The Killing Room

I

Margaret was too tired to be excited. She had already crossed at least two timezones and an international dateline, and was not sure if she was arriving tomorrow or yesterday.

She looked out of the window at the featureless mud flats below as her plane circled in from the ocean and descended rapidly to the new international airport at the south-west extreme of Pudong New Area. From the air, the curved roofs of the terminal building looked like the outstretched wings of some giant bird in flight.

Inside the cavernous terminal, a high ceiling studded with lights reflected off a polished marble floor into an unfocused distance. Solitary travellers were dotted about among vacant rows of white seats, while cream columns soared up from an endless line of airline desks. The passengers from Margaret’s flight, which had felt very crowded, were quickly dispersed and swallowed up in its vastness.

Margaret passed expeditiously through immigration. Her two heavy suitcases were already circling on the carousel when she reached it, and there was not a soul on duty at customs. On the sparsely populated concourse she looked around for signs in English, or a familiar face. She found neither. Only a group of elderly wide-eyed men and women in blue Mao suits, being shepherded around by a patient tour-guide wearing jeans and a tee-shirt emblazoned with the letters NYPD. Piped muzak somewhere in the background was playing, My Way.

‘You know, you can always spot an American. They never travel light.’ The American accent drawling at her right ear made Margaret spin around, and she found herself looking into the smiling face of a man of around forty, boyish good looks below an untidy mop of hair that was quickly going grey. He nodded towards the travel-scarred cases on her trolley. ‘Bet they weigh a ton, too. You need a hand?’

‘No, thank you,’ Margaret said curtly.

‘Well, that’s a relief,’ he said and held out his hand. ‘I’m Jack Geller.’ Very reluctantly she shook it. ‘Pleased to meet you, Miss Campbell.’

Margaret was taken aback She couldn’t believe that Li had sent this man to pick her up. He certainly didn’t look like he had anything to do with the Chinese police. He wore baggy brown corduroys, a shapeless green jacket that had seen better days and a grey, open-necked shirt. ‘How do you know my name?’ she said.

He grinned and pulled a rolled up newspaper from his jacket pocket and held it up so that it unravelled to reveal the front page. It was all in Chinese. But there, in the top right corner, was a large photograph of Margaret with short hair, the same one they had used on the TV news. ‘See, you’re famous here already.’

She regarded him suspiciously. ‘You weren’t sent here to pick me up.’

‘No, that was my idea. But if you’re expecting someone else, you know, you could be in for a long wait. Traffic in town just grinds to a halt sometimes, and we’re a long way out. I, on the other hand, have a taxi waiting and would be happy to give you a ride.’

‘I don’t think so,’ Margaret said. She paused. ‘Who exactly are you, Mr Geller?’

He fished in an inside pocket and produced a dog-eared business card and presented it to Margaret in the Chinese fashion, holding the top two corners between thumb and forefinger and offering it with both hands so that it can be read by the recipient. Only it was in Chinese. Margaret flipped it over. On the other side it read: JACK GELLER Freelance Journalist, and listed his address, and home and mobile numbers. She sighed and handed it back. But he held up a hand, refusing to take it. ‘No, keep it. You never know when you might want to give me a call.’

‘I can’t imagine a single circumstance,’ Margaret said with irritation, slipping it into her purse.

‘That’s a pity,’ he said. ‘I was hoping you might give me an interview, ahead of the pack.’

‘I won’t be giving any interviews to anyone,’ Margaret said, and started pushing her trolley away from him.

‘The taxi rank’s the other way,’ he said.

Gathering as much dignity as she could, Margaret turned her trolley around and headed past him in the other direction. He tagged along beside her. ‘The foreign press here are going to be on your tail for as long as this investigation’s on-going. You can make it easy on yourself, or hard.’ When she didn’t respond, he said, ‘A contact here at the airport checked the manifests for me. So I knew what flight you were coming in on. I always figured initiative deserved reward.’

‘And I always thought,’ she said, ‘that the individual had a right to privacy.’

‘Hey, you’re in China now,’ he said. ‘No such thing as the individual. And anyhow, in a kind of a way you’re representing your country here. Freedom of information and all that.’

‘Like you said, Mr Geller, we’re in China now.’

Glass doors slid open at their approach and Margaret pushed her trolley through them out on to a huge covered concourse, an empty four-lane highway running beyond it. Everywhere appeared deserted, apart from a short line of taxis at the far end. The lead driver looked hopefully in her direction, but she shook her head firmly.

‘Well,’ Geller said, ‘I’d have thought if they were picking you up they’d have been here by now.’

‘They’ll be here,’ Margaret said.

He shrugged. ‘I’ll catch up with you later, then. At the Peace Hotel.’

‘Where?’

‘The Peace Hotel. That’s where you’re staying, isn’t it?’

‘I have no idea.’

‘Well, take my word for it.’ He raised two fingers to his temple in a small salute, gave a slight nod and moved off towards the taxi rank.

Margaret stood for a quarter of an hour watching the rain fall on the empty road, growing colder and more irritable with every passing minute. She raised her eyes hopefully each time she heard the sound of a car, but usually it was just another taxi dropping someone off and then joining the line. After twenty minutes she felt she knew every cold concrete surface in this bleak approach to International Arrivals and was contemplating going upstairs and getting the first flight back out. She had expected to see Li. It was what had sustained her across all the hours of the flight. And now she felt dashed, hurt mixed with anger. How her mother would have enjoyed the moment.

Then a car drew up in front of her and her heart immediately lifted. She stepped forward to see Jack Geller leaning across the rear seat to open the door and her heart sank again. ‘You might as well get in,’ he said through the open window. ‘Unless your Chinese is pretty good, you’re going to have a lot of trouble trying to tell a taxi-driver you want him to take you to the headquarters of the criminal investigation department.’ He paused. ‘How is your Chinese by the way?’

‘If it was good enough to tell you to go forth and multiply, I would.’ She sighed, acquiescing reluctantly. ‘But since it’s not, I guess I’d better just accept your offer gracefully.’

He grinned and rattled off something in Chinese to the driver, who hurried out of the car to take Margaret’s cases and put them in the trunk. A small, wiry man of indeterminate age, he heaved and strained to lift them.

An almost empty six-lane highway sped them north and east through the mist and rain of a flat, featureless landscape reclaimed from ancient mud flats. Huge billboards raised on polished chrome stalks flashed by on each side of the road, like enormous weeds. On one of them, what looked like four giant glasses of carrot juice prompted the slogan, in English, PROTECT THE VIRESCENCE, CHERISH THE LIFE. Another depicted a group of prosperous-looking children running across a green meadow towards a cluster of red-roofed villas, school satchels slung across their shoulders. It was an ad for the Shanghai Commercial Bank, a depiction of the new Chinese dream. Yet another, beneath a portrait of Deng Xiaoping, proclaimed, DEVELOPMENT IS TRUTH.

