The Runner (The China Thrillers 5)

by Peter May

  She took her own advice several times as they then ran the gauntlet of touts trying to sell glossy guide books on the Forbidden City, only to arrive at the ticket office outside the Meridian Gate to find chains stretched between poles fencing it off, and a large sign in Chinese erected outside.

  ‘You want buy book?’ a voice at her elbow said.

  She turned to the owner of the voice, an old peasant woman, and said, ‘What does the sign say?’

  ‘Close,’ the old lady said.

  ‘Closed?’ Margaret was incredulous. ‘It can’t be.’

  ‘Big work inside. They fix.’

  ‘Renovation?’

  The old lady nodded vigorously. ‘Yeh, yeh, yeh. Renovation. You can still see. Buy book.’

  ‘I don’t believe it,’ Margaret’s mother said. ‘What do I tell the folks back home? I went to China, and it was shut?’

  * * *

  Tiananmen Square was busy, perhaps because the Forbidden City was closed. But there were more people than usual strolling its vastness, in spite of the bitter wind that raked across it. The air was filled with kites that dipped and swooped in the wind, red faces turned upwards, gloved hands tugging on taut lines. Groups of peasants up from the country posed for photographs with the Gate of Heavenly Peace in the background, and the queues at Mao’s mausoleum seemed longer than usual, pan-faced peasants standing patiently waiting to see the body of the man who had led their country through so many turbulent decades, lying preserved now in its glass case. Margaret’s mother declined to join the line. She had had enough.

  ‘I’m getting tired, Margaret. Perhaps we should go home.’ Words Margaret was relieved to hear.

  They went through the pedestrian subway and up the stairs to the north side of Chang’an Avenue where they could get the underground train home. As they emerged again into the icy blast, Mrs. Campbell, still tottering on her unsuitable heels, stumbled and fell with a shriek of alarm. Margaret tried to catch her, but her mother’s arm somehow slipped through her fingers. She clattered on to the pavings and sprawled full length, all thoughts of trying to retain her dignity vanishing with the pain that shot through her leg from the knee which took the brunt of her weight.

  Margaret crouched immediately beside her. ‘Mom, are you okay?’

  ‘I’m fine, I’m fine.’ But there were tears smearing her mother’s eyes, and as she turned to try to get up, Margaret saw the blood running down her shin from the gash on her knee. Her stocking was shredded.

  ‘Don’t try to move,’ Margaret said. ‘You’re bleeding. I’ll need to bandage it.’

  As she fumbled in her purse searching for a clean handkerchief, Margaret became aware of a crowd gathering around them. The Chinese were inveterate busybodies. They always had to know what was going on, and to see for themselves. Once a crowd began to gather, like Topsy it just grew and grew. A woman picked up Mrs. Campbell’s purse and handed it to her. Another knelt down and held her hand, gabbling away to her incomprehensibly. Margaret found a packet of antiseptic wipes and started cleaning the wound. It wasn’t deep, a graze really, but her mother winced as the antiseptic stung. Someone offered her a piece of candy, but she waved it away. There were so many people around them now, they were cutting out most of the light. Margaret pulled out a hanky – she always kept a clean one for emergencies – and tied it around the knee to stop any further bleeding. ‘It’s okay, Mom, it’s just a graze. You can try and get up now.’ And she took her mother’s arm to help her up.

  There was an immediate gasp from the crowd, and several pairs of hands drew Margaret away. One woman issued a stream of rapid-fire Mandarin into her face. Margaret had the distinct impression she was being lectured for some misdemeanour, and then she realised that’s exactly what was happening. She was pregnant. She should not even be attempting to help her mother up. The crowd was incensed.

  To Mrs. Campbell’s extreme embarrassment, she was lifted vertical by many hands and put back on her feet. Her leg buckled under her and she yelped in pain. But the crowd supported her. ‘I can’t put any weight on it,’ she called to Margaret. Her distress was clear in the tears rolling down her cheeks.

  ‘We’ll need to get a taxi,’ Margaret said, discomposed by the fact that she appeared to have lost all control of the situation.

  A small man in blue cotton trousers bunched over dirty trainers, and an overcoat several sizes too large, raised his voice above those of the other onlookers and took charge of Margaret’s mother. The crowd parted, like the Red Sea, and he led the elderly American lady through them, hobbling, to his trishaw which he had drawn up on to the sidewalk.

