The Killing Room

by Peter May

  Jiang was caught by surprise. “What?”

  So was Mei-Ling. Li was aware of her glancing at him. But he pressed on. “I mean, what did you do during the holiday? Were you working?”

  Jiang made a great show of thinking about this for a bit. “No . . .” he said at last. “No . . . last Spring Festival I went home for the holidays. Yeah, I’m sure that was last winter.”

  “So the Medical University would be closed for what—a month?” Li looked to Mei-Ling for confirmation.

  She nodded. “Usually a month.”

  He turned back to Jiang. “So you were at your grandparents’ home at Yanqing through most of February.” The body of the girl Margaret had just re-examined in Beijing had been found mid-February, and had only been in the ground for about a week.

  Jiang nodded hesitantly. “Yeah, I guess.”

  “And that’s how far from Beijing? Under an hour by rail?”

  “It’s pretty close.”

  “So you could go into town after breakfast to do a bit of shopping, have some Beijing duck at lunchtime and be home in time for dinner?”

  Jiang laughed. “You could. If you were mad.”

  “Or even stay overnight at your sister’s.”

  Jiang’s smile faded. “I haven’t seen my sister in years.”

  “So you didn’t go visit her last Spring Festival?”

  “No, I didn’t.”

  “How often did you go into Beijing?”

  “Never.”

  “Never?” Li was incredulous. “You were home for a whole month and you never went into the city once?”

  “What would I go into Beijing for? I don’t know anyone there except for my sister, and she and I don’t get on.”

  “So you stayed at home the whole time?”

  “Didn’t I just say that? Hey, do I get a prize? You know, like one of these quiz shows on TV, if I answer all your questions?”

  “There are no prizes for fulfilling your obligations as a citizen,” Mei-Ling said. “It is your duty to co-operate.”

  “Well, that’s what I’m doing, isn’t it?” Jiang held his hands out, appealing for sympathy. “And, hey, listen, I don’t hold it against you guys. I know you’ve got a job to do.”

  But Li was not going to be deflected. “What did you do at home that month?” he asked.

  Jiang shrugged. “I studied, watched TV, saw some friends . . .”

  “And your grandparents would be able to verify that?”

  “Sure. But, listen, don’t go bothering them. They’ll just get worried about me.”

  Li sat back and looked at the young man thoughtfully. Apparently he had all the answers, his confidence unshakeable. For a brief moment Li had thought he had made a connection. But if Jiang’s story checked out, they would be no further forward. He began to feel a sense of despondency creeping over him.

  Li’s sense of despondency increased at the detectives’ meeting. The room was packed and hot and filled with smoke, and not much else. The proceedings were all conducted under the brooding eye of the sullen Section Chief Huang who sat in his accustomed seat with his back to the window so that Li could not see his face clearly. The investigation was not going well and everyone knew it. The atmosphere in the room was tense.

  Li had just started briefing the detectives on the results of Margaret’s re-examination of the body in Beijing when there was a sharp rap at the door, and it opened to reveal the tall, uniformed figure of Procurator General Yue. There was an almost audible intake of breath. It was unheard of for a Procurator General to attend a detectives’ briefing meeting. “As you were, Detectives,” he said, and he closed the door behind him and pulled up a chair beside Huang. He sat down and crossed his arms, and in the silence that followed his eyes found Li’s. His expression was grim. “Carry on, Deputy Section Chief,” he said. Li took a moment or two to collect himself and then continued.

  He led them through all the evidence to date: the conclusions of the autopsies, the four victims so far identified, Margaret’s re-examination of the body in Beijing and the possibility that x-rays of her teeth might lead to her identification. He went over the interviews he and Mei-Ling had conducted with Jiang Baofu’s course tutors, the interview with the caretaker at his apartment block, the search of his apartment. Everyone around the table agreed that there were more than sufficient grounds to regard Jiang Baofu with great suspicion, but no evidence whatsoever that tied him to the killings. “The best hope we have,” Li said, “of connecting him in any way is by establishing that he was in Beijing at the time the girl we found there was murdered. We know he was at home at Yanqing at that time. He claims he never went into the capital. If his grandparents confirm that, then we’ve reached another dead end. If not, then we’ve got every reason to lean hard on him.”

