by Peter May
He had made a preliminary report on the findings of the autopsy to a packed meeting of the detectives working on the case. A number had been dismissive of Margaret’s conclusions. Left-handed, right-handed, they said, was a minor detail. As was the change from wine to vodka as a carrier for the flunitrazepam. Li pointed out that the severing of the head had also been less cleanly performed. Sang had suggested that perhaps the killer had deliberately made changes to his modus operandi in order to confuse the investigation, and a switch from right hand to left would explain why the cut had been less clean. No one believed these details to be of much importance compared to the number of identical features. But Li knew that Margaret believed them to be important, and his uncle had always said that the answer invariably lay in the detail.
Now he sat down at his desk and switched on an anglepoise lamp which spilled light across its surface. He looked at the buff folder in front of him. A man’s life lay within. Perhaps, also, a reason for his death. He opened it. Inside were duplicates of official documents: medical reports; education history in the United States; Yuan’s own curriculum vitae; his application for citizenship; an official report collated by some government agency on his political background; the assessment of his oral examination on application to join the State Department; the results of the State Department’s own security checks and medical examination. Li shuffled back and forwards through the documents, piecing together Yuan’s history.
Yuan Tao was born in 1949, the year of the birth of the People’s Republic. The year of the Ox. The same year as all the other victims. They were, all of them, children of the Revolution, progeny of the Liberation.
He had left China at the age of seventeen, in May of 1966, just under a month before the start of the Cultural Revolution, whose beginning was marked, in most people’s minds, by the suspension of classes at schools and universities across the country on 13 June. He had got out just in time, granted an exit visa to go to Egypt to study physics at the University of Cairo. But that had been a subterfuge, for he had spent less than a month in Cairo before flying on to the United States, where he had been accepted on a degree course to study political science. His sponsor was an uncle who had fled from China to San Francisco in 1948. Yuan had spent the summer working in his uncle’s restaurant in the city’s Chinatown to help pay his tuition fees when he started at the University of California, Berkeley, in the fall.
These had been turbulent years at Berkeley, with student civil rights demonstrations, and protests over the Vietnam War. Li shuffled in vain through the papers in the file searching for the report the FBI would surely have compiled on Yuan Tao at that time. He had known, of course, it would not be there. Just as there was no report of the CIA’s certain attempt to recruit him.
Yuan completed his doctorate in political science in 1972, but stayed on for another two years to finish a post-doctorate thesis. In 1974 he applied for and was offered the post of assistant professor of political science at Berkeley and immediately applied for his Green Card. His application was successful, allowing him to accept the position.
Yuan rented an apartment in Oakland, right across the bay from San Francisco, and close to the university. In 1978 he was promoted to associate professor, and the following year applied for and was granted naturalisation. Then, as an American citizen, he had married another Chinese-American in 1979. But the marriage had lasted less than two years, and was childless. Two years later, in 1983, he had become a full professor, and over the following years had proceeded to slip quietly into early middle-age in the cloistered backwaters of Californian academia.
Then, in 1995, at the age of forty-six, and completely out of the blue, he had applied for a job in the State Department. Certainly, they would have been pleased to receive him, an ethnic Chinese professor of political science, a naturalised American citizen who spoke fluent Mandarin. And Yuan Tao’s life had taken a totally different turn.
He had moved to Washington in the following year. But the papers provided by the Americans gave no clue as to what work he had been involved in there. Then in 1999, he had astonished his employers by applying for a posting to the US Embassy in Beijing when a lowly vacancy had arisen on the visa line. Several internal memos expressed consternation, and a letter had been sent to him suggesting that his abilities would be better employed elsewhere. There was no record of his response, and his application had duly been granted, with reluctance.
Yuan Tao had finally arrived back in China six months ago to take up his job in the visa department at the Bruce Compound at the top of Silk Street.
Li lit a cigarette and watched the blue smoke curl lazily through the light of his desk lamp. A series of facts. A chronology. None of which told him the first thing about the man. Who was he really? What were his hopes and fears? Who did he love, who did he hate, and who hated him? Why had he never returned to his homeland in the early years after the Cultural Revolution when it would have been safe for him to do so? And then why, after thirty-four years, had he suddenly decided to come back after all?
Li’s thoughts turned to the apartment at No. 7 Tuan Jie Hu Dongli. Why had Yuan wanted to rent when the embassy provided accommodation? And what had he hidden under the floorboards there that only his killer could have taken? The answers, Li was sure, would not be found in his file.
He wondered how Yuan had felt, returning to the country of his birth thirty-four years after he left it. What incredible changes there had been in that time. China must have been unrecognisable to him, a foreign country. Had he sought to make any contact with relatives? For surely there would be some, somewhere. Li flipped through the pages, coming to the only reference he could find to Yuan’s parents. His father had been a teacher, and died, apparently, in 1967. His mother had worked with pre-school children in kindergarten, but there was no record of what had become of her. And then there must have been old school friends. In six months he must have made contact with someone.
It was in Yuan’s own résumé that Li finally found what he was looking for. A list of his academic qualifications. He ran his finger down a reverse chronology, stopping finally at the second-last entry, and all the hairs stood up on the back of his neck. Yuan Tao had graduated from the No. 29 Middle School in Qianmen in May of 1966.
