The Runner

I

The snow had begun falling again. In spite of it, crowds jammed the Dong’anmen night market, where dozens of stall holders under red and white striped canopies were frying, barbecuing, steaming, grilling. The smell of food rose with the steam and smoke to fill the night air. Chicken, beef, lamb, fish, noodles, dumplings, whole birds impaled on bamboo sticks, grubs skewered for the grill. It was the most popular eating street in Beijing, where thousands of workers nightly stopped off on their way home to savour Chinese cuisine’s very own version of fast food. Licensed chefs in white coats with red lapels and tall white hats, kept themselves warm over sparking braziers and fiery woks, while hungry customers flitted from stall to stall in search of something special to warm their route home.

Margaret had to cycle hard to keep up with Dai Lili’s brother as he pedalled east, head down, along Dong’anmen, the feeding frenzy to their right fenced off behind red bins and white railings. There was very little traffic, and no one paid any attention to two figures cycling past, hunched against the cold and the snow in heavy coats and winter hats. Her legs were numb with the cold, even through her jeans.

As the lights and the sounds and smells of the night market receded, Margaret saw, looming in the dark ahead, the towering two-tiered Donghua Gate, the east entrance to the Forbidden City. They crossed the junction with Nanchizi Street, a corner grocer store blazing its lights out on to the snow-covered road. At this time, the traffic was usually jammed in all directions, but sense had prevailed and very few motorists had ventured out on untreated streets under inches of snow. The occasional cyclist crossed the junction, heading north or south. Dai Lili’s brother led them east into the dark pool of Donghuamen Street, in the shadow of the Donghua Gate. Normally the gate would be floodlit. But since the palace had closed for restoration work, the east and west gates had been shrouded nightly in darkness. The handful of shops on the north side had closed up early. No one in their right mind was venturing out in this weather unless they absolutely had to. The snow was falling so thickly now it almost obliterated the streetlights.

To Margaret’s surprise, Lili’s brother dismounted under the high red walls of the Donghua Gate. ‘You leave bike here,’ he said. And they leaned their bikes against the wall and she followed him into the shadowed arch of the great central doorway. The gold studded maroon doors were twenty feet high. Lili’s brother leaned against the right-hand door and pushed hard. With a creak deadened by falling snow, it opened just enough to let them slip through. The boy quickly glanced around before he ushered Margaret in and heaved the door closed behind them. They were in a long, cream-painted tunnel that led under the gate and out into a winter garden, stark trees traced in snow. They could see buildings ahead, cast into shadow by the reflected light of the city beyond the walls. Within its walls the Forbidden City lay brooding silently in the dark, six hundred years of history witness to the virgin footsteps Margaret and Lili’s brother made in the snow as they followed a path east, through another gate, and out into the huge cobbled square where once prisoners of war were paraded before the emperor who watched from his commanding position high up on the Meridian Gate. The Golden Water River, which curled through the square, was frozen, its ice covered by a flawless layer of snow. The marble pillars of the five bridges which spanned it stood up like dozens of frozen sentinels guarding this deserted place where the last emperor had once lived in final, splendid isolation, learning about life outside from his Scottish tutor, Reginald Johnston.

Margaret was breathless already. She grabbed the boy’s arm to stop him. ‘What in God’s name are we doing here?’ she demanded.

‘I work for…’ he searched for the words, ‘…building firm. We do renovation work, Forbidden City. But work no possible with snow.’ He struggled again with the language. ‘I hide Lili here. No one come. You follow with me.’ And he set off across the vast open space of this ancient square towards the twin-roofed Taihe Hall. Margaret breathed a sigh of despair and set off after him, leaving shadowed tracks in luminous snow.

Slippery steps took them up to the ancient gathering place. Through an open gate, between stout crimson pillars, Margaret could see the next in a series of halls standing up on its marble terrace at the far side of another square, flanked by what had once been the gardens and homes of imperial courtiers. By the time they reached it, Margaret was exhausted, and alarmed by cramps in her stomach. She stopped, gasping for air, and supported herself on a rail surrounding a huge copper pot more than a meter in diameter. ‘Stop,’ she called, and Dai Lili’s brother hurried back to see what was wrong. ‘For God’s sake,’ she said. ‘I’m pregnant. I can’t keep up with you.’

The boy appeared embarrassed. ‘You take rest. Not far now.’

Suddenly, and quite unexpectedly, a tear in the clouds released a flood of silver light from a full moon, and the Forbidden City lit up all around them, eerie in its deserted silence, a bizarre, secret and empty place at the heart of one of the world’s most populous capitals. The falling snow was swept away on an equally sudden breath of wind, leaving the air clear and still for just a moment before it resumed its steady descent. Their footprints in the square below were an alarming betrayal of their passing there. An engraved notice on a stand beside the copper pot where Margaret leaned revealed that there were three hundred and eight of them in the palace grounds. They had been used to hold water in case of fire. During the winter, fires had been lit under them to keep the water from freezing. No doubt increasing the risk of fire, was the absurd thought that flitted through Margaret’s mind.

She looked ahead, through the next gate, and saw yet another hall, on yet another terrace, and regretted her decision to go with the boy. But she had come too far to turn back now.

‘Okay,’ she said. ‘Let’s go. But not so fast.’

