Peter May - The Runner

It was too early for Mei Yuan to be peddling her jian bing on the corner of Dongzhimen Beixiaojie. Right now she would be among those hardy practitioners of tai chi , who would have gathered among the trees of Zhongshan Park as soon as it opened its gates. He would catch breakfast later.

Lights flooded out from the offices of Section One into the dark, tree-lined Beixinqiao Santiao, as Li wheeled his bike past the red gable of the vehicle pound and chained it to the railing at the side entrance. The first officers were arriving for the day shift as the night shift drifted home for something to eat and a few hours’ sleep.

Wu was at his desk when Li popped his head around the door of the detectives’ room. The television was on, and he was watching an early news bulletin. He jumped when Li spoke. ‘Anything new overnight?’

‘Oh, it’s you, Chief.’ He hurriedly turned the sound down on the television. ‘We got beat in the swimming. And didn’t do too well in the track and field either. We might just have pinched it, only the women’s three thousand meters champion failed to turn up, and the Americans took it by half a lap.’

Li sighed. ‘I was talking about the investigation, Wu.’

‘Sorry, Chief. Nothing really. A lot of legwork and not much progress.’

The door of Tao’s office opened, and Qian emerged from it clutching an armful of folders, juggling them to free a hand to switch out the light. ‘Morning, Chief.’

‘Qian. I thought it was a bit early for the Deputy Section Chief.’ Qian grinned and dumped the folders on his desk.

Li was halfway up the corridor before Qian caught up with him. ‘Chief,’ he called after him, and Li stopped. ‘It’s probably nothing, but since you were interested in the break-in at that photographer’s studio, I thought you might like to know.’

‘What’s that?’ Li asked, his interest less than lukewarm. He continued on up the corridor. Qian followed.

‘I got a call from the local bureau first thing to let me know. There was another break-in again last night. Only this time Macken was there and they gave him a bit of a going over.’

Li stopped. ‘Is he alright?’ He had a picture in his memory of Macken as a small, fragile man. It wouldn’t take much to damage him.

‘Just cuts and braises, I think. The thing is, Chief, it was something very specific they were after.’ He paused, knowing he had Li’s interest now.

‘What?’ Li said.

‘The contact prints he made from the negatives they stole the night before.’

Li scowled. He was more than interested now. ‘How the hell did they know he’d taken contact prints?’

Qian made a tiny shrug. ‘That’s what I wondered, Chief. I mean, outside of the local bureau, and the three of us, who even knew he’d made them?’

Li glanced at his watch and made an instant decision. ‘Let’s go see him.’

Macken and Yixuan lived in a small two-bedroom apartment on the tenth floor of a new tower block development in Chaoyang District. Yixuan was not at home when they arrived, and Macken showed them into his study. It was a small, untidy room, walls stuck with prints that had been pasted there for reference. The Macintosh computer on his desk was almost submerged by drifts of papers and prints and stacks of books, mostly of or about photography. A bureau pushed against one wall was stuffed to overflowing with more paperwork and rolls of exposed film. Strips of negatives hung from a length of wire strung across the window.

‘’Scuse the mess, folks,’ Macken said. ‘I’m gonna have to get this goddamn place cleared out before the baby arrives. It’s gonna be the nursery.’ He pulled out a pack of cigarettes. ‘You guys smoke?’ He grinned shiftily. ‘Only room she’ll let me smoke in. And only when she’s out. She says I’ve got to give up when the baby arrives. God knows why. I only smoke ‘cos there’s no other way to get filtered air in this goddamn city.’

Qian took one. Li declined, and Macken lit up. He had a bruise and swelling beneath his left eye, and a nasty graze on his forehead and cheek. Macken caught Li looking.

‘They threatened to do a lot worse. And, hey, I’m no hero. So I gave ’em the contacts.’

Li said, ‘Would you be able to describe them?’

‘Sure, they were Chinese.’ He shrugged and grinned. ‘What can I tell you?’ His smile faded. ‘What I can’t figure is how the hell they knew I had them.’

‘Who else knew?’ Li asked.

‘Outside of me, Yixuan, and the officers from the bureau, no one. Except you guys, I guess.’ He puffed on his cigarette. ‘So when the officers from the bureau came the second time, I didn’t tell them I still had a copy. I suppose it’s safe enough to tell you.’

‘You made two contact sheets?’ Li said.

‘No. After the negatives got taken the other night I scanned the contacts into the computer.’ He searched about through the mess of papers on his desk and found a Zip disk. He held it up. ‘Brought ’em home with me, too. Wanna take a look?’

Li nodded, and as Macken loaded the file into his computer, glanced at Qian. Qian’s English was limited, and Macken’s was quickfire and very colloquial. Li wondered how Qian had managed with him on the phone the other day. ‘You following this?’

Qian shrugged. ‘Just about.’ And, as if he had read Li’s mind, added, ‘His wife translated for us yesterday.’

Macken brought the contact sheet on to his screen. Each photograph was tiny and difficult to interpret. ‘I can blow ’em up, one by one,’ he said. ‘Quality’s not great, but at least you can see ’em.’ With the mouse, he drew a dotted line around the first picture, hit a key and the print filled the screen. It was very grainy, but clearly a shot of a swimming pool, stained glass windows along one side, mosaic walls at either end depicting scenes from ancient China. ‘Can’t figure why anyone would want to steal this shit,’ he said. ‘I mean, they’re not even good pics. I just rattled ’em off for reference. You wanna see ’em all?’

Li nodded, and Macken took them through each of the prints, one by one. Shots of comfortable lounge seats arranged around giant TV screens, massage rooms with one to four beds, the sauna, the communications centre with young women wearing headsets sitting at banks of computers arranged in a pentagon around a central pillar. There was a restaurant, a tepinyaki room, a conference room. In a shot of the main entrance, light falling through twenty-foot windows on to polished marble, there were five figures emerging from a doorway. Three of them, in lounge suits, looked like management types, with expensive haircuts and prosperous faces. Li could nearly smell the aftershave. A fourth was a big man who wore a tracksuit and had long hair tied back in a ponytail. A fifth, unexpectedly, was white, European or American. He looked to be a man in his sixties, abundant silver hair smoothed back from a tanned face against which his neatly cropped silver beard was starkly contrasted. He looked paunchy and well fed, but unlike the others was dressed casually, in what looked like a corduroy jacket, slacks and old brown shoes. His white shirt was open at the neck.

Li asked him to hold that one on screen. ‘Do you know who these people are?’

Macken said, ‘The one on the left is the CEO. The bigwig. The other two suits, I dunno. Other management, I guess. They all look like clones, these people. The guy in the tracksuit is a personal trainer. They got a gym down the stairs, you’ll see it in a minute. Members can ask the trainer to design workouts just for them. The guy in the beard, no idea.’

‘Can you give me a printout of that one?’

‘Sure. I can print them all off if you want.’