Peter May - The Fourth Sacrifice

Li sat for several minutes, leaning against the wall, gasping for breath. His chest hurt like hell, and he half-choked on the blood that ran back down his throat. He felt like a complete idiot.

*

Qian looked at the blood that had dried in streaks down the front of Li’s white tee shirt and shook his head. Li’s face was in quite a state. His bottom lip was split and swollen, and blood-soaked cotton wool trailed from each nostril where a medic had stuffed wads of it to stop the bleeding. ‘Must have been a big guy to make that much mess of you, boss.’

Li shook his head grimly. ‘Nothing to do with his size. He took me by surprise, that’s all. I wasn’t expecting there to be anyone in the apartment.’ He was embarrassed.

The whole block was now a blaze of lights. With the arrival of the police, sirens wailing, residents had poured out on to landings and into the courtyard. Neighbouring blocks had also been roused, and there was a crowd of several hundred curious men and women in the street, some with sleepy children clutching parental hands and blinking blearily at the comings and goings of uniformed officers.

Qian had only just arrived, dragged reluctantly from his bed by a call from the Section One duty officer. His face was puffy with sleep. ‘So what do you think he was doing in there?’ He looked through the doorway at the uniformed officers who seemed to be dismantling the entire apartment. ‘What are they doing in there?’

‘Same thing as he was,’ Li said. ‘Looking for something. Only difference is, he knew what it was. We don’t.’

Qian frowned and scratched his head. ‘You’ve lost me, boss. You mean, you know who he is?’

‘Sure. He’s the guy who broke in and planted the murder weapon in Birdie’s wardrobe.’

This was a new one on Qian. ‘ Planted the murder weapon? You mean, you don’t think Birdie did it after all?’

‘I never did. And the only reason I can figure the guy came back is he left or lost something while he was here. Something he thought might be incriminating.’

‘And do you think he found it before you disturbed him?’

Li shrugged and winced. The medic had strapped up his ribs, but they still hurt. ‘Who knows. But if there’s something there, I want to find it.’

It was almost five o’clock before Qian emerged from the apartment holding up a small, clear plastic evidence bag. Li was squatting in the corridor, small piles of ash and cigarette ends around him. The analgesics he had taken earlier were wearing off and he was starting to hurt again. He got painfully to his feet. ‘What have you got?’

Qian shook his head despondently. ‘Maybe something, maybe nothing.’

The first light was appearing in a sky washed clear by the previous night’s rain. The clouds had all moved on. Li took the bag and examined its contents. It was a small diamond stud not much bigger than a match head on the end of a short, blunt pin. ‘What the hell is it?’

‘It’s a stud earring,’ Qian said. ‘The kind of thing people wear in pierced ears to stop the hole healing up. I don’t think it’s Birdie’s.’

Li looked at him with undisguised dismay and pointed at his own face. ‘Are you telling me it was a woman that did this to me?’

Qian grinned, amused by the thought. ‘Not very likely, boss. Lot of young men get their ears pierced these days. A nasty habit picked up from the West.’

Li looked beyond him, disappointed, towards the apartment. ‘Nothing else?’

‘Afraid not, boss. At least, nothing that would raise an eyebrow. We were lucky we found that in the mess in there. If it hadn’t caught the light …’ Qian went to take the bag from Li, but his boss hung on to it.

‘Could be Dr Campbell’s,’ Li said. ‘She was in the apartment yesterday. What room was it in?’

‘The bedroom.’

Li nodded thoughtfully. To Qian his face was impassive, but inside his heart was pounding painfully against bruised ribs. He had a reason to see her. It was stupid and self-defeating, he knew, and it would probably only lead to more pain. But it was a valid reason.

‘I’ll get cleaned up,’ he said, ‘and go and ask her.’

*

The stalls of traders in furs and toys that lined the west sidewalk of Ritan Lu were shuttered and padlocked. In the park opposite, groups of men and women were gathering to dance the foxtrot or practise their tai ch’i or wu shu . Li could already hear the sound of scratchy music issuing from ghetto blasters mingling, among the trees, with the plaintive wail of a violin and the haunting voice of a woman singing a song from the Peking Opera. The first rays of watery yellow sunlight slanted and flickered among the leaves. The air was fresh in a way that it rarely was in Beijing these days.

Although it had barely gone six, the street was already thick with cyclists on their way to the park or factory or office block. A few vendors had established themselves at street corners selling freshly baked sweet potatoes hot from the coals of their braziers, or jian bing or roasted chestnuts. The smell of sweet things cooking for early breakfast drifted across the street in the smoke.

Li cycled slowly north. Each revolution of the pedals hurt his ribs. He had a splitting headache, and his lower lip throbbed painfully with the swelling. But he was almost unaware of these things as he looked up and saw the white-tile façade of the Ritan Hotel rising behind the trees. As he reached the gate he braked and slowly dismounted. A taxi honked its horn at him as it drove by, skirting a neatly arranged flowerbed and drawing up under the red painted framework of steel and glass that formed a canopy over the hotel entrance. Li was about to follow it through the gates when he saw a familiar figure hurrying out of the hotel and climbing into the taxi. It was Michael Zimmerman, looking happy and relaxed, and with a marked spring in his step. The sight of him leaving her hotel struck Li with more force than his assailant at Birdie’s apartment. Zimmerman could afford to be pleased with himself, Li thought bitterly. He had Margaret.

Li immediately pulled back, withdrawing behind a car parked on the sidewalk, and watched as the taxi emerged from the driveway and headed off down the street. Zimmerman did not notice him. Why would he? After all, Li was just another Chinese face in a city of eleven million Chinese faces. He caught sight of two security guards in brown uniform watching him with undisguised suspicion from where they stood smoking outside the gatehouse. He hesitated for a long time. He could not go in now. She would know he had seen Michael leave. He did not want to confront the reality of that. He never had.

Slowly he turned his bicycle round and remounted it. Later today he would send Sang to ask her about the stud earring. It was not something he had to do himself.

As soon as he turned his bicycle into Beixinqiao Santiao, and saw a dozen uniformed officers standing smoking in the dappled shade of the trees, he knew that something was wrong. An ambulance stood half on the sidewalk at the side entrance to Section One. The officers turned and looked at him as he appeared, and the hubbub of lively conversation died away. He parked his bike and hurried inside.

There were more officers gathered at the far end of the corridor, at the top of the half-flight of stairs that led down to the holding cells. Li had a sick sensation in his stomach. He ran the length of the corridor, pushing past the officers, and down the steps two at a time.

Birdie’s cell was full of plain-clothes and uniformed officers. Two medics were crouched over a prostrate form on the floor. Bodies parted to let Li in. Birdie’s head rested at a peculiar angle. His eyes were wide, and staring lifelessly at the wall. The tip of his tongue protruded through blue lips. A short length of dirty rope lay on the floor beside him, its weave still visible in a dry, golden-red abrasion furrow around his neck.