The Killing Room

by Peter May

  When she had taken a second shrimp, the plate went around the table and everyone else helped themselves. Margaret lifted her toasting glass and raised it towards Mei-Ling. “I’d like to propose a toast,” she said, “to Mei-Ling, for her generosity and thoughtfulness in introducing me to the delights of southern Chinese cuisine.” Mei-Ling reluctantly lifted her glass. “Gan bei,” Margaret said, and she tipped her head back and poured the foul-tasting mao tai down her throat in a single movement, banging her glass on the table.

  Mei-Ling had no option but to follow suit. Margaret saw immediately by her poorly concealed expression how much Mei-Ling disliked the toasting liquor. She had barely taken any alcohol all evening, sipping instead at her jasmine tea. Margaret guessed that Mei-Ling never drank much, if at all, and probably had little tolerance for alcohol. Now she caught Li throwing her a warning look, and she returned it with a sweet smile. One of the white-jacketed girls refilled the toasting glasses. Margaret immediately raised her glass again. “And I’d like to propose another toast to Mei-Ling, for welcoming me so warmly to Shanghai and making me feel so much at home here. Gan bei.” And she tipped the contents of the glass down her throat.

  Mei-Ling grimaced and, following Margaret’s lead, downed her replenished glass. Her fixed smile had a little less sparkle, and her eyes were already developing that glassy look as the alcohol went straight to her head. Mei-Ling’s father and brother looked at her with some concern, but Aunt Teng, more than a little inebriated herself, clapped her hands and shouted, “Bravo!”

  One of the waitresses dipped her head to speak to Aunt Teng, and the old lady quickly nodded and moved her chair closer to Margaret, creating a space which the waitress immediately filled with another chair.

  “Is someone joining us?” Margaret asked. Aunt Teng looked perplexed. Margaret pointed to the empty chair. “Someone else coming to eat?”

  Aunt Teng looked at the chair and shook her head solemnly. “No, no,” she said, but made no further attempt to explain, turning instead to her nephew and firing off some rapid observations in Shanghainese.

  Margaret decided that another toast was in order, and immediately raised her glass again to Mei-Ling, offering meaningless thanks for some unintended hospitality. “Gan bei,” she said and emptied her glass. This time a silence descended around the table.

  To Margaret’s annoyance, Li put his hand over Mei-Ling’s and said, “You don’t have to.” But Mei-Ling shook it away and lifted her glass. “Gan bei,” she said, responding to Margaret’s toast. And she, too, emptied her glass.

  Margaret saw hurt and accusing glances flicked in her direction from Jingjun and Mei-Ling’s father. They did not understand. But Margaret had drunk so much now that she did not care.

  A middle-aged man wearing a suit and thick glasses appeared from a room at the back and sat down at the table in the empty chair. Margaret glanced at him curiously, but no one else paid him any attention. A tense conversation had started up in Chinese. One of the waitresses placed a plate of what looked like white fish in front of the newcomer. Carefully, he lifted a piece with chopsticks which had been laid out for him, and put it in his mouth. He chewed slowly, thoughtfully, for nearly half a minute, before he nodded his satisfaction and swallowed the fish over. Then he stood up, making a small bow, and left the room. Still the others were in deep conversation. It was not until there was a momentary lull that Margaret was able to ask Aunt Teng who the man had been. At first she seemed confused. “What man?” she asked.

  “The one who sat beside you and ate the fish,” Margaret said.

  “He is a taster,” Jingjun said. “This fish . . .” he spun the Lazy Susan around to Margaret, “if it is not prepared correctly, is highly poisonous.” All his earlier warmth towards Margaret had gone. “It is his job to taste the fish before we eat it.”

  Margaret was horrified. “And what if it wasn’t prepared correctly?”

  “He will die, and we will not eat the fish,” Jingjun said matter-of-factly. “Please try some.”

  They were all looking at her now. She looked at the fish. It appeared innocuous enough, and the taster had walked out in one piece. “How long before the poison acts?” Margaret asked.

