Chinese Whispers (The China Thrillers 6) Page 21

  ‘And maybe you haven’t been such a good father.’ He flicked her a glance. ‘You were so obsessed with the loss of your wife, you forgot that your son had lost his mother. If ever a boy needed his father, it was then. But, no, you couldn’t see past yourself, past your own hurt. You couldn’t reach out to a kid who was hurting just as badly, maybe worse.’

  ‘What would you know about it?’ he said defensively.

  ‘I know what Li has told me. What happened, what he felt. Things he probably hasn’t told another living being. Certainly not you. And I know that the Cultural Revolution wasn’t his fault. That it wasn’t his fault his mother was persecuted for being an intellectual. He didn’t invent the Red Guards. He wasn’t even old enough to be one.’

  ‘You know nothing of these things. You are an American.’

  ‘I’m an American who has spent most of the last five years in China. I have talked to a lot of people, listened to their stories, read a great many books. In fact,’ she added bitterly, ‘I haven’t had much else to do with my life this last year, raising your grandson. I think I know a little about what the Cultural Revolution was, what it meant to those who survived it. And those who didn’t.’

  The old man held his own counsel for several minutes as they reached the top of the road and turned west towards the ramp to the underground walkway. As they passed into the darkness of the tunnel beneath Changan Avenue he said, ‘In China we treasure a son, because it is his duty to look after us in our old age. He and his wife, and their children, will look after his parents when they can no longer look after themselves.’ His voice echoed back at them off the roof and the walls.

  ‘Yeah,’ Margaret said unsympathetically. ‘That’s why the orphanages are full of little girls, dumped by their parents, abandoned on doorsteps. Great system.’

  ‘I did not invent the One Child Policy,’ Li’s father said bitterly. ‘I only thank God I had a daughter before they thought of it. She, at least, has taken her responsibility to her father seriously.’

  Margaret forced herself to remain silent. Xiao Ling, she knew, had been anything but the dutiful daughter.

  ‘But Li Yan? The moment he is old enough, he is off to Beijing to live with his Uncle Yifu and train to be the great policeman. Never a second thought for the family he left behind in Sichuan.’

  They emerged into the bright sunlight on the north side of Changan, and a shady path led off towards Tiananmen, the trees that hid it from the road casting their long shadows against the high red wall that bounded the gardens outside the Forbidden City. Margaret bumped the buggy into Nanheyan Street and swung hard left into the gardens. Anger forced her to break her silence.

  ‘That’s what really sticks in your craw, isn’t it? That he came to live with his Uncle Yifu. Your brother. Who was more of a father to him than you ever were.’ She barely stopped to draw breath. ‘And don’t give me that crap about how Li Yan was responsible for his uncle’s death. We both know that isn’t true. Even if he still feels guilty about it. But you never fail to play the guilt card, do you. Never miss a chance to turn the knife in all his emotional wounds. Because you know it works every time. I think you must take pleasure in his pain.’

  It was out now. She’d said it all, and there was no taking it back. Before them, the old moat wound its way through the remodelled gardens to a tall, arched bridge in white marble beside a pavilion where water tumbled down over moulded rock. Beyond it, the Gate of Heavenly Peace rose in red-tiled tiers into the sky. It was sheltered here, and barely a ripple broke the surface reflection of the willow trees overhanging the water. People strolled along the paths on both sides of the moat, unhurried, drinking in the peace and quiet of this oasis of tranquillity in the very heart of the city.

  Margaret and Li’s father walked in silence with the buggy, then, Li Jon fast asleep, head tipped to one side, oblivious of the tension between his mother and his grandfather. Margaret looked at her child. Round, chubby cheeks, rosy in the cold. Slanted eyes shut tight, lids fluttering slightly, rapid eye movement behind them reflecting some dream that she would never know and he would not remember. And it struck her with a sudden jolt, that her son shared her genes with those of his grandfather. These two adults, at loggerheads with each other, had come together over thousands of miles and millions of years in the living, breathing form of this tiny child. She felt immediate regret at the harshness of her words and turned towards Li’s father with an apology forming on her lips. But it never came, halted by the shock of seeing the tears that streaked the old man’s face.