Geller laughed. ‘The Chinese authorities still haven’t got over their need to sloganise. It’s just the messages that are different, and a little more confused. Mind if I smoke?’

Margaret shrugged. ‘It’s your cab. And your life.’

He lit up, then rolled down the window a little to blow out the smoke. ‘I was at a racetrack down in Canton recently. Horse-racing’s really catching on again in China. You’ve never seen anything like it. The car park was filled with expensive imported cars, punters were queuing up to place bets at computerised betting windows. Wealthy businessmen were crowded into private rooms in the stand, cheering on horses with names like “Millionaire” and “GetRichQuick”. But, anyway, right above them all, draped from the roof, was a giant red banner proclaiming, “Resolutely Implement the Central Government’s Order on Forbidding Gambling”.’ He laughed uproariously.

In spite of her mood, Margaret’s face cracked in a smile. Although she would have been loath to admit it, there was something quite likeable about this wry and slightly tousled reporter who smelled faintly of alcohol.

‘See what I mean about confused?’ he said. They passed another billboard, a photograph of the Great Wall with the slogan, LOVE OUR SHANGHAI, LOVE OUR COUNTRY. ‘Of course, Shanghai and Beijing hate each other’s guts,’ Geller said. ‘Beijing’s got all the power, and Shanghai’s got all the money, and each one envies the other. But for me, Shanghai wins hands down. It’s quite a place. You been here before, Miss Campbell?’

Margaret shook her head. ‘No.’

‘The Whore of the Orient.’

‘I beg your pardon.’

‘Some people called it the Paris of the East, but I like the Whore of the Orient. I think it probably characterises best what it was like here between the wars. You know the place was virtually run by the British and the Americans? And the French. Oh, and the Japs.’

‘No, I didn’t.’ Margaret was curious for the first time. She really knew nothing about Shanghai. ‘How did that happen?’

‘Oh, the Chinese were forced to grant various trading concessions to foreign powers in cities up and down the coast after the Opium Wars,’ he said. ‘But Shanghai’s where it really took off. The place became the commercial gateway to China.’ He drew on his cigarette and focused somewhere away in the middle distance. ‘We got together with the Brits to create what they called the International Settlement. The Frogs, as always, did their own thing in the French Concession. The “foreign devils” ran everything here. Police, sanitation, building regulations. They were completely self-governing, dominated by the most powerful business interests. The Chinese got squeezed into the slums of the old town and never got a look in. It’s hardly any wonder this is where the Chinese Communist Party started up.’ He sat back with a kind of dreamy smile on his face and took another long pull on his cigarette. ‘Shanghai was the most cosmopolitan city in the world. There were people here drawn from across the widest spectrum of East and West, from Nazi spies and Filipino band leaders to Arab gendarmes and Indian princesses.’ He turned and grinned at her, ‘I’d have loved to have been around in those days. The place was teeming with gangsters and adventurers. A twentieth-century Sodom and Gomorrah.’ He put on an English accent. ‘Spiced up by Lea and Perrin’s sauce and played out to the accompaniment of Gilbert and Sullivan.’

‘Not very Chinese,’ Margaret said.

‘Not at all,’ Geller conceded. ‘But then large parts of Shanghai aren’t. You’ll see for yourself in time. Even the hotel you’re staying in is very British old colonial.’

After Beijing, this is not what Margaret had been expecting. Another billboard flashed past advertising Haier electrical goods under the slogan, HAIER AND HIGHER. Off to their right a collection of Greek classical villas with white pillars, balustraded balconies and red roofs, just like those in the ad, stood behind gated security walls in a compound called LONG DONG GARDEN. Geller grinned at Margaret. ‘Always makes me smile. Juvenile, isn’t it?’

Now Margaret saw the skyscrapers of the Lujiazui financial district emerging from the mist, the Pearl TV tower and the river beyond, and almost before she knew it, they were sweeping over the Nanpu Bridge and cruising north along the waterside expressway, the Bund appearing out of the rains like a mirage, wholly incongruous, like water in a desert. For a fleeting moment, Margaret experienced the illusion of being transported back to sometime in the late 1930s, drifting past grand European edifices, banks built by the French, consulates established by the British and Russians, cathedrals of commerce where one paid homage to the great business empire of Jardine, Matheson and Company.

‘That’s your hotel,’ Geller said, pointing out of the window and breaking the spell. It was on the corner of Nanjing Road, a huge stone structure on fourteen floors with a steeply sloped green copper roof. ‘Used to be the Cathay Hotel, the most luxurious hotel in the east. Pure Art Deco. It’s still pretty stunning.’ And a couple of buildings further on, he pointed up towards a line of statues, mythical heroes holding up a crenellated roof. ‘The Communists covered them up when they came to power. A symbol of the oppressed worker or something. They revealed them again in all their glory on the fiftieth anniversary of the Republic. I suppose now they are seen to symbolise strength and power.’

On the river side of the Bund, a wide promenade was jammed with Chinese tourists in from the country, all jostling to have their photographs taken with the Oriental Pearl TV tower in the background.

Their taxi swung across the Waibaidu Bridge over Suzhou Creek, in the shadow of the impressive Shanghai Mansions and the old Stock Exchange building, now converted to cheap hotel rooms and apartment rentals. They headed north then, through burgeoning high-rise suburbs, afternoon traffic choking narrow streets, to join up with the northern ring road. By the time the car pulled up outside the gates of 803, Margaret was completely disorientated.

‘This is you,’ Geller said.

‘This is me where?’ Margaret asked peering through the rain at the white gatehouse and the pink-tiled buildings beyond.

‘The headquarters of criminal investigation.’ He spoke to the driver who retrieved her cases from the trunk. ‘Sure you don’t want a hand with those?’ he said as he pushed open the door for her.

‘I can manage fine, thank you,’ she said.

‘You won’t mind if I don’t get out, then. It’s kind of wet out there.’ He grinned. The driver got back in and Geller pulled the door shut. He rolled down the window. ‘I’ll see you at the press conference.’

‘What press conference?’ Margaret asked, confused. Geller appeared to know so much more about her movements than she did. But the car was already pulling away. She realised she was getting soaked, and pulled up the collar of her cotton jacket. She was not dressed for rain.

A uniformed guard watched implacably as she dragged her cases over to the window of the gatehouse, to discover that nobody there spoke English. It was another fifteen minutes, after much to-ing and fro-ing and phoning back and forth, that a young uniformed policewoman who spoke English after a fashion said, ‘You follow me,’ and led her into the main building where they took the lift up to the eighth floor. No one had offered to give her a hand with her cases. Her wet hair was smeared over her face, and her temper, short at the best of times, was strained to breaking point. At the end of a long corridor, they stopped at the open door of the detectives’ room. ‘You wait,’ the policewoman said.

