The Killing Room

The Killing Room by Peter May Read Free Book Online

Book: The Killing Room by Peter May Read Free Book Online
Authors: Peter May
Tags: Fiction, General, Mystery & Detective
the plane on the way down. ‘A young girl, we think early twenties. She was found by public utility workers on a piece of waste ground in Haidian district near the Summer Palace last February, during the New Year holiday. There had been heavy rain, and they were drawn to the spot by what looked like blood pooling in the mud. They started digging. She was just a couple of feet down in two black plastic bags. The pathologist reckoned she’d only been there about a week.’
    ‘Cause of death?’
    ‘Uncertain. Her heart stopped. That’s the only thing we know for sure. She’d been opened up by someone with pretty sophisticated surgical skills. Heart, liver, pancreas and one kidney had all been removed.’
    ‘Organ theft?’
    Li shook his head. ‘No. The organs were all still there in one of the plastic bags.’
    ‘And the rest of her?’
    ‘In the other one. Hacked to bits by someone with a butcher’s saw by the look of it.’
    ‘Anything else of significance?’
    Li shrugged. ‘It’s difficult to know what’s significant. She had the most common blood group – O. But she’d had some pretty expensive dental work, though not done by anyone in Beijing. It’s possible she’d had treatment in the West.’
    ‘Any clothes?’
    ‘Not a stitch. And no jewellery. No distinguishing marks. And the AFIS came up with zip on her fingerprints.’
    Mei-Ling looked thoughtful. ‘And motive? Would you hazard a guess?’
    ‘Couldn’t even begin,’ Li said. ‘Not sexual, at least not in any conventional way. There was no sign of violation, no mutilation of the sexual organs or the breasts.’ He was aware of feeling slightly uncomfortable discussing these details with a woman. He shrugged. ‘We hit a brick wall.’
    They passed under a sweeping junction of crisscrossing flyovers, and through a maze of buildings to their left Li caught sight of the remodelled People’s Square with its circular museum and glass theatre and vast white municipal monolith. Ahead through a forest of skyscrapers he spotted a strange green spire punctuated twice in its upward sweep by red and silver globes, all supported on four gigantic splayed legs. It looked for all the world like a Martian rocket ship. ‘What the hell’s that?’ he asked.
    She followed his eyeline and grinned. ‘Oh, that? That’s the Pearl TV Tower, across the river in Pudong.’ She glanced at him. ‘You know that before the Second World War Shanghai was known in the West as the Paris of the East? Now the good citizens of the city like to think they have their very own Eiffel Tower.’
    ‘It’s certainly as ugly,’ Li said. But the tower sank out of sight as the road dipped down and ran underground to the tunnel that would take them under the Huangpu River. He said, ‘What about the bodies you found this morning? Anything I described sound familiar?’
    She nodded. ‘Very. But I’ll let you see for yourself first, then you’d better go meet my boss.’
    ‘What about the American? The guy who fell into the pit. They never told me what happened to him.’
    ‘Oh,’ she said casually, ‘they got him out alive okay. Then he just went to pieces.’
    She flicked him a glance, and there was a moment of uncertainty between them before air escaped from her lips in a series of small explosions and she burst out laughing, her strange, infectious braying laugh, and he found himself laughing, too. Humour, no matter how black, was the only defence they ever had against the sick world they moved in.
    *
    Their Santana glided through the wide empty streets of Pudong’s Lujiazui financial district. Street lights reflected on wet sidewalks in the gloom of the late afternoon. All around them thirty-storey buildings soared into the darkening sky, but lights shone in only a few solitary windows. Investment in construction had so far outstripped demand. Across the river, traffic had come to a standstill along the Bund, a broad, waterfront boulevard characterised by its sweep of

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