Chinese Whispers

III

Margaret raised her left leg and felt all the stiff muscles of her buttock tug at her hamstring as she stretched. Slowly she turned through ninety degrees, arms raised level with her shoulders and bent up at the elbow, before bringing her foot down and raising the other leg. She felt the same stretching of the muscles, and was amazed at just how out of condition she was. The cold was stinging her face, and although she wore gloves, her fingers were frozen stiff. Her breath wreathed around her head like the smoke of dragon’s fire. The plink-plonk of a traditional Chinese orchestra emanating from a ghetto blaster on the wall lent succour to the illusion.

The previous day’s autopsy had taken more out of her than she could have believed. The muscles of her arms and shoulders were stiff and sore from wielding heavy shears to cut through ribs, and from turning the body this way and that in the course of its dissection. Her lower back and the tops of her legs ached from the angle at which she had held herself to cut through dead flesh and remove organs. Even her thrice weekly tai chi sessions in Zhongshan Park with Mei Yuan had failed to keep her fit and supple for a professional activity she had always taken for granted.

Of course, the trauma of Li Jon’s Caesarian birth, and everything else surrounding it, had taken it out of her. She had never regained the strength and vigour she had possessed before it, and slothful hours spent trapped in an apartment, reading and feeding and changing diapers had contributed to a decline of which she had hardly been aware. Until now. It worried her that these might be the first signs of old age. And then she looked around and found herself smiling. Most of the old women working through their slow-motion tai chi routines were more than twice her age. Some of them in their seventies or even eighties. She had allowed life, and events, to steal away her initiative. It was time to take control again.

‘You’re very quiet this morning.’

Margaret turned to catch Mei Yuan watching her closely. As she always did. Like an old mother hen. ‘Stuff on my mind,’ she said.

‘Li Yan?’

‘No. I’m afraid I’m obsessing about myself,’ Margaret said. And she felt a sudden pang of guilt. Li had left her to sleep on and gone off to fight dragons on his own. They had both understood the full implications of the files they had uncovered the night before in Lynn Pan’s private webspace, but had not discussed it. Li had folded in on himself, as he sometimes did, reluctant to share his deepest worries. She hated it when he was like that with her. She felt shut out, rejected. Once or twice she had surfaced briefly during the night from the deepest of sleeps, to become aware of the shallow, irregular breathing which told her he was still awake. But sleep had always dragged her back down into its warm, comforting oblivion. And when, finally, she had woken, he was gone. The sheets on his side of the bed long since turned cold.

Li Jon, in his buggy, waggled his arms and grinned at her, his tiny nose red with the cold. She saw his father in his eyes and his smile, and wondered where the closeness they had once shared had gone. She felt a tiny stab of fear, like pain, and wondered what kind of future they really had.

‘Let me try you with a riddle, then,’ Mei Yuan said. ‘It may relieve you of the burden of self examination.’

Margaret glanced at her, wondering for a brief moment if the older woman had somehow been able to read her thoughts. ‘Okay,’ she said. Something else to occupy her mind might be healthier. It was too easy, always, to focus on the negative.

Mei Yuan said, ‘It took Li Yan a whole twenty-four hours to work this one out.’

‘Shouldn’t take me long, then,’ Margaret said, and Mei Yuan grinned.

‘But like you, he was a little preoccupied,’ she said.

The frost was melting now on the trees as the sun rose through gnarled branches and withered leaves. Beyond the big pavilion with the red-painted pillars, a group of men and women were dancing across ancient paving stones to the rhythm of a Latin American band. And on the other side of a bamboo thicket, Margaret saw sunlight catching the shafts of swords as the daily practitioners of the centuries-old art of wu shu sliced through frozen air with ceremonial blades.

‘Two deaf mutes are planting rice in a paddy …’ Mei Yuan began, and she took Margaret through the complexities of the riddle just as she had done with Li two days earlier. Margaret listened as they continued with their exercises, carried along by the slow, measured rhythm of the group. When she had finished, Mei Yuan turned to look expectantly at Margaret.

