The Runner

I

An armed PLA guard, fur collar turned up on a long green coat, stood chittering in the sentry box at the back entrance to the compound of the Ministry of State and Public Security. Snow was gathering on his red epaulettes, on the shiny black peak of his cap, and on his boots. He glanced impassively at Li and Tao as Li turned his Jeep through the gate and then took a right along the front of the apartment blocks allocated to junior public security officers and their families. Lights from windows fell out in yellow slabs across the snow.

Li pulled in outside the third block along, and he and Tao got out and took the elevator to the seventh floor. From the window on the landing Li could see the lights from his apartment in the senior officers’ block, and knew that his father was waiting for him there on his own. He had not seen him in forty-eight hours. And he had no idea for how much longer he would be able to call the apartment his. But none of that mattered. He did not care whether he was still a police officer tomorrow or just another citizen, whether he was married to Margaret or not, whether they shared an apartment or lived apart. All that mattered was that he would find her before they killed her.

Tao knocked loudly on Sun’s door, and after a few moments Wen opened it. Li was immediately struck by how much she appeared to have aged in just a few days. There were dark rings beneath her eyes, and red blotches on pale cheeks. She did not appear surprised to see them.

‘He’s not here,’ she said dully.

‘May we come in?’ Li asked.

She stood aside mutely, and they walked past her into a small hallway. She closed the door and led them through to a living room with a glazed terrace that overlooked Zhengyi Road below. It was almost exactly like the apartment Li had shared for so many years with his Uncle Yifu. There was very little furniture in the room, and packing cases were still stacked against one wall. Another stood in the middle of the floor, partially unpacked, its contents strewn around it.

Wen wore a tight-fitting smock that emphasised the swelling of her child. She stood with her palms resting on her hips, just above the buttocks. A pose that Li had often seen Margaret adopt. It sent a jolt through him, like an electric shock.

‘Where is he?’ he asked.

She shook her head. ‘I have no idea.’

He looked at her contemplatively for a moment. ‘Why did you start crying when I phoned earlier?’

She sucked in her lower lip and bit down on it to stop herself from crying again. ‘I never know where he is,’ she said, her voice breaking. ‘I’ve hardly seen him since I got here.’ She threw her hand out in a gesture towards the packing cases. ‘I’ve had to do all this myself. We haven’t had a meal together in days. He doesn’t get in until two or three in the morning.’ And she couldn’t stop the sobs from catching in her throat. ‘Just like it was in Canton. Nothing’s changed.’

‘How was it in Canton?’ Li asked quietly.

She brushed aside fresh tears. ‘He was always out. More than half the night sometimes.’ She breathed deeply to try to control herself and looked up at the ceiling as if it might offer her guidance. ‘If it had been other women, maybe that would have been easier to take. Maybe you can compete with other women.’ She looked at Li. ‘He was a gambler, Section Chief. He loved it. Couldn’t ever let a bet go.’ She paused. ‘How do you compete with that?’ She couldn’t face them, then, and turned away towards the terrace, folding her arms beneath her breasts in a gesture of self-protection, walking up to the glass and staring out into the snowy darkness. ‘He ran up terrible debts. We had to sell nearly everything. And then, when he got the job here, I thought maybe it would be a fresh start. He promised me…for the baby.’ She turned back into the room and shook her head helplessly. ‘But nothing’s changed. He behaves so strangely. I don’t know him any more. I’m not sure I ever did.’

Li was both shocked and dismayed by her description of a young man he had once thought was like a younger version of himself. It was not the Sun Xi he knew, or thought he knew, the detective he had been nurturing and encouraging. What shocked him even more, was how badly he had misjudged him. He glanced at Tao. Had he also been as wrong about his deputy? What was it Police Commissioner Hu had said to him? Loyalty is not something you inherit with the job. You have to earn it. He certainly hadn’t done anything to earn Tao’s loyalty. Perhaps, after all, he just wasn’t cut out for management.

Tao said to Wen, ‘When you say he’s been behaving strangely, what do you mean?’

She gasped and threw her hands up in despair. ‘I found a piece of paper folded into one of his jacket pockets. It had a poem written on it. Some stupid poem that didn’t even make any sense. When I asked him about it he nearly went berserk. He snatched it from me and accused me of spying on him.’

Tao was frowning. ‘What kind of poem?’

