by Peter May
‘Sure. He was unusual. He was Chinese.’
‘And was there anything else you thought was unusual about him? Anything that made him stand out from the others?’
The guard shook his head slowly. ‘Nope. Can’t say there was.’ He hesitated. ‘If anything, I’d say I saw him less than the rest. Don’t remember him ever having any visitors.’
‘Ever?’ Wu was astonished.
‘Not that I can remember. Course, you’d have to ask the guys on the other shifts.’
‘Would you know,’ Li asked ‘if he didn’t stay in his apartment for a night, or even two?’
‘Not necessarily. He might already be in when you came on shift. And he might not.’
‘You don’t keep records?’
‘Nope.’
Li produced photographs of the other victims. ‘Ever seen any of these guys?’
The guard took a long look, then shook his head. ‘Nope.’
They climbed the stairs to the apartment on the second floor and found the door lying open. The place was tiny: one central room for living, eating and cooking, a stove and a sink set on a worktop over cheap units against the far wall. Through a half-glazed door was a tiny toilet with a shower that drained into an outlet set into the concrete floor. The bedroom was just large enough for a bed, a bedside cabinet and a single, mirrored wardrobe. Apart from the fact that it was smaller, the contrast with the apartment Yuan Tao had rented in Tuan Jie Hu Dongli was stark. Books were stuffed into sagging bookshelves, and piled up on the linoleum beneath the window. Piles of Chinese newspapers were stacked under a gateleg table folded against one wall. There was food decaying on dirty plates on the table, and dirty dishes were soaking in the sink. There was a smell of body odour and cooking and old clothes, a faint, distant hint of some exotic scent that seemed vaguely familiar. The kitchen cupboards were groaning with tinned and packet food. Dirty washing was spilling out of a laundry basket in the bedroom, washing hanging up to dry on a line in the toilet. Unlike the apartment at Tuan Jie Hu Dongli, Yuan Tao had lived here. He had left his smell, his personality and all his traces in this place, and perhaps, too, a clue as to why someone should want to kill him.
There were two officers there from the forensics department at Pao Jü Hutong. They were dusting for prints. The senior officer, a small, wizened man called Fu Qiwei, said, ‘Be with you in two minutes, Deputy Section Chief.’
Li ran his eye along the shelves of books. They were mostly academic volumes, some fiction, almost all of them in English, well-thumbed pages and broken spines.
‘He must have had them shipped over,’ Wu said. And Li wondered, not for the first time, why a professor of political science at a prestigious American university would give up his career to work on the visa line at the US Embassy in Beijing. Was there more to all this than met the eye? More to it than he was being told? Had Yuan Tao been a spy for the Americans, or even the Chinese? But he quickly dismissed the thought. If there were the slightest suspicion of that, he thought, the investigation would have been taken very quickly out of his hands.
All along the tops of the bookcases was an accumulated clutter of miscellaneous personal items and dust: a paperweight, pens and pencils, a dried-up eraser, a couple of unused notebooks, an antique dominoes set picked up at a market somewhere, a chipped and cracked but otherwise clean ashtray filled with fen coins on top of what appeared to be a picture frame lying face down. Li took out a handkerchief and shifted the ashtray so that he could turn over the frame. It contained a haphazard montage of old black-and-white family snaps — a couple in their early thirties with a young boy standing awkwardly between them grinning shyly at the camera; a passport-sized photograph of a teenage boy; a portrait picture of each of the adults, a little older, wearing Mao caps and staring earnestly out from the mists of history.
Wu peered over Li’s shoulder. ‘His family?’
‘Looks like it.’ Li always found pictures like these depressing. He had ones just like them. His sister, his mother and father, himself as a young boy, family groups with aunts and uncles and cousins, reminders of a time when he was still a part of a family, happy and whole, before history had torn them apart. ‘We’ll want these for the file,’ he said, and carefully he opened up the back of the picture frame and tipped the faded and dog-eared photographs out on to the table. On the backs of them someone had written dates and places — Ping Zhen, Ye and Tao, Tiananmen, 1952; Tao, aged seventeen; Ping Zhen, Qianmen, 1964 … Li turned over the family group taken in Tiananmen Square in 1952. In the background, he saw, hutongs and siheyuan where now the Great Hall of the People stood. People were flying kites back then, just as they did today. For a moment or two he scrutinised the faces of Yuan’s parents, Ping Zhen and Ye, as if there might be some answer in their dull, staring eyes. They did not look like happy people in their button-up tunics and Mao caps. They did not look like the same carefree couple who had posed, smiling unselfconsciously with their son in Tiananmen Square twelve years earlier. In just twelve short years life had etched its unhappiness indelibly on their faces. And no doubt, Li thought, the worst had still to come.
