The Runner (The China Thrillers 5)

by Peter May

  ‘We’ll know for sure after the autopsy.’

  ‘And that, of course, will all be reflected in the official report?’

  Li hesitated for a long moment. He despised the thought of being involved in any way in a cover-up. If he had thought there was anything more to it than sparing the blushes of a few officials he might have fought against it. But in the circumstances it hardly seemed worth it. He could almost hear his Uncle Yifu referring him to Sunzi’s Art of War and the advice offered by history’s most famous military strategist that He who knows when to fight and when not to fight will always win. And there were other, more important battles, he knew, that lay ahead. ‘I’ll see that it does, Minister,’ he said.

  The Minister smiled and appeared to relax. ‘I’m glad. It would be a great pity, damaging even, if certain people were embarrassed by certain unwarranted speculation.’

  ‘It certainly would,’ Li said, unable to keep an edge of sarcasm out of his voice.

  The Minister glanced at him sharply, searching for any hint of it in his expression, his smile dissolving quickly into studied reflection. After a moment he folded his reading glasses, placed them carefully on the table beside the sofa and stood up. Li immediately felt disadvantaged, still balanced uncomfortably on the edge of his armchair clutching his hat. But he had not been invited to stand.

  ‘However,’ the Minister said, ‘there are other, more consequential issues, raised by the death of Jia Jing tonight. You may not be aware of it, Li, but he is the fifth senior Chinese sportsman to die within the last month. All, apparently, from natural or accidental causes.’

  ‘Three members of the sprint relay team,’ Li said. ‘A cyclist, a weightlifter.’

  The Minister looked at him thoughtfully and raised an eyebrow. ‘You’ve been keeping your eye on the ball.’ He seemed surprised.

  Li did not like to admit that he had only spotted the ball for the first time that night. What was significant to him was that others had been keeping an eye on it long before him. But now he was one step ahead of them. ‘You’re going to have to revise that figure, Minister. The number is up to six.’

  The Minister had a young, unlined face, the merest trace of grey in his hair, although he was probably in his mid-fifties. He appeared suddenly to age ten years. ‘Tell me.’

  ‘I don’t have all the details yet. It appears to have been a suicide. A member of the swimming team. He was found hanging from the diving platform in the training pool at Qinghua.’

  ‘Who was it?’

  ‘His name was Sui Mingshan.’

  The name had meant nothing to Li, but the Minister knew immediately who he was. ‘In the name of the sky, Li! Sui was our best prospect of Olympic gold. He should have been swimming against the Americans tomorrow.’ He raised his eyes to heaven and sighed deeply. ‘How on earth are we going to keep a lid on this?’ Then his mind took off in another direction. ‘It can’t be coincidence can it? Six of our leading athletes dead within a month?’

  ‘On the balance of probability, Minister, it seems unlikely,’ Li said.

  ‘Well, you’d better find out, pretty damned fast. And I don’t want to read about this in the foreign press, do you understand? It will be difficult enough to explain the absence of such athletes from this event with the Americans, but with the Olympics coming to Beijing in 2008, we cannot afford even the whiff of a scandal. The prestige and international standing of China are at stake here.’

  Li stood up, still holding his black peaked cap with its silver braiding and shiny Public Security badge. ‘The investigation is already under way, Minister.’

  The Minister found himself looking up at Li who was a good six inches taller than him. But he was not intimidated. The power of his office gave him supreme confidence. He scrutinised Li thoughtfully. ‘We can’t afford to lose officers of your calibre, Section Chief,’ he said. ‘This … personal problem that you have … How can it be resolved?’

  ‘With all due respect, Minister, I don’t believe that I am the one with the problem. There is no legal requirement – ’

  The Minister cut him off. ‘Damn it, Li, it’s not law, it’s policy.’

  ‘Then you could make an exception.’

  ‘No.’ His response was immediate and definitive. ‘No exceptions. You make one, others follow. And when many people pass one way, a road is made.’

  ‘Then I may have to pass on the baton before the case is resolved.’