The boy nodded, and they set off again, at a more sedate pace. From the terrace of the Qianqing Palace, Margaret could see beyond the walls of the Forbidden City to the lights of Beijing. People were going about their normal lives out there. People in shops and homes and restaurants, people in cars and buses and on bikes. Normal people who saw only the high grey walls of the Forbidden City as they passed and had no idea that there were people in there. People in hiding, people in distress. People in danger.

A sign with an arrow pointed beyond a tall bronze bird and a giant tortoise to the Hall of Ceramics, and Lili’s brother took Margaret’s arm as they carefully negotiated the steps down into an ancient alleyway, and through a gate into a courtyard. They passed the red shuttered windows of a tourist shop advertising souvenirs, and the carving of names on chopsticks. Ceramic roofs dipped and soared above the high walls of narrow streets, rows of pillars cast shadows in covered galleries.

Chu Xiu, the Palace of Gathering Excellence, was built around a quiet courtyard with tall conifers in each corner casting shadows in the moonlight across the snow-covered pavings. Margaret’s legs were turning to jelly as she dragged herself into the enclosure. She had suffered several cramps now, and her apprehension was starting to turn to fear. ‘I can’t go any further,’ she gasped.

‘Lili here,’ her brother said. ‘No go any further.’ And he took her gently by the arm and guided her across the courtyard, past statues of dragons and peacocks, and up steps to the terrace of the long, low pavilion where the concubine and Empress Dowager Cixi had once lived, and given birth to an emperor.

He whispered loudly in the darkness, and after a moment, Margaret heard a whispered response from inside the pavilion. There were several more exchanges before the door creaked open a crack, and Margaret saw Lili’s frightened face caught in the moonlight, her birthmark like a shadow across her left cheek. She motioned quickly for Margaret to come in. ‘I wait out here,’ her brother said. And Margaret brushed past him, still out of breath, and squeezed into the ancient imperial dwelling.

Inside, pillars and painted beams, ceramic tiles, an ornamental throne, were brushed in shadow. The only light came from a tiny oil lamp which cast flickering illumination upon a very small circle of Lili’s things. A sleeping bag, a pillow, a sports hold all spilling clothes from its gaping top. There were some books, a cardboard box with cans of fruit and empty noodle cartons, a canvas chair, and a small paraffin heater which made no impression on the bone-jarring cold of this utterly inhospitable place.

Margaret took Lili’s hands in hers. They were colder than the corpses that passed through her autopsy room. Margaret said, ‘You’ve been living here?’

Lili nodded. ‘Hiding.’

‘In God’s name why? What from?’

‘They kill me if they find me,’ she babbled. ‘I know when I hear about Sui that I am next. I’ve been so scared for weeks. Everyone dying. And they did it to me, too. I know I am going to die.’ Sobs were breaking her voice into almost indecipherable pieces.

‘Woah,’ Margaret said. ‘Slow down. If I’m going to understand, you must start at the beginning.’ She steered her towards the seat and drew the paraffin heater close, and then draped the sleeping bag around the girl’s shoulders to try to stop her shivering.

‘I want to tell you before,’ she said. ‘But it too dangerous.’

Their voices seemed tiny, lost in the rafters of this dark place, whispering among the ghosts of history, the imperial concubines who had once known it as home.

‘From the beginning,’ Margaret encouraged her gently.

Lili took a deep, trembling breath. ‘They came the first time maybe six, seven months ago.’

‘Who are “they”?’

‘I don’t know. Men. Men in suits, men with cars and money. They take me to fancy restaurant and say they can make me big winner. And I make big money.’ She looked at Margaret, with a pleading in her eyes for understanding. ‘But I no wanna make big money. Only be good as my sister.’ And her eyes dipped towards the floor. ‘But, she sick. Can’t run no more. Medical costs ve-err expensive.’ She looked at Margaret, appealing her innocence. ‘I no greedy girl, lady I only say yes for my sister. So I can pay for her. Everything.’

Margaret crouched down beside her and squeezed her arm. ‘I believe you, Lili. I’m on your side.’

‘I say no drug. They say no drug. Minor — physical — adjustment. That is what they say.’ She had trouble saying it herself in English. ‘Minor — physical — adjustment. That is all.’ She clutched Margaret’s hand. ‘They tell me it is safe. There are others. And they tell me some names. I know them, because they are big names. All winning. They tell me I can be big name, too. I am good, but I can be better.’

‘Who were the other names?’

‘Xing Da. He big hero of me. And Sui Mingshan. They say there are others, but they no tell me. But I know in time. Because from little winners they are all become big winners. Again, and again. So I know, or I can guess.’

‘When you agreed to these…minor physical adjustments, what happened then?’

Lili shook her head miserably. ‘I don’t know, lady. They take some blood from me, and then a week later, maybe ten days, they come and take me to apartment downtown. They put me in a room and I sit and wait for lo-ong time. Then man come in. Foreign man.’

‘White hair? Beard?’

Lili looked at Margaret with astonishment, and then perhaps a little fear. ‘How you know this?’

‘He’s been hurting athletes all his life. He’s a bad man, Lili. We’re going to get him.’ Margaret paused. ‘What did he do to you?’

Lili shrugged. ‘He give me jab.’ She patted the top of her left arm. ‘That’s all.’

‘An injection?’

Lili nodded. ‘Then he say someone else explain, and he leave.’

‘Explain what?’

‘How it work.’ She corrected herself. ‘How I make it work.’

