Peter May - The Fourth Sacrifice

And as quickly as she had let her imagination run riot, she stopped herself. She had no idea if this blue powder matched the other samples. But to her immediate regret, she realised that she wanted to find out. And she found herself suddenly, and quite unexpectedly, being drawn back into a world she had been trying very hard to escape. The force that drew her was irresistible, as was the curiosity which she recognised now was edged by just the faintest hint of apprehension.

*

Margaret’s doubts about whether Mr Qi would be at work on a Sunday or not were quickly allayed. After all, criminals did not take weekends off, why should criminalists? He looked at the sample of powder she had brought him in a white hotel envelope and scratched his chin thoughtfully. Her shoes, in a plastic bag, lay on the table.

‘It look ve-ery much like same dust,’ he said. ‘Most probably about seventy per cent composition fired clay. The rest organic, mineral, some artefact.’ He looked at her. ‘Where did you find this, Doctah Cambo?’

‘I picked it up in the treads of my shoes at the pits of the Terracotta Warriors in Xi’an.’

‘Aha!’ Mr Qi’s face positively glowed with illumination. ‘Then this almost certainly same dust,’ he said. ‘We did analysis on mineral component of clay. Most commonly found in area of Shaanxi province west of Xi’an City. If you find it in pits it must be clay they use to make Terracotta Warrior more than two thousand years ago.’

And Margaret remembered now reading in the forensic notes that the clay had originated in Shaanxi Province. But she had never made the connection with Xi’an. There had been no reason to, until now. ‘How soon can you tell if it’s the same as the other samples found in the Yuan Tao murders?’

‘Oh,’ he said cheerily, ‘it quiet today. No problem. Couple hours, maybe. I can do low power analysis with stereo microscope, and maybe density gradient analysis. Even mineralogical profile if you want. You wanna wait?’

She glanced at her watch. ‘I can’t.’ She thought for a moment. ‘Could you phone Deputy Section Chief Li with the results?’

‘Sure,’ he said. ‘No problem.’ He grinned. ‘You clever lady, Doctah Cambo. You should come and work for Chinese police.’

She smiled. Not a chance in hell, she thought.

*

Her taxi dropped her at Silver Ingot Bridge. The corner grocery store was doing good business, and the paths that followed the contours of the lakes were dotted with couples and families out for a Sunday stroll. It was, at least, a day of rest for some. Margaret walked briskly along the south shore of Qianhai Lake, past decaying single-storey brick dwellings, and into the quieter leafy lanes that led to the Lotus Flower Market where Sunday crowds would already be gathering round food stands to buy plates of boiled pig’s intestine garnished with coriander. But Margaret turned off before she got there, through an arched gateway that led into Mei Yuan’s siheyuan . She had been entirely preoccupied with thoughts of the dust of aeons gathered in her shoes, found in a dead man’s apartment, scraped from the clothing of a murder victim. If the samples matched, then the only thing that connected them was the clay used to mould the Eighth Wonder of the World — the thousands of pottery soldiers fired in 220 BC to guard the underground burial chambers of the First Emperor of China. It was baffling. Margaret could make no sense of it.

Xinxin shrieked and rushed out to greet her in her slippers. She had been standing waiting at the door ever since breakfast. Margaret gave her a big hug and took her hand and led her indoors where Mei Yuan greeted her with a wide smile. ‘She is very impatient,’ she said. ‘I could hardly get her to sleep last night, she was so excited that you were going to take her to the playpark today.’ Her smile faded. ‘You are not really leaving Beijing?’

‘I’m afraid so,’ Margaret said, shrugging off her embarrassment.

‘There is trouble between you and Li Yan, I think,’ Mei Yuan said.

Margaret just nodded. She wasn’t about to elaborate. And then she felt Xinxin tugging at her arm. She turned and found her staring up with wide, sparkling eyes, and chattering rapidly.

‘She’s asking you to hurry up,’ Mei Yuan said with a grin. ‘She says she’s been waiting for hours.’

Margaret took Xinxin’s hand. ‘Come on, then,’ she said.

‘Just a minute.’ Mei Yuan stopped them. ‘She’s still in her slippers. Her trainers are by the door. She needs help with the laces.’

‘I’ll do it,’ Margaret said, and she squatted on a low stool by a collection of shoes that Mei Yuan kept to the right of the door. Xinxin’s trainers were tiny, smaller than Margaret’s hands, and Margaret thought how expensive it must be to keep her in shoes she was constantly outgrowing but never wearing out. As she lifted the left shoe, she saw the traces of blue dust on the floor, dark like a stain on the pale green lino, and she felt all the hairs on her neck and arms stand up.

Xinxin dumped herself on Margaret’s knee, urging her to hurry up, but Margaret was hardly aware of her. She turned the trainer over and saw the blue-black dust ingrained in the tread. The other shoe was the same. Confusion swept over her in waves. Now this really did not make sense. Xinxin had not been to Xi’an.

‘What’s wrong?’ Mei Yuan looked at her, concerned.

Margaret said, ‘When did Xinxin last wear these?’

Mei Yuan frowned, perplexed by the question. ‘Yesterday,’ she said. ‘They’re the same ones she was wearing when she was out with you and Li Yan.’

Margaret simply could not get her brain to function. It seemed to be adrift on a sea of extraneous thoughts. Where had they been? She looked at the soles of her own shoes. When she had found the residue in the treads of the trainers from Xi’an, she had put on the same shoes she had been wearing yesterday. But there was no trace of the blue dust. And then she remembered. Of course, there had been a downpour last night. She had run off from here through wet streets in search of a taxi. Whatever residue might have been trapped in her treads would have been washed away.

So, where had they been?

She tried to focus. They had been in the Jeep. At Section One. At the university …

‘Jesus,’ she said aloud. Xinxin and Mei Yuan were staring at her apprehensively. At the university they had been in the conservation lab, in that dirty, dusty room where they restored and preserved ancient artefacts. Professor Chang had apologised for the mess. We’ve been restoring the ancient treasures of China in here for decades , he had said. I guess it just never seemed all that important to clean up behind us. Professor Yue had worked there too. And it was on his trousers and shoes that they had first found the residue of blue dust.

Margaret became aware of Xinxin pulling at her hand, her voice whining at her in disappointment. She dropped the tiny shoes, slipped Xinxin from her knee and stood up, her face flushed with confusion and excitement. ‘I’m sorry. Mei Yuan. Apologise to Xinxin for me, but I can’t take her now. I’ll come back later. I have to go to the university.’

*

The stone lions guarding the west gate seemed to glower at Margaret as she slid from the back seat of her taxi. Of the three huge, studded doors between the columns of the gate, only the centre one remained open. The other two were firmly shut. The uniformed guard watched Margaret approach and she wondered how she was going to explain to him why he should let her in without a pass. But as she got closer she recognised him as the guard who had let them by yesterday. He recognised her, too. Perhaps he remembered that she had been accompanied by a senior police officer, for he waved her through. She smiled, and like Alice through the looking-glass, she slipped from one world into another.