The Killing Room (The China Thrillers 3) by Peter May

Author:Peter May [May, Peter]
Language: eng
Format: mobi
Publisher: Quercus
Published: 2012-06-27T23:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER EIGHT

I

The campus of the Shanghai Medical University sat behind high grey walls to the left and right of Dong’an Road, a jumble of mostly two-storey buildings linked by tree-lined private roads. Here students walked and cycled free of the traffic that choked the city streets outside, and a blink of late autumn sunshine lifted spirits otherwise destined for winter decline.

Li and Mei-Ling had driven here in silence. She had greeted him brightly enough at his hotel, putting a brave face on a disastrous night. No reference was made to Margaret, or the drink, or the food – or the bruise on Li’s cheek. But Mei-Ling was pale and fragile. She had, she said, arranged for them to meet Jiang Baofu’s course professor at the medical university. And little else had passed between them since.

Professor Lu was a broad man with a wide, flat face and narrow slanted eyes. His thick accent betrayed origins in north-west China. He wore a white coat open over a dusty cardigan and baggy pants, and on the rare occasions when he removed the cigarette from between his lips, he waved it around with nicotine-stained fingers. ‘Jiang Baofu?’ He breathed smoke at Li and Mei-Ling. ‘A brilliant student.’ He shuffled papers absently on the desk in his small office. Sun slanted in between the slats of Venetian blinds and lit his smoke in blue wedges. ‘In all the years I have been teaching, I cannot recall a student with more natural ability. He handles a scalpel as if he was born with one in his hand. If he chose to he could become one of the top surgeons in the country.’ He paused and raised his eyes from his papers. ‘I hope he doesn’t.’

Li frowned. ‘Why?’

‘Because that young man is more concerned with the dead than with the living.’

‘How do you mean?’

‘I mean that he has an unhealthy obsession with death. Here, we try to instil in our students a sense of caring, a sense of obligation to the well-being of the patient.’ He flicked a cold glance at Mei-Ling. ‘Even if we do not always succeed.’

Li glanced at Mei-Ling, confused now by a subtext he did not understand. There had been a certain familiarity in the greeting between Mei-Ling and Professor Lu which, Li assumed, had been established in a telephone call to arrange the meeting. Now, it was clear, there was more to it. But Mei-Ling remained impassive.

‘In the case of Jiang Baofu,’ Professor Lu continued, ‘he has no interest whatsoever in the patient, only in the mechanics of the body and the techniques of surgery. He spends hours in pathology, cutting up bodies donated to research. We have tried to persuade him that his talents might best be suited to the field of forensic pathology.’ He gave Li a look that suggested little sympathy, and said with a tone, ‘I’m sure he would be an asset to you people.’ He lit another cigarette from the remains of his old one. ‘However, sadly he still remains undecided.

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