The Killing Room (30 page)

And Margaret thought what an extraordinary person Mei Yuan was. A well-read and educated woman, torn down by the ravages of the Cultural Revolution, content now to sell
jian bing
on the street corner and indulge her passion for reading. She had lost her son during those terrible years, as Li Yan had lost his mother. And by some strange quirk of fate they had found each other on a street corner, and somehow managed to fill the missing parts of each other’s lives. ‘Thank you,’ Margaret said, and she gave Mei Yuan a hug. ‘When do we collect little Xinxin?’

*

Kites filled the sky like birds, and the children cast shadows several times longer than themselves. The vast expanse of Tiananmen Square meant nothing to them, other than limitless open space and empty skies in which to fly their simple structures of wire and plastic. None of them had been born when the tanks rolled in, leaving the blood and hopes of a generation to stain the paving stones. A century of bloody change had been played out here, and now it was just a place to fly a kite.

Mei Yuan said the kindergarten often brought the children here to fly their kites in the late afternoon when the sky was clear and the cold winds blew down from the north. Now the sun was very low in the west, and the strong shadows it cast somehow charred all colour from the scene, except for the red walls of the Forbidden City, and the orange-tiled roof of the Gate of Heavenly Peace. A troupe of armed police in long green coats and peaked caps marched past them in rigid formation, eyes fixed and unblinking. A woman with a thick scarf wrapped around her mouth tried to sell the two women a kite shaped like an eagle. The square was busy with tourists up from the country. There was barely a Western face in sight, and so Margaret was an object of great curiosity. Several groups of peasants followed them for some way before hurrying off excitedly to tell their friends about the blue-eyed, fair-haired foreign devil.

When Xinxin saw Margaret she squealed with excitement, but was caught in a quandary. She wanted to run and jump into her arms, but she was flying a kite and could not let go. Her little face was a picture of conflicting emotions. Mei Yuan resolved the problem by taking the line from her, and freeing her up to give Margaret the biggest of hugs. Margaret crouched and held the child to her, and felt her warmth and her love through the thick layers of clothes. Although only six, Xinxin had already picked up a few words of English. And so she stood back and said solemnly, ‘How do you do? So nice to see you.’

Margaret grinned and said,
‘Ni chi guo le ma?’
Which sent Xinxin and her classmates into a fit of hysterical giggles. Xinxin’s pink coat was buttoned up to the neck, and her face was the same colour of crimson as her woollen tights. Mei Yuan had tied her hair in bunches high on each side of her head, and Margaret thought she looked good enough to eat. Fleetingly she wondered what her own child would have been like. Much older than Xinxin now, and no doubt she would have taken all her worst features from her father. She shook the thought aside and asked if she could have a go at flying the kite. Mei Yuan translated for her, and Xinxin nodded vigorously, and all the children and their teachers gathered round as Margaret took the line and pulled and tweaked until she had Xinxin’s box-kite soaring into the deepening blue. Applause broke around her and she found herself laughing. She had forgotten what a wonderful release it was to fly a kite. She had not grown up in the Windy City for nothing.

*

In the taxi out to the airport, Margaret read to Xinxin in English from a big coloured picture book. Xinxin loved to have Margaret read for her, even if she did not immediately understand all the words. And it was amazing just how many words she had picked up in the last year. Conversation through the medium of English alone was limited, but just possible.

Margaret looked up to find Mei Yuan watching them fondly. The older woman said, ‘I have a riddle for you to take to Li Yan.’ Margaret smiled. It was a game Li and Mei Yuan had played for years during encounters at Mei Yuan’s
jian bing
stall.

‘What if I guess it first?’ Margaret said.

‘You usually do,’ Mei Yuan grinned.

‘Okay, try me.’

Mei Yuan said, ‘Imagine you are a bus driver on the number one route through Beijing. When the bus stops at the Friendship Store it is empty, but six passengers get on. At Wangfujing, three get off and another eight get on. At the Forbidden City five get off and fifteen get on. It is getting busier now. At Xidan, eight passengers get off, but ten get on.’ She paused. ‘Are you still with me?’

Margaret nodded. She had been furiously doing her arithmetic and trying to keep up with the constantly changing calculation.

‘Okay,’ Mei Yuan said. ‘So what height is the driver?’

