The Killing Room

The Killing Room

Peter May

First published in Great Britain in 2000 by Hodder and Stoughton
This edition published in 2012 by

Quercus
55 Baker Street
7th Floor, South Block
London
W1U 8EW

Copyright © 2000 by Peter May

The moral right of Peter May to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988.

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopy, recording, or any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher.

A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

ISBN 978 1 78206 076 5

This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, organizations, places and events are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or locales is entirely coincidental.

You can find this and many other great books at:
www.quercusbooks.co.uk

Also by Peter May

The China Thrillers
The Firemaker
The Fourth Sacrifice

The Lewis Trilogy
The Blackhouse
The Lewis Man

Coming Soon
The Chessmen

For Steve, Trenda and Danielle

PROLOGUE

The rain, like tears, streaks his view of the world from the back seat of his limousine. A blue-grey view smudged by this chilly sub-tropical November deluge. The American has come to celebrate a union spanning continents, a powerful conjoining of East and West. But all the money in the world cannot protect him from the horrors that are only minutes away.

Towers of steel and glass rise into the mist around him, insubstantial and wraith-like. They remind him of something strangely incongruous. A remote and rugged coastline on the north-west extremes of Europe. A trip made in search of his roots to a distant Scottish island, where fingers of stone reach for the sky in strange circular arrangements. Standing stones raised in worship to who knows what God.

Beyond the colossal pagoda-like Jin Mao Tower, its peak lost in cloud, more towers loom out of the misted distance, rising from the ashes of Mao’s dream of a communist utopia. The once desolate marshlands of Pudong, fed by their privileged status of ‘special economic zone’, now sprout tower blocks like weeds, watched in wonder by the Shanghainese across the river, a whole generation thinking, what next? The American looks up at these twenty-first century standing stones, and knows that the only God worshipped by those who raised them is Money. And he smiles. A sense of satisfaction in this. For he worships at the same altar.

They pass a high, sweeping wall painted salmon pink and topped by spiked black railings. His limo draws in behind others it has been following. Umbrellas, black and shiny, cluster immediately around his door. He steps out on to red carpet, and water pools around his feet as the weight of his steps squeezes rain from the pile.

Through open gates, the site unfolds before him, a forest of steel rods rising out of the concrete blocks already sunk there. On the far perimeter two tiers of workmen’s huts rise from the mud. Pale oriental faces gather in the rain to watch with dull curiosity as the party makes its perilous way across the quagmire, red carpet submerged now in liquid mud that sloshes over black shiny leather, spattering the bottoms of freshly pressed trousers. The American feels cold water seeping between his toes and curses inwardly. But his outward smile remains, fixed and determined for his Chinese hosts. They are, after all, partners in the biggest Sino-American joint venture yet attempted, although it is hard for him to believe that this sodden site will support the massive construction of steel and glass that will become the New York-Shanghai Bank, the tallest building in Asia. But he is reassured by the knowledge that his position as its chief executive officer will make him one of the most powerful men on earth.

He climbs the stairs to the stage, protected from the rains by its huge canvas awning, and steps into the glare of the world’s press, television lamps flooding this grey winter morning with a bright blue-white light, cameras flashing in the rain like fireflies. His PR people have done their job.

Strings of coloured bunting hang limp in the wet as his Chinese opposite number, smiling, approaches the microphone to begin the obligatory speeches. The American lets his mind and eyes wander. Above the temporary construction of the stage, a huge hopper leans over, its snout pointing downwards to the deep trench below. When he steps forward to release its lever, tons of concrete will pour from its mouth into the bowels of what will be his bank – a ceremonial foundation stone upon which he knows he will build a future of unparalleled success.

A sprinkling of applause, like water pouring from a jug, breaks into his thoughts. A hand on his elbow steers him towards the microphone. Fireflies flash. He hears his own voice, strange and metallic, through distant speakers, words he has learned by heart, and he cannot help but notice that the trench below him is rapidly filling with water, thick brown water like chocolate, boiling in the rain.

More applause, and he steps forward from the cover of the awning on to a small, square projecting platform, a Chinese at his right hand holding an umbrella above his head, beaded curtains of water tumbling around him. He takes the lever in his hand, and with a sense of absolute control of his own destiny, draws it down. All faces lift expectantly towards the hopper. For a moment, it seems, everyone is holding their breath. Only the tattoo of rain on canvas invades the sense of expectation.

The American feels something shift beneath his feet. There is a loud crack, then a strange groaning like the rattle of a dying man’s last breath. The struts supporting the boards of his tiny platform give way as the walls of the trench below collapse inwards. He turns, clutching in fear at the sleeve of the arm holding the umbrella, but already he is pitchingþ

forward through the curtain of rain. The sensation of falling through space seems to last an eternity. His own scream sounds disconnected and distant. And then the shock of cold liquid mud takes his breath away. The whole world appears to be falling in around him as his flailing arms endeavour to prevent him from being sucked under. He sees an arm reaching out towards him and thinks, thank God! He clutches the hand and feels its flesh oozing between his fingers. But he has no time to consider this. He pulls hard to try to haul himself from the mud, but the outstretched arm offers no resistance, and as he falls back again he realises that it is not attached to anything. He lets go immediately, repulsed and uncomprehending. He can hear voices shouting above him as he flips over in time to see a woman’s breasts emerging from a wall of mud, followed by her shoulders and belly. But no arms, no legs, no head. His own arms windmilling in panic, he kicks away again, only to find himself staring into a face with black holes where the eyes should be, long dark hair smeared across decaying flesh. He feels bile rising in his throat with his scream, and as he looks upward in a desperate appeal for help, he sees again the standing stones rising over him in the mist. Only now he sees them quite differently, clustered together like headstones in a cemetery.

