The Firemaker tct-1

by Peter May

  Li smiled. ‘Spicy and sweet. And therein you have the balance of opposites. Yin and yang. As in feng shui.’

  ‘I thought you didn’t know anything about feng shui,’ Margaret said suspiciously.

  ‘Not of its practice. But I understand the principles.’ He filled his mouth with more spicy food.

  ‘How can you do that?’ Margaret asked. ‘Doesn’t it burn you, too?’

  ‘I am used to it. And if you will eat some more now, you will find it does not burn so much and you will taste the flavours. And always take some noodles with each mouthful.’

  Hesitantly, she followed his advice, and to her amazement the food did not seem quite as hot as it had. But she proceeded more cautiously now, sipping frequently at her beer. ‘So where did you learn to speak such good English? At school?’

  ‘No. We did learn English at school, but it was my Uncle Yifu who taught me to speak it properly. He said there are only two languages in the world worth speaking. The first is Chinese, the second is English.’

  Margaret couldn’t help but notice the warmth in his eyes when he spoke of his uncle, and she realised, almost with a shock, that she had stopped seeing his face as Chinese, or as different in any way. It was just familiar now, a face she knew, a face she had even stopped seeing as ugly, for there was something deep and darkly attractive in his eyes.

  ‘He made me learn ten words every day,’ Li said, ‘and one verb. And he would test me on them, and make me practise. In Yuyuantan Park there is a place they call the “English Corner”. Chinese who speak English meet there just to talk to one another and practise speaking the language. Uncle Yifu used to take me there every Sunday morning and we would talk English until my head hurt. Sometimes there would be some English or American tourist or businessman staying in the city who would hear about the “English Corner” and come and make conversation with us. And that would be very special, because we could ask about slang and colloquialism and cursing that you cannot find in books. Uncle Yifu always says you only fully understand a society when you know which words they debase for swearing.’

  Margaret smiled, seeing the truth in this. ‘Your uncle should have been a teacher.’

  ‘I think, maybe, he would have liked that. He never had any children of his own, so all the things a father would like to pass on to his son, Uncle Yifu has passed on to me.’ Li raised the noodle bowl almost to his lips, and scooped noodles quickly into his mouth with his chopsticks. ‘But I didn’t learn all my English from my uncle. I spent six months in Hong Kong after the handover, working with a very experienced English police officer who had decided to stay on. This was very good for my English. And then I was sent for three months to the United States to take a course in criminal investigation at the University of Illinois in Chicago.’

  ‘You’re kidding!’ Margaret shook her head in wonder. ‘I took that course.’

  ‘But you are a forensic pathologist.’

  ‘Sure, that’s what I’m experienced in, but I also had firearms training with the Chicago PD. Was a pretty good shot, too. And I took the course in criminal investigation because … well, because it does no harm to broaden your horizons. A year later I was teaching forensics part-time on the same course. That’s where I met your boss. It’s amazing we didn’t run into each other.’

  Li nodded thoughtfully. ‘Your employer paid for you to take this course?’

  ‘Hell, no.’ Margaret smiled at the thought. ‘I took three months out at my own expense. I suppose I could afford to in those days. I had a husband who was working.’

  ‘Ah.’ Li couldn’t have explained, even to himself, why he was disappointed to be reminded that she was married. His eye flickered down to the ring on her wedding finger. ‘You have been married a long time?’

  ‘Foolishly,’ she said with a bitterness he had neither seen nor heard in her before, ‘since I was twenty-four. Seven years. Must have broken a mirror.’

  ‘I’m sorry? You broke a mirror?’ Li was confused.

  ‘It’s a silly superstition in the West. They say if you break a mirror it will bring you seven years’ bad luck. Anyway, I am no longer married, so perhaps my luck is changing.’

  Li was unaccountably relieved. But still intrigued. ‘What did he do, your husband?’

  ‘Oh, he lectured in genetics at the Roosevelt University in Chicago. It was his great passion. Or so I used to think.’ Li heard great hurt in her voice, but she was trying to disguise it by being flippant. ‘He always used to say genetics could be our salvation, or our downfall. We had to make the right choices.’