He left Wu to slip the pictures into a plastic evidence bag, and looked around the room again. There was a single, well-worn armchair, acquired second-hand, no doubt. The cushion and the chair back still bore the imprint of Yuan Tao’s body. A few short, black hairs clung to an antimacassar. There was a single dining chair at the gateleg table. Don’t remember him ever having any visitors, the security guard had said. He had clearly furnished his tiny apartment in the expectation that he would be its sole occupant. He had not anticipated receiving visitors.
They went into the small toilet. There was no curtain, nor any other attempt to cover up the window in the toilet door. Another indication that Yuan Tao had lived here in absolute isolation. He had had no need to protect his privacy. There was more of his hair trapped in the shower drain in the floor. A small cabinet on the wall contained the usual toiletries: shaving foam, a couple of fresh bars of soap, toothpaste, haemorrhoid cream, several packs of Advil — all American branded.
‘He bring all this stuff with him, too, do you think?’ Wu asked.
‘I don’t know,’ Li said. It was possible now to buy a huge variety of Western consumer goods in ordinary Chinese supermarkets. But these were a little different. ‘Unscented,’ he read off the can of shaving foam. And, ‘Hypo-allergenic,’ off the soap wrapper.
‘What’s that?’ Wu asked.
Li said, ‘Looks like maybe he had an allergic skin reaction to anything highly scented.’ He looked again at the contents of the wall cabinet. ‘I don’t see any aftershave or deodorants either.’
He closed the mirrored door of the cabinet and saw his own face staring back at him, and he was shocked by the dark shadows beneath his eyes and the strain in the lines around them. He looked quickly away, and Wu followed him into the bedroom. The sour smell of body odour and dirty laundry hung in the air. The forensics officers had just finished dusting. ‘What did you want to show me?’ Li said.
Fu Qiwei beckoned him towards the wardrobe and opened the door. It was jammed with clothes, mostly formal suits and white shirts. Several ties hung from a bar attached to the inside of the door. On a shelf above were a couple of pairs of jeans, some sweatshirts, a pile of tee shirts. The officer crouched down to a row of shoes along the bottom of the wardrobe. Again, the shoes were mostly formal, black or brown leather. There was a single well-worn pair of blue and white trainers. With his gloved hand, the officer carefully lifted one of them and Li saw, in its tread and lying scattered in the bottom of the wardrobe, a small accumulation of dark blue-black dust.
Li whistled softly. ‘Is that the same stuff we found on the victim that was moved?’
‘The archaeology professor,’ Fu Qiwei said, nodding. ‘It looks very like it. Same colour and consistency. We’ll be able to tell for sure once we get a sample back to the lab.’
Wu crouched down beside Li, peering in at the blue
dust, frowning his consternation. ‘What does it mean, boss?’
Li shrugged and shook his head, as perplexed as Wu. ‘I’ve no idea.’ But they all knew there was significance in it. That Yuan Tao had, somehow, been in the same place, possibly at the same time, as Yue Shi, the professor of archaeology at Beijing University. Here was something else to link them besides the manner of their deaths and the fact that they were former pupils of the same school. A blue-black dust, particles of fired clay — as puzzling and insubstantial as every other piece of evidence they had managed to collect.
‘That’s not all,’ said the forensics officer. He stood up and they followed him through to the living room where he stooped to open the kitchen cabinet below the sink unit. There, amongst a bucket and bottles of cleaning fluid, stood three unopened bottles of Californian red wine.
