Peter May - The Runner

‘Not far enough,’ Margaret said.

He raised himself up on one elbow and groaned with the pain. ‘What are you doing?’ she said, concerned.

He pointed to a chair across the room. ‘The plastic bag on that chair,’ he said with difficulty. ‘You’ll find my jacket inside.’ He found it hard to believe now that he had had the presence of mind to get the first officer on the scene to strip it off him and bag it. He had become conscious when Dai Lili’s neighbour from the end of the hallway had nearly fallen over him in the dark. Almost his first thought was the bottle of perfume in his pocket. His fingers had found broken glass as they felt for it in the dark, the strange musky-smelling liquid soaking into the fabric. ‘There’s a bottle of perfume in one of the pockets. Broken. Only, I don’t think it’s perfume that was inside it. I’m hoping there’s enough of it soaked into the fabric of the jacket for you still to be able to analyse it.’

Margaret left him briefly to look inside the bag. She recoiled from the smell. ‘Jesus, who would wear perfume like that?’ And she knotted the bag tightly.

‘Athletes,’ Li said. ‘Dead athletes. I found it in the apartment of the girl who was so keen to talk to you.’

Margaret was shocked. ‘Is she dead?’

‘Missing. But I’m not confident of finding her alive.’ Margaret returned to the bed, perching on the edge of it and taking his hand.

‘I don’t like what’s happened to you, Li Yan. I don’t like any of this.’

Li ignored her concern. ‘In one of the other pockets you’ll find a small aerosol breath freshener. I’d like to know what’s in it.’

‘We’re not going to know any of that stuff till tomorrow,’ Margaret said, and she pushed him gently back down on to the bed. ‘So there’s no point in worrying about it till then. Okay?’

His attempt at a smile turned into a wince. ‘I guess.’ He paused. ‘So what did you make of my father?’

Margaret thought about how his father had barely even looked at her during their two-hour wait in the restaurant. ‘It’s difficult to know,’ she said tactfully, ‘when someone doesn’t speak your language.’

Li frowned. ‘He speaks English as well as Yifu.’

Margaret felt anger welling suddenly inside her. ‘Well, if he does, he didn’t speak a word of it to me.’

Li closed his eyes. ‘He is an old bastard,’ he said. And he opened his eyes again to look at Margaret. ‘He disapproves of me marrying outside of my race.’

‘Snap,’ Margaret said. ‘My mother’s exactly the same. If only she’d known he spoke English they could have passed the time exchanging disapproval.’ She squeezed his hand. ‘Oh, Li Yan, why did we bother with any of them? We should just have eloped.’

‘If only it was that easy.’

She sighed. ‘What are we going to do?’

‘About what?’

‘The betrothal. We can’t get married if you don’t ask me.’

‘I’ll re-book the restaurant. We’ll do it tomorrow night.’

‘You’re in no fit state,’ she protested.

‘You said there was nothing broken.’

‘You’re concussed. They’ll not let you out if you’re still that way in the morning.’

‘I’m out of here first thing tomorrow,’ Li said. ‘Whether I’m concussed or not. That girl’s missing. If there’s the least chance that she’s still alive, then I’m not going to lie here feeling sorry for myself when somebody out there might be trying to kill her.’

Bicycle repair men sat huddled around a brazier, wind fanning the coals and sending occasional showers of sparks off to chase after the snow at its leading edge. About three inches had fallen overnight and Beijing had ground to a halt. There were no ploughs or gritters or low-traction vehicles for spreading salt on the roads. Just a slow-motion ballet of vehicles gliding gently into each other and bicycles dumping their riders unceremoniously in the middle of the road. Even the siren and flashing blue light on Li’s Jeep was unable to speed their progress, and only its four-wheel drive had kept them on the road.

Sun pulled into the kerb outside the Beijing New World Taihua Plaza at number 5 Chongwenmenwai Street and slithered around to the passenger side to help Li out. Li pushed him aside irritably, and eased himself down to the street. The strapping on his chest, beneath his shirt, helped support him, but if he bent or twisted, it still hurt like hell. His face was swollen, black under each eye, and it was still painful to eat or smile. Not that he was much inclined to smile today. Sun reached in beyond him to retrieve the walking stick that Wu had brought into the section that morning. It had belonged to his father and had a large rubber stopper at the end of it. What irked Li more than being given it was that he found it very nearly impossible to get around without it. Especially in the snow. He snatched it from Sun and hobbled over the frozen pavement to the entrance.

The security guard remembered them. He couldn’t take his eyes off Li as he rode up with them in the elevator to the fifteenth floor.

‘What are you looking at?’ Li growled.

‘Fall in the snow?’ the security man ventured.

‘No, I got the shit kicked out of me by a gang of muggers. Hazards of the job. Still want to be a cop?’

The security man opened the door to Sui’s apartment and Li tore off the crime scene tape rather than try to duck under it. They went straight to the bathroom. The Gillette Mach3 razor and the box of four heads was still on the shelf above the sink. But the two bottles of Chanel aerosol aftershave and the gold-coloured breath freshener were gone.

‘Shit!’ Sun said. He opened the bathroom cabinet. ‘They’re not here.’

Li pushed him out of the way. ‘They must be.’ But the cabinet contained only the spare box of toothpaste, the packs of soap, the unopened box of aspirin and the jar of cotton pads. He turned angrily towards the security guard. ‘Who the hell’s been in here?’

‘No one,’ the security man said, shaken. He saw his hopes of joining the force flushing away down the toilet. ‘Just cops and forensics. You people.’

‘And you’d know if there had been anyone else?’ Sun said.

‘No one gets into the building who’s not supposed to be here.’ The security man was very anxious to please. ‘The only other people with access to the apartment would be staff.’

Sun’s cellphone rang. Li reflexively went for the phone that he normally kept clipped to his belt, before remembering that the muggers had taken it. Sun answered, then held the phone out to Li. ‘Wu,’ he said. Li had sent Wu over to Jia Jing’s apartment to get the aftershave from the bathroom there.

‘Chief,’ Wu’s voice crackled in his ear. ‘I can’t find any aftershave. Are you sure it was in the bathroom cabinet?’

Li had also sent Qian over to Dai Lili’s apartment to get the bottle of perfume he had left behind, but he knew now that, too, would be gone. And he began to wonder if his attackers had, after all, been the muggers he had taken them for. He told Wu to go back to the section and handed the phone back to Sun.

‘What’s happened?’ Sun asked.

Li shook his head. ‘The aftershave’s gone there, too.’ Sun’s cellphone rang again. ‘That’ll be Qian, no doubt with the same story.’ Sun answered the phone. ‘ Wei ?’ And he listened intently for a few moments. Then he snapped his phone shut and turned thoughtful eyes on Li.

‘What is it?’

‘They found a body in Jingshan Park,’ Sun said. ‘A young woman.’

Jingshan Park was situated at the north end of the Forbidden City, on an artificial hill constructed with earth excavated from the moat around the Imperial Palace. Five pavilions sited around the hill represented the five directions of Buddha — north, south, east, west and centre. Each had commanding views of the city, and in more clement weather, Li often climbed up to the central Wanchunting Pavilion — the Pavilion of Everlasting Spring — at the very top of the hill, to look down upon the capital city of the Middle Kingdom and try to unravel the endless complications of his life. Today, in the snow, and following his battering of the night before, he did not relish the climb. Or the complications that awaited him.