Li said, ‘What about him?’
‘I recognised him. Not right away. But I knew I’d seen the face before. Then it came to me this afternoon, and I checked him out on the net.’
‘Who is he?’
She turned to look at him. ‘Doctor Hans Fleischer. Known as Father Fleischer to all the East German athletes he was responsible for doping over nearly twenty years.’
II
As they drove, in careful convoy, past the high walls of the Diaoyutai State Guesthouse on the eastern flank of Yuyuantan Park, Li dragged his thoughts away from Margaret. It was nearly an hour since he had taken her home and he wondered now what he would accomplish by his search of the club. There was, after all, nothing to link Fleischer with the deaths of the athletes. And Margaret herself had conceded that there was nothing in the pathology or toxicology to suggest that any of them had been taking drugs. But the coincidence was just too much to ignore. And, anyway, he needed something else to think about.
The Deputy Procurator General had been having dinner at the home of a friend and been annoyed by Li’s interruption. His irritation, however, had probably served Li’s cause. Had he examined in more detail the flimsy nature of the grounds with which he had been presented, he might not have signed the warrant.
As if reading Li’s thoughts, Sun took his eyes momentarily from the road, and tossed a glance towards his passenger. ‘What do you think we’re going to find here, Chief?’
Li shrugged. ‘I doubt if this will prove to be anything more than an exercise in harassment, detective. Letting CEO Fan know that we’re watching him. After all, if it’s true that Fan really doesn’t know who Fleischer is, then the link to the club is extremely tenuous.’ He slipped the photograph of Fan and Fleischer and the others out of the folder on his knee and squinted at it by the intermittent glow of the streetlights. ‘But there are other factors we have to take into consideration,’ he said. ‘The break-in at Macken’s studio to steal the film that he took at the club. JoJo’s murder. She was a friend of Macken’s, after all, and it was her who got him the job there in the first place.’
‘You think there’s a connection?’
‘I think there could be a connection between the break-in and the fact that Fleischer features prominently in one of Macken’s pictures.’ He glanced at Sun and waggled the photograph. ‘Think about it. Fleischer is internationally reviled, an outcast. If he went back to Germany he would end up in jail. Not the sort of person an apparently respectable businessman like Fan would want people to know he was connected to. So you’re coming out of a room in your private club. You’re with Fleischer. You think you’re perfectly safe. And flash. There’s a guy with a camera and he’s just caught the two of you together on film. Maybe you’d want that picture back.’
‘But would you kill for it?’
‘That might depend on how deep or unsavoury your connection with Fleischer was.’ Li sighed. ‘On the other hand, I might just be talking through a very big hole in my head.’
The convoy ground to a halt at the Fuchengmenwai intersection, and Li peered again at the photograph in his hand. He frowned and switched on the courtesy light and held the print up to it. ‘Now, there’s something I didn’t notice before,’ he said.
‘What is it?’
Li stabbed at the plaque on the wall beside the door. ‘They’re coming out of the Event Hall.’
Sun shrugged. ‘Is that significant?’
‘It was the one place Fan Zhilong didn’t show me and Qian. He said it was being refurbished.’ He flicked off the courtesy lamp as the traffic lights turned to green and their wheels spun before catching and propelling them slowly around the corner. He peered across the highway, through the falling snow, and saw the twin apartment blocks rising into the dark above the brightly lit entrance to the Beijing OneChina Recreation Club.
Fan Zhilong was less than happy to have his club overrun by Li and a posse of uniformed and plain-clothed officers. He strutted agitatedly behind his desk. ‘It’s an invasion of privacy,’ he railed. ‘Having the place raided by the police is going to do nothing for the reputation of my club. Or for the confidence of my members.’ He stopped and glared at Li. ‘You could be in big trouble for this, Section Chief.’
Li dropped his search warrant on Fan’s desk. ‘Signed by the Deputy Procurator General,’ he said. ‘If you have a problem, take it up with him.’ He paused, then added quietly. ‘And don’t threaten me again.’
Fan reacted as if he had been slapped, although Li’s voice could hardly have been softer. The CEO seemed shocked, and his face reddened.
Li said, ‘A girl has been stabbed to death, Mr. Fan. Your personal assistant.’
‘My ex-personal assistant,’ Fan corrected him.
Li threw the photograph of Fleischer on top of the warrant. ‘And a man wanted in the West for serially abusing young athletes with dangerous drugs was photographed on these premises.’
Fan tutted and sighed and raised his eyes towards the ceiling. ‘I already told you, Section Chief, I never met him before the day that photograph was taken. I couldn’t even tell you his name.’
‘His victims knew him as Father Fleischer.’ Li watched for a reaction but detected none. ‘And I suppose you still don’t remember the name of the member whose guest he was?’
‘You’re right, I don’t.’
‘What’s going on, Mr. Fan?’ The voice coming from the doorway behind them made Li and Sun turn. It was the tracksuited personal trainer with the ponytail, who was also in the Fleischer photograph. ‘The members downstairs are packing up and leaving. They’re not happy.’
‘Neither am I, Hou. But I’m afraid I have very little control over the actions of Section Chief Li and his colleagues.’
Li lifted the photograph from the desk and held it out towards Hou. ‘Who’s the Westerner in the picture?’ he asked.
Hou glanced at his boss, and then advanced towards Li to take a look at the photograph. He shook his head. ‘No idea. One of the members brought him.’
‘Which one?’
‘I can’t remember.’
‘How very convenient. I take it he’s not one of the other two in the picture?’
Hou shook his head. ‘Members of staff.’
‘So yourself, and Mr. Fan, and two other members of staff were left on your own, by a member whose name you’ve forgotten, to entertain this Westerner, whose name you don’t remember? Is that right?’
‘That’s right,’ Hou said.
‘How very forgetful.’
Qian appeared in the door leading to JoJo’s office. Along with half a dozen other section detectives, he had been called back on shift to take part in the search. ‘Chief,’ he said. ‘Remember that Event Hall that was being refurbished? Well, I think you should come and take a look at it.’
As they went in, Qian flicked on the overhead fluorescents, and one by one they coughed and flashed and hummed. ‘Sounds like Star Wars,’ he said. The Event Hall was huge, marble walls soaring more than twenty feet, tiled floors stretching off towards distant pillars, a ceiling dotted with tiny lights, like stars in a night sky. Li looked around with a growing sense of unease. Long banners hung from the walls, decorated with Chinese characters which made no sense to him. Between the door by which they had entered, and a platform against a curtained wall at the facing end, were three, free-standing ornamental doorways set at regular intervals. Between the third of these and the platform, several items were laid out on the floor. A bamboo hoop large enough for a man to pass through, serrated pieces of red paper stuck to the top and bottom of it. Pieces of charcoal arranged in a square. Three small circles of paper set out one after the other. Two lengths of string laid side by side. These items were flanked on each side by a row of eight chairs, set out as if for a small audience. And then on the platform itself, a large rectangular table with a long strip of yellow paper pinned to its front edge and left hanging to the floor.