The Firemaker (The China Thrillers 1)

by Peter May

  Margaret thought for a moment. ‘I guess he could only have been admitted to Military Hospital Number 301 if someone very powerful had arranged it, right?’ Li nodded. ‘Someone high up in government, or the civil service?’ Li nodded again, and for the first time Margaret began to understand Li’s retreat into himself. ‘Are we getting into something here that’s starting to get a bit scary?’ she asked, a knot like a fist beginning to turn in her stomach.

  ‘I’ve had a bad feeling about this all day,’ Li said. He breathed deeply. ‘And it’s not going away.’

  He sounded his horn more frequently than usual as they weaved through the bicycles and traffic in Chaoyangmen Nanxiaojie Street. He was more used to manoeuvring his way along this street as a cyclist than as a motorist.

  ‘But you will still be able to access his medical records, won’t you?’

  Li looked uncertain. ‘I don’t know. Dealing with a place like that is outside my experience, perhaps even my jurisdiction.’

  ‘In the States we’d subpoena the records.’

  ‘But this is China, not the United States.’

  ‘You told me no one in China refused to co-operate with the police.’

  ‘Of course, I will ask for the records,’ he said.

  ‘And if they won’t give you them?’

  ‘They’ll have to have a very good reason.’ His words sounded braver than he felt. He felt like a weak swimmer who has strayed further from shore than he intended and is a long way out of his depth.

  ‘Okay,’ Margaret said. ‘Let’s think about this. We’re dealing here with someone who has a great deal of power and influence. Someone with enough clout to have Chao admitted to a high-security hospital. Perhaps the same person who hired Johnny Ren to murder him and is now trying to stop you from finding out why. But this is not some all-powerful, or even infallible, individual. He’s made mistakes. Like making a mess of getting rid of the evidence, if that’s what Chao was. He clearly thought that burning the body would destroy whatever it was in his blood they wanted to hide. It didn’t. Then they made a real clumsy job of stopping us doing the AIDS test. Incinerating the body, for Christ’s sake, and all the samples! An administrative error? That’s not going to hold up for five minutes if you pursue it hard enough.’

  ‘But he didn’t have AIDS. We know that. So why were they trying to stop us from testing for it?’

  ‘In case we found something else. Something they didn’t want us to find.’

  ‘What?’

  Margaret shook her head in frustration. ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘And what about the other two murders? DNA tests prove that all three were killed by Ren. What’s the connection?’ Li felt the beginnings of a headache. The deeper they got into this, the muddier the waters were becoming.

  ‘I don’t know,’ Margaret said again. She was beginning to realise how little they really knew about any of it. ‘All I know is that someone must have been watching your investigation every step of the way. Someone with detailed access to your every move, and an understanding of the implications of everything you’ve done.’

  Li frowned. ‘What makes you think that?’

  ‘How else would Johnny Ren have known who was leading the case? How would he have known who to follow? How else would anyone know the autopsy results, or that you had asked for an AIDS test? I mean, who else knew about any of it outside the department?’

  ‘No one,’ Li said aggressively. He couldn’t believe she was suggesting that someone in Section One was implicated. Then he was struck by a thought that turned his blood to ice. ‘Except …’ He didn’t even dare to voice the thought.

  ‘Except who?’ When he didn’t respond, Margaret asked again, ‘Except who, Li Yan?’

  ‘Deputy Procurator General Zeng.’

  Her brows furrowed in consternation. ‘Who?’

  ‘Procurators are a bit like district attorneys. They decide whether to prosecute a case in court. Zeng asked me to provide him with detailed daily reports on the progress of the case. He seemed to know a lot about it already.’ He looked at Margaret. ‘I mean, it was unusual, but he is a DPG. I never really thought anything about it.’

  Margaret whistled softly. ‘Well, that tells us something anyway.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Our man’s powerful enough to have the equivalent of a district attorney in his pocket.’ She glanced apprehensively at Li. ‘That makes him pretty formidable opposition.’

  ‘Thank you for those words of encouragement,’ Li said dryly.