Margaret stood, silently fuming, and watched as the young woman crossed the busy office, and then for the first time she saw Li at a window on the far side of the room. He was deep in earnest conversation with an attractive Chinese woman who appeared to be hanging on his every word. He said something that made her laugh, a strange braying laugh that Margaret could hear above the noise of the office, and she saw the woman touch the back of his hand. Just lightly, with the tips of her fingers. But there was something oddly intimate in it, and Margaret felt a sudden surge of fear and insecurity, swiftly followed by anger. She had not travelled six thousand miles across the world to watch her lover sharing an intimate moment with another woman.

The uniformed policewoman spoke to Li and he glanced quickly across the room to see Margaret in the doorway. His face lit up in a smile and he hurried across towards her. And for a moment Margaret’s anger and insecurity melted away and all she wanted was for Li to take her in his arms and hold her. But, of course, he couldn’t. And she saw that the woman who had touched his hand had followed immediately behind him.

‘Margaret,’ he said, strangely formal. ‘I thought you’d be here earlier.’

‘I would have been, if I hadn’t had to find my own way from the airport.’ Her voice could have frosted the windows on the other side of the room.

Li frowned. ‘But I sent a car out to meet you.’ He turned to the Chinese woman. ‘You put in a request for one, didn’t you, Mei-Ling?’

‘Yes,’ she said, looking very puzzled. ‘I do not understand what could have happened. I will make enquiries about it.’ She spoke in very good, clear English, with a slightly English accent. And Margaret knew immediately that Mei-Ling had somehow contrived to sabotage the pick-up. There was something in the smile she flashed at Margaret. Something slightly knowing, slightly superior. And all of Margaret’s instincts told her that this woman was after her man.

Li seemed oblivious. ‘I am really sorry, Margaret. I would have come for you myself, but I have been up to the eyes.’ He paused. ‘This is Nien Mei-Ling. She is my opposite number here in Shanghai. We are working together on the case.’

Mei-Ling gave her a winning smile and shook her hand. ‘Hi,’ she said. ‘Li Yan has told me so much about you.’

‘Has he?’ Margaret shook her hand a little more firmly than required. You did not cut through human ribs with heavy shears without developing greater than average hand strength. She saw Mei-Ling’s smile become a little more fixed.

Barely a dozen words had passed between the two women, but there had been an unspoken declaration of war, clear and unequivocal, with Li as the disputed territory.

Li had heard only the dozen words and had no reason to take them at anything other than face value. He glanced at his watch. ‘We had better move. The press conference is in half an hour.’

Margaret forced her thoughts away from Mei-Ling. ‘Press conference?’ So Jack Geller really did know his stuff, she thought.

II

The press conference was held in the Peace Palace Hotel, directly across Nanjing Road from the Peace Hotel where Margaret was able to book in quickly and have her cases taken to her room. Geller had been right again. She barely had time to take in the marbled splendour of the place with its tall arched windows of polished mahogany, its stained-glass galleries with wrought-iron lamp holders and pink glass uplighters, before Li hurried her back out into the rain. They had not even had an opportunity to discuss the case.

They joined Mei-Ling under the protection of two large black umbrellas, and dodged the traffic in the fading light to cross to the old Palace Hotel, recently acquired by its more affluent neighbour across the way. Inside the cream and redbrick building it was very dull, the light absorbed by darkwood panelling from floor to ceiling. A broad, dark staircase took them to an upper landing where armed uniformed guards ushered them into a large function room packed with the world’s press. TV lights created an overlit sense of unreality. Cameras were ranged right along the back of the room. The Chinese media had pride of place at the front. This was an unusual experience for them. The authorities were not in the habit of holding press conferences to discuss the investigation of crimes.

On a raised dais, a table and half a dozen chairs faced the room. Microphones bunched together, one taped to the other, sprouted like strange metallic flowers on the table top, cables spewing over the edge and on to the floor. Li, Margaret and Mei-Ling, aware of curious eyes upon them, were shepherded quickly into a side room where hasty introductions were made to what Margaret gathered, in the confusion, were the Commissioner of Police, two deputies, Section Chief Huang Tsuo — Mei-Ling’s boss at Section Two — and an interpreter. There was very little time to log exactly who was who. Section Chief Huang was steering the Commissioner away across the room, speaking quickly and quietly into his ear. Another man, with neatly clipped hair, hurried in and introduced himself as the head of public relations. He interrupted Huang and spoke quickly to the Commissioner, and Margaret surmised that the conference was about to begin. The tension was palpable as they entered the main suite and stepped up to the platform. If the press was unused to attending press conferences, then the Commissioner of Police was equally unused to holding them. He was clearly nervous.

On the platform the TV lights were blinding, and Margaret had to squint beyond the glare to see the rows of faces looking up at them expectantly. She saw Geller about five rows back. He was sitting with a notebook on his knee, a pair of silver-rimmed half-moon spectacles perched on his nose. He peered at her over the top of them and winked. Margaret looked away self-consciously, and began to wonder what the hell she was doing here. This was all happening so fast, and she was still quite disorientated. She glanced at Li who was, apparently, listening intently to the Commissioner as he droned on in a high-pitched staccato voice. Margaret let her mind wander, barely listening to the interpreter as he conveyed the Commissioner’s long preamble in English. She looked appraisingly, instead, at Mei-Ling. Grudgingly, Margaret had to concede that she was very attractive. Older than she appeared at first sight, but poised and confident and very petite, like a bird. She could speak Li’s language, she shared his culture. Beside her, Margaret felt big and clumsy, and crumpled after all the hours of flying and then being caught in the rain. Her make-up, she knew, was faded and smudged, her hair a tangle. She couldn’t speak Chinese, she had little or no empathy with the culture. How could she even begin to compete with someone like Mei-Ling? And she felt a cloud of depression settle over her, ready almost to concede the fight even before it had begun.

Then suddenly her attention was brought sharply back into focus by the interpreter. She heard him saying, ‘Initial fears that these were victims of a mass killer have proved unfounded. Preliminary examination by our pathologists at 803 have concluded that the most likely explanation is that these women died of natural causes …’ He broke off as a buzz of speculation rose among the reporters. ‘We believe that their bodies may have been subject to illegal medical experimentation or, even more prosaically, for illicit practice by medical students.’

Margaret flashed an angry look at Li who met her eye and gave an imperceptible shake of his head.

The Commissioner spoke again, turning and smiling towards Margaret. Clearly he was pleased with the way things were going. The interpreter said, ‘Our main task will be to identify the bodies. And, to that end, we are fortunate to have acquired the services of leading American pathologist, Margaret Campbell, who has worked before with the Chinese police.’ Margaret felt all eyes turning towards her.

