Chinese Whispers

Wednesday
Chapter Nine
I

It was dark when Li left his apartment. Margaret was still asleep, her first undisturbed night for months. The apartment had seemed strangely empty when they got in the night before, with Li Jon spending the night at Mei Yuan’s. It was odd how a presence you took for granted was never more apparent than when it was no longer there. Margaret had fallen asleep almost immediately. Li had drifted once or twice, but for most of the long hours of the night had lain awake staring at the ceiling in the reflected light from the streetlamps outside. He knew he was in trouble, and had been playing a mind game his uncle had taught him. Take sequential facts that led to a conclusion and rearrange them in any order. Then look at them again with a fresh eye. It was amazing just how often you could reach a different conclusion. But no matter how many times Li rearranged the events of the last forty-eight hours, the conclusion always remained the same. And it scared him.

As he drove west on Changan, retracing his journey of the previous night, the first splinters of sunlight shot like arrows down the length of the city’s east-west artery, blinding him when he glanced in the rear-view mirror. It heralded the break of a day that filled him with dread. It brought no illumination. Merely contrast with the darkness he carried in his heart.

He turned north again at the Muxidi intersection and drove past the academy on his right, and Yuyuantan Park on his left. There was little traffic on the road yet, but even as he looked, the cycle lanes were filling up with huddled figures braving the subzero temperature to cross this city of thirteen million inhabitants to factories and offices on its far-flung outskirts. When he reached the traffic lights at the Yuetan Footbridge, he turned right into Yuetan Nan Jie, and there ahead of him were the rows of pink and white four-storey apartment blocks that housed the most senior police officers in China.

He showed his ID to the guard on duty at the gate and drove into the forecourt parking lot of the first block. He got out of the car and stretched stiff and tired limbs, breathing in the cold, harsh air, and trying to blink away the grit in his eyes. He pulled his long, black coat tightly around himself and looked up at the picture windows with their views of the parkland below, the open balconies where the privileged could dine in the shady cool of a summer’s evening, and knew he would never reach those dizzy heights. Not that he wasn’t good enough. He was a better cop than most of the residents of these luxury apartments. But he had a big mouth, which he was about to open again. And this time, even he was frightened of the consequences.

Commissioner Zhu was still in his dressing gown — black silk embroidered with red and gold dragons — when he opened his door to Li. He had been unable to disguise his surprise when Li announced himself on the intercom. A moment’s silence, then a curt, ‘You’d better come up.’

He ushered Li into the spacious living room at the front of the apartment. Net curtains as fine as gossamer hung over sliding glass doors that led out on to the balcony. In the distance, above the tops of the autumn trees, you could just see the roof of the Chinese Academy of Sciences. Li could hear the Commissioner’s wife in the kitchen, where she had clearly been sent and told to stay. The Commissioner stood with his back to the glass doors, his legs apart, arms folded. Against the light Li could not see his face, only the reflected light from his rimless glasses. Beyond him the sky was a deep orange. ‘This had better be good, Li. I’m not accustomed to being dragged from my bed by junior officers.’

Li took a deep breath. ‘I believe that one of the six of us who took the MERMER test on Monday afternoon murdered Lynn Pan,’ he said.

Zhu remained motionless, and Li could not see in his face what impact his statement had made. The Commissioner said nothing for what seemed like a very long time. Eventually he cleared his throat and said in a quiet voice, ‘Which one of us?’

‘I don’t know.’

‘Then what makes you think it was any of us?’

And Li told him. About the DNA mismatch, about how only someone with inside knowledge of the police investigation could have so accurately mimicked the Beijing Ripper. About the caller pretending to be him, luring Pan to a rendezvous with death at the Millennium Monument. About Pan’s fears, expressed in her e-mail to Hart, and her private folders on the academy website, with the three graphs marked, Liar, Liar, Liar.

‘But you don’t know whose graphs they were?’

‘No, Commissioner.’

‘And how do you propose to find out?’

