Peter May - The Fourth Sacrifice

*

‘Wow!’ Wu said. He was chewing furiously on his gum and rolling one of the legs of his sunglasses back and forth between thumb and forefinger. ‘Can we tell if that’s the same stuff our first three victims had been drinking?’

Fu Qiwei nodded. ‘We can compare it to residue found in wineglasses at the first two crime scenes. Give you a result later this afternoon.’

But Li knew that the results would only confirm what his instincts were already telling him. And he felt himself slipping deeper into the mire of confusion in which they were already wallowing.

Margaret had thought she would be curious about the place where Yuan Tao had worked. But, in truth, the visa department in the Bruce Compound was just another anonymous legation building. An extension had been built out front to accommodate the queues of applicants, so that they no longer had to clutter up the street, standing in line under the watchful and sometimes intimidating eye of the Chinese armed police guard on the gate. Inside the main building, extensive renovation work had created new, white-walled offices in the US Citizen Services Department where Margaret had been allocated a small room.

Sophie opened the door and waved Margaret through it. ‘Your very own office,’ she said.

Margaret looked around without enthusiasm. There was a small window high up on the wall that she could not see out of. What little daylight it admitted was supplemented by a naked fluorescent striplight overhead. There was a single desk with a telephone extension, a blotter, a pile of thick brown envelopes and a computer terminal, an uncomfortable-looking office chair, a battleship-grey filing cabinet, a yucca tree in a pot, and a map of China pinned to the freshly painted wall. The place smelled of emulsion paint and new carpet, and the fluorescent light reflecting from the white walls hurt her eyes. She wondered briefly who had been de-camped to make space for her, but knew better than to ask. She was sure she would spot some resentful face glaring at her in the corridor before the day was out.

‘You don’t look terribly impressed,’ Sophie said.

‘Should I be?’ asked Margaret. The filing cabinet was locked. She tried the desk drawers. They were locked, too. ‘I’m obviously not expected to be here very long.’

‘As long as the investigation takes.’

‘Which is as soon as possible as far as the embassy’s concerned.’

‘Naturally,’ Sophie said. She pointed to the bundle of envelopes on the desk. ‘That’s all the stuff you asked for from the Chinese police — copy prints from the crime scenes, translations of the autopsy reports …’

‘That was quick!’ Margaret was astonished. ‘They must be as anxious to get rid of me as you are.’

Sophie grinned. ‘It is quick. Jonathan couldn’t believe it. Apparently it would normally take weeks for something like this. Chinese bureaucracy moves at its own, usually very slow, pace.’

‘Just shows what they can do when they want,’ Margaret said, shuffling through the contents of the envelopes. ‘Oh, good,’ she said, pulling out a sheaf of reports. ‘That’s the toxicology results on my autopsy, along with the transliteration of the tape. Means I can get my own autopsy report written up.’ She glanced through the toxicology results and nodded. ‘Nothing unexpected here.’ She looked at her watch. ‘Oops, no time to read them just now,’ and she stuffed them back in the envelope and starting gathering all the papers and envelopes into a pile that she could carry away.

‘Where are you going?’ Sophie asked, disconcerted.

‘To pack. I’ve got a train to catch at six fifty.’

Sophie frowned. ‘But the Chinese police have set up a briefing meeting for you at Section One.’

Which stopped Margaret in her tracks. ‘When?’

‘At five.’

‘Then it’ll have to be a brief briefing.’

She lifted the bundle from the desk and pushed past Sophie and off down the corridor. Sophie chased after her. ‘But where are you going?’

‘Xi’an.’

‘Xi’an?’ Sophie was perplexed. ‘But … what’s in Xi’an?’

‘The Terracotta Warriors. Didn’t you know? Apparently they are the Eighth Wonder of the World and not to be missed.’

‘Michael,’ Sophie said flatly, as realisation dawned. ‘You’re going with Michael.’

‘He asked,’ Margaret said breezily, as she passed the scrutiny of the marine at the front door and was allowed out.

‘You lucky bitch!’ Sophie grinned. ‘He’s only after your body, you know.’

‘Well, maybe I’m after his, too,’ Margaret said with a twinkle. ‘Anyway, it’s only for a day. We’ll be back the day after tomorrow.’

‘Well, I hope you don’t expect the American government to pay you while you’re off gallivanting with Mr Zimmerman.’

‘Of course I do,’ Margaret said. She crooked her arm around the bundle she was carrying. ‘After all, I’ll be taking my work with me.’

*

The tension in the top floor meeting room of the Section One building in Beixinqiao Santiao was almost tangible. Margaret, shown first into the room, had taken Li’s customary seat with the window behind her. She knew it was the power seat in the room, and almost certainly the seat that Li would have made his own. Despite anxious glances from the other detectives, however, Li gave no sign of having had his nose put out of joint. He sat directly opposite Margaret and seemed concentrated on sorting out his papers. Also present were Zhao, Wu, Qian and Sang. To the annoyance of the others, it had transpired that Sang spoke flawless English, and so Li had nominated him official interpreter for the meeting.

‘OK,’ Li said. ‘You have received the prints and copy autopsies we sent you?’

Margaret nodded. ‘But, since they have only just come into my possession I have not yet had time to study them.’ She paused before delivering the first barb. ‘Twenty-four hours does seem a rather excessive amount of time to have to wait.’

Li felt the anger rising in his throat and took a moment or two to control it before speaking. ‘But time enough for you to have completed your autopsy report?’

‘Without the toxicology results and the transliteration of my tape which, of course, I have been waiting for from your people, that would have been rather difficult.’

Sang struggled to translate this.

Li sat back and exhaled his frustration. ‘Then there’s not a great deal of point in continuing this meeting,’ he said.

‘However,’ Margaret drew a bundle of stapled sheets from her bag, ‘as soon as I received the necessary information this afternoon I booked time in the business centre of my hotel — at my own expense — and produced a preliminary report covering all the essentials.’ She pushed the copies across the desk towards him. ‘There are no surprises.’

Li pulled the bundle to him, pushed one towards Sang, and flicked through the top copy. Without looking up he said, ‘We ran those tests you suggested on the sections of spine, comparing the signature left by the murder weapon on the vertebral bone in each murder.’ He paused.

Margaret could not restrain her curiosity. ‘And?’

‘We matched the first and third murders. Your “sweet spot” theory looked as if it might stand up for a while. But we could not find a match for the other two.’ Margaret was about to comment, but he cut her off. ‘We did, however, run another test, with the scanning electron microscope. On the bronze residue left by the sword that we collected on the tape lifts. The computer was able to report the relative percentages of the constituent elements. They were exactly the same. Which means that the same weapon was used in all four murders.’ He waited long enough to let the frown start to form on her forehead. Then added, ‘Which rather gives the lie to your suggestion that Yuan Tao’s murder was a copycat killing.’