‘I don’t know. Just a poem. I found it a couple of days later between the pages of a book in his bedside table. I didn’t say anything, because I didn’t want to be accused of spying again.’

‘Is it still there?’ Li asked.

She nodded. ‘I’ll get it.’

She returned a few moments later, with a grubby sheet of paper folded into quarters, well rubbed along the folds. She thrust it at Li. He took it and opened it carefully and spread it out on the table. He and Tao leaned over it. The poem was written in neat characters. It had no title and was unattributed. And, as Wen had said, appeared to make very little sense.

Li was completely nonplussed ‘It’s not much of a poem,’ he said.

Tao said quietly, ‘None of the Triad poems are.’

Li blinked at him, confused now. ‘What do you mean?’

‘It’s a tradition which has mostly passed from use,’ Tao said. ‘But there are still some Triad groups who practise it. Members are given personal poems to memorise. They can be interrogated on them to verify their identification.’ He lifted the sheet of paper. ‘But they are supposed to destroy them once they have been memorised.’

Wen was listening to their exchange with growing disbelief. ‘What do you mean, Triads?’ she said. ‘Are you telling me Sun Xi is a Triad? I don’t believe it.’

Tao looked at Li and shrugged. ‘Canton was one of the first areas in mainland China the Triads moved back into after the Hong Kong handover. If Sun had got himself into financial trouble with his gambling he would have been a prime candidate for Triad recruitment. And a big feather in their caps, too. A detective in criminal investigation.’

‘Even more so now,’ Li said. ‘Now that he’s an elite member of Beijing’s serious crime squad.’ He felt sick, suddenly remembering Mei Yuan’s appraisal of him. He lies too easily, she had said. And he had been Sun’s mentor and confidant. He had been succouring the cuckoo in the nest, his personal dislike of Tao leading him to look in all the wrong places. He was almost unable to meet his deputy’s eye. ‘I guess it’s me who owes you the apology,’ he said.

‘What are you talking about!’ Wen was nearly hysterical. ‘He’s not a Triad! He can’t be a Triad!’

Tao paid her no attention. He said to Li. ‘Apologies are not what’s important now, Chief. Finding Doctor Campbell is.’

II

A small lamp on a drinks table somewhere close by cast the only light in the room. Fleischer had switched off the ceiling light. ‘My eyes have grown rather sensitive as I have got older,’ he had explained unnecessarily.

Then he had leaned over her, as if wanting to get a better look. He had a warm, friendly face, avuncular, the smooth white hair and cropped silver beard lending the impression of an old family friend. Trustworthy, sympathetic. Until you saw his eyes. Margaret had looked straight into them when he leaned into the light, and thought she had never seen such cold, blue eyes in her life.

She was having trouble concentrating now. She was gripped by almost unbearable cramps every few minutes, and feared that she was going to give birth right there, still tied to the chair.

Fleischer was oblivious to her distress, and she had the impression that he was showing off to her, preening himself before someone who might just recognise his genius. He also seemed oblivious to the others in the room. CEO Fan and Detective Sun hovering somewhere just beyond the light of the lamp, shadowy figures whose impatience Margaret could feel, even through her pain. And poor Dai Lili. She simply didn’t count. A guinea-pig. A failed experiment. She whimpered quietly, slumped in her chair.

‘We selected seven altogether,’ Fleischer was saying. ‘Making sure we represented the major disciplines; sprinting, distance running, a swimmer, a weightlifter, a cyclist. Each of them was in the top half dozen in their respective sports. Already talented, but not necessarily gold medal winners. And that was key. They had to be good to start with.’ He was pacing in and out of the light, restless, energised by his own brilliance.

‘And what did you do to them?’ Margaret said. She pushed her head back and forced herself to focus on him.

‘I made them better,’ he said proudly. ‘I produced the first genetically modified winners in the history of athletics. Human engineering.’ He paused, and grinned. ‘You want to know how I did it?’

And Margaret did. In spite of her pain and her predicament. But she was damned if she was going to let Fleischer know it. So she said nothing, just staring back defiantly.

