The Runner (The China Thrillers 5) Read online

  ‘What is it, Margaret? What have I done?’ he asked eventually. He felt her take a deep, quivering breath.

  ‘It’s what you didn’t do,’ she said.

  ‘What? What didn’t I do?’

  ‘You didn’t tell me you would lose your job if we got married.’

  And the bottom fell out of a fragile world he had only just been managing to hold together. She felt him go limp.

  ‘Why didn’t you tell me?’ She broke free of him and looked into his eyes for the first time, seeing all the pain that was there, and knowing the answer to her question before he even opened his mouth.

  He hung his head. ‘You know why.’ He paused. ‘I want to marry you, Margaret.’

  ‘I want to marry you, too, Li Yan. But not if it’s going to make you unhappy.’

  ‘It won’t.’

  ‘Of course it will! For God’s sake, being a cop is all you’ve ever wanted. And you’re good at it. I can’t take that away from you.’

  They stood for a long time in silence before he said, ‘What would we do?’

  She gave a tiny shrug. ‘I don’t know.’ And she put her arms around him and pushed her cheek into his chest. He grunted involuntarily from the pain of it. She immediately pulled away. ‘I’m sorry. I forgot.’

  ‘How did you know?’ he said.

  ‘Does it matter?’

  ‘It does to me.’

  ‘Your deputy told me. Tao Heng.’

  Anger bubbled up inside him. ‘That bastard!’

  ‘Li Yan, he didn’t know that you hadn’t told me.’

  ‘I’ll kill him!’

  ‘No you won’t. It’s the message that matters. Not the messenger.’

  ‘And the message is what?’

  ‘That it’s over, Li Yan. The dream. Whatever it is we were stupid enough to think the future might hold for us. It’s out of our hands.’

  He wanted to tell her she was wrong, that their destiny was their own to make. But the words would have rung hollow, even to him. And if he could not convince himself, how would he ever persuade her? His life, his career, his future, were all spiralling out of control. And he seemed helpless to do anything about it.

  He felt the weight of the world descend on him. ‘Will I tell them, or will you?’

  * * *

  It was half an hour before he got them all into taxis. Mei Yuan promised to see Mrs. Campbell back to Margaret’s apartment. None of them asked why the wedding was being called off, and Li made no attempt to explain, except to say that he and Margaret had ‘stuff’ to sort out. Xinxin was in tears.

  When they had gone, he returned to the dining room of the emperor’s ministers and found Margaret sitting where he had left her. Her tears had long since dried up, and she sat bleakly staring out across the square. Her mood had changed, and he knew immediately that the ‘stuff’ he had spoken of was not going to be sorted tonight. He drew up a seat and leaned on the back of it, staring down at the floor, listening to the chatter of diners in the restaurant. He could smell their cigarette smoke and wished to God he could have one himself.

  After a very long silence, he said finally, ‘Margaret—’ and she cut him off immediately.

  ‘By the way, I forgot to tell you earlier … ’ And he knew from her tone that this was her way of saying she wasn’t going to discuss it further.

  ‘Forgot to tell me what?’ he said wearily.

  ‘I found a photograph on your desk this morning. One of the ones taken by Jon Macken at the club where that murdered girl worked.’

  Li frowned. ‘Which photograph?’

  ‘A Westerner, with white hair and a beard. He was with some Chinese.’

  Li said, ‘What about him?’

  ‘I recognised him. Not right away. But I knew I’d seen the face before. Then it came to me this afternoon, and I checked him out on the net.’

  ‘Who is he?’

  She turned to look at him. ‘Doctor Hans Fleischer. Known as Father Fleischer to all the East German athletes he was responsible for doping over nearly twenty years.’

  II

  As they drove, in careful convoy, past the high walls of the Diaoyutai State Guesthouse on the eastern flank of Yuyuantan Park, Li dragged his thoughts away from Margaret. It was nearly an hour since he had taken her home and he wondered now what he would accomplish by his search of the club. There was, after all, nothing to link Fleischer with the deaths of the athletes. And Margaret herself had conceded that there was nothing in the pathology or toxicology to suggest that any of them had been taking drugs. But the coincidence was just too much to ignore. And, anyway, he needed something else to think about.