  ‘I have never meant to cause him pain,’ he said, and he turned to meet Margaret’s eye. ‘He is my son. His mother’s child. I love him with all my heart.’

  She was filled with confusion and consternation. ‘Then why …?’

  He raised a hand to stop her question and took out a handkerchief to wipe his face. ‘There is not much of me in Li Yan,’ he said finally. ‘Not that I can find. But he is the image of his mother. I see her in everything about him, in everything he does. In his eyes and his smile, in his long-fingered hands. In his stubbornness and his determination.’ He paused to draw breath, and fresh tears rolled down his cheeks. ‘He thinks that somehow I blame him for her death.’ He shook his head. ‘I never did. But when he left, to come to Beijing, it was like losing her all over again. He was everything I had left of her, and he took that away from me.’ He blinked hard to stop the tears falling from beneath the tangle of white fuse wire that grew from his brows. He put a hand on the push arm of the buggy to steady himself, and she saw the brown spots of age spattered across the crepe-like skin on the back of it. He seemed shrunken, smaller somehow, drowned by his big brown duffle coat, and clothes that hung so loosely on his tiny frame that they only fitted where they touched.

  ‘Oh, my God,’ she whispered, realising for the first time that the pain he had inflicted on his son was only a reflection of the pain he felt himself. But only because he had never expressed it, at least not to Li Yan. Not in that way. ‘You have to tell him,’ she said. ‘You need to talk. Both of you.’

  ‘I have never spoken of these things to a living soul,’ he said. He looked at Margaret. ‘But, then, neither have I spilled tears in public.’ He drew breath. ‘The Tao teaches us that agitation within robs one of reflection and clarity of vision. In this state of mind it is impossible to act with presence of mind. So the right thing is to keep still until balance is regained.’ He waggled his head sadly. ‘I have never stopped to think beyond my own pain. Until now. Never stopped to reflect, and regain my balance.’ Something like a smile creased his face. ‘Harsh words sometimes carry hard truths, and make one stop to reflect.’

  Margaret could not think of a single thing to say. She put a hand over his, and felt the cold in it. ‘You should be wearing your gloves,’ she said. But he only nodded. They had reached the bridge, and Margaret said, ‘Could you lift one end of the buggy? He always wakens when I have to bump him up the steps.’

  ‘Of course.’ He wiped his face again, and blew his nose, and stooped to lift the foot of the buggy. And together they carried the child that bound them across the steep arch of this ancient bridge to the other side of the moat.

  ‘You push him,’ she said, when they got to the other side. And as they walked in silence together towards the pond where golden carp swam around a copper fountain, she slipped her arm through his.

  IV

  Pau Jü Hutong was a maze of ancient Beijing courtyard dwellings, narrow alleys with tin roofs and grey brick walls, tiny shops behind sliding windows, and ancient trees that sprouted gnarled branches to shade the tarmac. Old men on tricycles pedalled up and down its length, school kids in woolly hats carrying well-worn satchels made their way home from school in groups of two and three.

  Wu drove carefully between the parked vehicles, past the towering white detention centre where Section Six interrogators grilled criminal suspects, and turned in at the entrance to the Beijing Forensic Science Institute. The guard,
huddled over a stove in the gatehouse, recognised them through the window, and the steel gates concertinaed to let them in. There was a police mini-van and a black and white Jeep in the forecourt, and half a dozen other unmarked vehicles. Wu parked up and Li got out clutching the two video tapes from the EMS post office. They climbed the steps, past two dancing red lanterns, and plunged into the building.

  The AutoCAD computer was in a darkened room on the second floor. Li had phoned ahead, and so they were expected. A lab assistant shook their hands and took the video tapes, assuring them that the process of digitisation would only take a matter of minutes. ‘We require just a few frames in order to be able to lift the stills,’ she said. They followed her into the adjoining media room where she put the first tape into a player and started running it through. ‘Anywhere about there,’ Li said, stabbing his finger at the screen. He wanted the biggest and clearest possible images of the killer. The assistant stopped the tape. Their man had just stepped out of the burned-out patch of sunlight on the floor of the EMS hall. She ran it back a short way, and then punched a button on another machine and set the tape playing again. She let it run for about thirty seconds, then ejected it and put in the second tape. They repeated the process, capturing the best images of the man in the baseball cap, before the assistant flicked switches on all of the machines and one of them spat out a shiny silver disc about twelve centimetres in diameter.

