The Firemaker

I

Thursday Afternoon

She concentrated on the pumping of her legs, on watching the cyclists who whizzed by her on either side with curious passing glances, on the motorists who seemed intent on tipping her on to the tarmac or bursting her eardrums with their horns. And she absorbed the sights and sounds of this strange city like scenes in a movie shot from a passing car. With a pang of regret, Margaret realised she would miss Beijing. It was a place, she felt, that would have got under her skin had she spent any length of time here. It was so alive. Don’t even think about it! The words came into her head like a reprimand from a higher authority. But it was, she knew, her own counsel. And she took it.

She approached the hotel from the north, passing the Friendship Palace and its shady gardens where birds sang in cages, and wheeled her bicycle into the carpark, hot and uncomfortable in the scorching afternoon. A car horn sounded, but she paid it no attention. Motorists used their horns incessantly. It sounded again. Two short, insistent blasts and a longer one. She turned as a dark blue Beijing Jeep pulled in behind her and drew alongside. Her stomach flipped over as she recognised Li behind the wheel. The driver’s window wound down and he switched off the engine. He looked at her apprehensively. His battered face didn’t seem as bruised as it had earlier. ‘I tried to get you at the university,’ he said. ‘They told me you’d quit.’

She nodded confirmation. ‘My flight’s at nine thirty tomorrow morning.’

He thought she seemed cold and distant. He wanted to ask why she had quit, why she was leaving, but he didn’t have the courage. ‘I just wanted to check with you,’ he said. ‘About the AIDS test.’

Her disappointment manifested itself as anger. ‘Actually, I’m not interested. I’m no longer involved in your investigation, and I couldn’t care less if Chao tested positive or not.’

Li responded in kind, hurt by her tone. ‘And I couldn’t tell you, even if I wanted to… since you never requested the test.’

‘What?’ She glared at him, full of indignation.

‘According to Professor Xie.’

‘Well, that’s ridiculous. I spoke to him last night, on the way back here to change.’

‘And asked him to test a sample of Chao’s blood for AIDS?’

‘Of course.’

‘He says you didn’t.’

‘Then he’s a damn liar!’

‘You want to tell him that?’

‘Try stopping me.’ She kicked down her bike stand, slipped the lock through the back wheel and rounded the Jeep to the passenger side. As she slipped into the seat she slammed the door shut and glared at Li. ‘And you believe him, do you?’

‘No,’ he said simply.

She stared at him for some moments. ‘What’s going on, Li Yan?’

‘Someone doesn’t want us testing Chao Heng for AIDS.’

‘Professor Xie?’ Margaret was incredulous.

‘Only on instruction from someone else.’

‘Who?’

‘I’ve no idea.’

But… why?’

‘I don’t know that either.’

She shook her head. ‘This is absurd. You’re the police. How can anyone stop you having a simple blood test done?’

‘By destroying the body and all the blood and tissue samples.’

‘You’re kidding!’

‘This morning. They incinerated everything.’

Margaret simply couldn’t believe it. ‘That’s not possible. I mean, in most US states all toxicology specimens are held frozen for one year. Five in homicide cases.’

‘It’s not common practice to destroy evidence in China either,’ Li said. ‘In this case, it seems, authorisation to destroy the remains came as the result of an “administrative error”.’ It had taken him all morning to track that one down. They had even shown him the form. A clerk had typed in the wrong name, they said.

She shook her head. ‘And you believe that?’

‘No.’ He closed his eyes and breathed deeply, keeping his anger in check. ‘Someone’s gone to a lot of trouble to cover their tracks. But there is one loose end.’ He paused. ‘You.’

‘Me?’

‘You requested the AIDS test from Professor Xie last night — long before he received instructions to destroy the body and the samples.’

‘But if he’s denying that…’

‘That’s why I’d like a sworn statement from you before you leave. I know it’s only your word against his…’

‘But it’s not,’ Margaret said. ‘There was a witness.’

