The Runner (The China Thrillers 5) Read online

  When she had wakened Li was gone, but his warmth and the smell of him lingered on the sheets and pillow beside her. She had rolled over and breathed him in, remembering how good it had been just a few hours before when he had made slow and careful love to her, and she had felt a desire simply to be absorbed by him completely, to lose herself in all his soft, gentle goodness. To be a better person. And then she had seen the clock, and knew that Mei Yuan would be waiting for her.

  The sky was light in the east, pale gold rising to the deepest blue, but the sun had not yet found its way between the skyscrapers to throw its long shadows westward. And it was so cold her muscles had nearly seized solid.

  Up ahead, the traffic had been halted at Tiananmen to allow the dawn ritual of the raising of the flag. She saw the soldiers, in their slow-motion goose-step, march in impressive formation from the Gate of Heavenly Peace to the flagpole in the square, and she dismounted quickly to guide her bike between the stationary vehicles to the other side of the avenue. Below the high red walls of Zhongshan Park, an old man wearing a beret sat huddled on a bench watching the soldiers. A street sweeper in a surplus army greatcoat scraped his broom over the frozen pavings beneath the trees. Margaret cycled to the arched gate and parked her bike, before hurrying into the entrance hall with its crimson pillars and hanging lanterns, and paying her two yuan entrance fee at the ticket window.

  Beyond Zhongshan Hall and the Altar of the Five-Coloured Soil, she found Mei Yuan in a courtyard in front of the Yu Yuan pavilion. A row of windows gave on to tanks containing thirty different breeds of goldfish which swam, oblivious to the cold, in water heated to tropical temperatures. Along with half a dozen others, Mei Yuan moved in slow, controlled exercises to traditional Chinese music playing gently from someone’s ghetto blaster. Tai chi looked easy to the non-practitioner, but its leisurely control demanded something of nearly every muscle. It was a wonderful way of maintaining fitness without exertion, particularly for the elderly. Or the pregnant.

  When she saw her coming, Mei Yuan broke off to give Margaret a hug. ‘I thought perhaps you were not coming today.’ She looked forty, but was nearer sixty. Her smooth moon face beneath its soft white ski hat creased in a smile around her beautifully slanted almond eyes. She was shorter than Margaret, stocky, and wrapped in layers of clothes below a quilted green jacket. She wore blue cotton trousers and chunky white trainers. ‘Have you eaten?’ she asked in putonghua Chinese. It was the traditional Beijing greeting, born of a time when food was scarce and hunger a way of life.

  ‘Yes, I have eaten,’ Margaret replied. Also in putonghua. She fell in beside the older woman, and after a moment they joined the others in the slow sweep of the tai chi, following the intuitive methodical rhythms evolved over five thousand years of practice. ‘I can’t stay long this morning. Li Yan has asked me to do an autopsy.’ She glanced at Mei Yuan and knew that she would not approve.

  ‘Of course, you said yes.’

  Margaret nodded. Mei Yuan said nothing. She knew better than to question Margaret’s decision. But Margaret saw her disapproval clearly in her face. Pregnancy in the Middle Kingdom was treated with almost spiritual reverence, and the mother-to-be handled like the most delicate and precious Ming china. Even after delivery, the mother would often be confined by relatives and friends to a month of inactivity in a darkened room. They even had a phrase to describe the phenomenon: zuo yuezi. Literally a woman’s ‘month of confinement’ after giving birth to a child. Margaret, however, was not inclined to submit to constraint at any time – before birth or after.

  Half an hour later the gathering broke up when the woman with the ghetto blaster apologised and said she had to go. Mei Yuan and Margaret walked back through the park together, past a large group following their wu shu master in the art of slow-motion sword play. The red tassles that hung from the grips of their ceremonial weapons arcing in the sunlight that slanted now through the naked branches of the park’s ancient scholar trees.

  Mei Yuan said, ‘I have reserved a room for the wedding ceremony.’ She was the closest thing to a mother-figure in Li’s life. His own mother had died in the Cultural Revolution. Margaret, too, had become very fond of her. She thought of her as her ‘Chinese’ mother. And she wondered how her real mother would get on with her Chinese counterpart when she arrived. Li had asked Mei Yuan to make the arrangements for a traditional Chinese wedding, and Margaret had been happy to leave everything to someone else. She was only half listening to Mei Yuan now. The wedding still seemed distant and remote, as if it were all happening to another person.

