The Firemaker (25 page)

‘Where are we going?’

‘Just somewhere quiet and discreet, so we won’t be disturbed. I know how important your street cred is. You don’t want to be seen hanging around with a cop, do you?’

‘Stop, right now, and let me out!’ The Needle was starting to panic. ‘This isn’t what I agreed to.’

Li turned south on Dongdoqiao Road. ‘You’re not making a very good show of co-operating with the police,’ Li said. ‘You don’t want to give our American observer the wrong idea, do you?’

‘Fuck your American observer! Let me out!’ He tried to open the door but it was locked.

‘What’s going on?’ Margaret asked from the back, becoming concerned.

‘Oh, nothing much,’ Li said. ‘Just a routine breach of human rights.’

He turned the Jeep hard right, through open gates, and into a vast concourse, the giant circular Beijing Workers’ Stadium looming ahead of them. Soldiers on exercise, dressed in green camouflage, were piling into covered lorries and sweeping through the concourse in a wide arc towards the gates as Li drove in. He steered a course between them and slid the Jeep to a stop outside one of the exit ramps from the stadium. He killed the engine, flicked off the central locking and turned to The Needle. ‘Get out,’ he said.

Through a crack in the vast doors that opened on to the stadium at the top of the ramp, there was a glimpse of green grass and concrete terrace. The Needle jumped out of the Jeep. ‘What the hell are you up to, Li?’

Li rounded the bonnet and with one hand grabbed The Needle by his lapel. There was a sound of tearing cloth and stitching. Margaret was right behind them. ‘What are you doing?’ She was alarmed now.

Li dragged the unwilling Needle up the ramp behind him, the drug dealer’s physical resistance feeble in the face of Li’s size and strength. He searched around desperately for some sign of life – a face, a figure, a witness. But there was no one. No one but Margaret, chasing after them up the ramp, shouting at Li, demanding to know what the hell he thought he was up to.

Li ignored them both, pulling the door open a fraction and jerking The Needle through the gap. Margaret stood for a moment, panting, then squeezed through in their wake, in time to see Li push the other man down the slope, across the running track and on to the grass pitch. Terraces of empty seats rose up all around them. On days when China’s national soccer team played here, it was filled with sixty thousand cheering, screaming fans. Now it was eerily quiet, the voices of the two men on the grass echoing around the acoustic bowl of the stadium. Margaret heard the creak of the door they had entered, and turned in time to see it shutting behind them. A sensation, like ice-cold fingers, touched the back of her neck. ‘Li!’ she screamed. But Li’s attention was elsewhere. His left hand was holding The Needle by his shirt collar, twisting it, pushing it hard into his throat.

Gone was the cool confidence of this untouchable trafficker in drugs and misery. He seemed very small beside Li, childlike and whimpering. His feet almost left the ground. With his free hand, Li drew a large revolver from a shoulder holster beneath his jacket, and pushed the nozzle-end into The Needle’s forehead. His face was pale and grim, his eyes black. Margaret ran on to the grass. ‘Stop this,’ she said quietly. The Needle flicked a panicked glance in her direction. She might be an ally, the witness he needed to stop Li.

Li ignored her. ‘I want you to tell me about Chao Heng and Mao Mao,’ he said, his focus totally on The Needle.

For a moment, consternation replaced fear on the face of the drugs baron. ‘What do you mean?’

‘We both know,’ Li said, ‘that anything you tell me now is just between us. She doesn’t speak Chinese, and I can’t use information extracted at gunpoint against you. So do us both a favour and tell me what I want to know.’

‘I don’t know what you’re talking about!’

Li sighed deeply. ‘Okay, we’ll do it the hard way.’

‘What?’ The Needle was panicking again. Li turned him round and forced him to his knees. ‘What the hell do you think you’re playing at? You won’t get away with this!’ The Needle tried to get up and Li pushed him back down. ‘Help me!’ The Needle screamed at Margaret in English.

She stood several feet away, breathing hard, eyes wild with fear and anger; fear of what was going to happen, anger that Li had dragged her here. ‘I won’t be any part of this,’ she said.

‘Don’t be,’ Li said.

She looked around. There didn’t appear to be any way out, and the door they’d come in through was shut. ‘If you harm that man I will give evidence against you.’

‘Will you?’ Li glanced at her. ‘
He
trades in misery and death.
He
has ruined thousands, maybe tens of thousands, of lives, and you would give evidence against
me
?

