Peter May - The Killing Room

He had re-read her file during the flight, the autopsy report, the forensic evidence, the dozens of leads that had taken them nowhere. The only real clue to her identity had been distinctive gold foil dental restorations, expensive and unusual in China. But none of the Beijing clinics capable of such work had had any record of her. Found buried in a shallow grave on waste ground on a bleak February morning during Spring Festival, they knew no more about her now than they did then.

A heavy jolt and the squeal of tyres brought him back to the present. He glanced out across wet tarmac to the low, old-fashioned terminal building. Twenty bodies in a single grave! It seemed inconceivable to him. The spectre of some grim room with decomposing bodies laid out side by side rose up before him, and he wondered what it was that had ever drawn him to join the police. And then Yifu was there again at his shoulder, and he had no need to answer his own question.

The Arrivals concourse was crowded with travellers, mostly from internal destinations now that Hongqiao had become eclipsed by the new international airport at Pudong. Expectant faces were turned towards the exit gate as the passengers from Beijing flooded out. Some cards were raised with names scrawled in untidy characters. Li saw his name held above the head of an attractive young woman with long hair divided in a centre parting and tumbling over narrow shoulders. She was scanning the faces in the crowd and appeared to recognise him immediately. She smiled, a broad, open smile that dimpled her cheeks. And Li saw that she had very dark eyes, almost black, and that one of them turned in very slightly. But it didn’t spoil her looks so much as lend her a sense of quirky individuality. She was wearing jeans and a denim jacket over a white sweatshirt, and a pair of scruffy blue and white trainers.

‘Deputy Section Chief Li?’

Li nodded. ‘That’s me.’ Physically he towered over her, but she had a presence, an innate sense of self-confidence that lent her stature, and she didn’t seem so small.

‘Hi.’ She held out her hand.

He shook it and was surprised by the firmness of her grip. He said, ‘I was told I would be met by my opposite number here, Deputy Section Chief Nien.’

She cocked an eyebrow at him. ‘Were you?’ And she reached out to take his holdall. ‘I’ll take your bag.’

Her move caught him by surprise. ‘That’s okay,’ he said. But she had already snatched it and turned towards the sliding glass doors, swinging it up and over her shoulder.

‘I’ve got a car waiting outside,’ she said.

Li hurried after her. ‘So what happened to Nien?’

The girl never broke her stride. ‘The Deputy Section Chief’s got better things to do than provide a taxi service for some hotshot from Beijing.’ A dark blue Volkswagen Santana saloon sat idling at the kerb. The girl lifted the trunk and dropped Li’s bag in.

Li felt his hackles rise. This was not the courtesy or respect an officer of his rank was entitled to expect. Hotshot! And he remembered Wu’s sarcasm in Beijing. You’re such a fucking superstar, boss . Is that how people saw him, just because of the publicity a couple of high profile cases had brought? ‘What’s your rank, officer?’ he said sharply.

She shrugged. ‘I’m just the driver. Do you want to get in or do you want to walk?’

There was a long moment of stand-off before Li finally decided this was not the place to deal with her. Silently fuming he walked around the car and climbed in the passenger side. The rain battered down on glistening asphalt, red and white flags hung limply in a row, a ghostly mist, like gauze, almost obscured the car park and the pink multi-storey buildings beyond.

The girl slipped into the driver’s seat and set the wipers going to clear the windscreen. ‘Your name,’ Li said through clenched teeth.

She looked at him, affecting confusion. ‘I’m sorry?’

‘I’d like to know your name, so that I can take the appropriate action when we get to headquarters.’

‘803.’

He glared at her. ‘What?’

‘That’s what it’s called — the headquarters of the Criminal Investigation Department. 803. A cop show here on Shanghai TV called us that because of our address — 803 Zhongshan Beiyi Road. It stuck.’ Suddenly her face split into a grin and she started laughing, an odd braying laugh that was strangely beguiling.

Li found a puzzled smile sneaking up on him, in spite of himself. ‘What? What’s so funny?’

She held out her hand. ‘Maybe we should start again, Deputy Section Chief. I’m Nien Mei-Ling.’

He frowned. ‘Nien … Deputy Section Chief Nien?’

She laughed again. ‘Is it really so hard to believe that a mere woman could achieve the same rank as the great Li Yan? Or is it only in Shanghai that women hold up half the sky?’

Li shook the outstretched hand, startled and bemused. ‘I’m sorry, I thought-’

‘Yeah, I know … that I was just some junior officer sent to pick you up. Couldn’t possibly be Deputy Section Chief Nien.’ But there was no rancour in this, no chip on the shoulder. Just a wicked sense of mischief. And Li found her smile irresistible, and held on to her hand perhaps a little longer than necessary.

*

The expressway from the airport became Yan’an Viaduct Road, a six-lane highway raised on concrete pillars that ran through the heart of Shanghai, bisecting it from west to east. Li gazed out through the rain in amazement as all around tower blocks rose up in white and pink stone, a monolith made entirely, it seemed, out of green glass, rows of incongruous villas that owed more to the architecture of ancient Greece than ancient China, whole blocks of square three-storey buildings in cream stucco and red brick, strange silver cylindrical towers that disappeared into the cloud. Gigantic neon signs on every other rooftop advertised everything from Pepsi-Cola to Fujifilm. It was nearly fifteen years since he had last been in Shanghai, and it had changed beyond recognition. There were still the single-storey blocks of traditional Chinese shops and apartments crammed into crowded narrow lanes, still the bizarre pockets of European colonial architecture left by the British and the French from the days of the International Settlement. But from the seeds planted by Deng’s concept of a socialist market economy, a whole new city had grown up around them, a city filled with contradictions around every corner, bicycles and BMWs, a city of extremes and excesses, a future vision of China.

Mei-Ling glanced at him. ‘Changed a bit since you were last here?’

Li nodded. ‘You could say that.’

She smiled. ‘Wait till you scratch beneath the surface. It’s changed more than you think.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘Sex shops and massage parlours. All-night clubs and discos — hell, we even own a few.’

‘We?’

‘Public Security.’ She took in Li’s astonishment. ‘People’s Liberation Army, too. Disco till dawn with the PLA.’ A small bell hanging from her rear-view mirror chinged as she swerved around a slow lorry and switched lanes. ‘And then there’s the dogs.’

‘Dogs?’ Li was puzzled.

‘Seems they’re off the menu and on to the accessory list. These days you’re no one if you don’t own a dog. The European purebreds are particularly popular. The Russian mafia’s making a fortune doping them up on vodka and smuggling them down on the Trans-Siberian express. We’ve got pet parlours and veterinarian surgeries springing up all over the city.’ She paused. ‘And, of course, there’s the Taiwanese Mafia. They’re moving in big-time, running protection rackets and prostitution. There’s only one China as far as they’re concerned. We’ve got a population of fourteen million in this city, a hundred and seventy-five thousand taxis, the highest rate of economic growth in China, the fastest growing crime rate and eighteen bodies in a building site in Pudong. Welcome to Shanghai, Mr Li.’