Peter May - The Killing Room

Halfway down, Li came to the first door that was shut. He tried the handle. It was locked. He shone his flashlight through the opening in the door and saw, huddled against the wall at the far side of a rumpled cot bed, a pale young woman in her early twenties. She was wearing only a thin cotton smock, and her legs were pulled up under her chin, arms folded around her shins, trying to make herself as small as possible. There was no colour in her face, and she cowered from the light like a trapped animal. She was making tiny whimpering noises.

‘It’s all right,’ Li said softly. ‘We’re the police.’ He handed his flashlight to Margaret, braced himself against the opposite wall, and kicked the door several times with the flat of his foot. On the fourth kick the lock tore free and the door flew open. The girl screamed, curling herself into an even smaller ball. Li snatched his flashlight and hurried into the room. The girl pressed herself into the wall as if hoping somehow she might be absorbed into it. Li put his light on the bed and with warm, tender hands gently took her shoulders and pulled her into his chest. ‘It’s okay, it’s okay,’ he said softly. ‘You’re safe. You’re absolutely safe. I’m not going to let anyone hurt you.’

Her response was immediate, as she uncurled herself and then clamped herself on to Li, sobbing uncontrollably. Margaret stood watching from the doorway. There was nothing that she could do or say; the girl would not understand her. Vaguely, she was aware of the officer who had come in with them making his way further down the corridor, his shadow growing long behind him from the reflected light of his electric torch.

The girl was icy to the touch, and Li held her tightly to him, rocking her slowly back and forth on the bed, whispering softly all the time. But nothing would stop her shivering. Eventually he said to her, ‘Is there another girl here? A little girl? Do you know? Have you seen her? Have you heard her?’ But if the girl understood she was incapable of answering.

Suddenly there was a cry from the far end of the corridor. A man’s voice, the sound of a struggle. Margaret turned back into the corridor in time to see a flashlight tumbling across the floor. Before it smashed against the wall, she saw the figure of the uniformed police officer on his knees. A flash of blood, an expression of pain fixed on his face. And then darkness, and a sound like the wind, and Margaret felt, more than saw, the shape that flew at her. She screamed, and from somewhere a light flashed across a face made hideous by fear and anger. A face she knew from a moment of panic on a dark night on the Bund, a face with high, wide cheekbones and a hare-lip. She smelled his foul breath, felt it hot on her face, and saw his blade flashing in the light as it rose to plunge into her chest. A single, deafening sound roared in her head. And she wondered, momentarily, if this is what death felt like, a revelation, an explosion of light and sound. She fell backwards to the floor, with his weight on top of her, and immediately she was aware of her blood running warm across her chest and neck. There was no pain, but the chill of the stone flags beneath her felt like death, and she heard the screaming of the girl in the cell like a distant call from hell.

And then the weight, miraculously, was lifted from her and she was blinded by a light in her face. ‘Jesus …’ She heard Li’s voice, and for a moment was struck by the incongruity of a Christian oath in a Chinese mouth. ‘Margaret, are you all right.’

She sat up, breathing hard, and looked at the blood that soaked her tee-shirt, realising for the first time that it was not her own. And then, in the reflected light, she saw the Mongolian lying on the floor, half his head blown away by the shot from Li’s gun. ‘I’m fine,’ she heard herself saying, and then thought, no I’m not. The girl was still screaming.

She heard the calls of the other officers as they ran in from the steps. Li helped her to her feet. ‘She’s got to be here,’ he said.

Margaret nodded, unable to speak. Li took her hand, and ran with her down to where the wounded policeman lay in a pool of his own blood. Margaret knelt at his side and turned him over. But the blade had severed the carotid artery on the left side of his neck, and the life that had pulsed through his veins only minutes earlier had already ebbed away. She heard Li shouting, and looked up to see him at the bottom end of the corridor kicking furiously at another locked door. She scrambled to her feet and ran after him as the door finally tore free of its lock and crashed open. She arrived in time to see Li falling to his knees at the side of a cot bed. On top of it lay the tiny, prone figure of little Xinxin. Her hands and feet were bound, and she was gagged and blindfolded. Margaret felt a surge of anger and fear robbing her of strength, and she staggered forward.

Li turned the child over, fingers working feverishly to untie the gag and tear away the blindfold. Her eyes were closed, her mouth gaping. He leaned over her, and Margaret heard the moan that escaped his lips involuntarily. He looked up at her. ‘She’s not breathing,’ he said.

The car felt empty without Margaret or Mei-Ling. Li’s eyes were fixed on the white line that seemed to reel him in like a fish. In the far distance the lights of the city lit the underside of dark clouds on the horizon. He felt everything now with a heightened sense of awareness: the vibration of the tyres on the tarmac, the air that blew in his face from the vents on the dash, the sweat that gathered in the creases of his palms where he gripped the wheel with a tension that verged on ferocity.

He was startled when the radio spluttered and he heard Dai’s voice repeating his call sign. He unhooked the microphone and pressed the transmit button. ‘Li,’ he said, his voice flat, emotionless, like a dead man.

‘Chief,’ Dai’s voice came back to him. ‘The boys at the airport picked up that American surgeon. Daniel Stein. He was trying to board an Air India flight for Delhi. Had a briefcase full of computer disks that look like they might have some very interesting material on them …’ There was no response, and Dai’s voice crackled again around the interior of the car. ‘Chief …? Did you get that …?’

*

The elevator rose smoothly up the inside of one of the two green glass tubes that characterised the exterior of the Xiaoshaoxing Hotel. Li felt like a man floating. He looked down on the chaos of traffic and bicycles and pedestrians in Yunnan Nan Road below, red lanterns strung between buildings dancing in the night breeze, steam issuing from the open windows of dumpling takeaways. He couldn’t hear any of it, locked away in his glass capsule. Only the distant hum of the electric motor that pulled the cables. None of it seemed real.

The elevator came to a halt on the eighth floor and the doors slid noiselessly open. Li stepped out and walked briskly down the carpeted hallway, following the footsteps he had taken with Margaret and Mei-Ling less than a week before. He looked left and then right into luxurious banqueting rooms. Several gatherings were in the process of breaking up. Others had already gone. Li felt each footstep jar through his body. He was aware of other feet following in his wake, but only vaguely. His focus was elsewhere. Waitresses scurrying between banqueting rooms and kitchen, laden with the detritus of spent meals, gaped in astonishment and fear at the wild-eyed man spattered with blood who stalked the corridor.

Li turned left and then right, unwavering in stride and determination. At the end of the corridor he turned into the last and biggest of the banqueting rooms, just as a loud laugh rang out around the table. The laughter died almost as soon as he entered. Chairs scraped on the floor as people turned to see him standing in the doorway. There was a collective intake of breath. Cui Feng was sitting on Director Hu’s right, and his face flushed dark when he saw Li. The smile that had been upon it faded. Director Hu, close-cropped grey hair bristling on his bull head, glared at Li. ‘I do not recall inviting you, Deputy Section Chief,’ he said.