Snakehead tct-4

by Peter May

  Six refrigerated semitrailer rentals stood in a row on the tarmac outside the hangar doors. Four of them had sixteen bodies stacked inside on a double tier of makeshift plywood staging. The other two contained seventeen. Two teams of two from the Office of the Armed Forces Medical Examiner had worked late into the night removing the bodies from the container that had been brought down from Huntsville. Each body had been assigned a number, marked in black on a six-inch yellow plastic placard placed next to it, then individually and collectively photographed. They had been examined for gross injuries or blood and assessed for rigor mortis. Core body temperatures had been taken by making tiny incisions in the upper right abdomen and inserting a chef’s type thermometer into the livers. Finally, each foot had been tagged with the same number as the yellow placard, then zippered into a white body bag, with the corresponding number tied on to the zipper’s pull tag. Stacked in rows in the refrigerated semitrailers, they now awaited the full process of US autopsy procedure. It was not the America these Chinese migrants had dreamed of.

  Margaret walked briskly through the hangar, blinking in the fierce glare of the 500-watt halogen floodlamps that illuminated the nearly twenty stations that had been set up along one side. Plastic sheeting stretched across tubular frames formed partitions between them. Twelve of the stations were purely for autopsy. Mobile tables had been wheeled into each, plastic buckets hanging below drainers to catch body fluids. Other stations were dedicated to ancillary procedures like the collection and review of personal effects, fingerprinting, dental examination, total body x-ray. Opposite the stations, tables had been set up with computers for recording their findings. Each table was manned by at least three assistants, two of whom were earmarked to help with the work in the station. The sounds of voices and the hum of computers echoed around the vast corrugated space.

  It always struck Margaret as ironic that it took so much time, money and effort simply to record the passing of life. The human obsession with death. Perhaps, she thought, we imagined that by examining it in all its guises we might one day find a way of defeating it.

  ‘Dr. Campbell, good morning.’ Steve stepped across to greet her from the station he had been allocated. ‘Fine day for wielding the knife.’ He waved an arm around the hangar. ‘Spectacular set-up you have here.’

  ‘I think I gave you permission to call me Margaret,’ Margaret said.

  Steve’s eyebrows, behind the anonymity of his surgical mask, were still animated. ‘So you did. I was just being polite — in case you’d forgotten.’

  They cut bizarre figures in this NASA hangar in their green surgical gowns and plastic aprons, shower caps, masks and goggles.

  ‘Are we about ready yet?’ he asked.

  ‘First bodies are coming through the line now.’

  Steve’s grin stretched his mask across his face. ‘See you at lunch, then.’ And he headed back to his autopsy station.

  In spite of the face she had put on for Steve, Margaret was filled with apprehension. There was an encounter today she could not avoid, a confrontation with the man she wished she could hate, but knew she still loved. She turned toward autopsy station number one and felt her hackles rise at the sight of Hrycyk standing by the table waiting for her. He wore a surgical gown over tee-shirt, jeans and trainers and looked ridiculous with a green plastic shower cap pulled down on his head.

  He glanced at his gown. ‘Came prepared,’ he said. A body bag was wheeled past on a gurney destined for autopsy further down the line. He grinned. ‘I guess that’s what you’d call a Chinese take-out.’

  Margaret walked briskly into her station. ‘You’re a very sick man, Agent Hrycyk.’

  He was quite unabashed. ‘So I’ve been told.’

  Margaret spread out a cloth of gleaming knives on a stainless steel side table, and lifted the French chef’s knife that she used as her main cutting tool. ‘I’ll look forward to opening you up one day to find out why,’ she said.

  II

  Li was met by Fuller at Houston Hobby airport. It was the first time he had met the FBI agent, although they had spoken on the telephone. And it was his first time in Texas, although he had been in the United States for almost a year. They shook hands warmly on the concourse and Fuller took him out to the short-term car park where he had left his Chrysler Jeep.

  ‘Li Yan,’ he said, as if trying out the name for size. ‘I hear you guys have your family name come first.’

