Chinese Burn Read online

  Chinese Burn

  By Mark Chisnell

  Dedication

  For Tina, Aiden and Ollie

  Note from the Author

  I’d always intended the adventures of Sam Blackett to be a series, and many of the elements were set up in the first book, Powder Burn; the missing father, the ambition to be an investigative journalist and the relationship with Pete. In this second book I wanted to move the overall story along, but do it at maximum pace in a flat out suspense thriller. Unlike Powder Burn this one came together pretty quickly, if it hadn’t been for a sabbatical thanks to the birth of our second son, it would have been done and dusted from concept to completion in six months. I hope you like it.

  Table of Contents

  Table of Contents

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  More Books by Mark Chisnell

  About the Author

  Copyright

  Chapter 1

  Sam Blackett looked up from the People's Pilsner that sat in front of her, beads of perspiration now rolling down the glass. Not a drop had passed her lips. It was a shame that she couldn't claim as much for the four or five that had come and gone before it. And she had started the evening with the very best of intentions... a cheap meal, then back to the hotel for an early night.

  So what the hell was she now doing in the lush, white, art deco interior of the top-floor restaurant of Shanghai's Peninsula Hotel? She had needed cheering up. And that would explain the first drink. The rest she could blame on Roger — at least, she thought that his name was Roger.

  He'd approached her at the bar with a straight-forward, "Hello, can I buy you a drink?" After spending the last few days wandering around the city with only her own company, she had said yes without even thinking. And here they were; an eighty-dollar steak and several bottles of People's Pilsner later.

  He was staring out across the Huangpu River at the glowing swelter of light from the Bund. The temperature on the restaurant's terrace had dropped to no more than a couple of degrees below the sweat-sodden heat of the day. He turned back to her suddenly. "So, do you wanna go up to my room?" His Midwest accent was slightly burred with drink.

  She smiled. "Not particularly."

  Roger's shoulders twitched in a snort of laughter that died before it got to his throat.

  "Well, I guess that's straight-forward." He rose unsteadily to his feet. A moment later a flicker of alarm crossed his face and he lurched towards the railing.

  "Whoa, steady." She moved to grab him. They both peered down from the fourteenth floor. "Don't want to fall from here," she added, watching his face as she did so.

  Roger harrumphed in a dangerously non-committal way, something dark momentarily crossing his face.

  "Let me give you a hand, I think that last Mai-tai might have been too much." A little crease formed between her eyebrows.

  "Not sure it was that one in particular..." Roger's words were starting to openly slur.

  Typical. As soon as sex was off the table he let the alcohol steamroller him. The usual disappointment. He'd been such a good listener as she had explained how she came to be alone in Shanghai.

  An explanation that had somehow involved a fairly detailed description of the relationship-crash she had suffered in India with the man she had — briefly, admittedly — thought that she might spend the rest of her life with. But that was as much as she got in before his natural need to talk about himself had resurfaced. She had then listened to him slurp his way through half a dozen very expensive cocktails while moaning about the money problems his business was suffering back in Detroit.

  Roger stumbled the first couple of steps towards the terrace doors, and then lurched to a halt by the next table. She stepped beside him and took a firm grip of his forearm. It looked like she was going to his room after all.

  "Which floor are you on?" she asked.

  "Four, oh, three. Rooooom four oh, threeee... Shhorryesh... It hit when... stood up..." he blinked, very slowly, swaying slightly.

  I bet it did. She guided him unsteadily around the tables. He bumped into several of them, but there was only one other couple left in the terrace bar, and they were very self-absorbed, away in the far corner. She got Roger into the restaurant, more careful to steer him away from contact now, as all the tables had been cleared and freshly laid. She checked her watch. It was almost three am.

  They made it to the elevators. He sank against the wall as she pressed the call button. A moment later, the elevator doors slid silently open and with a huge sigh, he pushed himself back off the wall. They stepped inside, Sam pressed the button for the fourth floor, and again in silence, they began the short descent.

  Sam just had time to wonder how easy it would be to find a cab to get back to her own hotel at this time of night, when they stopped and the doors slid open. The notice on the wall opposite told her which way they needed to go, and she levered Roger out into the corridor. He was now struggling to stand, and she had to get his arm over her shoulders to help support him the fifty yards to his room.

  She propped him back against the wall beside the door, and helped him find his key card, tucked conveniently into the top pocket of his jacket. She opened the door and got him up off the wall. He lurched around the corner into the room. Sam felt that she had done her duty and, anxious not to give him the wrong message, she let him go and stayed on the threshold.

  He stopped a few paces into the room when he realized that she was no longer with him, and turned. He was standing there looking at her, very drunk and faintly disappointed, when the man came at him from behind the door. There was no time for any reaction to reach Roger's face before the assailant was on him, and the door slammed shut in her face.

  Sam only heard the grunting, the muffled howl of pain, and then the thud as he hit the floor. She took five stilted paces back, and melted motionless into the shadow from a pillar. It was only just enough, and it was only just in time.