Li sat staring blankly at the sheets in front of him for several minutes. The murder victims had all attended the same school.
The revelation cast for the first time, in his mind, a shadow of doubt over Margaret’s conclusions at the autopsy. For it inextricably linked all four. They had all been doped with the same drug, all had their hands tied behind their backs with the same silk cord. They had all had placards placed around their necks, their nicknames written upside down and crossed through. The placards had been numbered in sequential descending order from six. They had all been beheaded — the first three with a bronze sword — and Li had no doubt that forensic results would confirm this to be the case with the fourth.
And yet … the nagging doubts still would not go away. Small doubts they might be, but Li could not shake them off. Why would Yuan drink the blue vodka? Why did his killer stand on his right to deliver the fatal blow, when he had stood on the left of at least two of the others? Why had he tied his wrists with a knot which was exactly the reverse of the knots he had used to tie the other three?
There were other questions, too. Why had victim number three been moved from the scene of his execution? It must have been terribly risky, not to mention messy. And why, given the amount of blood that would have been shed, had they been unable to find the place where he had been murdered?
It was, he thought, like one of Mei Yuan’s riddles. He wished the solution could be just as simple. It made him think again of the riddle she had set him that morning, about the thirty-yuan hotel room. But he could not get his mind even to begin addressing the problem of the missing yuan. He had a bigger riddle of his own to solve first. And if he immersed himself in it deeply enough perhaps he might finally be able to put Ma
rgaret out of his mind.
He leaned back and blew a jet of smoke at the ceiling as the door opened and Chen came in. He was silhouetted against the lights of the detectives’ room, and his face was above the ring of light shed by Li’s desk lamp, so that Li could not immediately see his expression. Chen closed the door and Li saw that he was wearing a suit. And a tie. It was unheard of for Chen. He was renowned as a casual, even sloppy dresser who would usually shuffle to and from work in baggy pants, an open-necked shirt and an old zip-front jacket. He stepped towards the desk and Li caught sight of the grim set of his mouth.
‘You missed the briefing,’ Li said.
‘I was at the Ministry.’ Which explained the suit. Chen pulled up a chair and sat down. ‘Got a cigarette?’
Li tossed him one and Chen lit it, inhaling deeply, and then exhaling slowly, allowing his eyes to close. He loosened his tie at the neck. ‘I feel so damned uncomfortable in this stuff. How are you supposed to do your job properly if you’re not comfortable?’ Li knew he wasn’t expected to respond. He waited apprehensively for Chen to continue. But Chen was in no hurry. He took several further pulls at his cigarette before turning to meet Li’s eye.
‘We’ve been asked to keep the Americans fully apprised of any developments in this case. Access to everything.’ He paused, then, ‘They have requested and it has been agreed — above my head I might say — that our point of contact with them be Dr Campbell.’
Li was stunned, as if he had just had his face slapped for a second time. ‘I thought she was going back to the States?’ His voice seemed small and very distant.
‘Apparently they have prevailed upon her to stay.’ He hesitated. ‘I know this is tough for you, Li-’
‘Tough?’ Li was scathing. ‘In one ear the Commissioner tells me to steer clear of her. In the other you’re telling me I’ve got to co-operate with her.’
Chen was annoyed by his tone. He leaned forward and snapped, ‘Then you’re just going to have to learn how to separate your personal from your professional life.’ He stopped and peered strangely at Li. ‘What’s that on your face?’
Li said, ‘The slap you’ve just delivered.’
*
Li weaved his way through the night traffic in a daze. His uncle’s bicycle, like every other on the streets, had no lights and no reflectors. He relied on motorists seeing him. But right now he didn’t care much. If it had been painful seeing Margaret today, how much more so it would be tomorrow, and the day after, and the day after that. He felt as if he had been cast into limbo in which there could be only pain, and the knowledge that there was no foreseeable end to it. How could she have agreed to do it? Wouldn’t it be just as painful for her? Or maybe she saw it as some way of gaining revenge, turning the knife in his own, self-inflicted, wound.
At the Chaoyangmen Bridge he turned west, passing a Kentucky Fried Chicken joint on his left before turning south again. He parked up at the corner of Dong’anmen Street and joined the crowds of people thronging the night market. Food stalls stretched off as far as the eye could see. For a handful of yuan, you could eat almost anything deep fried on a stick. There were grubs the size of human thumbs, whole scorpions, tiny birds complete with heads, all stuck on skewers and ready to be plunged into great woks of boiling oil. But Li was not much interested in the exotic. He bought shredded potato deep-fried in egg and wrapped in brown paper. He ate one and bought another, and washed it down with a can of Coke and wandered through the animated groups of family and friends crushing the length of the street like animals at a feeding frenzy.
He had tried not to think about her, but even here she came back to haunt him. He had brought her here the night she told him about her husband and how he died. Everywhere in Beijing that they had been she lingered, wraithlike, in his memory.