Li frowned. ‘Who?’

‘Lily Peng. She insisted on coming in with me when I went to talk to Professor Xie.’

Li processed his thoughts rapidly. ‘Well, there’s no way he can get around that one, is there?’ He ran it through again in his mind. ‘And that means I can use you and Lily to frighten him. Sometimes when rats are scared they squeal. Do you still want to go and see him?’

Margaret hesitated. It would be too easy to say yes, to get involved again, let all that emotion back in when she’d just spent the last three hours building resolute defences against it. ‘I don’t think the university would approve,’ she said feebly.

‘This has nothing to do with the university. You’re a material witness.’

‘So… I don’t have any choice. Is that what you’re telling me?’

‘That’s what I’m telling you.’

‘Then I don’t have any choice, do I?’ There was just the hint of a smile about her eyes.

He grinned. ‘No,’ he said. ‘You don’t.’

It took less than fifteen minutes to drive to the Centre of Material Evidence Determination. For the first five neither of them spoke.

Margaret was having immediate regrets. She knew perfectly well that she could have refused to get involved, and Li would not have forced her. She had been foolish. What could possibly come of this but trouble and heartache? Nothing had changed. She was still leaving on the nine thirty flight in the morning. She would never see Li again. She would never return to China. What did she care about the murder of Chao Heng and some drug dealer and an unemployed labourer from Shanghai? What did it matter to her that someone was trying to block Li’s investigation? Who cared?

Li said, ‘We’ve identified the killer from that thumbprint.’

And she knew that she cared. She couldn’t have said why, only that she did. ‘Who is he?’

‘A Triad hit-man, like my uncle suggested right at the outset. DNA on the blood inside the glove matches the DNA in the saliva on the cigarette ends. So there’s no doubt. He’s called Johnny Ren. And he walked into the headquarters of Section One this morning and stole my fob watch from my desk drawer.’

Margaret looked at him in astonishment. ‘How…? Why?’

‘I don’t know why.’ Li was clearly agitated by it. ‘He’s been following us — you and me. Following our progress. He nearly killed me last night. And today he delivered a message. That he can do what he damn well likes and we can’t do anything about it.’

‘You think that’s why he took your watch? To make a statement?’

Li shrugged. ‘Maybe. I don’t know. Maybe he’s just a mad bastard. But if he thinks we won’t get him, he’s wrong. By tomorrow morning his face will be as famous in China as Mao Zedong’s.’

They sat in silence for a moment, Margaret thinking quickly. ‘But he couldn’t have been responsible for blocking the AIDS test. Could he?’

Li shook his head. ‘No. That must either have been his employer or another employee.’

‘Someone with a lot of clout, anyway,’ Margaret said. ‘To subvert a pathologist and contrive to have the medical evidence destroyed.’

Li nodded solemnly, then turned to look at her. They had stopped at traffic lights. ‘I am beginning to have a bad feeling about it,’ he said. ‘It is starting to look like your idea that Chao was burned to try to hide something might be closer to the truth after all. They just misjudged how much damage would be done by the fire.’

When they arrived at the Centre Professor Xie was in mid-autopsy. He looked up as the doors swung open, and Margaret saw colour rise on his face behind the mask. There was something close to panic in his eyes. But he remained outwardly cool, slipping off the mask and turning to his assistants, asking them to leave for a few minutes. Li waited until the door had closed behind them. ‘Do you still maintain, Professor, that Dr Campbell did not ask you last night to arrange for a sample of Chao Heng’s blood to be AIDS-tested?’

The professor smiled nervously and glanced at Margaret. ‘No, of course not,’ he said. ‘I’m sure Dr Campbell did ask. But, you know, my English is not, perhaps, what it might be…’

‘We never had any trouble with your English through three autopsies, Professor,’ Margaret said. ‘And I didn’t have the impression last night that you in any way misunderstood my request. I’m sure Constable Lily Peng will bear me out.’