  The most exciting development, he told them, was the description given them by the husband of the murdered acrobat, of a man who she had told him was following her. Li repeated the description for them of the long, greasy hair, the Mongolian features, the protruding teeth and the scarred hare-lip. “She saw this man on several occasions, in different locations, in the days before she disappeared. She was concerned enough to tell her husband about it and describe the man for him. There is a very strong possibility that this is the man who seized her. That he had been watching and waiting for his opportunity. And if this is the case, then others might have seen him, too, before they disappeared.”

  Mei-Ling said, “We need to distribute this description among the families of all the missing women whose files we’ve pulled so far. Some of them might just have reported seeing him. Another couple of confirmations would start to establish a pattern, and might also help us identify more of the victims. It certainly doesn’t sound like he trained as a surgeon, but he might be the grab man.”

  The meeting broke up in slightly more optimistic mood than it had begun, but it was clear that morale was beginning to suffer at the lack of any real progress. As Li gathered his papers together he watched Huang and the Procurator General exchange a few words, then Huang hurried out, his head down. Mei-Ling said to Li, “I’ll catch you later,” and dashed out after him.

  The room emptied and the smoke began to clear, drawn out into the corridor, as if it, too, were anxious to escape the impending storm. Li and the Procurator General faced each other across the width of the table. The Procurator General stood up, very slowly and deliberately, and closed the door. He remained standing by it. Li lit a cigarette and waited while the older man chose his words with care. “Four identifications. A sketchy description of a man with a hare-lip. A medical student who cannot be connected to the crime.” Very succinctly he had summed up the limited extent of the investigation so far. “Not much to show for five days’ work and the entire resources of Section Two at your disposal,” he said.

  “These things take time, Procurator General Yue,” Li said.

  “Time,” Yue said, “is not on your side, Deputy Section Chief.” He raised one eyebrow as if to underline his point. “In fact, time is very much your enemy. The Mayor requested that you lead this investigation in the hope that you could bring it to a speedy conclusion. You chose to embarrass his administration by contradicting the press statement issued the day after the discovery of the bodies. And you have since failed to come up with a credible alternative. Our silence is becoming the subject of much speculation in the American media. The Mayor is not happy.”

  If he had not realised it before, Li knew then that he had been handed a poisoned chalice. “Perhaps, Procurator General, in such a high-profile case as this, it would be more appropriate for the investigation to be taken over by your department.” Li saw the Procurator General’s expression harden. It was not without precedent for the investigation of sensitive cases to be handled by the Procurator General’s office. But the last thing that Procurator General Yue would want was to have the poisoned chalice passed on to him. He understood immediately that Li was, in effect, telling him to back off—unless he w
ished to have the investigation landed on his own desk. And he realised he had underestimated Li’s political acumen, something that might also have surprised Margaret. This was not someone who would be easily intimidated.

  The Procurator General glared at Li. Now he would have to find an exit line that would allow him to leave without loss of face. Li had just made an enemy. “If the Mayor had thought that appropriate, then I have no doubt that is the course he would have followed,” he said. “However, he and his policy adviser have chosen to put faith in you, Deputy Section Chief, and the reputation which precedes you. I am quite certain they would not like to be proven wrong in that choice.” He forced his lips into a smile that found no echo in his eyes. “I look forward to hearing that real progress has been made in the very near future.” He made his exit then, dignity intact and leaving Li with a sick, sinking feeling in his gut.