  The Minister glared at him. ‘You’re a stubborn sonofabitch, Li. Just like your uncle.’

  ‘I’ll take that as a compliment.’

  The Minister stood staring silently at Li for several long moments, and Li was not sure if he was furious or just at a loss for words. Finally he turned away, retrieved his half-moons from the table and sat down again on his sofa, lifting the bundle of papers back on to his knee. ‘Just keep me informed.’

  And Li realised he was dismissed.

  V

  Wu’s report was waiting for him on his desk when he got back to Section One. It was nearly midnight. He was too tired to change out of his uniform, throwing his cap on to the desk and slumping into his seat wearily to read the report, reliving the sad absurdity of the whole sordid tale. He got up and crossed to the door and shouted down the corridor, ‘Wu!’

  After a moment Wu appeared, emerging from the detectives’ office, cigarette smoke billowing at his back. ‘Chief?’

  Li breathed deeply as if he might be able to steal some secondhand smoke, waved him up the corridor and went back to his desk. When Wu came in he chucked his report back at him. ‘Do it again.’ Wu frowned. ‘Only this time, leave out the stuff in the bedroom.’

  ‘But that’s the juiciest bit, Chief.’

  Li ignored him. ‘Our weightlifter arrived looking for our committee member, but before he could say why, he collapsed and died. Okay?’

  Wu looked at him curiously. ‘That’s not like you, boss.’

  ‘No it’s not. Just do it.’ Wu shrugged and headed for the door and Li called after him, ‘And tell Sun I want to talk to him.’

  When Sun came in Li told him to close the door behind him and turn out the overhead light, which left only the ring of light cast around the desk by its lamp. He motioned Sun to take a seat, then sat back so that he could watch him from outside the reach of the light. His eyes were stinging and gritty. It had been a long day. ‘Tell me why you think this swimmer didn’t kill himself,’ he said.

  Sun said, half-rising, ‘I’ve finished my report if you want to read it.’

  ‘No, just tell me.’

  Li closed his eyes and listened as Sun described how he and Qian Yi, one of the section’s older detectives, had arrived at the natatorium shortly after seven-thirty.

  ‘What made us suspicious initially was the security man on the door saying he didn’t see Sui going in. I asked him if there was any chance Sui had arrived when he was in the toilet. He said he’d been at his post for two hours, uninterrupted. So I asked if there was any other way in. Turns out there are half a dozen emergency exits that you can only open from the inside. We looked at them all. One of them was not properly shut, which had to be how Sui got in without being seen.’

  Li thought about it for a moment. ‘Why would he have to sneak in through an emergency exit? Wouldn’t he just have walked in the front door? And if he did come in the emergency door, how did he open it from the outside?’

  ‘I asked myself the same questions,’ Sun said.

  ‘And did you come up with any answers?’

  ‘The only thing I could think was that he wasn’t on his own.’

  Li frowned and opened his eyes. ‘What do you mean?’

  Sun leaned forward into the light. ‘I mean that he didn’t go there of his own free will, Chief. That he was taken, against his will, by people who had already got him drunk. People who had arranged to have that fire door left unlocked.’

  Li raised a sceptical eyebrow. ‘And all this speculation because the security man
didn’t see him going in? Eye witnesses are notoriously unreliable, Sun. Memories are defective things. Maybe he did go to the toilet and just doesn’t remember. Maybe he was reading and didn’t notice Sui going past.’

  ‘And the fire door?’

  Li shrugged. ‘Doors get left open.’ Sun seemed slightly crestfallen. Li said, ‘Tell me you’re basing your doubts on more than a security man and a fire door.’

  Sun shook his head, exasperated by his boss’ scepticism. ‘Chief, I don’t know what to say. It just didn’t feel right. Everything about it. His team-mates said he never touched alcohol. Ever. Yet he was stinking of drink, and there was a half-empty bottle of brandy in the bag in his locker. And, I mean, if he’d drunk a half bottle of brandy, would he have been in any state to fold up his clothes and leave them hanging in his locker? And, anyway, why would he? And why would he shave his head?’

