Peter May - The Fourth Sacrifice

‘Ah,’ said Wang. ‘Now that really is a lottery.’

‘Your best guess, then.’

The pathologist scratched his chin thoughtfully. ‘It takes about twelve hours for rigor mortis to reach its stiffest. He’s not quite there yet.’ Wang looked at his watch. ‘About nine hours, maybe. Say … eight, eight-thirty last night, give or take two or three hours.’ He waved his cigarette at Li. ‘I’m going outside for a smoke if you need me for anything else.’ He pushed out on to the landing.

Li stepped carefully into the sitting room and surveyed the scene. Qian followed at his shoulder.

The body had toppled forward from a kneeling position, and then fallen on to its side, so there was something oddly foetal about its final resting position. Except for the fact that the arms were pinned behind the back, tied at the wrist. Li crouched to have a closer look. Silk cord. Just like all the others. As he stood up and moved carefully round the body, he saw the eyes of the disembodied head watching him. They gave the disconcerting impression of following him as he stepped across the room. He looked away, and his eyes fell on a once white placard lying partially in the main pool of blood. The cord with which it had hung around the neck of the victim had been severed and was stained dark red. Carefully, Li lifted an unbloodied corner of the placard to reveal characters daubed in red ink on the other side. A nickname, Digger, was written upside down and crossed through. Above it, three single, horizontal strokes. The number 3. All so familiar.

Li stood up and looked around the room and realised that something wasn’t right. There was a sofa, a table with a lamp, a TV cabinet with a small set on top. The sofa was old, but it didn’t look sat in. There were no knick-knacks, personal belongings of any sort, papers, mail. Li picked his way carefully around the body and saw that a wastebasket by the TV cabinet was empty. He opened the cabinet. Nothing.

‘What is it, boss?’ Qian asked.

Li went out into the dining area and opened the built-in cupboards against the back wall. There were a couple of jackets, a pair of trousers, a couple of pairs of shoes. They were big cupboards, but they seemed very empty. ‘Do we know who he is yet?’ Li asked, and he went through to the kitchen.

‘Still working on it, boss,’ Qian said. ‘It’s a privately owned apartment. The guy had been renting for about three months, but none of the neighbours knew who he was. They hardly ever saw him.’

‘What about the street committee?’

‘They don’t know either. Since the apartment wasn’t provided by his danwei …’

Li cursed the move to privatise housing. It might be desirable for people to own their own homes, but it was breaking down the traditional structure of Chinese society. The opposite ends of the new economic spectrum, home ownership and unemployment, were creating a large, unregistered, floating population that was almost impossible to keep track of. It was proving a breeding ground for crime. He threw open the kitchen cupboards. Apart from a few cans, and some prepackaged dried noodles, they were empty, too.

‘Who raised the alarm?’

‘Couple in the flat below.’ Qian wrinkled his face ‘The guy woke up to find the top sheet of their bed soaking wet. He thought for a minute he’d pissed himself during the night. Till he got the light on. The sheet’s bright red. He starts screaming, thinking it’s his own blood. His wife wakes up and she starts screaming, too. Then she sees the big red patch on the ceiling, and the blood dripping through. They were both pretty shaken up.’

He followed Li through to the bedroom and watched him as he carefully pulled back the top covers and examined the sheets, then checked inside the bedside cabinet before getting on his knees to look under the bed. ‘What is it you’re looking for, boss?’

Li stood up and was thoughtful for a moment. ‘No one’s been living here, Qian,’ he said. ‘Someone’s been using the place, cooking the odd meal, staying over the odd night. But it’s not been lived in. There are no clothes or personal stuff, no food …’

Qian shrugged. ‘There’s washing hanging out there on the balcony.’

‘Let’s take a look.’

They moved with great care back through the living room and out the screen door on to the glassed balcony. A circular drying rack was suspended from the ceiling, and hanging from it were a shirt and two pairs of socks. Li put out his arm to stop Qian from touching it. He rummaged in his pockets and brought out a small pocket flashlight. He shone it towards the ceiling above the drying rack, and in its light they saw the complex silver traces of an elaborate cobweb. A big, fat, black spider scurried away from the light. Li switched it off. ‘There was certainly a washing done here. But it was some time ago.’ He looked thoughtfully at Qian. ‘Let’s talk to the folk downstairs.’

*

The officer who’d been sitting with old Hua seemed glad to get away. As he passed Qian on the way out he put his hand up to his chest and made a mouth with it that opened and closed, and he raised his eyes to the heavens. The apartment was the same layout as the one above, but old Hua and his wife used it differently. They dined in the same central room, shelves of crockery hidden behind a checked drape, but slept in the smaller back room, and lived in the front room that looked down on to the street. The contrast with the apartment above could not have been greater. Here was a place that was lived in, every corner crammed with furniture, every surface cluttered and piled with the stuff of daily living. There were family photographs pinned to the wall, a calendar, some old posters from the twenties and thirties advertising soap and cigarettes. The place smelled of soiled clothes and body sweat and cooking. It smelled of life.

‘Have some tea.’ The old man waved his hand at the table. ‘The water’s still hot.’ But Li and Qian declined. From the bathroom they heard the sound of running water. ‘That’s her third shower,’ old Hua said. ‘Silly old bitch thinks she’s still got blood on her. I told her she was clean. But she won’t listen.’

The old man was almost completely bald. What little hair remained he had shaved into his scalp. He was wearing blue cotton trousers and a grubby-looking white shirt that hung open, exposing a buddha-like belly and breasts. He had nothing on his feet and was smoking a hand-rolled cigarette.

‘I mean, it’s not as if I’m not used to death,’ he said. ‘I was only scared when I thought it was my blood. Other people’s blood doesn’t bother me.’

Li pulled up a chair. ‘How is it that you’re used to death?’ he asked. He had encountered death himself, many times, and had never got used to it.

Old Hua grinned. ‘I work for the Public Utilities Bureau,’ he said. ‘Have done for thirty years. It’s not unlike your Public Security Bureau. We’re both in charge of people. Only with you it’s the living. With me it’s the dead.’

Qian frowned. ‘Public Utilities … You work at a crematorium?’

‘I don’t just work there,’ Hua corrected him. ‘I’m a mortician,’ he said proudly. ‘It’s a long time since I went round with the wagon fetching corpses from their homes. I dress up the bodies now — for the benefit of the living, of course. Taught myself from books on cosmetics and barbering. Mind you, it’s not so easy with some of these accident victims. You know, when the face is all smashed up and you’ve got to use cotton wool, and paper pulp, and plaster and the like to re-make it-.’

‘Yes, well right now,’ Li interrupted him, ‘we’re all dealing with the dead.’

Old Hua jerked his head toward the ceiling. ‘Him up there?’