Peter May - The Fourth Sacrifice

Li took a bottle of beer from the refrigerator and wandered through a cloud of depression, bare-footed, to dropped himself into an armchair in the living room. His shirt was unbuttoned and hanging loose over his jeans. He swung one leg up over the arm of the chair and took a slug at the bottle. It tasted cold and sharp. A drip of condensation fell from the bottle and landed on the flat, hard muscle of his bare stomach, making him wince. The light from the streetlamp outside cast the long shadow of the window frame across the room. He had no desire to turn on the light, to see Xinxin’s little jacket hanging on the chair opposite, to be reminded that Mei Yuan’s generosity could only be a temporary solution.

He lit a cigarette, letting his head fall back, and blew smoke at the ceiling. None of your fucking business , Margaret had told him. And she was right. It wasn’t. He had no right to be jealous, no right to be hurt, no right to hurt her. So why had he treated her that way on the phone? She had clearly been thinking about the investigation, about the myriad conflicting evidence, and had called him, excited by a fresh thought. A valid thought. If Yuan Tao’s murderer was indeed a copycat, it was entirely possible that he had been there at the previous three murders, and therefore knew exactly how to make the fourth one look the same. It was an intriguing thought but, if anything, muddied the waters even further. Who was the other murderer? There was no clear motive in any of it. The first three victims had been members of the same Red Guard faction, but Yuan had not even been in the country then, nor for thirty years afterwards.

Li was still not convinced that Yuan’s was a copycat murder. One of his team — it was Sang, he recalled — had suggested that the murderer had deliberately adopted a left-handed stance and tied the knot differently in order to confuse the investigation. It was entirely feasible, even if Margaret thought it unlikely.

His mind drifted back to Margaret. He drained his bottle and went to fetch another. Why had he been so short with her when he had wanted so much to say, Margaret, I was wrong, forgive me, we can still find a way ? Why, instead, had he deliberately taunted her, provoking her angry response? None of your fucking business! And the sound of the phone slamming in his ear. He slumped again in the chair and lit another cigarette. Was this his destiny? To be alone and in the dark, smoking and drinking and regretting the might-have-beens? He saw his life stretching ahead of him, an endless repetitive cycle of working days and lonely nights. He thought of his uncle and how he had used his work to fill the void left by the death of his wife. But for Li there had never been anything but work. There had been no one in his life who’d left a void to fill. Until now.

He shook his head and sat up. This was ridiculous! Morbid and self-pitying. He tried to clear his thoughts, and Mei Yuan’s riddle found its way into them. What was it again? Three men had paid thirty yuan for the room. But it only cost twenty-five, and when the bell-boy went to return the five they had overpaid, he pocketed two and only gave them back one each. So effectively they had paid nine yuan each, which was twenty-seven, and the bell-boy had pocketed two. Which was twenty-nine. So where had the other one gone?

Li frowned and scratched his head, then tipped it back to drain his bottle. What was it Mei Yuan had said to him that afternoon? The answer is staring you in the face, if only you will stop believing what I tell you . What had she told him? That they had given ten each and each got one back, which meant they had paid nine each. Which was twenty-seven. Li turned it around for a moment and then suddenly he saw it. Of course! How stupid of him! They didn’t get one back each from thirty, they got one back each from twenty-eight because the bell-boy had taken two. So among them they had paid twenty-five, plus the three yuan that had been returned to them. Which was twenty-eight. Plus the two the bell-boy had pocketed. Which was thirty. Mei Yuan was right. He had made the mistake of taking her suggested calculation at face value. And, of course, it was nonsense. So nothing else made sense.

The thought stopped him in his tracks. He sat frozen for several moments. Wasn’t that exactly what was happening with the Yuan Tao murders? All the evidence was suggesting things to them that didn’t add up. They were making assumptions that they couldn’t reconcile. Perhaps the assumptions were wrong. Any of them, all of them. Li cursed himself. He had even recalled to himself the previous day his uncle’s own philosophy. Assume nothing. Let the evidence lead you to the conclusion, do not jump to it yourself . And yet he had continued, for another day, to do exactly that.

He stood up, agitated now, and lit another cigarette and moved out into the glassed-in balcony. Outside the occasional yellowing leaf drifted to the sidewalk below. Stupid! His head had been so full of Margaret and Xiao Ling and Xinxin, he had not concentrated his mind properly at all. What other evidence was there? What had they been overlooking in their attempt to make the big evidence fit the picture they had formed for themselves? Something small, something insignificant. What?

He searched his mind, gathering together all the details, big and small, sifting them, rearranging them. The placards, the nicknames, the numbers, the bronze weapon, the silk cord. What else? Yuan Tao’s illegally rented apartment. What was it for? He walked himself through the apartment again in his mind, as he had done physically the night they found Yuan Tao. He saw the head and the body, the pool of blood draining into the hole in the floor. He paused. The hole in the floor. Boards that had been lifted. A secret cache. Hiding what? Then suddenly he remembered Margaret’s question at the autopsy. Had the linoleum been lifted, or was it torn? It appeared to have been torn, he had told her. Why had she asked? He thought about it. If you had hidden something under the floorboards, you would be very careful with the linoleum that covered them. A tear would draw attention. So it wasn’t Yuan Tao that had opened up his hiding place. It was someone else. Someone who had searched his apartment and didn’t care if they tore the linoleum. Someone who knew he had an apartment.

What had they been looking for? And had they found it there, under the floorboards?

Li paused to think again, rewinding his thoughts. If his murderer knew he had an illegally rented apartment, then he would also know that he had an embassy apartment. Had that been searched, too? Li drew on his cigarette and thought back to the embassy apartment in the diplomatic compound behind the Friendship Store. He and Wu had covered it pretty thoroughly. Forensics had been over it from top to bottom. There were no obvious signs of a search. Li tried to picture the floor, pull it back from somewhere in his memory. He saw a standard, grey linoleum floor covering. He was pretty certain that’s what it had been. And he would have noticed if it had been torn. But there was something else in his memory. Something vague and elusive, just beyond his reach. Something about the apartment.

In his mind’s eye he retraced the steps Wu and he had made through it. The living room with all its personal bric-a-brac, the photographs of Yuan’s parents, the books … The toilet, the shelf above the washbasin crammed with toothpaste, shaving foam, a couple of bars of soap … And suddenly Li knew what it was. The shaving foam and soap had been hypo-allergenic. Unscented. There had been no aftershave or deodorant. And yet, Li recalled, there had been a faint, distant smell of some exotic scent, like an aftershave, lingering on the air. It had only registered at all because it was unfamiliar to him. So the scent could not have been Wu’s or belonged to Forensics. Or to Yuan Tao.