The Firemaker (The China Thrillers 1)

by Peter May

  ‘Oh, wouldn’t he? Well, whatever he meant last night, he’s changed his mind this morning. Maybe he woke up and realised what an inadequate he really was. Now, it seems, I’m not “superfluous” after all, and they’d be “very pleased” to accept my help. I mean, as if I was offering! They asked me, then told me I was superfluous. Talk about losing face! Jesus!’

  ‘Superfluous’ had been an unfortunate choice of word, Bob thought. Almost certainly a result of Veronica expanding the breadth of her vocabulary at the expense of its nuance. Tactless, at the very least. He must have a word with her about it. Unfortunately, where Margaret was concerned, the damage was already done. Clearly it had got right under her skin. ‘What are you going to do?’

  ‘I don’t know. I know what I’d like to do. I’d like to tell them to stick it.’

  ‘That would hardly help the cause of Sino-American relations.’

  ‘Fuck Sino-American relations!’

  ‘You know,’ Bob said, starting to get breathless now, ‘most pathologists in the US would give their right arm to be asked to assist in a murder investigation in Beijing.’

  ‘For heaven’s sake, Bob, whoever heard of a one-armed pathologist?’

  ‘You know what I mean,’ he said, irritated, and she flashed him a wicked half-smile, to his further irritation. ‘The thing is, it’s going to look pretty damned good on your résumé. Don’t you think?’

  She stopped suddenly, taking him by surprise, and he was a pace and a half beyond her before he could pull up. He wheeled round. ‘For God’s sake, Margaret!’

  But her eyes were burning with some fresh inspiration. ‘Well, if I do it,’ she said, ‘there’ll be a price to be paid. I must have accumulated a little bit of guanxi in the bank by now, don’t you think?’

  III

  For the last two hours Li had been locked in conference with the detectives working on the three murders. A pall of depression and cigarette smoke hung over the meeting. From all the interviews, statements, witness accounts, not a single shred of evidence had emerged to shed any light whatsoever on any of the murders. Detectives had been circulating in Ritan Park since six that morning, talking to everyone who came through the gates, trying to jog memories, elicit some – any – piece of information, no matter how small. Still nothing. They knew who all three victims were, but had established no motives for their killings, and no link between them, except for a very tenuous drugs connection between Chao Heng and Mao Mao. But, as yet, they had been unable to determine that the two men even knew one another.

  Detective Wu suggested they pull in The Needle for questioning. He knew that Li was interested in The Needle and had asked for the file. But he was not expecting the laughter that came from around the table, and was embarrassed by it. ‘What the hell’s funny about that?’ he demanded.

  ‘The Needle’s not going to tell us anything,’ Detective Zhao said, indignation overcoming his group shyness. ‘Because if he confessed to knowing anything about Chao Heng’s habit or Mao Mao’s drugs connection, he’d be implicating himself in the drugs scene.’

  ‘And since we’ve been unable to do that in the last five years,’ Detective Qian added, ‘he’s not likely to hand it to us on a plate now, is he?’

  ‘Especially when we’ve got nothing on him,’ said Zhao. ‘No leverage.’

  Wu looked at Li, chastened by the derision of his colleagues. Fighting to recover face, he said, ‘I just thought, since the boss had asked for the file …’ He waited for Li to bail him out.

  ‘I agree with the consensus,’ Li said. ‘There would be little point in bringing The Needle here. But if Mohammed won’t go to the mountain …’ He smiled at the consternation around the table. Muslim mythology had not been on the school curriculum, and none of them had Old Yifu for an uncle. ‘I understand he hangs out at the Hard Rock Café during the day, that it’s his … unofficial office.’

  ‘You’re going to see him?’ Qian asked, surprised.

  Li nodded. ‘If he could be persuaded to talk to us – off the record … it could save us a lot of time and effort.’

  ‘Why would he talk to us off the record?’ Wu asked.

  ‘Because I ask him to,’ Li said evenly.

  And there was a silence around the table as each of them considered what exactly that might mean. They all knew there was a history between Li and The Needle. Li had managed to obtain a warrant for his arrest three years ago. And then the only witness in the case had turned his bicycle under the wheels of a No. 4 trolley bus on Wangfujing Street. It had been impossible to prove it was anything other than an accident, and The Needle had walked.

