Peter May - The Fourth Sacrifice

Li and Margaret stopped for a moment, as yet unseen by the man in the pavilion, and watched as he took his sword through all its motions with a bold confidence that belied his appearance. Margaret flicked a glance at Li. Here was an echo of his Uncle Yifu, who had been practising sword strokes in Jade Lake Park when Li had first taken her to meet him. Li’s face, however, gave nothing away.

The birds had betrayed their presence to their master, chatter increasing at the approach of strangers, and the swordsman stopped in mid-stroke and glanced towards them. He seemed alarmed, and Margaret saw fear in his black eyes. And although he relaxed a little as they approached the pavilion and he saw Li’s uniform, gone was all the poise and confidence he had shown in his handling of the ornamental sword.

Li held up his Public Security ID. ‘Police,’ he said. ‘You speak English?’ Birdie shook his head. ‘You know why we’re here?’ Birdie shook his head again. Li took the sword from him and examined it. It was a cheap, lightweight effort that concertinaed for ease of carrying. ‘You seem pretty good with this thing. You get a lot of practice?’

Birdie nodded. ‘Every day,’ he said. ‘It helps me relax.’

‘Just for the record, do you want to tell me your full name?’

‘Ge Yan,’ Birdie said. ‘But no one calls me that.’

‘What do you know about what happened to Monkey and Zero and Pigsy?’

The colour drained from Birdie’s face and he sat down on the narrow bench that ran between the lacquered posts.

‘I don’t suppose he speaks English?’ Margaret interrupted impatiently.

Li flicked her a look. ‘I’m afraid not.’ And with a tone, ‘What a pity you don’t speak Chinese.’

She deserved that, she realised, and backed off to the edge of the pavilion to watch from a distance. Birdie cast a nervous eye in her direction.

‘Never mind her,’ Li said. ‘Answer the question.’

Birdie’s eyes darted back towards Li. ‘They were murdered,’ he said, almost in a whisper, as if afraid to say it out loud.

‘Do you know who by?’

He shook his head. ‘But we are next.’

‘Who are next?’

‘Me and Pauper.’

‘How do you know that?’

‘Pauper said that someone is trying to kill us all. All of us who were in the Revolt-to-the-End Brigade.’

‘And why would someone want to do that?’

‘I don’t know.’

Li paused to think for a moment. He was still holding Birdie’s sword. He retracted the blade and threw it to him. ‘Here.’ Birdie caught it adeptly with his left hand. Li glanced at Margaret. She had not missed the significance. ‘Left-handed,’ Li said.

Birdie shrugged. ‘So what?’

‘No reason.’ Li lit a cigarette and watched the blue smoke curl slowly up in the still evening air. The light was beginning to fade.

‘What has he told you?’ Margaret asked.

‘The same as Pauper. He knew about the murders and figured they were next.’

‘Does he know about Yuan Tao?’

‘I haven’t asked him yet?’

Birdie seemed alarmed by this exchange in English. ‘What are you saying?’ he asked nervously.

‘We were talking about an old schoolfriend of yours. Yuan Tao.’

Birdie’s eyes opened wide. ‘Cat?’

‘We found him dead in an apartment on the east side of the city. Murdered just like the others.’

For a moment Birdie just stared at him, and then unexpectedly his eyes filled and big teardrops spilled from them and rolled down his cheeks. Li was stunned by his reaction. Margaret moved towards them. ‘What did you say to him?’

‘I just told him about Yuan.’

Birdie put a hand to his mouth to try to stifle his sobs. He drew in a breath in a series of small gasps and then issued a deep, animal moan, and the tears streamed down his face to gather among the whiskers of his beard. He looked up at Li with pain and hopelessness in his eyes. ‘I am sorry,’ he said. ‘I am so sorry.’

Li stood stock still. ‘Did you kill him, Birdie?’

Birdie shook his head, and when he found the breath to speak again, said, ‘No. I did not kill him. But we took his life away all those years ago. Back in the Cultural Revolution.’ A string of sobs pummelled his chest. ‘When we killed his father. In the school yard, with his mother watching.’ His eyes appealed pathetically for an understanding he knew would not come, his upturned face glistening with tears. ‘We did not mean to. We were just children.’ He broke down again, and held his face in his hands, weeping like the child he had once been. Li and Margaret waited in silence for his sobs to subside. There was something faintly shocking in watching a grown man cry so freely.

Finally, he regained some measure of control. ‘I have spent my life regretting the things we did then,’ he said. ‘China had gone mad, and we were carried along by the insanity. And now China has healed itself, but you cannot bring back the lives that were taken, or take away the pain from the wounds that will not heal.’ He wiped the tears from his face with the palms of his hands. ‘It has left me with a nervous condition now. I cannot work, except with my birds.’ He gazed up at his beloved birds singing in their cages. ‘They have no past, no future. They know nothing of my guilt. They make no judgements. I am free only with them. I have been free only ever with them.’ And after a moment, ‘Poor Cat,’ he said.

‘Cats and birds don’t really mix, do they?’ Li said, unmoved by Birdie’s display of remorse. His reading of the diary was still too vivid in his memory.

Birdie looked at him, confused. ‘What do you mean?’

‘It was Cat who murdered the others. Revenge for the killing of his father. You and Pauper were almost certainly next on his list.’

‘You still think I killed him?’ Birdie looked at him in disbelief.

‘Kill or be killed.’

Birdie shook his head. ‘I didn’t even know it was him. And even if I had, how could I have taken his life again?’ He ran his hands through his thinning hair in abject despair. ‘I only wish I had come higher on his list. At least, then, I would not have had to live with the guilt any more.’

‘Where were you on Monday night?’ Li asked.

Birdie looked at him, and there was a mix of panic and fear in his eyes. ‘I don’t know,’ he said. ‘Monday? At home maybe.’

‘And you live on your own?’

‘Yes.’

‘So there wouldn’t be anyone to back that up?’

Birdie was becoming increasingly agitated. ‘No. Yes. The girl in the lift. She must have seen me coming in.’

‘At what time would that be?’

‘I don’t know … Perhaps about seven.’

‘And when does the lift girl finish for the night.’

‘Ten usually.’

‘So, if you’d gone out after ten no one would know.’

‘I didn’t go out after ten!’ Birdie’s protestation was shrill and fearful.

‘What’s happening?’ Margaret asked.

‘He doesn’t have an alibi for Monday night,’ Li said.

‘Wait a minute!’ Birdie’s eyes had suddenly lit up. ‘Monday night. Monday night,’ he said excitedly, and a residue of sobs momentarily robbed him of his ability to speak. ‘Monday night I was playing checkers on the wall down at Xidan with my friend Moon. Usually we play Tuesday, but he had something else on and we played Monday instead. We sat and talked and smoked till maybe about twelve, when we finished playing. And then I went to his place for a beer before I came home.’

‘And he’ll confirm that if we ask him?’ Li felt unaccountably disappointed. However pathetic Birdie might have become, it did not alter the dreadful things he had done, and Li had found himself wanting it to be Birdie who had taken the life of his old classmate.