Li finished his Coke and became aware of a small, raggedy man of indeterminate years following him, to his left and slightly behind. His eyes were firmly fixed on Li’s empty can. Li turned, and was about to hand it to him when an old woman with tightly bound white hair and a single stump of a tooth grabbed it and made off. The raggedy man howled with dismay and chased after her, hurling imprecations at her back. So many cans returned for recycling earned so many fen. The street scavengers were fighting over them now.
Li retrieved his uncle’s bicycle and headed south again. There was beer in the refrigerator back at the apartment, and all he wanted to do now was get drunk. His wheels slithered and slid where reconstruction and rain had turned Wangfujing Street into a quagmire. Mud spattered over his trousers and shoes.
From East Chang’an Avenue he could see the floodlights of Tiananmen Square, where workers had already begun preparing the massive floral displays for National Day in just twelve days’ time. But all he wanted to do was escape from lights and people. The dark of Zhengyi Road came as a relief. The first leaves, he noticed, had started to drop from the trees. But autumn had not yet properly begun. These were just harbingers of its inevitable arrival.
The security guard nodded as he entered the gates of the compound, and parked and locked Old Yifu’s bicycle. His legs felt leaden as he dragged himself up the two flights of stairs. And then, as he slipped the key in the lock, he froze, and suddenly all tiredness and self-pity were banished. All his senses were on full alert. The door to the apartment was not locked. He always locked it. He hesitated for several seconds before slowly pushing it open. There was a shrill call, and the sound of footsteps, and a small girl appeared in the hallway, black hair tied back in bunches. She stopped dead when she saw Li. And then a pretty young woman in her late twenties appeared and the child immediately clung to her leg, burying her face to hide it from Li.
Li was stunned. ‘What are you doing here?’ he asked.
‘That’s a fine welcome after three years,’ the young woman said. ‘Didn’t you get my letter?’
Li hadn’t checked his mail in days. He looked at the pile of it on the table, and saw the envelope with the Sichuan postmark. He looked back at the young woman and the child.
‘I’m sorry,’ he said. ‘Life hasn’t been that organised.’ He hesitated only for a moment before stepping towards her and taking her in his arms, almost completely enveloping her slight form. She clung tightly to him, and the child tightened her grip on her leg. ‘Why have you come?’ Li asked.
‘We need to talk,’ she said.
IV
It was dark outside, and Margaret was making progress on her second vodka tonic in the bar of the Ritan Hotel when Michael appeared. She had almost forgotten about him, so focused was she on the spectre of Li, and the prospect of his returning to haunt her on a daily basis until this crime was solved. Of course, she realised, he would probably feel that he was the one being haunted. She had contemplated refusal to co-operate with the embassy. She could have insisted that she wanted nothing further to do with the investigation and got the next plane back to the States, as originally planned. They had no means of forcing her to stay on. But she hadn’t. And she wondered whether it was simply that she was more afraid of what the future held for her back home, than of the barren status quo here in China. It was easier to do nothing and drift with the tide, than to fight against it. Better the devil you knew.
‘I’ll have what the lady’s having.’ Michael’s voice startled her out of her reverie. The barman moved away to prepare another vodka, and Michael perched on a bar stool beside her. ‘Can I get you another?’
‘You’ve heard then?’
‘Heard what?’
‘Three vodkas and I’m anybody’s.’
‘And one more for the lady,’ he called after the barman.
She smiled. ‘Of course, it’s not true.’
‘Oh.’ He feigned disappointment.
‘It takes at least four.’ She looked at her watch. ‘You’re early.’
‘I never keep a lady waiting,’ he said.
‘Never?’
He shrugged. ‘Well, of course, that all depends on the circumstances. The
re are certain things you wouldn’t want to rush.’
‘I agree.’ She drained her glass. Then, ‘It’s a long time since anyone gave me flowers.’
‘Did you like them?’
‘They were beautiful. I’m just not sure what they signified. Men always have such ulterior motives.’
‘And, of course, women never do.’
‘Of course they do. But women are more subtle. Flowers are a bit … how can I put it? … in your face.’
He thought for a moment. ‘Let’s just say they were an expression of my pleasure at hearing you were staying on — at least for another couple of days. I was just getting to know you the other night when you did your disappearing act. Like Cinderella.’
‘And you wondered if I’d turned into a pumpkin?’
He laughed. ‘That was her carriage, wasn’t it?’
‘Oh, I don’t know. I’m not very up on my fairy tales.’ Their drinks arrived and they raised and touched glasses. ‘Cheers,’ she said. Then, ‘Oh, I know, she shed a glass slipper on the way out. That was it, wasn’t it? Then he went round trying it on all the women.’ She pulled a face. ‘I reckon he was a foot fetishist. I mean, how come he didn’t recognise her face?’ She took another gulp of vodka. ‘It’s like Lois Lane and Superman. He puts on a suit and a pair of glasses and she doesn’t know who he is. I mean, it’s ridiculous.’ She caught his expression and stopped, and laughed. ‘I’m sorry, it’s just so refreshing to be able to sit here and talk absolute crap. And be understood, and not have to worry about giving offence, or losing face, or breaching protocol … I’ve had nearly three months of it. You have no idea.’