Peter May - The Firemaker

‘Two years.’

Margaret shook her head in wonder. ‘In the States we wouldn’t have had the money, or the manpower, to pursue one case that long. And anyway,’ she grinned, ‘there’d have been a few hundred other homicides in the meantime.’

‘I know,’ Li said seriously, and Margaret wondered if this was straight-faced sarcasm. But he gave no indication of it.

Professor Xie glanced pointedly at his watch and sighed audibly.

‘Okay,’ Li said. ‘You want to have a look at the body?’

‘Are there any belongings?’ she asked.

‘Don’t you want to see the body first?’ Li seemed surprised.

‘No. Sometimes you can tell a lot from what a person was wearing, or carrying.’

Professor Xie spoke to one of several hovering assistants, who hurried away, returning a few moments later with a small plastic bag containing the few effects that survived the blaze. He tipped them out on one of the tables and they gathered round to have a look, Lily squeezing in between two assistants to catch a glimpse. If she had been expecting something macabre, then she would have been disappointed by the charred belt buckle, Zippo lighter and signet ring.

Margaret picked up and examined the buckle closely. It was a simple loop with a long, thin tongue. Quite unremarkable. She dropped it with a clatter on the metal table and picked up the Zippo, turning it this way and that with dexterous fingers before flipping open the lid. Inside was a blackened mess, the interior working melded to the exterior sheath, the cotton and wick incinerated in the fire. She asked for a pair of rubber gloves, a piece of cotton cloth and some cleaning fluid. An irked Professor Xie relayed the request to an assistant, who rushed off to comply.

Margaret continued examining the lighter, and Li took the opportunity to cast a discreet eye over her. She was dressed casually, in sneakers and jeans, a baggy white tee-shirt tucked in at her belt. He marvelled at the colour and texture of her hair, tumbling in golden curls from grey clasps. But her eyes were compelling. He had met many blue-eyed Westerners, but these were startlingly blue, as if lit from within. Her eyes met his for a fleeting moment, and he glanced away self-consciously. When he looked again, she seemed absorbed still in the lighter, scratching at the carbon coating with long, elegant white fingers. It was looking at her hands which drew his attention to her freckles. Her bare forearms were covered in them, beneath a mesh of fine, downy blonde hairs. He noticed, then, the sprinkling of them across her nose and forehead. She wore little or no make-up, a hint of brown on her eyelids, a scraping of red on her lips. His gaze dropped a little, following the smooth line of her neck, and he saw that she was not wearing a bra, breasts moving freely against the cool cotton of her shirt. Unaccountably, and to his intense annoyance, he felt a tiny knot of desire unravel somewhere deep inside his loins.

The assistant returned. Margaret snapped on the rubber gloves, soaked the cloth with fluid, and rubbed the lighter with it, slowly working off the carbon coating along its bottom face. ‘There’s some kind of engraved lettering here.’ She found a pair of half-moon reading glasses in her purse and squinted at the lettering, disappointed to bring into focus the ZIPPO registered trademark, and beneath it, Bradford PA, Made in USA . ‘Well, that’s a bit of a let-down.’ And as she said it, she wasn’t quite sure who she was saying it to. She glanced up self-consciously, then turned back to the lighter, working quickly with the cloth and fluid over its other surfaces. ‘Something else.’ More, very faint, lettering appeared as the carbon lifted along the bottom edge of the flip-lid. She had to turn it to catch the light to read ‘Solid Brass’. She dropped the lighter with a clatter back on the table and lifted the ring. ‘Signet ring,’ she said, and rubbed at it with the cloth. ‘It appears to be set with a flat, engraved, semi-precious stone of some kind.’ But no matter how hard she rubbed at the stone it refused to come up anything other than black, even though its metal setting began revealing patches of tarnished silver. ‘Could be ebony.’ She held it up and turned it to catch the light, screwing her eyes up behind her reading glasses. ‘There’s a symbol of some kind on it, and some lettering.’ As she turned it through the light, and the engraving fell into relief, she suddenly realised what it was, and her heart skipped a beat. She examined the rest of the ring more closely. It had been deformed by the heat, but not entirely melted. Perhaps his ring hand had been resting on the ground, half protected from the upward-licking flames. She squinted at the inner surface of the ring, rubbed it for a few furious seconds with the cloth, and then squinted at it again. Now she removed her glasses. She glanced at her watch and made a quick mental calculation. ‘Damn.’ And she looked up to find a row of curious faces watching her with affected patience. ‘Is there a phone I can use to call the States?’

Li looked at Professor Xie, who nodded. ‘In my office.’

While she made the call, Margaret could see, through a large window, the others waiting in an outer office. Professor Xie was a small man, almost effeminate, in his early forties, Margaret thought. He was dark-complexioned and his jet-black hair was swept back from a remarkable widow’s peak that seemed to begin halfway up his forehead. He was perched on the edge of a desk and appeared lost in his own gloomy thoughts.

Li, too, seemed preoccupied. Smoking, she saw with distaste. Lily was babbling away to him, but it was obvious he wasn’t listening. Margaret took a good look at him, but saw no reason to reappraise yesterday’s assessment. He was ugly, bad-tempered and moody. And he was a smoker. The ringing in her ear was suddenly interrupted as someone answered at the other end.

‘Twenty-third Precinct,’ said a woman’s voice.

‘Detective Hersh, please.’

Li looked past his reflection in the window and saw Margaret in its shadow. She had been talking animatedly for some time, laughing easily. Someone she knew well at the other end. And now she seemed to be waiting, tapping a pencil on the polished surface of Professor Xie’s immaculately tidy desk. He could not imagine the purpose of the phone call, or what she had seen in the ring. She still had it with her, and as she waited on the phone, she kept examining and re-examining it, a girlish excitement apparent in her inability to sit still. He noticed the ring on her wedding finger, and in spite of himself felt curious about the man who had married her.

It was Li’s firm belief that he would never marry. The few relationships he’d had at university had gone nowhere, and since joining Section One there just hadn’t been the time. He was still embarrassed by the recollection of half-remembered adolescent fumblings with teenage girls in his home town of Wanxian in Sichuan province. He had been an ugly boy, always tall for his age, and clumsy. The more experienced girls had made fun of him, teasing and taunting.

But there had been one girl, shy, not like the others. Like him she was no beauty, but also like him she was gentle, in body and spirit, strong in character. They had walked by the canal together during long, dusky summer evenings before he left for Beijing and the Public Security University. She had not wanted him to be a policeman. He was made for better things, she had told him. He was a sensitive soul, he had no place among brutish criminals in the big city. His family was pushing him into it, she said, because his uncle was a famous policeman in the capital. But Li knew that wasn’t why, at least not entirely. There was an anger in him that seemed to burn on a constant simmer. An anger at all the unfairnesses in life, the inequalities, the triumphs of evil over good.