  ‘Life is always about making the right choices.’

  ‘And some of us always seem to make the wrong ones.’ And she suddenly realised she had gone too far, and her eyes flickered downwards with embarrassment. ‘I’m sorry, you don’t want to know about my sordid private life.’ She tried to laugh it off. ‘I’m sure you’d much rather know how I became an expert in crispy critters.’

  ‘In what?’

  She laughed. ‘That’s what a pathologist I used to work for called his burn victims. Crispy critters. Sick, isn’t it?’ Li thought it was. ‘I guess it’s a kind of self-defence mechanism, that kind of humour. We live in a pretty sick world, and that’s our pretty sick way of dealing with it.’

  ‘So how did you become an expert in … “crispy critters”?’ The distasteful sound of it seemed to bring back the smells of the autopsy room, and Li’s nose wrinkled in disgust.

  Margaret smiled at his squeamishness. ‘Oh, I guess I got interested when I was assisting a pathologist at Waco. And then during my residency at the UIC Medical Centre I got lots of experience dealing with victims in trauma, fire victims from automobile accidents, home fires, airplane accidents, even a couple of cases of self-immolation, like you thought your guy in the park was. Then when I got a job as a pathologist with the Cook County Medical Examiner’s Office, I just sort of developed the speciality. I can’t say it had ever been an ambition. But then, we don’t always end up doing or being what we started out to do or be, do we?’ She looked at him. ‘Did you always want to be a policeman?’

  ‘Yes,’ he said.

  She laughed. ‘Short conversation.’

  ‘Why did you want to come to China?’ he asked, and it was as if, in asking the question, he had flicked a switch and turned out a light somewhere inside her. She lost all vivacity, and her eyes took on a dull cast.

  ‘Oh …’ She shrugged. ‘It was just something that came up, when getting away from Chicago was what I most wanted to do in life. It didn’t have to be China. Anywhere would have done.’

  A sixth sense told him that he had now entered dangerous territory, and that to venture any further down this particular path would be both fruitless and damaging. He slipped his watch from its pouch on his belt and checked the time.

  ‘May I see?’ She leaned across and held out her hand. He passed it to her, the chain fully extended. It was a very plain, hexagonal watch set in a heavy pewter-coloured casing. A bald-eagle badge decorated its leather pouch. ‘It’s very unusual,’ she said. ‘Did you get it in the States?’

  ‘Hong Kong.’ He slipped it back in its pouch. ‘I really must get back to the office.’

  ‘Of course.’ She washed down her remaining noodles with the last of her beer, and they headed out into the afternoon heat that beat down so relentlessly from the burned-out sky. ‘My mouth is still on fire,’ she said.

  He took her arm and steered her south along the sidewalk. ‘Chinese are very practical people,’ he said. ‘Which is why when you have a Sichuan restaurant, you have an ice-cream parlour two doors along.’ And they stopped outside a small glass-fronted shop with multicoloured plastic strips hanging down over the door. Above it, white letters on blue, was the legend Charley’s Ice Cream Parlour. And beneath that, Sino-America Joint Venture.

  Margaret laughed. ‘I don’t believe it!’

  Li said, ‘Specially to cool the palates of over-sensitive Americans.’

&
nbsp; She flicked him a look, and he grinned. They went in and picked a couple of scoops each from a huge range of flavours displayed in a glass freezer cabinet, and then ran to the car and the cool of its air-conditioning before the ice cream melted.

  III

  Something happened on the drive back. Something beyond touch, or reason. Something very tiny in the great complexity of human relations. Like a radio whose tuning has slipped fractionally off-station, turning fine music into something scratchy and irritating. They had finished the ice cream long before they reached Section One, and the chill of it seemed to cool the warmth there had been over lunch. Margaret began to wonder if she had imagined that warmth. Perhaps it had been the heat of the food. For now Li seemed aloof, disinclined to talk. On those few occasions he met her eye, his eyes were cold, his demeanour polite, but formal. Where was the man she had listened to speaking fondly of his uncle, of Sunday mornings in the park at the ‘English Corner’, of the one ambition he had ever had to be a policeman? The transformation during that short drive from the restaurant to the office was both extraordinary and complete. Back again was the surly, resentful, ugly police officer she had encountered the previous day, and again this morning. Margaret’s few attempts at conversation elicited little more than a monosyllabic response. Was it something she’d said or done? She found herself growing frustrated and angry.

