Peter May: The Runner

And finally Margaret was able to laugh, sending another spasm of pain forking through her. Her mother was smiling. Margaret whispered, ‘So you don’t mind having a Chinese grandchild?’

‘You know, it’s strange,’ her mother said. ‘I don’t see him as Chinese. Just my grandson.’

Li heard the roar of the traffic out on Xianmen Dajie as he stepped from the door of the hospital into the long, narrow car park. Gangs of workmen with wooden shovels had cleared it of snow the previous evening, but overnight another inch had fallen and the workers had not yet returned for the early shift to clear it again.

But it had stopped snowing for the moment, and the first grey light of dawn smudged the sky in the east. The clouds had lifted. The day seemed less threatening, somehow, less dark. Like life. Li no longer needed his stick. There was a spring in his step. He felt free. Of responsibility, of fear. He was suffused by an overwhelming sense of happiness.

The car park was deserted. There were only a few cars parked there, belonging, no doubt, to the senior consultants — since very few others could afford to own a motor vehicle. By contrast, hundreds of bicycles were squeezed together, fighting for space under the snow-covered corrugated roof of the bicycle shed.

Li crunched carefully over the frozen snow towards his Jeep. Plunging temperatures during the night had formed an icy crust which he had to break by stepping heel first. His breath gathered in wreaths around his head, and through all his euphoria one tiny, nagging doubt came bubbling up from somewhere in the darkness to burst unexpectedly into his consciousness.

A picture started replaying itself in his head. He saw himself sitting in his office with Tao and Qian. They were discussing the break-in at the studio of the American photographer. He could hear Qian saying, He’d been there on a recce the day before, and taken a few pictures for reference. Just gash stuff. Nothing that you would think anyone would want to steal .

And Tao responding, Well, that’s something we’ll never know, since he no longer has them .

Oh, but he has , Qian had come back at him. Apparently he’d already taken a set of contact prints. He’s still got those .

Li found the keys of the Jeep in his pocket and unlocked the door. He climbed in to sit in the driver’s seat and stare blindly through the windshield at nothing his eyes could see. Sun had not been there during that conversation. So how could he have known about the contact prints?

Suddenly a hand curled around his forehead and forced it back with a jolt against the headrest, holding it there like a vice. And he felt the sharp blade of a knife piercing the skin of his neck. He froze, knowing that any attempt to free himself would kill him.

He heard the hot breath of Tao’s voice in his ear. ‘Sooner or later,’ Tao said, ‘I knew you would figure it out.’ Almost as if he could read Li’s thoughts. ‘You arrogant big bastard. You thought that Sun was your protégé, your boy. But he was mine. Right from the start. Always.’ He issued a small, sour laugh. ‘And now we both know it, and you have to die.’

Li sensed the muscles in Tao’s arm tensing. He glanced in the rearview mirror, and saw Tao’s face in the moment before he died, eyes wide and enormous behind the dark frames of his glasses. He felt the blade cutting into his flesh. And then a roar that almost deafened him. Glass and smoke and blood filled the air. And Tao was gone. Li was aware of blood running down his neck and put his fingers to the wound, but it was barely a scratch. He turned to see Tao sprawled across the rear seat, blood and brain and bone splattered across the far window.

And into his confusion crashed a voice he knew. He turned, still in shock, and saw a face. A jaw chewing on a flavourless piece of gum. ‘Shit, Chief,’ Wu said. ‘I only came to see how Doc Campbell and the baby were. I’d have handed in the gun last night, only you weren’t there to sign for it.’ He looked at Tao with disgust. ‘Bastard,’ he said, with something like relish in his voice. ‘At least I won’t have to put any more money in the swear box.’