‘Of course you do,’ he said. ‘You think I don’t know?’ He drew a chair out of the darkness and into the circle of light, turning it around so that he could sit astride the seat and lean on its back, watching Margaret closely as he spoke. ‘All the drugs that these idiot athletes around the globe are still using to improve their performances are synthetic. Copycats. All they can ever do is emulate what the body does of its own accord in the world’s best natural athletes. Real testosterone and human growth hormone, building muscle and strength. Endogenous EPO feeding oxygen to tired muscles. That’s what makes winners. That’s what makes champions.’ He shrugged. ‘In any case it’s hard to take drugs now without being detected. Here in China they cracked down after all those embarrassments in the nineties. They made it illegal to supply banned drugs to athletes. An athlete found guilty of doping faces a four-year ban here. His coach, anything up to fifteen years.’ He grinned again. ‘So we have to be a little more clever. Because now they can test at any time. With only twenty-four hours’ notice, if you have been taking a banned substance, there is no way to get it out of your system. So I do two things.’ He held up one finger. ‘First, I programme the body to produce naturally what it needs. If you run fast I increase the testosterone. If you run long, I increase the EPO. If you lift big weights, I increase the growth hormone.’ He held up another finger. ‘And second, if they want to test you, I programme your body to destroy the excess.’

Margaret gasped as another cramp gripped her, and she wondered fleetingly if Fleischer thought she was perhaps gasping in admiration. She controlled her breathing, and felt a fine, cold sweat break out across her forehead. ‘How?’ she managed to ask.

‘Ah,’ Fleischer said. ‘The sixty-four thousand dollar question. In this case, perhaps, the sixty-four million dollar question.’

‘I suppose that’s how you got these athletes to agree to be your guinea-pigs, was it? With money?’

‘Oh, that was a part of it, Doctor. But only a part. You have to ask yourself why an athlete wants to win. Why they will put themselves through all that grinding pain and hard work, all that blood, sweat and tears. After all, they were doing it way before the monetary rewards made it financially worthwhile.’ He paused long enough to allow her to consider his question. And then he answered it for her, ‘Vanity, Doctor. It’s that simple. A desperate need for self-esteem, or the esteem of others. Fame, celebrity. And they are utterly single-minded in the pursuit of it.’ He chuckled. ‘So, you see, it wasn’t hard to convince them. After all, I was promising to deliver what it was they all wanted. Like a god, I could make them winners. Or not. It was their choice. But it was irresistible.’

‘Only to cheats,’ Margaret said.

Fleischer was indignant. ‘They weren’t cheating. They weren’t taking drugs. I engineered them to be better. Naturally. It’s the future, Doctor, you must know that. The enhancement of human performance by means of genetic manipulation. And not just in athletics. We’re talking about every aspect of human life. Health, intelligence, physical capability. Soon we’ll all be able to pop a pill to make us better in every way. Drugs to genetically treat those who are well, rather than those who are sick. And there’s a fortune to be made from it. Well people can work and pay for their medicines. They live longer than sick people, and so they can buy their medicines for longer. Sick people get cured or die. Either way, they stop buying medicine. Well people just get better and better. Like my athletes.’

‘Really?’ Margaret was not impressed. ‘Six of them are dead. You don’t get many corpses winning races.’

Fleischer frowned and shrugged aside her unwelcome observation like some irritating insect that buzzed around his head. ‘A glitch,’ he said. ‘One we can put right.’

Margaret dug her fingernails into her palms to stop herself from passing out. With a great effort she said, ‘You still haven’t told me how you did it.’

The German’s smile returned. ‘HERV,’ he said.

Margaret frowned. ‘HERV?’

‘You know what HERV is?’

‘Of course.’

He was positively gleeful. ‘It is so deliciously simple, Doctor, it gives me goosebumps each time I think of it. Human endogenous retroviruses comprise about one percent of the human genome. I chose the HERV-K variant, because it is known to carry functional genes. It was an easy enough matter to isolate pieces of HERV-K from blood samples, and then amplify those pieces by cloning them in a bacterium. Are you following me?’

‘Just about.’ Margaret’s voice was no more than a whisper, but her brain was still functioning, and she felt somehow compelled by Fleischer’s icy blue eyes, and the nearly mesmeric delight he took in his own genius.

‘I was then able to modify the cloned HERV, embedding in it genes with a unique promoter which would stimulate hormone production. In some cases the promoter would stimulate the athlete’s body to produce increased amounts of testosterone, or human growth hormone. In others it would stimulate increased quantities of EPO. It depended upon whether we wished to increase speed or strength in a sprinter or a weightlifter, or whether we wanted to increase stamina in a distance runner or a cyclist.’ He leaned further into the light. ‘Did you know that EPO can increase performance by up to fourteen percent? Fourteen percent! It gives an athlete a phenomenal edge. If you are already one of the top half dozen distance runners in the world, you become unassailable. You will win every time.’