  She smiled, and thought at least they could still smile. But the smile faded as she remembered that in the morning she would be boarding a plane and Li would be left to face this on his own. She didn’t want to leave him. She wished he could get on the plane with her and they could both leave all this behind. The game was no longer a game. It had turned dark and frightening.

  Li turned right into Dongzhimennei and drew in at the kerb beside Mei Yuan’s jian bing house. Mei Yuan rose from her stool as soon as she saw who it was. She gave Margaret a wide smile and said to Li, ‘You are a little late for breakfast today.’

  Li shook his head. ‘No, we are early for breakfast tomorrow.’ Margaret checked the time. It was nearly 6 p.m. ‘Two jian bing,’ Li said. ‘It has been a long day.’

  ‘It has,’ Mei Yuan said, beginning her preparations for the cooking. ‘I have been waiting for you for hours. I have a solution for your riddle.’

  Li and Margaret exchanged glances. ‘The one about the three murders and the cigarette ends?’ Margaret asked.

  Mei Yuan nodded. ‘You said he deliberately left the cigarette ends beside each of the bodies because he knew that you would find them and match the DNA.’

  ‘That’s right,’ Li said. ‘Why?’

  ‘I think it is so obvious,’ Mei Yuan said, ‘that maybe I have not understood the question properly.’

  Margaret was intrigued. ‘So why do you think he did it?’

  Mei Yuan shrugged. ‘To make you believe these murders are connected – when there is no connection.’

  Li frowned. ‘But why would he do that?’

  ‘Wait a minute,’ Margaret said. ‘You once told me that you conducted thousands of interviews to track down a man who murdered a whole family during a burglary. And it took you how long?’

  ‘Two years.’

  ‘So how long was it going to take you to track down all those migrant workers from Shanghai, and all the petty drug dealers and gay boys?’

  It dawned on Li. ‘Long enough to keep me looking in all the wrong places for months on end, trying to make a connection that doesn’t exist. God!’ It was so simple. But anyone who understood the modus operandi of the Chinese police would know that they would follow a painstaking and pedantic process of information-gathering that could take months, even years. ‘The only connection is that there is no connection,’ he said. It was a revelation. He gave Mei Yuan a big hug, and Margaret felt a twinge of jealousy. ‘How on earth did you think of it, Mei Yuan?’

  She glowed with the praise and Li’s attention. ‘Maybe,’ she said, ‘because I did not have to.’

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  I

  Thursday Night

  Red light refracting in hot humid air hung over the city like a veil as the sun dipped in the west, and darkness drew like a curtain from the east across the Middle Kingdom. Below them the lights of the city twinkled in the dusk. Red tail-lights of traffic in long lines snaked east and west, north and south, the growling of their engines a distant rumble. Somewhere down there, Margaret thought, people were crowding the stalls at the Dong’anmen night market, taking pleasure in eating, happy and free at the end of a working day. She wished she were among them.

  They had entered Jingshan Park by the south gate, almost opposite the place where the woman in the blue print dress had been knocked off her bike and Margaret had stopped the bleeding from her severed femoral artery by standing on her leg. They were entering the park as most people wer
e leaving. It would close in an hour. They had followed a winding path up through the trees to the pavilion that stood on the top of Prospect Hill. Halfway up, they had stopped briefly to join a crowd of people watching a very old lady in black pyjamas perform incredible contortions. She had laid a mat on the earth and, lying on her back, had wedged both her feet beneath a pole placed behind her neck, effectively folding herself in two. The crowd gasped in amazement, and there was a little burst of applause. The old lady remained impassive, but she was clearly enjoying showing off the suppleness of her joints and muscles. Margaret had guessed she must be in her eighties.

  The pavilion was deserted when they got there, orange-tiled curling eaves supported on maroon-and-gold pillars, late evening sunshine throwing warm light on cold marble. Walking round, beneath the eaves, provided a 360-degree panorama of the city below. It took Margaret’s breath away.