Which stopped Margaret in her tracks. It was the last question she had been expecting. She had a figure of twenty-three in her head, and was wondering where the trick was. But the driver’s height … ? She blinked uncomprehendingly at Mei Yuan, and Mei Yuan laughed and raised her hands.

‘Don’t try and work it out now. Think about it,’ she said. ‘But do not ask Li Yan until you have the answer yourself. For you will see then how important it is that you ask this question correctly.’

‘What are you talking about?’ Xinxin demanded to know. ‘Speak Chinese, speak Chinese!’

Mei Yuan laughed. ‘I was just giving Margaret a message for your uncle. When you are older, perhaps, Margaret will pass it on to you, too.’

Xinxin was almost beside herself with excitement when they got on to the main concourse in the new departure hall at the Capital Airport. She had never been anywhere so big, with so many people and so many lights mirrored in so many shiny surfaces. It was dazzling. She had never flown before, either, and with the fearlessness of the young could not wait to get aboard the airplane.

Margaret asked Mei Yuan to stay with Xinxin while she checked them in at the airline desk. Xinxin’s little case was small enough to travel as hand-luggage, and Margaret only had her briefcase. She stood in a long line waiting to check in, and then hurried away across the concourse to the shopping area to purchase a pack of mints for Xinxin to suck during take-off and landing. If she had never flown before, her ears might react badly to the change in pressure. There was a queue here, too, and Margaret stood letting her mind and her eyes wander.

Suddenly a face on the far side of the mall impinged on her consciousness, and a stab of fear shook her to the core. It was a face she had seen before. Flat Mongolian features, long greasy hair, a scarred lip stretched over yellow protruding teeth. And he was staring back at her. A tour group led by a guide wearing a silly yellow baseball cap and carrying a blue flag crossed her line of sight and the Mongolian disappeared for several moments. She craned to try to catch a glimpse of him through the heads, but when the group had passed he was gone, and for a moment she began to doubt that she had seen him at all.

She had forgotten all about the mints now, and left the line, rushing across the concourse, eyes darting left and right, trying to get a sight of him. But he was nowhere to be seen. Where could he have gone? How could he possibly have been here in Beijing? She remembered his face from that dark night on the Bund as clearly as she had ever remembered anything in her life. She could not possibly have mistaken him. Could she? She stopped and felt the bumping of her heart beneath her breast, like someone physically punching her. Her breathing was fast and shallow, her mouth dry.

‘Magret, Magret, what wrong?’ Xinxin’s little voice crashed into her thoughts. And a little hand slipped into hers. She turned round to see Mei Yuan and the little girl staring at her curiously. What kind of sight must she have presented?

‘Are you all right?’ Mei Yuan asked, concerned.

‘Sure,’ Margaret said, unconvincingly, trying to control her breathing. ‘I’m fine.’ But she wasn’t.

CHAPTER NINE

I

What Li found hard to understand was the calm with which Sun Jie had identified the mutilated and decomposed body of his wife. He had stood staring at her for several minutes, unaffected apparently by the stench or by the sight of her. His eyes had closed briefly, then he had simply nodded and walked from the room. In the car park, where spots of rain had begun to fall again, Sun Jie had turned to Li and said, ‘So now I know she is at peace I can be at peace also and know that she has moved on to a better place. For she was a good person.’ And for a moment Li had found himself envying that simple faith, that the end of life on earth was not the end of life. It just all seemed too easy, somehow.

He stood now on the concourse at Hongqiao Airport and felt the warmth of Mei-Ling standing close to him. He was excited by the thought of seeing Xinxin, but apprehensive about Margaret’s return. He knew she would not respond well to Mei-Ling being with him, but he was determined not to give in to her petty jealousies. He only wished that in some way it was possible for him to separate his private and professional lives. And then he remembered again those eighteen women who had been slaughtered in Shanghai, their husbands and children, fathers and mothers, and the thought put his own problems back into their proper perspective.

