Chinese Whispers

Chapter Eight
I

A red flag flapped in the wind outside the white-tiled police station on the corner of Fanggu Lu and Fangxing Lu. As the sun went down, the wind was doing its best to detach stubborn leaves from the scholar trees that lined the street. A couple of bicycle repair men on the corner wore gloves to protect oily fingers from the cold as they worked on the skeleton of an upturned cycle, the last job of the day. Li drove past the sports centre on his left, basketball courts and soccer pitches, a domed stadium with indoor tennis courts. Beyond it, traffic buzzed like flies dying in the autumn cold around the multi-storey Feng Chung shopping centre. At the end of the street he parked and crossed to the apartment block on the corner. A jian bing lady was selling pancakes from a stand in the gardens, while a warden swaddled in blue coat and red armband wore a white face mask as she patrolled the perimeter, casting a long shadow across the grass.

At the entrance to Lao Dai’s apartment, a couple of tricycle goods carriers were parked under a tin roof, and another Chinese flag snapped and cracked like a whip in the breeze. Li climbed the couple of steps to the door and went in. A short flight of stairs led to a lobby and the elevator. A stairgate stood ajar at the entrance to the stairwell. Off to the left, a corridor led to a door with a plaque which read, Veteran Senior Officers Activity Centre. For some reason it was also labelled in English, Old Cadres. Li knocked and walked in. An old man with a very large pair of glasses sat reading the Beijing Youth Daily next to a dispenser of bottled water. He looked up at Li, his face expressionless, then he looked at the front page of his paper and then back at Li.

‘Ni hau,’ Li said, and the old man nodded silent acknowledgement.

A big screen television stood on a wooden cabinet next to a tall refrigerator which had seen better days. In an alcove at the far end of the room the last sunshine of the day slanted in through windows on two sides. Two old men sat playing chess among the pot plants. From a room in a corridor leading off, Li heard the sound of men’s voices raised in an argument.

The apartment was provided by the Ministry of Public Security for retired senior police officers. Li wondered if he, too, would end up in a place like this one day. He pulled up a chair and sat down at the table with the chess players. For some reason, Old Dai never went to the park on a Tuesday.

‘You just cannot keep your face off the front pages of the newspapers these days, can you?’ Dai said, without looking up.

‘So it seems,’ Li replied. He paused. ‘Dai, I need your advice.’

Dai’s chess partner immediately rose to his feet. He had a long, lugubrious face, and a cardigan that hung open to reveal an egg-stained shirt. ‘No cheating,’ he said, and he headed out into the stairwell.

Old Dai grinned. ‘As if I needed to.’ And then his smile faded. ‘You are in trouble?’

Li sighed. ‘Maybe.’

Dai returned to his examination of the chessboard. ‘You had better tell me.’

‘I think the woman killed last night might have been murdered by a police officer.’

Dai lifted his eyes from the chessboard, all thoughts of the game banished from his mind. ‘Why do you think this?’

Li told him, and Dai sat listening in silence and gazing pensively from the window. When he had finished, Li added, ‘Margaret has taken the ears to the pathology department to confirm that they are Lynn Pan’s. Not that I think there is any doubt. A visual match will do for now. A DNA match will seal it for the record.’

‘And the handwriting?’

‘I have requested a calligrapher to compare the characters on the note that came with the ears, to the characters on the one that came with the kidney. Forensics are comparing the inks.’

‘But you don’t expect a match?’

‘No.’

Dai sat in silence for some time. At length he said, ‘The parcel with the ears had no stamp or postmark?’

‘It was hand-delivered.’

‘So whoever left it in your post-box had access to the Ministry compound.’

‘A cop,’ Li said flatly.

Dai nodded. But it was not a nod of agreement. Only an acknowledgement. ‘I am puzzled,’ he said.

‘Why? What’s puzzling you?’

‘If this police officer had knowledge of the previous murders, and wished you to believe that Miss Pan died by the same hand, why would he leave his saliva on the cigar? For he would know, surely, that when you tested the DNA it would not match.’ He looked Li in the eye. ‘That was careless of him, don’t you think?’