  Li squatted on the steps, looking south, over the symmetrical patchwork of roofs that was the Forbidden City, to the vast open expanse of Tiananmen Square. He liked to come here, he told her, in the late evening, when it was quiet and he could watch the city come to life as darkness fell around him. It was the most peaceful place in Beijing, he said, and it released him to think freely and clearly. She sat down beside him, their arms touching, and she felt the heat of his body and breathed in the musky, earthy smell of him.

  For a long time neither of them spoke. Swallows darted and dived around them in the dying light, and below, among the trees, the screech of cicadas rose, pulsing, into the night air.

  Eventually he said, ‘I’m scared, Margaret.’

  She inclined her head towards him and examined his profile, bold and strongly defined. ‘Scared of what?’ she asked softly.

  ‘If I knew, I wouldn’t be scared,’ he said. ‘I have a sick feeling in my stomach. I think we are both in danger.’

  ‘In danger of what?’

  ‘Of knowing too much.’

  Margaret released a tiny gasp of frustration. ‘But we know hardly anything. What do we know?’

  ‘We know that someone with power and privilege and something to hide had Chao Heng killed. We know that a professional hit-man was employed to do it, and that he killed two other, perfectly innocent, people for no other reason than to confuse the investigation. We know, or think we know, that there is a conspiracy to pervert the course of that investigation, involving one of the highest law officers in the land. And we know that the killer is out there, somewhere, watching us getting closer and closer.’ He paused. ‘We know far too much.’

  She shivered, in spite of the heat. For the first time she tasted his fear, and she knew it was real. ‘What do you think they will do? Will they try to kill us?’ It seemed shocking, somehow, that she was even suggesting such a thing. It had not occurred to her before that they could be in any real danger.

  ‘I don’t know,’ Li said. ‘They will be scared of us, because of what we know, or because of what they think we will find out. And we know they are ruthless people. Whatever they are hiding, they have killed three people to protect it. If it is worth three lives, it is worth three more, or thirty more, or three hundred more. How can you draw a line you have already crossed?’

  They sat in silence, each with their own private thoughts, and Margaret slipped her arm through his and held on to him for comfort. Below, the darkness among the trees grew around them, secret and hidden and menacing. Margaret felt surrounded. Isolated. What had seemed peaceful was now threatening. Beyond, among the twinkling city lights, people went about their lives, eating, loving, laughing, sleeping. Families gathering in hutongs around flickering blue TV screen light, eating dumplings and drinking beer, giggling at some programme. Normal lives. Something that neither she nor Li could possess. It was all so close, but just out of reach … She had seen Bertolucci’s film, and understood now the isolation of the Last Emperor, Puyi, shut away from the real world behind the walls of the Forbidden City spread out now beneath her in the dusk. Normality was just a touch away, but untouchable.

  Her gaze wandered a little to the west, where the last light in the sky reflected on a long, narrow lake. She frowned, unable to place it. She had not been aware of such a large body of water in the centre of the city. ‘What is that place?’ she asked. ‘I can’t remember ever having seen it from the street.’

  He followed her eyes. ‘Zhongnanhai,’ he said. ‘The New Forbidden City. It is where our leaders live and work. You have never seen it because it is hidden behind high walls, just like the old Forbidden City.’

  She gazed on the dark forbidden lake and wondered if perhaps somewhere in all the villas nestling among the trees along its banks lay the answers to all their questions. The lights of a car briefly flashed across the water and turned into the drive of a distant villa where light leaked out through slatted blinds. She closed her eyes and let her head rest on his shoulder.

  *

  They had been up on Prospect Hill for nearly an hour. The sun finally slid down below the ragged line of distant purple hills, and stars twinkled in a dark blue firmament. Li had smoked several cigarettes, and for the last forty minutes they had not spoken much. Margaret’s arm was still through his, her head still resting lightly on his shoulder. The darkness now did not seem so threatening. It wrapped itself around them like a blanket, and she felt safe and hidden. ‘There is one other thing that scares me,’ Li said finally.

  She waited for him to tell her, but he said nothing. ‘What?’ she asked.

  He swallowed and turned to meet her eye. ‘Losing you,’ he said.

