Peter May - The Killing Room

‘She had an abortion halfway through her first year,’ Qian said. ‘Didn’t want an unwanted pregnancy to get in the way of her education.’ And yet in some way that Li still did not understand, that abortion had cost the girl her life.

He said, ‘We need to get them to look at the bodies. Identify her, if they can.’

Dai said, ‘They’re on their way to the mortuary right now.’

And Li felt his stomach lurch. He thought of the fourteen corpses still unidentified, the horrors that awaited these poor people as they tried to discern the features of their little girl from the pulp of decaying human flesh that would be wheeled out by men in white coats and rubber gloves. But if they were able to make that identification, the investigation would have come full circle, ending where it had begun, with a medical student working as a night watchman on a building site. Li shook his head at the irony.

Dai cleared his throat again. ‘There’s one other thing, Chief,’ he said. ‘I’m not sure how important it is. And I guess I should have spotted it before now.’ He made a face. ‘But, then, probably we all should have.’ And in this there was a hint of accusation to deflect guilt. ‘It was right there all the time on the goddamn kid’s resumé.’

Li frowned. ‘What are you talking about?’

‘The medical student,’ Dai said. ‘Jiang Baofu. You know, all those vacation jobs he had, working in various hospitals and clinics?’ He paused. ‘One of them was the Shanghai World Clinic.’ Li glanced immediately at Huang standing by the door. The Section Chief was impassive. Dai said unnecessarily, ‘You know, Cui Feng’s place.’

*

Margaret sat alone in Li’s office. She had showered off all the blood, scrubbed and scrubbed, and watched it wash away down the drainer. But like Lady Macbeth, she still felt its taint. Only, this was no dream. Her face was pale and without even a trace of make-up, her hair still damp and scraped back. She had on the khaki cargoes she had worn the day she lost Xinxin, and another pair of trainers. Her black tee-shirt contrasted sharply with the whiteness of her skin. She looked at her hands and saw the first lines of age there, a prominence of the knuckles as the full flesh of youth thinned and became sinewy and tough. There was a thickening of her neatly trimmed nails, and the half-moons beneath her cuticles appeared paler than usual. Even as she looked at them, her hands started to shake, and she pressed them palm down on the table to make them stop.

But she could no longer focus on her hands, or the shadows on the wall where once posters and papers had been pinned, or the sound of the rain as it fell again from the heavens and battered on the window. Pictures that she had fought so hard to displace kept forcing their way into her mind. Pictures of Jack in his final moments as he lay in his own blood on the floor. Pictures of Xinxin laughing with joy as she manoeuvred her little red car around the miniature roads in the park. Pictures of a dark-skinned Mongolian face with an ugly hare-lip stretched across protruding brown teeth. An endless procession of half-decayed faces on autopsy tables. And closing her eyes could not shut these pictures out.

She was startled when the door burst open and Li strode in. His expression told her immediately that something had happened. Mei-Ling followed closely in his wake. Margaret stood up quickly. ‘What is it?’

But all Li’s attention was focused on the telephone, and as he reached his hand towards it, it began to ring, almost as though he had willed it to do so. He snatched it from its cradle. He listened intently for several seconds, then there was a brief, staccato exchange before he hung up. Margaret could see that he was drawing quick, shallow breaths. ‘Jiang Baofu,’ he said.

‘The medical student?’

Li nodded grimly. ‘A bracelet belonging to one of the dead girls was found in his apartment.’ He turned to Mei-Ling. ‘The parents just identified her,’ he said in Chinese. And to Margaret, ‘He also spent two summer vacations working at a clinic belonging to Cui Feng.’

Margaret was still attempting to take all this in. ‘An abortion clinic?’

Li shook his head. ‘No. Cui has a clinic that deals exclusively in the treatment of foreigners. Insurance work.’

Margaret’s confusion deepened. ‘I don’t understand. What’s the connection?’

‘That’s what we’re about to ask him,’ Li said.

*

Jiang Baofu’s hair was gelled and spiky. Li could smell the perfume of the gel. He was wearing his long coat, shoulders peppered with dark spots of rain. He had on the same high leather boots he had been wearing the night they first interviewed him in the hut on the building site, his jeans tucked into them at calf height. Li imagined that Jiang thought he looked pretty cool, modelled on one of those Hong Kong rock singers he watched on Channel ‘V’. He did not appear quite as composed as he had during previous interviews. He was leaning back in his chair, trying to convey the same careless attitude of relaxed indifference. But there were lights in his eyes, and they were wide and cautious.

Mei-Ling sat down opposite him, and Li took his time closing the door before approaching the table and pulling up a chair. He made no attempt to switch on the recorder. Instead, he held the boy in a gaze of icy intensity. Jiang shifted uncomfortably. Li said, ‘My niece was kidnapped yesterday. She is six years old.’

There was a long silence before Jiang decided to respond. ‘Why are you telling me?’

‘I want you to know,’ Li said slowly, ‘so that you will understand that I mean it when I say if one hair on her head has been harmed, I will tear out your heart and stuff it down your throat.’ His almost conversational tone gave his words a chilling, believable edge.

Jiang’s eyes widened and he sat himself more upright. ‘I don’t know what you mean?’

Li nodded to Mei-Ling and she switched on the cassette recorder. ‘November twenty-sixth,’ she said. ‘Eleven-fifty a.m. Interview with suspect Jiang Baofu. Present Deputy Section Chief Nien Mei-Ling, Section Two, Shanghai Municipal Police, and Deputy Section Chief Li Yan, Section One, Beijing Municipal Police, Criminal Investigation Department.’

Jiang’s rabbit eyes flickered from one to the other. ‘Suspect?’ His face cracked into a frightened smile. ‘Hey, you don’t really think I did this shit?’

‘We have reason to believe,’ Li said calmly, ‘that you murdered at least nineteen young women by cutting them open while they were still alive, and then removing vital organs, thereby killing them.’

Jiang stared at him for a moment in patent disbelief. And then a sort of calm visibly descended on him. ‘No,’ he said. ‘You’re trying it on.’ His confidence was returning. ‘Like I said before, you can’t think I did it. There’s no evidence.’

‘How can you know that?’ Mei-Ling asked.

‘Because I didn’t do it.’ This directed at Mei-Ling as if she were an idiot.

Li saw her bridle and stepped in quickly. ‘We traced the Zhang family from Yanqing,’ he said. And a hint of concern reappeared in Jiang’s eyes.

‘And?’

‘The daughter doesn’t remember you trying to give her a bracelet. In fact she doesn’t remember you at all.’

Jiang shrugged. ‘I didn’t have much confidence then. You know, it was kind of worship from afar. Not surprising really that she doesn’t remember me.’

Li placed his forearms very carefully on the table in front of him and leaned forward. ‘And her nickname isn’t Moon .’

Jiang said, ‘That’s just what I called her. Because she was beautiful, you know, like the moon. She had this lovely, round face …’