Peter May - The Firemaker

The process was repeated with the skin samples taken from the areas of needle track on the left foot. Margaret pushed her goggles up on to her forehead. ‘Same thing,’ she said.

‘Meaning what?’ Li asked.

‘Heroin users often grind up whatever other narcotics they can and inject the powder the way they do heroin. Particles of the pill residue get trapped in the tiny capillaries of the lungs and the surrounding lung tissue. Where the particles remain they get engulfed by inflammatory cells. There is clear evidence of that in this man’s lungs, as well as in the tracks in his foot.’

‘So what does this tell us?’

‘Nothing, except that he was probably a heroin user.’

‘And cause of death?’

‘As we all thought. Extensive thermal injury. Burning.’

‘You said something about contusion, haemorrhaging, a fracture of the skull… What does all that mean?’

‘It means someone hit him on the head with a blunt instrument. Not enough to kill him, but it would certainly have rendered him at least semiconscious, if not wholly unconscious.’

Li was startled. ‘It couldn’t have been accidental, or self-inflicted?’

She said dismissively, ‘Oh, I don’t think so. With an injury like that he’d have been in no condition to go walking around and setting himself up as a bonfire. And, as I understand it, he was found still in the lotus position. So he didn’t fall and hit his head on anything once he’d started burning. I believe he was knocked on the head and then sedated.’ She paused. ‘Are you familiar with the term Special K?’ Li frowned, clearly not. She smiled. ‘At least, that’s what they call it on the streets. A drug called ketamine. They used to use it as an anaesthetic induction agent in the States. Got some pretty nasty hallucinogenic side effects. My guess would be that when we get the blood tests back we’ll find he had been injected either with ketamine, or a very high dose of heroin. That would have made him more compliant and easier to handle.’

‘You’re telling me he didn’t kill himself.’ Li was stunned.

‘Suicide? Good God, no. This man was murdered.’

Tuesday Afternoon

They stood outside blinking in the sunlight — a very different kind of light from the bright lamps that illuminated the subterranean gloom of the autopsy room. Margaret slipped on her sunglasses. Lily had still not reappeared after her dash to the toilet, and Li and Margaret stood uncertainly, unsure how to conclude their business. Each exhibited a strange hesitancy about saying goodbye. To share the experience of something as traumatic and revealing as the dissection of another human being had an almost bonding effect, inducing a shared and heightened sense of mortality.

Margaret looked up and down the street. ‘Did you leave your car up at Administration?’

‘No, the Chief took it. I’ll take the bus back.’

‘Bus?’ Margaret was shocked. ‘Surely police resources would stretch to a taxi.’

He shrugged. ‘I don’t mind the bus.’

‘In this heat? I’ve seen the buses in this city. They’re jammed full. Standing room only. How far is it?’

‘Other side of Beijing.’

Lily appeared, looking distinctly pale. Her heightened sense of mortality had clearly manifested itself in an emptying of her stomach. ‘Lily,’ Margaret said brusquely, ‘I need to go back to Section One with Deputy Section Chief Li.’ She waved her hand vaguely. ‘Administrative detail.’ She paused. ‘So I won’t be needing you any more.’

‘That not possible, Doctach Cambo.’ Lily puffed up her indignation. ‘How you get back to university? I get car and take you there.’

‘Thought she might.’ Margaret smiled sweetly after her as Lily strutted off in the direction of Administration to find their car. Margaret turned to Li. ‘Can I offer you a lift?’

Li returned a wry smile, perfectly well aware of how she had just manipulated Lily. ‘There’s really no need.’

‘Oh, but I insist. I have no further classes today, and I’d be intrigued to see the operational headquarters of Beijing’s serious crime squad. I’m sure Section Chief Chen would have no objections.’

On the long drive across the city, Margaret had ample time to regret her impulsiveness. Lily sat up front with the driver, and Margaret sat in the back with Li in uncomfortable silence, a very awkward space between them that could easily have accommodated a third person. After the adrenalin rush of the morning, her body and brain were once again crying out for sleep, and she found herself having to blink frequently to stay awake. She should, she realised, have gone back to her hotel and slept for the rest of the day. After all, it was bedtime back home. But then again, she persuaded herself, if she had done that her body clock would never adjust to Beijing time.

Li was regretting accepting the lift for very different reasons. He was going to have to take her into the office. Already he could see the smirking faces, hear the whispered comments at his expense. And he knew that he would be unable to conceal his embarrassment. He blushed too easily. And yet it was a measure of his growing ambivalence towards her that he almost relished the opportunity to demonstrate his status and authority.

They approached Section One from the west along Beixinqiao Santiao, passing, at number five, an impressive building studded with colourful mosaic patterns beneath traditional upturned eaves. Marble gateposts were guarded by ubiquitous lions. ‘What’s that place?’ Margaret asked as it slid past their window.

‘Hotel for Overseas Chinese,’ Li said.

Margaret frowned. ‘You mean they have their own hotels?’

‘Some overseas Chinese think they are better than us poor mainlanders,’ Li said. ‘They think their money makes them better.’ He did not approve of the status awarded these overseas Chinese, some of them second and third generation, who returned from places as diverse as Singapore and the United States to flash their wealth and shower gifts upon poor relatives. It was true that for many years the money they had sent back to relatives in China had made an important contribution to the Chinese economy. But that was changing now. So much so that with the rapidly changing economic and political climate, many of these exiled Chinese were returning for good. China itself was becoming a land of opportunity, a place to make money.

As they passed the red-tiled façade of Noah’s Ark Food Room on their right, Li peered in the window, hoping that at this time of day a number of his colleagues would be grabbing a quick lunch — the fewer to snigger at his enforced association with the yangguizi . But the place appeared to be empty. He sighed.

If Margaret had been expecting some impressive showpiece building to house the headquarters of Section One, she would have been disappointed by the undistinguished brick block skulking anonymously behind the trees. From the street there was nothing to suggest that this was the nerve centre of Beijing’s fight against serious crime. Only a well-informed and observant onlooker would have spotted that the registration numbers of all the unmarked cars parked in the street began with the Chinese character representing the word Capital , followed by a zero — the telltale registration mark of all Beijing police vehicles. Li led Margaret, followed by Lily, in through the side entrance and up to the top floor. To his extreme discomfort the detectives’ room was full of officers sitting around poking chopsticks into carry-out dishes of noodles and rice, jars of green tea sitting on desks. There was an odd air of expectation as he walked in, and a hush that descended on their conversation, even before Margaret appeared in the doorway. Her appearance served only to heighten an already tense atmosphere. Detectives sat up self-consciously, wondering, clearly, who she was and why she was there. But Li was determined to play it cool.