Peter May - The Runner

‘But would you kill for it?’

‘That might depend on how deep or unsavoury your connection with Fleischer was.’ Li sighed. ‘On the other hand, I might just be talking through a very big hole in my head.’

The convoy ground to a halt at the Fuchengmenwai intersection, and Li peered again at the photograph in his hand. He frowned and switched on the courtesy light and held the print up to it. ‘Now, there’s something I didn’t notice before,’ he said.

‘What is it?’

Li stabbed at the plaque on the wall beside the door. ‘They’re coming out of the Event Hall.’

Sun shrugged. ‘Is that significant?’

‘It was the one place Fan Zhilong didn’t show me and Qian. He said it was being refurbished.’ He flicked off the courtesy lamp as the traffic lights turned to green and their wheels spun before catching and propelling them slowly around the corner. He peered across the highway, through the falling snow, and saw the twin apartment blocks rising into the dark above the brightly lit entrance to the Beijing OneChina Recreation Club.

Fan Zhilong was less than happy to have his club overrun by Li and a posse of uniformed and plain-clothed officers. He strutted agitatedly behind his desk. ‘It’s an invasion of privacy,’ he railed. ‘Having the place raided by the police is going to do nothing for the reputation of my club. Or for the confidence of my members.’ He stopped and glared at Li. ‘You could be in big trouble for this, Section Chief.’

Li dropped his search warrant on Fan’s desk. ‘Signed by the Deputy Procurator General,’ he said. ‘If you have a problem, take it up with him.’ He paused, then added quietly. ‘And don’t threaten me again.’

Fan reacted as if he had been slapped, although Li’s voice could hardly have been softer. The CEO seemed shocked, and his face reddened.

Li said, ‘A girl has been stabbed to death, Mr. Fan. Your personal assistant.’

‘My ex -personal assistant,’ Fan corrected him.

Li threw the photograph of Fleischer on top of the warrant. ‘And a man wanted in the West for serially abusing young athletes with dangerous drugs was photographed on these premises.’

Fan tutted and sighed and raised his eyes towards the ceiling. ‘I already told you, Section Chief, I never met him before the day that photograph was taken. I couldn’t even tell you his name.’

‘His victims knew him as Father Fleischer.’ Li watched for a reaction but detected none. ‘And I suppose you still don’t remember the name of the member whose guest he was?’

‘You’re right, I don’t.’

‘What’s going on, Mr. Fan?’ The voice coming from the doorway behind them made Li and Sun turn. It was the tracksuited personal trainer with the ponytail, who was also in the Fleischer photograph. ‘The members downstairs are packing up and leaving. They’re not happy.’

‘Neither am I, Hou. But I’m afraid I have very little control over the actions of Section Chief Li and his colleagues.’

Li lifted the photograph from the desk and held it out towards Hou. ‘Who’s the Westerner in the picture?’ he asked.

Hou glanced at his boss, and then advanced towards Li to take a look at the photograph. He shook his head. ‘No idea. One of the members brought him.’

‘Which one?’

‘I can’t remember.’

‘How very convenient. I take it he’s not one of the other two in the picture?’

Hou shook his head. ‘Members of staff.’

‘So yourself, and Mr. Fan, and two other members of staff were left on your own, by a member whose name you’ve forgotten, to entertain this Westerner, whose name you don’t remember? Is that right?’

‘That’s right,’ Hou said.

‘How very forgetful.’

Qian appeared in the door leading to JoJo’s office. Along with half a dozen other section detectives, he had been called back on shift to take part in the search. ‘Chief,’ he said. ‘Remember that Event Hall that was being refurbished? Well, I think you should come and take a look at it.’

As they went in, Qian flicked on the overhead fluorescents, and one by one they coughed and flashed and hummed. ‘Sounds like Star Wars,’ he said. The Event Hall was huge, marble walls soaring more than twenty feet, tiled floors stretching off towards distant pillars, a ceiling dotted with tiny lights, like stars in a night sky. Li looked around with a growing sense of unease. Long banners hung from the walls, decorated with Chinese characters which made no sense to him. Between the door by which they had entered, and a platform against a curtained wall at the facing end, were three, free-standing ornamental doorways set at regular intervals. Between the third of these and the platform, several items were laid out on the floor. A bamboo hoop large enough for a man to pass through, serrated pieces of red paper stuck to the top and bottom of it. Pieces of charcoal arranged in a square. Three small circles of paper set out one after the other. Two lengths of string laid side by side. These items were flanked on each side by a row of eight chairs, set out as if for a small audience. And then on the platform itself, a large rectangular table with a long strip of yellow paper pinned to its front edge and left hanging to the floor.

Li walked slowly through each of the ornamental doorways towards the platform, and noticed that there were facing doors on each of the side walls. Fan and the ponytail followed him at a discreet distance, watched from the doorway by Qian and Sun and several other officers. ‘What is this?’ Li said.

‘Nothing really,’ Fan said. ‘At least, nothing to interest you, Section Chief. Some ceremonial fun and games we have here for the members.’

‘You said it was being refurbished.’

‘Did I? I probably just meant it was being rearranged for the ceremony.’

‘And what exactly does this ceremony consist of, Mr. Fan?’

Fan shrugged and smiled. But not enough for his dimples to show. He looked faintly embarrassed. ‘It’s a game, really, Section Chief. A bit like a Masonic initiation ceremony. If you know what that is.’

‘I didn’t know there were Masons in China, Mr. Fan.’

‘There aren’t. It’s just something we made up. The members like it. It makes them feel like they’re part of something, you know, exclusive.’

Li nodded and stepped up on to the platform. The table was strewn with more odd items. He counted five separate pieces of fruit. There was a white paper fan, an oil lamp, a rush sandal, a piece of white cloth with what looked like red ink stains on it, a short-bladed sword, a copper mirror, a pair of scissors, a Chinese writing brush and inkstone. More than a dozen other items were laid out among them, everything from a needle to a rosary. ‘What’s this stuff?’

‘Gifts,’ Fan said. ‘From members. They do not have to be expensive. Just unusual.’

‘They are certainly that,’ Li said. ‘What’s behind the curtain?’

‘Nothing.’

Li stepped forward and drew it aside to reveal a double door. ‘I thought you said there was nothing here.’

‘It’s just a door, Section Chief.’

‘Where does it lead?’

‘Nowhere.’

Li tried the handle and pulled the right-hand door open. There was just marble wall behind it. Both the door and its façade were false.

Li looked at Fan, who returned his stare uneasily. The hum of the lights sounded inordinately loud. Li glanced towards Sun and Qian and the other detectives, and then his eyes fell on the club’s personal trainer, and Li noticed for the first time that although it was gathered behind his head in a ponytail, his hair was allowed to loop down over his ears, hiding them from view. The tip of his right ear was just visible through the hair. But the loop on the left lay flat against his head. It looked odd, somehow. Something came back to Li from his secondment in Hong Kong. Something he had heard, but never seen. He stepped up to Hou and pushed the hair back from the left side of his head to reveal that the left ear was missing, leaving only a half-moon of livid scar tissue around the hole in his head. ‘Nasty accident,’ he said. ‘How did it happen?’