Peter May - The Runner

Margaret said, ‘You can see, there is no petechial haemorrhaging around the face, the eyes or the neck. He didn’t die of strangulation.’ She lifted up the flap again to expose the muscles of the neck, and the open area where she had transected the trachea and oesophagus, peeling them away from the backbones and down into the chest. ‘The hyoid bone, just above the Adam’s apple, is broken, and the neck dislocated between the second and third cervical vertebrae, as you can see, cleanly severing the spinal cord.’

She turned the head each way to show them the deep red-purple abrasions where the rope had burned his neck, high up under the jaw bone. ‘It’s all very unusual in a suicide.’

‘Why?’ Li asked.

‘Most suicidal hangings don’t involve such a drop, so the neck isn’t usually broken. Effectively they are strangled by the rope, and there would be evidence of pinpoint haemorrhages where tiny blood vessels had burst around the face, eyes, neck. Petechial haemorrhaging. As you saw, there is none.’

She nodded to one of her assistants and got him to turn the body over. She said, ‘We know that he was alive when he made the drop, because the abrasions made by the rope on his neck are red and bloody. There is no doubt that death was caused by a dislocation of the vertebrae of the neck severing the spinal cord. A broken neck to you.’

‘So…you think he kill himself?’ Sun ventured in English.

Margaret pursed her lips behind her mask. ‘Not a chance.’

Li looked at her. ‘How can you be so sure?’

‘The amount of alcohol in his stomach,’ she said. ‘Can’t you smell it?’ Li found it hard to pick out any one odour from the melange of faeces, blood and decaying meat that perfumed the air. ‘I nearly sent the boys out for some soda so we could have a party.’

‘Half bottle brandy,’ Sun said.

‘Oh, much more than that,’ Margaret said brightly. ‘I nearly had to ask for bread and milk to be brought in. There was so much alcohol in the air I thought I was getting drunk. Not a good idea in my condition.’

‘But he didn’t drink,’ Li said. ‘His team-mates were quite definite about that.’

‘Well, then, I’m surprised it wasn’t the alcohol that killed him. From the smell alone, I’d say we were looking at something around zero-point-four percent. Enough to seriously disable, or even kill, the untrained drinker. Maybe somebody encouraged him to drink the first few. Perhaps with a gun at his head. And if he wasn’t used to alcohol, then it probably wasn’t long before they were able to pour it down his throat.’

‘How do you know he didn’t drink it himself?’ Li persisted.

‘Well, maybe he did.’ Margaret removed her mask and goggles, and Li saw the perspiration beaded across her brow. ‘But with that much alcohol coursing through his veins, he wouldn’t have been able to stand up, let alone climb ten meters to the top ramp of a diving pool, tie one end of the rope around the rail, the other around his neck and then jump off. Someone got him very drunk, took him up there, placed the noose around his neck and pushed him over.’

They heard the hum of the air-conditioning in the silence that followed, and the guys with the basketball were still pounding the court outside.

Eventually, Li said stupidly, ‘So somebody killed him.’

She said trenchantly, ‘When you push someone off a thirty-foot ramp with a rope around their neck, Li Yan, they usually call it murder.’

She returned her attention immediately to the body and asked, ‘Has the question of drug-taking arisen?’

Li frowned. ‘Why? Was he taking drugs?’

‘I have no idea. I’ve sent several samples down to toxicology and asked for priority analysis.’

‘You think he was, then?’

She shrugged non-committally and ran her fingers across the tops of his shoulder and upper back. The whole area was covered with acne spots and scars. ‘Acne is quite a common side-effect of steroids. On the other hand boys of his age can suffer like this.’

‘Toxicology should tell us, though?’

She peeled off her latex gloves. ‘Actually, probably not. He was due to swim in competition today, right?’ Li nodded. ‘So there would be a high risk of testing. If he was taking steroids he’d have stopped long enough ago that it wouldn’t show up.’ She shrugged again. ‘So who the hell knows?’

Outside, the basketball players were taking a cigarette break, steam rising from them with the smoke as they stood around chatting idly, one of them squatting on the ball. It put Sun in the mood, and he lit up, too, as Li dialled Section One on his cellphone. He got put through to the detectives’ room.

‘Qian? It’s Li. Tell the boys it’s official. Sui was murdered.’ He watched Sun drawing on his cigarette and envied him every mouthful. ‘And Qian, I want you to check with the various sports authorities when any of these athletes was last tested for drugs.’

‘You think it is drug-related, then?’ Qian asked.

‘No, I don’t think anything,’ Li said. ‘I just want every little piece of information we can get. The more pixels the clearer the picture.’ He couldn’t stand it any longer. He put his hand over the mouthpiece and said to Sun, ‘Give me one of those.’ And he held his hand out for a cigarette.

Sun looked surprised, then took out a cigarette and handed it to him. Li stuck it in his mouth and said to Qian, ‘This indoor athletics competition with the Americans, it starts today, right?’

‘Yes, Chief.’

‘At the Capital Stadium?’

‘Yeh, the place where they have the speed skating.’

‘Okay, get me a couple of tickets for tonight.’

‘I didn’t know you were a sports fan, Chief.’

‘I’m not,’ Li said, and disconnected. He clipped the phone on his belt and starting searching his pockets for a light, before he remembered he didn’t have one. Sun flicked open his lighter, and a blue-yellow flame danced in the sunlight. Li leaned forward to light his cigarette and saw, over Sun’s shoulder, Margaret coming down the steps of the Centre for Material Evidence Determination behind him. He quickly coughed into his hand, snatching the cigarette from his mouth and crumpling it in his fist. Sun was left holding his lighter in mid-air. He looked perplexed. ‘Put that fucking thing away!’ Li hissed.

Sun recoiled as if he had been slapped, slipping the lighter quickly back in his pocket. Then he saw Margaret approaching and a slow smile of realisation crossed his face. Li met his eyes and blushed, then whispered threateningly, ‘Not a word!’ Sun’s smile just broadened.

As she joined them, Margaret said, ‘Where are you off to now?’

‘We’re going to have a look at the weightlifter’s place.’

‘I thought Wang said it was natural causes.’

‘He did,’ Li said. ‘I just don’t like coincidences.’

Margaret’s hair was held back by a band, and she had not a trace of make-up on her face. But she looked lovely, her skin clear and soft and brushed pink by pregnancy. ‘I’m going back to the apartment,’ she said, ‘to shower and change. Then I guess I’ll head off to my exercise class. Will I see you later?’

‘I’m getting a couple of tickets for the indoor athletics tonight. I thought you might like to come along and see the Americans being shown how to do it by the Chinese.’

Margaret cocked an eyebrow. ‘The other way around, don’t you mean? You people have come a long way in a short time, but you’ve still a long way to go.’

Li grinned. ‘We’ll see. You’ll come then?’

‘Sure.’

And then he remembered, ‘Oh, yeh, and I thought we might have lunch tomorrow, with Sun Xi and his wife, Wen. It would be a good time to meet her. And you could maybe take her up to the hospital tomorrow afternoon. Get her sorted out.’