They heard a dull thud from out in the courtyard, and they both froze in the tiny circle of light that marked the boundary of their world. It sounded to Margaret like snow falling from a roof, but she couldn’t be sure. She leaned over and extinguished the oil lamp, and they were plunged into total darkness. Lili clutched her arm.

‘What is it?’ she whispered.

‘Shhh.’ Margaret had put her finger to her lips before she realised the futility of the gesture. Lili could not see her in the dark. They waited for several minutes, listening intently. But there was no further sound. Slowly, Margaret eased herself up into a standing position. One of her knees cracked and it sounded absurdly loud in the absolute still. The black which had smothered her eyes like a mask had turned to grey, and she realised that from somewhere there was a little moonlight seeping into the pavilion. Pillars and statues began to take the faintest shape in the deepest gloom, and she made her way carefully to the door. Lili followed, a tiny cold hand clutching at her coat in case she lost her. Margaret eased the door open a crack and peered out into the dazzling moonlight. Finally, the snow had stopped. The courtyard was empty. She saw the footprints she and Lili’s brother had left in the snow, tracking across the courtyard to the pavilion, and then stopping where they had stepped up on to the veranda. And then his footsteps again when Margaret had gone inside, and he had wandered back down into the square. They headed off towards the south-west corner, and into the deep shadow cast by the long, low building that bounded the south side.

‘Can you see Solo,’ Lili whispered.

‘Solo?’ Margaret glanced at her, confused.

‘My brother. Is his nickname.’

‘No, he’s not there. But I can see his footsteps heading across the courtyard. He must be sheltering in the gallery over there. I can’t see him, though.’

‘I’m scared,’ Lili whispered.

‘Me, too,’ Margaret said. ‘Let’s go find him.’ And as the words left her mouth, darkness fell across the courtyard as the sky closed up above them and shut out the moon. ‘Shit!’ she muttered. ‘Get the lamp, Lili.’

Lili scuttled across the flagstones to retrieve the oil lamp. ‘I light it?’

‘It would help if we could see where we were going. We’ll find your brother and go straight to the police.’

‘No police!’ Lili said, alarmed.

‘Section Chief Li will not let anyone harm you. You have my promise on that,’ Margaret whispered. But she saw the doubt in Lili’s face as the girl lit the lamp and they both blinked in its sudden brightness. And then a sharp cramp made Margaret gasp.

‘What’s wrong?’ Lili said urgently.

Margaret put a hand to her belly and found herself breathing rapidly. ‘Nothing.’ she said quickly. And she took the lamp. ‘Come on, let’s go.’ She forced herself to straighten up and pull the door wider so that they could slip out on to the terrace.

The lamp did not cast its light very far across the courtyard, and its brightness made everything else beyond its range seem even darker. Lili held Margaret’s arm with both hands, and they made their way across the snow, following the footprints which led towards the far side. Suddenly Margaret stopped, and fear touched her like cold hands on hot skin. Two more sets of footprints converged on Solo’s, coming from the left. They must have come up behind him, soundless as ghosts in the snow. There had been a scuffle. Margaret felt Lili’s grip tighten on her arm, and she swung around to her right, and by the light of the lamp they saw Solo lying in the snow, face up, a wide grin across his throat where it had been cut from ear to ear. He was covered in blood which had gouted in great loops across the snow, deep vivid red against the white, as his heart had pumped desperately to compensate for the sudden fall in pressure, only to hasten the blood loss from his severed jugular. Death had been swift and silent.

Lili screamed then, a shrill, feral scream that split the night air, and the shadows of men came at them out of the darkness. Margaret saw a face, pale and tense, caught for a fleeting moment in the light of the lamp as she swung it hard at the leading figure. It appeared to explode against him, oil igniting as it splashed over him through broken glass. In a matter of seconds his whole upper body was alight, his hair, his face. He howled in agony, spiralling away across the courtyard.

By the light of the flames engulfing him, Margaret saw two other men, frozen for a moment in horror as they saw their friend on fire. All thoughts of the women vanished as they dived towards him then, knocking him over to roll him in the snow, desperately trying to extinguish the flames and stop his screams. Margaret grabbed Lili’s hand. ‘Run!’ she hissed, and the two women set off in fear and panic, sprinting across the flagstones in the long gallery and out into the snow of a narrow street that ran north and south. Margaret’s instinct was to head back for the Donghua gate where Solo had led her into the Forbidden City only half an hour before. She pulled on Lili’s arm and they turned south and ran, slithering down the street, alleyways leading off to their right at regular intervals into obscured courtyards. The sky to the south was orange, low clouds reflecting the floodlights in Tiananmen Square. The roofs of palaces and pavilions curled their dark shapes in silhouette against it.

Behind them, they heard the voices of men shouting, and Margaret knew she could never outrun them, even if Lili could. The cramps in her stomach were coming frequently, and were sharply painful. She put a protecting arm around the swelling of her child and feared the worst.

Lili was the stronger of them now, half pulling her up the steps towards the vast open space that lay before the Qianqing Gate. They ran across the terrace, hemmed in by shadowy figures which, as confusion cleared, Margaret realised were the marble pillars of the balustrade that marked its boundary. The voices of their pursuers sounded very close behind them.

Margaret stopped, almost doubled up in pain. ‘I can’t go on,’ she gasped. ‘I just can’t.’

‘We hide,’ Lili whispered urgently. ‘Quick.’ And she pulled Margaret into the shadow of the gate.

‘Where? There’s nowhere to hide.’