  She felt a rush of blood suffuse her with warmth, a trembling inside that was something between fear and pleasure. She understood how big a moment it was for him to have given voice to his emotion. As long as you keep such feelings secret and safe, they cannot hurt you. They cannot be turned against you, or rejected, or laughed at. But the moment you share them you become vulnerable. And once spoken, the words can never be taken back. Her mouth had gone dry, her throat thick. Her voice was husky. ‘I don’t want to lose you either.’ It was almost a whisper. Now she had committed, too. They were equally vulnerable; the genie was out of the bottle.

  He put a hand up to touch her face, and tracked his fingers gently down the pale, soft skin of her cheek. Then he ran them back through her golden curls, feeling the shape of her skull through the soft, silken hair. He put his other hand up to cup her face and draw her close. She rested her hands lightly on his arms and closed her eyes as his lips brushed hers once, twice. And she opened her mouth to receive his – soft and warm and smoky. And then their arms were around each other, the first tentative kiss giving way to a fierce, almost desperate passion. They broke apart for a moment, breathless, drinking each other in with restless, hungry eyes. And then they were kissing again. Urgently. Devouring each other. Bodies pressed together. He felt the hardness of her breasts pushing into him. They were on their knees now, his erection pressing hard into her belly. She wanted him inside her. She wanted to suck him in and keep him there. She wanted to consume him.

  The crack of a twig snapping under foot cut through the chorus of cicadas from the trees below, and lust was replaced almost instantly by fear. They broke apart, and Li was on his feet. A flashlight shone in his face, and he raised an arm to shield his eyes. ‘Who’s that?’ he called.

  The light fell away to the ground, and an old man climbed several tentative steps towards them. He flashed the lamp briefly at Margaret, and said to Li, ‘The gates will be locked in five minutes.’

  *

  On the steep path down through the trees, Margaret slipped her hand into his. It felt big and protective as it gave hers a small, gentle squeeze. Staff at the gatehouse waited impatiently to lock up, glaring at them as they passed outside to blink in the bright streetlights of Jingshanquan Street. The traffic was heavy, the sidewalks thick with evening strollers and teenagers wandering in aimless, giggling groups. Despite the life in the street, Li and Margaret felt immediately vulnerable, expos
ed and open to view. He took her arm to hurry her across the road, dodging vehicles to a chorus of horns. They got halfway and were trapped by a seemingly endless stream, standing with a group of others on the centre line, traffic behind them snapping at their heels. They saw a break and made a dash for it. Crossing from the other side, a woman with a bicycle and a bird in a cage lost control of the bike in her panic to cross. The front wheel turned and twisted. She lost her hold on the cage and it fell to the road, its door springing open. There was a screech of brakes and a blasting of horns as the approaching traffic ground to a halt. A large black-and-white bird, a family pet perhaps, worth many weeks’ wages, flapped up from the road. The woman wailed and tried to catch it. Her fingers grasped at the feathers but could not hold on, and the bird rose from her outstretched hands and spread its wings, making for the opposite side of the street. Margaret reached up and tried to snatch it from the air as it lifted over her head. With a flutter of feathers beating the air in panic, it eluded her grasp and flew off into the night towards the park. The woman wailed at her loss, still juggling with her bicycle, the shopping from her basket spilling on to the tarmac. Margaret bent to help her, but Li grabbed her hand and pulled her away. ‘We must go. We are too exposed.’

  Margaret glanced back as they reached the opposite sidewalk. The woman was gathering her things from the middle of the road, traffic all around her honking impatiently. Tears streamed down her face. There was something, Margaret thought, inestimably sad in her loss. Both she and Margaret had come so close to plucking the bird from the air. Margaret imagined she had almost felt its heart beat as her fingers brushed its panicked breast. Its instinct had been to escape. And yet, Margaret knew, it would die in the wild.

  Li hurried her away along the sidewalk, turning south into the dark, still backwater of Beichang Street, where he had parked the Jeep under the trees. They stopped on the kerb by the car, and without conscious decision by either of them were kissing almost immediately, all the passion and lust of the park returning in a rush. They broke breathlessly and she held his face and gazed anxiously into his eyes. ‘What are we going to do, Li Yan?’