‘I’ve asked Bill Hart to gather together all the various pieces of information necessary to make that apparent. Miss Pan’s assistant, and the students who took part in the demonstration should be able to provide most of what he needs.’

For the first time, the Commissioner unfolded his arms and leaned forward to take a cigarette from a wooden box on a lacquered table. He lit it and blew smoke towards the ceiling. It hung in the still air of the apartment, backlit by the dawn.

‘And supposing you do identify this liar. What then? How does that in any way prove that he murdered Lynn Pan?’

‘It doesn’t. But it would tell us where to look.’

‘And his motive?’

‘The lie, presumably.’

The Commissioner snorted his derision. ‘What sort of a lie told during an innocent demonstration could possibly motivate murder? And anyway, how could he lie? We weren’t asked any questions.’

Li nodded. It was one of the many things which had plagued him during all the sleepless hours of the night. How could you lie, if you had not been asked any questions and had given no answers? And yet Pan had marked the files, Liar, Liar, Liar. Somehow, in some way, one of them had been caught in a falsehood. ‘I don’t have the answer to that yet, Commissioner.’

For the first time, the Commissioner moved away from the window, and Li saw that his face had turned quite pale. He started circling Li like a hunter stalking his prey, and Li remembered their conversation about the Commissioner’s boyhood spent hunting in the forests of the remote Xinjiang province. ‘It seems to me, Section Chief, that you are raising a great many questions to which you do not have any answers. You are indulging in the worst kind of unsubstantiated speculation. It goes against every tenet of Chinese police investigation — tried and tested techniques developed over decades by better men than you. Men like your uncle. I am sure he would be turning in his grave if he could hear this conversation.’

‘My uncle always trusted his instincts, Commissioner, and taught me to trust mine.’

‘Oh, I see. So your instincts are telling you that the Deputy Minister of Public Security might be a murderer. And presumably, since you have such faith in your instincts, you’ll be suggesting that we just lock him up?’

Li felt the serrated edge of the Commissioner’s sarcasm cutting into his fragile confidence. But he stood his ground. ‘There were six of us at the MERMER test, Commissioner.’

Zhu waved his cigarette in the air. ‘Well, that would make you and me suspects, too, I suppose.’

‘I wouldn’t be here, Commissioner, if I thought it was you.’

‘Ah, and that would be your trusty instinct again, Section Chief. Am I supposed to be flattered?’

Li decided not to respond to that one. It might be better to let the Commissioner make the next move. So he stayed silent, gazing through Zhu’s net curtains at the sun casting shortening shadows through the park.

‘And what is it you expect me to do, exactly?’ the Commissioner said finally. He stopped circling, and blew smoke in Li’s direction.

‘There would be one way of shortcutting the whole process, Commissioner.’

‘And that would be?’

‘If all six of us were to submit to a DNA test.’

He heard the Commissioner spluttering. ‘Are you insane, Li? Do you really think I’m going to go to the Deputy Minister, or the Procurator General, or the Director General of the Political Department, and ask them for samples of blood to eliminate them from a murder inquiry?’

Li said nothing, and the Commissioner began pacing agitatedly by the window, smoke trailing in his wake.

‘You’re really serious about this, aren’t you?’

‘Yes, Commissioner.’

Zhu stopped and glared at him. ‘Then you’re going to have to come up with some pretty damned good evidence, because I’m not going to act on this until you have. It would be suicide, Li. For both of us. Do you understand that?’

‘Yes, Commissioner.’

Zhu exhaled deeply. ‘We are talking about people in extremely exalted positions here, Li. We’re talking about power, and politics, not police work.’ He stabbed his cigarette into an ashtray, and Li could see from his concentrated frown that he was thinking furiously. ‘I might take one or two informal soundings — over a few heads. Just to see how we should proceed.’ He glanced at his junior officer sharply. ‘But in the meantime, I don’t want you breathing a word of this to anyone else, do you understand? Carry on with your investigation into the Beijing Ripper, but for the moment keep your other suspicions to yourself.’