‘In pot,’ Lili said. And Margaret saw that a huge copper pot flanked each side of the entrance to the gate, the reservoirs once used to guard against fire. She allowed herself to be dragged towards the fence around the nearer of the pots, and with a great effort she clambered over it. Lili helped her up over the lip of the pot, enormous strength in such small hands, and she dropped down into its echoing darkness to crouch in the snow that was gathered in the bottom of it. She heard the patter of Lili’s feet as she scuttled across the terrace to the other side. And then silence. Except for her breathing, which was hard and fast and painful, and deafening in this confined space.

For a long time she heard nothing. The voices that had pursued them were no longer calling in the dark. And then she remembered their footprints, almost at the same time as a shadow loomed over the lip of the pot above her and grabbing hands reached in. She heard Lili scream from across the terrace.

II

Li rode up in the elevator to the eleventh floor. He was cold and miserable and frustrated. No one seemed to know where Fleischer was. It was possible he had already left the country. And the response to their appeal for information on Dai Lili had been poor. People were still afraid of the police in China, and did not want to get involved.

He had no idea whether or not his letter of resignation had made it on to the desk of Commissioner Hu Yisheng, but as yet there had been no response. Not that it mattered now, anyway. However the situation was concluded, its resolution would not be a happy one. All he wanted was to lie with Margaret, sharing their warmth and their child and whatever happiness they could muster. But he knew that, too, was impossible, with her mother a constant presence in her apartment, and his father a black hole in his.

He stepped out on to the landing and took a deep breath, preparing to put a face on things for Margaret’s mother. He had to stop himself from using his key, and knocked instead. After a moment, the door flew open and Li found himself confronted by Mrs. Campbell.

‘What kind of hour do you call this?’ she said sharply, and then realising that Li was alone, looked up and down the hallway in surprise. ‘Where is she?’

‘Margaret?’

‘Well, who else would I be talking about?’

‘She’s not here?’ Li asked, perplexed.

‘Would I be asking you if she was?’ Mrs. Campbell snapped.

Mei Yuan appeared behind her. ‘You’d better come in, Li Yan. We’ve been waiting for her for more than two hours.’

Mrs. Campbell reluctantly stepped aside to let Li into the apartment. He said, ‘She had an antenatal class tonight.’ He looked at his watch. ‘She should have been back ages ago.’

‘What have we just been telling you?’ Mrs. Campbell said impatiently.

Li pushed into the sitting room and snatched the phone and dialled the switchboard at Section One. When the operator answered he said, ‘It’s Section Chief Li. Give me Detective Sun’s home number.’ He scribbled it on a notepad, hung up and then dialled again. After a few moments a girl’s voice answered. ‘Wen?’ he said.

‘Who is this?’ Wen asked cautiously.

‘It’s Chief Li.’ He paused. ‘Wen, was Margaret at the antenatal class tonight?’

‘Margaret? No,’ Wen said. ‘I was there on my own.’

Li frowned. ‘On your own?’

‘Yes.’

‘Sun Xi was with you.’

‘No.’

Li was surprised. ‘But he asked me if he could have the time off to go with you today.’ To his dismay Wen began sobbing softly at the other end of the phone. ‘Wen? Are you alright?’ And when she didn’t answer, ‘What’s wrong?’

Her voice was quivering when she said, ‘I can’t talk about it. I don’t want to talk about it.’ And he heard her crying aloud in the moment before she hung up.

‘Well?’ Margaret’s mother had been watching him critically from the doorway.

‘She didn’t go to her antenatal class.’ He was alarmed and puzzled by Wen’s reaction, and more than a little afraid now for Margaret. ‘She didn’t leave a note or anything?’

‘Nothing,’ Mei Yuan said. ‘Just her wedding outfit spread out on the bed, as if she had laid it out ready to wear.’

Li pushed silently past the two women and up the hall to the bedroom. The sight of the qipao, the little silk slippers she had bought, and the brightly embroidered smock, all laid out on the bed with the red headscarf, tied a knot tightly in his stomach, and he felt panic rising in his chest, although he could not have said exactly why. ‘I’m going down to talk to the security guard on the gate,’ he said.

And as he hurried out on to the landing he heard Mrs. Campbell call after him in a shrill voice, ‘You’ve lost her, haven’t you? You’ve lost my daughter!’

The elevator took an eternity to reach the ground floor. Li ran out, down the steps, still limping, and scuffed his way through the snow to the small wooden hut that provided shelter for the grey-uniformed security guard. The guard was sitting inside, muffled up in his coat and hat, hunched over a small heater smoking a cigarette. He was startled by Li’s sudden arrival. He stood up immediately.

‘You know the American lady?’ Li said. ‘Lives on the eleventh floor.’

‘Sure,’ said the guard.

‘Did you see her go out tonight?’

‘Yeh. She went on her bike.’

‘On her bike?’ Li could barely believe it. ‘Are you sure it was her?’

‘Sure I’m sure. The two of them left together. Both on bikes.’

‘Two of them?’ Li shook his head in consternation. ‘What are you talking about?’

The guard was becoming uneasy. ‘It was the guy who went up to see her,’ he said. ‘He stopped here to check that this was the right block. I told him she was on the eleventh floor.’

‘Describe him,’ Li snapped.

The guard shrugged. ‘I don’t know. Young, early twenties maybe. Bit scruffy. Looked like a workman.’

‘You’re going to have to do better than that,’ Li said.

