Peter May: The Runner

‘In the name of the sky, Wu!’ Li felt the first flush of anger. ‘You mean you just left him like that? For more than an hour?’

‘Hey, Chief,’ Wu held his hands up. ‘We didn’t have any choice. Doc says she’s had some kind of involuntary muscular spasm and she’s holding him in there. We can’t uncouple them, even if we wanted to. And, hey, have you ever tried moving three hundred pounds of dead meat? It’s going to take everyone here to lift him off.’

Li raised his eyes to the heavens and took a deep breath. Whatever he might have imagined, it could never have been this. But the implications were scandalous, not criminal, and his immediate inclination was to wash the section’s hands of it as quickly as possible. ‘What’s the Doc’s prognosis?’

‘He’s given her a sedative. Says when it takes effect the spasm should relax and we can prise him free.’ Again, the hint of a smirk, and Li knew that Wu was choosing his words carefully for their colour, enjoying the moment, and enjoying passing the buck.

‘Wipe that fucking smile off your face!’ Li said quietly, and the smirk vanished instantly. ‘A man’s dead here, and a woman’s seriously distressed.’ He took another deep breath. ‘You’d better show me.’

Wu led him through into a bedroom of extraordinary opulence and bad taste. A thick-piled red carpet, walls lined with crimson silk. Black lacquer screens inlaid with mother of pearl set around a huge bed dressed in peach and cream satin. Pink silk tassles hung from several hand-painted lanterns whose light was instantly soaked up by the dark colours of the room. The air was sticky warm, and layered with the scents of incense and sex.

The room’s incongruous focal point comprised the large, flaccid buttocks of the three-hundred-pound weightlifting champion of China. His thighs and calves were enormous below a thick waist and deeply muscled back and shoulders. A pigtail, like an old-fashioned Chinese queue, curled around the nape of his neck. By contrast, the legs he lay between were absurdly fragile. The woman was pale and thin, with short, bobbed hair, her make-up smeared by sex and tears. It seemed incredible that she had not been crushed by this monster of a man who lay prone on top of her, literally a dead weight. Li thought she looked as if she were in her forties, perhaps twice the age of her late lover.

She was still sobbing quietly, but her eyes were clouded like cataracts and staring off into some unseen distance. Doctor Wang Xing, the duty pathologist from the Centre of Criminal Technological Determination in Pao Jü Hutong, was sitting in a chair by the bedside holding her hand. He cocked an eyebrow in Li’s direction. ‘Administering sedatives and holding hands is not my usual domain,’ he said. ‘But it’s one for my memoirs, if ever they let me publish them.’ He flicked his head towards the lady of the house. ‘I think it might be worth trying to get him off her now.’

It took eight of them to lift Jia Jing clear of his lover long enough for Doctor Wang to pull her free. She was liquid and limp from the sedative, and he had difficulty getting her into a chair. Li tossed a silk dressing-gown over her nakedness and cleared the room.

‘So you think it was a heart attack?’ Li said.

Wang shrugged. ‘That’s how it looks. But I won’t know for sure until I get him on the slab.’

‘Well, I’d appreciate it if you could have your boys get him out of here just as soon as possible.’

‘They’re on their way.’

‘And the woman?’

‘She’ll be okay, Chief. She’s a bit groggy just now from the sedative, but it’ll wear off.’

Li knelt down beside her and took her hand. Her chin was slumped on her chest. He lifted it up with thumb and forefinger, turning her head slightly to look at him. ‘Is there someone who can come and spend the night with you? A friend maybe?’ Her eyes were glazed. ‘Do you understand what I’m saying?’

There was no response. He looked at Wang. ‘Is there anyone we can get to stay over?’

But suddenly she clutched his wrist, and the glaze had half-cleared from her eyes. They were dark and frightened now, black mascara smudged all around them. ‘He doesn’t have to know, does he?’ Li didn’t have to ask who. ‘Please…’ she slurred. ‘Please tell me you won’t tell him.’

Dongzhimennei Street was a blaze of light and animation as Li nursed his Jeep west towards Beixinqiao. Hundreds of red lanterns outside dozens of restaurants danced in the icy wind that blew down from the Gobi Desert in the north. Ghost Street, they called this road. While most of the city slept, the young and the wealthy, China’s nouveau riche , would haunt Dongzhimennei’s restaurants and bars until three in the morning. Or later. But in the distance, towards the Dongzhimen intersection with the Second Ring Road, the lights of Ghost Street faded into darkness where the hammers of the demolition contractors had done their worst. Whole communities in ancient siheyuan courtyard homes had been dismantled and destroyed to make way for the new Beijing being fashioned for the Olympic Games. The mistakes of the West being repeated forty years on, city communities uprooted and rehoused in soulless tower blocks on the outskirts. A future breeding ground for social unrest and crime.

Li took a left and saw the lights of Section One above the roof of the food market. There were lights, too, in the windows of the One Nine Nine Bar as he passed, shadowy figures visible behind misted windows. He turned left again into the deserted Beixinqiao Santiao and parked under the trees opposite the brown marble façade of the All China Federation of Returning Overseas Chinese. During the day there would be a constant stream of ethnic Chinese wanting papers to return to the country of their birth, or the birth of their ancestors, anxious to take advantage of the opportunities provided by the fastest growing economy on earth.

He slipped in the side entrance of the four-storey brick building that housed Section One of the Criminal Investigation Department of the Beijing Municipal Police and climbed the stairs to the top floor. The detectives’ office was buzzing with activity when he poked his head in. It was often busier at night than during the day. Wu was already at his desk, blowing smoke thoughtfully at his computer screen and pushing a fresh strip of gum in his mouth. He looked up when Li appeared in the doorway. ‘How do you want me to play this, Chief?’ he said.

‘Dead straight,’ Li said. He was only too well aware of the possible repercussions of what they had witnessed tonight. Members of the Beijing Organising Committee of the Olympic Games were political appointees. Its president was the city’s Mayor, its executive president the head of the Chinese Olympic Committee. China regarded the success of the Games as vital to its standing in the world, and the committee itself was invested with a huge weight of responsibility. A scandal involving one of its senior members would send shockwaves rippling through the corridors of power. And it was becoming increasingly difficult to keep scandal out of the media. Li was going to have to prepare his own report on the incident to supplement Wu’s.

He glanced towards the office of his deputy. The door was ajar, and the office beyond it in darkness. He had not expected to find Tao Heng at his desk at this hour and was relieved not to have to discuss this with him. He made his way down the corridor to his own office and flicked on his desk lamp, tilting back in his chair so that his head was beyond the ring of light it cast. He closed his eyes and wished fervently that he could have a cigarette. But he had promised Margaret that he would give up, for the baby’s sake, and he was not about to break his promise. In any case, she had a nose like a blood-hound and would have smelled it on him immediately.