In spite of everything, Margaret found the concept both fascinating and horrifying. But there were still gaps in her understanding. ‘But how? How did you make it work?’

He laughed. ‘Also simple. I re-infected them with their own HERV. A straightforward injection, and the modified retrovirus carried the new genes straight into the chromosome.’

Margaret shook her head. ‘But, if suddenly these athletes are creating excesses of whatever hormone it is you’ve programmed them to produce, they would OD on it. It would kill them.’

Fleischer was terribly amused by this. He laughed. ‘Forgive me, Doctor. But you must think I am incredibly stupid.’

‘Stupid is not the word I would have used to describe you,’ she said, working hard to maintain eye contact.

His smile faded. ‘The genes can be switched off and on,’ he snapped. ‘If you want me to be technical about it, the hormone promoter is triggered by a chemical which is recognised by the enzymes acting at the promoter to synthesise the RNA message for the protein hormone.’

‘You can be as technical as you like,’ Margaret managed dryly. ‘But it doesn’t mean I’ll understand it.’

Fleischer’s returning smile was smug. He was in the ascendancy again. ‘I’ll keep it simple for you, then. One chemical activates the gene. Another switches it off. And a second HERV is activated by a third chemical.’

‘What’s the function of the second HERV?’

‘Stimulated by the third chemical, a protease enzyme in the second modified HERV will, literally, munch up the excess hormone. It can be activated at a moment’s notice so that the presence of increased hormone in the system is undetectable. Quite simply because it’s not there any more.’ He waved a hand dismissively. ‘A mere refinement. Because at the end of the day, the IOC and all their stupid testing bodies cannot say that naturally produced endogenous hormone constitutes doping.’

Margaret let another wave of pain wash over her, and then tried to refocus. ‘So you engineered these seven athletes to produce, within themselves, whatever hormone would best enhance their particular discipline. And also the ability to flush it out of their systems at a moment’s notice, so they could never be accused of doping.’

‘Makes it sound devilishly simple when you put it like that. Don’t you want to know how they were able to switch the hormone producing genes off and on?’

‘I’ve already worked that one out,’ Margaret said.

‘Have you?’ Fleischer was taken aback, perhaps a little disappointed.

‘The bottles of aftershave, and perfume.’

His smile was a little less amused. She had stolen his thunder. ‘You’re a very clever lady, aren’t you, Doctor Campbell? Yes, the aerosols act like a gas. The athlete only has to spray and inhale, and the unique chemical content of each scent, ingested through the lungs, sends the requisite message to the appropriate gene. Hormone on, hormone off.’

‘And the breath freshener?’

‘Triggers the destructive protease to chew up the excess hormone.’ He straightened up in his seat and beamed at her triumphantly. ‘Genetically engineered winners. Virtually guaranteed to break the tape every time.’

From the depths of her misery, Margaret gazed at him with something close to hatred. ‘So what went wrong?’

And his face darkened, and all his self-congratulatory preening dissolved in an instant. ‘I don’t know,’ he said. ‘Well, not exactly. There was some kind of recombination between the introduced and the endogenous HERV. It created something we could never have foreseen. A new retrovirus which attacked the microscopic arteries of the heart.’ He was thoughtful for a long time, gazing off into some unseen middle distance. Then, almost as if realising he still had an audience, he said, ‘Of course, we did not know that at first. It was all going so well. All our athletes were winning. We were monitoring them all very closely. And then suddenly our cyclist dropped dead without warning. Of course, I knew immediately there was a problem. But the last thing we wanted was anyone performing an autopsy. So we arranged for him to die “by accident”. The body was removed from its coffin before it was burned at the crematorium, and then we were free to perform our own examination. Which is when we discovered the thickening of the microvasculature.’

‘And you knew that your retrovirus had caused that?’

‘No, not immediately. It wasn’t until the three members of the sprint relay team became ill after coming down with the flu, that I began to piece things together. We knew that the cyclist had suffered from the flu shortly before he collapsed. That was when I realised that the retrovirus was being activated by the flu virus, and that there was nothing we could do about it. We kept all three athletes at our clinic, and they died within days of each other. An autopsy on one of them, after he had been “cremated”, confirmed all my fears.’