The guard made a face. ‘I don’t know…’ And then he remembered. ‘Oh, yeh. He had a tattoo. On the back of his hand. It was like the head of a snake or something.’

And Li knew straight away that it was Dai Lili’s brother. He remembered the sullen-faced boy at Lili’s family home, the snake tattoo that twisted around his arm, culminating with the head on the back of his hand. The cellphone on his belt rang. He had forgotten it was there. Wu had loaned him his so that he could be contacted at any time. He fumbled to answer it. ‘Wei?’

‘Chief?’ It was Qian. ‘We’ve got a murder at the Forbidden City. Deputy Tao’s on his way.’

‘So why are you telling me?’ Li was irritated by the interruption. He couldn’t be expected to attend every murder in the city. And right now, he was much more concerned about Margaret.

‘I thought you’d want to know, Chief. Apparently the whole place has been closed down for renovation work. The company have a night watchman on site. He found the east gate lying open about an hour ago, and half a dozen tracks or more coming in and out. He called security, and several armed officers went in with flashlights and followed the tracks in the snow. They found the body of a young man with his throat slit in a courtyard outside the Chu Xiu Palace on the north-west corner. The night watchman recognised him as one of the workers employed by the company.’

‘Why would I be interested in this?’ Li asked impatiently.

‘Because the dead kid is the brother of the missing athlete, Dai Lili.’

III

The Donghua Gate was choked with police and forensic vehicles, blue and orange lights strobing in the dark. Several dozen uniformed officers were standing around in groups, smoking and talking and keeping a growing crowd of curious onlookers at bay. The floodlights had been switched on, and so the red walls and russet roofs that towered above them stood out vividly against the night sky.

Li’s Jeep came roaring up Nanchizi Street, lights flashing, and slewed around the corner into Donghuamen. He leaned on his horn, and the crowd parted to let him through. He jumped out and nearly fell in his hurry to get to the gate. He felt a hand reach out to catch him. A voice. ‘Alright, Chief?’

He pushed past the officers standing around the open gate and stopped in his tracks. There, leaning against the wall, was Margaret’s bicycle, with its distinctive strip of pink ribbon tied to the basket on the handlebars. Another bicycle was lying in the snow just a few feet away. Tao and Wu emerged from inside the Forbidden City as he looked up. Tao was surprised to see him.

‘What are you doing here, Chief?’ he asked coolly.

Li found he could barely speak. He nodded towards the bike with the pink ribbon. ‘That’s Margaret’s bike,’ he said. ‘Doctor Campbell. She left her apartment about two hours ago with Dai Lili’s brother.’

Wu said, ‘Shit, Chief, are you sure?’

Li nodded.

‘Well, she’s not with him now,’ Tao said grimly. ‘There’s just the one body in there.’

‘Yeh, but lots of footprints,’ Wu said, chewing furiously on his gum.

‘You’d better take a look,’ Tao said, and his concern appeared genuine.

Li was so shaken he could not even respond. He nodded mutely, and the three men went back through the gate and into the Forbidden City. The lights had all been turned on, and the roofs and walkways, and vast open spaces glowed in the snow like a mediaeval winter scene from some classical Chinese painting.

Fluttering black and yellow tape had been strung between traffic cones to keep investigators from disturbing the tracks left in the snow by the players in whatever tragic drama had unfolded here. A drama whose final act had led to the murder of Dai Lili’s brother. Tao said, ‘Unfortunately, the night watchman and the security people who originally came in did not take any care over where they put their feet. You can see where their tracks cross the originals.’ Some of the older footprints had been partially covered by snowfall but were still clearly visible. ‘Lucky for us it stopped snowing,’ Tao added. Li was feeling anything but lucky.

In the courtyard of the Palace of Gathering Excellence, the body of Dai Lili’s brother still lay where Margaret and his sister had found it. But here, the snow had been savagely disturbed and was difficult to read. The pathologist’s photographer had rigged up lights and was making a meticulous photographic record of the scene. Pathologist Wang stood smoking in the far corner in hushed conversation with Chief Forensic Officer Fu Qiwei. Li and Tao and Wu followed the tape around the perimeter of the square. Wang looked up grimly and took a long pull at his cigarette. ‘More of the same, Chief,’ he said.

‘What do you mean?’ Li asked.

‘Multiple stab wounds. Just like the girl at Jingshan.’

Li glanced at Tao. ‘I thought he’d had his throat cut.’

‘Oh, sure,’ Wang said. ‘That’s what killed him.’ And he motioned for them to follow him around to where they could look at the body without disturbing the scene. ‘The throat was slit left to right. So the killer was almost certainly a right-hander. Severed the jugular and the windpipe. You can see how the blood spurted from the way it fell across the snow. He’d have been dead within two minutes.’

‘You said multiple stab wounds,’ Li said.

Wang nodded. ‘Somewhere between thirty and forty of them. If you look carefully, you can see where the knives have cut through his clothing. Of course, he was already dead by then, so there was no bleeding from the wounds.’

‘Knives?’ Li asked. ‘Plural?’

‘Both from the number of wounds, and the number of prints in the snow, I’d say there were several assailants. At least three.’ He glanced at Fu who nodded his silent accord.

‘Why would they stab him when he was already dead?’ Li said.

‘Death by a myriad of swords,’ Tao said quietly and Li looked at him. Tao glanced up. ‘Symbolic,’ he added. ‘Like leaving a calling card.’

Li turned to Fu Qiwei. ‘What do you think happened here, Fu?’

