The Firemaker (The China Thrillers 1)

by Peter May

  She was a little taken aback. ‘What, you want me to do it now?’

  ‘No, no. I want you to come and meet my deputy. He is with Professor Jiang. I have, of course, already asked Professor Jiang for permission to ask you.’

  And the professor, Margaret thought, was probably glad to get her out of his hair for a while. In fact, when Professor Jiang rose from behind his desk as they knocked and entered his office, she felt that his smile lacked a little in warmth. He looked at Chen. ‘Well?’

  ‘Dr Campbell has agreed, of course.’

  Jiang seemed relieved, and Chen turned to a younger man who had been sitting by the window. ‘My deputy, Li Yan,’ he said. ‘He is in charge of the case.’ And as Li stood up Margaret realised who he was.

  *

  Li hurried to keep up as Chen strode across campus to where they’d parked their car in the shade of some trees. Chen was furious. ‘What do you mean “not necessary”?’ he barked.

  Li tried to be reasonable. ‘The pathologist at the Centre of Material Evidence Determination will not be pleased. It will be a loss of face for some American to be brought in.’

  ‘You didn’t think so when I first suggested it.’

  ‘I didn’t know who it was then.’

  ‘And just what do you have against this woman? She is a recognised expert in her field.’

  ‘I realise that, Chief. It’s just …’

  But Chen cut him off. ‘And do you not think I will lose face if suddenly I turn around and tell her we’ve changed our minds? It’s out of the question. I have asked. She has agreed. And that’s an end to it.’ He climbed into the driver’s seat, slammed the door shut, started the engine and drove off with an impetuous squeal of tyres.

  IV

  The sky was lost in a dazzling wash of haze and dust. The diffused glare of the sun reflected back from every surface, and the world seemed burned out, like an overexposed photograph. Margaret slipped sunglasses over her eyes to bring back definition, and hurried to keep pace with Lily on the long walk from the administration block, past the playing fields, to the squat, four-storey concrete building at the far end which housed the Centre of Material Evidence Determination. Her spirits were high for the first time since her arrival in China, lifted in large part by the look on Deputy Section Chief Li’s face when she had walked into Professor Jiang’s office with Mr Chen. All his irritated superiority of the previous day had been replaced first by astonishment, and then dismay. His handshake had been cursory, his eyes distant. He had said almost nothing. Enough, and no more, to remain polite. And now he would be waiting for her impatiently in an autopsy room, the stink of disinfectant and formaldehyde wrinkling his nose. They were the perfumes of her profession, an olfactory sensation so often experienced it no longer registered – except as something familiar, almost comforting. But not to Li, she was sure.

  In fact there were five metal autopsy tables in the room, with gutters and reservoirs perfectly placed to collect blood and other fluids draining from the bodies during dissection. Li stood stiffly by the door making desultory conversation with a pathologist in a white gown. Both turned as Margaret entered with Lily.

  ‘Dr Campbell, Professor Xie.’ Li made the bleak introduction. There was no warmth in either hand or eye as Professor Xie shook her hand. Margaret understood immediately that the professor had lost face, being made to play second fiddle not only to an American, but to a woman. She was, she realised, beginning to learn something about the psychology of the Chinese. She decided not to indulge in appeasement for the moment. She turned to Lily.

  ‘No need for you to hang around, Lily.’

  ‘No, I stay in case there be anything you need, Doctah Cambo.’ Lily was determined not to miss out on this moment between Margaret and Li, especially after what had passed between them yesterday afternoon.

  ‘Actually,’ Margaret said acidly, ‘there is some photocopying I was wanting done.’

  ‘All taken care of, Doctah,’ Lily replied, quite unfazed.

  Margaret turned to Li. ‘So – you have no idea who the victim is?’ she asked.

  ‘No,’ Li said. ‘We will have to wait and match dental records with missing-persons reports as they come in. It could take some weeks.’

  ‘Weeks?’ She was astonished.

  He took her tone as criticism. ‘Time is unimportant. Results are.’

  ‘In the States both are.’

  ‘Yes, but in China we pride ourselves on getting things right.’

  She bit her tongue. After all, she had no ammunition with which to fight back. The Chinese might make studies of well-known cases in the US, but Americans were profoundly ignorant of headline crimes in China.