  ‘That’s right,’ Li said.

  ‘So that would make you, uh, Mr. Li, or Agent Li, or whatever?’

  ‘Just plain “Li” is fine.’

  ‘Uh, okay. But if I was to call you by your first name it would be Yan, right?’

  ‘If you wished to be familiar,’ Li said, ‘you would call me Li Yan.’

  ‘Oh. Right.’ Fuller glanced at him. ‘Your English is pretty good.’

  Li had lost count of the number of times he had been told this, as if it was an extraordinary thing that a Chinese could speak English as well as an American. But it was his job to foster good relations between US and Chinese law enforcement agencies, and so he was always polite. ‘I was taught by my uncle from an early age,’ he said. ‘And then I spent time in Hong Kong with the British police before the handover. I also spent some time in Chicago where I learned some interesting new vocabulary.’

  ‘Like what?’ Fuller asked.

  ‘Like “motherfucker”, and “shithead”.’

  ‘Hey!’ Fuller laughed. ‘You almost sound like a native.’

  Li had learned long ago that it amused people when you could swear in their language.

  Fuller negotiated a network of roads leading through a forest of advertising billboards out on to Highway 45, where they turned south for the short trip to Ellington Field. ‘So…’ he said. ‘Criminal justice liaison. What kind of job is that exactly?’

  ‘Just what it sounds like,’ Li said. ‘I provide a bridge between the criminal justice organisations of both our countries. And I make myself available to help in any investigations that your people have on-going that may have Chinese involvement. Drugs, people-smuggling, computer fraud, that sort of thing.’

  ‘I guess,’ Fuller said, ‘you probably have your hands full just trying to keep track of the number of law enforcement agencies we have here in the US.’

  Li allowed himself a tiny smile. ‘When I bring senior Chinese police officers to the United States to meet with senior American police officers, the Chinese are outnumbered around ten to one. My people cannot understand why you need so many agencies: the Justice Department, the FBI, the INS, the DEA, the Secret Service, the NSA…When your people come to my country it is a one-stop shop.’

  Fuller laughed. ‘I like your sense of humour, Li.’

  Li said, straight-faced, ‘I did not know I was being funny.’ Although he did. But now Fuller wasn’t quite sure. So he changed the subject.

  ‘You know about what’s going down here in Houston?’

  ‘Ninety-eight dead Chinese found in a truck. Almost certainly renshe, illegal immigrants. Autopsies begin today.’

  ‘Ren…what? What d’you call them?’

  ‘Renshe. Human snakes. It is the name we give to smuggled Chinese, because of their ability to wriggle past tight border controls.’

  The FBI man nodded. ‘Right.’ He paused. ‘The thing is, Li, this is starting to get embarrassing.’ Fuller flicked a wary glance in Li’s direction. ‘Now it’s not my job to get into the politics of all this, but folks in Washington are unhappy at the number of incidents where Chinese illegals—renshe—are turning up dead on boats in American waters and trucks on American soil. It’s been on the increase since all those people died when the Golden Venture sank off New York nearly ten years ago. Your people were supposed to be doing something about it. But the numbers just keep going up and up.’

  ‘There has been a huge campaign against illegal immigration in China,’ Li said, without any hint of defensiveness. ‘As soon as we arrest the little snakehe
ads, others take their place. It is the big snakeheads, the ones who finance the traffic, that we need to catch. Like Big Sister Ping in New York. You cannot kill the snake without first cutting off its head.’

  ‘And how do you propose we do that?’

  ‘Most of the Chinese immigrants now come in from Mexico,’ Li said. ‘Houston is the hub. From here they fan out all over the rest of the country. Since we cut off the supply of money from New York, it might be fair to assume that the operation is now being financed out of here.’

  ‘That’s quite an assumption.’

  ‘It is somewhere to start,’ Li said.