  Li sat forward. This was a new piece of information. ‘He’d shaved his head?’

  ‘Yeh. He could only have done it a couple of hours before. There were fresh nick marks on his scalp, dried blood, and he had a full head of hair the last time anyone saw him.’

  Li puzzled over this for several moments. ‘Was there a pathologist in attendance?’

  ‘Doc Zhu, one of Wang’s deputies from Pao Jü Hutong.’

  Li knew him. He was young, not very experienced. ‘What did Zhu say?’

  ‘Not a lot, Chief. Just that there were no external signs of a struggle, and that death appeared to have been caused by a broken neck due to hanging. Of course, he couldn’t commit to that until after the autopsy.’

  ‘Who’s doing the autopsy?’

  ‘He is.’

  Li shook his head. ‘Put a stop on that. I don’t want anyone with his lack of experience touching the body.’

  Sun was taken aback, and for a moment didn’t know how to respond. Was this vindication? ‘You mean you think I might be right? That this isn’t just a straightforward suicide?’

  Li pondered his response briefly. ‘While accepting that your assumptions are speculative, Sun, I think they are not unreasonable. For two reasons.’ He held up a thumb to signify the first. ‘One. We’ve got to look at this in the context of six top athletes dead in a month. It stretches the theory of coincidence just a little far.’ He added his forefinger to signify the second. ‘And two. There’s the hair thing. That just doesn’t make sense.’

  Sun looked puzzled. ‘How do you mean?’

  ‘You asked why Sui would have shaved his head. My understanding is that it’s not unusual for swimmers to shave off their hair in order to create less resistance in the water.’

  Sun nodded. ‘And … ?’

  Li said, ‘Well, if you were planning to kill yourself, why would you shave your head to make yourself faster for a race in which you had no intention of taking part?’ He saw the light of realisation dawning in Sun’s eyes, and added, ‘But that leaves us with an even more implausible question. Why would somebody else do it?’

  VI

  Margaret was finding it difficult to sleep. She liked to keep her curtains open, safe in the knowledge that there were no other tower blocks sufficiently close to allow anyone to see in, even if she put the lights on. She enjoyed moving around the apartment, able to see by the light of her small television set, and the ambient city lights that surrounded her. For some reason she had become more sensitive to bright light since becoming pregnant, and there was a sense of security in the darkness. She felt safer. She also liked to look out over the city on a clear night like this. You could see the tail lights of cars and buses for miles as they negotiated the gridiron road network of the capital, queuing in long tailbacks at rush hour, speeding along deserted ring roads late at night, like now.

  But tonight, the nearly full moon was bathing her bedroom in a bright silver light, falling through the window and lying across her bed in distortions of bisected rectangles, keeping her awake. And Li’s departure had left her frustrated and lonely, and still with the aching regret of unfulfilled sex.

  In just over a week she would be married. And yet the thought filled her with dread. Of the ordeals she would have to endure in the next few days. A belated betrothal meeting. The reunion with her mother. The first meeting with Li’s father. And then what? What would be different? Until Li was allocated an apartment for married officers they would still be forced to spend much of their lives apart. And when the baby came … She closed her eyes. It was a thought she did not want to face. She had attended enough births during her time as an intern at the UIC Medical Centre in Chicago to know that it was an experience she would have preferred not to live through in person. She found pain hard enough to cope with when it was other people’s. Her own scared her to death.

  She turned on to her side, pulling the covers up over her head, determined to try to sleep, and heard a key scraping in the latch. She sat bolt upright and glanced at the red digital display on the bedside clock. It was 1:14 am. Surely he hadn’t come back at this time of night? ‘Li Yan?’ she called, and her bedroom door swung open and she saw him standing there in the moonlight. He still had on his uniform and cap, his coat slung over his shoulder.

  ‘I didn’t mean to wake you,’ he said.

  She tutted her disbelief. ‘Of course you did. You’re sex obsessed. Why else are you here?’

  But he didn’t smile. ‘I’ve got a couple of favours to ask.’

