Peter May - The Killing Room

For a long time he just held her and said nothing, until gradually the sobs began to subside. Then he drew the hair back from the streaky wetness of her face and smiled gently down at her. ‘What you need is to get out of here,’ he said. ‘I’m going to take you to dinner tonight. And if I don’t have you laughing by the end of the evening, I’ll pick up the tab.’

Which made her smile, in spite of everything. She remembered how she had always insisted they went Dutch, and how he had always made her laugh.

Her life flashed before her eyes, like that moment people experience just before they believe they are going to die. All the familiar places she had haunted as a student, and then later during her residency at UIC Medical Centre. She had been more of a hermit during her time at the Cook County Medical Examiner’s office.

The cab took them along Armitage, lights blazing in the early evening dark. On Halsted they had passed familiar-looking restaurants, a bar where she had once spent an hour drinking with a boyfriend, waiting for a table in a nearby eatery. By the time it was ready they were too drunk to eat.

Now she saw the used CD store where she used to browse when she was low on funds, only in those days they still sold vinyl, too. And the little speciality tea and coffee shop where she had got her favourite blend of roasted beans and Earl Grey tea by the pound. And all the chi-chi shops and boutiques where she would happily spend hours picking out what she would buy if only she could afford it.

They passed under the El, and Margaret suddenly began to get a bad feeling. ‘Where are we eating?’ she asked.

David smiled knowingly. ‘I don’t think you’ll be disappointed.’

But when the cab took a right into Sheffield and drew up outside Sai Café, she was. ‘ Sushi! Jesus, David,’ she said, trying to make light of it, ‘I just spent the last eighteen months eating Asian, I was kind of hoping you might take me somewhere different. Somewhere American , you know, even a burger joint.’

‘Oh.’ He looked crestfallen. ‘You always liked sushi . I just thought …’ His voice trailed off. He shrugged. ‘But, hey, doesn’t matter. We can always go somewhere else.’

His disappointment was palpable. Margaret relented. ‘But you made a reservation, right?’ It helped to make a reservation for Sai Café if you wanted to be sure of getting in.

‘Sure. But somebody else’ll be happy to get our table.’

‘No, it’s okay, let’s eat here.’ She started to get out of the cab. She knew he wanted to bring her here because it was where they had eaten together as students, when they could afford it. Only, David could always afford it. It was Margaret who had trouble scraping her share together. She watched him pay the cab driver. No tip. Nothing had changed. ‘Listen,’ she said when the cab pulled away, ‘don’t mind me. It’s just today, you know? I’m a bit cranky.’

David guffawed. ‘Hey, Mags, you always were.’

She felt a little chill run through her. Mags is what Michael had called her. That was something David had obviously forgotten about Sai Café.

The place was packed. People stood around the bar and sat drinking at tables in the window waiting for seats in the restaurant proper. Ahead and to the right, in the main eating area, customers perched on low stools along the sushi bar, chatting to Japanese chefs as they wielded sharp blades to carve up delicate pieces of raw fish. The girl at the lectern checked their reservation, and they followed her between crowded tables to one at the far wall. Candles flickered in the smoky atmosphere, and Margaret remembered that David, like Li, was a smoker. After all these months in China it didn’t bother her as much as it used to.

Steaming hot towels were brought to the table, and they ordered miso soup and moriawase — mixed sashimi platters. David lit up as soon as they had placed their order. ‘So,’ he said, ‘how long are you planning on staying?’

‘Don’t,’ Margaret said. ‘You sound like my mother.’

‘Jesus, I hope not.’ David laughed and gazed at her fondly. ‘You two never did get along, did you?’

‘Nope.’

‘I always reckoned you were more like your dad.’

And Margaret remembered how David had never really known her. He had been attracted to her, physically, and that had been more important to him than anything else. She had thought he was good-looking, and the physical side of their relationship had always been rewarding — until she got pregnant. And then there had only been one course of action as far as he was concerned, and she had allowed herself to be talked into it. She had never forgiven herself. Or him. ‘You still in medicine?’ He had made the youngest ever cardiac consultant at Chicago Hope.

‘Sure.’ He laughed, although a little uneasily, she thought. ‘Still single, too.’

Margaret hoped he had developed more subtlety in telling patients they were terminally ill. ‘I’m sure you had lots of girls after we split up.’

‘Lots.’ He drew on his cigarette and blew a jet of smoke over her head. ‘But, then, you were a hard act to follow.’

She grinned. ‘Oh, come on, David, it’s me you’re talking to. I never did fall for your bullshit.’

He returned the grin ruefully. ‘No, and neither has anyone else.’ He patted the top of his head. ‘And now I’m losing my hair I’m not such a catch any more. Women just pull out the hook and throw me back.’

‘Oh, sure. Like there aren’t a million women out there who wouldn’t die for a good-looking thirty-something cardiac consultant.’

‘Maybe I’ve just set myself too high standards. That’s what my mother thinks.’

‘She never thought too much of me.’

‘Yeah, but she never knew you like I did.’

‘Thank God.’ She grinned and he grinned back. And then there was an awkward silence that neither of them knew how to fill.

But they were rescued from their embarrassment by the arrival of the soup. The taste of it was familiar and comforting, pieces of wakame and tofu cubes in hot dashi stock thickened by red miso . They slurped in silence for minute or two.

Then, ‘Good food, weird people,’ David said.

Margaret looked confused. ‘What?’

‘The Japanese.’ He grinned stupidly. ‘Don’t think I’d much like to be practising over there. Neither would you.’

‘Why not?’

‘You know, they got this weird religion in Japan. Shinto . It’s peculiarly Japanese, but it’s kind of soaked up bits of Buddhism and other stuff as well. They’ve got a pretty strange view of the sanctity of the dead body. And, you know, they only got around to defining brain death as a legal condition a few years back.’ He laughed. ‘Last time a doctor over there performed a heart transplant was in nineteen sixty-eight, and he got charged with murder.’

Margaret said, ‘I can think of a few doctors who should be charged with that.’ And she remembered her fear in the moments before she lost consciousness in the operating theatre, and then coming to and knowing that they had killed her child. She looked at David and wondered if he even remembered.

‘I read all about you when that business was in the news about the rice,’ he said suddenly. ‘Jesus, Margaret, that was scary stuff.’

She just nodded.

‘Nearly put me off sushi for life.’

She managed a pale smile.

He tried again. ‘You want to tell me about it?’

She shook her head. ‘Nope.’

‘Okay.’ He raised his hand. ‘Margaret says subject off limits.’ He hesitated, then, ‘So what have you been doing in China all this time?’