  She waggled it at Li. ‘Digitised on to DVD. Do you have the measurements?’ Li nodded and she picked up an internal phone and told someone called Qin at the other end that they were ready for him.

  Qin was a big man in every way, nearly as broad as he was tall. He had cropped black hair and thick eyebrows that fell away in steep curves on either side of his eyes. His gold-framed glasses somehow softened the threat of his physical presence. He had been instrumental in developing the AutoCAD software. As he slipped the DVD into the computer and began capturing matching still images from each camera using the time-codes, he explained, ‘Used to be that we needed to take measurements from every side of a crime scene to build an accurate 3-D image. Now we just need one to get the scale for the whole thing.’ He examined the pictures of the killer striding across the concourse with his long coat and his baseball cap and the box with the kidney under his arm. ‘What measurements did you take?’

  Li said, ‘The length of the hall, the height of the counter, the width of the windows …’

  Qin cut him off. ‘The width of a window will do.’ Li placed the piece of paper with the measurements on the computer table. Qin typed in the width of the window in centimetres. ‘Okay, now the computer will do the rest.’ He ran the mouse dextrously across its mat and the arrow on the screen dipped and dived. Menus dropped down, options were selected. The screen divided into two halves. The left half showed one of the stills of the killer caught in mid-stride. For the moment the other half was blank. Qin pulled down another menu, highlighted one of its options, and the blank half filled in with an outline 3-D graphic image of the EMS hall, with the kidney man at its centre. By manipulating the options, Qin was able to take them through a three-hundred-and-sixty-degree circle around him. At intervals he hit the print button, and the printer spewed out hard copies.

  Li and Wu watched, fascinated as they took a tour of their murderer. The computer could not show them his face, but it gave them an accurate picture of his build and his shape. He seemed tall, with broad shoulders, but carrying little weight, and was slightly stooped. The shape of his head was obscured by the baseball cap.

  ‘That’s amazing, Chief.’ Wu’s jaw was hanging open. He had never seen this technology in action before and had forgotten to keep chewing.

  ‘Can you give us an idea of his height?’ Li asked.

  ‘I can tell you exactly what height he is,’ Qin said. ‘I can even tell you what size shoes he wears.’

  Li found himself clenching his fists. It took them one step nearer to him. One step at a time. He looked at the image on screen with an unblinking intensity. There he was, right in front of them. He thought he was being so clever, and although it was still not enough they knew more about him now than he could ever have imagined.

  V

  It was late afternoon by the time he got back to the apartment. He had with him a copy of The Murders of Jack the Ripper, and Elvis’s digest, which he had not yet had a chance to read. At the detectives’ gathering a packed meeting room had discussed developments. The kidney, the video tape from the EMS post office, the AutoCAD analysis of the killer. They had new photographs on the wall now. Pan’s murder scene. The bloody corpse cheek by jowl with the photograph of Pan and her lover in their graduation gowns. They discussed Pan’s sexuality, her autopsy. When Li distributed the computer printouts with the 3-D graphic of the murderer, a tantalising glimpse of their prey, an unusual hush had fallen over the meeting. But for all the interviews, autopsy reports, photographs, printouts – a veritable paper mountain generated by five murders – they were no nearer to catching him. Before he wound up the meeting, Li asked if anyone wished to confess to briefing the Beijing Youth Daily on the Beijing Ripper. Unsurprisingly, no one did.

  * * *

  Margaret was in her usual armchair, reading in the last hour of daylight, her book tilted towards the window. She had fully intended to talk to Li about his father when he got in, but he was earlier than she expected, and she knew by his face that something had happened.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ he said, ‘about missing my father.’ He dropped his coat on the settee and slumped into a chair.

  She closed her book. ‘What happened?’

