Chinese Whispers

Tuesday
Chapter Six
I

Her body was slim and firm and beautiful. His hands slipped over the softness of her curves, tracing the line of her hips, gliding across her belly and up to the swelling of her breasts. The nipples pressed hard into his palms. He felt her legs wrap themselves around him, crossing in the small of his back as he slid inside her. Her hair smelled of peaches. ‘Help me,’ she whispered, and he heard her say, ‘I love you.’

‘I love you, too,’ he said.

‘Help me,’ she said again.

But he was lost inside her, drifting on a wave of lust, thrusting against it.

‘Help me.’ It was louder, now, more insistent. Another wave crashed over him. ‘Help me!’ she screamed, and he opened his eyes. Her smile had slipped from her face. There were black holes where her ears and eyes should have been, and blood ran across her face like vivid red slashes. He screamed and reared up and something struck him hard on the back of his head.

‘Chief, are you okay?’

It was Wu, his face a mask of concern. The desk lamp was lying on the floor, the bulb shattered into a thousand pieces. The first yellow sunlight was slanting in the window.

Li blinked and couldn’t figure it out. ‘What …?’

Wu stooped to pick up the lamp. ‘You must have had a nightmare, Chief. The whole section heard you screaming. You sure you’re okay?’

‘I was asleep?’ Li could hardly believe it.

‘You dropped off about two, Chief. No one had the heart to wake you.’

‘Shit.’ Li stood up unsteadily and tried to straighten out the creases in his uniform. He was shaken by his dream. It had left him wrestling with feelings of guilt and horror. He looked at Wu and realised he must have been there all night, too. ‘What about you guys?’

‘Oh, we all got a few hours at one time or another,’ Wu said. There was a bedroom on each floor of the section, three beds to a room. Officers detained beyond their shift could always snatch some sleep if things got bad.

‘Where are we at?’

‘About ready for a meeting whenever you are, Chief. The autopsy’s scheduled for nine.’

Li checked his watch. It was six a.m. ‘I need to get changed and showered. Get my brain in gear. Let’s wait until after the autopsy before we do the meeting.’

Wu nodded and was in the corridor before Li called after him, ‘I never saw the statement you took from the security guard.’ Wu had decided to bring him back to Section One, and they had raised all the staff from the museum and the shop who had been on duty at the monument when it closed up for the night, and brought them all in for questioning.

Wu reappeared in the doorway. ‘He didn’t remember her,’ he said. ‘I pulled her pic from the computer, but it didn’t mean anything to him. Only thing that stuck with him was a car parked at the side of the road when he locked up. About five or six metres south of the gate.’

Li had a mental picture of the bloody tracks beyond the fence coming to an abrupt end at just about that point on the sidewalk. ‘Make? Colour? Anyone inside?’

Wu shook his head. ‘He was more concerned about hoofing it back to base for a smoke and a warm and something to eat. He said it was dark-coloured. A saloon. There might have been someone sitting in it, he wasn’t sure.’

Li gasped his frustration.

‘We struck it lucky with the girl, though.’

‘What girl?’

‘From the ticket office. She recognised Pan straight off. Remembered she spoke with a weird accent and was really pretty. Seems she bought a ticket about five-fifteen. Which was unusual, because apparently people don’t normally buy tickets that close to closing time. The girl had already cashed up.’

Li saw Pan striding across the causeway, her long coat flapping about her calves, her collar pulled up around her neck. She must have climbed the steps to the top as the sun was dipping behind the mountains. It had been a spectacular sunset the previous night. It must have been something special from up there. Blue mountains against a red sky, lights going on all across the city. Qian was right. She must have hidden there beneath the arm of the dial, waiting for the place to close up, waiting to meet the man who would take her life. But why? He lifted his coat from the stand. ‘I’ll be back in a couple of hours.’

