Peter May - The Killing Room

Li said nothing. He reached below his jacket and drew out Huang’s gun from where it was tucked in his belt, and raised it to point at Cui. There was a ripple of panic among Director Hu’s distinguished guests, and several jumped to their feet, sending chairs tipping over behind them. As Li moved slowly among them, keeping his gun trained on Cui’s face, they shrank away like sea anemones from a diver’s touch. The remains of two dozen Shanghai crabs were strewn across the table. It was less than an hour since Li had driven past the lake where they had been caught.

Cui remained seated until Li was no more than a metre away, his gun pointed directly at Cui’s head.

Director Hu, too, refused to stand or be intimidated. ‘You’re finished, Li,’ he hissed. ‘Your career is over.’ But for the second time that night his words fell on deaf ears. He was not used to being ignored. He banged his fist on the table. ‘Dammit, Detective, put that gun down!’

Li kept his eyes fixed on Cui. ‘Get up,’ he said.

Cui got slowly to his feet and stood staring back at Li with the arrogance of a man who believes he is above and beyond the law. He looked down and saw that Li’s hand was trembling, and in that moment may have realised that the law might no longer be the issue here. Li was after justice, or maybe revenge. And law, justice and revenge did not sit easily together. He looked back into Li’s eyes, and what he saw there drained all colour from his face. First doubt, then fear, then panic, set in. ‘Don’t,’ he said, his voice almost a whisper.

But Li just continued to stare, as if in staring long enough he might be able to see reason somewhere beyond the blackness of the man’s soul. He felt perspiration make his finger slippery on the trigger of the gun. With all of his heart he wanted to pull that trigger, to obliterate evil. It would be so easy. A gentle squeeze of his finger. An end to it all.

‘Chief?’ He heard Dai’s voice coming from where he and Qian stood in the doorway behind him. There was, in that one word, that single question, asked softly and without prejudice, an appeal to reason. Li stood for a moment longer, undecided, and then he reached into his inside jacket pocket and pulled out a folded wad of official papers. He held it up in front of Cui’s face.

He said, ‘Cui Feng, I have a warrant for your arrest on suspicion of murder. The count begins at fifty-four and will probably go higher.’ And a smile that verged on a sneer, flickered across Cui’s face, almost as if he believed he had won, because Li had not pulled the trigger. He had opted for justice, not revenge. He had chosen the law, and maybe Cui figured he was still above it. Li was only vaguely aware of Dai and Qian and several uniformed officers pushing past him to handcuff Cui and lead him out of the room. They left behind them a stunned silence. Li tilted his head to look at the Mayor’s policy adviser. He said bleakly, ‘Marry a dog, stay with a dog; marry a rooster, stay with a rooster. You should choose your friends more carefully, Director Hu.’

There was that smell again, of antiseptic and disinfectant. Li ran down the corridor, past orderlies wheeling gurneys, nurses in starched white uniforms. Someone called after him, but he ignored them. The intensive care beds were at the far end of a hallway that felt interminably long. When he got there, breathing hard, he stopped in the open doorway. Margaret was sitting in a chair at the side of the bed. She seemed crushed and small and inestimably sad. She looked up when she heard Li’s footsteps. Her eyes were dark ringed and bloodshot and she wore a loosely tied hospital gown. Li looked beyond her to where the tiny figure of Xinxin lay under the sheets, attached by wires to a bewildering array of electronic equipment. A clear plastic tube fed a drip from an overhead bag into her right arm. But she was not moving.

Margaret stood up. ‘They were keeping her dosed up on an almost toxically high level of sedative,’ she said. ‘She was dehydrated, almost comatose. If we’d been another hour or two …’

Li was almost unable to take her words on board. ‘She’s … is she …?’

‘She’s going to be okay,’ Margaret said wearily. And then she shook her head. ‘But, Li Yan … she’s going to need a lot of love.’

Li closed his eyes, took a deep breath, and then reached out and drew Margaret towards him. He had no idea what the future might bring, what remained of the love that he and Margaret had once had. But it did not matter. Only now mattered. The life of a child. He felt Margaret’s body mould itself to his, and he held her tight. ‘We all do,’ he said. ‘We all do.’