  The roads on either side of the freeway were thick with billboards raised on single stalks advertising everything from adult movies and massage parlours to used cars and ice-cream. Tiny flags fluttered in great profusion over sprawling used-car lots, and enterprising people sold hardware out of what looked like wooden shacks. They turned east off the freeway, and the rising sun shone straight in their eyes. Fuller flicked down his visor and snapped on a pair of sleek wraparound sun-glasses that gave him a slightly sinister air. He turned and grinned at Li. ‘Almost mandatory now for any self-respecting FBI agent. Kind of inscrutable, huh?’ And then he remembered that’s how they always described the Chinese. ‘Uh, no offence,’ he added quickly.

  Li smiled. ‘None taken.’

  ‘Just about there,’ Fuller said. The road took them through small clusters of single-storey housing, past green watered lawns and stands of shady trees. On their left Pete’s BBQ House advertised boiled crawfish as its speciality. ‘You’ll meet INS Agent Hrycyk. He’s an ass, but unfortunately we’re going to have to work with him. He, uh…’ Fuller glanced nervously again in Li’s direction, ‘…he doesn’t much like Chinese.’

  Li shrugged, ‘I have been here long enough, Agent Fuller, to know that a lot of people don’t much like Chinese.’

  Fuller nodded, embarrassed, glad that he could hide behind the shades. ‘You’ll also meet the Chief Medical Examiner. Attractive enough, but I don’t figure any of us are going to like her much. She’s a real hard case. Dr. Margaret Campbell.’

  Li felt as if he had just left his insides somewhere back on the road, and his heart was beating so hard he was sure Fuller must be able to hear it. But apart from a slight colouring of his high, wide cheekbones, not a trace of it showed on his face.

  III

  In spite of the air-con, Margaret was perspiring under the heat of the halogen lamps. The body lying face down on the table in front of her was a pale jaundice colour, almost hairless. She was working her way through the external examination, shouting out brief sporadic observations for the assistant at the table to tap into the computer. She would write a full report later and fill out the avalanche of paperwork that would have to go with it.

  The knuckles of the subject were severely bruised where, she assumed, frantic attempts had been made to break out of the container. Several of the fingernails were torn and had bled. Dried blood was clotted around the nail beds, and there were smears of blood on the notebook and pencil that had been found with the body. She had identified petechial haemorrhaging around the eyes and in the mouth. She expected to find the same on the surfaces of some of the chest organs. Fingertips, toes and lips were tinged with blue.

  ‘So what does it all mean?’ Hrycyk asked. He had been watching the process carefully and listening to every word. ‘Petechial haemorrhaging…what is that?’

  ‘Pinpoint haemorrhages where tiny blood vessels have burst,’ Margaret said. She sighed. ‘On the face of it, it looks like you might have been right, Agent. The haemorrhaging, along with the blue tinging on the fingers, toes and lips, are all consistent with suffocation. But I’m not about to commit myself just yet.’

  ‘You don’t have to,’ Hrycyk said. ‘I already examined the air intake on the container.’

  ‘So did I.’

  He looked faintly surprised. ‘So you’ll know it was closed?’

  ‘I know it was closed when I examined it.’

  ‘Jesus, you people never want to commit, do you?’

  ‘Oh, I’ll commit alright,’ Margaret snapped. ‘Murder, if you don’t get out of my face.’

  Margaret then turned her attention to a tiny bruise and pinprick in the semi-lunar fold of the left buttock, on the medial aspect, almost at the point where the left met the right.

  Hrycyk’s eagle eye was on to it immediately. ‘What is it?’

  ‘Looks like an injection site.’

  Hrycyk frowned. ‘You mean he was taking drugs or something? Injecting himself?’

  Margaret tutted her irritation. ‘Have you ever tried injecting yourself in the buttock?’

  Hrycyk made an effort to picture it. But his imagination came up with a blank. ‘Can’t say I have.’

  ‘And it’s a single puncture mark, so clearly not a regular occurrence. And very recent. Probably within the last twenty-four hours.’

  ‘So what was he injected with?’

  ‘I have no idea. But tox might tell us when we get the results back.’

  ‘How long?’

