Peter May - The Killing Room

He nodded gravely.

‘How do you know?’ Mei-Ling asked.

‘The yellow-brown colour of the skin around the long central wound. Caused probably by betadine, an iodine tincture used to disinfect the skin before making an incision. You don’t need to disinfect the skin of a dead person.’

‘And that is conclusive?’ asked Li.

‘No. But there were plenty of other clues. There was blood clotting around the chest and abdominal wounds. Doesn’t happen if the person’s dead. Also, the black gritty material I described along the incision edges was caused by an electrocautery device used to heat-seal small bleeders that aren’t big enough to suture. Miss Nien made the point herself when she described to you why the wounds were bloodless where the limbs and head had been severed. The woman was certainly dead when they hacked her up.’ She took a sip of her tea. ‘And then there were those sutures inside, tying off bleeding arteries where organs had been removed. Like I said, dead people don’t bleed.’

Mei-Ling flicked her hair back from her face and said, ‘You mentioned something about succinic acid and midazolam found in the urine.’

Margaret nodded. ‘I’m pretty sure the lab will find succinylcholine in the brain tissue. I would suspect that it was used, in conjunction with the midazolam, to keep the victims compliant. The midazolam sedates. It is often used in the induction phase of anaesthesia. It would need to be injected in small doses every few minutes to keep the victim riding on the edge of unconsciousness. The succinylcholine is a neuromuscular blocker. It would have paralysed the victims so that an ambu bag would have been required to force air into the lungs and keep the blood oxygenated. It sounds complicated, but it’s quicker and easier to apply than full anaesthesia.’

There was a long silence as everyone in the room took in the implications of Margaret’s findings. Eventually Li said, ‘It looks like I am going to have to revise my initial thoughts on organ theft.’

Margaret frowned. ‘What were those?’

Li said, ‘The reason I was brought in on this case is because of a body we found in Beijing last winter. A young woman, cut open and then dismembered. Identical in almost every detail to the Shanghai victims. I dismissed the thought that she might have been murdered for her organs because, although they had been removed, they were found with the body in a separate bag.’

Margaret shook her head. ‘I don’t think you can look for a motive in organ theft.’

‘Why not?’

‘Well, for a start the lady I examined today appeared to me to have had a partial autopsy performed on her, albeit a “live” one. And, as you know, the organs are always removed during autopsy to be sectioned.’

‘Why would anyone want to perform a “live” autopsy?’ Mei-Ling asked.

‘I have no idea. But it certainly helps to establish cause of death. After all, if you remove someone’s heart it is going to kill them. So the victim would die halfway through the procedure. Perhaps that’s why the ante-mortem was not completed, why the spleen and the lower organs were left intact. Who knows?’ She looked around the faces watching her, hanging on her every word, her every thought. ‘But more compelling still,’ she said, ‘there would be no need to keep someone alive in order to remove their organs for transplant. You would simply kill them and remove the organs afterwards. Cleaner, quicker, easier. I cannot think of a single reason why you would want to keep the person alive.’ She took another gulp of her tea. ‘The facts are these. Our seamstress was murdered by sterile surgical procedure. Her legs, arms and head were then crudely hacked off with some kind of heavy chopping instrument. The pieces were stored in a freezer for at least three months, and then dumped across the river anything up to a week ago, the process of thawing having increased the rate of decomposition. These are the facts. And other than indulging in wild speculation about it being the work of some kind of psycho surgeon, I’m afraid I can’t offer you a single clue as to why.’

And still the rain fell. Li and Margaret stood on the step outside the mortuary door, under the cover of a red-tile canopy. She wanted air. He wanted a cigarette and the chance to talk to her. But for several minutes he said nothing, and she did not seem inclined to conversation. He sneaked a glance at her and saw that her pale skin was pink, the freckles dotted across her nose more pronounced, somehow, than usual. Her eyes appeared bluer than he remembered them, startling, like chips of ice set in rose gold. She caught him looking at her, and he glanced away guiltily. Finally he turned to look at her again and said, ‘Margaret, I am sorry about last night. I said things that-’

‘Don’t,’ she said. ‘It was my fault. I was tired and drunk, and stupid and thoughtless, as usual.’ She paused. ‘I hardly slept.’

‘Me neither.’

She wanted to reach up and touch his face, and kiss his lips, and tell him she loved him. ‘Li Yan, I …’

But from somewhere Mei-Ling’s voice came to them. The tail end of a conversation with Dr Lan. She laughed at something he said, that long, braying laugh that Li found so endearing. And Margaret thought how it sounded just like a donkey in heat. She knew it was a laugh which, if she heard it often enough, could tip her over the edge. Like chalk on a blackboard, it made her flesh crawl. She gritted her teeth, and Mei-Ling came smiling out on to the step to join them.

‘Hey,’ she said to Li. ‘We had better go. Detective meeting at 803 in fifteen minutes.’ And she headed for the car.

Li turned to Margaret, reluctant to go. ‘See you later.’

‘Sure,’ Margaret said, made sour again by Mei-Ling’s interruption, and as he hurried through the rain to the passenger door, she called after him, ‘Just tell your detectives to keep that creepy medical student away from me in future.’

Li froze, his fingers on the handle of the door. He half turned. ‘What medical student?’ Mei-Ling started the car and peeped the horn and he lifted his hand from the door to silence her.

‘I can’t remember his name,’ Margaret said, raising her voice above the roar of the engine. ‘He’s the night watchman at the place you found the bodies.’

Mei-Ling cut the motor and opened the door.

‘Jiang Baofu?’ Li said as she got out of the car.

‘Yeah, that sounds like it,’ Margaret said.

Mei-Ling looked from one to the other. ‘The medical student?’

Li ignored her. ‘When did you see him?’

‘He approached me at the Peace Hotel yesterday evening, not long before you came to pick me up.’

Li’s jaw slackened in amazement, and he exchanged looks with Mei-Ling. ‘And he knew who you were?’ Mei-Ling asked, quickly picking up the conversation

‘Sure. He said he’d seen my picture in the papers and wanted to help in the investigation.’

Li was very still, like an animal that smells danger and is waiting to see the direction from which it is coming. ‘What did you say?’

‘He freaked me,’ Margaret said. ‘Told me he’d followed me to the hotel from 803. I told him he shouldn’t be talking to me and I didn’t want him coming near me again.’

‘Why in the name of the sky did you not tell me this last night, Margaret?’

‘I’d forgotten about him,’ Margaret said, irritation in her voice now. ‘And, anyway, last night didn’t seem like an appropriate time to bring it up.’ Li stopped himself from saying that she had managed to raise much more inappropriate subjects. Margaret asked, ‘Should I be worried?’

‘Jiang Baofu,’ Mei-Ling said, ‘currently tops a suspect list of one.’