His bike was where he had left it the previous morning, chained to the railing leading into what had once been the main entrance to the building. The door had not been in use for as long as Li had been there. He cycled out into Dongzhimen Nanxiao Da Jie and headed south with the traffic, past the restaurant on the corner where Mei Yuan plied her trade. The restaurant was shuttered up, and it was too early for Mei Yuan. There were plenty of other bikes on the road, and traffic was already building up towards rush hour. Li cycled at a leisurely rate, buttoned up tight against the cold, and let the city slip by him. His fatigue had been startled out of him by the icy wind. His thoughts, however, were still full of Lynn Pan and his dream of making love to her. But the only image of her he could conjure in his mind was of her body lying cold and dead under the photographer’s lights at the Millennium Monument. Throat cut. Ears hacked off. Red blood on yellow stone.

On Jianguomen Da Jie, the cycle lane was choked with morning commuters, all wrapped in hats and scarves and gloves, padded jackets thickening slight Chinese frames, white masks strapped across faces to protect against both the cold and the pollution. With the sun at their backs, the stream of cyclists moved like a river, at the same pace, an odd current carrying someone in a hurry past the main flow. A girl chatting breezily on her cellphone weaved in and out amongst the more sedate of her fellow bikers. Cycling with the crowd brought an odd sense of belonging, of being a part of the whole. They passed the footbridge at Dongdan, and the vast new Oriental Plaza at Wangfujing. And at the Grand Hotel, Li moved out into the traffic to take his life in his hands and turn left into Zhengyi Road. He had done it a thousand times, and it only ever got harder. In the distance he saw a formation of PLA guards marching across Changan from the Gate of Heavenly Peace, as they did every morning, to raise the Chinese flag in Tiananmen Square.

Most of the leaves in the trees in Zhengyi Road still clung stubbornly to their branches. Those which dropped were swept up daily by women in blue smocks and white masks. But it was too early for the blue smocks, and the leaves which had fallen overnight scraped and rattled across the tarmac in the wind. Li cycled past the entrance to the Ministry compound and turned in at the news-stand at the end of the road to pick up the first editions of the newspapers. The news vendor was wrapped in layers of clothes, a fur hat with earflaps pulled down over her bobbed hair to overlap the collar and scarf at her neck. She wore fingerless gloves and cradled a glass jar of warm green tea. What was visible of her face smiled a greeting at Li.

‘How are you today, Mr Li?’

‘Very well, Mrs Ma.’

She handed him his usual People’s Daily and Beijing Youth Daily, folded one inside the other, in return for a few coins.

‘You’re up early today.’

He smiled. ‘I haven’t been to bed yet.’

‘Ahhh,’ she said sagely. ‘Of course. Another murder.’

He looked at her in astonishment. ‘How do you know that?’

She nodded towards the bundle in his hand. ‘It’s in the paper.’

Li frowned. ‘It can’t be.’ He looked at the People’s Daily. The front page was covered in the usual CCP propaganda Illiteracy rate among adult people slashed. And, Yangtze water cleanup ensured. There was a story about massive new investment in the western provinces, and a photograph of the executive deputy secretary of Tibet answering questions at a press conference. His heart skipped a beat as he saw a photograph of himself receiving his award from the Minister of Public Security. He would not have expected the public organ of the Party to have carried anything on the murders. The Beijing Youth Daily was another matter. Independent of the Party, and increasingly bold in its coverage of Chinese internal affairs, it had begun to garner a reputation for running high-risk stories. But even so, Li could not imagine the paper carrying a crime story about which no details had yet been released. Particularly since the latest murder had only been committed the night before. He unfolded its front page and felt as if he had been slapped. Beijing Ripper Claims Victim No. 5. The headline ran almost the full length of the left side of the front page in bold red characters. Two strips of sub-heading matched it, side by side, white characters on a red background. Body discovered at Millennium Monument, throat cut, ears removed. And, Four previous victims in Jianguomen found with body parts missing. Above the story itself, was a photograph of Li pictured at the award ceremony the previous evening. The caption read, Award-winning Beijing cop, Li Yan, leads investigation.

‘It would make you frightened to go out at night,’ the news vendor said. ‘He must be insane, this Beijing Ripper, cutting open these poor women and taking out their insides.’ Her words dragged Li’s eyes from the paper to her face. She must have read the story from start to finish. As, in all probability, would most of the city’s population in the hours ahead. It was going to spread panic, and it would certainly be picked up by the foreign media. The political implications were unthinkable. How in the name of the sky, he wondered, had they got hold of this kind of detail?

