Питер Мэй - The Ghost Marriage

Wang examined her hands. ‘No sign of trauma,’ he said. ‘And no blood or skin beneath the fingernails.’ He and Margaret exchanged looks, and he nodded to one of the assistants, who drew blood from the femoral artery with a large syringe. ‘What do you think they’ll find in toxicology?’

Margaret shrugged. ‘These days, who knows? Rohypnol would have had a sedative effect after fifteen to twenty minutes. She obviously didn’t put up any kind of a fight.’

They continued the external examination. There was no sign of sexual activity, and no trauma around small, flat breasts with their tiny, dark areolae around the nipples.

Then they came to the neck, where a skin-coloured cosmetic foundation had dried and cracked. Using moistened cotton pads, Margaret carefully washed it away to reveal the bruising that the facial lividity had suggested would almost certainly be there: four circles on the left side of the neck, two of which were close to half an inch in diameter, one larger oval on the right side.

‘Her killer left his mark,’ Wang said.

Margaret carefully traced the line of the little crescent-shaped abrasions that were associated with the bruising. Tiny flakes of skin were heaped up at the concave side. ‘And took a little of her away with him beneath his fingernails.’

They moved up, then, to her face, where blood pressure had mounted in her head and caused petechial haemorrhaging of the tiny blood vessels around the eyes and nose. It was not necessary to stop someone breathing to strangle them. It only required around four-and-a-half pounds of pressure on the jugular to prevent blood draining from the head. Death would have come fast.

Margaret pulled back the eyelids and closed them again. ‘Strange.’

‘What is?’ Wang looked more closely.

‘There are circles of paler flesh around the eyes, blanched into the lividity.’ Margaret stared at the closed eyes of the dead girl, and could almost have sworn she saw patterns in those pale circles. ‘As if coins might have been placed over them to keep them shut.’ She turned to Wang. ‘Do we have a TMDT kit?’

‘We do.’ And he nodded to one of the assistants, who disappeared to return two minutes later with a four-ounce spray bottle of test solution, and a short-wave ultraviolet light source with a 4-watt bulb, sometimes known as a Wood’s lamp.

Margaret took the bottle, and carefully sprayed the solution around each eye, and they waited in silence for several minutes until it had dried. ‘Lights,’ she said. And the assistant turned out the overhead lights, plunging the autopsy room into total darkness.

Margaret snapped on the Wood’s lamp, and an eerie ultraviolet glow filled the room. She moved the lamp over the dead girl’s eyes. There over each one, marked in dark purple against the yellow background of the dried solution, were two perfectly round images with clearly engraved markings.

‘Coins,’ Wang said. ‘You were right. What metal is denoted by purple?’

Margaret stared thoughtfully at the circular patterns engraved into the lividity around the eyes. ‘Brass or copper,’ she said. ‘We’ll need to take photographs. And samples.’

Gan Bo ran a computer-dating agency from an office on the twelfth floor of a new tower block in Sanlihe Lu, overlooking Yuyuantan Park. He didn’t appear to employ any staff, except for a bored-looking young secretary who was painting her fingernails when Li arrived. She seemed pleased by the interruption, and made a great show of calling her boss on the intercom to announce Li’s arrival, before conducting him into the inner sanctum.

Gan’s office was big and empty with an enormous desk placed before a glass wall with a panoramic view over the park below. Li could see the sun reflecting off the lake where he and Margaret often skated with Li Jon when it froze over in winter.

Gan himself was a broad man with the yellowish skin and Han features of a southerner. A thick head of hair was gelled back from an unlined face that Li guessed had seen maybe thirty summers. He wore immaculately pressed black trousers, a plain white Armani shirt, and shiny black Gucci shoes. A Havana cigar smouldered in an ashtray on his desk, and the room was filled with the rich, toasty smell of it. The desk, too, was almost empty, except for a computer screen and keyboard, a telephone, and a cellphone which lay within easy reach of Gan’s grasp.

Gan stood up and waved Li nervously towards the only guest seat in the office. ‘What can I do for you, Section Chief?’

Li remained standing. ‘You can tell me where you acquired the body of a young girl called Jiang Meilin.’

Gan frowned. ‘I have no idea what you’re talking about.’

‘Of course you do. About ten days ago you were contacted by a man called Sheng Dai who had recently lost his son in a motorcycle accident. He asked if you could provide the body of a young girl to take part in a minghun , to ensure their son’s happiness in the afterlife.’

Gan eased himself back into his chair and lifted his cigar from the ashtray. He puffed on it thoughtfully. ‘Yes, I remember that. But I run a computer-dating agency, Section Chief. A legitimate business finding brides for single men.’ His smile was smooth, like silk. ‘I don’t know where he got the idea I could provide him with a dead one, but I sent him away.’

‘Oh?’ Li sauntered towards the window, his hands in his pockets. ‘That’s bizarre, Mr Gan. Because on the day of the funeral someone turned up with the body of a young girl and told the Sheng family that you had found her for them.’

Gan rotated his chair towards Li. He could not conceal the look of puzzlement in his eyes, but feigned nonchalance. ‘Nothing to do with me.’

‘He took twelve hundred dollars for it. But I guess you never saw a cent of that.’

Something like anger shadowed his face, but there was no trace of it in his voice. ‘Twelve hundred dollars, Section Chief? That’s a lot of money for some dead meat.’

Li could see the distant figures of barbers cutting the hair of clients at the entrance to the park below. Among the trees beyond, groups of old men gathered around to watch games of chess in progress.

‘That “dead meat”, Mr Gan, was a living, breathing human being just a few hours before.’ He turned around. ‘Someone murdered that girl to provide a corpse for a ghost wedding. And I think that someone was you.’

Gan paled. ‘That’s ridiculous!’

‘Do you know how they execute murderers, Mr Gan? They take them into a public stadium and shoot them in the back of the head. It would make a hell of a mess of that expensive designer shirt of yours. All that blood and brain tissue.’

‘I run a legitimate business.’

‘You trade in human beings.’

‘Live ones. I never killed anyone in my life.’

‘I think you might have trouble convincing a court of that.’

‘In the name of the sky, I didn’t kill her!’

‘Then who did?’

‘I have no idea.’

Li leaned over and removed Gan’s cigar from his hand, stubbing it out in the ashtray, then put his own hands on the arms of the desk chair, and placed his face just inches away from Gan’s. ‘You and I both know that this computer-dating crap is just a front. You procure women for desperate men. God knows how. But no doubt that will come to light as we start taking your little empire apart. I don’t know if you murdered Jiang Meilin or not, but there’s enough circumstantial evidence, I think, to get a conviction. Especially when we can demonstrate to the court how you really make your living.’

He could smell Gan’s fear, even above the stink of rancid cigar smoke on his breath.