Margaret was silent for a moment, then shrugged. ‘They didn’t finish planting till ten at night, maybe later. So it had to be dark. Which is why they couldn’t see one another.’

Mei Yuan smiled. ‘Too easy.’

Margaret laughed. ‘Did it really take Li Yan twenty-four hours to work it out?’

‘To be fair, I don’t think he’d given it a thought until I asked him again the following morning. But, then, I think Li Yan is better at practical mind games than theoretical ones.’

Like solving murders, Margaret thought, to save lives. It was, essentially, what separated them. She only dealt with the dead. Her achievement was in determining how they had died. Li had an obligation to the living — to catch a killer before he killed again. And now the murder of Lynn Pan, with all its political ramifications, had distracted him from the Ripper murders, making it more likely that the killer would remain free to do his worst. She shook her head to snap herself out of it. There was nothing she could do — until, perhaps, he did kill again. ‘I have to go to the visa office today,’ she said, ‘to collect my passport. But I want to go to the flower market first to see if I can’t get some fresh flowers to brighten up the apartment. It seems so dull and stale these days.’

‘You need more plants in the apartment,’ Mei Yuan said. ‘More living, growing things. It is good feng shui.’

‘Well maybe I’ll get some pot plants, then. Will you come with me?’

‘As long as I can be back at my corner in time for lunch.’

‘We’ll be back in plenty of time,’ Margaret said, pleased to have the company. ‘We’ll take a taxi.’

* * *

The flower supermarket was close to the You Yi Shopping Centre on the banks of the slow-moving Liangma River on the north-east corner of the city. It stood in the shadow of the Sunflower Tower, and cheek-by-jowl with an Irish pub called Durty Nellie’s, which boasted a crude painting of a large-bosomed Irish wench clutching a pint of Guinness. Rows of baby pines in green pots were lined up outside the market, Christmas trees for ex-pats. The Christmas season was starting early in Beijing. Next door was a pot plant centre under an arched blue roof.

Margaret asked Mei Yuan to wait for her outside the centre with Li Jon while she ran into the market to get some cut flowers. They would look at the pot plants afterwards. Up half a dozen steps and through glass doors, the market stretched off in a blaze of colour, hundreds of exotic flowers arranged in thousands of pots, the air heady with myriad scents, and the sharp smell of cut green stems. Although it was warm in here, and humid, the girls were all muffled in winter jackets and scarves, smiling when they saw the curling fair hair and blue eyes, urging Margaret to buy from them. ‘Looka, looka,’ they urged, waving hands at big yellow daisies and purple-spotted orchids. There were red, white and pink roses, tulips from God knows where, flowers Margaret had never seen before, bizarre-looking blue and grey conical things like something you might find growing on a tropical reef. Fat-petalled extravaganzas, and fine, feathery ones. A bewildering choice. Margaret took her time, wandering the aisles, letting her eyes fall to left and right until something took their fancy. Finally she settled for a large bunch of yellow and white chrysanthemums. They stood out for their plainness amidst all the exotica, and it was that which appealed most to Margaret in the end.

They were, of course, ridiculously cheap, and Margaret was pleased with her purchase, enjoying the fresh smell of summer in this deepest cold of November.

She was pushing the door open to go out, sunlight flooding in the through the glass, when she heard the scream. It was a deep scream, almost a wail, and carried something primeval in the fear it conveyed. It went through Margaret like a frozen arrow. She hurried out and stopped on the top step. Mei Yuan was standing out amongst the Christmas trees, arms pressed to her sides, tears streaming down her face. Margaret ran to her, dropping the flowers on the steps. She grabbed Mei Yuan by the shoulders, eyes wide with fear. ‘Where’s Li Jon?’ she shouted. ‘Mei Yuan, where’s Li Jon?’

Mei Yuan’s face was wet with tears and mucus. Her eyes were like saucers. ‘He’s gone,’ she managed to say through deep sobs that wrenched themselves from her chest.

‘What do you mean, gone?’ Margaret was almost hysterical. She looked all around, searching frantically for his buggy.

‘I turned away only for a moment,’ Mei Yuan wailed. ‘To look at the Christmas trees. When I turned back he was gone.’