Peter May - The Firemaker

Li drew a deep, slow breath. ‘That’s very good of the professor, Chief, but it’s really not necessary.’

‘Oh, but I’ve already accepted on your behalf. I told the professor she could carry out the other two autopsies in the morning.’

Li clenched his jaw, trying to stay calm. ‘Well, you shouldn’t have done that, Chief. I’ve already asked Professor Xie to do the autopsies. This is a Chinese investigation, about which Dr Campbell knows nothing. I have no need of her.’

Chen was about to overrule his junior colleague when their eyes met and he thought better of it. Li was clearly determined, and Chen had already overruled him once on the same subject. Perhaps the younger man should be allowed a little latitude to do things his way. He sighed. ‘Oh, well, I’ll tell the professor that other arrangements had already been made, and that while we are very grateful for the offer, Dr Campbell’s services will not be required.’ He paused and added, ‘But if this is something personal, Li Yan, then you are very foolish to allow it to cloud your professional judgment.’

He left, and Li stared into space, part of him wishing he had accepted the offer, part of him knowing that if he had, then the danger was that it would have become personal — in a way that might well have clouded his professional judgment. She had stirred in him feelings he had spent ten years suppressing, in favour of his career, and did not want to encourage now. He opened the file on The Needle to cast an eye over an old adversary.

The scrape of a door opening was sufficient to penetrate the fragile quality of her sleep. She blinked and lifted her head from a pillow that seemed uncommonly hard and unyielding. One arm had gone to sleep and would take longer to waken than she. Her neck seemed locked in one position. Through fuzzy, unfocused eyes, she saw a man approach the bed. What was a man doing in her bedroom? She raised herself up, blinking hard, heart pounding, and realised she wasn’t in bed. For a brief, panic-stricken moment she had not the faintest idea where she was, before suddenly the truth dawned on her. She had fallen asleep at her desk, head resting on her right forearm, in which her blood supply was now painfully re-establishing itself.

‘You all right?’ Bob asked.

‘Yeah. Sorry. I guess I must have fallen asleep. Didn’t get much last night.’

Last night? When was that? Her brain couldn’t seem to find a context for anything. Like the blood finding its way back into the veins of her arm, memories of the last twenty-four hours leaked back into her consciousness accompanied by a series of pains — behind her eyes, at either temple, at the base of her neck. She remembered the autopsy, the lunch with Li, and her subsequent depression. And then she remembered being called in to see Professor Jiang and asked if she would be prepared to carry out another couple of autopsies and advise Deputy Section Chief Li’s murder inquiry in a consultative capacity.

That recollection brightened her again now. She remembered apologising to Professors Tian and Bai and Dr Mu for having displaced them from their office and, in a grand and magnanimous gesture, offering to let them have it back. After all, she had told them, now that she was assisting Section One with a murder inquiry she would not be spending so much time at the university. She was excited by the prospect.

‘But where will you prepare your lectures?’ Dr Mu had asked Veronica to ask her.

‘In my hotel room,’ Margaret had replied. ‘There’s plenty of space, it’s air-conditioned, I have access to a telephone, and downstairs there’s a business centre where I can get anything I want photocopied, faxed, e-mailed, you name it.’

They had clearly thought she was mad, but were happy enough to get their office back, and so were not going to argue.

‘You should have gone back to your hotel,’ Bob told her.

She shook herself to try to clear her head, but only succeeded in producing a pain that felt as if it would crack open her skull. ‘Ow.’ She rubbed her temples. ‘I know. I meant to. I must just have put my head down for a minute, and then… well, bang. What time is it?’

‘Five thirty. Professor Jiang would like a word.’

‘Another one? What, now?’

Professor Jiang smiled uneasily when she came into his office. Veronica sat primly in a chair, hands folded neatly in her lap. She regarded Margaret with some caution. The professor indicated a chair and Margaret sat and listened while he spoke to her earnestly for about two minutes. Then he sat back and allowed Veronica to translate.

‘Professor say Section Chief Chen call to say sorry, but his deputy think you are… how to say?… superfluous to the inquiry.’ She sat back, pleased with her ‘superfluous’, unaware of its connotations of uselessness and rejection which hit Margaret like a slap on the face.

Tuesday Evening

Beijingers get their hair cut at all hours of the day and night. And so the ladies in their white coats and peak caps were still doing brisk business outside the gates of Yuyuantan Park on Sanlihi Road at six o’clock. No sooner had one customer vacated a stool than another would replace him. The sidewalk was littered with locks of black hair which the barbers would meticulously sweep up when they finished work. The park, too, was busy, people shifting back and forth in waves beneath the rainbow that arched across its entrance, joining dance groups on their way home from work, or catching some air after long hours in a factory or shop. Early evening traffic, beyond the trees that shaded the cycle lane, was manic.

Li wheeled his bicycle past the barbers at work and lifted it over a low railing into a shaded area of trees and shrubs between flagstone paths that led in various directions down to the river. Here the sound of the traffic seemed remote, the air cooler, shadowed as it had been through the heat of the day, and rising off the water to blow a gentle breeze through the leaves. Birds sang in cages that hung from the trees, their owners — old men mostly — gathered on stools round stone tables playing cards or Chinese chess. A woman had hung large red character posters from a line strung between two trees, and a couple of men, hands behind their backs, stood staring at them without comment. The woman watched their expressions with interest, but they showed no discernible emotion as far as Li could see. In a pergola hanging with creeper an old man played a violin, while a few feet away a dead-eyed young man in army camouflage trousers and skip cap was drinking alcohol from a plastic bottle.

Li found his uncle a little further on, sitting at a low stone table preparing to move in for the kill. The King’s Guide had made a fatal error, and Old Yifu was merciless in victory. His Horse jumped the river and the King was trapped. ‘ Jiang jun! ’ he cried, delighted with the pincer movement that had created his checkmate. His opponent scratched his shaven head and shook it in wonder.

‘I don’t know why I bother playing you, Old Yifu. I’m never going to win.’

Old Yifu smiled. ‘You will win,’ he said, ‘when you stop losing.’ He looked up and saw Li approaching. ‘Li Yan.’ He jumped to his feet and shook his nephew’s hand vigorously. ‘How was your first day?’

Li smiled ruefully. ‘Only three murders, Uncle.’

His uncle’s chess opponent lifted a birdcage down from the tree that had been shading their game, hung it from the handlebars of his bicycle and said, ‘I’m off for my dinner. All this excitement has given me an appetite.’

‘ Zai jian .’ Old Yifu did not take his eyes off Li. ‘You’re joking,’ he said.