‘Why did you bring me here?’

He gazed at her steadily. ‘To watch,’ he said.

The Needle was sprawled on the grass now, trying to edge away as Li turned his attention back to him. ‘Stay where you are,’ he snapped. ‘I’ll give you a chance. Maybe several. But the odds’ll get shorter.’ He flipped the barrel out from the main body of the revolver and took out the bullets one by one, leaving only a single round. ‘A game invented by our neighbours in Russia.’ He snapped the barrel back in place.

‘For God’s sake!’ Margaret said, and she walked away, out towards the centre of the pitch, her back turned towards them. She put her hands on her hips and stared up to the heavens. Physically, she knew, there was nothing she could do to stop it. But she was damned if she was going to watch.

The Needle followed her with his eyes, a sense of hopelessness growing like nausea in his belly. She wasn’t going to do anything. Li hauled him back to his knees and placed the revolver at the base of his skull. The tip of it was cold and hard against his skin and pulled at his hair. ‘Okay, so I’ll ask you again,’ Li said softly.

‘I told you, I don’t know what you’re talking about.’ The Needle had had a sudden revelation. Li wasn’t going to pull that trigger. Not with the American there. It was obvious there was friction between them. Then he felt, more than heard, the squeezing of the trigger mechanism raising the hammer, and the smack of it against an empty chamber. He lost control of his bladder and felt a rush of hot urine on his thigh.

Margaret heard the sound of the hammer on the empty chamber echo around the terracing, and swivelled to stare at Li in disbelief. Somehow, somewhere deep inside, she hadn’t believed he would actually do it. ‘Jesus!’ And she listened to her voice whispering round the stadium, as if it belonged to someone else.

‘Tell me about Chao Heng,’ Li insisted.

‘I told you …’ The Needle started to weep.

Crack! The hammer smacked down on another empty chamber.

‘Li! For God’s sake!’ Margaret screamed at him.

‘Tell me,’ Li said, his voice tight and controlled. He blinked and flicked his head as a trickle of sweat ran into one eye.

The Needle felt the grate of the trigger mechanism again. ‘Okay, okay, okay!’ he screamed.

‘I’m listening,’ Li said.

‘Chao Heng was well known,’ The Needle gasped. ‘He used to hang around the clubs downtown trying to pick up boys. The younger the better. Everyone knew what he was like.’ The Needle was babbling like a baby now, words and all inhibition loosened, like the muscles of his bladder, by naked fear. ‘I didn’t know him personally, but I knew him by sight. He got his stuff off a guy called Liang Daozu.’

‘One of your people?’

‘I don’t have any people,’ he shouted, and felt the muzzle of the gun push harder into his neck. ‘Okay, yeah, he was one of my guys.’

‘What about Mao Mao?’

‘What about him?’

‘What was his connection with Chao Heng?’

‘I’ve no idea.’ Again the muzzle pushed hard into the base of his skull. ‘For God’s sake, I didn’t even know they knew one another! Mao Mao was low life, street scum. He didn’t move in the same circles as someone like Chao Heng.’

‘Or you?’

‘Or me. Shit, I don’t trade stuff on the streets. Never have. That’s for users and losers like Mao Mao.’

‘Maybe Mao Mao was into little boys, like Chao?’

The Needle shook his head. ‘Not that I knew of.’

Not that anyone else knew of either. Li had read the statements of Mao Mao’s family and friends. He’d had a wife and a kid somewhere, and a string of mistresses. Li’s adrenalin rush was slowly giving way to disappointment. He had The Needle on his knees in front of him, confessing to anything and everything. But not only would it be impossible to use any of it against him, none of it helped in the investigation. He pulled the trigger anyway. Crack!

The Needle yelped. ‘Shit, man, what are you doing! I told you what you wanted to know.’

Li pushed him over on to his back, and The Needle lay staring up at him in disbelief, paralysed by fear. Li extended his arm downwards and pointed the revolver straight at the centre of The Needle’s face.

‘Li?’ Margaret took a step towards him. She had thought it was over. The Needle had talked rapidly for nearly a minute, telling Li, it had seemed, what he wanted to know. Now Li was going to kill him in cold blood.

Li pulled the trigger once, twice, three times. The Needle screamed, a long scream of anguish, the pain of knowing he was going to die, almost worse than death itself.

