The Runner (The China Thrillers 5)

by Peter May

  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 squeez
ed 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.’

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