Fu shrugged. ‘It’s a matter of interpretation, Chief. Can’t guarantee I’m right, but I’ll have a go.’ And he took them around the courtyard, and through his interpretation of the events which had unfolded there. Tao and Wu had already been through it all, but tagged along anyway. ‘Looks like two people arrived here together first off. Partially covered tracks. One set of prints smaller than the other. Could be a woman. They went into the palace building there on the north side. At least, they stepped up into the shelter of the terrace.’

They followed him around and into the palace itself, now brightly illuminated. Fu pointed to the stuff lying around the floor. ‘Someone’s been living in here. For several days by the look of it. Empty tins, old noodle boxes. The clothes…’ he lifted up a pair or tracksuit bottoms with his white gloved hands, ‘…sport stuff. Unisex. But small size. Probably a woman.’ And he retrieved a long black hair as if to prove his point. ‘Oddly enough, we also found some of these.’ And he took out a plastic evidence bag and held it up to the light so that they could see several long, single, blond hairs. ‘So she had company. Maybe one of the two people who came calling tonight.’

Li’s stomach turned over, and he found Tao watching him closely.

‘The thing is,’ Fu said, ‘there’s a small heater, but no light.’ He paused. ‘But we found the remains of a smashed oil lamp on the other side of the square, near the body. For what it’s worth, here’s what I think might have happened.’ And he led them back out on to the steps. ‘You can see a single set of footprints heading off across the courtyard here. One of the older ones, partially covered. So I figure one of them went inside, the blond, and the other one, the victim, crossed the square where he was jumped by at least three attackers. They cut his throat, and when he was dead, they kneeled around him in the snow and stabbed him repeatedly in the chest and legs. The two inside heard something. They came out with the oil lamp and found the kid lying dead in the snow. Then they got attacked, too. Now, here’s the interesting thing…’ They followed him on the safe side of the tape across the square. ‘There’s been a hell of a ruckus here. Broken glass. Melted snow. We found shreds of burned clothing. And this.’ He glanced at Tao and Wu. ‘I only found it a few minutes ago, after you’d gone.’ He shone his flashlight on to a strange, blackened indentation in the snow. ‘Damned if it doesn’t look like a face print to me.’ And Li saw, then, the shape of an eye, a mouth, a nose. Part of a cheek, the curve of a forehead. ‘I figure somebody got that lit oil lamp full in the face and got pretty badly burned. We’ve recovered particles that I’m pretty sure are going to turn out to be burned flesh and singed hair.’

‘Fuck me,’ Wu said in awe, then glanced immediately at Tao, wondering if he would be fined another ten yuan for the swear box. But Tao hadn’t heard him.

‘Then there was a chase,’ Fu said. They followed him along the gallery and out into the narrow street at the end of which a mêlée of feet had emerged to leave their prints in the snow. ‘You can see these prints are quite different from the ones that arrived. Only half-prints, mainly left by the ball of the foot. They were running. The three bigger sets of feet after the two smaller ones, I’d say.’

With a heart like lead, Li followed the forensics man along the street, past palaces and pavilions, alleyways and galleries, illuminated now by floodlights, and up steps on to the wide concourse in front of the Qianqing Gate. Tao and Wu walked silently in their wake.

‘I guess that the two on the run were probably the women, from the size of their prints. They must have had a bit of a head start, because you can clearly see they went first to one of these copper pots, with one set of tracks leading to the other. They must have hidden inside them.’

Li closed his eyes, conjuring a dreadful image of Margaret crouched inside one of these pots in fear and panic. It was almost more than he could bear.

Fu said, ‘With all these lights, we can see their tracks quite clearly. Although it was dark then, I figure their pursuers must have been able to see them, too. The pots were no hiding place at all. You can pick out the other prints that followed them, straight to the pots, and then the scuffles around them where they must have dragged the women out. There’s some blood in the snow here.’

And they looked at a smear of vivid red in the frozen white. Li looked away quickly. What were the chances that he was looking at Margaret’s blood in the snow? He could not deal with the thought, and tried to keep his mind focused on the facts. Facts which gave him, at least, a little hope. There was only one body, after all. ‘What happened then?’ he asked, nearly in a whisper.

‘They dragged them off,’ Fu said. No one had told him that the blonde woman was almost certainly Li’s lover. ‘Back out to the Donghua Gate. Probably bundled them into a vehicle of some kind, then away.’

Away to where? And why? Li tried hard to think, but his concentration was shot. He felt a hand on his arm, and turned to find Tao looking at him, concerned. Li wondered if it was really sympathy he saw in those dark eyes magnified behind thick lenses. ‘You okay, Chief?’ he asked. Li nodded. ‘We’ll find her.’ And there was an unexpected steel and determination in his voice.

They left Fu and walked back to the Donghua Gate in silence, Li trying to piece together in his mind what must have happened. Dai Lili’s brother had come to Margaret’s apartment and convinced her to go with him to see his sister. Anger flared briefly in his chest. Why in the name of heaven did she go?

The boy must have been hiding his sister in the Forbidden City, but it was hardly a secret that Dai Lili had wanted to talk to Margaret. He had, himself, told Supervising Coach Cai as much. Could Cai be involved as he had first suspected? Li cursed himself now for his indiscretion. They must have been watching Margaret, or the boy. Or both. Whichever, they had followed them to the Forbidden City. There, they had killed the brother and snatched the two women. Why had they not just killed the women as well? Why did they want them alive? Information, perhaps? To know how much was known and by whom? If only they realised how little Li really knew or understood any of it. But until they did, maybe there was still the faintest chance of finding Margaret before they killed her. As they surely would.