  The Deputy Procurator General had been having dinner at the home of a friend and been annoyed by Li’s interruption. His irritation, however, had probably served Li’s cause. Had he examined in more detail the flimsy nature of the grounds with which he had been presented, he might not have signed the warrant.

  As if reading Li’s thoughts, Sun took his eyes momentarily from the road, and tossed a glance towards his passenger. ‘What do you think we’re going to find here, Chief?’

  Li shrugged. ‘I doubt if this will prove to be anything more than an exercise in harassment, detective. Letting CEO Fan know that we’re watching him. After all, if it’s true that Fan really doesn’t know who Fleischer is, then the link to the club is extremely tenuous.’ He slipped the photograph of Fan and Fleischer and the others out of the folder on his knee and squinted at it by the intermittent glow of the streetlights. ‘But there are other factors we have to take into consideration,’ he said. ‘The break-in at Macken’s studio to steal the film that he took at the club. JoJo’s murder. She was a friend of Macken’s, after all, and it was her who got him the job there in the first place.’

  ‘You think there’s a connection?’

  ‘I think there could be a connection between the break-in and the fact that Fleischer features prominently in one of Macken’s pictures.’ He glanced at Sun and waggled the photograph. ‘Think about it. Fleischer is internationally reviled, an outcast. If he went back to Germany he would end up in jail. Not the sort of person an apparently respectable businessman like Fan would want people to know he was connected to. So you’re coming out of a room in your private club. You’re with Fleischer. You think you’re perfectly safe. And flash. There’s a guy with a camera and he’s just caught the two of you together on film. Maybe you’d want that picture back.’

  ‘But would you kill for it?’

  ‘That might depend on how deep or unsavoury your connection with Fleischer was.’ Li sighed. ‘On the other hand, I might just be talking through a very big hole in my head.’

  The convoy ground to a halt at the Fuchengmenwai intersection, and Li peered again at the photograph in his hand. He frowned and switched on the courtesy light and held the print up to it. ‘Now, there’s something I didn’t notice before,’ he said.

  ‘What is it?’

  Li stabbed at the plaque on the wall beside the door. ‘They’re coming out of the Event Hall.’

  Sun shrugged. ‘Is that significant?’

  ‘It was the one place Fan Zhilong didn’t show me and Qian. He said it was being refurbished.’ He flicked off the courtesy lamp as the traffic lights turned to green and their wheels spun before catching and propelling them slowly around the corner. He peered across the highway, through the falling snow, and saw the twin apartment blocks rising into the dark above the brightly lit entrance to the Beijing OneChina Recreation Club.

  * * *

  Fan Zhilong was less than happy to have his club overrun by Li and a posse of uniformed and plain-clothed officers. He strutted agitatedly behind his desk. ‘It’s an invasion of privacy,’ he railed. ‘Having the place raided by the police is going to do nothing for the reputation of my club. Or for the confidence of my members.’ He stopped and glared at Li. ‘You could be in big trouble for this, Section Chief.’

  Li dropped his search warrant on Fan’s desk. ‘Signed b
y the Deputy Procurator General,’ he said. ‘If you have a problem, take it up with him.’ He paused, then added quietly. ‘And don’t threaten me again.’

  Fan reacted as if he had been slapped, although Li’s voice could hardly have been softer. The CEO seemed shocked, and his face reddened.

  Li said, ‘A girl has been stabbed to death, Mr. Fan. Your personal assistant.’

  ‘My ex-personal assistant,’ Fan corrected him.

  Li threw the photograph of Fleischer on top of the warrant. ‘And a man wanted in the West for serially abusing young athletes with dangerous drugs was photographed on these premises.’

  Fan tutted and sighed and raised his eyes towards the ceiling. ‘I already told you, Section Chief, I never met him before the day that photograph was taken. I couldn’t even tell you his name.’

  ‘His victims knew him as Father Fleischer.’ Li watched for a reaction but detected none. ‘And I suppose you still don’t remember the name of the member whose guest he was?’

  ‘You’re right, I don’t.’

  ‘What’s going on, Mr. Fan?’ The voice coming from the doorway behind them made Li and Sun turn. It was the track-suited personal trainer with the ponytail, who was also in the Fleischer photograph. ‘The members downstairs are packing up and leaving. They’re not happy.’