* * *

Margaret was feeding Li Jon in the living room when he got in. She was still in her dressing gown, face smudged and bleary from sleep — or the lack of it. He threw the Beijing Youth Daily on to the coffee table in front of her. ‘Look!’ he said.

She glanced at the paper. ‘I see a photograph of you,’ she said. ‘Is that what I’m supposed to be looking at? Maybe I should cut it out and keep it by the bedside, that way I’d probably see more of you than I do at the moment.’

But Li was in no mood for her sarcasm, and in his agitation, he had forgotten that she would not be able to read the headline. ‘Beijing Ripper Claims Victim No. 5.’ He read it for her.

She shrugged. ‘So? It’s true, isn’t it?’

‘That’s not the point!’ His voice was strained by exasperation and anger. ‘No one outside of the investigation knows the kind of detail they’ve printed in there.’

‘So someone leaked it.’

Li shook his head. ‘It doesn’t happen in China.’

‘It does now.’ Margaret pushed up an eyebrow. ‘Welcome to the rest of the world.’ She removed the teat from Li Jon’s mouth and wiped his lips. ‘Good morning, by the way.’

Li threw his hands up in frustration. ‘They’re going to blame me for this, Margaret.’ He cursed under his breath. ‘I’m going for a shower.’ And he stormed off to the bathroom.

Margaret called after him. ‘Your son says good morning, too.’

The slamming of the bathroom door came back in response. After a moment she heard the sound of the shower running, and the shower door banged shut. The phone rang. Usually she did not answer it, because the calls were invariably for Li and the callers spoke only Chinese. But he was in the shower, and in spite of her resentment at being abandoned to play the role of the little wife and doting mother, she did understand the pressure he was under. She lifted the receiver. ‘Wei?’ A female voice spoke to her in Chinese. ‘I’m sorry, I don’t understand,’ Margaret said. ‘Please hold.’

She hefted Li Jon in her left arm, and took the phone through to the bathroom. Li’s uniform and underwear lay crumpled on the floor where he had dropped them. She opened the shower door and immediately felt the hot spray and steam on her face. She saw the shape of Li lathering his head with soap somewhere in the midst of it all and thrust the phone towards him. ‘Here,’ she said. ‘A call for you.’

He fumbled to turn off the water, stinging shampoo running into his eyes as he reached for the phone. ‘Shit, Margaret, could it not have waited?’

‘I’ve no idea,’ she said, and she slammed the door shut behind her.

Li winced, and stood dripping in the cubicle, clutching the phone to his wet head. The cold of the apartment was already making itself felt as the water cooled, and he started to shiver.

‘Wei?’

It was the secretary from the Commissioner’s office at police headquarters. The Commissioner wanted to see him without delay. Li closed his eyes and took a deep breath to calm himself. The storm was about to break. And it was going to break right over his head.

By the time he was dressed and ready to go, Margaret had steamed some lotus paste buns and made green tea. He appeared in the kitchen doorway looking harassed, wearing his long, heavy coat. But he had changed into freshly pressed slacks and a white shirt. Margaret thought he looked stunning, and she always loved the smell of him when he came out of the shower. But he never seemed to be around long enough these days for her to enjoy him.

‘I’ve got to go,’ he said. ‘Commissioner Zhu is going to cut me up into little pieces and feed me to the fish.’

‘Then you should have some breakfast before you go. To fatten you up for the fish.’

‘No time. I’ll call later.’ And he was gone.

She shouted after him, ‘Are you remembering we’re going out for dinner tonight?’ But the door was already closing behind him. She shut her eyes to try to calm herself, and to prepare herself for the emptiness of the day ahead — before remembering that Li’s father had said he would drop by in the afternoon to see his grandson. Perhaps, she reflected, the day would have been better left empty. She felt her blood pressure start to rise once more.

The phone rang again, startling her this time. She swithered about whether to answer it, but if it was important there was still time to call down to Li from the balcony. And, besides, what else did she have to do with her time? She picked up the receiver. ‘Wei?’

A man’s voice spoke in a clipped American accent. ‘May I speak with Doctor Campbell?’

It seemed so odd to have someone addressing her as Doctor Campbell, not only in her own language, but in a comfortingly East-coast American accent. ‘This is she,’ she replied.