‘So you decided to get rid of the rest of your guinea-pigs before someone else started figuring it all out.’

‘The risks were too great.’ Fan Zhilong moved into the light, startling them both. They had all but forgotten that there were others there. He said, ‘We could not afford to have any of our athletes take fright and start to talk.’

Margaret looked at him with disgust, seeing only his expensive haircut and his designer suit, his manicured hands and his air of confident invulnerability. ‘And you funded all this?’ He inclined his head in acknowledgement. ‘Why?’

‘Why?’ He seemed amused by what he clearly thought was a silly question, and dimples pitted his cheeks. ‘Because I am a gambler, Doctor Campbell. We are all gamblers here. And like all gamblers, we spend our lives in pursuit of the impossible. The sure thing.’ His supercilious smile did not reach his eyes. ‘And there can hardly be a safer bet than an athlete who is guaranteed to win. Our little experiment in human engineering here in China was going to be just the beginning. Had it been successful, there are athletes around the world who would not have taken much persuading to join our winners’ club. Membership a guarantee of success. The potential rewards could have run to millions. Tens, maybe even hundreds, of millions.’

‘Only there is no such thing as a sure thing, is there, Doctor Fleischer?’ Margaret turned her contempt on the German doctor and saw that he appeared suddenly to have aged. All Fan’s talk of ‘woulds’ and ‘coulds’ and ‘might have beens’ perhaps bringing home to him, finally, that it was all over. ‘You must be very proud of yourself. Tricking young athletes in Germany into taking drugs that left them dying or disabled. And then exploiting the greed and insecurity of young Chinese athletes to pursue your insane idea of a genetically modified world. Only to kill them in the process. There’s no such thing as a sure thing in science, either. Unless you think you’re God. Only, gods are supposed to be infallible, aren’t they?’

Fleischer gave her a long, sour look, and then he eased himself out of his chair and stood up. ‘I’ll get it right next time,’ he said.

‘I’m afraid there won’t be a next time,’ Fan said, and Fleischer turned towards him in surprise as Fan drew a small pistol from inside his jacket and fired point blank into the old man’s face.

Lili screamed as Fleischer momentarily staggered backwards, blood pouring from the place where his nose used to be. Then he dropped to his knees and fell face forward on to the floor. Margaret was very nearly more startled by the scream than the shot. She had forgotten that Lili was there. The young athlete had not uttered a sound during the entire exchange.

Fan stepped back fastidiously to avoid getting Fleischer’s blood on his shoes. He looked at Margaret. ‘The police are far too close to the truth,’ he said. ‘We have to remove all the evidence.’ And he raised his gun towards Margaret and fired again. Margaret screwed up her face, bracing herself against the impact of the bullet and felt nothing but the ear-splitting sound of the second shot ringing in her head in the confined space. There was a moment of silence and confusion, and then she opened her eyes in time to see Lili tipping forward, crashing to the floor, still tied to her chair. Most of the back of her head was missing.

Margaret felt herself start to lose control. Of her mind, of her body. She just wanted it all to be over. But Fan was in no particular hurry.

‘I suppose your boyfriend is going to wonder what happened to you,’ he said softly. ‘Maybe he’ll think you just changed your mind about getting married and took off back to America. Maybe he won’t even care. But one thing is certain, he’ll never find you. So he’ll never know.’ He turned and nodded to Sun who was still hovering just beyond the reach of the light. ‘You do it.’

Sun stepped forward. He looked pale and shocked. ‘Me?’

‘I’m not used to asking twice,’ Fan said.

Without meeting her eye, Sun slipped a gun from a holster strapped high under his leather jacket and raised it unsteadily towards Margaret. She looked straight at him, the tears running silently down her face. ‘At least have the guts to look me in the eye, Sun Xi,’ she said. And she saw the fear and confusion in his eyes as they flickered up to meet hers. ‘I hope your child, when he is born, will be proud of you.’ A series of sobs broke in her throat, robbing her momentarily of her power of speech. She gasped, struggling to control herself, determined to have her final say. ‘And I hope every time you look him in the eye you’ll see me. And remember my child.’

‘Get on with it!’ Fan snapped impatiently. And Sun turned and put a bullet straight through the centre of Fan’s forehead. There was barely time for Fan to register surprise. He was dead before he hit the floor.

