Peter May - The Killing Room

Margaret replayed the question in her head, but could make no sense of it. ‘I beg your pardon?’ she said, pronouncing her words very carefully. The wine, after the vodka, was beginning to have an effect. And now she took a long pull at her beer.

The Procurator General, round spectacles perched on an unusually long nose, leaned over. ‘We have great love of detective fiction in China,’ he said. ‘Many police officers write detective stories.’

Director Hu laughed. He said, ‘I believe in Beijing they have courses at the Public Security University in the History of Western Detective Fiction.’

Margaret had not heard this before. ‘Really?’ It was one of those strange Chinese curiosities she continually stumbled across.

‘Many police officers take this course,’ the Commissioner said. ‘They are very inspired by Hormez.’

Margaret glanced towards Li for help, but he was engaged in polite conversation with Mrs Cui. She became aware of Mei-Ling smiling at her discomfort from across the table. ‘And who exactly is this … Hormez?’

The Commissioner looked at her in astonishment. ‘You don’t know Hormez? Ohhh … he ve-very farmers in China. Sherlock Hormez.’

And suddenly it dawned on her. ‘Holmes! You mean Sherlock Holmes!’

‘Yes,’ said the Commissioner. ‘Hormez. You know Hormez?’

Margaret had to confess that she had not actually read any of the Conan Doyle books. But when she was younger, she said, she had seen a number of the old black and white movies with Basil Rathbone. Everyone else looked puzzled.

Someone was turning the Lazy Susan, and a plate piled high with prawn crackers stopped in front of her. Margaret looked in horror at the small black scorpions crawling over the crackers before she realised that they weren’t actually moving.

‘Deep fried whole scorpion,’ Mei-Ling said from across the table, and Margaret saw that it was Mei-Ling who had stopped the dish in front of her. ‘They are a great delicacy.’

Other conversations around the table tailed off, and smiling faces turned in Margaret’s direction. Western sensitivity to Chinese ‘delicacies’ was well known, and everyone was anxious to see Margaret’s reaction. The Commissioner took one in his chopsticks and popped it into his mouth, crunching enthusiastically. ‘Scorpion valued for medical reason,’ he said. ‘You try one.’

Margaret’s jaw set. The Chinese could be so goddamned superior at times like this, and she felt as if she were representing the whole of Western culture here. She forced herself to smile, lifted one of the brittle black insects with her chopsticks and with a great effort of will put it in her mouth. As she crunched on its bitterness it was all she could do to stop herself from gagging.

‘Bravo,’ Director Hu said and clapped his hands. ‘I can never bring myself to eat the bloody things. They are disgu-usting.’

Margaret took a long draught of beer to try to wash the taste away, and a waitress immediately refilled her glass. To her relief, the focus shifted away from her again as conversations restarted around the table. The alcohol and the fatigue were beginning to make her feel quite heady. After all, she had barely slept in more than twenty hours. She had noticed earlier that Mei-Ling’s boss, Section Chief Huang, was distracted and dour, and she saw now that he only picked at his food, troubled somehow, and taking no part in the social intercourse. She watched him for a moment or two. He was a good-looking man, but careworn somehow, as if carrying a heavy burden through life. She could not recall having seen him smile once.

She was wondering why he was here at all when a waitress came in and whispered something in his ear. He paled slightly and stood up immediately. He spoke rapidly to Director Hu in Chinese. The Director nodded gravely and said something back, and Huang turned with a curt nod and hurried out. The Commissioner whispered to Margaret, ‘I am afraid the wife of the Section Chief is very unwell.’

‘I wonder, what is your view on our one-child policy, Doctor?’ Margaret realised the question was being addressed to her, and turned to find Cui Feng, the Director’s personal friend, smiling at her across the table.

‘I think it is draconian and barbaric,’ she said bluntly.

Mr Cui was unruffled. He nodded. ‘I agree. But a necessary evil.’

‘I’m not sure that evil is ever necessary.’

‘Sometimes,’ Mr Cui said, ‘evil is the only option, and it is necessary to choose whichever is the least unpalatable. Without a policy to reduce the birth rate we would be unable to feed our population and many millions of people would die.’ He ran a hand thoughtfully over his smooth chin. He was taller than his friend, the Director, with a head of thick, black hair and a very gentle demeanour, like a doctor with a kindly bedside manner. ‘You know, in Shandong Province alone, the population would now have reached nearly one hundred and fifty million. But because of our birth control policy, the population is only ninety million. We have cut the birthrate by more than half since nineteen seventy, and cut the rate of infant mortality to thirty-four per thousand — which is far less than the world average of fifty.’

The Procurator General said with a mischief-making smile, ‘Mr Cui has a vested interest here, Doctor. Five years ago he opened a number of joint-venture clinics in Shanghai and persuaded the government to give him the contract to carry out all the abortions in the city.’

And Margaret thought how being a personal friend of the Mayor’s policy adviser would not have hindered that process, though she didn’t say so.

‘Three hundred thousand of them a year,’ the Director said. ‘Which was placing a heavy demand on limited government resources.’

‘Three hundred thousand abortions !’ Margaret said, incredulously. ‘A year ?’

‘In Shanghai alone,’ Mr Cui said.

‘Then your policy is failing,’ Margaret retorted. She felt an anger building in her, and ignored the warning looks from Li.

‘How so?’ asked Director Hu coldly.

‘It is one thing to persuade people to have only one child. It is another to force them to have abortions.’ She recalled with horror and regret the emotional blackmail that had forced her to abort her own unborn child. It’ll ruin both our lives , David had said, and she had lived with the pain and the guilt ever since. She said, ‘You are simply substituting the death of people by starvation with the murder of children in the womb. I can accept abortion when the life of the mother is in danger, but not as a matter of convenience.’

‘It is not convenience,’ Mei-Ling said. Her tone was as aggressive as Margaret’s. ‘These women have had babies. They made a mistake getting pregnant again, or were greedy, and it is their duty to have the children aborted.’

Margaret glanced at Li, but his face was impassive.

Mr Cui said, more softly, ‘Family planning in China has not only reduced the birth rate, Doctor, it has increased living standards, and life expectancy is now more than seventy years.’

‘Well, of course, as someone who’s profiting from other people’s misery, you would say that, wouldn’t you?’ It was out before Margaret could stop herself. She felt her face flush red as she realised the bluntness of what she had said.

There was a moment’s shocked silence around the table. Only Mr Cui remained, apparently, unperturbed. He retained his soft bedside manner. ‘Of course we are in business to make money,’ he said. ‘As are doctors and hospitals in the United States. But we also offer advice and counselling. These women would have had their abortions in state hospitals where the procedure would have been performed on a production line basis. We, at least, try to make the process more human.’