Xinxin saw Li immediately, standing among the waiting crowds on the other side of the Arrivals gate, and she went running to leap up into his arms. Margaret smiled at the sight of the two of them together. Li liked to present an image of himself as tough and unyielding, a hard man, with his flat-top crewcut and his square, jutting jaw. Margaret knew him, in reality, to be a big softie. But the smile on her face froze as Li turned, with Xinxin in his arms, to introduce her to the woman standing on his right. Mei-Ling was all smiles and sweetness, shaking Xinxin’s hand and then delving into her purse for a pack of candy. Xinxin’s initial shyness immediately evaporated and lights shone in her eyes. How easily the affections of a child could be bought. Margaret remembered that in her panic at seeing the man with the hare-lip in Beijing, she had forgotten to buy the mints for Xinxin.

Li put the child back down, and Mei-Ling spoke rapidly to her, eliciting an immediate smiling response. She held out her hand which Xinxin took without hesitation, and the two of them headed off towards the shops on the far side of the concourse. Li turned self-consciously to meet Margaret. Margaret thrust Xinxin’s case into his chest. ‘Maybe Mei-Ling would like to carry her bag for her as well.’ Li’s heart sank, but Margaret wasn’t finished yet. ‘Did you have to bring her with you?’

Li sighed. ‘I do not have transport here. She offered me a lift. All right?’

‘No, not really. But then, I don’t suppose it matters what I feel.’

‘Look, I thought after last night all that jealousy stuff would be behind us.’

A thousand angry responses ran through Margaret’s mind. About Li’s insensitivity in bringing Mei-Ling to the airport, about last night changing nothing as far as Mei-Ling was concerned – or Li, apparently. About how she’d just spent a gruelling day poking over the remains of a rotting corpse as a favour to Li, and how the least she could expect was some time alone with him and Xinxin. But all she said was, ‘It is.’ Then, ‘When do you want my report on the autopsy?’

He was surprised by the sudden change of subject. ‘In the morning,’ he said. ‘You can brief Mei-Ling and myself, and then we’ll brief a full meeting of detectives at Section Two.’

‘Why can’t I brief the meeting myself?’ she asked.

‘Because not enough of them speak English, and to have to translate everything would just be a distraction.’

‘So now I’m a distraction as well. I suppose that’s another one to add to the list,’ Margaret said. She saw the annoyance in Li’s eyes and knew that she was doing nothing to win back his affections. If anything, her continuing hostility was having exactly the opposite effect. But she couldn’t help herself. It was a natural response to the constant hurt – the need to hurt back. She understood Li’s reasoning for not involving her in the full briefing. It made absolute sense. But it only served to increase her sense of exclusion and underline the fact that being Chinese was like being part of a very exclusive club, a club of which she could never be a member. She glanced over to where Mei-Ling and Xinxin were sharing a joke at a toy stand at the shops, and felt her insecurity wrap itself around her like a blanket. No matter how well she and Xinxin got on together, they would always speak different languages. With Mei-Ling, communication would be easy for Xinxin, not an issue. For a moment Margaret caught Mei-Ling’s eye as she glanced towards Margaret and Li, and Margaret knew that Mei-Ling would try to take Xinxin from her as well. And that she would probably succeed. Margaret turned back to Li. ‘Shall I come back to the hotel to tuck Xinxin in?’

Li shook his head. ‘No, not tonight. I’m taking her to meet her babysitter. They’ll be sharing a room next to mine.’

Margaret tried again. ‘You said she’ll be going to kindergarten here. I could take her there in the mornings and pick her up again in the afternoons.’

Li shifted uncomfortably. ‘Actually, Mei-Ling will be running her to kindergarten in the mornings – or delegating another officer to do it if she can’t.’

‘How very kind of her,’ Margaret said, and Li felt the sting of her tone. But Margaret was losing the will to fight. ‘Look, why don’t I just get a taxi back to my hotel? Then I won’t have to take you out of your way.’ And she pushed past Li and headed for the exit, forgetting that she had meant to speak to him about the man with the hare-lip.

II

‘You look like someone who could do with a drink.’

Margaret turned and found Geller standing at her side. She was perched on a stool in the bar of the Peace Hotel leaning over an empty glass. As usual the bar was deserted. She said, ‘I thought you’d never ask.’

He slipped on to the stool beside her and signalled the waitress. She shimmied along the bar and he ordered a beer and another vodka tonic for Margaret. ‘You look tired.’

‘I am. I’ve been to Beijing and back today.’