They emerged into the floodlights in Donghuamen. Outside the gate the crowd of spectators had swelled. There were more than a hundred of them now, straining to catch a glimpse of whatever might be going on, ignoring the barking of the uniformed officers trying to keep them behind the tape.

Li turned to Wu. ‘I want arrest warrants for Fleischer, and Fan Zhilong, the CEO of the OneChina Recreation Club. And also for Coaching Supervisor Cai Xin. Soon as we can get them, I want them held at Section One for questioning. Nobody gets to talk to them before me. Understood?’

‘You got it, Chief.’ Wu shoved a fresh stick of gum in his mouth and hurried off.

Tao walked with Li to his Jeep. He took out a cigarette and offered him one. Li took it without thinking, and Tao lit them both. They stood for nearly a minute, smoking in silence. ‘I’m sorry,’ Tao said eventually.

‘About what?’

‘About everything.’

A car pulled in behind Li’s Jeep, and the tall, bespectacled figure of Professor Yang stepped out, wrapped tightly in his warm winter coat. ‘Section Chief,’ he called, and as Li and Tao turned, he hurried carefully through the snow towards them. ‘I’ve been trying to reach Margaret for hours. They told me at Section One that you were here.’ He glanced around. ‘I thought she might be, also.’ Fastidiously, he waggled each foot to flick off the accumulated snow from the shiny black leather of his polished shoes.

Li shook his head.

‘Well, then, I should pass the information on to you.’

‘I don’t really have time just now, Professor.’

‘I think it could be important, Section Chief. I know Margaret thought it was.’

It was enough to catch Li’s attention. ‘What?’

The Professor removed his rimless glasses to polish them with a clean handkerchief as he spoke. ‘Margaret asked me this morning if I knew anyone who could perform a genetic analysis on a sample of blood that she had taken from the swimmer she autopsied.’

‘Sui Mingshan?’

‘That’s him. Well, I took her up to see my friend at Beida. Professor Xu. He’s head of the College of Biogenic Science there. Margaret wanted him to analyse the sample to see if he could find any evidence of genetic disorder.’ He shrugged and placed his glasses carefully back on the bridge of his nose, smoothing back the hair behind his ears. ‘She didn’t really confide in me. In either of us. But I know she was hoping for more than that.’

‘And what did Professor Xu find?’ Li asked.

‘Oh, he did indeed find much more than that,’ Yang said. ‘But not a genetic disorder. Genetically modified HERV.’ He waited for Li to be impressed.

But Li only scowled. ‘HERV? What the hell’s that?’

Yang’s face fell as he realised he was going to have to explain. ‘Ah,’ he said. ‘It’s not a particularly easy concept for the layman.’

‘Try me,’ Li said.

Yang cleared his throat. ‘HERV. It’s an acronym, I suppose. From the English. Human endogenous retrovirus.’

‘Retrovirus.’ Li remembered Margaret talking about retroviruses the previous night. ‘Margaret told me something about that. It’s in our DNA or something.’

‘So you’re not a complete beginner,’ Yang said.

‘Maybe not,’ Li said. ‘But I don’t have much time. Get on with it, Professor.’

Yang glanced at Tao. ‘Endogenous,’ he said. ‘Means it’s something produced from within us. These HERV, they’re in all of us. The viral remnants of primeval diseases that afflicted the species during the earliest stages of evolution. No longer harmful to us, but there nonetheless, subsumed into our germline DNA and passed on from father to son, mother to daughter. An integral part of the human genome.’ He looked around him. ‘A bit like footprints frozen in the winter snow. But footprints which cross the borderland between genes and infection. Because, really, they are not genes, they are retroviruses, or bits of retroviruses, to be found in every human cell.’ His face was a study of concentration in trying to distil the complexities into bite-sized chunks that his audience might understand. ‘The thing is, although they are dormant, some scientists believe that occasionally they can be activated…’

‘By a virus,’ Li said, remembering Margaret’s spoken thoughts.

Yang smiled. ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘Viruses could do it. There could be other factors. But the point is, that once activated, it is possible that they could be responsible for some very dangerous human diseases.’

Li began to see a glimmer of light. ‘Like thickening of the microvasculature of the heart?’

‘Yes, yes, I suppose so,’ Yang said, and began himself to see the first glimmers of light.

Li said, ‘And you’re saying someone has…genetically modified these HERV?’

‘It appears that some of them had been removed from our swimmer, modified in some way, and then put back.’

‘Why?’

Yang shrugged his shoulders. ‘I have absolutely no clue, Section Chief. And neither has Professor Xu.’ He raised his eyebrows. ‘But I have an idea that Margaret might.’

Li said grimly, ‘If I knew where she was I’d ask her.’

Yang frowned, but he had no chance to ask.

‘Thank you,’ Li said, and he tapped Tao’s arm and nodded towards the Jeep. ‘Get in.’

Tao looked surprised. ‘Where are we going?’

‘Detective Sun’s apartment.’

IV

The van lurched and bounced over a frozen, rutted track. From the rear of it, where Margaret and Lili had been tied hand and foot and forced to sit with their backs to the door, Margaret could see headlights raking a grim, winter landscape. The skeletons of cold, black trees drifted in and out of vision. Big, soft snowflakes slapped the windshield before being scraped aside and smeared across the glass by inefficient wipers.