‘Jesus!’ Margaret said. ‘I can’t believe you got me all the way over here for this.’ She strode across the lobby of the Peace Palace Hotel after the press conference. Li hurried after her. ‘A bunch of bodies that have been hacked up by medical students!’

‘That is only a theory, an initial thought,’ Li said.

‘Then why are you telling the press? You’re only going to look fucking stupid if it turns out not to be true.’ She pushed through the revolving door and out into the street. The pavements were choked with affluent shoppers and people hurrying home from work, umbrellas fighting for ascendancy in the airspace above their heads. Someone got into a taxi at the kerbside, and an electronic voice said, Dear passenger, you are welcome in our taxi.

‘That was not my idea,’ Li said. ‘The Commissioner thought it would take the heat out of the situation.’

‘Which shows how many press conferences he’s taken.’ Margaret was scathing. ‘First rule of public relations: you never tell the press anything you don’t know for certain. Let them do the speculating, not you.’

Mei-Ling appeared on the steps above them. ‘Is there a problem?’

Margaret said, ‘If your people have already started carrying out autopsies, then I’m wasting my time.’

‘Well, why do we not go and look at the bodies right now, and you can make that judgement for yourself.’ Mei-Ling was the voice of perfect reason.

Margaret glared at her and turned her anger on Li. ‘I busted my butt to get here. The least you could have done was wait.’

The city mortuary was out in the north-west of Shanghai, beyond Fudan University, in a quiet street off the residential Zhengli Road. They turned in a gate and passed the administration building, a cream painted house with a steeply pitched red-tile roof that looked like a Swiss guest house. There was an area of green lawn dominated by a large conifer tree. Flower beds bloomed with red and yellow roses, even in November. There was a large parking area, at the far end of which stood the mortuary itself, an elegant two-storey building in the same style of cream and red-tile. Shrubs and small trees had been planted around it. Nothing about the place would have indicated its purpose.

There were several cars parked out front. Mei-Ling drew the Santana in beside them and led Li and Margaret inside, turning right out of a small entrance hall into a long cold room. One wall was lined with two tiers of metal doors opening on to refrigerators where the bodies were kept on roll-out shelves. Each door had a gold number on it. There were forty doors.

‘There are two roll-out shelves in each,’ Mei-Ling said. ‘We have a capacity for storing eighty bodies in total here.’

There were two autopsy rooms off, one table in the first, two in the other. Everything was clinically clean, white-tiled floors and walls, scrubbed stainless steel autopsy tables with proper drainers, water fed from below and controlled by levers and buttons at knee height. Margaret noticed closed-circuit TV cameras mounted high on the walls. A stainless-steel work top ran the length of one wall in each room, and above, taped to the tiles, were the charts originally assembled in the underground car park as the bodies were brought in. These included lists of the body parts, photographs of each piece as it had been found, envelopes containing all the initial x-rays and the crudely drawn diagrams of each body, indicating which bits were present and which were missing.

Margaret walked along the wall in the second room, looking at the charts. Dr Lan entered quietly behind them. He was wearing a dark blue jacket over light-coloured pants and a blue, grey and white striped roll-neck. He stood in the doorway watching Margaret in silence for a few moments before clearing his throat. The others turned, startled, and after a moment of hiatus Li made the introductions in Chinese and English. Lan bowed slightly, a tiny smile playing around his mouth that did not reach his eyes, as he shook Margaret’s hand. ‘I speak a little English,’ he said, in what sounded to Margaret like very good English. He waved his hand around the room. ‘You like our facility here?’

Margaret nodded solemnly, aware of how Lan’s position had been undermined by her arrival. But he was, at least on the surface, coping well with the loss of face. ‘It’s excellent, Doctor,’ she said. ‘As good as I’ve seen anywhere.’

His smile widened a little, but still did not make it past his upper lip. He ran a hand down the side of the door and looked at his fingers. ‘Cleaner than most hospitals,’ he said. ‘We have fifteen pathologists here, Dr Campbell, and among us we perform a thousand autopsies each year. We are equally qualified in forensic science, and have, in addition, seven lab technicians at our disposal. We matched all the body bits by DNA comparison.’

Margaret thought that Dr Lan had more than a little English. And she understood that he was using it to lay out his credentials in case she thought she was dealing with someone of inferior qualification or experience. She looked at the diagrams on the walls. ‘How many of these women have you already autopsied?’

‘Two. Although I have made a preliminary examination of them all.’

‘Did you establish cause of death?’

‘Not yet, no.’

‘But on the basis of what you’ve seen, you have concluded that these women were simply corpses used for practice by medical students, or for some kind of medical research?’

‘It is not a conclusion, Doctor. Just an early thought.’

‘May I see one of the other bodies?’

Lan nodded, and they followed him through to the refrigeration room. He opened one of the lower doors and rolled out the upper shelf. He made a small movement of his hand towards the far end of the room, and two white-coated assistants wearing thick rubber gloves stepped forward and unzipped the white body bag that lay on the shelf. Inside were the roughly assembled pieces of a young woman. The smell of decaying flesh was powerful, even in the refrigerator. Arms, legs and one hand were severed, as was her head. Cold, dried mud still clung to the bleached yellow flesh. A ‘Y’-shaped incision that cut in from each shoulder to the breast bone, and then down to the pubis, had opened up the torso, revealing a chest cavity which had been stripped of its organs and then sewn up with rough twine. Margaret looked quickly at Lan. ‘I wanted to see one that you hadn’t autopsied.’

Lan said, ‘She is as we found her.’

Margaret frowned, and bent down to examine the cut more closely. ‘May I have some gloves and a piece of cotton?’ she said. Lan spoke to one of the assistants, who hurried off. Margaret asked, ‘Have all the bodies been cleaned off to this extent.’

‘They were very carefully washed down,’ Lan said. ‘By pathologists. There is no loss of evidence.’

Margaret said nothing. When the gloves came she pulled them on and then took the cotton and rubbed very gently along one edge of the incision. She peered at it very closely for a long time. Finally, she straightened up and peeled off the gloves. ‘Well,’ she said, ‘this one certainly wasn’t a corpse used for practice.’

Lan stiffened, colour rising high on his pallid cheeks. He frowned, and glanced down at the contents of the bag. ‘How can you know that?’

‘I’m not prepared to commit myself, Doctor, until I’ve done the autopsy.’

‘Which will be when?’ Lan asked.

‘When I’ve had some sleep,’ she said. ‘In the meantime, I don’t want any more autopsies carried out.’

Lan said stiffly, ‘I am instructed to proceed as quickly as possible.’

Margaret turned to Li. ‘Who is the lead pathologist on this case?’ He had called her in, he was going to have to take responsibility. If he didn’t back her now, she was out of there.

Li glanced uneasily at Lan. Then, ‘You are,’ he told Margaret.