Li felt the hairs bristling across his scalp. Then wondered why he had reacted in such a way. After all, here was a man who had lived for more than thirty years in the United States. Would it not be the most natural thing in the world for him to keep bottles of wine in his kitchen? To drink a glass or two with a meal was commonplace in the West. He crouched down to look at the labels. They were all the same vintage. A 1995 Mondavi Reserve Cabernet Sauvignon from the Napa Valley. Li knew enough to know that this was no cheap plonk. He also knew that Yuan Tao could not have purchased them in China and could only have brought a limited amount with him. So why, after six months, did he still have three bottles? And even more curiously, why would he keep his expensive vintage wine with the cleaning fluids beneath the sink?
*
‘Wow!’ Wu said. He was chewing furiously on his gum and rolling one of the legs of his sunglasses back and forth between thumb and forefinger. ‘Can we tell if that’s the same stuff our first three victims had been drinking?’
Fu Qiwei nodded. ‘We can compare it to residue found in wineglasses at the first two crime scenes. Give you a result later this afternoon.’
But Li knew that the results would only confirm what his instincts were already telling him. And he felt himself slipping deeper into the mire of confusion in which they were already wallowing.
III
Margaret had thought she would be curious about the place where Yuan Tao had worked. But, in truth, the visa department in the Bruce Compound was just another anonymous legation building. An extension had been built out front to accommodate the queues of applicants, so that they no longer had to clutter up the street, standing in line under the watchful and sometimes intimidating eye of the Chinese armed police guard on the gate. Inside the main building, extensive renovation work had created new, white-walled offices in the US Citizen Services Department where Margaret had been allocated a small room.
Sophie opened the door and waved Margaret through it. ‘Your very own office,’ she said.
Margaret looked around without enthusiasm. There was a small window high up on the wall that she could not see out of. What little daylight it admitted was supplemented by a naked fluorescent striplight overhead. There was a single desk with a telephone extension, a blotter, a pile of thick brown envelopes and a computer terminal, an uncomfortable-looking office chair, a battleship-grey filing cabinet, a yucca tree in a pot, and a map of China pinned to the freshly painted wall. The place smelled of emulsion paint and new carpet, and the fluorescent light reflecting from the white walls hurt her eyes. She wondered briefly who had been de-camped to make space for her, but knew better than to ask. She was sure she would spot some resentful face glaring at her in the corridor before the day was out.
‘You don’t look terribly impressed,’ Sophie said.
‘Should I be?’ asked Margaret. The filing cabinet was locked. She tried the desk drawers. They were locked, too. ‘I’m obviously not expected to be here very long.’
‘As long as the investigation takes.’
‘Which is as soon as possible as far as the embassy’s concerned.’
‘Naturally,’ Sophie said. She pointed to the bundle of envelopes on the desk. ‘That’s all the stuff you asked for from the Chinese police — copy prints from the crime scenes, translations of the autopsy reports …’
‘That was quick!’ Margaret was astonished. ‘They must be as anxious to get rid of me as you are.’
Sophie grinned. ‘It is quick. Jonathan couldn’t believe it. Apparently it would normally take weeks for something like this. Chinese bureaucracy moves at its own, usually very slow, pace.’
‘Just shows what they can do when they want,’ Margaret said, shuffling through the contents of the envelopes. ‘Oh, good,’ she said, pulling out a sheaf of reports. ‘That’s the toxicology results on my autopsy, along with the transliteration of the tape. Means I can get my own autopsy report written up.’ She glanced through the toxicology results and nodded. ‘Nothing unexpected here.’ She looked at her watch. ‘Oops, no time to read them just now,’ and she stuffed them back in the envelope and starting gathering all the papers and envelopes into a pile that she could carry away.
‘Where are you going?’ Sophie asked, disconcerted.
‘To pack. I’ve got a train to catch at six fifty.’
Sophie frowned. ‘But the Chinese police have set up a briefing meeting for you at Section One.’
Which stopped Margaret in her tracks. ‘When?’
‘At five.’
‘Then it’ll have to be a brief briefing.’
She lifted the bundle from the desk and pushed past Sophie and off down the corridor. Sophie chased after her. ‘But where are you going?’
‘Xi’an.’
‘Xi’an?’ Sophie was perplexed. ‘But … what’s in Xi’an?’
