The Runner (The China Thrillers 5) Read online

  Margaret said, ‘You’d need alignment maintained?’

  ‘Sure. You’ll have to rig up a little collection kit to pack it in, so that you maintain hair alignment and root-tip orientation for me. About two and a half centimeters would provide an average sixty-day growth length.’

  Margaret said to Li, ‘Is the weightlifter still at Pau Jü Hutong?’

  ‘In the chiller.’

  ‘Then we’d better get straight over there and give him a haircut.’

  Pi sipped his tea. ‘It would help,’ he said, ‘to know what I was looking for.’

  ‘Hormones,’ Margaret said.

  ‘What, you mean like anabolic steroids? Testosterone derivatives, synthetic EPO, that kind of thing?’

  ‘No,’ Margaret said. ‘I mean the real thing. No substitutes or derivatives or synthetics. Testosterone, human growth hormone, endogenous EPO. You can measure the endogenous molecule, can’t you?’

  Pi shrugged. ‘Not easy. Interpretation is difficult because physiological levels are unknown. But we can look at the esters of molecules like testosterone enanthate, testosterone cypionate and nandrolone, and determine whether they are exogenous or not. So I should be able to identify what is endogenous.’

  Li looked confused. ‘What the hell does that mean?’

  Professor Yang said, ‘I think it means, yes, Section Chief.’

  IV

  The light was fading by the time Margaret got back to the apartment. The snow had stopped falling, but it still lay thick across the city, masking its beauty and its imperfections. She had cut a lock of Jia Jing’s silken black hair according to Doctor Pi’s instructions, and delivered it in its proper orientation back to the Centre of Material Evidence Determination.

  Her mother had not yet returned, and there was something cheerless about the place. More so than usual. She felt the radiator in the sitting room and it was barely lukewarm. The communal heating was acting up again. The overhead electric light leeched the colour out of everything in the apartment, and Margaret shivered at the bleak prospect of life here on her own with a baby. There was no question of Li being allowed to share the apartment with her officially. She would not even be allocated a married couple’s apartment – because she was not married to him. And they could not afford to rent privately if Li was unemployed.

  She arched her spine backwards, pressing her palms into her lower back. It had started to ache again. Her antenatal class was due to begin in just over an hour. She had not felt like going out again into the cold and dark, but the apartment was so depressing she could not face the prospect of sitting alone in it waiting for her mother to return. A wave of despair washed over her, and she bit her lip to stop herself crying. Self-pity was only ever self-defeating.

  She went through to the bedroom and opened the closet. Hanging amongst her clothes was the traditional Chinese qipao which she had bought to wear on her wedding day. She had sat up night after night unpicking the seams and recutting it to accommodate the bulge of her child. Still, it would have looked absurd. She had intended wearing a loose-fitting embroidered silk smock over it, to at least partially disguise her condition. She lifted the qipao and the smock from the rail and laid them out on the bed beside the red headscarf that Mei Yuan had given her, and gazed upon the bright, embroidered colours. Reds and yellows and blues, golds and greens. Dragons and snakes. In the bottom of the closet were the tiny silk slippers she had bought to go with them. Black and gold. She lifted them out and ran the tips of her fingers over their silky smoothness. She threw them on the bed suddenly, knowing she would never wear them, and the tears came at last. Hot and silent. She didn’t know whether she was crying for herself, or for Li. Maybe for them both. Theirs had been a difficult, stormy relationship. They had not made things easy for themselves. Now fate was making them even harder. She had been born in the Year of the Monkey, and Li in the Year of the Horse. She remembered being told once that horses and monkeys were fated never to get on. That they were incompatible, and that any relationship between them was doomed to failure. She felt her baby kick inside her, as if to remind her that not everything she and Li had created between them was a failure. Perhaps their child could bridge the gulf between horse and monkey, between China and America. Between happiness and unhappiness.

  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.’

  ‘We’ve got Triads in Beijing, Tao. Anyone with specialist knowledge could be valuable.’

  Tao narrowed his eyes. ‘You don’t believe that. You think I’m involved.’

  Li shrugged. ‘Why would I think that?’

  ‘You tell me.’

  Li turned and wandered towards his desk. ‘There are certain anomalies in this investigation which require explanation,’ he said. ‘The bottles of perfume removed from their apartments, the return visit by the thieves who robbed Macken.’

  Tao looked disgusted. ‘And you think I was responsible for those … anomalies?’

  ‘No,’ Li said. ‘I had a look at your file, that’s all. You’re the one who’s jumping to conclusions.’

  ‘There’s only one conclusion I can jump to, Section Chief Li. You’re trying to smear my name so I won’t get your job. Some kind of petty revenge.’ Tao gave a small, bitter laugh. ‘Your parting shot.’