‘Good, then we’ll start the autopsies in the morning.’ She nodded to Lan, handed the gloves and the cotton to the assistant, and headed out into the hallway. Li followed her, leaving Mei-Ling to deal with Lan’s loss of mianzi.

Li lowered his voice almost to a whisper. ‘Was that really necessary?’

‘What?’

‘Putting me on the spot like that?’

This was not how Margaret wanted it to be. She had taken a momentous decision, travelled a long way to be with Li, and already they were at one another’s throats. But there were principles at stake. ‘I’m the one who’s on the spot here,’ she said, struggling to keep her voice down. ‘You’ve brought me in on an investigation that some people would clearly like to see just disappear.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘That press conference,’ she said, ‘was a joke. The Commissioner of Police is telling the press that these women weren’t murdered, even before the investigation’s got properly under way. And Dr Lan might be a very good pathologist, but I think he’s just fulfilling some wishful thinking on behalf of his bosses.’

‘Are you saying he’s concealing the findings of his autopsies?’

‘Not necessarily,’ Margaret said. ‘But maybe he’s just not looking very hard.’ She sighed. ‘You’re a good cop, Li Yan, but when it comes to politics you can be pretty naïve.’

Li frowned. ‘You think someone is actually trying to subvert the investigation?’

She shrugged. ‘Well, it’s all pretty embarrassing, isn’t it? For the authorities.’

Li said, ‘It was the Mayor’s policy adviser who put me in charge. It was he who gave me permission to bring you in.’

‘Then maybe there are others who don’t like decisions like that being taken over their heads.’

Li thought about it. His meeting with Huang and the Deputy Commissioner had been pretty frosty, and the Commissioner himself had been briefed by Huang. But he found it hard to believe that any one of them would contrive to hide the truth. Why would they?

Margaret said, ‘The point is, I have my integrity and a professional reputation to protect. Either I get full access and complete co-operation or I’m on the first plane home.’

For a moment, Li wondered where she meant by ‘home’. The United States? He was confused. She had stayed on in China to be with him and had only returned to the States to attend her father’s funeral. He dragged his thoughts back to the case. He said, ‘You have my guarantee on that.’

She nodded. ‘Then that’s good enough for me.’ And suddenly she wilted, fatigue etching itself on her face. She wanted to touch him, feel his skin under her fingers, his soft warm lips on her neck. ‘Let’s go back to the hotel. I need a shower, then we can get something to eat, and …’ Li looked uncomfortable. ‘What?’

‘We must attend a banquet tonight.’

She felt all the strength drain out of her. All the Chinese ever seemed to do was hold banquets. ‘Aw, Jesus, Li, not tonight. Please.’

He shrugged helplessly. ‘I have got no choice. It is being hosted by the Mayor’s policy adviser, and you and I are the guests of honour. I think he wants to show us off.’

Mei-Ling came out from the refrigeration room and cast Margaret a chilly look. She said to Li, ‘I will give you a lift back to your hotel after we have dropped off Miss Campbell.’

Margaret frowned and said to Li, ‘Aren’t you staying at the Peace Hotel?’

Mei-Ling answered for him. ‘I am afraid the budget does not run to two rooms at the Peace Hotel, Miss Campbell. We Chinese have to content ourselves with something a little more austere.’

For the first time, Li became aware of the friction between the two, and was puzzled by it. After all, they had only just met.

Mei-Ling said, ‘But do not worry, we will come back and pick you up on the way to the banquet tonight.’

Margaret bristled. ‘We? Do I take it that you are also going to the banquet?’

Mei-Ling smiled. ‘Of course.’

III

Margaret’s shower had lifted her appearance, but not her spirits. Her hair fell in freshly laundered golden waves across her shoulders. She had put on an elegant but conservative sleeveless black dress for the banquet. But her eyes were stinging from lack of sleep, she felt tired and depressed and in need of alcohol. She wandered in search of the bar along endless marbled corridors dominated by gold and pink squared ceilings and elaborate Art Deco uplighters. But there were no signs in English that she could see. In a lounge opposite the reception lobby, people sat drinking coffee and beer at tables, but it was not exactly what Margaret had in mind.

‘S’cuse me. You Miss Maggot Cambo?’

Margaret turned to find a smiling young Chinese man standing timidly in front of her.

He held out his hand. ‘Ah … My name … Jiang Baofu.’ His English was hesitant, but he was determined to persevere. ‘Medical student … Read about you in paper, Miss Cambo.’

Reluctantly she shook his hand.

‘How do you do?’

‘Ah … very well, thank you.’ He bowed slightly. ‘You … mmmm … very farmers, Miss Cambo.’

She frowned. ‘Farmers?’

He nodded enthusiastically. ‘Very farmers.’ And she realised suddenly that he meant ‘famous’.

‘I don’t think so,’ she said.

‘Oh, yes. I … mmm … wanna be pathologist like you.’ He smiled, still nodding enthusiastically. ‘I … mmm … night watchman, where they find bodies.’

And Margaret was immediately on her guard. She had thought, initially, that the young man was harmless enough, but now she had major misgivings. ‘In that case,’ she said, ‘you are a material witness and we shouldn’t be talking.’

She strode off across the lobby, but he hurried after her. ‘I like to help,’ he said. ‘I like to help investigation. I like to help you.’

She spun around. ‘Just how did you know where to find me?’ she asked.

‘Oh …’ he said. ‘I give statement at 803. Aaa-ll day. I … mmm … follow you to hotel.’

Margaret was distinctly unhappy now. She looked at him again. She saw that despite the almost cringing obsequiousness of his demeanour, he was a powerfully built young man. He had a strong physical presence, and his lack of confidence was only in his English. ‘I think you should go,’ she said, and turned away. But he caught her arm, and she felt the strength of his fingers as they bit into her bare flesh.

‘No, no … I only wanna help,’ he said.

She pulled her arm free. ‘Don’t ever touch me again,’ she said dangerously, and with more confidence than she felt.

‘Lady in need of assistance?’ She turned at the sound of the voice on her right hand and felt a huge wave of relief to see the familiar smiling face of Jack Geller.

‘Yes,’ she said, trying to remain composed. ‘I was looking for the bar.’

‘Then you found the right man to take you there,’ he said. He glanced at Jiang Baofu, then steered her away past the currency exchange to a narrow wooden staircase leading up to a small mezzanine bookshop. ‘What was all that about?’ he asked.

She shrugged it off. ‘Nothing.’

‘Didn’t look like nothing to me.’

‘Believe me, women alone in hotels are always getting pestered.’ She looked around at the rows of books and racks of magazines. ‘Actually, when I said “bar” I was thinking more of something that sold booze, not books.’

He grinned. ‘Keep walking.’ They passed along a narrow corridor where tall, elaborate glass and wrought-iron lampstands stood sentinel. On one side there were large semi-circular stained-glass windows from floor to ceiling, on the other a marble balustrade protecting a view down into the well of the reception lobby below. The bar opened out before them. Big, comfortable armchairs and sofas gathered around low coffee tables, windows along one side looked down on to the lounge.

