Peter May - The Fourth Sacrifice

Suddenly aware that a constriction in her throat was causing her to breathe erratically, she looked up to find Li standing watching her from the doorway. Her face coloured in embarrassment, as if she believed he could somehow read her thoughts. She looked away, and saw the photographs of Old Yifu on the wall, and unaccountably felt tears filling her eyes. She blinked them quickly away, looking down at the bed to hide them from Li. She picked up Xinxin’s picture book and stood up, pretending to scrutinise the pages. Her eyes fell on the vertical columns of large Chinese characters that ran up the right margin of each page, and clutching at something to say to hide her emotion she said, ‘Do you really read from right to left?’

Li took the book from her and closed it gently. ‘Only when the characters are on the vertical. When they are horizontal we read left to right.’ He seemed very close now. She could hear his breathing, and the familiar smell of him made her heart beat a little faster. He said, ‘They say that Chinese children learn to read up and down because they are very obedient and always obey their parents.’ He made an up and down nodding motion with his head. ‘But Western children are very disobedient and never do what they are told. That is why they read from left to right.’ And he moved his head from side to side as if shaking it.

She smiled. ‘When you say “they” say, I take it you mean the Chinese.’

‘Of course.’ He dropped the book on the bed and she felt an arm slip around her waist. He lowered his head to kiss her, and she tipped her face towards him in an instinctive response. It was only the shock of his lips on hers that suddenly made her pull away.

‘No!’ she said, and then suddenly remembered Xinxin and lowered her voice to a whisper. ‘No, Li.’ They stood staring at each other for a moment. Then she said, ‘I’d better go. I’ll get a taxi in the street.’ And she hurried past him, stopping in the living room to pick up her folders, before running out and down the stairs. He heard the door slam behind her, and felt the tears run warm on his cheeks.

Margaret struggled out of her taxi, laden with the files that Li had dumped on her. She fumbled to pay the driver, then hurried into the Ritan Hotel, past the deserted lobby shop with its display of overpriced trinkets, and turned right towards the elevators.

In the short taxi ride from Li’s apartment to her hotel, her distress had turned to anger. How dare Li play with her emotions like that? How could she ever hope to accept his rejection if he could not accept it himself, if he became jealous of any relationship she had with another man, if he was going to succumb to his own weakness every time they were together? And she was just as angry with herself for almost having given way to desires she had been trying to sublimate. Desires she had been forced to sublimate. What had seemed clear and easy and right with Michael just twenty-four hours before was suddenly thrown into confusion again. She needed time to think.

‘Margaret.’ She turned at the sound of Michael’s voice just as the elevator doors slid open.

‘Michael. What are you doing here?’

‘Waiting for you.’ He approached across the vast expanse of marble looking at his watch and smiling ruefully. ‘For the last two hours. You people work long days.’ His face clouded. ‘I wanted to talk to you, Margaret. About this morning.’

‘I wanted to talk to you, too, Michael.’ Margaret sighed. ‘I can’t apologise enough. It was just Li Yan being jealous. Trying to get back at me through you.’ The elevator doors slid shut again.

Michael frowned. ‘I thought you and he were history.’

‘So did I.’

He shuffled awkwardly. ‘Look, Margaret. The thing is, if it gets around that I’m some kind of suspect in a murder investigation, it could completely ruin my connections here in China.’

Margaret couldn’t stop herself laughing. ‘Oh, Michael,’ she said. ‘You’re not a suspect. Li was just playing silly games with the most tenuous of links. There’s no question of anyone thinking you had anything to do with this. You were with me the evening Yuan was killed, you weren’t even in the country when another two of the murders took place.’ She paused, gasping her frustration. ‘What can I say? Forget it. It’s not even an issue.’

He seemed to relax a little then, and smiled. ‘Have you eaten?’ She shook her head. He said, ‘Good, ’cos I booked us a table at a little place I know.’ He checked his watch again. ‘They should still be serving. Just.’

She glanced down at herself. ‘Michael, I’ll have to change first. Fifteen minutes. That’s all. I promise.’

He grinned. ‘OK. Starting from …’ he raised his wrist and began pushing buttons on his watch, ‘… now.’ He started the stopwatch function. She pressed the call button for the elevator.

He held open her hotel room door as she staggered in and dropped her files on the bed, papers spilling out across the bedspread and dropping on the floor. He stooped to start picking them up. ‘Just leave that stuff,’ she said. ‘I’ll get it later.’ She grabbed some fresh underwear from a drawer, and took a pair of jeans and a lemon tee shirt from hangers in the wardrobe. ‘A quick shower,’ she said. ‘I promise I won’t be long.’

He grinned and tapped his watch. ‘Still counting.’

She hurried into the bathroom and quickly stripped off and started the shower running. She caught a glimpse of herself naked in the mirror and remembered being with Michael the night before, his hands gentle on her breasts and buttocks, the great sense of his contained strength and control as he slipped inside her. The steam from the shower misted her reflection and she turned to step into the stream of deliciously hot water.

‘So if I’m no longer the prime suspect, who is?’ she heard Michael call through from the bedroom.

‘It’s a long story,’ she called back.

‘Better make it quick, then. You’ve only got another ten minutes.’

She laughed and started lathering herself with a big soft sponge drizzled with shower gel. ‘Yuan’s father was killed back in the sixties by a group of six Red Guards during the Cultural Revolution.’ She spluttered briefly as she pushed her head back under the shower and let the water run down her face. ‘Yuan was at university in America and didn’t know about it till he got his mother’s diary thirty years later. Seems he came back to take his revenge.’

Michael said something but she couldn’t hear him.

‘What was that?’

He raised his voice. ‘So who killed Yuan?’

‘The best bet is some guy they call Birdie. Works at the bird market.’

‘Why would he want to kill Yuan?’

‘Because Birdie’s the last surviving member of the group of Red Guards that killed Yuan’s father. He was sure to have been on Yuan’s hit list.’ She rinsed the shampoo out of her hair. ‘Mind you, he might be the best bet, but he’s a pretty poor one. The guy’s a misfit. Lives on his own with a bunch of birds. Suffers from nerves and can’t do proper work … and a whole bunch of other reasons I wouldn’t even bore you with.’

She turned off the shower and stepped out of the bath reaching, eyes closed, for the bath towel on the rail. She felt a hand touching her and screamed with fright, opening her eyes with a shock. Michael stood grinning in the steam-filled room, holding out the bath towel. ‘Jesus, Michael!’ she said. ‘You gave me a fright.’ She snatched the towel and wrapped it around herself.

He cocked an eyebrow and said, ‘That’s not what you said last night.’ And he slipped his arms around her waist and drew her towards him.