Chinese Whispers

II

They came up a long, steeply sloping ramp from the platforms below. Steam and smoke filled the air, along with the hissing of old steam-driven boilers and the voices of porters shouting up and down the quays, pushing metal-wheeled trolleys piled with great stacks of mail in canvas sacks.

The stream of passengers, newly alighted from the train, moved slowly, as if in a trance, subdued and still half asleep, about to be rudely awakened by the icy blasts that awaited them above. Li pushed through the bodies ahead of him, heedless of the curses that followed in his wake. When he got no reply from Lyang’s apartment, he had telephoned and got Wu out of his bed for the second night running.

Uniformed ticket collectors stood at the top of the ramp taking tickets from passengers as they filed out through the gates. Li thrust his ticket at the nearest of them and pushed out into the arrivals hall. Wu was waiting by the door, chewing mechanically, scanning the faces as they appeared at the top of the ramp. He raised an arm to catch Li’s eye and called out to him. Li hurried over. Wu looked terrible. ‘We’ve got cars on the way,’ he said. ‘I’ve left the motor running in mine.’

Li followed him down the steps into the bitter cold of the night, new arrivals streaming out behind them in search of buses and taxis. Wu’s Santana was idling in the middle of the concourse, a blue light flashing on the roof.

He called back over his shoulder. ‘You’d better be right about all this, Chief. Or I am in the deepest shit.’

For once in his life, Li hoped earnestly that he was entirely wrong.

* * *

It was with a sickening sense of anticipation that Margaret pushed open the door to the children’s room. The curtains had been drawn and it was darker in here. But there was still enough light for Margaret to see that the bed that Xinxin had been sharing with baby Ling was empty. And so was the cot.

She spun around and looked down the length of the hallway towards the Harts’ study at the far end. The door was pulled to. She had been wrong about the trail of blood leading into the master bedroom. It led from it, all the way to the study door. She started walking slowly towards it, the kitchen knife clutched tightly in her hand. Somehow her fear had gone, to be replaced by a slow burning determination that drove her on, like an automaton, towards the study. He was in there. She knew he was. And so was Li Jon. And Xinxin. With that monster. Chinese wall-hangings that Bill and Lyang had chosen together, stirred slightly in the breeze of her passing, their wooden weights clunking gently against the wall. She hesitated for only a second outside the door before pushing it open.

Her eyes fell immediately on two swaddled bundles propped among the cushions on the settee. No trace of blood, just the gentle sound of breathing. The deep, slow breath of sleep. The sound of life. Miraculously Ling and Li Jon were oblivious to the hell unfolding around them. Unharmed. In her relief, Margaret nearly dropped her knife. She took a step into the room, and a sound off to her right made her turn towards the window. A muffled cry escaped from somewhere behind the hand clamped firmly across Xinxin’s mouth. Margaret froze in horror.

Deputy Commissioner Cao Xu had wheeled one of the desk chairs up to the window and was sitting on it, his back to the city below him. Xinxin, still in her little pink nightie, was held firmly between his legs, one hand nearly covering her face, the other holding the edge of a long-bladed knife hard against her throat. Margaret could see the sheer terror in her eyes.

It was something else altogether that she saw in Cao’s eyes. There was light in them, but a light like darkness, like smouldering coals. Something not quite human. As a little girl, Margaret had heard Biblical tales of the Angel of Death. If such a thing existed, then she was staring it in the eye right now. He was smothered in sticky, dark blood. It was all over his hands and face, as if he had gorged himself on poor Lyang. Indulged himself in a banquet of slaughter.

‘Let her go!’ Margaret said. Her only fear now was for Xinxin.

Cao smiled. He moved his head from left to right and Margaret heard bones cracking in his neck. ‘How is poor old Mistah Li?’

‘Let her go,’ Margaret said again, and she took a step towards him. Xinxin squealed as the blade broke the skin on her neck, and Margaret stopped dead in her tracks.

‘Did you recognise her?’ Cao asked, relaxing again. Margaret frowned her confusion. ‘My Mary Jane,’ he added. And she knew that he was talking about Lyang. Except that somewhere in his twisted mind he saw her now only as Mary Jane Kelly. She nodded, and he smiled his pleasure. ‘I am good,’ he said. ‘As good as him.’

‘Let her go.’ Margaret nearly shouted.

‘Of course,’ he said. ‘We make exchange. Little girl for you. You can be my sixth. My Alice. I don’t wanna hurt the little girl. She still have her innocence. Only when she lose innocence do I take life.’

Margaret realised that the best she could hope for was to buy herself some time to try to figure out what to do. She had to get him talking, keep him talking. ‘It’s all over,’ she said. ‘Li Yan is on his way. We know who you are.’

He smiled. ‘No. Perhaps you know who I am not. But you do not know who I am.’

‘Who are you then?’

‘I am the man who is going to kill you. And your precious Li Yan cannot stop me. He is a fool. He never would catch me, except for the stupid MERMER test. And that idiot Professor Pan. So sure she could seduce us all.’

‘How did you do it?’ Margaret asked.

‘Do what?’

‘Break into the academy. Steal all those computers. Break into her house.’

He shook his head, smiling smugly. ‘No, no, no. I do not do those things. I am policeman for thirty year. So maybe I know a few people. So maybe they owe me some favour. You know. Guanxi. No question ask.’ He pressed the blade harder into Xinxin’s throat, and Margaret saw a trickle of blood appear. Xinxin stood rigid and still, like a rabbit caught in the headlamps of a car. ‘It feels so nice,’ Cao said. ‘That fine edge of steel, when it cut through soft flesh.’