  ‘I was once involved in a murder investigation that lasted more than two years,’ Li went on, to illustrate his point. ‘A family were found slaughtered in their home. A mother, father, grandfather, child. There was a forced entry, a night-time burglary we believed had gone wrong. Blood everywhere. Footprints in blood, fingerprints. But our national fingerprint register is, as yet, limited. We had to trace and interview nearly three thousand migrant workers known to have been in the area at the time.’

  Margaret interrupted. ‘How did you know it was a migrant worker?’

  ‘In China,’ Li said, ‘people respect the police. They know it is their duty to help the police. If they have a job, their danwei provides their apartment, pays for their medical treatment. Someone on their street committee will know if they are at home or not at home. There is a network of information about people’s lives and movements that we can call on. We call it the masses line. The masses line is the single biggest reason for low crime figures in China. People do not commit crime if they know they will be caught. And if they are caught they lose everything – job, house, medical treatment, pension …’ He shook his head and scuffed his foot on the floor. ‘Everyone agrees, economic reform in China is good. Deng Xiaoping said: “To be rich is glorious.” But now the iron rice bowl is broken …’

  ‘Iron rice bowl?’

  He seemed annoyed by the interruption. ‘Job for life. We call it the iron rice bowl. Now that the rice bowl is broken, there are many unemployed people. Many workers are itinerant. They move about the country looking for work. They are what we call the floating population. And as the floating population grows, so does the crime rate.’

  Margaret nodded, beginning to understand just how such fundamental differences in a society can affect its criminal activity. ‘So you went after your three thousand itinerant workers.’

  ‘We found eleven had gone missing. One by one they had to be found and eliminated from our inquiry. Finally we got our man.’

  ‘Two years?’

  ‘Two years.’

  Margaret shook her head in wonder. ‘In the States we wouldn’t have had the money, or the manpower, to pursue one case that long. And anyway,’ she grinned, ‘there’d have been a few hundred other homicides in the meantime.’

  ‘I know,’ Li said seriously, and Margaret wondered if this was straight-faced sarcasm. But he gave no indication of it.

  Professor Xie glanced pointedly at his watch and sighed audibly.

  ‘Okay,’ Li said. ‘You want to have a look at the body?’

  ‘Are there any belongings?’ she asked.

  ‘Don’t you want to see the body first?’ Li seemed surprised.

  ‘No. Sometimes you can tell a lot from what a person was wearing, or carrying.’

  Professor Xie spoke to one of several hovering assistants, who hurried away, returning a few moments later with a small plastic bag containing the few effects that survived the blaze. He tipped them out on one of the tables and they gathered round to have a look, Lily squeezing in between two assistants to catch a glimpse. If she had been expecting something macabre, then she would have been disappointed by the charred belt buckle, Zippo lighter and signet ring.

  Margaret picked up and examined the buckle closely. It was a simple loop with a long, thin tongue. Quite unrem
arkable. She dropped it with a clatter on the metal table and picked up the Zippo, turning it this way and that with dexterous fingers before flipping open the lid. Inside was a blackened mess, the interior working melded to the exterior sheath, the cotton and wick incinerated in the fire. She asked for a pair of rubber gloves, a piece of cotton cloth and some cleaning fluid. An irked Professor Xie relayed the request to an assistant, who rushed off to comply.

  Margaret continued examining the lighter, and Li took the opportunity to cast a discreet eye over her. She was dressed casually, in sneakers and jeans, a baggy white tee-shirt tucked in at her belt. He marvelled at the colour and texture of her hair, tumbling in golden curls from grey clasps. But her eyes were compelling. He had met many blue-eyed Westerners, but these were startlingly blue, as if lit from within. Her eyes met his for a fleeting moment, and he glanced away self-consciously. When he looked again, she seemed absorbed still in the lighter, scratching at the carbon coating with long, elegant white fingers. It was looking at her hands which drew his attention to her freckles. Her bare forearms were covered in them, beneath a mesh of fine, downy blonde hairs. He noticed, then, the sprinkling of them across her nose and forehead. She wore little or no make-up, a hint of brown on her eyelids, a scraping of red on her lips. His gaze dropped a little, following the smooth line of her neck, and he saw that she was not wearing a bra, breasts moving freely against the cool cotton of her shirt. Unaccountably, and to his intense annoyance, he felt a tiny knot of desire unravel somewhere deep inside his loins.