  The door opened, and a slightly built Chinese man stepped outside the room. He glanced up and down the corridor, then rolled his head on his neck as if to ease stiff muscles. He pulled a light raincoat on; hiding blood stained shirt and trousers, then turned away from her and walked unhurriedly to the fire exit stairs.

  Sam waited until he was gone before she rushed into the room. It was a knife attack; it had been swift and very violent. The acidic stench of puke and shit-smell almost overwhelmed her. It was obvious there was nothing anyone could do. She'd seen deer die often enough, and there was no point even calling for help for Roger.

  The blood was spreading in a thick pool around him, the stain on his shirt vivid even in the half-dark of the room. His body was twisted and contorted, racked by the spasms of pain and she could hear the gurgle and suck as he tried to breath. She crouched down and took his hand and squeezed it. The skin was cold and clammy.

  "Let..." he squealed, gripping her like a vice, eyes wide open and pupils bulging.

  "What?" She shook her head, not understanding.

  "Yearghhhhhhh!" A bloody spittle whistled off his lips. His head banged against the floor repeatedly. Then, suddenly, for a moment he was calm. 'Letter, give my wife!'

  Wife?

  "Oh god, oh god, oh god... my mother, I want mother...' he screamed, the calm passing like the eye of a storm. His feet drummed against the floor and he freed his hand from hers to claw at the inside of his jacket. And then he was go
ne.

  Sam rocked back on her heels in the silence, pushing against the waves of shock and anxiety. One minute he was trying to get her into bed, the next he was dying on the floor of his hotel room, trying to get her to take a final letter to his wife. She fought for half a minute to get her own breathing and thinking under control. And then she checked his pockets.

  Inside the jacket, above the wounds and free of blood, she found a small envelope in a rich, creamy paper; the hotel stationery. It was addressed to Madeline Ravert, an address in Ann Arbor. A door banged loudly somewhere on the corridor and there was a tentative footstep. A man had died violently. He was a long way from home and friends, and his final wish was that she should take a letter back to his wife. This last part didn't seem unreasonable. In fact, it was the only part that did.

  Sam put the letter in her jeans pocket, and stepped away from the body. There were more footsteps in the hall. She turned, just as a man peered in through the door. He was dressed in a hotel dressing gown, and spoke a short sentence in Chinese. She shook her head, stepped to the phone by the bed and dialed for reception.

  Sam sat up as the door opened. The Chinese police officer glanced around the room until he saw her on the spread of white bed linen, and then waved his hand to tell her to follow. So she got up and headed for the door. After she had called reception for help it had taken the police just a few minutes to arrive and take charge from the overwrought hotel staff.

  On arrival they had closed down the entire corridor, taken her passport from her and led her to an unused room. She had washed the blood off, lay down on the bed and stared at the ceiling. Now she glanced at her watch as she followed the police officer down the empty corridor. It was 10am. Holy crap, she must have slept.

  She followed the officer to the lift, and they rose silently to the twelfth floor. He took her to a corner room, knocked twice, then opened the door and indicated that she should enter. He didn't follow, and closed the door behind her. She was in a room bigger than her mother's house, amid acres of expensive pale blue and cream fabrics. It must have been one of the Peninsula's suites. A man was sat at a dark wooden desk. Behind him, through the wall of plate glass, was a stunning view across the river to the Bund.

  "Please." He indicated the chair opposite, on the other side of the desk.

  Sam sat down. There was no paper on the desk, and no kind of recording device was visible anywhere. Not that that meant anything. She turned her attention to the man. She judged him to be in his thirties. He was wearing a suit that was a touch too shiny, and a touch too tight, even for his slim frame. Deep set brown eyes watched her from under the fringe of dark hair.

  "So," he pulled out a packet of cigarettes and a lighter, "I understand that you were a witness to the murder of Mr Roger Ravert?" He tapped out a cigarette.

  Sam watched him light it, trying not to look disapproving. Her stomach was churning; she thought the smoke might make her throw up.

  "Mr Ravert?" he exhaled smoke towards her.

  She watched it approach, unable to hide her distaste. "Can I ask who you are, please?" It sounded more diffident than she had intended.

  "The officer investigating the murder."

  Sam didn't reply. It wasn't really good enough, but it was obviously all that she was going to get.

  "And you are Sam Blackett, and you saw the attack and reported the murder to the hotel?"

  She nodded, trying not to breath in the smoke. Her stomach turned over, and she felt the start of a dry heave. She leaned forward and put her hands to her mouth.

  "Are you all right?" asked the man, sharply.

  "Not really... the smoke..." she flapped her hand at it.”I don't feel too good anyway..."

  He watched her for a moment, and then stubbed out the cigarette.

  "Thank you," she said.

  He didn't react, just watched her. "How long have you been in our wonderful country, Sam Blackett?" he asked, as she sat up straight and dropped her hands to her lap.

  What's that got to do with a man dying in a bloody heap on the floor of one of your best hotels? "About a month," she said. "Your English is very good."