They sat on stools at a long, polished bar. An old-fashioned golfer in plus-fours and cloth cap peered at them through round spectacles with real lenses. He was all of three feet high, brightly coloured paint on glazed china. Margaret could imagine executives of Jardine, Matheson gathering here at the day’s end seventy years before to quaff their gins and tonic and discuss the day’s dealings. Although the bar was empty, their ghosts still haunted it. A young waitress in a qipao took their order.

Margaret had a long draught of her vodka tonic and felt the alcohol hit her bloodstream almost immediately. She closed her eyes and let the feeling relax her. Geller watched her with interest over the rim of his beer glass. He said, ‘Dead fodder for medical students. That’s all they were, huh?’

She opened her eyes slowly and looked at him. ‘You expect me to comment on that?’

‘You don’t have to. It’s all bullshit.’

‘Why do you say that?’

‘Aw, come on. Eighteen young women, most of them under thirty …? I don’t think so. Life expectancy here is seventy plus, and there’s a hell of a lot more men than women. If they’d all died of natural causes, the law of averages would make most of them over fifty, and a majority of them male.’

Margaret made no comment. But she couldn’t argue with the logic. ‘And if someone had been conducting research on, say, declining fertility in young women across a twenty-year age range …?’

‘Were they?’

‘I have no idea. I’m just making an argument.’

‘It would still be bullshit.’

‘Why?’

‘Because eighteen young women, all dead from natural causes and conveniently available for illicit medical research, still goes against the law of averages.’ He took another sip of his beer. ‘By the way, has anyone told you you’re very attractive for someone who cuts up people for a living.’

‘Oh yes,’ she said, ‘I’ve often been told how attractive I am by men who want to get into my pants. But a blow-by-blow account of how I dissect the male organ during autopsy is usually enough to put them off.’

Geller grinned, ‘I love it when a woman talks surgery.’

And, to her surprise, she found herself laughing. She looked at him a little more appraisingly and noticed there was no ring on the left hand. ‘Did anyone ever tell you you’re not bad-looking for someone who hacks people to pieces in print?’

‘Once,’ he said. ‘My editor. Sadly he was a guy. My kind of luck.’

‘You never married, then?’

‘Thought about it once. For a whole five seconds.’ He rubbed his chin thoughtfully. ‘Or was it as long as that?’ He finished his beer. ‘You want another of those?’

She nodded. He ordered another round and she said, ‘So who do you work for out here?’

He smiled. ‘Remember I told you about the Whore of the Orient? Well, I am that whore. I’ll do it for anyone who pays me.’

‘And who pays you?’

‘Newsweek, sometimes. Time, A couple of wire services, some of the big papers back home when their regular correspondents go off on a rest cure to a massage parlour in Thailand.’ He shrugged. ‘It’s a living.’

‘How long have you been in Shanghai?’

‘Too long.’

She shook her head. ‘You’re a fund of information, aren’t you?’

‘I try not to be. Listen, I’m the hack here, I thought I was the one supposed to be asking the questions.’

Their drinks arrived and Margaret lifted her glass. ‘The best way to avoid answering questions is to ask them.’ She took a long draught, then checked her watch. ‘Oh, my God! Is that the time? They’ll be waiting for me in the lobby.’ She took another hurried drink and put her glass back on the bar. ‘I’m sorry, Mr Geller, I’m going to have to love you and leave you.’

He shrugged ruefully. ‘I’ll settle for that — with or without the leaving bit.’ She grinned and slipped off the stool. ‘So where are you off to?’ he asked.

‘A banquet. Hosted by some policy adviser to the Mayor.’

If she thought he’d be impressed she was wrong. ‘Ahh,’ he said seriously. Director Hu. The Director is not a very nice man.’

IV

Mei-Ling eased the Santana through the crowds of people, cars and bicycles that choked Yunnan Nan Road. Two elderly women in the light blue uniform of traffic wardens were waving their arms at the junction, and blowing their whistles like demented birds. The Santana passed under a traditional Chinese gate and into a neon wonderland. Red lanterns and yellow banners were strung overhead. Every shop front and restaurant was lit in this narrow street, each fleck of coloured light coruscating in the rain. Steam rose from open windows where great racks of dumplings cooked over boiling water, smoke issuing from open barbecues, spicy skewers of lamb and chicken hissing and spitting their fat on the coals. A group of drunken young women with painted faces, staggering precariously on very high heels, banged on the hood of the car and leered in the window at Li. Margaret sat in the back, feeling remote and isolated from Li who sat up front next to Mei-Ling. There had been very little said since they left the hotel.

When Mei-Ling drew the Volkswagen into a tiny car park next to the twelve-storey Xiaoshaoxing Hotel, they made a dash through the rain to the front entrance. The elevator to the eighth floor slid silently up one of two glass tubes built on to the side of the building. From here they had an ascending view of the chaotic jumbled sprawl of rooftops and balconies below, washing hanging out across the street on long poles, wetter than when it had been put out.

They followed a waitress along quiet, panelled corridors, turning left and then right, past several private banqueting rooms. Director Hu and his guests awaited them in a large room at the end. They were standing in groups around a very large circular table, smoking and chatting animatedly, classical Chinese music playing quietly from large speakers in each corner. Li introduced Margaret to the Director. His eyes were on a level with hers and they ran up and down her appraisingly. His handshake, she thought, was limp and slightly damp. He had a wide smile, revealing unusually even and white teeth. He wore an immaculately cut designer suit, and she caught the briefest whiff of Paco Rabanne. She looked at his smooth, round face and thought that the aftershave was more for effect than any practical purpose. She resisted a sudden absurd urge to run her hands over his head to see if his closely cropped grey hair was as velvety to the touch as it looked:

‘Dr Campbell,’ he said, ‘I have heard very much about you. It is an honour to meet you.’ He turned and introduced her to his other guests — the Commissioner of Police and Section Chief Huang whom she had already met; the Procurator General, still in his uniform; another of the Mayor’s advisers, a square-set and unsmiling man; a personal friend, Mr Cui Feng, and his wife; and a couple of aides, younger men who nodded and smiled and ushered everyone to their seats. Li was placed on one side of the Director, Margaret on the other.

Tall waitresses in elegant pink qipaos filled their small toasting glasses with red wine. Nearly everyone was drinking beer, except for the Director who sipped at a glass of bright red watermelon juice. The ritual of toasting began with the Director, and was followed around the table by his guests. Each time a toast was drunk, there was a chorus of ‘gan bei’, and the toasting glasses were emptied and then immediately refilled. Plate after plate of food arrived and was placed on the revolving Lazy Susan in order to allow everyone to help themselves.