She was racked by pain now, and knew she was in serious trouble. She felt blood, hot and wet, between her legs, and every bone-jarring pitch of the van provoked a fresh fork of cramp in her belly. Lili was absolutely silent, but Margaret could feel her fear.

The only sound which had broken the monotonous drone of the engine during their journey was the whimpering of the man Margaret had set on fire. She could smell his burned flesh and singed hair. He lay curled up in the back, almost within touching distance, wrapped in a blanket. Margaret suspected it was fear more than pain which made him cry. His burns were severe enough to have destroyed the nerve-endings. It was possible he felt no pain at all. But he must know he would be disfigured for life.

When they had dragged her from the copper pot, they pushed her to the ground and kicked her until she thought they were going to kill her there and then. She had curled into the foetal position to try to protect her baby. They did not care that she was pregnant. Eventually they had dragged the two women to the Donghua Gate and bundled them into the back of the waiting van. Margaret thought they must have been on the road for more than an hour and a half since then.

She saw brick buildings and slate roofs now, walls and gates, the occasional light in a window. Stacks of bricks at the roadside. Pipes projected from the sides of houses, issuing smoke into the night sky. Margaret could smell the woodsmoke. They were going through a village of some kind. Margaret had no sense of the direction they had taken when they left the capital. They could be anywhere. But wherever it was, she knew, there was no chance that anyone was ever going to find them there. After a few minutes, they left the village behind, and entered a dense copse of trees before emerging again into open country. A solitary light shone in the blackness, and gradually it grew brighter as they got closer, before the van finally juddered to a halt outside the gate of a walled cottage. The double green gates stood open, and the light they had seen was an outside lamp above the door of what appeared to be an L-shaped bungalow.

The driver and his passenger opened the van doors and jumped down. After a moment the back doors were thrown open, and Margaret and Lili nearly fell out into the snow. Rough hands grabbed them and pulled them out into the freezing night. Margaret was bruised and aching, and the joints in her legs had seized up, buckling under her. She could barely stand. The two men crouched in the snow to untie their feet, and they were led through the gate, along a winding path to the door of the cottage. Margaret could see that the red brick dwelling had been renovated some time recently. The windows were a freshly painted green, the garden trimmed and manicured beneath a layer of snow. Gourds hung drying from the eaves and the orange of frozen persimmons lined the window ledges.

The door was unlocked and the two women were pushed through it into a small sitting room. One of the men flicked a switch, and a harsh yellow light threw the room into sharp relief. Whitewashed walls, rugs strewn across the tiled floor, a couple of old couches, a writing bureau, a round dining table under one of the windows looking out on to the garden. Two wooden chairs with woven straw seats were brought in from another room, and Margaret and Lily were forced to sit in them, side by side. Their feet were tied again, and their hands untied and then re-tied to the backs of the chairs.

The men who had brought them in had an urgent conversation in low voices, and one of them went out to the garden to make a call on his cellphone. After a few minutes, he returned and waved his friend to follow him. The second man switched off the light as he left. Margaret and Lili heard the engine of the van coughing into life, and the whine of the gears as it reversed and slithered through a three-point turn before accelerating off into the night, its headlights dying into blackness.

It was some minutes before Margaret found the ability to speak. ‘What did they say?’ she asked, and was surprised at how feeble her voice sounded in the dark.

‘They take their friend for medical treatment. The one who is burned. The driver talk to someone on the phone who say they will be here soon.’ Lili’s voice sounded very small, too.

The ropes were burning into Margaret’s wrists and ankles, and she knew there was no chance of freeing them. They sat, then, in silence for what seemed like hours, but may have been no more than fifteen or twenty minutes. And then Lili began sobbing, softly, uncontrollably. She knew they were going to die. As Margaret did. Margaret closed her eyes and felt her own tears burn hot tracks down her cheeks. But they were more for her lost child than for herself.

After, perhaps, another ten minutes, they saw lights catch the far wall of the cottage through the side windows, and they heard the distant purr of a motor. As it grew closer, so Margaret’s fear increased. She tried hard to free her hands, but only succeeded in burning the skin down to raw flesh.

The vehicle drew up outside the gate. The headlights went out, and then they heard three doors bang shut. Footsteps crunched in the snow, and Margaret turned her head towards the door as it opened. The overhead light, when it came on, nearly blinded her, and a man she recognised as Doctor Hans Fleischer walked in. He wore a camel-hair coat with a silk scarf and leather gloves, and his suntan made him seem incongruous here, implausibly prosperous. He beamed at the two women, and then focused his gaze on Margaret. ‘Doctor Campbell, I presume,’ he said. ‘Welcome to my humble abode.’ His English was almost accentless.

Another man came in behind him. Chinese, much younger, immaculately dressed.

‘I don’t believe you know Mr. Fan, my generous benefactor,’ Fleischer said. ‘But he knows all about you.’

The CEO of the Beijing OneChina Recreation Club smiled, dimpling his cheeks. But he appeared tense, and he did not speak.

Margaret became aware that a third man had entered. She craned her neck to look at him, but he had his back to them as he shut the door behind him. Then he turned, and for a moment hope burned briefly in Margaret’s heart. It was Detective Sun. And then just as quickly the flame died. He could not even meet her eye. And she knew that he was one of the bad guys, too.