Peter May - The Fourth Sacrifice

Li took a photograph of Yuan out of his breast pocket. ‘Is this him?’

Mr Ling put on a pair of spectacles and peered at it. ‘Sure, that him.’ He nodded thoughtfully. ‘You know, not every day someone order sword like that. But I also remember this man for two other reason.’

‘Oh?’ Li tucked the photograph back in his pocket. ‘What were they?’

Mr Ling said, ‘He Chinese man. OK. He have Beijing accent. OK. But he don’t act like Chinese man. I don’t know how describe. But he just not like Chinese man.’

‘And the other reason?’ Margaret asked.

Mr Ling’s face lit up. ‘Oh yeah. He recommend to me by my good friend. Ve-ery famous American archaeologist. Mistah Zimmerman.’

*

Sang stood at a discreet distance pretending not to listen, but heads in the street were turning, and a group of small children stood by the entrance to the schoolyard staring with gaping mouths as the yangguizi shouted at the policeman.

‘It’s just ridiculous.’ Margaret’s voice rose to a shrill pitch. ‘How can you possibly figure Michael has anything to do with this?’

‘Who said I did?’ Li’s calm was all the more infuriating. He walked off towards the Jeep, and Margaret followed like a dog snapping at his heels.

‘Why else would you want to question him?’

‘To eliminate him from our inquiry, of course.’ He reached the driver’s door and turned back. ‘I mean, you must admit,’ he said, ‘it’s a very strange coincidence that he just happened to know the victim. And not only did he know him, but he recommended a place where he could buy a sword, which in all probability will turn out to be the murder weapon.’

‘It might be a coincidence,’ Margaret came back at him. ‘But there’s nothing strange about it. Yuan worked at the embassy. Michael spent a lot of time there in the last six months. It’s a small community. I mean, there’s nothing more sinister about that than Michael knowing the professor of archaeology at Beijing University.’

Li frowned at her. ‘Yue Shi? Zimmerman knew Professor Yue?’

Margaret could have kicked herself. All she had succeeded in doing was giving him more ammunition. ‘Well, of course,’ she said defensively. ‘He’s an archaeologist. China’s his speciality. Yue Shi was a protégé of the archaeologist Hu Bo — the guy Michael’s making his documentary about. I happen to know that he was deeply shocked by the professor’s murder. It’s not every day someone you know gets their head cut off.’

Li lit a cigarette as Margaret took a breather. He stared hard at the ground for a moment, gnawing reflectively on the inside of his cheek. Then he looked at her very directly. ‘How come Zimmerman knew how Professor Yue was murdered?’

Margaret frowned. ‘What do you mean?’

‘I mean, how did he know the professor had been decapitated? Stuff like that doesn’t make it into the papers here. Very few people know the details of how any of these people were murdered.’

Margaret raised her hands to the heavens in frustration. ‘How the hell do I know? He knows lots of people at the university.’ She stopped, steadied herself, took a deep breath. ‘You’re enjoying this, aren’t you?’ He cocked an eyebrow at her. ‘And don’t pretend you don’t know what I’m talking about. You’re jealous and angry and hurt, and here’s a heaven-sent opportunity to get right back at me.’

Li took a long pull at his cigarette, his face impassive. ‘I don’t know what you think I have to be jealous of,’ he said evenly. ‘But even if I did, I’m smart enough not to let my personal feelings cloud my professional judgement.’ He paused for effect. ‘Unlike someone else I could mention.’ She glared at him, seething inside, but knew that his position was unassailable. He pushed home his advantage. ‘So why don’t we just go and ask Mr Zimmerman all those questions that neither of us has the answers to?’

A large brush in a clenched fist daubed red paint over the two characters representing Ding Ling, and as the camera pulled back, a young peasant appeared on the screen, clutching his pot of paint and scrambling down the ladders that leaned up against the huge stele. Chuck ruffled his white hair excitedly, never taking his eyes off the monitor. ‘Of course, we covered the stone in clear plastic,’ he said, as if anyone might believe the vandalism was real.

Margaret looked out from the open door of the truck and saw, at the far side of the stele pavilion, the camera and camera operator on a cherry picker at the end of a huge crane. The crane swung back from the pavilion and started slowly delivering the camera towards the ground. She glanced back at the screen and saw the shot pan away from the pavilion to the steps leading down to the square. Michael was already descending the stairway. He looked straight into the lens as it moved down with him.

‘ Already they had smashed the stone bridge leading to the square. Then they vandalised the proud stone tablet that had stood sentinel over the imperial burial chambers for centuries. And as the peasants gathered in the square were whipped up to a frenzy by the Red Guards, they were about to deliver the most devastating blow of all. An act that would haunt the young Red Guard leader for the rest of her life, as night after night the Emperor and his Empresses returned in her dreams to try to kill her with a sword. ’

The camera stopped moving, and Michael walked out of shot. ‘Cut,’ Chuck shouted into his walkie-talkie. ‘Brilliant!’ He turned to Li and Margaret. ‘When we pick up the reverse of that we’ll be following him down into the square. Of course, by then, there’ll be about fifteen hundred extras there baying for blood.’

‘What happened?’ Li asked. ‘I mean, in reality.’

‘Didn’t they teach you in school?’ Margaret said. ‘Surprise, surprise. I don’t suppose the Cultural Revolution was on the curriculum.’

Li said, ‘When I was as school, the Cultural Revolution was the curriculum.’

There was a moment of stand-off between them, and Chuck leaped in quickly. ‘They smashed up the skeletons of the Emperor and the two Empresses,’ he said and nervously lit a cigarette.

‘Then they made a big bonfire,’ said Margaret, never taking her eyes off Li, ‘of all the royal remains.’

Chuck said, ‘Then it started to rain and everything got washed away in the mud. Lost for ever.’ He sighed. ‘We’re going to have to simulate that rain later today. Not the best of weather for it.’ He nodded towards the door and the palest of clear blue skies outside. The mountains beyond shimmered in the heat.

‘You seem to know a lot about it,’ Li said to Margaret. ‘And I know the Cultural Revolution wasn’t on the curriculum at your school.’

‘Michael told me,’ she said. ‘He knows more about it than most Chinese.’

Li bristled.

Chuck was uneasy with the tension between the visitors to his control truck. ‘Listen, you guys,’ he said. ‘You want to talk to Mike, I can give you about twenty minutes while we’re setting up the next shot.’

*

To Li’s annoyance, Michael stooped to give Margaret a quick kiss before reaching out his arm to shake Li’s hand. Li felt his face colour. Margaret, too, was embarrassed by this show of affection in front of Li. Only Michael seemed oblivious. And, again, as he had been at Beijing West Railway Station, Li was aware of something curiously familiar about Michael, something he couldn’t quite identify.

‘Hey, guys,’ Michael said. ‘Great you could make it. I didn’t think you were going to manage out, Margaret.’ He seemed genuinely pleased to see them.

‘No, neither did I,’ she said self-consciously.