The Commissioner of Police sat on Margaret’s right. ‘You like Hormez?’ he asked.

Margaret replayed the question in her head, but could make no sense of it. ‘I beg your pardon?’ she said, pronouncing her words very carefully. The wine, after the vodka, was beginning to have an effect. And now she took a long pull at her beer.

The Procurator General, round spectacles perched on an unusually long nose, leaned over. ‘We have great love of detective fiction in China,’ he said. ‘Many police officers write detective stories.’

Director Hu laughed. He said, ‘I believe in Beijing they have courses at the Public Security University in the History of Western Detective Fiction.’

Margaret had not heard this before. ‘Really?’ It was one of those strange Chinese curiosities she continually stumbled across.

‘Many police officers take this course,’ the Commissioner said. ‘They are very inspired by Hormez.’

Margaret glanced towards Li for help, but he was engaged in polite conversation with Mrs Cui. She became aware of Mei-Ling smiling at her discomfort from across the table. ‘And who exactly is this … Hormez?’

The Commissioner looked at her in astonishment. ‘You don’t know Hormez? Ohhh … he ve-very farmers in China. Sherlock Hormez.’

And suddenly it dawned on her. ‘Holmes! You mean Sherlock Holmes!’

‘Yes,’ said the Commissioner. ‘Hormez. You know Hormez?’

Margaret had to confess that she had not actually read any of the Conan Doyle books. But when she was younger, she said, she had seen a number of the old black and white movies with Basil Rathbone. Everyone else looked puzzled.

Someone was turning the Lazy Susan, and a plate piled high with prawn crackers stopped in front of her. Margaret looked in horror at the small black scorpions crawling over the crackers before she realised that they weren’t actually moving.

‘Deep fried whole scorpion,’ Mei-Ling said from across the table, and Margaret saw that it was Mei-Ling who had stopped the dish in front of her. ‘They are a great delicacy.’

Other conversations around the table tailed off, and smiling faces turned in Margaret’s direction. Western sensitivity to Chinese ‘delicacies’ was well known, and everyone was anxious to see Margaret’s reaction. The Commissioner took one in his chopsticks and popped it into his mouth, crunching enthusiastically. ‘Scorpion valued for medical reason,’ he said. ‘You try one.’

Margaret’s jaw set. The Chinese could be so goddamned superior at times like this, and she felt as if she were representing the whole of Western culture here. She forced herself to smile, lifted one of the brittle black insects with her chopsticks and with a great effort of will put it in her mouth. As she crunched on its bitterness it was all she could do to stop herself from gagging.

‘Bravo,’ Director Hu said and clapped his hands. ‘I can never bring myself to eat the bloody things. They are disgu-usting.’

Margaret took a long draught of beer to try to wash the taste away, and a waitress immediately refilled her glass. To her relief, the focus shifted away from her again as conversations restarted around the table. The alcohol and the fatigue were beginning to make her feel quite heady. After all, she had barely slept in more than twenty hours. She had noticed earlier that Mei-Ling’s boss, Section Chief Huang, was distracted and dour, and she saw now that he only picked at his food, troubled somehow, and taking no part in the social intercourse. She watched him for a moment or two. He was a good-looking man, but careworn somehow, as if carrying a heavy burden through life. She could not recall having seen him smile once.

She was wondering why he was here at all when a waitress came in and whispered something in his ear. He paled slightly and stood up immediately. He spoke rapidly to Director Hu in Chinese. The Director nodded gravely and said something back, and Huang turned with a curt nod and hurried out. The Commissioner whispered to Margaret, ‘I am afraid the wife of the Section Chief is very unwell.’

‘I wonder, what is your view on our one-child policy, Doctor?’ Margaret realised the question was being addressed to her, and turned to find Cui Feng, the Director’s personal friend, smiling at her across the table.

‘I think it is draconian and barbaric,’ she said bluntly.

Mr Cui was unruffled. He nodded. ‘I agree. But a necessary evil.’

‘I’m not sure that evil is ever necessary.’

‘Sometimes,’ Mr Cui said, ‘evil is the only option, and it is necessary to choose whichever is the least unpalatable. Without a policy to reduce the birth rate we would be unable to feed our population and many millions of people would die.’ He ran a hand thoughtfully over his smooth chin. He was taller than his friend, the Director, with a head of thick, black hair and a very gentle demeanour, like a doctor with a kindly bedside manner. ‘You know, in Shandong Province alone, the population would now have reached nearly one hundred and fifty million. But because of our birth control policy, the population is only ninety million. We have cut the birthrate by more than half since nineteen seventy, and cut the rate of infant mortality to thirty-four per thousand — which is far less than the world average of fifty.’

The Procurator General said with a mischief-making smile, ‘Mr Cui has a vested interest here, Doctor. Five years ago he opened a number of joint-venture clinics in Shanghai and persuaded the government to give him the contract to carry out all the abortions in the city.’

And Margaret thought how being a personal friend of the Mayor’s policy adviser would not have hindered that process, though she didn’t say so.

‘Three hundred thousand of them a year,’ the Director said. ‘Which was placing a heavy demand on limited government resources.’

‘Three hundred thousand abortions!’ Margaret said, incredulously. ‘A year?’

‘In Shanghai alone,’ Mr Cui said.

‘Then your policy is failing,’ Margaret retorted. She felt an anger building in her, and ignored the warning looks from Li.

‘How so?’ asked Director Hu coldly.

‘It is one thing to persuade people to have only one child. It is another to force them to have abortions.’ She recalled with horror and regret the emotional blackmail that had forced her to abort her own unborn child. It’ll ruin both our lives, David had said, and she had lived with the pain and the guilt ever since. She said, ‘You are simply substituting the death of people by starvation with the murder of children in the womb. I can accept abortion when the life of the mother is in danger, but not as a matter of convenience.’

‘It is not convenience,’ Mei-Ling said. Her tone was as aggressive as Margaret’s. ‘These women have had babies. They made a mistake getting pregnant again, or were greedy, and it is their duty to have the children aborted.’

Margaret glanced at Li, but his face was impassive.

Mr Cui said, more softly, ‘Family planning in China has not only reduced the birth rate, Doctor, it has increased living standards, and life expectancy is now more than seventy years.’

‘Well, of course, as someone who’s profiting from other people’s misery, you would say that, wouldn’t you?’ It was out before Margaret could stop herself. She felt her face flush red as she realised the bluntness of what she had said.

There was a moment’s shocked silence around the table. Only Mr Cui remained, apparently, unperturbed. He retained his soft bedside manner. ‘Of course we are in business to make money,’ he said. ‘As are doctors and hospitals in the United States. But we also offer advice and counselling. These women would have had their abortions in state hospitals where the procedure would have been performed on a production line basis. We, at least, try to make the process more human.’

