Peter May - The Killing Room

But his family had all been buried here at Mount Carmel, to the west of Chicago, a ragtag bunch of undistinguished antecedents of Scots and Irish origin. Her mother’s family were of German descent, and she supposed that’s where she got her pale freckled skin and fair hair. Her father had had Celtic black hair in his youth, and incongruously blue eyes. It was a comfort to her that she had inherited at least some of his genes.

News of his death had reached her in Beijing in a short, cold phone call from her mother, and she had sat for a long time in the tiny apartment provided by the University of Public Security, aware of a peculiar sense of emptiness, disturbed by her lack of emotion. It was nearly two years since she had last seen him, and they had spoken a mere handful of times on the phone. It was only when she awoke to her own tears in the middle of the night that she discovered the grief she feared might not be there.

Now she was at a loss. The tragic circumstance of her father’s death had finally forced her to break her ties with China, fragile ties held in place only by a man she thought she loved. And now that she was ‘home’, she would have to make decisions she had been putting off for far too long. Decisions about where her future really lay. Decisions she did not want to face.

She had been back in Chicago for nearly three days, and not once had she ventured to the north side to check on her apartment in Lincoln Park. She had left neighbours collecting mail and watering house plants. But she had been gone for more than eighteen months, and she was afraid of what might greet her there. Afraid, too, of a past she did not wish to revisit, memories of a man she had lived with for seven years. The man she had married. Instead she had opted for the safety of her old bedroom in the redbrick house where she had grown up in the leafy suburbs of Oak Park. Everything there was familiar, comforting, filled with recollections of a time when she had no cares or responsibilities, and life had still held the promise of something magic. She was, she knew, just hiding.

‘Margaret.’ Her mother’s voice carried to her on the wind and had the same chill edge to it. Margaret stopped and waited for her to catch up. They had barely spoken in the last three days. They had embraced briefly, but without warmth. There had been the polite enquiries about their respective well-being, the mechanical exchanges of necessary information. It wasn’t that they had ever really fallen out, their relationship had simply been sterile for as long as Margaret could remember. Loveless. A strange relationship for mother and daughter. ‘You’ll help me serve up the food when we get back to the house?’

‘Of course.’ Margaret didn’t know why her mother was asking. They had been through all this earlier. Perhaps, she thought, it was just for the lack of something else to say.

They walked to the gate in silence then, side by side, a space between them that a husband and father might have filled. As they reached the cars her mother said with a tone, ‘So what now? Back to China?’

Margaret clenched her teeth. ‘I don’t think this is the time or place, Mom.’

Her mother raised an eyebrow. ‘I take it that’s Margaret code for “yes”.’

Margaret flashed her a look. ‘Well, if I do go back, it’ll probably just be to escape from you.’ She opened the rear door of the hired limousine and slipped into the cold leather of the back seat.

‘Deputy Section Chief Li.’ The defence lawyer spoke slowly, as if considering every syllable. ‘There is no doubt that if one compares these shoe prints with the photographs of the footprints taken at the scene of the murder, one would be led to the conclusion that they were made by the same pair of shoes.’ Photographs of the footprints and the corresponding shoe prints were laid out on the table in front of him.

Li Yan nodded cautiously, uncertain as to where this was leading, aware of the judge watching him closely from the bench opposite, a wily, white-haired veteran languishing thoughtfully in his winter blue uniform beneath the red, blue and gold crest of the Ministry of Public Security. The scribble of the clerk’s pen was clearly audible in the silence of the packed courtroom.

‘Which would further lead one to the conclusion that the owner of these shoes was, at the very least, present at the crime scene — particularly in light of the prosecution’s claim that traces of the victim’s blood were also found on the shoes.’ The lawyer looked up from his table and fixed Li with a cold stare. He was a young man, in his early thirties, about the same age as Li, one of a new breed of lawyers feeding off the recent raft of legislation regulating the burgeoning Chinese justice system. He was sleek, well groomed, prosperous. A dark Armani suit, a crisp, white, button-down designer shirt and silk tie. And he was brimming with a self-confidence that made Li uneasy. ‘Would you agree?’

Li nodded.

‘I’m sorry, did you speak?’

‘No, I nodded my agreement.’ Irritation in Li’s voice.

‘Then, please speak up, Deputy Section Chief, so that the clerk can note your comments for the record.’ The Armani suit’s tone was condescending, providing the court with the erroneous impression that the police officer in the witness stand was a rank novice.

Li bristled. This was a cut-and-dried case. The defendant, a young thug up from the country who had claimed to be looking for work in Beijing, had broken into the victim’s home in the north-east of the city. When the occupant, an elderly widow, had wakened and startled him in the act, he had stabbed her to death. There had been copious amounts of blood. The warden at a workers’ hostel had called the local public security bureau to report that one of the residents had returned in the middle of the night covered in what looked like blood. By the time the police got there the defendant had somehow managed to dispose of his bloody clothes and showered away all traces of blood from his person. No murder weapon was recovered, but a pair of his shoes matched footprints left in blood at the scene, and there were still traces of the victim’s blood in the treads. Li wondered what possible reason this supercilious defence lawyer could have for his apparent confidence. He didn’t have to wait long to find out.

‘You would further agree, then, that the owner of these shoes was most probably the perpetrator of the crime.’

‘I would.’ Li spoke clearly, so that there could be no ambiguity.

‘So what leads you to believe that my client was the perpetrator?’

Li frowned. ‘They’re his shoes.’

‘Are they?’

‘They were found in his room at the hostel. Forensic examination found traces of the victim’s blood in the treads, and footwear impressions taken from them provided an exact match with the footprints found at the scene.’

‘So where are they?’ The lawyer’s eyes held Li in their unwavering gaze.

For the first time Li’s own confidence began to falter. ‘Where are what?’

‘The shoes, of course.’ This delivered with an affected weariness. ‘You can’t claim to have found a pair of shoes in my client’s room, tying him to a crime scene, and then fail to produce them as evidence.’

Li felt the blood pulsing at his temples, a hot flush rising on his cheeks. He glanced towards the procurator’s table, but the prosecutor’s eyes were firmly fixed on papers spread in front of him. ‘After forensics had finished with them they were logged and tagged and-’

‘I ask again,’ the lawyer interrupted, raising his voice, a voice of reason asking a not unreasonable question. ‘Where are they?’

‘They were sent down to the procurator’s office as exhibits for the court.’