Chinese Whispers

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 who 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?’

‘Well, think about it. Someone out there is producing carbon copy killings of the Jack the Ripper murders. Always the same MO. Strangulation, and then the cutting of the throat. Half-smoked Russian cheroot left by the body. We get a letter from him threatening to cut off the ears of the next victim. It’s word for word the same as the first of the Jack the Ripper letters. The next victim is Pan. She is strangled, has her throat cut. A Russian cheroot is found by the body. Her ears are cut off. It has to be the same killer.’

‘Not necessarily.’

‘How do you mean?’

‘Think about the things that don’t match. The fact that Pan wasn’t a prostitute. The fact that she was murdered in another part of the city from all the other victims. The fact that she wasn’t mutilated — apart from the cutting off of the ears.’

Li shook his head vigorously, heaving himself out of his chair. ‘It doesn’t matter. The things that don’t match don’t matter.’

‘Why not?’

‘Because only the killer of the first four victims would be able to replicate the things that do match in the fifth.’ He opened out both palms and cocked his head, as if challenging her to contradict him. And he waited.

She looked at him speculatively for a moment, then said, ‘You’re overlooking something.’

‘What?’

‘The killer is not the only person who knows his MO.’

He stared at her uncomprehendingly. ‘Well, who else?’

‘Every police officer on the investigation.’

He was about to dismiss the notion out of hand. But something stopped him. A memory that wormed its way to the head of the queue of thoughts fighting for space in his mind. A conversation he’d had with Bill Hart after the MERMER demonstration at the Academy. Of course, it has to be used very carefully, Hart had said. I mean, think about it. You’re the investigating officer. You make a detailed examination of the crime scene, so now you carry the same information in your brain as the killer. Can we always be sure we’ll know which is which, who is who? But he couldn’t bring himself to believe it. ‘You’re not seriously suggesting that someone on my team murdered Lynn Pan?’

Margaret shrugged. ‘Someone who used the other murders as a convenient cover. Someone who knew enough detail to make it convincing and throw your investigation into confusion. Who else but a cop would have access to that information?’

Thoughts tumbled through Li’s brain like balls in a lottery drum. He didn’t want to believe it, but he couldn’t find a convincing counter argument. If the DNA didn’t match, it was the only possible answer. Which meant they were now looking for two killers. And one of them was someone he knew.

In his search for some alternative, his eyes fell upon a pile of envelopes and a small parcel wrapped in brown paper sitting on the table. At first he wasn’t even looking at them, they were just a convenient focus for the eye. He was running through all the people on his team, the officers from forensics, the pathology lab, everyone who would have access to the kind of information which would allow them to stage Lynn Pan’s killing in such a way that Li would think it was another Ripper murder. And then another ugly little thought sneaked up out of left field and he found himself staring at the parcel on the table and listening to the blood pulsing in his head. ‘What the hell’s that?’ he said.

Margaret looked towards the table. ‘Just the mail. I picked it up when I came back from the autopsy.’ And then she realised what was in his head. ‘Oh, God …’ It was barely a whisper.

The parcel was about twelve centimetres square, wrapped in brown paper and sealed with sticky tape. Li’s name and address was written on it, in what seemed to Li like a familiar hand. But there were no stamps. No postmark. It had been hand-delivered. ‘Do we have any gloves in the house?’ he said, not taking his eyes off it.

Margaret nodded and ran off to the kitchen. She returned a few moments later with a pair of clear plastic disposable food-handling gloves. She kept a box of them in the cupboard above the food preparation area. Li took them and pulled them on, and very carefully began picking at the sticky tape until he had raised a corner of it. Then he eased it free of the paper, a centimetre at a time until he was able to open one end of the parcel. He slid out a plain, white cardboard box tied with a red ribbon. He undid the ribbon and lifted the lid. Inside, nestled in cotton wool stained with blood that had dried and turned brown, were Lynn Pan’s ears. Margaret’s gasp was quite involuntary. Li felt nausea turning to anger. Tucked down the side of the box was a folded note. He gently eased it out and open it up. Red ink. And what appeared to be the same, spidery handwriting as before.

Dear Chief,

A couple of ears for you. As promised.

Sincerely,

Jack.