  ‘And I have ordered the flowers for the altars,’ Mei Yuan was saying. She had already explained to Margaret that there were no formal wedding vows in Chinese culture. The couple simply interlinked arms and drank from cups joined by red string, a symbol of their binding commitment. This was performed in front of two altars to honour the ancestors of each family. It had already been decided that this would not take place at Li’s home, as was traditional, since the apartment was too small. ‘Now, it is usual to place a rice bowl and chopsticks on one of the altars if there has been a recent bereavement in either of the families.’ She left this hanging. It was not so much a statement as a question. Margaret immediately thought of her father. But she did not know how her mother would respond.

  ‘Perhaps Li will want to make the gesture in memory of his uncle,’ she said.

  Mei Yuan said, ‘It is some years since Yifu died.’

  ‘Yes, but his death still casts a shadow over the family. I know that there isn’t a day goes by when Li doesn’t think about him.’ Li’s description of his uncle’s death was as vivid in Margaret’s mind as if she had witnessed it herself. ‘I’ll ask him.’

  Mei Yuan nodded. ‘I have spoken to Ma Yun,’ she said, ‘and she will be happy to cater for the wedding banquet. Of course, her price is far too high, but we can negotiate her down. However, there are certain items which must appear on the menu, and they will be expensive.’

  ‘Oh?’ Margaret was not too concerned. Her definition of expensive, and Mei Yuan’s were rather different. Mei Yuan earned her living from a mobile stall selling fast-food Beijing pancakes called jian bing. She was lucky if she made seventy dollars a month.

  ‘There must be fish, roast suckling pig, pigeon, chicken cooked in red oil, lobster, dessert bun stuffed with lotus seeds … ’

  ‘Sounds good,’ Margaret said. ‘But why?’

  ‘Ah,’ Mei Yuan said, ‘because every item of food has a symbolic meaning. We must have fish, because in Chinese the word for fish is pronounced the same as abundance, which means the newly-weds will have plentiful wealth.’

  ‘I’ll drink to that,’ Margaret said, and then added quickly, ‘not with alcohol, of course.’

  Mei Yuan smiled indulgently. ‘Lobster is literally called dragon shrimp in Chinese,’ she said, ‘and having lobster and chicken together at the wedding banquet indicates that the dragon and phoenix are in harmony and that the Yin and Yang elements of the union are balanced.’

  ‘And one just has to have one’s Yin and Yang in balance,’ Margaret said.

  Mei Yuan ignored her. ‘The roast suckling pig is usually served whole as a symbol of the bride’s virginity.’ She stopped suddenly, realising what she’d said, and the colour rose on her cheeks as her eyes strayed to Margaret’s bump.

  Margaret grinned. ‘Maybe we’d better skip the suckling pig, Mei Yuan.’

  They hurried on towards the bronze statue of Dr. Sun Yat Sen and passed on their left the red, studded gates of the Beijing Centre of Communication and Education for Family Planning. And Margaret was reminded that in a country where birth had been controlled for decades by the One Child Policy, a baby was a precious thing. Her hands strayed to the swelling beneath her woollen cape and she experienced a sense of anticipation that was both thrilling and scary.

  At the gate, she retrieved her bicycle and said, ‘Say hi to Li for me. You’ll probably see him before I do.’ Mei Yuan’s stall was on
a street corner not far from Section One. It was where Li had first met her. He still had a jian bing for breakfast most mornings.

  Mei Yuan opened her satchel and brought out a small, square parcel and handed it to Margaret. ‘A gift,’ she said, ‘for your wedding day.’

  Margaret took it, embarrassed. ‘Oh, Mei Yuan, you shouldn’t go buying me things.’ But she knew she could not turn it down. ‘What is it?’

  ‘Open it and see.’

  Margaret carefully opened the soft parcel to reveal, folded within, a large, red, silk and lace square. ‘It’s beautiful,’ she said. It was real silk, and she realised it had probably cost Mei Yuan half a week’s earnings.