  ‘Ask Major Cardiff. His people are doing all the toxicology.’

  ‘Dr. Campbell…’ Fuller’s voice separated itself out from the racket beyond Margaret’s autopsy station. Someone, somewhere, was playing rock music very loudly. Some pathologists Margaret knew could only work with music playing, as if somehow the music could drown out the heightened sense of mortality that always seemed to accompany a body on a slab. She turned. Fuller said, ‘This is the criminal justice liaison at the Chinese Embassy in Washington.’

  Margaret found herself staring at an oddly alien figure standing awkwardly at the entrance to her station, next to a wary-looking Agent Fuller. She had forgotten how Chinese Li looked after a separation. When she had been with him, she never noticed. He was just Li Yan. The man she made love to. The man she talked and laughed and cried with. Now he was a stranger. A tall, strongly built Chinese man with a square-topped crewcut, and big ugly features that she had once grown to love. She had traced every contour of them with her fingers. He wore a simple white cotton shirt that fitted loosely across his broad chest and shoulders, and was tucked into the narrow waistband of dark, pleated slacks. She had forgotten how beautifully clothes hung on the Chinese frame.

  They stood, simply staring at each other, for a prodigious amount of time. ‘Hello, Li Yan,’ she said finally.

  ‘You know each other?’ Fuller asked, amazed. Li had given no indication of it.

  ‘Yes,’ Li said. And he knew that Fuller was wondering if he had spoken out of turn about her in the car. But he didn’t take his eyes off Margaret for a minute. The icy sensation in his chest was almost painful. How often had he seen her like this? Hidden behind the mask and the goggles, almost every inch of her covered by cotton or plastic. Except for the gap between the tops of her gloves and the short-sleeved gown. And he saw the freckles there on pale skin, the down of soft, fair hair. He wanted to touch her so much it hurt.

  The momentary spell was broken by the almost brutal way that Margaret turned over the body on the table. ‘Mr. Li and I met when I assisted the Beijing police during a couple of murder enquiries. He was deputy head of their Serious Crime Squad.’ Her voice was cold and controlled. ‘I’m glad you’re here,’ she said. ‘Since none of us read Chinese, maybe you can tell us what it was this man was writing in his diary.’

  Li looked at the body in front of him for the first time, and it felt for a moment as if the world had stopped turning. He put a hand on the end of the table to steady himself. ‘Wang,’ he said, his voice almost a whisper.

  ‘You know this guy?’ Hrycyk asked, incredulous.

  ‘Wang.’ Li’s voice cracked as he said the name again. ‘Detective Wang Wei Pao. Senior supervisor, class three, Tianjin Municipal Police.’ He paused. ‘I didn’t really know him. I briefed him.’

  Margaret saw that Li was affected by this man’s death and immediately regretted her c
allousness. She had spent her life regretting the things she did and said, and the hurt she inflicted on the people she loved.

  ‘So what the hell was a Tianjin cop doing on that truck?’ Hrycyk demanded to know, untouched by the moment.

  ‘He was working undercover,’ Li said, regaining some degree of composure. He saw Fuller and Hrycyk exchange glances. ‘An operation we mounted more than six months ago. He volunteered for the job, and he was ideal for it. He was born in Fujian Province, which is the departure point for most of the illegal immigrants. He spoke the dialect. It was easy for him to make contact with a local snakehead and get the next boat out.’ He remembered Wang’s enthusiasm. He was fed up with the routine in Tianjin, his marriage had broken down and he’d been looking for something else to fill his life. ‘He phoned us whenever he could, under the pretence of phoning home. And he posted several reports, so we were able to follow his progress. But we never knew that it would take so long.’ He paused for a moment. ‘Or that it would end like this.’

  ‘Wait a minute,’ Fuller said. ‘Are you telling me you people mounted a unilateral operation here, without keeping us informed?’ He looked at Hrycyk. ‘Did the INS know about this?’

  ‘We sure as hell did not.’ Hrycyk glared at Li as if he was the embodiment of everything he hated about the Chinese.