Peter May - The Killing Room

Occasionally the police radio crackled and interrupted her thoughts. Earlier, Li had spoken briefly to someone at headquarters as he had turned the car up a ramp on to the Zhongshan Xilu ring road. A few minutes later he had relayed to her the contents of a cryptic return call. They would be met in Suzhou by officers of the local public security bureau. And his request for an arrest warrant for Cui Feng had been turned down by the Procurator General, on grounds of lack of evidence. Neither had passed comment on this, and there had been no exchange between them since.

The journey felt interminable although, in truth, less than an hour had passed since they had left Huang’s apartment building. An endless succession of broken white lines, illuminated by their headlamps, threw themselves at the windscreen and vanished into history. But in spite of their hypnotic effect, the image of Mei-Ling still lingered. Closing her eyes, Margaret could not erase it. Only the dreadful spectre of what they might find when they reached Suzhou could compete for space in her burned-out imagination.

Shortly before they saw the lights of Suzhou in the distance, the rain stopped. Somewhere away to their right, the waters of Yang Cheng Lake lay brooding in the darkness. Li took a spur off the expressway and they turned south towards Loumen Gate at the north-east corner of the old city wall. Beyond the gate, a convoy of five police vehicles was pulled in at the side of the road, red lights flashing. Li pulled up beside them and got out. Margaret remained in the car and watched as he walked forward to be met by the senior officer. There were about a dozen men in total, all in uniform. They spoke for several minutes before Li returned to the car. He said, ‘They have a small sampan waiting to take us to the basement at the rear of Cui’s clinic. It is only approachable by river.’ He took several deep breaths. ‘There will be three officers with us. The officer in charge was afraid that a motor boat would alert anyone who might be on guard. Some of the others will remain at the landing stage and the rest will cover the building from the road at the front. Apparently there are no lights on there at the moment. The place appears to be locked and empty.’ His words had a focused professionalism. He was trying to be a police officer doing a job, rather than a man afraid of what he might find in Cui’s basement.

They followed the convoy of police vehicles through the brightly lit modern streets of the new town, catching only glimpses to their right of the narrow streets that ran off into the old city, where hundreds of steeply arched bridges traversed the dozens of natural waterways on which the town had been built two-and-a-half thousand years before.

At an intersection, the convoy split up, and now they were following only two vehicles into the narrow streets of the ancient city, a jumble of whitewashed houses built one on top of the other. Beyond the steeply pitched grey-tiled roofs, Margaret saw the tiers of a pagoda rising into the night sky. They passed a tearoom perched on the edge of a narrow creek where old men would sit through the day, listening to the chirrup of their caged birds, and gaze on the tranquillity of life that drifted by.

In a dark, quiet square, they pulled into the kerb and got out of their vehicles. Several of the Suzhou officers stared curiously at Margaret. Their senior officer barked a command and Li steered Margaret gently by the elbow to follow him through an elaborate brick-carved arch, into a narrow lane that weaved its way between the crumbling whitewashed walls of ancient private dwellings. They crossed a number of humpbacked bridges over impossibly narrow waterways. Margaret saw covered corridors linking one house with another across deep, dark water. Finally, they reached a much wider river, and climbed down steep, uneven steps to where a sampan was bobbing gently on the swell, and the smell of raw sewage filled the damp air.

A fisherman in blue cotton pants and a white shirt held the boat steady as Li, Margaret and three uniformed officers climbed aboard. It was very dark. The houses on either side of the river rose straight out of the water, stones jutting out from the walls to form an arrangement of steps leading up to shadowed doorways. There were lights in only a few windows, and they cast pale, flickering reflections on the water. Margaret heard the steady slap, slap, of river water on the side of the boat and the breathing of the men who gathered around her in the belly of the small craft. The fisherman cast off and stood at the stern of the boat, grasping a long oar in both hands, working it easily backwards and forwards to propel them with surprising speed downriver. The old wooden vessel creaked and groaned against the resistance of the water, but the fisherman barely broke sweat. Margaret was wondering how on earth he managed to see in the dark, when suddenly, overhead, the clouds parted and an almost full moon poured a bright silvery light down upon them. It was a transformation. The whitewashed houses glowed like ghosts on either side of a river of mercury. Trees that overhung the water from between buildings, rustled gently in a breeze that had sprung from nowhere. It was immediately cooler, and Margaret shivered.

They passed under two bridges, before gradually slowing and drawing in towards the right bank. The helmsman looked back along the riverbank and appeared to be counting. Then, finally satisfied, he pulled up at a flight of stone steps that looked much like any other. At the top of them a stout, studded, wooden door stood firmly shut. The windows on the lower level were all barred. There were another two levels above that, accessible, Margaret assumed, from the street on the other side. A cloud scudded across the moon and they were plunged briefly into darkness before, in a moment, being flooded again with light.

Li jumped on to the bottom step and drew out the gun he had removed from Huang’s dead hand. The blood had dried rust red on it. There was a brief, whispered exchange between him and the senior uniformed officer who was unarmed, before they proceeded up the steps. The fisherman helped Margaret out of the boat and she followed them. The other two officers climbed out after her, but remained on the bottom step.

At the top of the steps, Li tried the door. But it was securely locked. He put his shoulder to it twice, but could not move it. After another whispered exchange one of the other officers hurried up the steps with a long metal crowbar. Slowly, working it backwards and forwards, he managed to insinuate it between the door and the jamb until he achieved sufficient leverage to force it open. There was a splintering and cracking of wood that was deafening in the stillness of the night. The door swung open and they were met by a rush of damp, fetid air. Everyone stood stock still, but there was nothing to be heard. Li felt inside the wall for a light switch, but found nothing. The darkness beyond was inky black. The third officer climbed back aboard the boat and grabbed two flash lights. He jumped out again and ran up the steps to pass them to Li and his senior officer.

Li snapped on his light, and its strong beam penetrated the blackness to reveal a long, narrow corridor with a flagstone floor. Stone walls ran damp with condensation. Somewhere up ahead a small creature, probably a rat, scurried away from the light. Li froze for a moment, then began moving cautiously inside. The senior officer switched on his flashlight and followed. Margaret stepped gingerly after them, her hand recoiling from the cold, slimy touch of the wall.

There were half a dozen doors at regular intervals, on left and right. The first two they passed stood open. The doors had small, barred, unglazed openings in them. In the rooms beyond, there were cot beds freshly made up with sheets and blankets, small bedside cabinets, rush matting on the floor.