Peter May - The Fourth Sacrifice

‘You knew about this, didn’t you?’ she said.

‘Would it matter if I did?’ he said without turning. ‘The decision was not mine to take. And if it had, you know what it would have been.’ He opened the driver’s door and threw his briefcase inside.

‘Well, of course,’ she said. ‘God forbid that you should need help. Or even ask for it if you did.’

Li turned on her, his face pale with anger. His eyes were shaded by the peak of his cap and she could not see them. ‘I do not,’ he said, ‘appreciate having my inquiry called into question in front of my section chief and the divisional head of CID.’

‘Ah!’ Margaret threw her hands in the air. ‘Of course. Mianzi . That’s what all this is about, isn’t? Face. Or rather your loss of it in front of your boss. To hell with the evidence, let’s not lose face! That it? How very Chinese of you.’

His fury was palpable, but he controlled his voice, albeit with difficulty. ‘This is about the evidence,’ he said. ‘The most important piece of evidence we’ve come up with, and you just … dismiss it.’ He waved his hand dismissively towards the trees.

‘I didn’t dismiss anything.’

‘Well, you made it perfectly clear that you don’t believe Yuan Tao was responsible for the other murders.’

‘Of course he is,’ Margaret said. ‘The diary provides us with the perfect motive. It’s obvious he did it.’ Li was stunned to silence. And she was on a roll. ‘He had both motive and opportunity. And the wine and the blue dust provide us with good circumstantial evidence. But the point I was making is that we don’t have a single scrap of evidence actually tying him to any one of the crime scenes. And we need that.’

‘We?’ he asked.

‘Well, whether we like it or not, it looks like you’re stuck with me and I’m stuck with you until we put this one to bed.’ She stumbled momentarily over her unfortunate choice of metaphor, then added quickly, ‘So the sooner we find out whodunnit, the sooner we’ll be out of each other’s hair.’

‘And the sooner you can get back to your archaeologist.’ It was out before he could stop himself. He could have bitten his tongue off.

‘Oh,’ she said, ‘so that’s what all the hostility’s about. My relationship with Michael.’

He became immediately defensive. ‘Why should I care about your relationship with “Michael”? After all, it’s strictly platonic. That’s what you said, isn’t it?’

Margaret struck back. ‘And what was it you said? Platonic is how you describe your relationship with someone just before you sleep with them?’

He flinched, as he had done when she slapped him in the face after the autopsy. But this was no slap in the face. It was a knife in the heart, and she immediately regretted it. But there was nothing she could say now that would undo the damage. They stood glaring at each other in a tense silence until she could no longer bear to meet his eye and looked away towards the towering municipal police headquarters at the far side of the compound.

‘It’s a pity the AFIS didn’t come up with a match for the fingerprint found at number two,’ she said for something to say.

Li forced his mind back through the red mist of pain that filled it and tried to focus on what she had just said. ‘What?’

‘Your Automated Fingerprint Identification System. If it had matched that bloody fingerprint to Yuan, it would have placed him at one of the crime scenes.’

The red mist cleared as Li remembered the bloody fingerprint found on the edge of the desk in Bai Qiyu’s office. He had forgotten all about it. Margaret clearly had not. But he did not understand her question. ‘Why would the AFIS come up with a match for Yuan Tao when his fingerprints haven’t been entered into it?’

‘What?’ Margaret was shocked. ‘You mean you don’t enter the prints of victims as well as criminals? That’s standard practice in the States.’

In other circumstances Li might have been defensive. But his mind was racing. He said, ‘The system’s new. It’s not fully operational yet.’

‘So no one’s crosschecked to see if there’s a match?’ He shook his head. She said, ‘Well, don’t you think someone should?’

‘Hey, good to see you guys are getting right into it.’ They turned to find Dakers and Sophie approaching across the compound. Beyond them, Li saw Chen getting into an unmarked Section One saloon car.

Dakers was all smiles and bonhomie. He addressed himself to Li. ‘Just been going over the ground rules in there. I think we’re gonna get along just fine. Anything you need, anything we can help you with, you just ask.’ Li nodded curtly. Dakers touched Margaret’s arm. ‘Talk later,’ he told her.

He and Sophie were about to turn away when Li said, ‘Were any of your people in Yuan’s embassy apartment before our forensics people got access?’

Dakers turned back. ‘Sure,’ he said. ‘I checked it out myself.’ He grinned. ‘Just in case there was another body in there we didn’t know about.’ None of the others smiled.

‘Nobody else?’ Li asked.

Dakers shook his head, a little puzzled now. ‘Nope. Just me.’ He paused. ‘Am I missing something here?’

‘No,’ Li said. And then, unexpectedly, ‘Have you always had a beard?’

Dakers’ hand went instinctively to his fine-cropped whiskers and he ran it through the bristles, surprised by the question. ‘Sure have,’ he said. ‘Always had a heavy growth. Had to start shaving when I was fifteen. Brought me up in a nasty rash. So I couldn’t wait to grow a beard. Soon as I finished school.’ He paused again. ‘Sure I’m not missing something?’

Li managed a smile of what he hoped was reassurance. ‘Just curious.’ But he was thinking that men who don’t shave don’t use aftershave. So it wasn’t Dakers who had left his scent in Yuan’s apartment.

Dakers gave him an odd look. ‘OK,’ he said. ‘See ya.’ And he and Sophie went off towards the embassy limo, parked in the shade with its large red shi character prominent on the registration plate.

‘What was all that about?’ Margaret asked. She watched carefully for his response. Li never asked questions for no reason. But he just shrugged. ‘Nothing.’ He reached into the Jeep for the police radio. ‘I’d better get Yuan’s prints entered into the AFIS.’

She watched him as he spoke rapidly in Chinese into the radio handset and a strange metallic voice crackled back at him. She wanted to touch him and tell him she was sorry. Not that she had slept with Michael, but that she had told him — or as good as told him. It was cruel and unfair, and the colour that had risen high on his cheekbones was still there. But she knew it was not something she could discuss with him. To admit his hurt would be to lose face. And that was something he would never do. He finished his call and turned to her. ‘It seems Detective Wu was one step ahead of us. He’s already asked for the prints to be crosschecked.’

‘Well, at least one of your team’s on the ball,’ Margaret said.

He ignored her barb. ‘But the result may be superfluous,’ he said. ‘It looks like we might have found the dealer who sold him the sword.’

Li’s Jeep nosed its way along the narrow hutong of Xidamochang Jie running east off Qianmen. It was crowded along its length by pedestrians and cyclists, traders with barrows, lorries, boys delivering coal briquettes. Small restaurants spilled tables and chairs out into the street where men sat barbecuing meat and chicken over hot coals, the smell of it hanging in smoke that obscured the narrow strip of blue sky overhead. Women sat in groups on tiny stools, preparing dumplings or just chatting. Through an open doorway, Margaret saw a man stretched out on a plastic-covered divan, hands tucked behind his head, fast asleep. In another, a woman stood chopping vegetables on a wooden board with a huge cleaver. ‘Where on earth are we going?’ she asked Li.