  Other officers avoided Li’s eye as he walked down the corridor. They knew that he had been involved in some kind of confrontation with the Procurator General, and they did not want any part of it. Li stopped outside the door of Section Chief Huang’s office. It stood half open, and he could see Huang standing grim-faced by his desk, Mei-Ling next to him talking earnestly. Li could not hear what they were saying. Mei-Ling touched her boss’s hand lightly, and put her other hand on his arm. There was something so strangely and casually intimate in this that Li immediately felt a restriction in his throat, and his heart quickened. He realised that what he felt was jealousy. The same feeling, although he did not know it, that Margaret had experienced when she saw Mei-Ling touch his hand in almost the same way.

  Mei-Ling turned towards the door, and Li started guiltily along the corridor, as if he had been caught in some illicit act of voyeurism. He heard Mei-Ling exiting from Huang’s office behind him and then her footsteps hurrying in pursuit. “Li Yan,” she called, and he half-turned, trying to appear natural. She fell into step beside him and lowered her voice. “Huang Tsuo’s just had word from the hospital. They’re sending his wife home. Reading between the lines, I think they’re expecting her to die there.”

  Li felt an odd sense of relief. It was sympathy he had witnessed, not intimacy. And then he immediately felt guilt at the thought that news of a woman’s approaching death had prompted him only to feel relief. “Will that put you in charge during his absence?” he asked.

  Mei-Ling shook her head. “He won’t take time off. Not while this investigation’s on-going. Apparently he’s employing a nurse to look after her.”

  Li wondered briefly why Huang felt it necessary to remain in situ while his wife was dying. After all, he was only nominally heading the investigation. In truth, while he may have had a watching brief, he had had virtually no involvement in it.

  They turned into Li’s office and found the young forensics officer who had attended the autopsies waiting by the window. He was cleaning his gold-rimmed spectacles with a white handkerchief, and staring blindly out at the apartment blocks opposite. He turned as they entered, hurriedly pushing his spectacles back on his nose. His green uniform looked faintly rumpled, and the ubiquitous stubble still clung to his jaw. He pulled a folder from under his arm and thrust it towards Li. “That’s my final report on the search of Jiang Baofu’s apartment,” he said. Li still remembered the look on the officer’s face when Margaret had asked him to slip his hand inside the degloved skin of the seamstress’s hand to take her fingerprints. “I don’t think you’ll find it any more helpful than my initial verbal,” he said.

  Li took it and dropped it on his desk. “Thanks,” he said listlessly. More bad news was not what he needed right now.

  “But you might be interested in this.” The officer took a clear plastic evidence bag from his pocket and handed it to Li.

  “What is it?”

  “It’s a girl’s bracelet. We found it at the back of a drawer in the apartment.”

  Li held it up for Mei-Ling to see and they looked at it closely. It comprised a fine gold chain about six inches in length, with four tiny carved jade Buddhas dangling from it at half-inch intervals either side of a jade nameplate engraved with the character for the word Moon. Li looked at the forensics officer. “What’s the significance?”

  The young man shrugged. “Maybe none. I just thought, you know, you said he was a loner. No friends. So probably no girlfriends. And it doesn’t look like something he’d wear himself.”

  Li dropped the bracelet, still in its evidence bag, on to the table. “You want to tell me about this?” he said.

  Jiang sat forward to look at it and immediately blushed to the roots of his hair.

  “Don’t tell me we’ve discovered your little secret,” Mei-Ling said. Jiang looked at her with something like panic in his eyes. “You’re a cross-dresser.” He frowned, not understanding. “Oh, never mind,” she said. “I take it you don’t wear this yourself—secretly or otherwise?”

  He shook his head.

  “You recognise it, though,” Li said. At last, he felt, they might have caught him out on something.

  “Of course.”

  “So . . . ?”

  “So what?”

  “So what is it?”

  “It’s a bracelet.”

  Li bristled. It felt as if Jiang was playing for time. “I can see that. Whose is it?” he snapped.

  “It’s mine.”

  Li leaned his elbows on the table and clasped his hands slowly in front of him. He said very quietly. “Don’t fuck with me, son. Tell me about the bracelet. Who is Moon?”

  “She was a girlfriend I had back in Yanqing. Years ago.”

  “You had a girlfriend?” Mei-Ling said incredulously.