  "And where have you spent that time?" he continued, ignoring her comment.

  "I started in Hong Kong, and then travelled up here, mostly on the coast, seeing stuff."

  "So this is a holiday?"

  "Yes."

  "But you are a journalist?"

  Oh, how long had she waited to hear someone say that to her? And here it was, possibly about to land her in a whole world of trouble. It was hard to get a journalist's visa for China, so she hadn't bothered. And in theory — the way she had interpreted the embassy website — as long as she didn't report on news stories the tourist visa that she had was adequate. However, this theory wasn't something that she had planned to test in practice. "I'd like to be," she said. "I don't know that I could claim to be a journalist yet. I've only had a couple of stories published."

  "And one of them was a front page story in the New York Times, about CIA-agitation of a rebellion in the Himalayas, in Shibde?"

  Sam shifted in her seat, and then forced herself to be still. He had done his homework. "It was, yes — but what's this got to do with Roger's murder?"

  "That's what I'm trying to find out."

  "There's no connection." She looked away as she said it, across the river to where the towers soared into the air. "I only met him last night at the bar, here in the hotel. We had a couple of drinks... well, maybe more than a couple and I helped him up to his room. He walked inside, and someone knifed him. They ran... actually, no, they didn't run. They walked, very calmly to the fire exit. And I called the hotel reception. That's it." She turned back to him. And that was it. She had done nothing else, just watched him die. She felt utterly sick, right to her core.

  "I'm curious, what was the source of your story on Shibde?"

  She closed her eyes for a moment, and tried to find the strength to deal with this, and not to just break down in tears, rolled up in a ball on the lush carpet. "I'll tell you what I told everyone else," she said, after a few moments, "including the editors at the New York Times. My source is protected."

  "I think you might try to be a little bit more helpful." The voice was soft and warm. "After all, you were found in a hotel room with a man who had been stabbed to death. His blood was on you, and no one saw anyone else come or go from the hotel room. It's not hard to see you as a suspect, Sam Blackett."

  It wasn't even a thinly veiled threat. "Why would I call for help if I'd done it?"

  The man shrugged.

  "And where's the knife? It's not in the room."

  The man shrugged again.

  "Do I have any rights here? Can I see someone from the US embassy please?"

  "There will be plenty of time for that later."

  This time Sam said nothing.

  "I see from your passport that you have a tourist visa. So you are not here to work?" he asked, after a few seconds of her silence.

  "No, it's just a holiday, I've been having a look around in case I can find something to write a travel story about when I get home, but that's it." She had spent the last couple of days traipsing around Zhujiajiao — Shanghai's so-called Venice — trying and failing to find an original angle for the travel story she'd been commissioned to write by the Boston Globe. Something that she had recorded faithfully on her blog, in her Facebook status, and in several tweets and instagram posts. All of which this man might have read. "I've been travelling through Asia for a while," she added, "taking some time out while I figure out what to do with my life."

  "Ah, the famous American backpacker, trying to 'find' yourself..." The sentence tailed off with just the tap of the cigarette packet on the desk. Again, she remained silent, and eventually, he spoke again. "I'm sure you understand my concern, Miss Blackett. A famous American reporter with connections to the CIA..."

  "I'm not a famous reporter, and I don't have connections to the CIA!"

  "Then
how did you know about the operation in Shibde?"

  Sam took a deep breath. This was getting really ugly.

  "You can see my problem," he continued, "the famous American reporter has investigated and revealed covert American operations in an area that's both far from the US sphere of influence, and very politically sensitive to the People's Republic of China. And now you are here, and an American arms dealer is murdered, apparently right in front of you."

  "Arms dealer?" she said, the shock creeping into her voice.

  "Of course, you weren't aware of Mr Ravert's business interests?" The sarcasm was thick.

  "No..." but I might have been if I'd been paying attention last night "...it's just an unfortunate coincidence. We had a drink, I helped him to his room; he was incredibly drunk."

  "So this meeting was not pre-arranged?"

  "No, I stepped into the hotel to have a meal. He was already in the bar. We got talking and had a few drinks together. That's how it works for Americans, how does it go down in China?"

  "Do you know why Roger Ravert was in China?"

  "No idea, and frankly, I had no interest."

  "So what did you talk about?"

  "My ex-boyfriend and his money problems."

  "He didn't explain those problems?"

  "Probably, but you know, I wasn't all that interested."

  "Of course," he replied with a smile. Then he leaned forward. "It's not hard to see your position here as very difficult, Sam Blackett. It would be better for both of us if you could explain how you knew what was happening in Shibde."

  She took a deep breath. Uglier and uglier, she would have to come up with some sort of story. "I was in Nepal..."

  "On holiday."

  Sam ignored the sarcasm. "I was trekking up near the border with Shibde, and I met one of the rebels. He'd had contact with the CIA; he told me what was happening in his country. I wrote up his story. It was that simple."

  "Why would he tell you? The Shibdese are famous for their reluctance to deal with the outside world."