Peter May: The Runner

Li held the receiver halfway between his ear and the phone for several moments before finally hanging up. The icy sensation he had felt earlier in his stomach had returned, and a chill mantle seemed to have descended from his shoulders over his whole body. To be summoned to the home of the Minister of Public Security at ten-thirty on a cold December night could only be bad news.

The black, top-of-the-range BMW felt as if it were gliding on air as it sped past the north gate of the Forbidden City and turned south into Beichang Jie where Li had attended the death of Jia Jing only two hours earlier. Li had changed into his uniform in his office, and sat now on soft leather in the back of this ministerial vehicle, stiff and apprehensive. As they passed them, Li saw that the electronic gates of the senior BOCOG official were locked, and there were no lights on in his home. The cops were all gone. Li had stayed long enough to see the body of the weightlifter bagged and taken away in the meat wagon, trying all the while to assuage the growing hysteria of the adulterous wife as her sedative started wearing off. There were, he had told her, no guarantees that her husband would not get to know what had happened there that night, and she had dissolved into uncontrollable sobbing. He had left when finally a girlfriend arrived to spend the night.

The street was virtually deserted now as they passed through the tunnel of trees that arched across the roadway, and at the Xihuamen intersection they turned west. The high walls of Zhongnanhai rose up before them. When the car stopped at the gate, his electronic window wound down automatically, and Li showed his maroon Public Security ID to the armed guard who scrutinised his face and his photograph carefully in turns. And then the car was waved through, and Li was within the walls of Zhongnanhai for the first time in his life. He found that his breathing had become a little more shallow. Lights burned in the windows of a government office compound away to their left, but they quickly left these behind as the car whisked them along a dark road lined with willows, before emerging into the glare of moonlight shining on frozen water. Zhonghai Lake. It was white with ice and a sprinkling of snow reflecting a nearly full moon.

Here, on the shores of this lake, his country’s leaders and high officials lived in the luxury and seclusion of their state villas and apartments. The privileged indulging the privileges of power. Catching the light on the far shore, Li saw a pavilion by a small jetty, eaves curling outwards and upwards at each of its four corners. A mist was rising now off the ice, and through it, lights twinkled in homes beyond yet more trees on the other side.

The driver turned off the lakeside road into a driveway that curved through a bamboo thicket. The hanging fronds of leafless willows rattled gently across the roof. He pulled up outside an impressive villa built on two levels in the traditional Chinese style, pillars the colour of dried blood supporting the sloping roof of a veranda which ran all the way around the house. Inside, the driver left Li standing nervously in a dark hallway of red lacquered furniture and polished wood before a young woman in a black suit appeared and asked him to follow her up thickly carpeted stairs.

At the end of a long hall of hanging lanterns, she showed him into a small room lit only by an anglepoise and the flickering light of a television set. A soccer match was playing on it, but the sound was turned down. A polished wooden floor was strewn with Xinjiang rugs. A small desk with a laptop computer sat below a window whose view was obscured by wooden slatted Venetian blinds. The walls were covered with framed photographs of the Minister in his dress uniform shaking hands with senior police officers and leading politicians. He was pictured smiling with Jiang Zemin; towering over Deng Xiaoping as they shook hands; warmly embracing Zhu Rongji.

The Minister was sitting on a soft, black two-seater sofa, scribbling by the light of the anglepoise on a bundle of papers balanced on his knee. More papers and official publications were strewn across the seat next to him. He was wearing soft, corduroy trousers, an open-necked shirt and carpet slippers. A pair of half-moon reading glasses was balanced on the end of his nose. He glanced up distractedly and waved Li to a well-worn leather armchair opposite. ‘Sit down, Li, I’ll be with you in a moment,’ he said, and returned to his papers.

Li felt stiff and awkward in his uniform and wondered if he’d made a mistake in wearing it. He perched uncomfortably on the edge of the seat and removed his braided peaked cap. He glanced at the TV screen and saw that China were playing South Korea. Korea were two goals ahead.

‘You like football, Li?’ the Minister said, without looking up.

‘Not particularly, Minister,’ Li replied.

‘Hmmm. Athletics?’

‘Not really.’

‘Don’t like games at all, then?’

‘I enjoy chess.’

The Minister peered at him over his half-moons. ‘Do you now? Any good?’

‘I used to give my uncle a decent game.’

‘Ah, yes…’ The Minister put his papers aside and turned his focus fully on to Li for the first time. ‘Old Yifu. He was a foxy old bastard, your uncle. Good policeman, though.’ He paused. ‘Think you’ll ever make his grade, Section Chief?’

‘Not a chance, Minister.’

‘Ah…’ the Minister smiled. ‘Modesty. I like that.’ Then his smile faded. ‘But, then, you’re not going to make any kind of grade at all if you’re not prepared to rethink your personal plans.’

Li’s heart sank. So this is why he had been summoned.

But the Minister cut his thoughts short as if he had read them. ‘Though that’s not why you’re here.’ He appeared to be lost in reflection for some moments, as if unsure where to begin. Then he said, ‘A certain wife of a certain member of a certain committee made a telephone call tonight after you left her home.’ The Minister paused to examine Li’s reaction. But Li remained impassive. He should have realised that a woman in her position would always know someone of influence. The Minister continued, ‘The recipient of that call made another call, and then my telephone rang.’ He smiled. ‘You see how connections are made?’ Li saw only too well.

The Minister removed his reading glasses and fidgeted with them as he spoke. ‘As far as we are aware, no crime was committed tonight. Am I correct?’ Li nodded. ‘Then it is perfectly possible that a certain weightlifter arrived at the home of a certain committee member for reasons unknown to us. Perhaps he wished to make representations on behalf of his sport to that committee member who, unfortunately, was out of the country. But, then, we’ll never know, will we? Since the poor chap collapsed and died. Heart attack, is that right?’

‘We’ll know for sure after the autopsy.’

‘And that, of course, will all be reflected in the official report?’

Li hesitated for a long moment. He despised the thought of being involved in any way in a cover-up. If he had thought there was anything more to it than sparing the blushes of a few officials he might have fought against it. But in the circumstances it hardly seemed worth it. He could almost hear his Uncle Yifu referring him to Sunzi’s Art of War and the advice offered by history’s most famous military strategist that He who knows when to fight and when not to fight will always win . And there were other, more important battles, he knew, that lay ahead. ‘I’ll see that it does, Minister,’ he said.

The Minister smiled and appeared to relax. ‘I’m glad. It would be a great pity, damaging even, if certain people were embarrassed by certain unwarranted speculation.’