  ‘Neither am I, Hou. But I’m afraid I have very little control over the actions of Section Chief Li and his colleagues.’

  Li lifted the photograph from the desk and held it out towards Hou. ‘Who’s the Westerner in the picture?’ he asked.

  Hou glanced at his boss, and then advanced towards Li to take a look at the photograph. He shook his head. ‘No idea. One of the members brought him.’

  ‘Which one?’

  ‘I can’t remember.’

  ‘How very convenient. I take it he’s not one of the other two in the picture?’

  Hou shook his head. ‘Members of staff.’

  ‘So yourself, and Mr. Fan, and two other members of staff were left on your own, by a member whose name you’ve forgotten, to entertain this Westerner, whose name you don’t remember? Is that right?’

  ‘That’s right,’ Hou said.

  ‘How very forgetful.’

  Qian appeared in the door leading to JoJo’s office. Along with half a dozen other section detectives, he had been called back on shift to take part in the search. ‘Chief,’ he said. ‘Remember that Event Hall that was being refurbished? Well, I think you should come and take a look at it.’

  * * *

  As they went in, Qian flicked on the overhead fluorescents, and one by one they coughed and flashed and hummed. ‘Sounds like Star Wars,’ he said. The Event Hall was huge, marble walls soaring more than twenty feet, tiled floors stretching off towards distant pillars, a ceiling dotted with tiny lights, like stars in a night sky. Li looked around with a growing sense of unease. Long banners hung from the walls, decorated with Chinese characters which made no sense to him. Between the door by which they had entered, and a platform against a curtained wall at the facing end, were three, free-standing ornamental doorways set at regular intervals. Between the third of these and the platform, several items were laid out on the floor. A bamboo hoop large enough for a man to pass through, serrated pieces of red paper stuck to the top and bottom of it. Pieces of charcoal arranged in a square. Three small circles of paper set out one after the other. Two lengths of string laid side by side. These items were flanked on each side by a row of eight chairs, set out as if for a small audience. And then on the platform itself, a large rectangular table with a long strip of yellow paper pinned to its front edge and left hanging to the floor.

  Li walked slowly through each of the ornamental doorways towards the platform, and noticed that there were facing doors on each of the side walls. Fan and the ponytail followed him at a discreet distance, watched from the doorway by Qian and Sun and several other officers. ‘What is this?’ Li said.

  ‘Nothing really,’ Fan said. ‘At least, nothing to interest you, Section Chief. Some ceremonial fun and games we have here for the members.’

  ‘You said it was being refurbished.’

  ‘Did I? I probably just meant it was being rearranged for the ceremony.’

  ‘And what exactly does this ceremony consist of, Mr. Fan?’

  Fan shrugged and smiled. But not enough for his dimples to show. He looked faintly embarrassed. ‘It’s a game, really, Section Chief. A bit like a Masonic initiation ceremony. If you know what that is.’

  ‘I didn’t know there were Masons in China, Mr. Fan.’

  ‘There aren’t. It’s just something we made up. The members like it. It makes them feel like they’re part of something, you know, exclusive.’

  Li nodded and stepped up on to the platform. The table was strewn with more odd items. He counted five separate pieces of fruit. There was a white paper fan, an oil lamp, a rush sandal, a piece of white cloth with what looked like red ink stains on it, a short-bladed sword, a copper mirror, a pair of scissors, a Chinese writing brush and inkstone. More than a dozen other items were laid out among them, everything from a needle to a rosary. ‘What’s this stuff?’

  ‘Gifts,’ Fan said. ‘From members. They do not have to be expensive. Just unusual.’

  ‘They are certainly that,’ Li said. ‘What’s behind the curtain?’

  ‘Nothing.’

  Li stepped forward and drew it aside to reveal a double door. ‘I thought you said there was nothing here.’

  ‘It’s just a door, Section Chief.’

  ‘Where does it lead?’

  ‘Nowhere.’

  Li tried the handle and pulled the right-hand door open. There was just marble wall behind it. Both the door and its façade were false.

