As he turned, he saw silver hair and wide-open staring eyes. Wu was at the other side of the car. ‘Shit, Chief,’ he said. ‘It’s Cao Xu’s wife.’
A police radio was crackling in the cold night air. One of the officers said, ‘They found the security guard. Someone cut his throat.’
Li vaulted up the steps to the exit door from the northwest tower and kicked it until the glass shattered and the door burst inwards. He skidded across the lobby through the broken glass as the doors of the elevator parted to reveal a small child standing there in the light. It took him a moment to realise it was Xinxin. She ran to him, howling, and he swung her up in his arms, holding her so tightly she almost couldn’t breath.
‘Where’s Margaret?’ he said.
‘She’s still upstairs.’ She fought to draw breath against the sobs that were stealing it from her. ‘Uncle Yan, a man tried to cut my throat…’
Li turned to the officers running in behind him. ‘Someone get her a medic, fast.’ He thrust her into the arms of a young uniformed policeman and slipped into the lift just before the doors slid shut. He heard her call his name as he punched button number twenty-three, and the lift started its high speed ascent.
Curious residents were up and about now, coming out of their apartments into the hallway on floor twenty-three, wrapped in dressing gowns, scratching their heads. Li shouted at them to get out of the way and ran the length of the hall to the open door of the Harts’ apartment. ‘Margaret!’ He screamed her name into the darkness, and to his intense relief he heard her voice call back from somewhere upstairs.
He strode up the stairway into the top hall and saw the door of the study lying open. Margaret was sitting on the settee cradling the still sleeping Li Jon in her arms. ‘Thank God,’ he whispered, offering thanks to whatever deity it was that had watched over her, even if it was not one he believed in.
As he came into the room, she laid the baby carefully back among the cushions and let him take her in his arms, enveloping her, absorbing her, so that they were almost one. He glanced across the room and saw Cao lying in his own blood, twisted, half-propped against the remains of the window, throat and mouth gaping. The freezing November night blew in through the jagged shards of glass that framed the view to the north. ‘What happened?’ he said.
‘Lyang’s dead.’ He shut his eyes in despair. ‘Cao’s wife killed him, then she went through the window.’ Margaret looked up at him. ‘She was the one who burned down the orphanage. She was the one who knew the real Cao Xu. She was one of the orphans.’
He kissed her forehead. ‘It’s over, Margaret,’ he said. ‘It’s all over.’
She let him press her head gently into his chest. ‘Li Yan,’ she said, her voice almost a whisper. ‘Who was he? Who was he really?’
Li looked over at the bloody remains of the deputy police commissioner. ‘I’ve no idea,’ he said. ‘Like Jack the Ripper, we probably never will.’ He shook his head. ‘Chances are we might only ever know him by the name he gave himself. The Beijing Ripper.’