The colour drained from the professor’s face. Li said, ‘You are in deep trouble, Professor Xie. Attempting to destroy or cover up evidence would make you an accessory to murder.’

The professor held himself very stiffly, and he spoke softly, rapidly, in Chinese. ‘I am not involved in this, Deputy Section Chief Li. I do what I am told. No more, no less. I have no idea what is going on. But if you try to implicate me, then I can assure you, you are the one who will be in trouble.’ Margaret watched his scalpel hand tremble as he spoke.

‘Are you threatening me, Professor?’ Li’s voice was level and steady.

‘No. I am telling you how things are. And they are things over which neither of us has any control.’

‘We’ll see,’ Li said, and he turned abruptly and headed for the door, catching Margaret by surprise. She had no idea what had been said, but the tone was unmistakably hostile. Her brow furrowed in a question to Professor Xie that was formulated entirely in body language. After all, they had performed three autopsies together. There had been an element of bonding in that. The professor responded with an almost imperceptible shrug that carried the hint of an apology. Margaret sighed and followed Li out. She caught him up as he stepped from the cool of the building into the blaze of mid-afternoon sunshine.

‘What was all that about?’ she asked.

‘He was warning me off.’

‘What, you mean threatening you?’

‘No.’ Li smiled grimly. ‘Warning me.’

Margaret shook her head. ‘I don’t understand. I mean, can’t you just arrest him for obstructing a police investigation?’

‘We have no such law.’

‘So, what happens if someone refuses to co-operate with the police?’

Li smiled with genuine amusement at her naïveté. ‘No one refuses to co-operate with the police in China.’

Margaret took a moment to fully absorb his meaning. ‘But isn’t that what Professor Xie just did?’ she asked.

Li’s smile faded. ‘No. He didn’t refuse to co-operate. He just lied.’

‘Where is she now?’ Chen stood behind his desk, eyes blazing with anger as he gathered papers together and slipped them into a briefcase.

‘In my office.’

‘You’re a fool, Li,’ Chen raged. ‘I told you she was to play no further part in this investigation.’

‘She’s a witness. I’m taking her statement.’

‘Proving what? That Professor Xie’s English is less than perfect? For God’s sake, Li, what possible reason could the professor have for deliberately destroying evidence or failing to carry out blood tests?’

‘None.’

‘Well, there you are, then.’

‘He was ordered to.’

Chen’s laugh was hollow and without humour. ‘Oh, what’s this? A conspiracy theory now? Dr Campbell is turning out to be the biggest mistake I ever made.’ He rounded the desk and unhooked his jacket from a peg on the back of the door.

‘It’s got nothing to do with Dr Campbell.’

‘You’re right. It hasn’t. This is an investigation by Section One of the Criminal Investigation Department of Beijing Municipal Police.’ He pulled his jacket on angrily.

‘The point is, someone tried to stop us doing tests on Chao’s blood, Chief.’

‘Well, if that’s true, they succeeded, didn’t they?’ He looked at his watch. ‘Look, I’ve got a meeting at the Procurator General’s office. I’m going to be late.’ He paused at the door and cast Li a withering look. ‘Perhaps you’d like me to pass on your conspiracy theory to Deputy Procurator General Zeng, since you and he seem very tight on this case.’

Li followed him out into the corridor, ignoring the barb. ‘Chief, I think the key to this whole case is in what those blood tests would have shown up.’

‘Then find another key. There’s always a back door.’ Chen checked his watch again without breaking his stride. ‘And, for heaven’s sake, lose the American. I hear she’s quit her job at the university.’

‘She’s booked a flight home tomorrow morning.’

‘Good. Make sure she’s on it.’

Li stopped and watched Chen all the way to the end of the corridor, then turned into the detectives’ room, ignoring the curious glances of his colleagues and passing straight through into his own office. He slammed the door behind him. Margaret was sitting at his desk, tipping the chair slowly backwards and forwards.