  “Oh, about fifteen minutes,” Mei-Ling said quickly, and Margaret saw that she was holding on to the edge of the table. Margaret also realised that the taster had been gone for less than five minutes. Was this Mei-Ling’s revenge?

  “Go ahead,” Jingjun said. “It is very good.”

  There was absolute silence around the table as, reluctantly, Margaret lifted a piece of the fish with her chopsticks. With a picture indelibly forming in her mind of the taster lying writhing in agony behind the door to the back room, locked in his death-throes, she forced herself to put it into her mouth. To her surprise it was soft and full of flavour and slightly aromatic. She smiled and nodded. “It is good.”

  Again she was in time to catch Mei-Ling’s disappointment. And this time Margaret lifted her beer glass. Mei-Ling’s was full and untouched. Margaret said, “I drink a toast to Mei-Ling for being so thoughtful in letting me taste this wonderful delicacy.” She heard her own words slurring slightly. “Gan bei.” She raised her glass to her lips and slowly poured the remains of her glass down her throat. She felt the alcohol “hit” that the beer carried in its bubbles, and that sense of euphoria returned.

  Mei-Ling sat staring at her for a long time. She could not refuse the toast without suffering extreme loss of face. Everyone knew now what the game was here. She lifted the beer and started to drink in a series of small gulps. She managed about half the glass before she gagged. Once, then again. And then suddenly she put a hand to her mouth and fled from the table to a toilet somewhere through the back. In the silence they could all hear her retching. The sound of it almost made Margaret gag, too. But she remained brittlely in control, sitting very upright, enjoying a brief moment of victory and trying to stop the room from spinning.

  II

  He did not want to fight in the taxi. There was no point in creating a spectacle for some curious taxi-driver. So he sat in silence, nursing his wrath to keep it warm. Margaret, apparently, was oblivious. She was sitting staring straight ahead, her hand clutching the grip on the door. Drunk, and trying very hard not to show it.

  Mei-Ling had not reappeared, and Li’s embarrassment had been acute as he expressed his gratitude to the stony-faced Jingjun and his father when he and Margaret left. Aunt Teng had either not noticed the gan bei episode or been too drunk to care. She had wished them both fond farewells, reminding Li again how luck and good fortune would be with him all his life.

  He reflected now on how both appeared to have deserted him tonight.

  When they reached the Peace Hotel, Li followed Margaret through the revolving doors and along the hall to the elevators. She was walking quickly, but carefully, and with a sense that if she relaxed for a moment she might fall over. As they stepped into the elevator she seemed surprised to see him. “Aren’t you going back to your hotel?” she said, over-enunciating her words.

  “Later,” he said. “Right now we need to talk.”

  She fumbled with the key at her door before he took it from her and opened it, slipping the key into its wall-holder to activate the lights. Only one bedside lamp was switched on. As he closed the door she turned to face him, steeling herself. He turned from the door, and she swung her clenched fist through the air and caught him high on the face, just below his left eye. “You bastard!” she hissed.

  He staggered back, more in surprise than from the blow. “What the hell . . .”

  She was shaking her hand, clenching and unclenching her fist. “Jesus, that hurt!” Then she glared at him. “The only thing that bitch was trying to do was humiliate me, and you were just going to let her do it.”

  Li rubbed at his cheekbone and felt it swelling already. He would be sporting a bruise there tomorrow. “She didn’t have to humiliate you,” he said levelly. “You did a perfectly good job of that yours
elf.”

  “Is that so?” She put a hand on the wall to steady herself. “Crabs’ private parts. Wild cats. Eggs in horse’s piss. Deep fried ants. Live shrimp. Poison fish . . . You trying to tell me she didn’t know what any of these would mean to a Western palate?”

  Li glared at her. He knew perfectly well what Mei-Ling had been doing. He did not understand what had prompted the instant loathing between her and Margaret, nor did he approve. But whatever Mei-Ling had started, Margaret had taken too far. “It was just a bit of fun,” he said, and knew how lame that sounded.

