Peter May - The Runner

‘It just doesn’t make any sense.’ Li’s mood had not been improved by their visit to Pau Jü Hutong. They had made the short trip back to Section One in silence. These were almost the first words he had spoken, standing on the third-floor landing one floor down from his office, trying to catch his breath. His beating the previous night had taken more out of him than he would care to admit.

Margaret said, ‘Just about every label on every market stall in China is a fake.’

‘Yes, I know, but these athletes were all earning incredible amounts of money. Apart from the fact that they could afford the real thing, why would they all go out and buy the same fake Chanel?’ And almost as an absurd afterthought, ‘And why were they all using breath freshener?’

‘There’s a lot of garlic in Chinese food,’ Margaret said. Her flippancy turned his glare in her direction. She gave a small, apologetic smile. ‘Sorry.’

They carried on up to the top floor. Li said, ‘I’ve got to go and talk to some people about this. If you wait in my office I’ll be along in a few minutes and call you a taxi.’

‘You’ve called me a lot worse,’ Margaret said. But her attempts to lighten his mood with a little humour fell on unreceptive ears. He went into the detectives’ room, and she shrugged and headed on down the corridor to his office. When the taxi came, she would pick up her mother from Mei Yuan’s stall and retreat to that tiny oasis of calm that was her apartment. Except, now that she had to share it with her mother, there was very little calm left in it.

There was a man standing staring out of the window in Li’s office when she walked in. He turned expectantly at the sound of the door opening, and she recognised him immediately as Li’s deputy, Tao Heng. A man, she knew, whom Li detested. He seemed startled, behind his thick, square glasses, to see her.

‘Oh,’ he said. ‘I’m sorry. I was waiting for the Section Chief.’ He looked embarrassed. His face was flushed, and she saw that he was perspiring. As if he had read her mind, he took a handkerchief from his pocket and wiped his forehead.

‘He’ll be along in a moment,’ Margaret said.

‘I’ll not wait,’ Tao said, and he walked briskly to the door, avoiding her eye. She moved aside to let him past, and he dodged awkwardly around her. He stopped in the doorway, still holding the handle, and turned back. For a moment he hesitated, and then he said, ‘I suppose it’ll be a relief to you, not to have him coming home every night railing about his “pedantic” deputy.’

The bitterness in his voice was shocking. In fact, Li hardly ever talked about Tao, although his deputy clearly thought he did. Some giant chip on his shoulder. Margaret was startled, confused. ‘I’m sorry, I don’t know what you’re talking about.’

Tao appeared to regret immediately that he had said anything, but he seemed unable to control himself. It was as if he could no longer contain the flood of vitriol that he had been holding back to release against Li, and it was starting to leak out anyway. ‘What are you going to do? Take him back to America? I suppose there are any number of agencies over there who would consider it a feather in their cap to have an ex-Chinese cop of Li’s standing on their books.’

Bizarrely, Margaret wondered for a moment at the quality of Tao’s English, before remembering that he had worked for years with the British in Hong Kong. And then she replayed his words for their meaning and felt the cold chill of a dreadful misgiving creep across her skin. ‘Ex-Chinese cop?’

Tao looked at her blankly, and then a mist cleared from his eyes. ‘You don’t know, do you?’ A smile that Margaret could have sworn was almost gleeful spread across his face. ‘He hasn’t told you.’

Margaret’s shock and disbelief reduced her voice nearly to a whisper. ‘Told me what?’

And just as quickly, the glee slipped from Tao’s face, as if he were having second thoughts about whether or not this was something to be pleased about. He became suddenly reticent, shaking his head. ‘It’s not for me to say.’

‘You’ve started,’ Margaret said, shock and fear now fighting for space with anger. ‘You’d better finish.’

Tao was no longer able to meet her eye. ‘It’s policy,’ he said. ‘Just policy. I can’t believe you don’t know.’

‘What policy?’ Margaret demanded.

He took a deep breath, as if indicating that he had also taken a decision. He looked her straight in the eye, and she felt suddenly disconcerted by him, afraid. ‘It is impossible for a Chinese police officer to marry a foreign national and remain in the force. When Li marries you, his career will be over.’

Li had seen Tao come into the detectives’ room and thought he looked oddly flushed. His deputy had avoided making eye contact with anyone in the room and hurried into his office, shutting the door firmly behind him. Li had thought no more of it. When he got back to his office he was surprised not to find Margaret there. He called the switchboard and asked if anyone had ordered a taxi for her. But no one had. He looked out the window at the brown marble facade of the All China Federation of Returned Overseas Chinese, snow clinging to the branches of the evergreens that shaded its windows, and saw Margaret on the street below, walking quickly towards the red lanterns of the restaurant on the corner and then turning south towards Ghost Street. He was puzzled only for a moment, before turning his mind to other things.

The road was rutted with snow and ice. Bicycles and carts bumped and slithered across it. Snow, like a dusting of icing sugar, covered the rubble in the ugly gap sites the demolishers had created, if it was possible to create anything by destruction. Margaret was in danger of turning her ankle, even falling, as she hurried, oblivious, through the crowds of late morning shoppers and cyclists that choked the main approach to the large covered food market. Through tears blurring vision, she was unaware of the looks she was drawing from curious Chinese. She cut an odd figure here in north-west Beijing as she strode towards Ghost Street, her long coat pushed out by her bulging belly, golden curls flying out behind her, tears staining pale skin.

How could he not have told her? But as soon as the question formed in her mind she knew the answer. Because she would not have married him if he had. His work was his life. How could she have asked him to give it all up? Of course, he knew that, which is why he had decided to deceive her.

But you can’t build a relationship on lies, she thought. You can’t build a relationship on deception. He had been stalling her for weeks on the issue of the apartment for married officers. And how stupid was she that she hadn’t suspected? That it had never even occurred to her that there would be a price to pay for getting married? And how had he been going to tell her after the deed had been done? What did he imagine she would think, or say, or do?

The thoughts were flashing through her mind with dizzying speed. She stumbled and nearly fell, and a young man in a green padded jacket and blue baseball cap grabbed her arm to steady her. It had been an instinctive reaction, but when he saw that the woman he had helped was a wild-eyed, tear-stained yangguizi , he let her go immediately as if she might be electrically charged. He backed off, embarrassed. Margaret leaned against a concrete telegraph post and tried to clear her brain. This was crazy. She was being a danger to her baby. She wiped her eyes and took deep breaths, trying to steady herself. What in God’s name was she going to do?

The snow, which had earlier retreated into its leaden sky, started to fall again with renewed vigour. Big, soft, slow-falling flakes. Suddenly Beijing no longer felt like home. It was big and cold and alien, and she felt lost in it, wondering how it was possible to feel like a stranger in a place so familiar. And yet she did. The irony was, that a hundred meters down the road, Mei Yuan would be turning out jian bing in the lunchtime rush, and Margaret’s mother would be with her. There was no chance for her to be alone, to find some way of coming to terms with all this before she had to face Li again. Her mother would be expecting her, and there was no way she could abandon her ten thousand miles from home in a city of seventeen million Chinese.