Peter May - The Killing Room

Li drew his car at an angle into the sidewalk beside Mei-Ling’s Santana. He looked at it for a moment, saw the little bell that chimed so sweetly hanging motionless from the rear-view mirror. He had a bad feeling about all this. He started to get out of the car. ‘You stay here,’ he told Margaret.

‘I will not,’ she said fiercely. ‘I’m not sitting out here on my own.’ And she got out the passenger side.

The door of the elevator stood open in the lobby, throwing a cold yellow light out into the dark. Inside, a middle-aged woman wrapped in a padded blue jacket sat on a stool, her face buried in a book, a jar of cold green tea at her feet. There was a smell of stale cigarette smoke and urine. She did not even look up as they entered. ‘Second floor,’ Li said.

The woman kept her eyes on her book, reached out and felt for the second button up on the tarnished steel panel and pressed it. The elevator jerked, as if it had made a little cough, and the doors juddered shut. The steel box started a slow ascent. At the second floor the doors jerked open again and Li and Margaret stepped out into a gloomy corridor. As the doors shut behind them they heard the woman pulling a crackle of phlegm into her mouth and spitting it out on the floor.

They found Huang’s apartment at the end of the passageway. The light bulb here had burned out and not been replaced, and it was even gloomier. The steel gate in front of the door stood ajar, half opened into the corridor. Beyond it, the main door stood wide open. Inside, the apartment appeared to be in complete darkness.

Li pulled the gate fully open. ‘Stay here,’ he said to Margaret. ‘And this time I mean it.’ She nodded mutely. She had no idea what was going on, but she sensed Li’s tension and it scared her.

Li felt almost smothered by the deep silence of the apartment. In the distant, reflected light from the landing, he felt his way gingerly along a narrow hallway. He passed an open door into a tiny kitchen. The next along was half-glazed, limp curtains providing a small measure of privacy for an equally small bathroom. As he got further down the passage, and his eyes became accustomed to the dark, he saw a faint glow falling out across the hallway from an open door at the end. The apartment seemed infused with an all-pervading smell of antiseptic and disinfectant, like a hospital. It reminded Li of Jiang Baofu’s place. His own tremulous breathing sounded inordinately loud. ‘Hello,’ he called, to make some louder sound, and his voice cracked feebly. He cleared his throat and tried again, louder. ‘Hello?’

He was greeted only by silence. He turned into the frame of the open door and was bathed in the soft warm glow of a nightlight on a bedside table. The smell of antiseptic was almost suffocating in the warm air of the room. The gaunt figure of a woman lay on the bed, a single sheet draped across her lifeless, wasted body. Her eyes were open and staring at the ceiling, her jaw hanging slack, her mouth gaping. A tiny noise somewhere behind him made Li spin round. The door opposite was also open, the room unlit. But in the blackness, Li saw a small movement of light, and in a moment of choking fear realised that it was the reflected light in the movement of an eye.

A lamp snapped on and he was, for a moment, blinded and startled. He raised an arm, almost defensively, to shield his eyes, and saw Section Chief Huang sitting in a chair at the far side of the room across the hall. He was drawing one of his hands away from a small lamp on a table at the side of his chair. The other pointed a gun directly at Li. In that same moment, Huang realised who Li was, and he lowered the gun slowly into his lap. The two men stared at each other, unmoving for an immeasurable period of time, before gradually Li became aware that a shadow on the floor just inside the door opposite was cast by the leg and foot of someone lying just out of his line of vision. A sick feeling rose in his stomach. There was something horribly familiar about the faded denim and the scuffed white trainer. He stepped slowly forward, crossing the hall and entering the living room where Huang still sat motionless, watching Li with unblinking eyes.

Careful not to make any sudden movement, Li raised a hand and pushed the door wide. Mei-Ling was lying face down on the floor, a large pool of blood soaking into the carpet around her. Li could see her face in profile, long black hair lying untidily across it, her mouth open a little, lips pursed where a small amount of blood had oozed out. ‘Oh, God,’ he whispered, without knowing which God he was appealing to. Any one would do. He knelt quickly at her side, and with trembling fingers felt for a pulse in her neck. But she was already quite cold, and he almost recoiled as the shock of it gripped him. He looked up at Huang, full of incomprehension and confusion. Huang looked back at him like a dead man from his grave. The lamp beside him cast an orange glow on one side of his bloodless face, the other was striped white by the light of the streetlamps that fell in narrow wedges through the Venetian blinds.

‘I swear on the graves of all my ancestors,’ Huang said, his voice barely a whisper, ‘I never intended to kill her.’

Slowly, with legs like jelly, Li got back to his feet. ‘Then why did you? In the name of the sky, Huang, why?’

‘She was going to arrest me. I couldn’t let her do that. I had paid enough. I had to be my own executioner.’

Li felt like a man sleepwalking through a nightmare. None of this seemed possible, none of it made sense. ‘Why would she want to arrest you?’

‘From the moment you found out what had been going on at Cui’s clinic, she knew that I was involved. I guess she probably suspected for a long time.’ He shook his head. There was pain for him in remembering. ‘She couldn’t understand why I was so hostile to the idea of bringing you in on the investigation. You never knew it, but she was fighting your battles for you behind closed doors. Why was I being so obstructive over approaching Cui Feng? Why wouldn’t I support your request for a search warrant?’

Li looked at the small, frail body of Mei-Ling lying on the floor. He remembered her smile, her twinkling eyes, that braying laugh of hers, her jealousy of Margaret. How easily all that life and vitality had been taken from her. He turned his tearful gaze back on Huang. For the first time, the Section Chief could not meet it. He looked away and took a long, deep breath.

‘It must have been so clear to her. She knew, of course, that it was only a liver transplant three years ago that saved the life of my wife.’ He shook his head and forced himself to meet Li’s eyes again. ‘She knew that only too well, because up until then she and I had been lovers.’ His eyes flickered to the body on the floor. ‘I don’t know now whether it was love, or lust. But it was full of passion. I was going to leave my wife.’ He paused. ‘Until she was diagnosed with terminal liver disease.’ And he looked quickly at Li, an appeal for understanding in his voice and his eyes. ‘I couldn’t leave her then. I couldn’t just abandon her. I don’t know whether it was guilt, or whether somewhere deep inside I still loved her, but I simply couldn’t bring myself to walk away. I had to choose between them. But I had no choice.’ His appeal for understanding, even sympathy, fell on stony ground, and he retreated back into himself. ‘I don’t think Mei-Ling ever really got over it.’ His voice had retreated, too, almost to a whisper.

Li stood, unable to move, the silence singing in his ears, before he became aware of the slow tick, tick, of a clock somewhere in the room. Even as it invaded his consciousness it grew louder, until Huang’s voice suddenly snuffed it out again.

‘I don’t even know how Cui found out about my wife, but when he approached me with the offer of a transplant, how could I refuse? I could never have afforded it. But Cui waived all the fees. He told me I should regard it as a favour. A gift. A gift of life.’ He shook his head. ‘I should have known, of course, that he was simply investing in a little guanxi , in the knowledge that what was a small thing for him, was incalculable for me. That I would be forever in his debt. But I could never have known just how much. It was not the gift of life he promised it would be. It was a gift of death.’