  Li was furious with himself. He should never have taken her for lunch. He had been trapped into it by his own weakness, and it was only now, as they drove back to the office, that he realised the full consequences of it. It wasn’t just the ribbing he would receive from his colleagues. That would be embarrassing enough, but he could handle it. What he knew he couldn’t handle was any kind of relationship with this woman. And for a time, as they had talked across the table, he had allowed himself to succumb to some unaccountable attraction to her. And in doing so, had lowered his guard and revealed much more of himself than he would ever have wished. It was ridiculous! And even now, as he manoeuvred the Jeep through the frantic afternoon traffic, he could not for the life of him think what it was about her he found attractive. For a start, she was an American, a yangguizi with a fast mouth. She was arrogant and superior and steeped in a shallow culture that could hardly have been more different from his own. He glanced at her sitting in the passenger seat, stiff and removed. For a time, over lunch, she had seemed almost human, vulnerable, displaying a hint of some deep hurt. Perhaps, he thought, that explained why on the drive back she had become distant again. She, too, had revealed too much and was regretting it.

  * * *

  Lily Ping was furious with both of them. They were more than forty minutes late. She said nothing, of course. Not in the presence of Li. But she sat in the detectives’ office, a brooding presence in the corner, like a black rain-cloud, awaiting their return. Her fury, though, had less to do with their tardiness than the fact that she had been excluded from lunch. She was extremely curious about how it had gone, as were the detectives in the office. But they had other things to occupy them in the interim. A succession of Beijing low lifes had passed through the office — unshaven creatures in dirty tee-shirts and baseball caps, wide boys in cheap suits and oiled hair — before being led down the corridor to the interview room. Pimps and suspected small-time drug dealers who might have known or had some association with the man found stabbed on waste ground out west that morning. The phones had never stopped. Detective Qian must have made twenty calls, and at one stage had sent a police dispatch rider to pick up dental records from somewhere downtown and deliver them to the Centre of Material Evidence Determination. A fax from the Centre had caused some excitement, but no one was sharing any information with Lily. Conversations were cryptic and careful.

  She was checking her watch yet again when Li and Margaret finally returned. A few heads lifted to cast curious glances in their direction, but for the moment the work in hand was serious and took precedence. The smart comments they would save for later. Lily’s annoyance intensified when Li and Margaret failed even to acknowledge her, and passed straight through into Li’s office. Neither was smiling, and they brought in with them a strange, strained atmosphere. Qian followed them through. Li had already picked up the phone.

  ‘That’s us, Chief. Any time.’ He hung up and turned to Margaret. ‘The Chief’ll be through in a minute. He wants to say thanks.’

  ‘Does he.’ Margaret’s voice was flat.

  Qian handed Li the fax from the Centre. ‘Dental records confirm the identity of the burn victim, boss. As you thought, his name was Chao Heng. Apparently he was the scientific adviser to the Minister of Agriculture before retiring six months ago through ill health. Lived in an apartment in Chongwen District.’

  Li read quickly through the report from the Centre and looked up at Margaret. ‘You were right on both counts,’ he said. ‘Identity, and sedation.’ He waved the fax. ‘That’s the test results from the Centre. They show a high level of ketamine in his blood.’

  Margaret nodded dully. Had she had a continued involvement in the case, then her interest would have been keener. As it was, she felt deflated, depressed. Others would unravel the crime she had identified. She had nothing further to contribute, or at least she would not be asked to do so. Li’s sudden mood change was having a more profound effect on her than she could have imagined. She had only been in China twenty-four hours, but already it seemed like a lifetime, and she was ready to go.

  Li risked a couple of quick glances in her direction as she gazed absently past him and out of the window. He found annoyance welling up inside at her apparent lack of interest. She was happy, it seemed, to swan in for a couple of hours, demonstrate her superior knowledge, and swan out again. Well, to hell with her! He returned the fax to Qian. ‘Thanks. We’ll talk in a minute.’

