Peter May - The Fourth Sacrifice

‘Jesus,’ Margaret said.

‘And it gets worse,’ Stan said, raising what looked suspiciously like a plucked eyebrow.

‘Really?’ said Margaret. ‘I can’t think of anything much worse than decapitation.’

‘For us, not for him,’ Dakers said, crossing the room to stand beside the Ambassador. The RSO was a solid, square man, an ex-cop, bald and aggressive, with a close-cropped silver-grey beard. ‘He was murdered in an apartment he’d been renting in the Chaoyang District.’ He paused, as if this should mean something to Margaret.

‘So?’ she asked.

Stan said, ‘Embassy staff are allocated apartments in special embassy compounds. In Yuan Tao’s case, a two-room affair in a block just behind the Friendship Store.’

‘Technically,’ Jon Dakers said, ‘he was breaking the law.’

‘Yeah, I know,’ Margaret said. She had bitter experience. ‘You got to register where you’re staying with Public Security, and they get pretty pissed if you spend even one night somewhere else.’

‘And the Chinese are, indeed, pretty pissed,’ said the Ambassador.

‘They’re embarrassed,’ Dakers corrected him. ‘An American citizen’s been murdered on their patch. They’re looking for any way to pass the buck.’

A sudden worm of suspicion worked its way into Margaret’s mind. ‘Wait a minute. When you say this guy was “a member of the embassy staff”, is this some kind of euphemism?’

The Ambassador chuckled grimly. ‘He wasn’t a spy, if that’s what you mean.’

‘And, of course, you’d tell me if he was.’

‘No,’ the Ambassador said, ‘but I’m telling you he wasn’t. He was a low-level official. Only been out here about six months, working on the visa line.’

‘Which probably gives a few thousand people a motive for doing him in,’ Stan said.

‘We’re waiting on the State Department sending his file,’ Dakers said.

There was a pause, then, that no one seemed anxious to fill. Margaret glanced around the faces looking expectantly at her.

‘So what’s any of this got to do with me?’ she asked.

The Ambassador rounded the sofa and sat down. ‘The Chinese police believe they have a serial killer on their hands. They think Yuan Tao is victim number four. The other three were Chinese nationals. But this guy’s an American citizen. And we’d like you to carry out the autopsy.’

‘What?’ Margaret was stunned.

‘You’ve worked with them before,’ Dakers said.

‘Look,’ Margaret said, ‘I came here last spring to lecture for six weeks at the University of Public Security. I did one autopsy as a favour — and spent the next three months regretting it. I do not want to get involved again.’

‘Margaret, I understand perfectly.’ The Ambassador leaned forward earnestly. He was drawing on all his powers of diplomacy. ‘But there’s no way we can get anyone else out here fast enough. Besides which, the Chinese trust you.’

‘Do they?’ Margaret was amazed.

‘Well, they’ve agreed to let you do the autopsy — or, at least to assist.’

‘And if I refuse?’

‘We all have certain obligations to our country, Margaret.’ The Ambassador sat back, playing his trump card — the appeal to her patriotism.

Margaret had always wondered what all that swearing allegiance to the flag and singing the national anthem at school was about. Now she knew. She sighed. ‘I’ll have to rearrange my flight.’

‘Already taken care of,’ Stan said smugly.

‘Oh, is it?’ Margaret threw him a hostile glance and stood up.

‘Oh, and one other thing,’ Stan said, and she saw a strange look of anticipation brighten his eyes. ‘The officer in charge of the case is Deputy Section Chief Li Yan of the Beijing Municipal Police.’ He beamed at her. ‘I think you know him.’

The half-dozen detectives freshly drafted in from CID headquarters at Qianmen had been sitting smoking and talking animatedly for nearly half an hour. Their cigarette smoke hung like a cloud over the top floor meeting room at Beixinqiao Santiao, reflecting the mood of their Section One colleagues, who joined them now around the big table to sift through the evidence which had been collected over the past month. The detectives of the serious crime squad were depressed by their failure to achieve any significant progress, and embarrassed by the need for reinforcements.

Li sat brooding in his seat with his back to the window. He had been reinstated as Deputy Section Chief shortly after the first murder, and he was frustrated by the lack of a single substantial lead. He had even begun to question his own previously unshakable faith in himself, and wonder if the death of his uncle and the events of the past three months had taken a greater toll on him that he had realised. There were times, he knew, when his concentration was not what it should be. He had found himself sitting in meetings, his mind wandering to thoughts of Yifu. And Margaret.

Simply bringing her name to mind was painful, accompanied as it was by a host of memories, bittersweet and full of hurt. He thought back to the only time they had made love, the sun streaming in through the dirt-streaked windows of a neglected railway sleeper on a siding near Datong.

‘Boss …’

He became aware of an insistent voice forcing its way into his thoughts.

‘Boss, are you still with us?’

Li looked up suddenly and saw Detective Wu, sunglasses pushed back on his forehead, eyeing him oddly from across the table. He glanced around at the other detectives, almost twenty of them now, and saw that they were all looking at him.

‘Yeah, sure. Sorry …’ Li shuffled the papers on the desk in front of him. ‘Just following a train of thought.’

‘Perhaps you’d like to share it with us, then?’ Li looked towards the door, startled to see that Section Chief Chen Anming had come in without his even noticing.

‘Not worth it, Chief,’ Li said quickly. ‘It wasn’t going anywhere.’

‘A bit like this investigation,’ Chen said. He pulled up a chair and sat down, folding his arms across his chest and surveying his detectives with a stony gaze. Chen was a lean, sinewy man in his late fifties, a thick head of prematurely silver hair streaked with nicotine. He was renowned for his apparent inability to make the muscles of his face form a smile, although the twinkle in his eyes frequently betrayed the very human person that concealed itself behind the hardman image. But there was no twinkle there now. ‘Four victims,’ he said. ‘And we’ve got nothing. Nothing!’ He raised his voice, and then sat silently for several seconds. ‘And now that this latest victim turns out to be an American, the whole thing is turning political.’ He leaned forward, placing his palms carefully on the table in front of him. ‘I just took a call in my office from the Deputy Minister of Public Security.’ He paused. ‘I have never had a call from a Deputy Minister of Public Security. And it’s not an experience I want to repeat.’ He sat back again. The room was absolutely still. ‘So let me make this quite clear. However many more officers we have to draft in, however many hours of overtime we have to work, we are going get a result.’ He waited for maximum dramatic effect before adding, ‘There are careers on the line here.’

‘You mean heads will roll?’ Wu said, grinning, and there was a gasp of smothered laughter around the table.

Chen turned a steely glare on him. ‘Be assured, Detective Wu, yours will be the very first.’

Wu’s grin faded. ‘Just trying to lighten things up, Chief.’

‘OK,’ Li stepped in before ‘things’ went any further. ‘Let’s go over what we’ve got for the benefit of the guys from HQ. And then we’ll have a look at last night’s killing. Wu, you kick us off.’