Peter May - The Runner

Sun said, ‘Didn’t they meet at the betrothal meeting?’

Li glanced at him self-consciously. ‘We haven’t had the betrothal meeting yet.’ The betrothal meeting would normally have taken place six months before the wedding. In this case it would be only a matter of days. ‘Thank heaven we have Mei Yuan to bridge the gap.’

‘She’s an unusual woman,’ Sun said. ‘How does someone with a degree from Beida end up selling pancakes on a street corner?’

‘The Cultural Revolution,’ Li said. ‘She was an intellectual, and suffered particularly badly. They took away her baby boy and sent her to work in the countryside. She never saw him again, and never recovered.’ He knew that in many ways he had filled the hole in her life left by the son she had lost and never had the chance to raise. He turned to Sun, a sudden recollection returning. ‘Who do you know in Beijing who has English books?’

Sun shrugged. ‘No one,’ he said. ‘I thought maybe I could buy her some books at the English Language Bookstore. She wouldn’t ever have to know, would she?’

Li looked at him, moved by his thoughtfulness. ‘No,’ he said. ‘She wouldn’t.’

The national team swimming coach was a small man in his middle fifties, wiry and nervous, with close-cropped greying hair and black darting eyes. He didn’t look as if he would have the strength to swim a length of the Olympic-sized pool below them, never mind train a gold medal winner. Even beneath his thick sweatshirt and track suit bottoms, Li could see that he did not have the build of a swimmer. He was slight, almost puny. Perhaps he had reached his current position because of his motivational qualities.

They sat up amongst the tiered rows of blue seats with a grandstand view of the swimming pool. The air was warm and damp. Both Li and Sun had unbuttoned their coats, and Li loosened the scarf at his neck. Away to their right, forensics officers had taped off the diving area and were painstakingly searching every square inch of tile. The diving pool itself was being drained through large filters that would catch any evidence traces that might be suspended in the water. The diving platform and the steps leading up to it had been tape-lifted. But so far all their efforts had been unrewarded.

Coach Zhang could not sit still. ‘It’s outrageous,’ he said. ‘My team are in competition this afternoon and they have nowhere to train, nowhere to warm up.’

Sun said, ‘Aren’t there two pools up at Olympic Green?’

‘They are both in use,’ Zhang said irritably. ‘One for swimming, one for diving. We don’t have access to either.’

Li said, ‘You seem more concerned about training facilities than the death of your star swimmer.’

Zhang flicked him a wounded look. ‘Of course, I am shocked by Sui’s death,’ he said. ‘But the competition is going ahead. I can’t bring him back, and we still have to compete.’

Li smiled cynically. ‘The show must go on. How very American.’

‘Oh, I’d be happy to cancel,’ Zhang said quickly. ‘But we’re not even allowed to say why Sui’s name has been withdrawn. It’s your people who have forced that upon us.’

Li had no reply to that. Instead, he asked about Sui. ‘When was the last time you saw him?’

‘At training, the night before last.’

‘And how did he seem then?’

‘Morose. But he always was. Not one of the more gregarious members of our team.’

‘Did he ever discuss with you the idea of shaving his head?’

Zhang frowned. ‘No. No, he didn’t. And I would not have approved. The naked head is such an ugly thing, and I don’t believe it makes a centimeter of a difference.’ He scratched his chin thoughtfully. ‘But it doesn’t surprise me. Sui was a very single-minded young man. He had a bout of flu about ten days ago. Knocked the stuffing out of him. We thought he wasn’t going to be able to compete this week. But he worked so hard in training…’ Zhang lost himself for a moment in some distant, private thought, and then he looked at Li and Sun. ‘He was determined he was going to make it. Absolutely determined. I just can’t believe he committed suicide.’

Nor could his team-mates. Li and Sun found them gathered in one of the changing rooms downstairs, sitting around the slatted benches with sports bags at their feet waiting for the mini-bus to collect them and take them across town to Olympic Green. In contrast to the high spirits of the previous evening, their mood was sombre and silent. Not exactly conducive to successful competition.

Although they had been questioned last night by Sun and Qian, they were still eager to help in any way they could. But none of them had had contact with Sui on the day of his death, so nobody had seen his shaven head until they found him dangling above the diving pool.

‘What was he like, I mean as a person?’ Li asked.

Several of them ventured views not dissimilar to his coach. ‘He used to be a lot more fun.’ This from a tall, broad-shouldered boy called Guo Li upon whom high hopes were invested for the two hundred meters butterfly.

‘You’d known him a long time?’ Li asked.

‘We were at school together in Guilin. He used to be a good laugh. You know, serious about his swimming, but fun to be with. Lately he started taking it all a lot more seriously.’

‘How lately?’

‘About six months ago,’ one of the others said. ‘He started getting…I don’t know, too serious.’

‘And started winning big time,’ another of them pointed out.

‘He was a pain in the ass,’ someone else said. And when the others glared at him said defensively, ‘Well, he was. He’d bite the head off you if you looked at him the wrong way.’

Li remembered Wang’s observation at Jia Jing’s autopsy. There can often be behavioural changes with steroid abuse. Users can become moody, aggressive . He said, ‘Is there any chance he was taking drugs?’

‘No way!’ Guo Li left no room for doubt. And there was a murmur of agreement from around the changing room, even from the one who thought Sui was a pain in the ass. ‘He treated his body like a temple,’ Guo said. ‘His diet, his training. There was no way he would do anything to damage himself.’

‘And yet,’ Li said, ‘if appearances are to be believed, he drank a half bottle of brandy and then hanged himself. Hardly the actions of someone who treated his body like a temple.’

None of them had anything to say to that.

Outside, the sun remained winter low in the sky, and snow still lay across the concourse on the shaded side of the building. The road below remained white, too, and as they scrambled down the embankment, students rode gingerly past on bikes that were liable to slither from under them without warning. Sun had parked their Jeep opposite the student accommodation block. ‘Where to now, Chief?’

‘Let’s go and see where an Olympic gold medal prospect lives.’

Sui Mingshan, Chinese swimming’s best prospect of Olympic gold, rented an apartment in one of the city’s most up-market new housing complexes, above Beijing New World Taihua Plaza on Chongwenmenwai Street. Three shining new inter-linked towers formed a triangle around the plaza below. Eighteen storeys of luxury apartments for the wealthy of the new China. Out front, a huge Christmas tree bedecked with lights and foil-wrapped parcels dwarfed a gaggle of plastic Father Christmases looking absurdly like over-sized garden gnomes. An ethereal Oh Come All Ye Faithful in Chinese drifted across the concourse. External elevators ascended in polished glass tubes.

Sun parked in a side street and they entered the apartment block at number 5 on the north-west corner. Marble stairs led them to a chrome and glass entrance from behind which a security man in light grey uniform watched them advancing.