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Jinhai grabbed the grenade and rushed to the back door, but before he could do anything more, the device detonated.
There was no explosion. Instead it released a cloud of noxious gas that made Li cough and splutter. He’d taken a couple of lungfuls before he realized he should hold his breath. He grabbed the handle of the side door and tried to release it, but their assailant had overridden the system. It was no good, they were trapped, and whatever was in his lungs was doing its work. He saw the rest of his team fall and felt his own body weaken as the gas took him into oblivion.
CHAPTER 2
TWO FORENSICS TRUCKS stood on the far side of the parking lot, next to a couple of Beijing Police vehicles in their black-and-white livery and three unmarked SUVs. Uniformed officers performed a fingertip search of the area while crime-scene analysts in white full-body hazmat suits checked the interior and exterior of the blue van. Sunlight dappled the woodland between the parking lot and the reservoir, where more police officers performed a ground search.
Zhang Daiyu had been to many such scenes before, but what made this one different was her personal connection to the victims. Years on the force had taught her to control her emotions, but it proved difficult to keep a lid on her grief as she parked beside one of the forensics trucks. She cut the engine and took a moment to compose herself, glancing in the rear-view mirror and wiping away the tears that threatened to brim over. Throughthe rear window of her Honda CR-V she saw someone approaching. She quickly climbed out. Chen Ya-ting, a former colleague in the city’s police department, came toward her. He’d called and suggested she come to the scene. He wore the sky-blue shirt, black tie and black trousers that had once been Zhang Daiyu’s uniform too. As he reached her he removed his peaked cap and ran his hand over his tufty black hair. His usually cheerful face looked somber.
“Zhang Daiyu,” he said. “I wish I could say it was good to see you, but not in these circumstances.”
“Thanks for calling me,” she replied. His sorrow only made things harder and she fought back more tears. Kha Delun, Ling Kang and Jiang Jinhai were her colleagues, and she thought back to all the moments she’d spent with them—laughing at Delun’s lame jokes, arguing over the best noodle stands with Kang, or discussing cases with Jinhai, who was always the most serious of the trio. She couldn’t bear to think they were gone.
“We believe the assailant or assailants used knockout gas before shooting them. We found the canister in the van.”
“And Shang Li?” she asked.
Her boss had texted her to say he was on his way here because Jinhai had summoned him.
Chen shook his head. “No sign of him. We found drag marks near the van. They’re patchy, but they lead over the parking lot to the bank of the reservoir. We have divers in the water searching for him.”
Shang Li was the warm, generous man who’d recruited Zhang Daiyu from the Beijing Police. She knew his wife and children,and didn’t want to be the one to break this terrible news to them. She prayed Chen was wrong in assuming her boss had been drowned.
“What were they doing out here?” he asked.
“Following a lead,” she replied.
“That sounds a lot like detective work,” he countered.
Private detectives were officially illegal in China, but they existed thanks to a loophole that permitted consultants and advisers to help individuals and organizations solve operational problems. Anything overtly investigative was against the law, and would be punished, but Zhang Daiyu and Chen went way back and she knew there was no need for pretense between them, not least because they were standing a few yards away from a van full of surveillance gear.
“This lead have a name?” Chen asked.
Zhang Daiyu was saved from answering by a shout from one of the officers involved in the fingertip search.
“Sir, I’ve found something,” she said, rising from the ground. She hurried over and showed Chen a tiny USB drive in the palm of her gloved hand.
He thanked her and carefully put on a pair of latex gloves before taking the small data-storage device. Zhang Daiyu followed him to the nearest forensics truck. The blast of air conditioning was welcome relief from the mid-morning heat.
There were two crime-scene technicians working at neighboring benches, analyzing and bagging evidence recovered from the scene.
“Check this for prints,” Chen said to the nearest technician, ayoung woman whose face was the only visible part of her body. The rest of her was concealed beneath a hazmat suit. The technician nodded and sprayed light-sensitive fluid onto the USB, before holding it under a UV lamp. She shook her head.
“No prints or biological material. You want me to bag it for analysis?”
“Thanks. I’ll take a look at it first,” he replied.
He beckoned Zhang Daiyu over to a workbench in the corner of the truck and popped the drive into the USB port of a laptop. The screen came to life and the computer automatically opened a file window.
“All the hard drives in the surveillance van have been erased,” Chen revealed. “Whoever did this was trying to cover up something.”
There was a single video file contained in a folder. He played it.
The screen filled with surveillance footage shot by a drone, showing a man standing in a courtyard on the nearby university campus. His face was familiar to Zhang Daiyu, and she knew Chen too would recognize him as one of Beijing’s richest men.
“David Zhou,” he said.
The footage ended, freezing on an image of Zhou’s face.