  Jiang blushed again. “Well, she wasn’t exactly my girlfriend. She was . . . well, you know, I kind of hoped she would be. So I bought her the bracelet. Cost me a small fortune.” He glanced from one to the other and then shrugged. “But she wouldn’t take it. Said she wasn’t interested in me.”

  “Surprise, surprise,” Mei-Ling said.

  “And she could corroborate this?” Li asked.

  Jiang shook his head vaguely. “I don’t know. If you could find her. Her family moved away years ago. I can’t remember what the family name was.”

  “Well, try,” Li said dangerously.

  Jiang met his eyes briefly but couldn’t hold them. “She probably wouldn’t even remember,” he said.

  “The name,” Li said.

  Jiang scratched his head then picked up the bracelet to look at it again, and Li saw that his hands were shaking. “Zhang,” he said eventually, uncertainly. “Zhang. I think that was the family name. They lived near the middle school.”

  Li took the bracelet from him and stood up. “Go home,” he said.

  Jiang looked at him, surprised. So did Mei-Ling. Jiang said, “What!”

  Li said, “You’re free to go. Just don’t even think about leaving Shanghai without asking this office first.”

  Jiang stood up quickly, all smiles, relief written all over his face. “Hey, thanks. You know, I’m still happy to help. Any time. Just give me a call.”

  “Go home,” Li said, and the boy nodded and hurried from the room.

  Mei-Ling looked at Li. “What did you do that for?”

  Li shrugged. “We’ve no reason to hold him. We know where he is if we need to find him.”

  “What about the bracelet?”

  “It’s a feasible story. We should find the girl and see if she remembers. Even if she doesn’t, that’s not proof of anything.” He handed the bag to Mei-Ling. “But let’s get it photographed and circulate a description round the team.”

  For the first time, Li sensed that Mei-Ling did not agree with him, and she appeared to think long and hard about whether or not to express that disagreement. Then she gave him a curt nod. “Sure,” she said, and she turned and left the interview room. Li was beginning to feel a little embattled, and very much on his own.

  IV

  Xinxin’s kindergarten was in a large interna
tional hotel on the west side of the city, in a suite of rooms off the first-floor mezzanine. There was a large play area, and several classrooms. The children were aged between three and six, and as Margaret waited in the hall, she could hear the tuneless screeching of children playing violins in a music class. From other rooms the sound of laughter, the imperious voices of children raised in inquisitorial clamour, demonstrating in a thousand questions that earliest of human passions, the hunger for knowledge. Parents, mostly mothers, were gathering in the hall overlooking the reception area below, waiting for the big doors to open and the children to come flooding out. These were wealthy Shanghainese who could afford to send their children to kindergarten in a place like this, but wealth did not necessarily equate with sophistication, and they stared as curiously at Margaret as if they had been peasants at a market.

  When, eventually, a bell was rung by hand somewhere that sounded very far away, the children did not come out in the expected rush, but in twos and threes, chattering excitedly, being gathered up by parents finished work for the day and heading home for family meals. Margaret felt out of place here in more ways than one.

  Finally she saw Xinxin heading out on her own, but before she could greet her, a uniformed policewoman stepped forward to take her hand. Margaret pushed through the waiting mothers and called out the child’s name. Xinxin turned, and as soon as she saw her let out a yelp of delight. She broke free of the policewoman’s grasp and ran to Margaret for a hug.

  Almost immediately the policewoman was there, pulling Xinxin away and shouting at Margaret, her face contorted in anger and indignation.

  “What the hell do you think you’re doing?” Margaret shouted back, and she reached for Xinxin’s hand.

  But the policewoman yanked the child away and stabbed a finger in Margaret’s chest, her voice raised in anger. Xinxin started to cry. Mothers drew their children to them for safety and looked on in amazement. The Chinese are born spectators. Any spectacle or argument will do. One of the teachers came hurrying out from the kindergarten and there was an exchange between her and the policewoman. The teacher looked at Margaret. “You speak English?” she asked.