Sun turned back to Margaret. He shook his head. And through her own tears, she saw that he was weeping, too. ‘I never knew it be like this,’ he said pathetically. ‘I sorry. I so sorry.’ He raised his gun again and Margaret wanted to close her eyes. But she couldn’t. And she saw him turn the barrel towards himself, sucking it into his mouth like a stick of candy. Now she closed her eyes, and the roar of the shot filled her head, and when she looked again he was lying on the floor. Four dead people lying all around her, an acrid smell that filled the cold air, and a pain that gripped her so powerfully that all she wanted to do was join them.

Through the window, she thought she could see the lights of the village twinkling in the distance. But she knew it was too far. They would never hear her shouts. She looked down and saw that the tops of her jeans were soaked with blood. And she knew that she would not have to wait much longer.

III

Li was exhausted by the time he and Tao got back to Section One. Physically and mentally. Somewhere, he had lost his stick, and found it hard to walk without it. He was closer to despair than he had ever been in his life. Closer to simply giving up. It all seemed so hopeless. It was perhaps two, maybe three hours, since Margaret had been taken from the Forbidden City. The chances of her still being alive were so remote he could not even contemplate them. If he could, he would have wept. For Margaret, for their child, for himself. But his eyes remained obstinately dry, full of the grit of failure.

His office felt bleak and empty, and lacking in any comfort under the harsh overhead fluorescent striplight. Tao said, ‘I’ll get some tea and check on developments.’ He left Li to slump into his chair and survey the detritus of his working life that covered every inch of it. A life that seemed far away now, a life that belonged to someone else.

On top of the ‘in’ tray was a faxed report from Doctor Pi at the Centre of Material Evidence Determination. In the two and a half centimeters of Jia Jing’s hair, he had found a record of regular concentrations of human growth hormone. But this was no synthetic substitute. It was the real thing, produced by his own body, in amounts that peaked way above normal concentrations, and then dipped again to normal, or below normal, levels. All at regular intervals over a two-month period.

Li let the report fall back into the tray. It hardly mattered now that he knew why the heads of the athletes had been shaved. That somehow they had been producing concentrations of endogenous hormone to enhance their performances. And that someone had cut off all their hair to hide that fact. Without Margaret, nothing in the world mattered to him any more.

Which was when he saw the envelope in the internal mail tray, its distinctive red, gold and blue public security emblem embossed on the flap, and he knew that it came from the office of the commissioner. He sat staring at it for a long time, unable, or unwilling, to make himself reach out and open it. Just one more thing that no longer mattered. Wearily he lifted it from the tray and tore it open. A cryptic acknowledgement of receipt of his letter of resignation. So it had reached the commissioner after all. And confirmation that he was relieved of all duties with immediate effect. Deputy Section Chief Tao was to assume interim control of the section until his replacement was appointed.

Li let the letter slip from his fingers and flutter to the desk. He wondered if Tao knew. If he had been summoned, or telephoned, or whether there was a letter from the commissioner waiting for him in his in tray, too.

Tao came in, then, with two mugs of steaming hot green tea and put one of them down in front of Li. His eye fell on the letter, and he glanced at his old boss. Li shrugged. ‘I guess you’re the chief now.’

Tao said, ‘Apparently the commissioner’s office has been trying to contact me all evening. My cellphone was bust.’ He grimaced. ‘There was a letter on my desk, too.’

A rap on the door broke the moment, and a flushed-looking Qian hurried in. ‘Chief, we just got a report from the Public Security Bureau out at Miyun that residents in the village of Guanling reported hearing gunfire. They seemed to think the shots came from a cottage just outside the village.’

Li could barely muster interest. ‘What’s that got to do with us?’

Qian was surprised. ‘Guanling, Chief? That’s where Fleischer has his holiday cottage.’

And hope and fear filled Li’s heart at the same moment, as the implications of Qian’s words hit home. He looked at Tao who sighed, resigned. ‘I could say I didn’t open the letter till tomorrow,’ he said.

Li was on his feet immediately. ‘I want every available detective,’ he said to Qian. ‘Armed. I’ll sign out the weapons.’

For most of the drive out to the reservoir, the snow had stopped falling. Brief blinks of moonlight illuminated a silver-white landscape, and in between the world was smothered with darkness, limiting vision to the range of their headlamps. As they drove through the village in careful convoy, a few shreds of light momentarily illuminated the snow-capped mountains beyond, with their peaks and clefts and shadows. There were lights in nearly every window, and dozens of villagers were out on the frozen tracks that intersected their homes. Through a clutch of dark evergreens, they saw the blue flashing lights of the local police who had surrounded the cottage, with strict instructions not to enter.