  ‘It’s a veil,’ Mei Yuan said. ‘To be draped over the head during the ceremony. Red, because that is the symbolic colour of happiness.’

  Margaret’s eyes filled. She hugged the smiling Mei Yuan. ‘Then, of course, I will wear it,’ she said. ‘And wish for all the happiness in the world.’ For there had been precious little of it these last turbulent years.

  II

  Smoke made it nearly impossible to see from one side of the meeting room to the other. The ceiling fan was on, but only succeeded in moving the smoke around. It was too cold to open a window, and almost the only person in the room without a cigarette was Li. He wondered why he had bothered giving up. At this rate he’d be back on thirty a day without ever putting one to his lips.

  There were more than twenty detectives in the room, some arranged around a large rectangular meeting table, others sitting in low chairs lined up along the walls. Flasks of piping hot green tea sat on the table, and every detective had his own mug or insulated tankard. The central heating was toiling to cope with an outside temperature which had so far failed to rise above minus five centigrade, and most of the detectives were wearing coats or jackets. One or two even wore gloves. Everyone knew now why they were there, that this was a priority investigation.

  The tone of the meeting was set from the start by a clash between Li and his deputy, Tao Heng. Tao was a man in his fifties with thinning dark hair scraped back across a mottled scalp, his bulging eyes magnified behind thick-rimmed glasses. Nobody liked him.

  ‘I’d appreciate,’ Tao said, ‘being told why the autopsy of last night’s suicide victim was cancelled.’ He looked around the room. ‘Since I seem to be the only one here who doesn’t know.’

  ‘The autopsy has not been cancelled, Deputy Section Chief,’ Li said. ‘Merely re-assigned.’

  ‘Oh? And who is going to do it?’ Tao asked.

  ‘The American pathologist, Margaret Campbell,’ Li told him evenly.

  ‘Ah,’ Tao said. ‘Keeping it in the family, then?’

  There was a collective intake of breath around the table. Nepotism was considered a form of corruption, and in the present political climate, police corruption was very much under the microscope. No one had any illusions about the subtext of Tao’s comment.

  Li said coldly, ‘Doctor Campbell is the most experienced forensic pathologist available to us. If you have a problem with that, Tao, you can raise it with me after the meeting.’

  Relations between Li and his deputy were strained at best. When Li left the section to take up his position as Criminal Liaison at the Chinese Embassy in Washington DC, Tao had succeeded him as Deputy Section Chief, coming from the criminal investigation department in Hong Kong. He had known that there was no way he could try to follow in the footsteps of the most popular deputy anyone in Section One could remember. So from the start he had been his own man and done things his own way. Which was remote and superior. He believed in a dress code. Which was unpopular. He always wore his uniform, and he fined detectives for the use of foul language in the office. If anyone crossed him he could expect to get every shit assignment on the section for the next six months.

  When Section Chief Chen Anming had retired earlier that year Tao was expected to succeed him. But Chen’s retirement had coincided with Li’s return from America and Li was appointed over Tao’s head. The appointment had coloured their relationship from the start. And with two such diametrically different personalities, it was a relationship that was doomed to failure.

  Tao resumed his silent sulking, and they listened as Wu gave his account of Jia Jing’s adulterous misadventure with the wife of the BOCOG member the previous evening. Some muted laughter was immediately cut short by Li’s admonition to them that he would remove from his job anyone who revealed details of the case outside the section. The official report, for reasons they did not need to know, reflected less than the full story, he told them. And none of them had any doubt what that meant.

  They sat, then, with their files open in front of them listening to Sun going over his report on the ‘suicide’ of the swimmer, Sui Mingshan. He had altered it to take account of Li’s thoughts on the shaven head, which he repeated now as if they were his own.

  Li took over. He said, ‘I want the swimming pool and Sui’s home treated as potential crime scenes. We won’t know the cause of death for certain until we have the autopsy report, so unless or until we have reason to believe otherwise we’ll treat it as suspicious.’