  Qian turned and passed Section Chief Chen on the way in. Chen shook Margaret’s hand warmly. ‘Dr Campbell, I am so very grateful to you for your help. It has been invaluable, Li Yan, has it not?’

  Li nodded solemnly. ‘It has.’

  ‘And has my deputy looked after you well?’ Chen asked Margaret.

  ‘Oh, very well,’ said Margaret. ‘He took me to lunch at a Sichuan restaurant. My mouth is still burning.’

  ‘It was my pleasure,’ Li said.

  Chen laughed heartily, to the amazement of the detectives who could hear him through the open door. He steered Margaret out and into the corridor, followed by a resentful Lily. ‘Come, I will see you to your car. And I will phone Professor Jiang this afternoon to thank him personally for letting us borrow you.’

  Margaret flicked a backward glance over her shoulder to see Li already involved in discussions with his detectives. In all likelihood she would never see him again.

  As she turned to be led down the corridor, Li looked over to the door to see her back for an instant before she disappeared. Apparently, he thought bitterly, he wasn’t even worth a backward glance.

  Another couple of sullen hoodlums were bundled in to have details taken before being led away for interrogation. ‘We took more than fifteen statements this morning,’ Wu told Li. ‘Anyone and everyone who knew Mao Mao. The scum of the earth. Dope dealers, pimps, prostitutes.’ Li wandered through to his office and Wu followed. ‘He wasn’t a very nice guy, Li Yan. Nobody’s shedding any tears for him. Even his family. You’d think a mother would grieve for her son. When we told her, she just spat and said, “Good riddance”.’

  From his window, Li could see into the street below. Through the foliage he watched as Margaret got into the BMW. Good riddance. Mao Mao’s mother’s words about her son found an echo in his present thoughts. Just before she closed the door, Margaret glanced up. Damn! She’d seen him watching. He took a quick step back, then felt foolish. This was absurd! He focused his mind again on Wu, who was still talking. ‘It was definitely drugs he was into, but he wasn’t one of the Golden Circle, just one of the flies attracted by the dung.’

  The Golden Circle was what they called
the ring of dealers at the centre of the Beijing drug trade, the ones whose hands were always clean, who always had an alibi, who never took the rap. They were the ones who made the money, trading death for gold.

  ‘Of course,’ Wu said, ‘no one knows a thing.’ He paused. ‘And you know what, boss? You get an instinct for these things. I don’t think they’re lying.’

  Li nodded thoughtfully. ‘Sometimes they know more at the top about what’s going on at the bottom than the other way around. Take out the file on The Needle for me. Leave it on my desk. I’ll have a glance at it tonight.’ The Needle was the nickname they all used for the man everyone knew was behind most of the heroin on the streets. But what was known, and what could be proved, were two very different things. A conspiracy of silence surrounded him, a phenomenon almost unknown in Chinese society. The masses line was no competition for the aura of fear that surrounded him.

  ‘Sure, boss. And I’ll get those statements to you as soon as we can get them typed up.’ Wu headed back to his desk.

  From the door Li called after him, ‘By the way … was he a smoker? Mao Mao.’

  Wu looked sheepish. He knew he’d been caught out. ‘Don’t know, boss.’

  ‘Better find out, then.’ Li beckoned to Zhao to follow him into his office. It was stiflingly hot. He tried to open his window more fully, but the feng shui man had been right, it was well and truly jammed. Whether or not it restricted the view, it certainly stopped the flow of oxygen. ‘Any news on the intinerant?’ Li asked.

  ‘Yeah, we got confirmation back from Shanghai on his identity.’ Zhao consulted his notebook conscientiously. ‘Guo Jingbo, aged thirty-five, divorced. No criminal record. No known criminal associations. He was a builder’s labourer. Finished on a building site in Shanghai about six weeks ago and told friends he was going to Beijing in search of work. But he didn’t register with Public Security until four weeks ago, so there’s a missing two weeks in there.’