  “Yeah, like you saw me laughing,” Margaret slurred.

  Li shook his head. “Your trouble is you just don’t know when to stop. It wasn’t Mei-Ling you hurt, it was her family.”

  “Her family!” Margaret’s voice rose in righteous indignation. “She was the one who was using her family to get at me. Sure, I feel sorry for them. They were nice people. But the meal was her idea. And all that horoscope shit. All that stuff about you and me being incompatible, and you and she being made for each other. She had all that planned. She was trying to make me feel like I didn’t belong. Like you and I had no future.” Her lip began to tremble. “And you know what, Li Yan? She damn well succeeded!”

  She turned away to hide her emotion, to conceal her weakness, and she stumbled and almost fell, clutching at thin air for something to hold her up. He grabbed her quickly to stop her falling, and she turned on him, fists balled up and pummelling his chest and his face.

  “I only ever stayed in China because of you.” Only now did she weep. “I only came back because of you.” Although there was no force in the blows, he still struggled to grasp her wrists and stop her. She turned her tear-stained face up to him. “I love you, Li Yan, and you’ve only got eyes for Mei-Ling. Touching her, looking at her, laughing with her. You couldn’t even pick me up at the airport. If I had the faintest idea where home was I’d go running back there right now. But you’ve taken that from me, too.”

  All his guilt came flooding back. “Margaret, it is not like that. We are working together, that is all.”

  “If you believe that,” Margaret sobbed, “if you think she’s not after you, then you’re even more naïve than I thought.”

  He looked into her blue, tear-blurred eyes, and saw the red blotches around them on her pale cheeks. He felt her body pressed hard against his where he had pulled her against himself to restrain her. And he felt himself growing hard against her as all the passion and anger and guilt found focus in the lust she had always provoked in him. He lowered his face to hers and kissed her. At first she tried to fight it, struggling to free herself from his grasp, but her resistance was short-lived, and he felt her yielding, growing limp, a sudden hunger in her mouth as she opened it to his. Her arms wound around his neck as he lifted her and carried her to the bed, still devouring her with his mouth. And then their passion simply took them both, fingers finding buttons and clasps, clothes flung to the floor. He felt the heat of her flesh against his, the hardness of her nipples as he took them in his mouth, each in turn. Then their lips were together again, and he felt her guiding him into her, and then thrusting against him, wanting to consume him, to hold him to her and not let go for fear of losing him. He gave in totally, then, to his lust, realising how much he had missed this, how much he loved making love to this woman. All the anger and frustrations of their relationship found resolve in this simple act. He felt her teeth sharp on his chest, her fingers digging into his back, her legs locked around his hips, urging him ever deeper, ever faster until, finally, spent, they lay panting side by side. He turned and saw the sweat glistening on her face, and rolled her into the crook of his arm, so that her head rested on his chest, her hair fanned out across him. He closed his eyes and realised that nothing had been resolved at all, except for their animal passion. It felt good and right to hold her like this, to feel her breath on his skin. But it didn’t change anything. It didn’t make their relationship any easier, or banish the feelings that Mei-Ling had aroused in him. He wanted to tell her he loved her, but he no longer knew if it was true. Then he became aware of her slow, shallow breathing and realised that she was asleep, and that he was spared from having to say anything.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  I

  The campus of the Shanghai Medical University sat behind high grey walls to the left and right of Dong’an Road, a jumble of mostly two-storey buildings linked by tree-lined private roads. Here students walked and cycled free of the traffic that choked the city streets outside, and a blink of late autumn sunshine lifted spirits otherwise destined for winter decline.

  Li and Mei-Ling had driven here in silence. She had greeted him brightly enough at his hotel, putting a brave face on a disastrous night. No reference was made to Margaret, or the drink, or the food—or the bruise on Li’s cheek. But Mei-Ling was pale and fragile. She had, she said, arranged for them to meet Jiang Baofu’s course professor at the medical university. And little else had passed between them since.