  Li shook his head. ‘You’re obsessed with getting this job, aren’t you?’

  ‘I could hardly be worse at it than you.’ Tao stabbed a furious finger through the air in Li’s direction. ‘And one way or the other, I’m not going to let you fuck it up for me!’

  Li said, ‘That’s ten yuan for the swear box, Deputy Tao.’

  Tao turned on his heel and stormed out, slamming the door behind him. And Li closed his eyes and tried hard to stop himself from shaking.

  Chapter Eleven

  I

  The snow had begun falling again. In spite of it, crowds jammed the Dong’anmen night market, where dozens of stall holders under red and white striped canopies were frying, barbecuing, steaming, grilling. The smell of food rose with the steam and smoke to fill the night air. Chicken, beef, lamb, fish, noodles, dumplings, whole birds impaled on bamboo sticks, grubs skewered for the grill. It was the most popular eating street in Beijing, where thousands of workers nightly stopped off on their way home to savour Chinese cuisine’s very own version of fast food. Licensed chefs in white coats with red lapels and tall white hats, kept themselves warm over sparking braziers and fiery woks, while hungry customers flitted from stall to stall in search of something special to warm their route home.

  Margaret had to cycle hard to keep up with Dai Lili’s brother as he pedalled east, head down, along Dong’anmen, the feeding frenzy to their right fenced off behind red bins and white railings. There was very little traffic, and no one paid any attention to two figures cycling past, hunched against the cold and the snow in heavy coats and winter hats. Her legs were numb with the cold, even through her jeans.

  As the lights and the sounds and smells of the night market receded, Margaret saw, looming in the dark ahead, the towering two-tiered Donghua Gate, the east entrance to the Forbidden City. They crossed the junction with Nanchizi Street, a corner grocer store blazing its lights out on to the snow-covered road. At this time, the traffic was usually jammed in all directions, but sense had prevailed and very few motorists had ventured out on untreated streets under inches of snow. The occasional cyclist crossed the junction, heading north or south. Dai Lili’s brother led them east into the dark pool of Donghuamen Street, in the shadow of the Donghua Gate. Normally the gate would be floodlit. But since the palace had closed for restoration work, the east and west gates had been shrouded nightly in darkness. The handful of shops on the north side had closed up early. No one in their right mind was venturing out in this weather unless they absolutely had to. The snow was falling so thickly now it almost obliterated the streetlights.

  To Margaret’s surprise, Lili’s brother dismounted under the high red walls of the Donghua Gate. ‘You leave bike here,’ he said. And they leaned their bikes against the wall and she followed him into the shadowed arch of the great central doorway. The gold studded maroon doors were twenty feet high. Lili’s brother leaned against the right-hand door and pushed hard. With a creak deadened by falling snow, it opened just enough to let them slip throug
h. The boy quickly glanced around before he ushered Margaret in and heaved the door closed behind them. They were in a long, cream-painted tunnel that led under the gate and out into a winter garden, stark trees traced in snow. They could see buildings ahead, cast into shadow by the reflected light of the city beyond the walls. Within its walls the Forbidden City lay brooding silently in the dark, six hundred years of history witness to the virgin footsteps Margaret and Lili’s brother made in the snow as they followed a path east, through another gate, and out into the huge cobbled square where once prisoners of war were paraded before the emperor who watched from his commanding position high up on the Meridian Gate. The Golden Water River, which curled through the square, was frozen, its ice covered by a flawless layer of snow. The marble pillars of the five bridges which spanned it stood up like dozens of frozen sentinels guarding this deserted place where the last emperor had once lived in final, splendid isolation, learning about life outside from his Scottish tutor, Reginald Johnston.

  Margaret was breathless already. She grabbed the boy’s arm to stop him. ‘What in God’s name are we doing here?’ she demanded.

  ‘I work for … ’ he searched for the words, ‘ … building firm. We do renovation work, Forbidden City. But work no possible with snow.’ He struggled again with the language. ‘I hide Lili here. No one come. You follow with me.’ And he set off across the vast open space of this ancient square towards the twin-roofed Taihe Hall. Margaret breathed a sigh of despair and set off after him, leaving shadowed tracks in luminous snow.

  Slippery steps took them up to the ancient gathering place. Through an open gate, between stout crimson pillars, Margaret could see the next in a series of halls standing up on its marble terrace at the far side of another square, flanked by what had once been the gardens and homes of imperial courtiers. By the time they reached it, Margaret was exhausted, and alarmed by cramps in her stomach. She stopped, gasping for air, and supported herself on a rail surrounding a huge copper pot more than a metre in diameter. ‘Stop,’ she called, and Dai Lili’s brother hurried back to see what was wrong. ‘For God’s sake,’ she said. ‘I’m pregnant. I can’t keep up with you.’