  Mrs. Campbell’s distress increased. ‘Margaret, he’s touching me,’ she wailed. ‘His hands are filthy, where’s he taking me?’

  Margaret hurried to take her elbow. ‘Looks like you’re getting your first ride in a trishaw, Mom.’

  He eased her up on to the padded bench seat mounted over the rear axle of his tricycle. The flimsy cotton roof had flaps extended down the back and at each side creating an enclosure which afforded at least a little protection from the weather. Margaret climbed up beside her and told him their address.

  The crowd was still gathered on the sidewalk, noisily debating events, and no doubt discussing whether or not Margaret should even be out of the house. Margaret smiled and waved her thanks. ‘Xie-xie,’ she said, and the thirty or more people gathered there burst into spontaneous applause. The driver strained sinewy old legs to get the pedals turning, and they bumped down into the cycle lane heading west.

  It was a long and arduous cycle, taking nearly forty minutes. Mrs. Campbell, pale and drawn, sat clutching her daughter’s arm. Her face was smudged and tear-stained, her hair like a bird’s nest blown from a tree in a storm. All dignity was gone, and her pride severely dented. The bleeding from her knee had stopped, but it was bruised and swelling. ‘I should never have come,’ she kept saying. ‘I knew I shouldn’t have come.’ She shuddered. ‘All those horrible people with their hands on me.’

  ‘Those “horrible” people,’ Margaret said angrily, ‘had nothing but concern for your well-being. Do you think if you’d fallen like that on a Chicago street anyone would even have stopped to ask if you were all right? Someone would almost certainly have run off with your purse. And I can just see a taxi driver stopping to give you a lift home.’

  ‘Oh, and I suppose your precious Chinese coolie is giving us a lift out of the goodness of his heart.’ Mrs. Campbell was not far from further tears.

  ‘He is not a coolie,’ Margaret said, shocked, and lowering her voice. ‘That’s a terrible thing to say.’

  When they finally reached the apartment block, the trishaw driver helped Mrs. Campbell out of the cab, waving aside Margaret’s offer of help, and insisted on taking her mother into the elevator and up to the apartment. Only when he’d got her seated in the living room did his expression of serious concentration slip, and a wide smile split his face.

  ‘Oh, my God,’ Margaret’s mother breathed. ‘Look at his teeth!’

  He had one solitary yellow peg pushing out his upper lip, and three on the bottom. Margaret was mortified and delved hurriedly into her purse to retrieve some yuan notes. ‘How much?’ she asked him. ‘Duoshao?’ He grinned and shook his head and waved his hand. ‘No, no, you must,’ Margaret insisted, and tried to push five, ten yuan notes into his hand, but he just backed away. And Margaret knew that having once refused he could not change his mind without losing face, mianzi.

  ‘Zai jian,’ he said and started for the door.

  Margaret caught his arm. ‘You have a child?’ she said.

  He looked at her blankly and she looked around the room frantically for something to convey her meaning. There was a small framed photograph on the table of Li’s niece, Xinxin. She grabbed it and pointed at Xinxin and then at the driver. ‘You have a child?’

  He frowned for a moment, perplexed, and then caught her drift. He nodded and grinned, then pointed to the photograph and shook his fi
nger, before pointing it at himself.

  ‘You have a son,’ Margaret said. And she held up the folded notes and pushed them into his hand. ‘For your son.’ And she pointed again at the photograph of Xinxin and then at him.

  Clearly he understood, for he hesitated a moment, uncertain if his pride would allow him to accept. In the end, he closed his hand around the notes and bowed solemnly. ‘Xie-xie,’ he said.

  When he had gone, Margaret went back into the living room and stood glaring at her mother, who by now was feeling very sorry for herself. ‘You never even said thank you to him,’ Margaret upbraided her.

  ‘I don’t speak the language.’

  Margaret shook her head, fury building inside her. ‘No, it’s not that. The truth is, he doesn’t count. Isn’t that right? He’s just some Chinese peasant with bad teeth.’

  ‘And an eye for a fast buck. I saw he wasn’t slow to take that wad of notes you pushed at him.’

