Li walked slowly through each of the ornamental doorways towards the platform, and noticed that there were facing doors on each of the side walls. Fan and the ponytail followed him at a discreet distance, watched from the doorway by Qian and Sun and several other officers. ‘What is this?’ Li said.
‘Nothing really,’ Fan said. ‘At least, nothing to interest you, Section Chief. Some ceremonial fun and games we have here for the members.’
‘You said it was being refurbished.’
‘Did I? I probably just meant it was being rearranged for the ceremony.’
‘And what exactly does this ceremony consist of, Mr. Fan?’
Fan shrugged and smiled. But not enough for his dimples to show. He looked faintly embarrassed. ‘It’s a game, really, Section Chief. A bit like a Masonic initiation ceremony. If you know what that is.’
‘I didn’t know there were Masons in China, Mr. Fan.’
‘There aren’t. It’s just something we made up. The members like it. It makes them feel like they’re part of something, you know, exclusive.’
Li nodded and stepped up on to the platform. The table was strewn with more odd items. He counted five separate pieces of fruit. There was a white paper fan, an oil lamp, a rush sandal, a piece of white cloth with what looked like red ink stains on it, a short-bladed sword, a copper mirror, a pair of scissors, a Chinese writing brush and inkstone. More than a dozen other items were laid out among them, everything from a needle to a rosary. ‘What’s this stuff?’
‘Gifts,’ Fan said. ‘From members. They do not have to be expensive. Just unusual.’
‘They are certainly that,’ Li said. ‘What’s behind the curtain?’
‘Nothing.’
Li stepped forward and drew it aside to reveal a double door. ‘I thought you said there was nothing here.’
‘It’s just a door, Section Chief.’
‘Where does it lead?’
‘Nowhere.’
Li tried the handle and pulled the right-hand door open. There was just marble wall behind it. Both the door and its façade were false.
Li looked at Fan, who returned his stare uneasily. The hum of the lights sounded inordinately loud. Li glanced towards Sun and Qian and the other detectives, and then his eyes fell on the club’s personal trainer, and Li noticed for the first time that although it was gathered behind his head in a ponytail, his hair was allowed to loop down over his ears, hiding them from view. The tip of his right ear was just visible through the hair. But the loop on the left lay flat against his head. It looked odd, somehow. Something came back to Li from his secondment in Hong Kong. Something he had heard, but never seen. He stepped up to Hou and pushed the hair back from the left side of his head to reveal that the left ear was missing, leaving only a half-moon of livid scar tissue around the hole in his head. ‘Nasty accident,’ he said. ‘How did it happen?’
‘Like you said, Section Chief, a nasty accident.’ Hou flicked his head away from Li’s hand. There was something sullen and defiant in Hou’s tone, something like a warning. Li took another good, long look at Fan and saw that same defiance in his eyes, and felt a shiver of apprehension run through him, as if someone had stepped on his grave.
‘I think we’ve seen enough,’ he said. ‘Thank you, Mr. Fan, we’ll not disturb you any longer.’ And he walked back through the ornamental doorways to where his detectives stood waiting. ‘We’re through here,’ he said to Qian. Qian nodded, and called the rest of the team to go as they crossed the entrance hall to the tall glass doors.
‘What is it?’ Sun whispered. He could see the tension in his boss’ face.
‘Outside,’ Li said quietly, and they pushed out into the icy night, large snowflakes slapping cold on hot faces.
Once through the gates, they stopped on the sidewalk. ‘So what was going on in there, Chief?’ Sun asked. ‘The atmosphere was colder than the morgue on a winter’s night.’
‘What direction are we facing?’ Li looked up at the sky as if searching for the stars to guide him. But there were none.
Sun frowned. ‘Fuchengmenwai runs east to west on the grid. We’re on the north side, so we’re facing south.’
Li turned and looked at the building they had just left. ‘That means we entered the Event Hall from a door on its east side,’ he said.
Sun said, ‘I don’t understand.’
Li hobbled around to the passenger side of the Jeep. ‘Let’s get in out of this weather.’
The snow in their hair and on their shoulders quickly melted in the residual warmth of the Jeep. Condensation began forming on the windshield, and Sun started the motor to get the blower going. He turned to Li. ‘Are you going to tell me what’s going on, Chief?’
‘These people are Triads,’ Li said.
‘Triads?’
Li looked at him. ‘You know what Triads are, don’t you?’
‘Sure. Organised crime groups in Hong Kong, or Taiwan. But here? In Beijing?’
Li shook his head sadly. ‘There’s always a price to pay, isn’t there? It seems we haven’t only imported Hong Kong’s freedoms and economic reforms. We’ve imported their criminals as well.’ He turned to the young police officer. ‘Triads are like viruses, Sun. They infect everything they touch.’ He nodded towards the floodlit entrance of the club. ‘That wasn’t some ceremonial games hall in there. It was an initiation chamber. And trainer Hou, with the ponytail? He must have transgressed at some point, broken some rule. He didn’t lose his ear by accident. It was cut off. That’s how they punish members for misdemeanours.’
‘Shit, Chief,’ Sun said. ‘I had no idea.’ He lit a cigarette and Li grabbed the packet from him and took one. ‘Give me a light.’
‘Are you sure you want to do this, Chief? They’re dangerous to your health, you know.’
‘Just give me a light.’ Li leaned over to the flickering flame of Sun’s lighter and sucked smoke into his lungs for the first time in nearly a year. It tasted harsh, and burned his throat all the way down. He spluttered and nearly choked, but persevered, and after a few draws felt the nicotine hit his bloodstream and set his nerves on edge. ‘I spent six months in Hong Kong back in the nineties,’ he said. ‘I came across quite a number of Triads then. Mostly they were just groups of small-time gangsters who liked the names and the rituals. They call the leader the Dragon Head. All that shit in there, it’s a kind of recreation of a journey made by the five Shaolin monks who supposedly created the first Triad society, or Hung League as they called it, set up to try to restore the Ming Dynasty.’
‘Sounds like crap to me,’ Sun said.
‘It might be crap, but that doesn’t mean they’re not dangerous.’ Li drew thoughtfully on his cigarette. ‘I never came across anything on this scale, though. I mean, these people have serious money. And serious influence.’ He shook his head. ‘I still can’t believe they’re here in Beijing.’
‘Can’t we just shut them down?’ Sun said.
‘On what pretext? That they’re Triads? They’re never going to admit to that, are they? And we don’t have any proof. On the face of it, Fan and his people are running a legitimate business. We have no evidence to the contrary, and after tonight I figure we’ll be hard pushed to find any.’ He lowered his window an inch to flick the half-smoked remains of his cigarette out into the snowy night. ‘We’re going to have to tread very carefully from here on in, Sun. These people are likely to be a lot more dangerous to our health than any cigarette.’