Peter May - The Fourth Sacrifice

*

From the bar of the Ritan Hotel, Michael saw Margaret step from a taxi, and he hurried across the vast expanse of shiny marbled foyer to intercept her at the door. She took one look at him and burst into tears, to his confusion and distress. He took her in his arms. She was wet and dishevelled, mascara tracks on her cheeks. ‘For God’s sake, Margaret, what’s wrong?’

‘Nothing’s wrong,’ she mumbled into his chest. ‘Nothing’s wrong, Michael. Just hold me.’

Margaret had her back to him. He saw Michael approach her. There was something in his hand, but he could not quite see what it was. Then she turned as he raised his arm, and the blade of a dagger glinted in the light as it arced through the air towards her. Li called out, but his voice would not sound. He tried to move, but his hands were bound behind his back, and he became aware for the first time of a white placard hanging round his neck. He could read his own name on it, and realised it was upside down. Now he looked up and saw that it was not a dagger, but a sword, and it was not Michael who held it, but Margaret. She had the strangest smile on her face as she brought the blade slicing down on him.

His own scream brought him to consciousness, and he heard the distant echo of it reverberating in his dream. He was breathing hard and lathered in sweat, as if he had just run a race. Blood pulsed painfully at his temples. He looked at the digital display by his bedside and saw that it was only one o’clock. He had barely been asleep half an hour.

He swung his legs out of the bed and reached for his cigarettes. He had only just lit one when he was startled by a fist pounding on his door. ‘Hello?’ he heard a woman’s voice shouting. ‘Is there anyone there?’

He ran through the dark apartment and unlocked the door, throwing it open to reveal the middle-aged woman who lived across the landing. She was a fearsome creature with a big ugly face and whiskered chin, a very senior officer in the Ministry of State Security which shared its compound with the Ministry of Public Security. She wore a pink cotton dressing gown wrapped around her overample frame, and her face was covered with white cream.

Li stared at her in astonishment. ‘What is it?’

‘I heard someone screaming.’

He breathed a sigh of relief. Was that all? ‘I was having a bad dream,’ he said, and noticed that her eyes had strayed down to his middle regions. With a shock he realised he was stark naked. ‘Is there anything else?’ he asked.

Reluctantly she dragged her eyes away from the focus of their interest and glared at him. ‘You’re disgusting!’ she said. ‘Exposing yourself to a helpless woman in the middle of the night.’ But she didn’t sound too disgusted. ‘I’ve a good mind to report you.’

‘What for?’ he asked. ‘Failing to get a hard-on? One look at you, comrade, and there isn’t a court in the land that would convict me.’ She flushed. ‘Thank you for your concern.’ And he shut the door on her indignant face.

He wandered through to get a beer from the refrigerator, but he had drunk it all. He pulled on a pair of jogpants and sat in the dark of the living room taking long pulls at his cigarette. Outside, he could see, the rain had stopped. But the leaves on the trees were still glistening wet in the light of the streetlamps, and dripping on the sidewalk below. He thought about Margaret, and immediately stopped himself. It was too easy. It was all he had done all night. He was damned if he was going to sit here and wallow in self-pity. He got up, walked out on to the balcony and forced his brain to work in other directions.

An image of Birdie in his holding cell floated into his mind, pathetic and sad and curled up like a foetus on the unyielding boards of his bunk bed. Another thought crowded in, an earlier thought that he had already dismissed. And an image that went with it, of a shadowy figure creeping through the dark of Birdie’s apartment to hide a sword in the bottom of the wardrobe. He heard the birds, screeching, disturbed from their sleep, alarmed by the movement they could not see. And he suddenly remembered Qian fumbling with the padlock on the steel shutter. The lock’s burst , he had said. We didn’t need the keys after all . Li cursed himself. He had not even bothered to look at it. Had it been forced, or was it simply broken? He lit another cigarette and ran a hand back through the stubble of his hair. It had not even been an issue at the time. No one could have suspected then that someone might have broken into Birdie’s apartment to plant the murder weapon. It was by no means certain now. Li checked the time. It was still only one thirty. He went back through to his bedroom, pulled on a tee shirt and slipped his feet into a pair of trainers. He did not have the patience to wait until the morning to ask Qian.

The air was filled with the smell of damp earth and wet leaves as he cycled north through the dark deserted streets, wondering if his determination to check out the lock on Birdie’s apartment was simply a means of shutting Margaret out of his thoughts. He put his head down and pedalled harder, trying to free his mind from the burden of any conscious thought.

The duty officer at Section One retrieved Birdie’s keys from the evidence room and handed them to Li. ‘He asked for pen and ink and some paper a couple of hours ago,’ he told Li. ‘Haven’t heard a cheap from him since.’ He smiled at his own sad pun.

The alleyway leading off Dengshikou Street was deserted. The windows of the apartment block stood in dark, silent rows, one upon the other. Li wheeled his bicycle into the courtyard, and startled a rat foraging among the pile of garbage on the steps. It scurried off into the night. He parked his bicycle under the lamp by the door and went inside. From somewhere in the depths of the building he heard the distant hum of something electrical. Otherwise, the building was deathly silent. The lift doors were shut, and the normally illuminated call button was dark. Li made his way to the foot of the stairs and took out the keys to unlock the stairgate. But the gate creaked away from his hand as he touched it. He took out a penlight from his back pocket and shone it on the lock. It was seized solid, and had obviously been that way for some time. So anyone could have gained access to the building anytime after ten o’clock when the lift was switched off. He began the long ascent.

By the time he reached the ninth floor he was seriously regretting not having given up cigarettes long ago — and his automatic response was to light one immediately and take a deep draw. A faint light from distant streetlamps washed in through the windows and illuminated the corridor. He made his way along it and turned left into the darkness of the hallway where his penlight picked out the number 905 above Birdie’s door. The shutter was lying ajar, and Li felt a surge of anger at the carelessness of his officers for leaving it that way. He crouched down and lifted up the padlock on the end of its chain. The top loop slipped in and out of its hole, but failed to lock. Li focused his penlight on the keyhole and saw several fine scratches in the metal, shiny and freshly made. The lock had clearly been disabled. Recently. And by someone who knew what they were doing. He stood up and let it go and it clanked off the metal of the door. Someone had broken into Birdie’s apartment and planted the sword there. Li stood still for a moment, shocked by the revelation, and puzzled. It hardly seemed possible.

He turned the handle of the inner door and pushed it open. He heard the beat of wings in the air, a screeching chorus of alarm, and something flew at him out of the darkness. Something big and dark that struck him violently in the chest. He staggered backwards, taken completely by surprise, and robbed totally of his ability to breathe. As the shape emerged from the deepest shadows, he saw that it was the figure of a man, quite a bit smaller than himself, lean and wiry. But he had only the vaguest glimpse of the silhouette before another foot struck him in the chest, and a small, iron-hard fist smashed into his face. His head struck the wall behind him with a sickening crack, and he slid down it to the floor, blood bubbling from his mouth and nose. His attacker leaped nimbly over his prostrate form and was gone in a blur, through the door and away down the corridor. Li heard the footfalls on concrete, the banging of a door, and then steps echoing in the stairwell as his assailant made good his escape.