The local bureau chief shook Li’s hand. ‘There hasn’t been a sound or a movement from in there since we got here, Chief,’ he said in a low voice. He nodded towards a sleek, shiny black Mercedes parked at the gate. ‘Keys are still in the ignition.’ He took out a notebook and started flipping through the pages. ‘I got them to phone in the number. It’s registered to…’ he found the name, ‘…to some guy called Fan Zhilong.’

Li felt a tightness across his chest. He was not surprised, but that did nothing to diminish his sense of dread. He waved Wu and Sang to the far side of the gate. Wu took his pistol from its shoulder holster and flicked away his cigarette butt, still chewing feverishly. Li could have sworn he was enjoying this, living out for real something he might have watched in a movie, or on an American cop show. Tao and Qian followed him to the nearside gatepost, and they all took out their weapons.

The house was deathly quiet. They could not see anything through the windows, but there was a soft light burning somewhere inside. There were several sets of tracks leading to and from the house, partially covered over by a recent fall. And even as they watched, the first flakes of a fresh fall began to drift down from a black sky. Li started cautiously along the path, and waved the others to follow. They fanned out across the garden, snow creaking beneath their feet like old floor-boards. But even when they reached the house, their view of the interior was still obscured by condensation inside the glass.

Gingerly, Li tried the door handle. It turned easily and the door slipped soundlessly off the latch. He nodded to the others, and after the briefest hesitation, they burst in, shouting as they went, issuing instructions to whoever might be there to get down on the floor with their hands on view. Gun barrels panned left and right to cover the room. And almost immediately they fell silent, breath condensing in rapid bursts in ice cold air filled with the sticky scent of drying blood. There were four bodies on the floor, and a sickening amount of blood. Sun, Fan and Fleischer, and Dai Lili, still tied to the chair, tipped on her side. It was all Li could do to stop himself from being sick.

His eyes raked across the carnage in confusion, before coming to rest on a figure slumped in a chair. It was a moment before he realised that it was Margaret. Her face was ghostly pale, her head lying at a slight angle, mouth gaping. She was soaked in blood from the waist down, and with an awful sense of the inevitable, Li knew that she was dead.

IV

Something out there was trying to get in. Something without shape or form, trying to penetrate the darkness. It was light, and it was pain, all at once. Confused sensations making no sense in a world without beginning or end. And then it was there, blinding her, coming from beyond the protective cover of her eyelids as they broke apart to allow the outside in. From somewhere a long way away, the pain which had forced them open, was suddenly very close. It was sharp and shocking. She coughed and nearly choked, and the cough sent the pain stabbing through her like the prongs of a fork. Still the world was a blur. Only her pain was focused. Somewhere down there. She made an effort and felt her hand move, soft cotton on her skin, and she shifted it towards her belly where she had carried her child for eight long months. And the swelling was gone. Her baby was no longer there. Only the pain remained. And it bubbled up through her to explode in her throat, a deep howl of anguish.

Immediately she felt a hand on her forehead. Cool and dry on her hot skin. She turned her head and a shadow fell across her eyes, blurred by her tears. The sound of a voice. Low and soothing. A hand took hers. She blinked hard and saw Li’s poor, bruised face swim into focus.

‘My baby…’ Her voice tailed away into sobbing. ‘I lost my baby…’

‘No,’ she heard him say, inexplicably, and she fought hard to make sense of this world that was crashing in on her. She was in a room. Pastel pink. An air-conditioning unit. A window. Grey light in the sky beyond it. And Li. ‘Our child is fine,’ he was saying, and she could not understand. How could their child be fine if it was no longer inside her. She tried to sit up, and the pain seared across her belly like fire. But it made everything sharper somehow. Li was smiling his reassurance.

‘How…?’

‘They cut you open. A Caesarian section. It was the only way to save the baby. They said it was…’ he searched to recall exactly what they had said, ‘…abruptio placenta. The placenta tore off a bit and the two of you were losing blood.’

Margaret managed a nod.

‘They said maybe you being tied to the chair like that saved both of you.’

‘Where is it?’

