Peter May - The Fourth Sacrifice

And yet … the nagging doubts still would not go away. Small doubts they might be, but Li could not shake them off. Why would Yuan drink the blue vodka? Why did his killer stand on his right to deliver the fatal blow, when he had stood on the left of at least two of the others? Why had he tied his wrists with a knot which was exactly the reverse of the knots he had used to tie the other three?

There were other questions, too. Why had victim number three been moved from the scene of his execution? It must have been terribly risky, not to mention messy. And why, given the amount of blood that would have been shed, had they been unable to find the place where he had been murdered?

It was, he thought, like one of Mei Yuan’s riddles. He wished the solution could be just as simple. It made him think again of the riddle she had set him that morning, about the thirty-yuan hotel room. But he could not get his mind even to begin addressing the problem of the missing yuan. He had a bigger riddle of his own to solve first. And if he immersed himself in it deeply enough perhaps he might finally be able to put Margaret out of his mind.

He leaned back and blew a jet of smoke at the ceiling as the door opened and Chen came in. He was silhouetted against the lights of the detectives’ room, and his face was above the ring of light shed by Li’s desk lamp, so that Li could not immediately see his expression. Chen closed the door and Li saw that he was wearing a suit. And a tie. It was unheard of for Chen. He was renowned as a casual, even sloppy dresser who would usually shuffle to and from work in baggy pants, an open-necked shirt and an old zip-front jacket. He stepped towards the desk and Li caught sight of the grim set of his mouth.

‘You missed the briefing,’ Li said.

‘I was at the Ministry.’ Which explained the suit. Chen pulled up a chair and sat down. ‘Got a cigarette?’

Li tossed him one and Chen lit it, inhaling deeply, and then exhaling slowly, allowing his eyes to close. He loosened his tie at the neck. ‘I feel so damned uncomfortable in this stuff. How are you supposed to do your job properly if you’re not comfortable?’ Li knew he wasn’t expected to respond. He waited apprehensively for Chen to continue. But Chen was in no hurry. He took several further pulls at his cigarette before turning to meet Li’s eye.

‘We’ve been asked to keep the Americans fully apprised of any developments in this case. Access to everything.’ He paused, then, ‘They have requested and it has been agreed — above my head I might say — that our point of contact with them be Dr Campbell.’

Li was stunned, as if he had just had his face slapped for a second time. ‘I thought she was going back to the States?’ His voice seemed small and very distant.

‘Apparently they have prevailed upon her to stay.’ He hesitated. ‘I know this is tough for you, Li-’

‘Tough?’ Li was scathing. ‘In one ear the Commissioner tells me to steer clear of her. In the other you’re telling me I’ve got to co-operate with her.’

Chen was annoyed by his tone. He leaned forward and snapped, ‘Then you’re just going to have to learn how to separate your personal from your professional life.’ He stopped and peered strangely at Li. ‘What’s that on your face?’

Li said, ‘The slap you’ve just delivered.’

*

Li weaved his way through the night traffic in a daze. His uncle’s bicycle, like every other on the streets, had no lights and no reflectors. He relied on motorists seeing him. But right now he didn’t care much. If it had been painful seeing Margaret today, how much more so it would be tomorrow, and the day after, and the day after that. He felt as if he had been cast into limbo in which there could be only pain, and the knowledge that there was no foreseeable end to it. How could she have agreed to do it? Wouldn’t it be just as painful for her? Or maybe she saw it as some way of gaining revenge, turning the knife in his own, self-inflicted, wound.

At the Chaoyangmen Bridge he turned west, passing a Kentucky Fried Chicken joint on his left before turning south again. He parked up at the corner of Dong’anmen Street and joined the crowds of people thronging the night market. Food stalls stretched off as far as the eye could see. For a handful of yuan, you could eat almost anything deep fried on a stick. There were grubs the size of human thumbs, whole scorpions, tiny birds complete with heads, all stuck on skewers and ready to be plunged into great woks of boiling oil. But Li was not much interested in the exotic. He bought shredded potato deep-fried in egg and wrapped in brown paper. He ate one and bought another, and washed it down with a can of Coke and wandered through the animated groups of family and friends crushing the length of the street like animals at a feeding frenzy.

He had tried not to think about her, but even here she came back to haunt him. He had brought her here the night she told him about her husband and how he died. Everywhere in Beijing that they had been she lingered, wraithlike, in his memory.

Li finished his Coke and became aware of a small, raggedy man of indeterminate years following him, to his left and slightly behind. His eyes were firmly fixed on Li’s empty can. Li turned, and was about to hand it to him when an old woman with tightly bound white hair and a single stump of a tooth grabbed it and made off. The raggedy man howled with dismay and chased after her, hurling imprecations at her back. So many cans returned for recycling earned so many fen. The street scavengers were fighting over them now.

Li retrieved his uncle’s bicycle and headed south again. There was beer in the refrigerator back at the apartment, and all he wanted to do now was get drunk. His wheels slithered and slid where reconstruction and rain had turned Wangfujing Street into a quagmire. Mud spattered over his trousers and shoes.

From East Chang’an Avenue he could see the floodlights of Tiananmen Square, where workers had already begun preparing the massive floral displays for National Day in just twelve days’ time. But all he wanted to do was escape from lights and people. The dark of Zhengyi Road came as a relief. The first leaves, he noticed, had started to drop from the trees. But autumn had not yet properly begun. These were just harbingers of its inevitable arrival.

The security guard nodded as he entered the gates of the compound, and parked and locked Old Yifu’s bicycle. His legs felt leaden as he dragged himself up the two flights of stairs. And then, as he slipped the key in the lock, he froze, and suddenly all tiredness and self-pity were banished. All his senses were on full alert. The door to the apartment was not locked. He always locked it. He hesitated for several seconds before slowly pushing it open. There was a shrill call, and the sound of footsteps, and a small girl appeared in the hallway, black hair tied back in bunches. She stopped dead when she saw Li. And then a pretty young woman in her late twenties appeared and the child immediately clung to her leg, burying her face to hide it from Li.

Li was stunned. ‘What are you doing here?’ he asked.

‘That’s a fine welcome after three years,’ the young woman said. ‘Didn’t you get my letter?’

Li hadn’t checked his mail in days. He looked at the pile of it on the table, and saw the envelope with the Sichuan postmark. He looked back at the young woman and the child.

‘I’m sorry,’ he said. ‘Life hasn’t been that organised.’ He hesitated only for a moment before stepping towards her and taking her in his arms, almost completely enveloping her slight form. She clung tightly to him, and the child tightened her grip on her leg. ‘Why have you come?’ Li asked.

‘We need to talk,’ she said.