Peter May - The Fourth Sacrifice

‘Shit,’ Wu said. ‘That’s Yue Shi, Professor Yue. Look, his hands are tied behind his back.’

And they saw, also, the placard hanging around his neck and could clearly read the name, Monkey , upside down and scored through, below the number 4. The professor seemed to be weeping. The other man, whose face they still could not clearly see, appeared to be talking to him and looking around. And then he turned, so that he was almost facing the camera. Li had known, from the moment the figures stumbled into shot, who they were. But it was still a shock to see Yuan Tao turning towards the camera, his face triumphant, almost gloating. The last time Li had seen him was on the autopsy table.

Yuan raised something from his side, and they saw that in his right hand was his executioner’s sword, the bronze replica that he had commissioned from Mr Mao in Xi’an. The professor made a half-hearted attempt to get to his feet, but Yuan pushed him down again. He was easy to manipulate under the influence of the flunitrazepam. Yuan put his hand on the back of Yue’s head and pushed it forward, then he stood back, adopting a position, legs astride, slightly behind his victim and to his left. He placed the blade of the sword briefly on the back of the professor’s neck, and then in one swift and expert movement, he raised it high over his head and brought it down to send the professor’s head spinning away across the floor.

In Zimmerman’s apartment there was a collective intake of breath, six men watching in horror as the headless body of Yue Shi fell forwards and sideways, blood spurting from the severed carotid arteries. Yuan stepped back, took a rag from his pocket and drew it swiftly along the length of his sword, then seemed to look behind him again at the rows of silent witnesses.

Li said, ‘No wonder they knew how to replicate the murders. They had the whole thing on tape.’

One of the uniformed officers made a dash for the bathroom, hand over his mouth.

‘What’s Yuan doing?’ Wu asked in a hushed voice. ‘What are those figures he’s looking at in the background?’

Li picked up the remote control and pressed the pause button. The picture flickered momentarily, and then held in a perfect freeze-frame. Li leaned forward to try to make out what it was in the background. ‘In the name of the sky,’ he whispered. ‘They’re Terracotta Warriors.’

*

Margaret stood shivering among the silent figures. She was not certain if it was the cold or her fear that made her tremble so violently. In the momentary glow of the pinpoint of red light that flashed at regular intervals overhead, the faces of her companions took brief form in the dark and then plunged again into blackness. But their faces were cold as stone, lifeless eyes staring off towards an eternity into which they had been marching for two thousand, two hundred years. She did not know how many of them there were. Dozens perhaps. They stood in hushed rows, one behind the other in the cold and dreadful darkness of this underground chamber. They had had time to get used to it. Margaret had not.

At first, after the lights had gone out, there had been a distant clang of metal and she had called out, frantically hoping that someone would hear her. Terrified, she had felt her way back up the tunnel, inch by inch, one hand on the wall, one probing the darkness ahead of her. She could not remember ever having been so completely without light. The blackness seemed to take form and substance, enveloping her totally. It was frightening, disorientating. She had wondered if this was how it felt to be blind, and thought briefly of Pauper losing her sight slowly, first one eye, then the other. When she had told them her story of the sun rising red over the Yellow Sea and firing the town of Chongqing in the light of its crimson dawn, Margaret had been able to visualise it so clearly. Now she could see nothing, not even in her mind’s eye.

Up ahead her hand had touched something cold and wet, and she recoiled with a little scream. After a moment she had reached out again, and realised that what she felt was the cold metal of the gate at the tunnel’s entrance. Her relief was only momentary, as she realised that the gate was shut. And locked. Any illusions she may have harboured that she had been shut in here by accident had quickly vaporised. Her fear had turned to terror, and she had made her way quickly back to the chamber where the Terracotta Warriors stood waiting for her, as if it had been their destiny, and hers, to share the darkness of this awful place.

It was some time before she had realised that the winking red light which afforded her the briefest glimpses of her companions, was the light of a security camera mounted on the wall above the tunnel entrance. Was it an infrared camera? Was there someone, somewhere, at a monitor who could see her in the dark, who was watching her every movement? The thought made her feel sick.

Now she squeezed herself carefully among the warriors to crouch down and obscure herself from the camera and huddle, arms around her legs, for warmth and comfort. She wanted to cry. She did not know how long she had been here. But it seemed like a very, very long time.

Li slammed down the phone and shouted, ‘Wu!’

Wu appeared quickly in the doorway. The office behind him was buzzing with activity.

‘Boss?’

‘Get down to the Procurator General’s office and pick up that warrant for Zimmerman.’

‘On my way.’

Qian took his place in the doorway as Wu left it. ‘No one seems to know where Zimmerman is, boss. He’s not out on location, or at the production office. He’s not at the American Embassy …’

The phone on Li’s desk rang. He snatched the receiver. ‘Just a moment,’ he barked into it and put a hand over the mouthpiece. He flicked his head at Qian. ‘Try that bar where he said he was the night of Yuan’s murder. The Mexican Wave. I think it’s in Dongdaqiao Lu.’ And into the phone, ‘Deputy Section Chief Li.’ He flicked open his file on the murders and a couple of sheets of paper fluttered to the floor. He leaned over to pick them up.

‘It’s Mr Qi here, Deputy Section Chief. At the Centre of Material Evidence Determination. Hope I didn’t get you out bed.’

‘What do you want?’ Li was in no mood for Qi’s levity. He laid the fallen sheets on his desk in front of him.

‘I’ve got the results here that Dr Campbell asked for. She wanted me to phone you.’

Li frowned. ‘What results?’ His eyes were drawn by the printed sheets he had picked from the floor. They were in English, two of the pages from the print-out Margaret had made of the North California Review of Japanese Sword Arts after she had downloaded it from the Internet.

‘The dark blue dust she brought in this morning. She wanted me to run a comparison with the samples you found on Professor Yue and at Yuan Tao’s embassy apartment.’

Li was mystified. ‘She brought you a sample? This morning?’

‘Yes,’ Qi said. ‘It was a positive match.’

He now had Li’s full attention. ‘Did she tell you where she found it?’

‘Sure,’ said Qi. ‘It was in the tread of her shoes from when she was in the pits of the Terracotta Warriors in Xi’an.’

But Li barely had time to register this information before a name leaped out at him from one of the sheets of paper on his desk. A name that came several paragraphs below Yuan’s, in a list of winners in a minor Tameshi Giri competition in San Diego. It seemed extraordinary to him that they hadn’t seen it before. But, then, they hadn’t been looking. He felt sick.

‘Hello … hello …’ he heard Qi saying. ‘Are you still there?’

‘Sure.’ Li’s throat was thick. He knew now who had killed Yuan. ‘Thank you, Mr Qi.’ He hung up and sat for a moment. A thousand conflicting computations ran through his mind before one of them punched up an answer that sent a chill through him. He became aware that the sheet of paper in his hand was trembling.