  He flipped through the folder in front of him. ‘You all have the report on the accident which killed three members of the sprint relay team last month.’ There had been no reason then for anyone to think it was anything other than an accident. Three young men travelling too fast in a car late at night, losing control on black ice and wrapping their vehicle around a lamppost. Li said, ‘And the cyclist who was killed in a freak accident in a private pool.’ They all shuffled their papers to bring that report to the top. ‘Three witnesses saw him slip on the diving board and crack his skull as he fell in. Dead by the time they got him out.’ He took a deep breath. ‘We have no autopsy reports. No bodies. But in light of last night’s fatalities, we have no choice but to go back over all these deaths in the minutest detail. I have no idea what we’re looking for, or even if there is anything to be found, but I doubt if there’s anyone in this room who would think the deaths of six athletes in little over four weeks worthy of anything other than our undivided attention.’

  There was nobody in the room who did.

  ‘So let’s kick it around,’ Li said. ‘Anyone got any thoughts?’

  Wu had the report on the cyclist open in front of him. ‘These three witnesses,’ he said. ‘They all have addresses in Taiwan. Are they still going to be around for further questioning?’

  ‘Why don’t you make it your personal responsibility to find out?’ Li said. Wu pulled a face, and there was a sprinkling of laughter around the table. ‘Talk to the attending officers. Get them to go over it all again, in the smallest detail. There might be stuff that never made it into the report.’ He turned to the detective next to him. ‘And Qian, why don’t you talk to the officers who attended the car crash? Same thing.’ Qian was about ten years older than Li. He would never be management material, but he was steady and reliable and Li had a lot of time for him.

  ‘Sure, Chief.’

  ‘Shouldn’t we talk to the relatives, too?’ This came from Zhao, the youngest detective in the section, a sharp and intelligent investigator destined, in Li’s view, to be a future deputy chief. But the arrival of Sun had somewhat eclipsed him, and he had spent the last few months sulking in the shadows.

  ‘Absolutely,’ Li said, ‘and the coaches, and other athletes, as many friends as we can track down. We need to look at financial records, any remaining personal belongings … ’ He glanced around the table. ‘I’m sure that Deputy Tao will be able to organise you all to ensure you make the best use of your time.’

  There were several stifled sniggers. Tao was fond of charts and worksheets and rotas.

  ‘What about drugs?’ asked Sang. He was another of the section’s younger detectives. In his early thirties, Sang had distinguished himself, while still downtown, during an investigation into a particularly bloody serial killing, and had transferred to Section One soon after.


  ‘What about drugs?’ Li asked.

  ‘Well,’ Sang said. ‘If we’re looking for a motive … ’

  ‘We’re not looking for a motive, Detective,’ Tao cut him off sharply, and the earlier tension immediately returned to the room. ‘We’re looking for evidence. As much as we can accumulate. No matter how painful, or how slow. Only then will we see the bigger picture. There are no shortcuts.’

  It was the old argument, the traditional Chinese approach to criminal investigation. Accumulate enough evidence and you will solve the crime. Unlike the approach of criminal investigators in the West, motive was regarded as being of secondary importance, something which would become self-apparent when enough evidence had been gathered.

  Li said, ‘Deputy Tao clearly thinks you’ve been reading too many American detective novels, Sang.’ Which provoked some laughter and softened the tension. ‘But I agree with him. It’s too early to be looking at motive. We don’t even know if there has been a crime.’

  As the meeting broke up and Li gathered together his papers, he became aware of Tao hanging back to speak to him, and he sighed inwardly. Tao kept his peace until they were on their own. Then he closed the door so that they would not be overheard, and crossed the room to drop his copy of Wu’s report on the death of Jia Jing in front of Li. ‘Why was I not consulted about this?’

  ‘You weren’t here last night, Tao.’

  ‘And this morning? Before the meeting? Did it not occur to you, Section Chief, that I should have been briefed before the detectives? Have you any idea how it feels to be told by a junior officer that an autopsy has been cancelled when you know nothing about it?’

  ‘I’m sorry, Tao, if you feel slighted. Protocol has its time and its place. Unfortunately, this morning there was no time.’ Li picked up his folder to go, but Tao was not finished. He stood his ground.