Peter May - The Killing Room

‘For Chrissake, will someone call an ambulance,’ she said. And she moved quickly to the window to try to untie the cord that held him. But it was knotted tight, his weight dragging against it. She heard one of the detectives talking rapidly on his mobile. ‘Someone got a knife? We’ve got to cut him down.’ The desperation she felt was compounded by the knowledge that he was almost certainly going to die. He had lost a huge amount of blood, and his system was probably already fevered by bacterial infection from the intestine.

She was almost shocked when he lifted his head, and she found herself looking into his glassy eyes. ‘No,’ he whispered. ‘Leave me.’

‘Jack, we’ve got to get you to a hospital.’

An almost imperceptible shake of the head. ‘Too late.’

She knelt on the floor in front of him and felt his blood soaking into her jeans. She put her arms around his chest and strained to lift him slightly to take the weight off his arms. Li cut the cord, and then helped her lay him on the floor. ‘Something for his head,’ she said sharply. And Mei-Ling hurried to get a cushion from the settee in the dressing room. Margaret slipped it under his neck to support his head.

‘There’s an ambulance on the way,’ Dai said.

Geller was shivering now, a cold sweat gathering in the creases of a forehead furrowed by pain. ‘Who did this to you, Jack?’ Margaret asked softly.

He gazed up at her like a mournful dog desperate for forgiveness from an angry master. ‘I’ve been following you,’ he said. He swallowed with difficulty. ‘I was there at the park … Other side of the fence.’ He swallowed again. ‘I saw him grab her, but I couldn’t … couldn’t …’ His breathing was becoming laboured. ‘Chased the van. Nearly got him.’

Margaret held his hand. It was as cold as ice. ‘Did he do this to you?’

Geller nodded. ‘Saw me.’

And Margaret realised that if the Mongolian had been following her, he must have known who Jack was. She could have wept then. Jack had nothing to do with the kidnapping of Xinxin. He had tried to save her. But, still, none of it made sense. ‘Why were you following me, Jack?’

He tried to smile. ‘You wouldn’t help me … Had to know.’

‘Know what?’ She glanced at Li for some help in understanding this. But he just shook his head helplessly. She turned back to Geller and wiped the perspiration from his forehead with the back of her hand. ‘We found a photograph of you with one of the dead girls.’ And whatever agony he had suffered up until then intensified. He screwed up his eyes and let out a small cry of pain. After a moment he opened them again and she saw that they were wet with tears.

‘Chai Rui?’ he said. Margaret nodded. He swallowed hard. ‘She was my little sister.’ And he started sobbing. ‘Mom and my stepdad were in a … a road accident … He died straight off … she lasted a few days. That’s when I came back from the States …’ He was fighting now for his breath. ‘Last thing she made me promise … was to look after Cherry.’ He shook his head. ‘Really fucked up, didn’t I?’

Li said, ‘Ask him what happened to her little girl.’

Geller’s eyes flicked up towards him. ‘With friends,’ he managed to say.

‘Oh, Jack,’ Margaret said, ‘why didn’t you just tell me all this?’

‘Scared,’ he said. ‘Thought she might be one of them … Missing all that time.’ The tears ran from the corners of his eyes down each side of his head. ‘Didn’t want it to be true.’ And his body was racked by sobbing. ‘Poor Cherry.’ And he stopped suddenly and opened his eyes and stared straight into Margaret’s. ‘You get them,’ he said. ‘Whoever it was … you get them.’

Margaret’s own tears dragged like hot wires down her cheeks. ‘I’ll get them,’ she said. And she looked up at Li. ‘We’ll get them.’ Li nodded grimly, and by the time she looked back at Jack he was dead.

And she knelt there in his blood and wept for him. Poor Jack. She remembered their first encounter at the airport, his story about the racecourse, his juvenile amusement at the LONG DONG GARDEN. She remembered their drinks at the bar in the Peace Hotel. He had been amusing, attractive. Did anyone ever tell you you’re very attractive for someone who cuts up people for a living? he had asked her. And now he lay dead on the floor, disembowelled because he had tried to save a little girl’s life, because he had wanted to know what had become of his little sister. And he had died with grief in his heart, and guilt for having failed his mother.

In the distance Margaret heard the siren of the ambulance, and Li helped her gently to her feet.

They had their meeting in the room with the skulls. Sightless eyes watched them from glass shelves, and their eternal silence contributed to the hush that filled the room. Almost the entire department was squeezed in. Standing-room only. Huang stood by the door, his face the colour of the yellowed remains in the display cabinets. Mei-Ling had whispered to Li as they entered that his wife was not expected to see out the day. Smoke from dozens of cigarettes hung over the table like a shroud. All eyes were on Li. He saw in them curiosity, sympathy, pity, and it was all he could do to keep his voice from cracking.

In slow, measured sentences, he described the discovery of Jack Geller in the apartment in Jingan District, and Geller’s dying identification of Xinxin’s kidnapper as his killer. Eyes flickered down to the dozens of images of the Mongolian that were scattered around the table. The Mongolian, Li said, was also suspected of stalking, and perhaps abducting, one of the eighteen women found in the mass grave at Lujiazui. He had also been stalking the American pathologist, Margaret Campbell.

He took another moment to collect himself. ‘There is no doubt in my mind,’ he said, ‘that the murders of the eighteen women in Shanghai, the one in Beijing, and the abduction of my niece, are inextricably linked.’ The implications of Li’s simple statement went through the mind of every detective in the room, and their silence so filled it that it seemed to expel all oxygen. Someone at the back opened a window. ‘So,’ Li said, ‘does anyone have any ideas?’

Dai cleared his throat and everyone looked at him expectantly. He blushed. ‘I got a confession, Chief,’ he said. ‘Remember you asked me to check through all those files of missing girls to see if any of them had a nickname that matched the one on that bracelet we found at Jiang’s place?’

Li inclined his head slightly. ‘I remember.’

‘Well, I delegated. You know, we all had so much on our plates, I was still tracking down the Zhang family from Jiang’s home town … I didn’t think you’d mind.’

‘What’s your point, Dai?’ Li asked impatiently.

Dai glanced at another, younger officer across the table. ‘You want to tell him, Qian?’

The young detective remained composed. He nodded and looked at Li. ‘I found a match this morning,’ he said. He opened up a file on the table in front of him. ‘A girl called Ji Li Rong. She was a second-year student at Jiaotong University. Disappeared about nine months ago. Everyone called her Moon . I spoke to her parents. It was her father who first called her that because when she was a baby her face was round like the moon.’

‘Did you show him the bracelet?’ Li asked.

Qian nodded. ‘It was hers all right.’

It was the smallest chink of light in a dark place, but to Li, after so long in that place, it was blinding. However, his face betrayed no emotion. He said, ‘Can we find out if this girl ever had an abortion?’

Dai said, ‘We thought of that. I got Qian to go back and check.’