Peter May: The Runner

Her voice was quivering when she said, ‘I can’t talk about it. I don’t want to talk about it.’ And he heard her crying aloud in the moment before she hung up.

‘Well?’ Margaret’s mother had been watching him critically from the doorway.

‘She didn’t go to her antenatal class.’ He was alarmed and puzzled by Wen’s reaction, and more than a little afraid now for Margaret. ‘She didn’t leave a note or anything?’

‘Nothing,’ Mei Yuan said. ‘Just her wedding outfit spread out on the bed, as if she had laid it out ready to wear.’

Li pushed silently past the two women and up the hall to the bedroom. The sight of the qipao , the little silk slippers she had bought, and the brightly embroidered smock, all laid out on the bed with the red headscarf, tied a knot tightly in his stomach, and he felt panic rising in his chest, although he could not have said exactly why. ‘I’m going down to talk to the security guard on the gate,’ he said.

And as he hurried out on to the landing he heard Mrs. Campbell call after him in a shrill voice, ‘You’ve lost her, haven’t you? You’ve lost my daughter!’

The elevator took an eternity to reach the ground floor. Li ran out, down the steps, still limping, and scuffed his way through the snow to the small wooden hut that provided shelter for the grey-uniformed security guard. The guard was sitting inside, muffled up in his coat and hat, hunched over a small heater smoking a cigarette. He was startled by Li’s sudden arrival. He stood up immediately.

‘You know the American lady?’ Li said. ‘Lives on the eleventh floor.’

‘Sure,’ said the guard.

‘Did you see her go out tonight?’

‘Yeh. She went on her bike.’

‘On her bike?’ Li could barely believe it. ‘Are you sure it was her?’

‘Sure I’m sure. The two of them left together. Both on bikes.’

‘Two of them?’ Li shook his head in consternation. ‘What are you talking about?’

The guard was becoming uneasy. ‘It was the guy who went up to see her,’ he said. ‘He stopped here to check that this was the right block. I told him she was on the eleventh floor.’

‘Describe him,’ Li snapped.

The guard shrugged. ‘I don’t know. Young, early twenties maybe. Bit scruffy. Looked like a workman.’

‘You’re going to have to do better than that,’ Li said.

The guard made a face. ‘I don’t know…’ And then he remembered. ‘Oh, yeh. He had a tattoo. On the back of his hand. It was like the head of a snake or something.’

And Li knew straight away that it was Dai Lili’s brother. He remembered the sullen-faced boy at Lili’s family home, the snake tattoo that twisted around his arm, culminating with the head on the back of his hand. The cellphone on his belt rang. He had forgotten it was there. Wu had loaned him his so that he could be contacted at any time. He fumbled to answer it. ‘ Wei? ’

‘Chief?’ It was Qian. ‘We’ve got a murder at the Forbidden City. Deputy Tao’s on his way.’

‘So why are you telling me?’ Li was irritated by the interruption. He couldn’t be expected to attend every murder in the city. And right now, he was much more concerned about Margaret.

‘I thought you’d want to know, Chief. Apparently the whole place has been closed down for renovation work. The company have a night watchman on site. He found the east gate lying open about an hour ago, and half a dozen tracks or more coming in and out. He called security, and several armed officers went in with flashlights and followed the tracks in the snow. They found the body of a young man with his throat slit in a courtyard outside the Chu Xiu Palace on the north-west corner. The night watchman recognised him as one of the workers employed by the company.’

‘Why would I be interested in this?’ Li asked impatiently.

‘Because the dead kid is the brother of the missing athlete, Dai Lili.’

The Donghua Gate was choked with police and forensic vehicles, blue and orange lights strobing in the dark. Several dozen uniformed officers were standing around in groups, smoking and talking and keeping a growing crowd of curious onlookers at bay. The floodlights had been switched on, and so the red walls and russet roofs that towered above them stood out vividly against the night sky.

Li’s Jeep came roaring up Nanchizi Street, lights flashing, and slewed around the corner into Donghuamen. He leaned on his horn, and the crowd parted to let him through. He jumped out and nearly fell in his hurry to get to the gate. He felt a hand reach out to catch him. A voice. ‘Alright, Chief?’

He pushed past the officers standing around the open gate and stopped in his tracks. There, leaning against the wall, was Margaret’s bicycle, with its distinctive strip of pink ribbon tied to the basket on the handlebars. Another bicycle was lying in the snow just a few feet away. Tao and Wu emerged from inside the Forbidden City as he looked up. Tao was surprised to see him.

‘What are you doing here, Chief?’ he asked coolly.

Li found he could barely speak. He nodded towards the bike with the pink ribbon. ‘That’s Margaret’s bike,’ he said. ‘Doctor Campbell. She left her apartment about two hours ago with Dai Lili’s brother.’

Wu said, ‘Shit, Chief, are you sure?’

Li nodded.

‘Well, she’s not with him now,’ Tao said grimly. ‘There’s just the one body in there.’

‘Yeh, but lots of footprints,’ Wu said, chewing furiously on his gum.

‘You’d better take a look,’ Tao said, and his concern appeared genuine.

Li was so shaken he could not even respond. He nodded mutely, and the three men went back through the gate and into the Forbidden City. The lights had all been turned on, and the roofs and walkways, and vast open spaces glowed in the snow like a mediaeval winter scene from some classical Chinese painting.

Fluttering black and yellow tape had been strung between traffic cones to keep investigators from disturbing the tracks left in the snow by the players in whatever tragic drama had unfolded here. A drama whose final act had led to the murder of Dai Lili’s brother. Tao said, ‘Unfortunately, the night watchman and the security people who originally came in did not take any care over where they put their feet. You can see where their tracks cross the originals.’ Some of the older footprints had been partially covered by snowfall but were still clearly visible. ‘Lucky for us it stopped snowing,’ Tao added. Li was feeling anything but lucky.

In the courtyard of the Palace of Gathering Excellence, the body of Dai Lili’s brother still lay where Margaret and his sister had found it. But here, the snow had been savagely disturbed and was difficult to read. The pathologist’s photographer had rigged up lights and was making a meticulous photographic record of the scene. Pathologist Wang stood smoking in the far corner in hushed conversation with Chief Forensic Officer Fu Qiwei. Li and Tao and Wu followed the tape around the perimeter of the square. Wang looked up grimly and took a long pull at his cigarette. ‘More of the same, Chief,’ he said.

‘What do you mean?’ Li asked.

‘Multiple stab wounds. Just like the girl at Jingshan.’

Li glanced at Tao. ‘I thought he’d had his throat cut.’

‘Oh, sure,’ Wang said. ‘That’s what killed him.’ And he motioned for them to follow him around to where they could look at the body without disturbing the scene. ‘The throat was slit left to right. So the killer was almost certainly a right-hander. Severed the jugular and the windpipe. You can see how the blood spurted from the way it fell across the snow. He’d have been dead within two minutes.’