  The assistant returned. Margaret snapped on the rubber gloves, soaked the cloth with fluid, and rubbed the lighter with it, slowly working off the carbon coating along its bottom face. ‘There’s some kind of engraved lettering here.’ She found a pair of half-moon reading glasses in her purse and squinted at the lettering, disappointed to bring into focus the ZIPPO registered trademark, and beneath it, Bradford PA, Made in USA. ‘Well, that’s a bit of a let-down.’ And as she said it, she wasn’t quite sure who she was saying it to. She glanced up self-consciously, then turned back to the lighter, working quickly with the cloth and fluid over its other surfaces. ‘Something else.’ More, very faint, lettering appeared as the carbon lifted along the bottom edge of the flip-lid. She had to turn it to catch the light to read ‘Solid Brass’. She dropped the lighter with a clatter back on the table and lifted the ring. ‘Signet ring,’ she said, and rubbed at it with the cloth. ‘It appears to be set with a flat, engraved, semi-precious stone of some kind.’ But no matter how hard she rubbed at the stone it refused to come up anything other than black, even though its metal setting began revealing patches of tarnished silver. ‘Could be ebony.’ She held it up and turned it to catch the light, screwing her eyes up behind her reading glasses. ‘There’s a symbol of some kind on it, and some lettering.’ As she turned it through the light, and the engraving fell into relief, she suddenly realised what it was, and her heart skipped a beat. She examined the rest of the ring more closely. It had been deformed by the heat, but not entirely melted. Perhaps his ring hand had been resting on the ground, half protected from the upward-licking flames. She squinted at the inner surface of the ring, rubbed it for a few furious seconds with the cloth, and then squinted at it again. Now she removed her glasses. She glanced at her watch and made a quick mental calculation. ‘Damn.’ And she looked up to find a row of curious faces watching her with affected patience. ‘Is there a phone I can use to call the States?’

  Li looked at Professor Xie, who nodded. ‘In my office.’

  While she made the call, Margaret could see, through a large window, the others waiting in an outer office. Professor Xie was a small man, almost effeminate, in his early forties, Margaret thought. He was dark-complexioned and his jet-black hair was swept back from a remarkable widow’s peak that seemed to begin halfway up his forehead. He was perched on the edge of a desk and appeared lost in his own gloomy thoughts.

  Li, too, seemed preoccupied. Smoking, she saw with distaste. Lily was babbling away to him, but it was obvious he wasn’t listening. Margaret took a good look at him, but saw no reason to reappraise yesterday’s assessment. He was ugly, bad-tempered and moody. And he was a smoker. The ringing in her ear was suddenly interrupted as someone answered at the other end.

  ‘Twenty-third Precinct,’ said a woman’s voice.

  ‘Detective Hersh, please.’

  Li looked past his reflection in the window and saw Margaret in its shadow. She had been talking animatedly for some time, laughing easily. Someone she knew well at the other end. And now she seemed to be waiting, tapping a pencil on the polished surface of Professor Xie’s immaculately tidy desk. He could not imagine the purpose of the phone call, or what she had seen in the ring. She still had it with her, and as she waited on the phone, she kept examining and re-examining it, a girlish excitement apparent in her inability to sit still. He noticed the ring on her wedding finger, and in spite of himself felt curious about the man who had married her.

  It was Li’s firm belief that he would never marry. The few relationships he’d had at university had gone nowhere, and since joining Section One there just hadn’t been the time. He was still embarrassed by the recollection of half-remembered adolescent fumblings with teenage girls in his home town of Wanxian in Sichuan province. He had been an ugly boy, always tall for his age, and clumsy. The more experienced girls had made fun of him, teasing and taunting.

  But there had been one girl, shy, not like the others. Like him she was no beauty, but also like him she was gentle, in body and spirit, strong in character. They had walked by the canal together during long, dusky summer evenings before he left for Beijing and the Public Security University. She had not wanted him to be a policeman. He was made for better things, she had told him. He was a sensitive soul, he had no place among brutish criminals in the big city. His family was pushing him into it, she said, because his uncle was a famous policeman in the capital. But Li knew that wasn’t why, at least not entirely. There was an anger in him that seemed to burn on a constant simmer. An anger at all the unfairnesses in life, the inequalities, the triumphs of evil over good.

