Peter May - The Runner

‘No. It’s an all male preserve. But she must have known something, betrayed a confidence, I don’t know…’ He sat up in bed, all fatigue banished from body and mind. ‘They took her up there and stabbed her to death and laid her out for the world to see. Like they were making an example of her. Or issuing a warning.’

‘Who to?’

‘I don’t know. I just don’t know.’ And then Li remembered something which had got lost in a day of traumas and revelations. Something he had meant to ask Margaret about earlier. He turned to her. ‘Margaret, Wu came up with something at the meeting this morning. It’s maybe nothing at all. But it did seem strange.’

‘What?’

‘All of the athletes, including Jia Jing, had the flu at some point in the five or six weeks before they died.’ He paused. ‘Could that have been the virus that caused their heart trouble?’

Margaret scowled. ‘No,’ she said. ‘The flu wouldn’t do that to them.’ She thought about it some more. ‘But it could have done something else.’

‘Like what?’

‘Activated a retrovirus.’

Li screwed up his face. ‘A what?’

Margaret said, ‘We’ve all got them, Li Yan, in our germline DNA. Retroviruses. Organisms that have attacked us at some point in human history, organisms that we have learned to live with because they have become a part of us. Usually harmless. But sometimes, just sometimes, activated by something else that finds its way in there. A virus. Like herpes. Or flu.’

‘You think that’s what happened to these athletes?’

She shrugged. ‘I’ve no idea. But if they all came down with the flu, and that’s the only common factor we can find, then it’s a possibility.’

Li was struggling to try to understand. ‘And how would that help us?’

Margaret shook her head. ‘I don’t know that it would.’

Li fell back on the pillow. ‘I give up.’

She smiled at him and shook her head. ‘I doubt it. You’re not the type.’

He closed his eyes and they lay side by side in silence, then, for ten minutes or more. Finally she said, ‘So what are you thinking?’

He said, ‘I’m thinking about how I quit the force tonight.’

Margaret raised herself immediately on her elbow. She could barely hear her voice over the pounding of her heart. ‘What?’

‘I want to marry you, Margaret.’ She started to protest, but he forced his voice over her. ‘And if you won’t marry me, then I’ll have to live with that. But it won’t change my mind about quitting.’ He turned his head on the pillow to look at her. ‘I wrote my resignation letter before I left the office tonight. It’s in the mail. So all my bridges are burned. No going back.’

‘Well, you’d better find a way,’ Margaret said brutally. ‘Because I won’t marry you, Li Yan. Not now. I won’t have your unhappiness on my conscience for the rest of my life.’

Traffic in the city had already ground to a halt. And there was not even light, yet, in the sky. Li hobbled past lines of stationary vehicles blocking all six lanes on Jianguomenwai Avenue. A few taxis were making their way gingerly along the cycle lanes, cyclists weaving past them on both sides, leaving drunken tracks in the snow. He would have to take the subway to Section One, for what would probably be his last time.

Margaret was still asleep when he left. He had no idea when either of them had drifted off, finally, to escape from their stalemate for a few short hours. But he had wakened early and lay listening to her slow, steady breathing on the pillow beside him. She had looked so peaceful, so innocent in sleep, this woman he loved. This pig-headed, stubborn, utterly unreasonable woman he loved.

He walked quickly to burn up anger and frustration. Not just with Margaret, but with everything in his life. With a bureaucracy that wouldn’t allow him to marry her and still keep his job. With an investigation that grew more obscure the more he uncovered. With his father for blaming him unreasonably for things that were not his fault. With himself for not being able to solve his own problems. With his Uncle Yifu for not being there when he needed him most.

And still the snow fell.

He reached the subway station at Jianguomen, and limped down the steps. Warm air rushed up to meet him. He bought a ticket and stood on a crowded platform waiting for a train going north. A southbound train, headed for Beijing Railway Station, came in on the other line, debouching a handful of passengers before sucking in all the people on the far side of the platform.

Li had seen the face of the driver in his cab as it came in, pale and weary in the early morning, caught for a moment in the dazzle of lights on the platform. As it left, he saw the guard peering from the side window of the cab at the other end. Had the train come in on Li’s side, heading in the other direction, their roles would have been reversed. And he realised consciously for the first time that the trains were reversible. They could be driven from either end. The same going forwards as backwards. And he wondered why something tucked away in the farthest and darkest recesses of his mind was telling him that there was significance in this.

His train arrived, and he squeezed into it to stand clutching an overhead handrail, using his free arm to protect his ribs from the other passengers crushing in around him. The recorded voice of a female announcer told them that the next stop was Chaoyangmen. And the significance of the reversible train came to him quite unexpectedly. It was Mei Yuan’s riddle. About the I Ching expert and the girl who came to consult him on his sixty-sixth birthday. Somewhere, beyond awareness, his subconscious had been chipping away at it, and now that the solution had come to him, he wondered why he had not seen it immediately. It was breath-takingly simple.

At Dongzhimen he struggled painfully to the top of the stairs, emerging once more into the cold, bitter wind that blew the snow in from the Gobi Desert. The sky was filled with a purple-grey light now, and the traffic was grinding slowly in both directions along Ghost Street. The demolition men were out already, thankful for once to be wielding their hammers, burning energy to keep themselves warm. The snow lay in ledges along every branch of every tree lining both sides of the street, on walls and window-sills and doorways, so that it felt as if the whole world were edged in white. Even the gap sites looked less ugly under their pristine, sparkling carpets.

Li was surprised to see Mei Yuan serving customers at her usual corner, steam rising in the cold from her hotplate as she scooped up jian bing in brown paper parcels to hand over in exchange for cash. She had rigged up an umbrella from her bicycle stall to fend off the snow as she worked. But the wind was defeating it, and large, soft flakes blew in all around her.

‘You’re early,’ he said to her.

She looked up, surprised. ‘So are you.’ There was a moment of awkwardness between them. Unfinished business from the betrothal meeting, unspoken exchanges. Confusion and sympathy. Perhaps a little anger. She said, ‘I’m going to the park later today. With Mrs. Campbell. She expressed an interest in tai chi .’

‘Did she?’ But he wasn’t really interested.

‘Would you like a jian bing ?’

He nodded, the smell of the pancakes making him realise for the first time just how hungry he was. Although his head was protected by the hood of his jacket, the snow blew in all around his face, making it wet and cold. Big flakes clung to his eyebrows. He brushed them away. ‘I’m sorry about last night.’

She shrugged. ‘Someday, perhaps, you’ll feel like telling me about it.’