  He said, ‘Yesterday it was a letter. Today it was half a kidney.’

  ‘Jesus! Whose?’

  ‘The girl we found Monday morning. We’ve still got to DNA match it, but Wang’s pretty sure. And there was a note with it. Pretty vile stuff. He claims to have eaten the other half.’

  Margaret frowned. ‘I thought you had assigned an officer to go through the Ripper book and list all the salient facts.’

  ‘I did. Elvis. I think it took him most of the night to do it.’

  ‘Didn’t he tell you that Jack the Ripper sent half a kidney to someone through the post?’

  Li shook his head. ‘He’s on night shift, and his digest only got handed out this afternoon. No one’s even had the chance to look at it yet.’

  Margaret lifted her copy of the book off the floor and started thumbing through it. ‘It was sent to a guy who ran some kind of vigilante group that was patrolling the streets trying to catch the Ripper. Ah, here we are …’ She folded the book back on itself. ‘Lusk, that was his name. Chairman of the Mile End Vigilante Group. And there was a note with that, too.’ She read it out. ‘From Hell. Mister Lusk, Sor, I send you half the kidney I took from one woman. Preserved it for you. Tother piece I fried and ate, it was very nice. I may send you the bloody knife that took it out if you only wait a while longer. Signed, Catch me when you can, Mishter Lusk.’ She looked up and saw that the colour had drained from Li’s face.

  ‘It’s almost word for word,’ he said. And he closed his eyes and the image of the killer was still there, etched indelibly in his memory. ‘I’ve seen him, Margaret.’

  Margaret straightened up in the chair. ‘What do you mean?’

  And he explained about the video and the AutoCAD imaging software. ‘Here …’ He opened his folder and handed her one of the computer printouts, along with a copy of a still from the video.

  She gazed at them, fascinated. ‘So close …’ she said, and had no need to finish. She laid the prints aside and looked at him. He seemed exhausted, pale and tense. ‘You need a drink,’ she said.

  ‘I do.’ She got up and went into the kitchen to get him a beer from the refrigerator, and to mix herself a vodka tonic ‘Maybe it’s good we’re going out for dinner tonight,’ she called back through. ‘You need a break from all this.’

  ‘I’m not sure how much of a break it’ll be,’ he said. ‘It was Bill w
ho brought Lynn Pan over here, remember. He feels really lousy about it.’

  ‘Oh, yeah, of course.’

  She came back through with the drinks and handed him a cold bottle of beer. He put it to his lips and sucked it down thirstily. She said, ‘We’ve got to talk about your dad.’ And she saw his eyes close, hoping that the world would just go away. He really didn’t want to hear it. And, almost as if to rescue him, the phone rang. Margaret said, ‘It’ll be for you.’

  He shook his head. ‘I don’t want to know.’

  Reluctantly, Margaret picked up the receiver. ‘Wei?’ Li opened one eye to watch her as she listened. She slipped her hand over the mouthpiece and whispered, ‘It’s Wang.’ And into the phone. ‘I’ll get him for you.’ But she didn’t move. ‘Oh,’ she said. ‘Okay.’ Li saw a frown form itself on her face, a frown that turned into consternation. He opened his other eye.

  ‘What is it?’

  She held up a hand to silence him. ‘Okay. Okay. I’ll tell him.’ She hung up and looked at him, but he saw that she was looking some place way beyond him, eyes glazed, their focus somewhere else entirely.

  ‘What!’ He sat up, forcing her to switch focus to him.

  ‘He just got the DNA results from the lab. From the cheroot found by Pan’s body.’ She paused. ‘It’s different.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘I mean it’s different. Not the same as the DNA they got off all those other cheroots.’

  Li found himself tumbling through the confusion freefall Margaret had predicted that morning if the DNA failed to match. Neither of them had believed then that such an eventuality was likely. ‘How’s that possible?’

  Margaret consciously tried to stretch the horizons of her thinking so that it would not be limited by the obvious. But it was only the obvious that came to mind. ‘She must have been killed by somebody else.’

  He shook his head. ‘But that’s not possible.’

  ‘Why not?’