  There had been a time when men like The Needle would have been ‘persuaded’ to confess to their crimes, and punished accordingly. But times had changed. Police practice, and the whole justice system, was under close scrutiny. And conventional means of applying social pressures on an individual, through his work unit, did not apply to entrepreneurs like The Needle, who would claim that his income came from the covered market stalls he ran in Liulichangxi Street.

  The meeting ended in the same gloomy mood in which it had begun. Beyond continuing the interviews and taking statements from potential witnesses, no one had any fresh ideas. But as they drifted out of the meeting room, there was a buzz among the detectives, a sense of anticipation about Li’s intention to beard The Needle in his own den.

  IV

  Li parked at the door of the Centre of Material Evidence Determination and went inside. In Professor Xie’s outer office he found Lily Peng sitting with a face like sour cream, flipping agitatedly through a science magazine. ‘Is Dr Campbell here?’ he asked.

  She flicked a thumb towards the autopsy suite. ‘In there. For hours.’

  ‘Not watching today?’ he asked, with a flicker of a smile.

  She glared at him. ‘No room,’ she said.

  He frowned, puzzled. ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘See for yourself.’ And she turned back to her magazine.

  Li pushed through two sets of swing-doors into the autopsy suite, and found it crowded with fifteen students in green coats and face masks gathered round the gaping body of the itinerant worker from Shanghai. The chest cavity was still exposed, the scalp peeled down over the face, and the brain had been removed from the skull. Some of the faces of the students were the same colour as their coats. Two autopsy assistants were in the process of tidying up the corpse. Margaret was giving a running commentary.

  ‘The organs from the bucket get put back into the chest cavity … as you see. The breastplate is then reapproximated, and the assistants will sew up my incision with some coarse waxed twine. The skullcap gets replaced, the scalp pulled back into place and sewn closed as well. Then the body will be scrubbed, hosed off, blotted dry and put in a body-bag for return to the refrigerator. I don’t know about here, but in the States a mortician would collect the body, pump it full of preservative, dress it up and apply facial make-up so that it can be displayed in the coffin for family and friends at the funeral.’

  ‘In this case,’ Professor Xie intervened, ‘the body will be returned to the family in Shanghai and there will be a straightforward cremation. Most people in China could not afford the services of a mortician.’

  Margaret turned to the students. ‘It’s a great pity you weren’t here yesterday for the autopsy we carried out on a burn victim. It was an extremely interesting case. Professor Xie employed a useful piece of technology called a cryostat to enable us to speed up our findings. Anyone know what a cryostat is?’ No one did. ‘Basically it’s a refrigerator that allows us to freeze tissue samples for sectioning and microscopic examination almost immediately. It is more commonly used during surgical operations to allow surgeons to have on-the-spot diagnoses made before continuing with the operation.’ She turned and indicated the samples she had cut from various organs. ‘These samples will take six hours or more to prepare for microscopic examination, using the more traditional method of setting them in paraffin or wax
. That allows them to be cut into ultra-thin, but permanent, sections. Using the cryostat the sections melt almost immediately and are corrupted by the process.’

  She looked beyond the students and acknowledged Li for the first time. ‘Ah. I see we’ve been joined by Deputy Section Chief Li. Nicely timed, Detective Li.’ She turned to her students and told them, as if in confidence, ‘He’s a little squeamish about these things.’

  There were a couple of giggles and a few smirks and Li, to his intense annoyance, felt his face reddening. She turned back to him. ‘I took the opportunity of asking the professor if he would mind my class sitting in on this morning’s second autopsy. Of course, he was entirely agreeable. I think it’s very important that they gain this kind of experience during training, don’t you?’

  ‘Of course,’ he said stiffly. ‘And while demonstrating your skills to your students, did you happen to notice what the victim died of?’

  There were some more stifled laughs among the students, and a collective intake of breath. Despite the fact that English was their second language, they had been aware immediately of the atmosphere between the pathologist and the policeman.