Margaret’s heart stood still. ‘That’s six,’ she said.

The Needle looked up at Li in breathless disbelief. Li extended his left hand towards Margaret and opened his fist. Six bullets nestled in his palm. ‘The speed of the hand deceives the eye,’ he said grimly.

Margaret closed her eyes. She wanted to strike him with her fists, with her feet, to bite him, inflict pain on him in any way she could. ‘You bastard,’ she said.

Li ignored her, holstering the gun and slipping the bullets into his pocket. He stooped and dragged the hapless Needle to his feet and pushed his face into his. ‘Maybe you think you’ve lost a bit of face here today.’ The Needle said nothing. ‘I just hope the next time you go visiting a stadium, it’s to get a bullet in your head for real. And with a bit of luck they’ll blow your face clean off.’ He let go of him, and The Needle dropped back to his knees. Li looked in disgust at the black urine patch on his trousers. ‘I was going to give you a lift back, but I don’t want you fouling up my Jeep. And maybe you’d rather change before you drop back in on the boys.’

The Needle stared up at him with hatred in his eyes and murder in his heart.

II

‘Just take me straight back to the university.’ Margaret sat tight-lipped and furious in the passenger seat.

‘Sure.’ Li nodded and they drove in silence for some way.

But she was unable to contain her anger for long. ‘You had that all planned, didn’t you?’ He shrugged. ‘And someone at the stadium knew we were coming.’

‘I’ve got my contacts,’ he said.

‘It was moronic,’ she said. ‘Absolutely moronic. I’ve never seen anything like it.’

‘Funny,’ he said. ‘I learned it from a couple of cops in Chicago. I think, maybe, they did it for my benefit. Back seat of the squad car, up a blind alley. A small-time pusher with dirt on someone higher up the chain. They sure as hell scared the kid. He told them everything they wanted to know.’

She flashed him a look that might have turned him to stone had he met her eye. ‘That doesn’t justify it. For them, or you.’

‘At least I saved a dozen of my detectives maybe six weeks’ work chasing a connection that doesn’t exist.’

‘How can you know that?’

‘Because if there was a drugs connection between Chao Heng and Mao Mao, The Needle would have known about it. And, somehow, I believed him when he said he didn’t.’ He glanced over at her. ‘I wouldn’t spill any tears over The Needle. He’ll get over it.’

‘I don’t give a shit about The Needle,’ she said. ‘It’s what you put
me
through in that stadium. If I’d known there were no bullets …’

‘You would have approved?’

‘No, of course not.’

‘Which is why I did not tell you. I was not sure I would even take you into the stadium.’

‘Oh, I’m supposed to feel honoured now, am I? Jesus!’ She slapped her palms on the dashboard. ‘Why
did
you take me in?’

‘You were so ready to believe in human rights violations in China, I thought maybe you should see some for yourself, first hand, as inspired by Americans.’

‘Well, first off, let’s not confuse human rights and civil rights. What you saw those cops in America do was a breach of that kid’s civil rights. They also broke the law. And I can assure you it’s not common practice.’

‘Nor is it in China.’

‘Oh yeah? Like there are no violations of civil or human rights in China?’

‘Not on
my
watch.’

‘Oh, so today was the first time you’ve ever done anything like this, right?’

‘It was.’

‘Sure.’

He turned to meet her disbelief face on. ‘It was.’ And the sincerity in his eyes disconcerted her. ‘For myself, I would happily have killed that man. As a policeman, it is against everything I believe. My uncle would be ashamed of me. He would tell me that the measure of any civilisation is the strength and balance of its system of justice. And he would be right. And he would not listen when I told him that I had a feeling, an instinct, that we could not afford to spend weeks, months, maybe years finding this killer. He would tell me that I should employ good police work to back up that instinct.’

In spite of herself, she was interested. ‘What instinct?’

‘If I knew what it was, maybe today would never have been necessary. There is something … bizarre about these killings. Something in what we already know that I am missing. Something that troubles my unconscious mind, but that my conscious mind has not grasped. So I have taken a short cut that I should not have taken, because somehow I know there is no time.’

‘You think he’s going to kill again?’

He shrugged. ‘I don’t know.’ They had stopped at traffic lights, and he turned and examined her face, and thought he saw the shadow of doubt in it. ‘Have you never had an instinct about something? Something you can’t explain, you just feel?’