Peter May - The Fourth Sacrifice

Sophie sat between Margaret and Chen, as if aware of the tension between them, and chatted animatedly to the Section Chief while Dakers made desultory conversation with Commissioner Hu. Margaret sat like a lemon, wondering what she was doing here and how long she was going to give it before making an exit. But she was spared from having to take that decision by the arrival of Li.

He knocked and entered, a little flustered she thought. He was in uniform, as she had seen him the very first time they met. Pale green short-sleeved shirt over dark green trousers. His epaulettes bore the three gold stripes and three stars of a Class Three Senior Supervisor. His gold-braided cap sat square on his head, its peak casting his eyes in deep shadow. Seeing him like that made something in her stomach flip over, and her guilt returned to haunt her. He saluted the Commissioner, apologised for being late, removed his hat and drew in a chair. He opened the briefcase he had been carrying and took out some papers.

‘Well,’ Hu said, ‘now that we are all here, why don’t you brief us, Deputy Section Chief?’

Li cleared his throat awkwardly and glanced at Margaret. There was something utterly sad and disconcerting in his eyes. She wondered if she was imagining it, but she also felt she saw betrayal there. As if he knew that only a few hours ago she had been lying in another man’s arms, sexually sated, all memories of Li wiped from her mind. And suddenly she felt utterly exposed, as if she was sitting there naked, on view to everyone in the room. She felt herself blush.

Li said, ‘Following up on our investigations, I last night discovered a diary hidden under the floor of Yuan Tao’s embassy apartment. The diary was that of Yuan’s mother, and covered the period from May of 1966, when he left for the United States, until the death of his father in June of 1967.’ He broke off to hand around several photocopied sheets. ‘These are photocopies of the relevant passages from it. They detail the harassment of Yuan’s parents by a group of his former classmates who comprised the six Red Guard members of the so-called Revolt-to-the-End Brigade. They were part of the then Red-Red-Red Faction which existed during the Cultural Revolution.’ He paused and looked around. ‘I should make it clear now that the first three victims were all members of the Revolt-to-the-End Brigade.’

This was news to Margaret, Sophie and Dakers, and the significance of it was not lost on them. ‘We are having a translation made of the diary in its entirety,’ Li said. And Margaret listened in fascinated and horrified silence as he then outlined the nature of the harassment as described in it, culminating in the final humiliation of Yuan’s father in front of a jeering crowd at the No. 29 Middle School, and his death just a few hours later.

Li concluded, ‘The sign hung around his father’s neck, his name written upside down in red and scored through; the kneeling position and the blows to the back of his neck inflicted with a cane; even the enforced drinking of the ink — all of these can be seen as a template for the modus operandi used in the killings. For ink, read red wine. The administering of the drug flunitrazepam, through the medium of the wine, made it easy to place the victim in a kneeling position. The blow to the back of the neck, only this time with a sword, brought death through decapitation. All three victims had their names written upside down in red ink on white card hung around their necks.

‘Remember, also, that decapitation was an ancient form of capital punishment in China. The killer almost certainly saw himself as an executioner, performing just retribution for crimes committed.’

Margaret said, ‘But if you’re right, then this wasn’t justice. It was revenge.’

Li inclined his head slightly, indicating agreement. ‘True,’ he said. ‘But what is capital punishment but society’s collective revenge on those who commit crimes against it? And history is littered with individuals who have taken matters into their own hands when they feel that society has let them down.’

Margaret wondered if these were the thoughts of Uncle Yifu, carefully collected, and polished and preserved by his nephew to be trotted out on appropriate occasions. She said, ‘It’s an interesting theory, Deputy Section Chief. But aren’t you rather flying in the face of conventional methods of Chinese police investigation?’ She felt ice forming in sheets around her. ‘I understood that only after the painstaking collection of evidence would you even start to form a picture of the crime and who had committed it. I mean, what evidence do you have that puts Yuan Tao at any of the other crime scenes?’

Li was unfazed. ‘The particles of dark blue dust found in Yuan’s apartment are an exact match for the particles found on the body of Yue Shi.’

‘Are you suggesting Yue Shi was murdered in Yuan’s apartment?’

‘No.’

‘Then there is no direct connection.’

‘The wine, then,’ Li said evenly. He was determined not to be rattled by her. ‘The red wine found in Yuan’s apartment was the same as the wine the other three had been drinking before being murdered.’

‘But that still doesn’t place Yuan at any of the other crime scenes, does it?’

‘No,’ Li conceded.

‘And we know that Yuan was killed with the same weapon.’

‘Are you suggesting,’ asked Li with the hint of a sneer in his voice, ‘that Yuan cut his own head off?’

Margaret laughed. ‘Actually, I thought maybe that’s what you were suggesting. Although I think he might have had trouble disposing of the murder weapon afterwards, don’t you?’ But her amusement was not shared by anyone else in the room.

Li said, ‘You suggested yourself that he might have been murdered by someone who was a witness to the other killings.’

Margaret shook her head. ‘That was before we had a motive. A witness would have had to be an accomplice. If, as you suggest, Yuan had gone on a spree of revenge killings, an accomplice would have had to share his sense of revenge. What other motive could he have had? And, then, what would have been his motive for murdering Yuan?’

‘This is all very interesting, Margaret,’ Dakers broke in. ‘But we’re not here to start picking over the evidence. This is a briefing meeting.’

‘What?’ Margaret almost snapped at him. ‘So we’re supposed to just sit here and accept what we’re told without question?’

‘Of course not,’ Dakers said smoothly. ‘We very much want to participate in the scrutiny of the evidence. Which is why we have asked our friends in the Ministry of Public Security if they would allow you the privilege of participating full time in the investigation — at least until Yuan Tao’s involvement in it has been cleared up to everyone’s satisfaction.’ He had stopped addressing himself to Margaret and had turned towards Commissioner Hu. ‘I know that the American Ambassador has already broached this subject at a higher level.’

The colour rose slightly on the Commissioner’s cheeks as he interlaced his hands on the desk in front of him. Margaret noticed that his knuckles were white. He did not like anyone going over his head. ‘I understand this to be so,’ he said. ‘I spoke to the Minister myself less than thirty minutes ago. Your Ambassador has already been informed of his decision to grant your request.’

For once, Margaret was speechless. She glanced at Li and saw that he was staring, stony-faced at the floor.

*

A burned-out sun in a pale sky reflected white off the dusty compound outside the redbrick building that housed CID headquarters. Margaret struggled to keep up with Li as he strode across the compound to where he had parked his Jeep in the shade of a line of trees.