Peter May - The Killing Room

Cui laughed. ‘Good health is bad for business, I’m afraid.’

No doubt, Li thought, the hundreds of thousands of abortions Cui carried out each year would subsidise any slump in business at his Shanghai World Clinic. He stretched out a hand to shake Cui’s. ‘Thank you very much, Mr Cui, for your help. We’ll send an officer over to liaise with your staff.’

Cui smiled beneficently, shaking both their hands. ‘Not at all, not at all. Anything I can do to help, please don’t hesitate to ask.’

In the car, Mei-Ling looked at Li and said, ‘You don’t like our Mr Cui very much, do you?’

Li looked at her, surprised, then conceded, ‘No, I don’t. Access to health care used to be everyone’s right in this country, not just a privilege afforded to the wealthy.’ He paused. ‘Was it that obvious?’

‘To me. But, then, I don’t like him that much either.’

‘Why’s that?’

She shrugged. ‘I hate to find myself agreeing with Margaret Campbell.’ She glanced at Li. ‘But much as I support the principle of the One Child Policy, it doesn’t feel right that someone should make money out of other people’s unhappiness.’

And Li remembered Margaret’s bold words to Cui’s face, accusing him of profiting from other people’s misery. He had been shocked at the time, and angry. Now he remembered her bluntness almost fondly. Margaret had no sense of tact or diplomacy, but at least whatever she presented to the world came from the heart.

Almost as if she had read his mind, Mei-Ling said, ‘If I were to make an educated guess, I’d say that at some time your Miss Campbell has had an abortion herself.’

Margaret was standing by the window in Li’s office when he and Mei-Ling got back to 803. Li stopped in the doorway, surprised for a moment to see her there. Her hair tumbled freely over her shoulders, catching the late morning sunshine that was squeezing in appearances between banks of dark, wallowing, low cloud. She was wearing khaki cargo pants over brown suede boots, and a yellow tee-shirt under a green waterproof jacket that was drawn in at the waist. There was a touch of red about her lips, and brown-pink around her eyes. She had a radiance about her that Li had not seen in a long time, and the sight of her kick-started a fluttering sensation in his stomach, and the faintest stirring in his loins. With the icy cold presence of Mei-Ling at his side he felt himself flush with embarrassment, as if she or Margaret could somehow read his feelings.

‘Hi,’ Margaret said brightly. And she cocked her head, frowning slightly and giving Li an odd look. ‘You look like shit,’ she said. ‘You couldn’t have had much sleep.’

‘I have not had any,’ he said.

‘Poor thing,’ Margaret smiled, although her tone suggested anything but sincerity. She rounded the desk. ‘Look, I know you two are busy …’ She let that hang for a moment. ‘So I’ll not get under your feet. I just dropped by on my way to pick up Xinxin. I thought you might be interested to see this.’ She lifted a sheet of paper off the desk and held it out to Li.

He took it. ‘What is it?’

‘A fax from Dr Wang in Beijing. He sent it to my hotel. I asked him to DNA-match the body parts of the girl in Beijing, just in case the pathologist who did the original autopsy got the visual matching wrong and we were really looking at pieces of two victims.’

Li looked up at her, horrified by the thought that they could have got it so wrong. ‘Are you telling me they do not match?’

‘No, they match perfectly.’

Li frowned. ‘So, what’s the problem?’

‘There’s no problem,’ Margaret said. ‘It’s the girl’s HLA type that the DNA-matching threw up …’

Mei-Ling took the sheet from Li and examined it. ‘DQ-alpha allele “1.3”?’ She shook her head, nonplussed. ‘What is special about that?’

‘Wait a minute,’ Li said. ‘What is DQ-alpha allele?’

Mei-Ling said, ‘The HLA DQ-alpha gene is one of the markers on the DNA panel used to match body parts. Right?’ She looked to Margaret for confirmation.

‘Something like that,’ Margaret conceded. And then to Li, ‘An allele is a variant of any particular gene on a chromosome in your DNA. Some of them show statistical differences between races.’

He said, ‘So what is significant about this “1.3” allele?’

‘I don’t know about its significance,’ Margaret said, ‘but it’s certainly unusual. In fact the HLA DQ-alpha allele “1.3” is never found in the DNA of a Chinese.’

Li was being very slow on the uptake. ‘I don’t understand. What does that mean?’

Mei-Ling had the answer. ‘It means that your little hostess at the Black Rain Club was, in the doctrine of American political correctness, of mixed parentage. Or, as people used to say, a half-caste.’ She looked at Margaret. ‘European? American?’

‘Impossible to say. But on the statistical balance of probability, it’s unlikely.’

‘Why?’ Li asked.

Margaret said, ‘I did a little checking on the Internet. That’s where I discovered that the “1.3” is never found in Chinese — or South-East Asians for that matter. Hispanics have a pretty low incidence of it. Only about four-and-a-half per cent of blacks have it. Caucasians have the second highest frequency. But that’s still only eight-and-a-half per cent. So it’s pretty rare in any racial group. Strangely, the highest incidence — about twenty-two per cent — is found in Japanese. So the chances are her mom or her dad came from the Land of the Rising Sun.’

Li started searching through the untidy piles of papers that were strewn across his desk.

‘What are you looking for?’ Mei-Ling asked.

Li said, ‘I asked Dai to dig out as much background on the Chai Rui girl as we had available from public records.’ Fatigue was fraying his temper and his patience now. ‘Where the hell is it?’

Mei-Ling said, ‘You’ve kept the guys pretty busy all morning, Li Yan.’ She sighed. ‘I’ll speak to him.’ And she picked up the phone.

Margaret smiled at Li and put a hand lightly on his arm. ‘Try and get a break if you can,’ she said, and this time he saw she meant it. ‘I’ll see you later.’

Li had a very powerful desire, then, to kiss her and close his eyes and just hold her there. But all he said was, ‘Sure.’

Margaret hesitated briefly, as if perhaps she had felt the same impulse, but then she turned and went out. He lit a cigarette and rubbed his eyes with the heels of his hands, but only succeeded in making them burn. He blinked at Mei-Ling as she hung up the phone. ‘Well?’

‘Dai’s got the stuff on his desk. But you’ve got an appointment first.’ He scowled, and she said, ‘The Commissioner of Police wants to see you in his office straight away.’

*

The Commissioner of Police sat behind his desk, the crossed flags of the Republic on the wall behind him. There was nothing on the desk except for a telephone and a lamp. Not a pen or a pencil, not even so much as a scrap of paper. Its surface was polished to such a high shine that the Commissioner was almost perfectly reflected in it. He wore his official dark green uniform with two gold stripes at the bottom of each sleeve, and the gold, red and blue badge of the Ministry of Public Security on his left arm. His carefully trimmed receding hair, was brushed back from a round, heavy-jowled face. His hands were folded in front of him on the desk. He did not ask Li to sit, and Li stood uncomfortably to attention in the middle of the room. The Procurator General stood by the window, peering at Li over his round steel-rimmed reading glasses. He held a swatch of papers in his hand, but never once referred to them. He remained a mute witness to the proceedings.