Peter May - The Fourth Sacrifice

The night-shift security guard nodded as Li wheeled his bike out into Zhengyi Road and headed north up to East Chang’an Avenue. There was very little traffic about at this time, the odd private car, the occasional convoy of great rumbling trucks hauling coal south from the pits north of the city. There were virtually no other cyclists, and Li had the cycle lane to himself. He pedalled hard through the dappled light of streetlamps shining through the trees. Most of the neon and coloured arc lights that illuminated so many of the new buildings at night were turned off at this time. It was the darkest hour of the night. And Li fought to keep the darkest thoughts from his mind.

This was the fourth beheading in what were, as far as anyone knew, the first ever serial killings in Beijing. Four murders in as many weeks. Bloody, execution-style killings, each following the same bizarre ritual, chilling in their cold, calculated and entirely premeditated nature. He tried to shut out of his mind the scene that he knew would confront him. He had seen many murder victims in his time, and victims of all manner of accidental death, but never had he seen so much blood. It was hard to believe the body held so much. And when it was such a vibrant, freshly oxygenated red, the effect was shocking.

Li passed under the flyover of the second ring road and continued east, past the CITIC building and the China World Trade Centre, before turning north again on the third ring road. In a couple of hours, the city would be waking, bleary-eyed cyclists jamming the cycle lanes heading for work. The traffic would start to build, so that by eight almost all the main arteries would have ground to a halt, and row upon row of frustrated motorists would peep their horns and rev their engines, belching filthy, unregulated fumes into the already toxic atmosphere. Cycling in Beijing had long since ceased to be a pleasure.

But as yet the third ring road was still deserted, not a single vehicle or cyclist along its length as far as Li could see. He could almost believe he was alone in the city. Until he turned east into Tuan Jie Hu Dongli and saw, about two hundred yards along this normally secluded, tree-lined street, a crowd of several hundred people gathered around a phalanx of police and forensic vehicles drawn into the sidewalk at Building No. 7. These were people from up and down the street, woken from their sleep by the sirens of police and ambulance. Hastily dressed figures, some still in slippers, pressed around the official vehicles, puffy faces below tousled hair straining for a sight of what was going on. Several dozen uniformed officers assigned to crowd control were already erecting temporary barriers. More people were emerging all the time from tenement closes. Li had to force his way through to the barriers, and a po-faced young uniformed officer would not let him through until he had flashed his Ministry ID. Another officer, this time one Li recognised, stood sentry by the entrance to the close.

‘Where’s Detective Qian?’ Li asked.

The officer jerked his thumb over his shoulder. ‘Up the stairs. Fourth floor.’

The walls of the close were scarred and dirty. They had probably never been painted since the apartments were first built in the seventies. There was a damp, airless smell in the stairwell, a faint whiff of urine. Rusted old bicycles jostled for space on each landing, doors to apartments shuttered behind steel grilles. Li climbed the stairs two at a time. A number of uniformed officers stood smoking on the fourth landing, a couple of forensics men, wearing tell-tale white gloves, leaned on the rail and watched him come up. Bright light spilled out from the apartment.

Li nodded grimly and squeezed in the door, past a tiny kitchen on his left, a toilet on the right. There were a couple of flimsy flip-flop sandals by a cabinet just past the kitchen door — a change of footwear for the interior in more fastidious times. Beyond was a narrow room with built-in cupboards at the far end, and a table littered with the detritus of everyday life: newspapers, cigarettes, an overflowing ashtray, dirty dinner plates waiting to be cleared away. To the left, interior windows gave on to a bedroom filled with light from the streetlamps outside. To the right, a tiny living room with a sofa and TV, and a screen door opening on to a glassed balcony. There was a smell of stale cigarettes and cooking, and the merest hint of something strangely sharp, almost sweet, that Li could not identify.

The body was in the living room. Li smelled the blood before he saw the crouched shape of the fallen decapitated figure, the head two feet further away, lying on its side, eyes staring back towards him. The flash of the police photographer’s camera unexpectedly burned the image into Li’s brain, the great pool of red made more vivid in the sudden blinding light.

Detective Qian’s gaunt face swam into view. He nodded grimly. ‘Just the same as the others, boss.’

Qian was nearly ten years older than Li, considerably more experienced. But he didn’t have Li’s flair or imagination, which is why Li, at the age of thirty-three, had been promoted ahead of him. But Qian had had no ill feelings. He knew what his limitations were, and he was a good judge of others’ abilities. He was absolutely dependable, and Li leaned on him heavily. Besides which, he was as straight as they come. There was no side to Qian. What you saw was what you got, and Li knew there was never any danger of their misunderstanding each other.

‘When the photographer’s finished let’s clear this place,’ Li said. ‘There’s too many people in here.’

‘Sure. I think he’s just about done. The doc’s looking at the body now.’ Qian immediately started moving people out.

Dr Wang Xing, the duty pathologist from the Centre of Criminal Technological Determination in Pao Jü Hutong, was crouched over the body. He had an unlit cigarette clamped between pursed lips and blood on his white gloves. He stood up and slowly peeled them off, stepping carefully over an area of floor where the linoleum had been pulled back and floorboards lifted. Avoiding the great pool of blood that had drained into the hole, and the characteristic spatter patterns left by the jets of blood that had shot from the carotid arteries, he picked his way out into the hall. The cigarette had stuck to his lips and he peeled it carefully away and grinned. ‘“If you can keep your head when all about you are losing theirs and blaming it on you” …’

‘Rudyard Kipling,’ Li said.

‘Ah,’ said Pathologist Wang. ‘A man of letters.’

‘My uncle had a book of his poetry.’

‘Well, of course … He would, wouldn’t he?’ The pathologist dropped his soiled gloves into a plastic bag and almost sang, ‘You’re going to have to catch this guy, Li. Or it’ll be your head.’ He pulled a lighter from his pocket.

‘Don’t light that in here,’ Li said. ‘I don’t suppose there’s any need to ask you about the cause of death?’

Pathologist Wang shrugged and put his lighter away. ‘Well, it’s pretty obvious that someone cut his head off. Not quite as cleanly as the previous victims — but it might just be that his blade’s starting to get a little blunt.’ Li ignored the jibe. ‘From the amount of blood I think you could safely say that his heart was still beating when the blow came. So, yes, I’d happily put money on decapitation being the cause of death.’

‘But only,’ said Li, ‘if the government ever decides to legalise gambling.’

Pathologist Wang smiled. His addiction to cards and mah jong was well known. ‘I was speaking figuratively, of course.’

‘Of course,’ said Li. He would not have been surprised if money changed hands at Pao Jü Hutong on the outcome of autopsies. ‘What about time of death.’