  Once, at his school, it had boiled over. A bully, the biggest boy in his year, was mercilessly baiting one of the juniors, a soft boy with a deformed hand of which he was crushingly self-conscious. He was almost hysterical with shame and embarrassment at the bully’s cruelty. A crowd had gathered, the way that crowds do, scared, fascinated, glad that it wasn’t them. Li broke through the circle of boys and told the bully to stop. The boy was not used to being challenged. He turned, wild-eyed, and demanded to know who the hell Li thought he was. Li said, ‘I am Li Yan. And if you do not stop I will break your skull.’ And he meant it. And the bully saw in his eyes that he meant it. But he was trapped by his own weakness. He could not back down without losing face. So Li had to crack his skull. He was in hospital for nearly two weeks and Li was visited by the juvenile delinquency officer and almost expelled from his school. But no one ever bullied the boy with the deformity again, not while Li was around. And Li had never had to fight anyone else again since.

  So he knew that this girl was wrong. He was not made for better things. He was made to be a policeman, and to Li that was the very best thing he could be. He had never regretted coming to Beijing, and the last he heard the girl he walked by the canal with had married the bully whose skull he’d cracked. He had smiled, for the bully was weak, and she was strong and would mould him into whatever she wanted.

  Margaret, he noticed now, was scribbling in a notebook whatever was being relayed to her across the ether. She nodded and smiled and hung up the phone, tearing the page out of the notebook before coming through. She handed it to Li, a gleam in her eyes. ‘Chao Heng,’ she said. ‘That’s the name of your John Doe through there.’ She jerked her thumb towards the autopsy room. ‘About ninety-nine per cent certain.’

  Li looked at the piece of paper. She had scribbled, Chao Heng, graduated microbial genetics, University of Wiscon
sin, 1972.

  He looked up at her in astonishment. Professor Xie said, ‘How can you possibly know this?’

  She held up the ring. ‘In the States, there’s a tradition among university graduates. To mark the occasion they have special graduation rings made that bear the crest of their university. In this case, the University of Wisconsin.’ She handed the ring to Professor Xie. ‘You can see the crest carved in the stone. Even if it hadn’t actually said University of Wisconsin on it, I’d have known the university because …’ Li saw a cloud, like a cataract, come across her eyes and the skin darken around them. ‘… because someone I knew well graduated from there.’ The moment was past, and she was back on her roll. ‘The thing is, they very often get them engraved on the inside. A name, a date, initials. In this case, if you look carefully, the initials C.H. and the date, 1972.’

  Professor Xie peered at the engraving and passed it to Li.

  ‘We’re lucky it wasn’t completely melted.’ She shrugged. ‘So fate was kind to us. Anyway, it’s half past ten at night over there, so I couldn’t call the university. I did the next best thing; spoke to a friend on the Chicago force. He goes on-line to the Internet, pulls up the alumni register for Wisconsin, and checks out the initials on all the graduates from ’72. There’s only one Chinese name with the initials C. H. Chao Heng. Graduated in microbial genetics.’

  Li clenched his fist around the ring, a gleam in his eye which when he turned it on her might have held a hint of admiration, albeit grudging. She felt a flush of pleasure. She remembered reading something somewhere, once, a very long time ago. She knew it was Chinese. ‘Women hold up half the sky.’ She shrugged it off as if it were nothing.

  Li raised an eyebrow, and she saw pure mischief in those dark eyes. ‘Ah,’ he said. ‘You are quoting from Mao Zedong.’ She nodded. So that’s who had said it. ‘Of course,’ Li continued, ‘he meant the lower half of the sky.’

  There was a moment’s stand-off, before a wide grin slashed his face. It was irresistibly infectious, and she found herself smiling back when what she really wanted to do was punch him. She turned to Professor Xie. ‘Professor, if I may, I would very much like to assist you in the autopsy. I am sure there is much I could learn from an experienced pathologist like yourself.’ Credentials established, she had no problem with restoring Professor Xie’s mianzi.