  Margaret raised her eyes to the heavens and took a deep breath. When she had controlled the impulse to strike the woman who had brought her into this world, she said, ‘You know, there was a time when I first came here, that I saw Chinese faces as very strange, quite alien.’ She paused. ‘Now I don’t even see them as Chinese. Maybe one day you’ll feel that way too, and then you’ll see them for what they are – just people. Just like us.’

  Mrs. Campbell turned doleful eyes on her daughter. ‘In the light of my experiences to date, Margaret, that seems highly unlikely.’ And she let her head roll back on the settee and closed her eyes.

  ‘Jesus!’ Margaret hissed her frustration. ‘I wish I’d never asked you to the wedding.’

  Her mother opened eyes that brimmed with tears. ‘I wish I’d never come!’

  Chapter Seven

  I

  Li cycled up Chaoyangmen Nanxiaojie Street as the first light broke in a leaden sky. He had taken his father out for a meal the night before, and they had sat staring at each other in silence across the table as they ate. For all the hurt and misunderstanding that lay between them, they had nothing to say to each other. He had been tempted to call Margaret and suggest he drop by, but it was her first night with her mother and instinct had told him to stay well away. He would meet her soon enough at the betrothal. Instead he had gone to bed early, and risen early to be free of the atmosphere that his father had brought to the apartment. He wasn’t sure when he would get away from the office tonight, so his sister had agreed to collect the old man from Li’s apartment and take him to the Imperial Restaurant on Tiananmen Square where they had booked the room for the betrothal meeting. Li was dreading it.

  The narrow street was busy with traffic and bicycles. Braziers flared and spat sparks on the sidewalk as hawkers cooked up breakfast in great stacks of bamboo steamers for workers on the early shift. Everyone wore hats today and more muffling. Although it was perhaps a degree or two milder, the air was raw with a stinging humidity that swept in on a north wind laden with the promise of snow.

  It was too early for Mei Yuan to be peddling her jian bing on the corner of Dongzhimen Beixiaojie. Right now she would be among those hardy practitioners of tai chi, who would have gathered among the trees of Zhongshan Park as soon as it opened its gates. He would catch breakfast later.

  Lights flooded out from the offices of Section One into the dark, tree-lined Beixinqiao Santiao, as Li wheeled his bike past the red gable of the vehicle pound and chained it to the railing at the side entrance. The first officers were arriving for the day shift as the night shift drifted home for something to eat and a few hours’ sleep.

  Wu was at his desk when Li popped his head around the door of the detectives’ room. The television was on, and he was watching an early news bulletin. He jumped when Li spoke. ‘Anything new overnight?’

  ‘Oh, it’s you, Chief.’ He hurriedly turned the sound down on the television. ‘We got beat in the swimming. And didn’t do too well in the track and field either. We might just have pinched it, only the women’s three thousand metres champion failed to turn up, and the Americans took it by half a lap.’

  Li sighed. ‘I was talking about the investigation, Wu.’

  ‘Sorry, Chief. Nothing really. A lot of legwork and not much progress.’

  The door of Tao’s office opened, and Qian emerged from it clutching an armful of folders, juggling them to free a hand to switch out the light. ‘Morning, Chief.’

  ‘Qian. I thought it was a bit early for the Deputy Section Chief.’ Qian grinned and dumped the folders on his desk.

  Li was halfway up the corridor before Qian caught up with him. ‘Chief,’ he called after him, and Li stopped. ‘It’s probably nothing, but since you were interested in the break-in at that photographer’s studio, I thought you might like to know.’

  ‘What’s that?’ Li asked, his interest less than lukewarm. He continued on up the corridor. Qian followed.

  ‘I got a call from the local bureau first thing to let me know. There was another break-in again last night. Only this time Macken was there and they gave him a bit of a going over.’

  Li stopped. ‘Is he alright?’ He had a picture in his memory of Macken as a small, fragile man. It wouldn’t take much to damage him.

  ‘Just cuts and bruises, I think. The thing is, Chief, it was something very specific they were after.’ He paused, knowing he had Li’s interest now.

  ‘What?’ Li said.

  ‘The contact prints he made from the negatives they stole the night before.’

  Li scowled. He was more than interested now. ‘How the hell did they know he’d taken contact prints?’