‘Not it.’ He paused for emphasis. ‘He.’ And there was no doubting the pride in his smile. ‘We have a baby boy, Margaret.’ And he squeezed her hand. She wanted to laugh, but all that came were tears. He said, ‘They put him in an incubator straight away, because he was four weeks premature. But he’s a strong boy. Like his daddy.’

And from outside the limits of her conscious reach came the tiny sound of a baby crying, and she forced herself to look beyond Li, and saw her mother there with a swaddle of soft wool and cotton in her arms. She leaned over and laid the bundle beside Margaret on the bed. And Margaret turned to see her son for the first time. A pink, wrinkled little face, crying hard to let them know he was alive.

She heard her mother’s voice. ‘He looks just like his father. But, then, all babies are ugly.’

And finally Margaret was able to laugh, sending another spasm of pain forking through her. Her mother was smiling. Margaret whispered, ‘So you don’t mind having a Chinese grandchild?’

‘You know, it’s strange,’ her mother said. ‘I don’t see him as Chinese. Just my grandson.’

V

Li heard the roar of the traffic out on Xianmen Dajie as he stepped from the door of the hospital into the long, narrow car park. Gangs of workmen with wooden shovels had cleared it of snow the previous evening, but overnight another inch had fallen and the workers had not yet returned for the early shift to clear it again.

But it had stopped snowing for the moment, and the first grey light of dawn smudged the sky in the east. The clouds had lifted. The day seemed less threatening, somehow, less dark. Like life. Li no longer needed his stick. There was a spring in his step. He felt free. Of responsibility, of fear. He was suffused by an overwhelming sense of happiness.

The car park was deserted. There were only a few cars parked there, belonging, no doubt, to the senior consultants — since very few others could afford to own a motor vehicle. By contrast, hundreds of bicycles were squeezed together, fighting for space under the snow-covered corrugated roof of the bicycle shed.

Li crunched carefully over the frozen snow towards his Jeep. Plunging temperatures during the night had formed an icy crust which he had to break by stepping heel first. His breath gathered in wreaths around his head, and through all his euphoria one tiny, nagging doubt came bubbling up from somewhere in the darkness to burst unexpectedly into his consciousness.

A picture started replaying itself in his head. He saw himself sitting in his office with Tao and Qian. They were discussing the break-in at the studio of the American photographer. He could hear Qian saying, He’d been there on a recce the day before, and taken a few pictures for reference. Just gash stuff. Nothing that you would think anyone would want to steal.

And Tao responding, Well, that’s something we’ll never know, since he no longer has them.

Oh, but he has, Qian had come back at him. Apparently he’d already taken a set of contact prints. He’s still got those.

Li found the keys of the Jeep in his pocket and unlocked the door. He climbed in to sit in the driver’s seat and stare blindly through the windshield at nothing his eyes could see. Sun had not been there during that conversation. So how could he have known about the contact prints?

Suddenly a hand curled around his forehead and forced it back with a jolt against the headrest, holding it there like a vice. And he felt the sharp blade of a knife piercing the skin of his neck. He froze, knowing that any attempt to free himself would kill him.

He heard the hot breath of Tao’s voice in his ear. ‘Sooner or later,’ Tao said, ‘I knew you would figure it out.’ Almost as if he could read Li’s thoughts. ‘You arrogant big bastard. You thought that Sun was your protégé, your boy. But he was mine. Right from the start. Always.’ He issued a small, sour laugh. ‘And now we both know it, and you have to die.’

Li sensed the muscles in Tao’s arm tensing. He glanced in the rearview mirror, and saw Tao’s face in the moment before he died, eyes wide and enormous behind the dark frames of his glasses. He felt the blade cutting into his flesh. And then a roar that almost deafened him. Glass and smoke and blood filled the air. And Tao was gone. Li was aware of blood running down his neck and put his fingers to the wound, but it was barely a scratch. He turned to see Tao sprawled across the rear seat, blood and brain and bone splattered across the far window.

And into his confusion crashed a voice he knew. He turned, still in shock, and saw a face. A jaw chewing on a flavourless piece of gum. ‘Shit, Chief,’ Wu said. ‘I only came to see how Doc Campbell and the baby were. I’d have handed in the gun last night, only you weren’t there to sign for it.’ He looked at Tao with disgust. ‘Bastard,’ he said, with something like relish in his voice. ‘At least I won’t have to put any more money in the swear box.’