CHAPTER ONE

I

The cold, dry earth rattled across the lid of the coffin as it left her mother’s hand. Margaret, too, stooped to lift a handful and felt the frosted dirt stick to her skin. She let it fall from her fingers into her father’s grave, and lifted her eyes to a pewtery sky. The first snow of winter fluttered on the edge of an icy wind that blew in across the distant lake and she shivered, pulling her coat tight around herself to contain her grief.

She turned away from the handful of mourners at the graveside, a few relatives and friends, a representative from the university, some old students of her father. There was something primitive about the ritual of burial that seemed somehow absurd to Margaret. Placing a person in a wooden box in the ground and leaving them to rot. She had seen enough bodies in various states of decomposition to have decided long ago that when her turn came she would be cremated. It was simpler, cleaner. More final, somehow. She knew the stages of decay that the body they had buried would undergo, and she did not want to think of her father like that.

The wind rattled the branches of the empty trees, stark in their winter nakedness. The last leaves of fall lay rotting on the ground, silver edged by the previous night’s frost. Somewhere, away to their left among the rows of tombstones, she knew, lay the graves of famous gangsters from the city’s colourful past. Alphonse Capone, and his father and mother; the infamous John May and his wife Hattie; ‘Machine Gun’ Jack McGurn; Antonio ‘The Scourge’ Lombardo; and dozens more Italian immigrants and their descendants who had helped sow the seeds of America’s organised crime in this windy place. Her father had kept better company in life.

But his family had all been buried here at Mount Carmel, to the west of Chicago, a ragtag bunch of undistinguished antecedents of Scots and Irish origin. Her mother’s family were of German descent, and she supposed that’s where she got her pale freckled skin and fair hair. Her father had had Celtic black hair in his youth, and incongruously blue eyes. It was a comfort to her that she had inherited at least some of his genes.

News of his death had reached her in Beijing in a short, cold phone call from her mother, and she had sat for a long time in the tiny apartment provided by the University of Public Security, aware of a peculiar sense of emptiness, disturbed by her lack of emotion. It was nearly two years since she had last seen him, and they had spoken a mere handful of times on the phone. It was only when she awoke to her own tears in the middle of the night that she discovered the grief she feared might not be there.

Now she was at a loss. The tragic circumstance of her father’s death had finally forced her to break her ties with China, fragile ties held in place only by a man she thought she loved. And now that she was ‘home’, she would have to make decisions she had been putting off for far too long. Decisions about where her future really lay. Decisions she did not want to face.

She had been back in Chicago for nearly three days, and not once had she ventured to the north side to check on her apartment in Lincoln Park. She had left neighbours collecting mail and watering house plants. But she had been gone for more than eighteen months, and she was afraid of what might greet her there. Afraid, too, of a past she did not wish to revisit, memories of a man she had lived with for seven years. The man she had married. Instead she had opted for the safety of her old bedroom in the redbrick house where she had grown up in the leafy suburbs of Oak Park. Everything there was familiar, comforting, filled with recollections of a time when she had no cares or responsibilities, and life had still held the promise of something magic. She was, she knew, just hiding.

‘Margaret.’ Her mother’s voice carried to her on the wind and had the same chill edge to it. Margaret stopped and waited for her to catch up. They had barely spoken in the last three days. They had embraced briefly, but without warmth. There had been the polite enquiries about their respective well-being, the mechanical exchanges of necessary information. It wasn’t that they had ever really fallen out, their relationship had simply been sterile for as long as Margaret could remember. Loveless. A strange relationship for mother and daughter. ‘You’ll help me serve up the food when we get back to the house?’

‘Of course.’ Margaret didn’t know why her mother was asking. They had been through all this earlier. Perhaps, she thought, it was just for the lack of something else to say.

They walked to the gate in silence then, side by side, a space between them that a husband and father might have filled. As they reached the cars her mother said with a tone, ‘So what now? Back to China?’

Margaret clenched her teeth. ‘I don’t think this is the time or place, Mom.’

Her mother raised an eyebrow. ‘I take it that’s Margaret code for “yes”.’

Margaret flashed her a look. ‘Well, if I do go back, it’ll probably just be to escape from you.’ She opened the rear door of the hired limousine and slipped into the cold leather of the back seat.

II

‘Deputy Section Chief Li.’ The defence lawyer spoke slowly, as if considering every syllable. ‘There is no doubt that if one compares these shoe prints with the photographs of the footprints taken at the scene of the murder, one would be led to the conclusion that they were made by the same pair of shoes.’ Photographs of the footprints and the corresponding shoe prints were laid out on the table in front of him.