  Professor Lu was a broad man with a wide, flat face and narrow slanted eyes. His thick accent betrayed origins in north-west China. He wore a white coat open over a dusty cardigan and baggy pants, and on the rare occasions when he removed the cigarette from between his lips, he waved it around with nicotine-stained fingers. “Jiang Baofu?” He breathed smoke at Li and Mei-Ling. “A brilliant student.” He shuffled papers absently on the desk in his small office. Sun slanted in between the slats of Venetian blinds and lit his smoke in blue wedges. “In all the years I have been teaching, I cannot recall a student with more natural ability. He handles a scalpel as if he was born with one in his hand. If he chose to he could become one of the top surgeons in the country.” He paused and raised his eyes from his papers. “I hope he doesn’t.”

  Li frowned. “Why?”

  “Because that young man is more concerned with the dead than with the living.”

  “How do you mean?”

  “I mean that he has an unhealthy obsession with death. Here, we try to instil in our students a sense of caring, a sense of obligation to the well-being of the patient.” He flicked a cold glance at Mei-Ling. “Even if we do not always succeed.”

  Li glanced at Mei-Ling, confused now by a subtext he did not understand. There had been a certain familiarity in the greeting between Mei-Ling and Professor Lu which, Li assumed, had been established in a telephone call to arrange the meeting. Now, it was clear, there was more to it. But Mei-Ling remained impassive.

  “In the case of Jiang Baofu,” Professor Lu continued, “he has no interest whatsoever in the patient, only in the mechanics of the body and the techniques of surgery. He spends hours in pathology, cutting up bodies donated to research. We have tried to persuade him that his talents might best be suited to the field of forensic pathology.” He gave Li a look that suggested little sympathy, and said with a tone, “I’m sure he would be an asset to you people.” He lit another cigarette from the remains of his old one. “However, sadly he still remains undecided.”

  “Surely,” Li said, “if he is so talented, his skills would be best used in the service of the living?”

  The professor squinted at him through his smoke. “Tell me, Detective, would you rather have a doctor whose technique was impeccable, or one who actually cared about whether you lived or died?” But he did not wait for Li’s response. “I know which I would choose.”

  “You don’t like him much, then?” Mei-Ling said in a tone laced with sarcasm.

  “Actually, I can’t stand to be near the boy,” the professor said bluntly. “He is . . .” and he thought about it for a moment, “uniquely and unremittingly unlikeable. I cannot think of anyone who likes him, staff or students. You never see him in the company of others. In the canteen he always sits alone.” He shrugged. “What more can I tell you? I would describe him as abnormally brilliant, but I think abnormal would suffice.” He pulled apart the Venetian blinds to let the sunlight fall upon his face. For a moment he closed his e
yes, as if basking in its warmth. Then abruptly he let the blinds snap shut. “But don’t take my word for it. Ask his professor of pathology. Dr. MacGowan is a visiting lecturer from the United States. Jiang idolises him. But I think the good American doctor could quite happily strangle him.” Professor Lu grinned as some private thought flashed through his mind.

  “May we speak to Dr. MacGowan?” Li asked.

  “Of course. If you can speak English.”

  “I could see that goddamn kid far enough, you know what I mean?” MacGowan dragged his attention away from the corpse that lay cut open on the table in front of him and looked up at Li and Mei-Ling. “This doesn’t bother you, does it? I mean, I guess you people have seen plenty of stuff like this. I’m sorry if this one’s a bit ripe.”

  “Sure,” Li said. “It is not a problem” But you never got used to the perfume of rotting human flesh. He glanced at Mei-Ling and saw that, if anything, she was paler than when she’d arrived at the hotel. You needed a strong stomach for this sort of thing at the best of times. And for Mei-Ling, this was not the best of times.

  She caught Li’s look. “I am fine,” she said.

  There were five other bodies laid out on tables in this large, overlit room, each in various stages of decay and dissection. The doctor’s students, first-year novices, were due in five minutes to pick up from an earlier session.