  ‘Oh, yes?’ But she didn’t ask what. ‘Are you going to stand out there in the hall all night, or are you coming to bed?’ She grinned. ‘I do like a man in uniform.’

  He moved into the room, pushing the door shut behind him, and started to undress. She watched the way the light cut obliquely across his pectorals and made shadows of the six-pack that ribbed his belly as he opened his shirt. He moved with an easy, powerful grace, and she felt the rekindling of her earlier frustrated desires as he slipped out of his pants and stood three-quarters silhouetted against the window. But he made no attempt to get into bed. He said, ‘There’s a young guy in the section. I’ve talked to you about him. Sun.’ She waited in silence, wondering what on earth he could be going to say. ‘He came up from Canton three months ago, and they’ve only now allocated him married quarters.’

  ‘Oh, I see,’ she said, stung. ‘So the junior detective gets an apartment, but his boss has to wait.’

  ‘That’s just an administrative thing,’ Li said quickly, not wanting to get involved in a discussion about apartments. ‘The point is, his wife’s just arrived from the south. She doesn’t know anybody here, she doesn’t know Beijing. And she’s due about the same time as you are. I thought … well, I wondered, if maybe you could show her the ropes, so to speak.’

  Margaret snorted. ‘Hah! Like I’ve not got enough to think about with my mother arriving, a betrothal meeting, a wedding … ’ She stopped and looked at him hard. ‘You didn’t come here at one o’clock in the morning just to ask me to nanny some country-girl wife of one of your detectives.’

  ‘Well,’ Li said. ‘There was something else.’

  ‘And what was that?’

  ‘I want you to do an autopsy.’

  She was silent for a very long time. ‘I thought I was banned,’ she said quietly. ‘You thought there could be health risks for the baby, and I didn’t argue with that. What’s changed?’

  ‘I wouldn’t ask if I didn’t think it was important.’ He paused. ‘And I won’t ask if you think there is the slightest risk.’

  She knew that in reality if there was no risk to her there was no risk to the baby. And she had never been inclined to put herself at risk. ‘What’s the case?’ She could barely keep the excitement out of her voice. It was a chance to take her life back, be herself again, put all these other personas – wife, mother, daughter – on the back burner, at least for a time.

  He sat on the edge of the bed and took her through the events of the evening. She lay thinking about it for a long time. ‘Who’s doing the autopsy on the weightlifter?’
/>   ‘Wang.’

  She nodded. Wang was okay. She had worked with him before. ‘What about the others? The road accident victims, the guy who drowned. Can I see their autopsy reports?’

  Li shook his head. ‘We don’t autopsy every accidental death, Margaret. Only if there are suspicious circumstances, or cause of death is not apparent. We don’t have enough pathologists.’

  ‘That’s inconvenient,’ she said, unimpressed. ‘I don’t suppose we can dig them up?’

  Li sighed, realising himself just how little they were going to have to go on. ‘Burials are forbidden in the city. I’ll check, but I’m pretty sure they’ll all have been cremated.’

  ‘You’re not making this very easy for us, are you?’

  Li said, ‘The more I think about it, the more it seems to me like someone else has been trying to make it that way.’

  Margaret snorted her derision. ‘In the event that you ever got around to actually investigating.’

  Li said evenly, ‘Will you do the autopsy on the swimmer?’

  Her face was in shadow but he heard her grin. ‘Try stopping me.’ And after a pause she grabbed his arm. ‘Although, right now I’m hoping we can get to the third reason you came back.’

  ‘There was a third reason?’ he asked innocently.

  ‘There had better be.’ And she pulled him into her bed.

  Chapter Two

  I

  She was late, but knew that to hurry could be dangerous. And so she pumped her pedals at a slow, even rate, keeping pace with the flow of cyclists heading east along the reduced cycle lane in Chang’an Avenue. As the number of motorists had increased and the number of cyclists diminished, so the authorities had allowed the traffic to encroach on the generous cycle lanes originally laid out by the twentieth-century city fathers. Dividers now cut their width by half and streams of taxis jammed the tarmac which had once been the domain of the bicycle.