  Margaret was quite unruffled. ‘This victim died from a separation of the skull from the first vertebra of the neck. It’s known as an Alanto-occipital disarticulation. The first vertebra, the one on which the head rests, is called the atlas.’ She smiled sweetly. ‘Those anatomists were cute with names, don’t you think?’ This failed to raise a smile. She shrugged. ‘Anyway, it is jointed in two places to the occipital bone at the base of the skull. When the separation of one from the other occurs, probably with a double “pop”, much like the cracking of your knuckles, the spinal column is severed by the edge of the foramen magnum through which it passes into the skull. Death would have been instantaneous, a very rare thing. Most deaths – including our previous autopsy, the single knife strike to the heart – take a minute or two.’ She removed the goggles which she had pushed high up on her head and pulled and stretched the elastic as she spoke. ‘This particular injury is very common in automobile accidents, but a lack of any other major trauma in this case means he probably wasn’t in a car at the time.’

  Again she smiled, and again found that no one else shared her sense of humour. She sighed. ‘From the absence of any finger bruising on the victim’s neck or face, I would suggest that his assailant grasped the victim with the arms, one around the forehead, the other at the base of the back of the head, twisting while forcing upwards and forwards, causing the foramen magnum to slide across the top of the spinal column and sever the spinal cord. Such a clean and fatal break, in the absence of other major trauma, suggests to me a substantial degree of expertise.’

  The imagery conjured up by Margaret’s description left everyone in the room uneasy.

  ‘In our previous autopsy …’ She checked her watch. ‘Goodness, how time flies when you’re enjoying yourself.’ The faces around the room stared back at her with a serious intensity. Didn’t they realise, she wondered, that humour was the only thing that kept you sane in this job? ‘In our previous autopsy, the victim was killed by a single stab wound to the heart. My guess would be that he was approached from the rear, held around the neck by an arm, and the knife driven inwards and upwards by the assailant with his free hand. The blade was about nine inches long. It entered at the base of the breastbone, severing parts of both the left and right ventricles. The direction from which the stab came is unreliable. So I can’t tell you if the killer was left- or right-handed. That’s just for the movies. But I can tell you that the delivery of a single, fatal wound of this nature would require considerable skill.’

  She paused for effect. ‘In my view these were execution-style killings, Detective, carried out by a very experienced professional.’ Her words had a sobering effect on everyone in the room.

  Li stood very still. You’re saying the killer was a professional? he had said to Old Yifu. Some Triad hit-man, his uncle had responded. These were no casual killings, Li Yan.

  ‘Can I ask a question?’ Margaret said.

  ‘Go ahead.’

  ‘What makes you think the burn victim from yesterday and the two we’ve looked at today are linked?’

  ‘Why do you think I do?’

  ‘Because you wouldn’t have asked me to perform these autopsies today if you hadn’t thought they were connected.’

  Li nodded. There was logic in that. The students waited with bated breath. He said, ‘I don’t think these are matters we should be discussing in front of your students.’ And there was a collective groan.

  ‘Perhaps not,’ Margaret conceded. She turned to the disappointed students, who were just beginning to get involved. ‘Leave your gowns and your masks with Professor Xie’s assistants, and I’ll see you in class in the morning.’

  As the students filed out, Li and Margaret and Professor Xie moved away from the autopsy table. Li said, ‘There was a single cigarette end found at each crime scene. The same brand.’

  ‘One I might know?’

  ‘Marlboro.’

  ‘Oh, yes,’ she said. ‘Marlboro Country. Where the cowboys ride around with oxygen tanks on their backs to help them breathe.’ She paused. ‘You know, there seem to be a hell of a lot of people who smoke in this country. Don’t you know it’s bad for you?’

  ‘The American tobacco companies must have forgotten to tell us that,’ Li said.

  ‘Well, they would, wouldn’t they?’ she said. ‘I mean, it’s a big market. If they flood China with cigarettes they’ll put big bucks in the pockets of the shareholders back home. You know, the ones who gave up smoking years ago because it was damaging their health.’

  Professor Xie asked, ‘There was only a single cigarette end at each scene?’ Li nodded.

  Margaret snorted. ‘And you think that it might be the same killer, smoking the same brand of cigarette, who smoked one at each crime scene and left the butt there for us to find?’ She clearly thought this stretched the bounds of credibility. ‘The same man who was so professionally meticulous in the execution of these crimes? You think he’d be careless enough to leave a cigarette end behind?’ She shook her head. ‘It seems pretty unlikely to me.’