  Qian made a tiny shrug. ‘That’s what I wondered, Chief. I mean, outside of the local bureau, and the three of us, who even knew he’d made them?’

  Li glanced at his watch and made an instant decision. ‘Let’s go see him.’

  * * *

  Macken and Yixuan lived in a small two-bedroom apartment on the tenth floor of a new tower block development in Chaoyang District. Yixuan was not at home when they arrived, and Macken showed them into his study. It was a small, untidy room, walls stuck with prints that had been pasted there for reference. The Macintosh computer on his desk was almost submerged by drifts of papers and prints and stacks of books, mostly of or about photography. A bureau pushed against one wall was stuffed to overflowing with more paperwork and rolls of exposed film. Strips of negatives hung from a length of wire strung across the window.

  ‘’Scuse the mess, folks,’ Macken said. ‘I’m gonna have to get this goddamn place cleared out before the baby arrives. It’s gonna be the nursery.’ He pulled out a pack of cigarettes. ‘You guys smoke?’ He grinned shiftily. ‘Only room she’ll let me smoke in. And only when she’s out. She says I’ve got to give up when the baby arrives. God knows why. I only smoke ’cos there’s no other way to get filtered air in this goddamn city.’

  Qian took one. Li declined, and Macken lit up. He had a bruise and swelling beneath his left eye, and a nasty graze on his forehead and cheek. Macken caught Li looking.

  ‘They threatened to do a lot worse. And, hey, I’m no hero. So I gave ’em the contacts.’

  Li said, ‘Would you be able to describe them?’

  ‘Sure, they were Chinese.’ He shrugged and grinned. ‘What can I tell you?’ His smile faded. ‘What I can’t figure is how the hell they knew I had them.’

  ‘Who else knew?’ Li asked.

  ‘Outside of me, Yixuan, and the officers from the bureau, no one. Except you guys, I guess.’ He puffed on his cigarette. ‘So when the officers from the bureau came the second time, I didn’t tell them I still had a copy. I suppose it’s safe enough to tell you.’

  ‘You made two contact sheets?’ Li said.

  ‘No. After the negatives got taken the other night I scanned the contacts into the computer.’ He searched about through the mess of papers on his desk and found a Zip disk. He held it up. ‘Brought ’em home with me, too. Wanna take a look?’

  Li nodded, and as Ma
cken loaded the file into his computer, glanced at Qian. Qian’s English was limited, and Macken’s was quickfire and very colloquial. Li wondered how Qian had managed with him on the phone the other day. ‘You following this?’

  Qian shrugged. ‘Just about.’ And, as if he had read Li’s mind, added, ‘His wife translated for us yesterday.’

  Macken brought the contact sheet on to his screen. Each photograph was tiny and difficult to interpret. ‘I can blow ’em up, one by one,’ he said. ‘Quality’s not great, but at least you can see ’em.’ With the mouse, he drew a dotted line around the first picture, hit a key and the print filled the screen. It was very grainy, but clearly a shot of a swimming pool, stained glass windows along one side, mosaic walls at either end depicting scenes from ancient China. ‘Can’t figure why anyone would want to steal this shit,’ he said. ‘I mean, they’re not even good pics. I just rattled ’em off for reference. You wanna see ’em all?’

  Li nodded, and Macken took them through each of the prints, one by one. Shots of comfortable lounge seats arranged around giant TV screens, massage rooms with one to four beds, the sauna, the communications centre with young women wearing headsets sitting at banks of computers arranged in a pentagon around a central pillar. There was a restaurant, a tepinyaki room, a conference room. In a shot of the main entrance, light falling through twenty-foot windows on to polished marble, there were five figures emerging from a doorway. Three of them, in lounge suits, looked like management types, with expensive haircuts and prosperous faces. Li could nearly smell the aftershave. A fourth was a big man who wore a tracksuit and had long hair tied back in a ponytail. A fifth, unexpectedly, was white, European or American. He looked to be a man in his sixties, abundant silver hair smoothed back from a tanned face against which his neatly cropped silver beard was starkly contrasted. He looked paunchy and well fed, but unlike the others was dressed casually, in what looked like a corduroy jacket, slacks and old brown shoes. His white shirt was open at the neck.