Li felt fingers of frustration choking back his brief optimism. It would be ironic if they managed to catch their killer on tape, but not be able to see his face.
The time-code on the tape was counting back at high speed. The picture was just a blur. Wu said, ‘Stop it at twelve-fifteen. We’ll watch it from there.’ He shoved another piece of gum in his mouth and lit another cigarette.
The tape ran back a little past twelve-fifteen before the security man could stop it. The picture cleared and they had a view of the hall from the left-hand camera. It was running forward now from twelve-thirteen and fifty-three seconds. Li said, ‘Can you cue up the tape from the other camera while we’re watching this?’ The security man nodded. He found the right tape and set it rewinding in another machine.
The others watched a constant stream of activity on the first monitor. A woman with a pushchair. A bunch of schoolgirls posting some letters. Businessmen with express mail. Ordinary folk going about their ordinary business. The main floor was busy, at least thirty people moving around it at any one time. Maybe more. The picture definition was not good, as if the camera had viewed proceedings through gauze stretched across its lens. Suddenly, Wu shouted, ‘There!’ And he stabbed his finger at the screen.
Li leaned in and saw a figure in a long, dark coat with a shoebox parcel under his arm walking through the sunshine that spilled in from the main door. ‘Shit!’ he muttered under his breath. ‘He’s wearing a baseball cap. He knows about the cameras.’ His face was completely masked by the long peak of the black cap, and plunged into shadow by it. His collar was turned up, and they could not even tell if his hair was long or short. He wore gloves, dark trousers, black shoes. There was not one centimetre of him on view.
Wu was shaking his head. ‘He’s playing with us, Chief. He knew we would see these tapes. He knew how fucking frustrated we would be when we had him right there in our sights and still couldn’t see him. He’s like the invisible fucking man.’
They watched as he stood for some time in the centre of the concourse, as if deciding which queue to join. Then he walked to a window at the far end, almost immediately below the other camera. Its view of him would be hopelessly distorted, and he was about as far as he could get from the camera whose shot they were watching now. He conducted his business with a teller they could not see. After a brief exchange, the window was lifted and his parcel taken across the counter. He waited until it had been weighed and costed, and then took a wallet from his coat pocket and paid in cash. He never once looked around, his face hidden from view at every moment. He turned and walked briskly to the door and was gone.
Li turned to the manager. ‘Find out who that teller was and get them in here now.’
The teller turned out to be a plump, middle-aged woman with an attitude. She had done nothing wrong, and as far as she was concerned, she was going to be as unhelpful as possible. They replayed the tape for her and she watched with a bored expression.
‘So what am I supposed to be?’ she asked. ‘Madame Memory? I don’t even look at their faces. It’s bad enough that I can smell their breath through the grilles in the window.’
‘It was an unusual address,’ Wu said.
‘I don’t look at the addresses. I weigh the parcel, I look at the postcode, I get a price. I stamp it, they pay. They go, then it’s who’s next.’
‘You’re not being very helpful, lady,’ Wu said.
‘I’m not paid to be helpful,’ she snapped. ‘I’m paid to do a job. I do it. I’ve done if for years. If anyone’s got any complaint about my work, that’s another matter.’ She looked defiantly around the faces. ‘Is anyone complaining about my work?’
Li said very quietly. ‘Do you have any idea what was in that parcel?’
‘Of course I don’t. What’s it to me what was in the parcel?’
‘Well,’ Li said patiently, ‘it might help you to understand just how much danger you are in.’
For the first time, there was no quick comeback and she visibly blanched. ‘What do you mean?’
‘I think it would be helpful if I explained,’ Li said, ‘that the parcel you took from that gentleman contained the kidney of a woman he hacked to death on Sunday.’ Her eyes widened. ‘You might even have heard of him. He was in the paper this morning. They’re calling him the Beijing Ripper.’ There was the smallest intake of breath, and her hand went to her mouth. ‘Did you see that story by any chance?’ She nodded, unable to speak now. ‘Well, you’re the only person we know of who has seen him.’ Her eyes grew wider still. ‘And if we know you’ve seen him, he knows you’ve seen him. So I don’t really think I’d like to be in your shoes tomorrow when he reads that we have interviewed a witness, a teller at the EMS post office, who took a parcel from him on Monday.’
‘You wouldn’t put that in the paper!’ she gasped.
Li shrugged sympathetically. ‘Maybe we won’t have to. Maybe we’ll catch him by then. But we’re going to need some help. We’re going to need a description. Anything at all you can remember. Anything.’ He paused. ‘It could be the most important thing you’ve ever had to do in your life.’
She asked to see the tape again. Then they played her the second tape, but half of the killer was outside the bottom frame of the picture, and they were looking directly down on top of him. There was not so much as a hair on view.
The teller was babbling nervously now. ‘I don’t know, I don’t know. His face was shaded by that cap. And really, I don’t look at them, I don’t.’
‘Anything you can remember,’ Li said again. ‘Was he tall, short? Was he clean shaven? Did he wear glasses…?’
‘Yes,’ the teller broke in eagerly. ‘He had glasses. I remember that. Like sunglasses, only not as dark. You know, like they react to the sunlight, but the lenses never go really black.’
‘Do you remember what kind of glasses?’
She shook her head.
‘Think. Did they have heavy frames? Or were they silver or gold? Steel frames like your boss?’
She glanced at the manager who scowled silently at her. She shook her head. ‘No. No, I don’t remember. But he was clean shaven. I’m pretty sure about that. I would have noticed if he had whiskers.’
‘What about his accent?’ Li said. ‘Was there anything unusual about his voice?’
He could see the concentration on her face. There was nothing that concentrated the mind so well as fear, and the instinct for self-preservation. But to her own and their frustration, she genuinely could not remember.
Li looked at the monitor. He was right there in front of them. Li could reach out and touch the screen. But they were no nearer to catching him than before. He was taunting, torturing them, of that Li was certain. He plotted and planned his every move, anticipating what they would do at every stage so that he was always one step ahead of them.
‘We’ll need both those tapes,’ Wu said to the head of security, and the security man punched a button and the picture froze on the screen. Li had a sudden inspiration.
‘Take a statement from the teller,’ he said to Wu, and turned to the manager. ‘I want you to come down to the floor with me. And I’ll need a tape measure. I want to take a few measurements.’
III
It had been an awkward half hour. Both Margaret and Li’s father had paid lip service to the thought that Li might turn up any at moment. But neither really believed it. The old man had sat in the apartment with his coat and hat on, a fur hat with fold-up earmuffs pulled down over thin, grey hair, his gloves folded neatly on his knees. He had spent all of five minutes half-heartedly bouncing Li Jon on them before becoming bored with the child and handing him back to Margaret. He had accepted an offer of tea, taken two sips and then left it to grow cold on a low table beside the settee.