Margaret felt her panic returning. But she forced herself to speak with a cold calm that she did not feel. ‘If you harm a hair on that child’s head, I’ll kill you.’ And she tightened her grip on her knife.

‘You will not have to.’ The voice came from behind Margaret and to her right, so startling her that she nearly cried out. She turned to see the slight figure of an older woman standing in the doorway. She seemed bizarrely familiar, but Margaret could not place her. She had shortcut silver hair and wore a heavy black jacket buttoned up above grey cotton trousers gathered at the heel over flat, black shoes. Everything about her seemed small and sinewy. Her face, although remarkably unlined, was stretched too tightly over the skull beneath it.

‘Tie Ning!’

The sound of Cao’s voice made Margaret turn her head towards him again, and the shock in his face brought to her a realisation of who this woman was. His wife. The quiet lady who had looked so uncomfortable in her black evening dress at Li’s award ceremony. Her English was better than her husband’s and she spoke it for Margaret’s benefit rather than his.

‘I have been sitting in my car in Jinsong Lu ever since he came in. Trying to find the courage to follow him. Afraid of what I would find if I did. If only I had not been afraid for so many years, perhaps all those young women would still be alive.’

‘You followed me here?’ Cao said in Chinese. He sounded incredulous.

‘You think I don’t know?’ she said, still in English. ‘Ever since I covered up for you all those years ago, when you raped and murdered that poor girl, I have known I made a mistake. I wanted to believe you when you said it was an accident. I was infatuated. I would have done anything.’ She looked at Margaret. ‘She was a Red Guard, just like us. She was my friend. But I loved him. They would have shot him. So we ran. We hid in Henan Province, in the country. And I went to Taiyuan City to burn down the orphanage there, to steal him the identity of a boy who died.’ She took a deep breath, conjuring up some distant memory. ‘I knew him, Cao Xu. A gentle boy. We grew up there together.’ She turned her gaze back on her husband. ‘I pushed you, I know I pushed you. To more success. To greater power. And all the time I wanted to believe. That it had really been an accident. That it had happened only one time. That with time and distance you would become like the boy whose name you took.’ She sighed. ‘But each time a girl was murdered and they could not find her killer I wondered. I wondered if there was something inside you that I could never reach, never touch. Something dark and hidden, beyond my understanding. Beyond yours.’

‘They … they know,’ Cao almost whispered. ‘They know everything.’

She ignored him and took a step closer. ‘I never knew for sure until I found blood on your shirt when that first girl was murdered. But, even then, it wasn’t until the third killing that I went into your study and found the book, and the cuttings taken from the personal ads. Prostitutes advertising their services. And then I knew.’ Margaret saw her lower lip tremble. ‘And still I did nothing.’ She turned to Margaret, tears running slowly down the parchment skin of her cheeks. ‘I am so ashamed. When I read the story in the paper of those terrible murders … I knew I was responsible. And that it had to stop.’

Cao listened to her with a mouth half opened in disbelief And there was fear in his eyes. Margaret was certain that was what it was. He was afraid of her. She had always been stronger than him, driven him onwards and upwards, forced the agenda. But, in the end, his weakness had been greater than her strength.

Somewhere from the streets below, they heard the sound of police sirens rising into the night, the squealing of tyres.

‘Let her go,’ Tie Ning said suddenly, and Cao flinched. ‘Let. Her. Go!’

He would not meet her eye, but in sheepish acquiescence took his hand from Xinxin’s mouth and lowered the knife meekly from her neck. Xinxin emitted a long, mournful wail as she ran across the room into Margaret’s arms. Margaret held her tightly for just a few moments then forced her to break her grip. ‘Go!’ she said to her. ‘Get out of here. Now!’

Xinxin was sobbing hysterically. ‘You come, too, Magret. You come, too.’

Margaret took her roughly by the shoulders and shook her. ‘Go!’ she almost screamed at her. ‘Take the elevator and don’t stop until you are out of the building.’ Margaret pushed her towards the door and heard her feet slapping on the wooden floor as she ran wailing along the hallway and down the stairs. Margaret would not leave without the babies.

Tie Ning turned to her. ‘You go, too.’

Margaret shook her head. ‘We’ll wait here together until the police arrive.’

Tie Ning shook her head sadly. ‘There will be no police.’ She snatched the knife from Margaret’s hand and in five short strides had crossed the study to the window. Cao sat frozen in fear and disbelief as she swung it viciously across her body from left to right and his neck opened up in a wide, black smile. Blood spurted from severed arteries and gurgled in his open windpipe. He dropped his knife and his hands went to his neck, scrabbling at the wound as if somehow they could keep the blood in.

Tie Ning stood above him watching, as the life ebbed out of him in moments. Fear of her, fear of death, fear of whatever lay beyond, was clear in his eyes. He slithered from the chair on to the floor, and it ran away on its castors to bump into what had once been Lyang’s desk. His blood pooled around him on the polished floor.

She turned, her back to the window, silhouetted against floor to ceiling glass giving on to the magnificent panorama of Beijing beyond. And still more sirens sounded in the night. Margaret saw blood running along the blade of the knife as Tie Ning raised it from her side. ‘I am sorry,’ she said.