‘It’s strange to think he was in here,’ she said. She lifted a copy of Johnny Ren’s photograph from the desk. ‘I take it this is him?’ Li nodded. ‘He doesn’t look at all like I imagined him.’

‘How did you think he’d look?’

‘Not Chinese. I don’t know why. I knew he would have to be, but it’s not the picture I had in my head.’ She examined the photograph again. ‘He’s got evil eyes, hasn’t he? There’s no light in them. They’re quite dead.’ She looked up. ‘What did Chen say?’

‘He’s not buying into a conspiracy.’

‘Are you surprised?’

‘Not really. He thinks Professor Xie’s story sounds quite plausible.’

‘So where does that leave us?’

‘It leaves me trying to catch Johnny Ren. And it leaves you catching a plane home in the morning.’ He glanced at her, then quickly averted his eyes, suddenly self-conscious. He wandered to the window, hands pushed in pockets, and there was a silence between them that lingered interminably.

Finally she said, ‘Of course, there could be another way of getting access to Chao’s medical history.’

He turned, frowning. ‘How do you mean?’

‘Well, presumably he had a doctor. I mean, where else would he get all those prescription drugs?’

Li shook his head in disbelief. It was so obvious, why had it taken both of them until now to think of it? And then he smiled to himself.

‘What’s so funny?’ she asked.

‘Old Chen,’ he said. ‘He is a prickly old bastard, but he’s not stupid. I told him I thought the key to Chao’s murder was in his blood. He said,’ — and Li was careful to recall the exact words — “then find another key. There’s always a back door.”’

‘As long as you let me help to unlock it.’ Margaret raised an appealing eyebrow.

‘You’ve got a plane to catch.’

‘A lot can happen in…’ She checked her watch. ‘… seventeen and a half hours.’

II

Li turned the Jeep down Beijingzhan Street, and ahead of them rose the twin towers of Beijing railway station, where Old Yifu would arrive back from Sichuan some time that evening. Li had taken a circuitous route to Chongwenmen to avoid the traffic that had ground to its habitual afternoon standstill on the second ring road. He had finally summoned up the courage to ask Margaret what had happened to make her quit the university. And she had told him: about missing her lecture, about the attitude of Jiang and his staff, about her row with Bob. Now he shook his head and said, ‘I am so sorry, Margaret.’

‘Why? It’s not your fault.’

‘If I had taken you back to your hotel instead of my apartment none of this would have happened.’

‘If I hadn’t got drunk…’ She didn’t need to finish. ‘Well, anyway, it’s that little bitch, Lily Peng, that I blame. It was her that snitched on us.’

Li shrugged. ‘If it had not been her it would have been someone else — the duty policeman at the apartments, the staff at the Friendship… But there was no reason for you to quit.’

She sighed. ‘Yes, there was. I guess maybe Bob’s holier-than-thou attitude pushed me over the edge, but the blow-up’s been coming since the moment I stepped off the plane. I should never have come here, Li Yan. I came for all the wrong reasons — to escape the mess of my life back home, not because I wanted to come to China. And Bob was absolutely right. I didn’t take the interest I should have, I didn’t prepare properly. I arrived with all the baggage of popular paranoid American propaganda about China and communism — and a completely closed mind.’ She glanced at him across the Jeep and smiled ruefully. ‘If I hadn’t met you, if you hadn’t challenged me and forced me to open my eyes and my mind, I would probably have gone through my six weeks here like some kind of automaton, and none of this country would have rubbed off on me. And I’d have gone home the same person I was when I arrived. And the same wasted life would have been waiting for me when I got back. But these four days have changed me. When I go home tomorrow, it’ll be a different me who gets off the plane in Chicago. And I won’t be going back to the same old wasted life. I’ll be starting a new one.’ She stared at her hands. ‘I just wish…’ But she couldn’t finish what she had started and shrugged, a little hopelessly. ‘So why did you take me back to your apartment?’