  Li shrugged. ‘Perhaps so. But it does not change the fact that the cigarette ends were there.’

  Margaret turned to Professor Xie. ‘Do you have facilities for DNA testing here?’

  ‘Of course.’

  She looked at Li. ‘Then, if there’s any trace saliva on the cigarette butts, you can match the DNA, and tell immediately if they were smoked by the same man.’

  Li said, ‘I sent the cigarette ends for testing yesterday. We should have the results this afternoon.’

  Margaret looked at him for a moment, then smiled wryly. ‘Okay, so I think we’re into grandmother and eggs territory here.’ And she laughed at his look of complete incomprehension and shook her head. ‘I’m sorry, forget it. I was being a smartass and you caught me.’ An awkward silence descended on them. Margaret’s smile faded. ‘So … these cigarette butts are the only connection?’

  ‘No,’ Li said. ‘There’s the style of the murders. All professional – execution-style killings, as you call them. This is very unusual in China. There is also a drugs connection. As you know, Chao Heng was a heroin addict. The first of your autopsies today, the man known as Mao Mao, dealt drugs on the street.’

  ‘He was also a user,’ Professor Xie interrupted.

  ‘Needle tracks on the left arm,’ Margaret said.

  ‘Anything else I should know?’ Li asked.

  Margaret shrugged. ‘Nothing that’ll make a difference. You’ll get the report tomorrow when we’ve done the sections.’ She looked to Professor Xie for confirmation. He nodded.

  She started untying her gown. ‘I’d better get washed and changed.’

  ‘Excuse me,’ Professor Xie said, and moved off to talk to his assistants.

  Li said, ‘I’m heading across town, following up on the drugs conne
ction.’ He hesitated, slight colour rising on his cheeks again. ‘Perhaps you would like to come with me.’

  Margaret was taken aback, and slightly suspicious. ‘Why?’

  ‘The man I am going to see is known to control the drugs traffic in Beijing. His nickname is The Needle.’

  Margaret looked at him in astonishment. ‘Well, if you know who he is, why’s he not behind bars, or six foot under with a bullet in his head? That’s how you do it here, isn’t it?’

  ‘If we have the evidence,’ Li said, controlling his annoyance. ‘Contrary to popular belief we don’t shoot people just because we suspect they are guilty. But at least when they are convicted, a bullet in the head is better than ten years on Death Row, destroying their hope and their health before frying them in an electric chair anyway. That sounds like an Amnesty International definition of torture to me.’

  ‘Lethal injection seems to be the current vogue,’ Margaret said, neatly sidestepping a fight. She did not want to get involved in an argument about capital punishment. ‘So I guess that means you don’t have anything on this guy – The Needle.’

  ‘No, we don’t,’ Li acknowledged.

  ‘So what do you want me along for?’ Margaret was desperate to go, but she wasn’t going to let Li know that.

  ‘I don’t … particularly,’ Li said casually. He didn’t want to seem over-anxious to have her join him. But at the same time, he didn’t want to put her off. ‘I thought you might learn something.’

  ‘Oh, did you?’ She snapped off her outer gloves. ‘Like how it can take two years to solve a murder?’

  CHAPTER SIX

  I

  Wednesday Afternoon

  Lily’s anger at being told again that she was not required was palpable, and she watched with grim dislike as Li and Margaret pulled out of the university compound in Li’s Jeep. She strutted off towards the administration block plotting her revenge.

  Following their exchange in the autopsy room, Li had been cold and distant. Margaret wondered if this was a response to her jibe about taking two years to solve a murder, or whether it was a repeat performance of his mood swing of yesterday. Despite the fact that he had asked her along, she had the strong feeling that he resented her presence. They drove east in uncomfortable silence through the late morning traffic along West Xuanwumen Avenue, a huge loop of six-lane freeway that marked the outer boundary of the inner city. Bamboo scaffolding scaled concrete towers. High among the structures, tiny figures in blue, with yellow hard hats, moved easily around the skeleton blocks. Giant cranes swung back and forth overhead, like prehistoric monsters stalking a concrete landscape. Margaret’s growing resentment at Li’s silence finally found voice. ‘Look, if you don’t want me around, just say so. Stop the car now and I’ll get a taxi back to the university.’