‘The Terracotta Warriors. Didn’t you know? Apparently they are the Eighth Wonder of the World and not to be missed.’
‘Michael,’ Sophie said flatly, as realisation dawned. ‘You’re going with Michael.’
‘He asked,’ Margaret said breezily, as she passed the scrutiny of the marine at the front door and was allowed out.
‘You lucky bitch!’ Sophie grinned. ‘He’s only after your body, you know.’
‘Well, maybe I’m after his, too,’ Margaret said with a twinkle. ‘Anyway, it’s only for a day. We’ll be back the day after tomorrow.’
‘Well, I hope you don’t expect the American government to pay you while you’re off gallivanting with Mr Zimmerman.’
‘Of course I do,’ Margaret said. She crooked her arm around the bundle she was carrying. ‘After all, I’ll be taking my work with me.’
*
The tension in the top floor meeting room of the Section One building in Beixinqiao Santiao was almost tangible. Margaret, shown first into the room, had taken Li’s customary seat with the window behind her. She knew it was the power seat in the room, and almost certainly the seat that Li would have made his own. Despite anxious glances from the other detectives, however, Li gave no sign of having had his nose put out of joint. He sat directly opposite Margaret and seemed concentrated on sorting out his papers. Also present were Zhao, Wu, Qian and Sang. To the annoyance of the others, it had transpired that Sang spoke flawless English, and so Li had nominated him official interpreter for the meeting.
‘OK,’ Li said. ‘You have received the prints and copy autopsies we sent you?’
Margaret nodded. ‘But, since they have only just come into my possession I have not yet had time to study them.’ She paused before delivering the first barb. ‘Twenty-four hours does seem a rather excessive amount of time to have to wait.’
Li felt the anger rising in his throat and took a moment or two to control it before speaking. ‘But time enough for you to have completed your autopsy report?’
‘Without the toxicology results and the transliteration of my tape which, of course, I have been waiting for from your people, that would have been rather difficult.’
Sang struggled to translate this.
Li sat back and exhaled his frustration. ‘Then there’s not a great deal of point in
continuing this meeting,’ he said.
‘However,’ Margaret drew a bundle of stapled sheets from her bag, ‘as soon as I received the necessary information this afternoon I booked time in the business centre of my hotel — at my own expense — and produced a preliminary report covering all the essentials.’ She pushed the copies across the desk towards him. ‘There are no surprises.’
Li pulled the bundle to him, pushed one towards Sang, and flicked through the top copy. Without looking up he said, ‘We ran those tests you suggested on the sections of spine, comparing the signature left by the murder weapon on the vertebral bone in each murder.’ He paused.
Margaret could not restrain her curiosity. ‘And?’
‘We matched the first and third murders. Your “sweet spot” theory looked as if it might stand up for a while. But we could not find a match for the other two.’ Margaret was about to comment, but he cut her off. ‘We did, however, run another test, with the scanning electron microscope. On the bronze residue left by the sword that we collected on the tape lifts. The computer was able to report the relative percentages of the constituent elements. They were exactly the same. Which means that the same weapon was used in all four murders.’ He waited long enough to let the frown start to form on her forehead. Then added, ‘Which rather gives the lie to your suggestion that Yuan Tao’s murder was a copycat killing.’
The other detectives, listening intently to Sang, looked quickly to see Margaret’s reaction.
She shrugged. ‘Not really,’ she said. ‘It simply means that the killer had access to the same murder weapon used in the first three murders.’ The detectives turned to catch’s Li’s reaction. But he was impassive. She added, ‘Is that all you have to tell me? Is that the sum total of your investigations over twenty-four hours?’
‘Of course not.’ Li looked more composed than he felt. She had been unfazed by the revelation about the murder weapon, and her calmly suggested explanation was so simple he wondered why he had not thought of it himself. But he knew the answer to that almost immediately. He had found it virtually impossible to believe that Yuan Tao had been murdered by a copycat, and in admitting that to himself now, realised he had been making a basic mistake for which his uncle would have derided him. He had made an assumption, and was trying to make the evidence fit the assumption. Assume nothing, his uncle used to tell him. Let the evidence lead to you the conclusion, do not jump to it yourself.