He kept his eyes ahead of him as he circumnavigated the station, turning east at the junction into Chongwenmen Dong Street. He wanted to tell her it was because he needed to be close to her, that he didn’t want to leave her, that just her presence, her scent, in his apartment was worth all the wrath that he knew would pour down on him from above. He said, ‘With Johnny Ren on the loose I was concerned for your safety.’

‘Oh,’ she said, somehow disappointed that there wasn’t more to it. ‘And is that what you told your boss?’

Li nodded. ‘He wasn’t impressed.’

Margaret bridled. ‘You know, that’s what gets me about this whole disapproval thing. I spent the night in your apartment, entirely innocently. But they don’t believe it. There’s something prurient about the whole lot of them.’

Li smiled. ‘And when people think you are guilty, you might as well have had the pleasure of committing the crime.’

Margaret turned and looked at him curiously. ‘Pleasure?’

But still he kept his eyes on the road. ‘It’s a pity we’ll never know.’ After a moment he glanced across, but she had turned away again and he could not gauge her reaction. In fact, her heart was pounding. Was he really expressing regret that they had not slept together? Certainly, it was characteristically oblique, although paradoxically it was also uncharacteristically direct. She wanted to grab his face and tell him to say what he meant, express what he felt. But she realised that she had done neither herself. Why was it so difficult? But, of course, she knew. It was fear. Her fear of involving herself in a relationship with no future, especially when she was still so raw from the last one. His fear of involving himself in any kind of relationship. She suspected that his career had predominated for so long he had forgotten how to be with a woman.

They turned off Xihuashi Street and into the compound overlooked by the apartment block where Chao had lived. Li parked the Jeep in the shade of the trees and Margaret followed him to the door of Chairwoman Liu Xinxin’s ground-floor apartment. Liu Xinxin answered the door cautiously, glaring at Li for a moment until recognition dawned.

‘Detective Li,’ she said. And then she stared inquisitively at Margaret.

‘Chairwoman Liu, this is Dr Campbell, an American pathologist who is helping with our inquiry. Do you speak English?’

Liu Xinxin’s face lit up. ‘Oh, yes. But I am slow now. I no get much practice.’ She held out a hand to Margaret. ‘Am very please meet you, Doctah Cambo.’

Margaret shook her hand. ‘It is my pleasure.’

‘Please to come in.’ She led Li and Margaret into her living room. Her two grandsons were squatting on the carpet playing with a toy steam locomotive crudely carved in wood and painted by hand. They gawped at Margaret in awe. ‘Tea?’ Liu Xinxin asked.

‘That’s very kind of you,’ Li said. ‘Unfortunately we have very little time today.’ He was anxious not to be drawn into another rousing chorus of ‘Our Country’ around the piano. ‘I wondered if you could tell us which doctor Mr Chao attended.’

‘Hah!’ Liu Xinxin waved her hand dismissively. ‘Very strange man, Mr Chao. He is scientist, educated in West.’ She nodded towards Margaret as if to say, ‘You should know, you come from the West’. ‘Everything modern, modern. Expensive hi-fi. CD player. Mobile telephone. But he no like modern medicine. He like traditional, Chinese herbal medicine. He go Tongrentan.’

Margaret glanced at Li. ‘What’s that?’

‘It’s a traditional Chinese medicine store. The kind of place where you pay a year’s wages for a piece of fifty-year-old ginseng root.’ He turned back to Liu Xinxin. ‘What branch?’

‘Dazhalan.’

‘I don’t understand,’ Margaret said. ‘He went to a medicine store instead of a doctor?’

Li shook his head. ‘They have consulting doctors there. Usually retired. It’s a way to augment their pensions.’

‘And they prescribe herbal medicine?’

‘Traditional Chinese medicine,’ Liu Xinxin said. ‘Very good medicine. Make you well very fast.’

‘Well, he certainly didn’t get reverse transcriptase and protease inhibitors in a herbal medicine shop,’ Margaret said.