Margaret confined herself to a quick nod, not trusting herself to open her mouth again.

But if Mr Cui had remained understanding, Director Hu was not so forgiving. He said pointedly, ‘It seems, Dr Campbell, that developments regarding the bodies at Pudong are unlikely now to require your extended attention.’

‘And why is that?’ she asked levelly.

‘You were at the press conference, I believe,’ said the Director.

‘In my experience,’ Margaret said, ‘there is often a big gap between the truth and what the press is told.’

The Director leaned forward and placed his chin very carefully on his interlocked fists. ‘Meaning?’

‘The body I examined tonight, albeit briefly, was not that of a corpse subjected to student practice or medical research.’

Director Hu tensed visibly. Much as he would doubtless have liked to put Margaret on the first plane back to the States, he was a prisoner of his own high-profile decision to bring her in. ‘Then how did she die?’ he asked.

‘I should be able to tell you that after the autopsy.’ She was aware of the looks that flashed quickly between the Director, the Commissioner and the Procurator General. If they had harboured hopes of this thing going away quickly and easily, this ill-mannered American was clearly intent on dashing them. What had started out, perhaps, as a celebration banquet, had very quickly turned sour. And it did not last much longer.

Half-hearted toasts were drunk, glasses raised in thanks to the host, and then Director Hu stood up, signalling that the meal was over. His guests immediately stood also, and began making their farewells. Margaret stood isolated near the door and watched as the Director took Li to one side. Mei-Ling approached her, a smile playing mischievously about her lips. ‘Well done,’ she said in a stage whisper. ‘You have just made an enemy of the second most powerful man in Shanghai.’

Li was cursing himself for having trusted Margaret in this situation. He had smelled the vodka on her breath when they picked her up at the hotel. He had watched her empty all the toasting glasses, and consume several beers. Alcohol always lowered her already limited levels of self-restraint.

He felt the grip of the Director’s short, thick fingers on his arm as he steered him away from the table. ‘That Meiguoren …’ he almost spat out the Chinese word for American, ‘… had better not embarrass us, Li.’

Li said, ‘You told me you wanted the truth, Director Hu. I believe she will give us that.’

Director Hu glared at Li, no doubt regretting the haste in appointing him and his agreeing to the involvement of the American. ‘A word of advice, Deputy Section Chief. Marry a dog, stay with a dog; marry a rooster, stay with a rooster. You should choose your friends carefully.’

As their taxi drew away from the kerb, Margaret caught a fleeting glimpse, like a smear on the window, of Mei-Ling’s unhappiness. Li had turned down her offer of a lift back to the hotel and told her he and Margaret would take a taxi. And so Mei-Ling had been left standing on the sidewalk in the rain with the Procurator General and the Commissioner of Police. The Director’s entourage had already departed. But it was of small comfort to Margaret. She could almost reach out and touch Li’s anger. It seemed that working together always brought them into conflict.

As soon as they were on their own in the back of the taxi, Li said, ‘What the hell were you playing at?’

Margaret immediately felt her hackles rise. ‘I was expressing my mind. Where I come from that’s not a crime.’

‘Well, where I come from, it is extremely bad manners to show disrespect to your host and his guests by being rude to them. But then, I should have known — Americans are not renowned for their sensitivity.’

‘And the Chinese are famous for their intolerance towards other people’s ideas. But I suppose that’s what comes of running a one-party state. The powers that be aren’t used to being questioned. And they don’t like it when they are.’ The irony of their fight was not lost on Margaret. Thirty-six hours earlier she had been defending China to David in Chicago.

Li held up his hand and through gritted teeth said, ‘Do not start, Margaret. Please do not start.’

She sat back and folded her arms across her chest, clenching her jaws to fight back the impulse to give voice to all the thoughts going through her head. They sat in silence for several minutes as their car left behind the lights of Yunnan Nan Road, and headed east towards the river.

Finally Li said, ‘And your performance at the mortuary this afternoon is going to make things very difficult as far as working with Dr Lan is concerned. You know how important mianzi is to the Chinese. Mei-Ling says he was acutely embarrassed.’

‘Oh, does she? And what else does Mei-Ling say?’

‘She thinks maybe you are not the right person to work on such a highly sensitive case.’

‘Oh, and what about your loss of face? After all, you’re the one who brought me in.’

‘You are the one who is causing me to lose face,’ Li said angrily.

‘And that’s what all this is about, isn’t it?’ Margaret snapped back. ‘Face! Everybody’s face, or the loss of it. It’s all you goddamn people seem to care about.’ And she wondered what on earth had possessed her to come back ‘And, of course, you and Mei-Ling will have discussed all this during your intimate little rides to and from your hotel this evening. Did she come in and hold your hand while you changed?’

Li sighed theatrically and turned to stare out of the window. ‘Do not be so ridiculous!’

‘Oh, so I’m ridiculous now. Not only am I an embarrassment who causes you to lose face, but I’m ridiculous as well. And I suppose it would be equally ridiculous of me to imagine that there might be anything going on between you and Mei-Ling.’

‘What?’ Li looked at her incredulously. ‘That is not even worthy of a response.’ And part of him was gripped by an acute sense of guilt at the feelings that Mei-Ling had aroused in him the night before. He looked quickly away again.

‘You mean you’re not even going to deny it? Two attractive people thrown together on a stressful job in a strange city? It wouldn’t be the first time it had happened.’

‘You are being unreasonable and paranoid,’ he said.

‘So the count’s up to four, now. Not only am I embarrassing and ridiculous, but I’m also unreasonable and paranoid. I don’t know why the hell you ever wanted me to work on this case.’

He turned angrily on her, ‘Neither do I.’

It was like a slap full in the face. Margaret felt it stinging. Li knew he had gone too far, but it was too late to take anything back. Light from a shop front caught her hair as they passed it, and he wanted to reach out and touch it. He remembered how they had been together, remembered the first time they had made love in a cold railway carriage in the north. Her arrogance had always infuriated him, and her vulnerability always drawn him. Each emotion fought with the other in him now as he sat there in the taxi beside her. But he could not bring himself to bridge the gap of their argument, to hold out the olive branch that would lead to reconciliation and the feel of her skin on his in a warm bed in the Peace Hotel.

Margaret had gone cold inside. She was determined not to cry, determined not to show him how much he had hurt her. All she had wanted from the moment she arrived was to hold him, and have him hold her. To make love and lie in his arms and forget, at least for a time, all the things that stood in the way of their relationship.

The taxi pulled up outside the Peace Hotel, and a bellboy in red uniform and carrying a black umbrella, stepped out of the shelter of the canopy to open her door. She swung her legs out, then turned back towards Li. She said quietly, ‘I wish I’d never come back.’

And she hurried through revolving doors to ride in solitude to her room on the sixth floor and cry herself to sleep on a big, cold empty bed.