  Li looked at Fan, who returned his stare uneasily. The hum of the lights sounded inordinately loud. Li glanced towards Sun and Qian and the other detectives, and then his eyes fell on the club’s personal trainer, and Li noticed for the first time that although it was gathered behind his head in a ponytail, his hair was allowed to loop down over his ears, hiding them from view. The tip of his right ear was just visible through the hair. But the loop on the left lay flat against his head. It looked odd, somehow. Something came back to Li from his secondment in Hong Kong. Something he had heard, but never seen. He stepped up to Hou and pushed the hair back from the left side of his head to reveal that the left ear was missing, leaving only a half-moon of livid scar tissue around the hole in his head. ‘Nasty accident,’ he said. ‘How did it happen?’

  ‘Like you said, Section Chief, a nasty accident.’ Hou flicked his head away from Li’s hand. There was something sullen and defiant in Hou’s tone, something like a warning. Li took another good, long look at Fan and saw that same defiance in his eyes, and felt a shiver of apprehension run through him, as if someone had stepped on his grave.

  ‘I think we’ve seen enough,’ he said. ‘Thank you, Mr. Fan, we’ll not disturb you any longer.’ And he walked back through the ornamental doorways to where his detectives stood waiting. ‘We’re through here,’ he said to Qian. Qian nodded, and called the rest of the team to go as they crossed the entrance hall to the tall glass doors.

  ‘What is it?’ Sun whispered. He could see the tension in his boss’ face.

  ‘Outside,’ Li said quietly, and they pushed out into the icy night, large snowflakes slapping cold on hot faces.

  Once through the gates, they stopped on the sidewalk. ‘So what was going on in there, Chief?’ Sun asked. ‘The atmosphere was colder than the morgue on a winter’s night.’

  ‘What direction are we facing?’ Li looked up at the sky as if searching for the stars to guide him. But there were none.

  Sun frowned. ‘Fuchengmenwai runs east to west on the grid. We’re on the north side, so we’re facing south.’

  Li turned and looked at the building they had just left. ‘That means we entered the Event Hall from a door on its east side,’ he said.

  Sun said, ‘I don�
�t understand.’

  Li hobbled around to the passenger side of the Jeep. ‘Let’s get in out of this weather.’

  The snow in their hair and on their shoulders quickly melted in the residual warmth of the Jeep. Condensation began forming on the windshield, and Sun started the motor to get the blower going. He turned to Li. ‘Are you going to tell me what’s going on, Chief?’

  ‘These people are Triads,’ Li said.

  ‘Triads?’

  Li looked at him. ‘You know what Triads are, don’t you?’

  ‘Sure. Organised crime groups in Hong Kong, or Taiwan. But here? In Beijing?’

  Li shook his head sadly. ‘There’s always a price to pay, isn’t there? It seems we haven’t only imported Hong Kong’s freedoms and economic reforms. We’ve imported their criminals as well.’ He turned to the young police officer. ‘Triads are like viruses, Sun. They infect everything they touch.’ He nodded towards the floodlit entrance of the club. ‘That wasn’t some ceremonial games hall in there. It was an initiation chamber. And trainer Hou, with the ponytail? He must have transgressed at some point, broken some rule. He didn’t lose his ear by accident. It was cut off. That’s how they punish members for misdemeanours.’

  ‘Shit, Chief,’ Sun said. ‘I had no idea.’ He lit a cigarette and Li grabbed the packet from him and took one. ‘Give me a light.’

  ‘Are you sure you want to do this, Chief? They’re dangerous to your health, you know.’

  ‘Just give me a light.’ Li leaned over to the flickering flame of Sun’s lighter and sucked smoke into his lungs for the first time in nearly a year. It tasted harsh, and burned his throat all the way down. He spluttered and nearly choked, but persevered, and after a few draws felt the nicotine hit his bloodstream and set his nerves on edge. ‘I spent six months in Hong Kong back in the nineties,’ he said. ‘I came across quite a number of Triads then. Mostly they were just groups of small-time gangsters who liked the names and the rituals. They call the leader the Dragon Head. All that shit in there, it’s a kind of recreation of a journey made by the five Shaolin monks who supposedly created the first Triad society, or Hung League as they called it, set up to try to restore the Ming Dynasty.’