Peter May - The Runner

A hammering at the door crashed into her thoughts and startled her. It was a loud, persistent knocking. Not her mother or Mei Yuan. Not Li, who had a key. Hastily, she wiped her face and hurried through the hall to answer the door. Before she did, she put it on its chain. The moment it opened, the knocking stopped, and a young man stepped back into the light of the landing, squinting at her between door and jamb. He was a rough-looking boy, with a thick thatch of dull black hair, and callused hands. She saw the tattooed head of a serpent emerging from the arm of his jacket on to the back of his hand. He smelled of cigarettes and alcohol.

‘You Doctah Cambo?’

Margaret felt a shiver of apprehension. She had no idea who this young man was. He was wearing heavy, workman’s boots, and could easily have kicked in her door. ‘Who wants to know?’

‘You come with me.’

‘I don’t think so.’ She tried to close the door, but he was there in an instant, his foot preventing her from shutting it. ‘I’ll scream!’ she said shrilly.

‘My sister wanna talk t’you,’ he said gruffly, and pushed the door back to the extent of its chain.

‘Who the hell’s your sister?’

‘Dai Lili.’

Margaret stepped back from the door as if she had received an electric shock. The hammering of her heart was making her feel sick. ‘How do I know she’s your sister? What does she look like?’

He touched his left cheek. ‘She got mark on face.’

And Margaret realised what a stupid question she had asked. Millions of people had seen Dai Lili running on television. Her birthmark was her trademark. ‘No. I need more.’

He fumbled in his jacket pocket and pulled out a dog-eared business card. ‘She gimme this to give you.’ And he thrust it through the gap towards her. It was the card she had given Dai Lili that day outside the hospital. She knew it was the same card because it had the scored-through phone number of her friend scrawled on it.

Margaret took a deep, tremulous breath. The boy was clearly agitated. He kept glancing nervously towards the elevators. It was a big decision for her. She knew she probably should not go, but the picture in her mind of the young runner’s face, the fear in her eyes, was still very vivid. ‘Give me a minute,’ she said, and she closed the door before he could stop her. She shut her eyes, her breath shallow now and rapid. ‘Shit!’ she whispered to herself. And then she went into the kitchen and lifted her coat and hat.

When she opened the door again, the young man seemed startled to see her, as if he had already decided she was not going to reappear. ‘Where is she?’ Margaret asked.

‘You got bike?’

‘Yes.’

‘You follow me.’

In the detectives’ room a crowd was gathered around the television set to watch the ad going out on air. Li had taken the very nearly unprecedented step of asking Beijing TV to put Dai Lili’s photograph out on all of its channels, appealing for any information from the public on her whereabouts. They had set up six lines, with a bank of operators to take calls. Li was certain that she was involved. Somehow. She had been desperate to talk to Margaret, and now she was missing. He was convinced that if they could find her she would be the key to everything. But only if she was still alive. And his hopes of that were not high.

He saw Wu hanging up his telephone. ‘Any news?’ he called.

Wu shook his head. ‘Nope. According to the security man Fleischer hasn’t been back to his apartment for days. And that place out by the reservoir is some kind of summer house. It’s been shut up all winter.’

Li gasped his frustration. Doctor Fleischer, apparently, had disappeared into thin air. They had officers watching his apartment and the club. Inquiries with his previous employer, Peking Pharmaceutical Corporation, revealed that he had been running their highly sophisticated laboratory complex for the last three years, but had left their employ six months ago, just after his work permit and visa had been renewed. Li headed for the door.

‘By the way, Chief,’ Wu called after him. ‘Anything we put in the internal mail last night is history.’

Li stopped in his tracks. ‘What do you mean?’

‘Motorbike courier was involved in a smash on the second ring road first thing this morning. Mail was all over the road…most of it ruined.’

Li lingered in the doorway. Was it fate? Good luck, bad luck? Did it make any difference? He said, ‘What about the courier?’ He did not like to think that the fates might have intervened on his behalf at the expense of some innocent courier.

‘Broke his wrist. A bit shaken up. Okay, though.’

But even if his letter of resignation had failed to reach its destination, it was only a stay of execution. Li shook his head to clear his mind. It was not important now. Other things took precedence. He turned into the corridor and nearly collided with Sun.

‘Chief, is it okay if I take a couple of hours to go up to the hospital with Wen? I still haven’t made it to one of these antenatal classes yet and she’s been giving me hell.’

‘Sure,’ Li said, distracted.

‘I mean, I know it’s not the best time with everything that’s going on just now…’

‘I said okay,’ Li snapped, and he strode off down the hall to his office.

Tao was waiting for him, standing staring out of the window into the dark street below. He turned as Li came in.

‘What do you want?’ Li said.

Tao walked purposefully past him and closed the door. He said, ‘You had my personnel file out last night.’

Li sighed. It did not occur to him to wonder how Tao knew. ‘So?’

‘I want to know why?’

‘I don’t have time for this right now, Tao.’

‘Well, I suggest you make time.’ The low, controlled threat in Tao’s voice was clear and unmistakable.

It cut right through Li’s preoccupation, and he looked at him, surprised. ‘I’m not sure I like your tone, Deputy Section Chief.’

‘I’m not sure I care,’ Tao said. ‘After all, you’re not going to be around long enough for it to make any difference.’ Li’s hackles rose, but Tao pressed on before he could respond. ‘Seems to me it’s a serious breach of trust between a chief and his deputy when you go asking junior officers to pull my file from Personnel. Makes it look like it’s me who’s under investigation.’

‘Well, maybe it is,’ Li snapped back.

Which appeared to take Tao by surprise. ‘What do you mean?’

‘In the mid-nineties you were involved in an investigation by the Hong Kong police into the activities of Triad gangs there.’

‘What’s your point?’

‘You spent time working under cover. You got very close to what was happening on the ground. But you didn’t make a single arrest of any note. Not a single prosecution worth a damn.’

‘No one working on that investigation did.’ Tao had gone very pale.

‘And why was that?’ Li asked.

‘We never got the break we needed. Sure, we could have picked up all the little guys. But more little guys would just have taken their place. It was the brains behind them that we were after, and we never got near.’

‘I remember hearing a rumour that was because the Triads were always one step ahead of the police.’

Tao glared at him. ‘The insider theory.’

‘That’s right.’

‘There was never any evidence that they had someone on the inside. It was a good excuse thought up by the British for explaining their failure.’ The two men stared at each other with mutual hatred. But Li said nothing. And finally Tao said, ‘You think it was me, don’t you?’

‘I didn’t say that.’

‘That’s why you pulled my file.’