Free The Killing Room by Peter May Page A

come from?’
    ‘Yanqing, in Hebei Province.’
    ‘That’s just north of Beijing, isn’t it?’
    The boy nodded, and as they turned to go, added, ‘Listen, if your people need any help, the pathologists or anyone … If they’re looking for assistants or anything, you know, I’m happy to volunteer my services. It’d be good experience.’
    ‘We’ll keep that in mind,’ Li said.
    As they crossed the site towards the main gate, Mei-Ling said, ‘That boy’s really creepy!’ But Li was lost in thought. She glanced at him. ‘You all right?’
    He said, ‘This kid lives with his grandparents, who can’t afford to send him to university. So he has to take on all these part-time jobs and work the holidays. But he can afford a colour TV set. And that was good quality gear he was wearing. Expensive gloves lying on the table. And it must be pretty costly to subscribe to an American medical journal and have it sent to China every month.’
    ‘What are you saying?’ Mei-Ling asked.
    ‘I’m saying here’s a kid who has the requisite skills to do what was done to those women. He had the opportunity to dispose of their bodies right here on the site where he’s working as night watchman. And he seems very affluent for a student who’s having to work his way through medical school.’
    ‘You don’t think he did it, do you?’ Mei-Ling was shocked. ‘I mean, I know he’s weird, but usually I have an instinct about these things, and right now it isn’t telling me this is our killer.’
    ‘Neither is mine,’ Li confessed, and he knew it would have been just too easy. ‘But if someone broke into the site, dug a hole and buried eighteen bodies in it, why didn’t he see them? Why didn’t he hear them? And why would someone dump the bodies some place there was a night watchman?’ He lit a cigarette. ‘I know it’s early in the investigation, but I think our medical student’s got to be the first name on the suspect list.’
    ‘Maybe,’ Mei-Ling said. ‘Anyway, we’ll have a better idea just what we’re looking for once we’ve got the autopsy reports.’
    ‘That might be a few days,’ Li said.
    Mei-Ling was surprised. ‘Why? Dr Lan can start tomorrow.’
    Li said, ‘I’m bringing in another pathologist to do the autopsies.’
    She was taken aback, and stopped suddenly, feet squelching in the mud. ‘Does Dr Lan know?’
    Li shook his head. ‘No. And he probably won’t be very pleased.’
    ‘No, he won’t,’ Mei-Ling said. ‘Talk about losing face …’ She paused. ‘Who is it? Someone from Beijing?’
    ‘An American,’ Li said. He took in her expression. ‘Oh, I know. I got the same speech from Huang. How the Chinese don’t need the Americans to show them how to do anything.’
    Mei-Ling shrugged. ‘Jiang Zemin said we must learn from foreign experts.’
    Li looked to see if she was sending him up, but she appeared perfectly serious. ‘I’ve worked with her before,’ he said, ‘and she’s very experienced.’
    Mei-Ling started for the gates again and said, a little too casually, ‘She?’
    ‘Margaret Campbell,’ Li said. ‘She’s been lecturing at the Public Security University in Beijing.’
    Mei-Ling nodded but said nothing, and they continued picking their way through the mud.
    They passed the lights, and the polythene flapping in the wind. Li caught sight of the face of one of the forensics people working in the mud. A young man, his face almost blue with the cold, pinched and distressed. He would never have envisaged this when making his career choice. And Li had a sudden sense of the futility of all their jobs, working as they did on the edge of sanity, picking their way through the dark side of the human psyche, and all the horrors that lay therein.
    Mei-Ling suddenly lost her footing in the quagmire and, with a cry, almost fell. Li caught her arm and held her firmly until she regained her balance. She laughed, embarrassed, clutching his jacket, and he felt the swelling of