Dazhalan was a jumble of street markets and curiosity shops in narrow, medieval hutongs just south of Qianmen. Li and Margaret pushed their way through frenetic crowds of shoppers. Tinny music blasted from loudspeakers hanging at every corner. Red and yellow character banners zigzagged above their heads. Shopfronts were fantastic creations of tiled and curling eaves supported on intricate and colourfully painted beams and pillars. ‘During the Ming Dynasty,’ Li told her, ‘there were great wicket gates here that closed off the inner city at night. Dazhalan means, literally, “big stockades”. In imperial Beijing, shops and theatres were not permitted in the centre of the city. So they opened up here, just outside the gates. It was the place to come on a dull Beijing night.’

They passed a four-hundred-year-old emporium selling pickle and sauce, a restaurant offering imperial snacks, a shop which had been dealing in silks and wool and furs for more than a hundred years. ‘This used to be the red-light district,’ Li said. ‘Until the communists shut all the brothels down in 1949 and sent the girls to work in factories.’ And suddenly he remembered Lotus, and his promise to Yongli. He cursed inwardly, but he was in no position to do anything about it now.

Beneath a colourful and beautifully ornate canopy, white marble lions in wrought-iron cages guarded the entrance to the Tongrentan Traditional Medicine Shop, purveyor of herbal concoctions since 1669. But they had not prevented several young men from slipping into the shade of the canopy and curling up on the cool marble slabs to sleep away the afternoon. Li and Margaret stepped over an older man who was snoring aggressively and pushed through glass doors into the deliciously cool air-conditioned interior.

It was not what Margaret had been expecting. Somehow the notion of traditional Chinese herbal medicine had conjured in her mind a dark and dingy shop, with daylight slanting in through old wooden shutters, and an old man with a long, wispy white beard serving behind a counter piled high with jars and bottles of exotic pills and lotions. Instead it was large and bright and modern. A gallery on the second floor was supported on red-and-gold pillars and overlooked the first-floor shop where the pills and lotions were displayed in very ordinary cardboard boxes in fluorescently lit glass display cabinets. High above them, huge glass lampshades were painted with scenes of imperial China and hung with long yellow tassels. The medicines themselves, however, surpassed even her wildest expectations: dried seahorses and sea slugs, tiger bone, rhino horn and snake wine, cures for everything from fright to encephalitis — or so they claimed.

Just inside the doors, a long and patiently waiting queue of people snaked across the breadth of the shop. The object of their vigilance was a consultation with an old, pinched-faced man perched in a booth off to the left. This retired doctor of medicine was, apparently, slow in dispensing his sagacity, and Li had no intention of waiting his turn. He pushed his way to the head of the queue, displaying his Ministry ID. Margaret hurried after him, eliciting odd and occasionally resentful stares. But no one voiced any objection. Li and Margaret entered the booth as a girl in her early twenties emerged, pasty-faced and spotty-cheeked, clutching a prescription and looking distinctly worried. The old doctor looked at Li’s ID for a long time before examining his face carefully and then inviting them both to sit. He barely gave Margaret a second glance. ‘What can I do for you, Detective?’ he asked.

‘I’m interested in one of your patients, Chao Heng.’

The doctor tipped his head in Margaret’s direction. ‘Who is she?’

‘An American doctor. A pathologist helping us with a case.’

The old man turned to Margaret, eyeing her now with interest. ‘Where did you train?’ he asked her in perfect English.

She was taken aback. ‘The University of Illinois.’

‘Ah. I spent some time at the University of California, Davis Medical School. A research project on glandular cancer with my very good friend Dr Hibbard Williams. Endocrinology is his speciality. Perhaps you have heard of him?’

‘I’m afraid not.’ She frowned. ‘I thought you were a practitioner of traditional Chinese medicine.’

‘I studied both traditional Chinese and Western medicines. There is much that each can learn from the other. What is your speciality?’

‘Burn victims.’

His nose wrinkled in distaste. ‘How unpleasant.’

Li interrupted. ‘Chao Heng did consult with you? Is that right?’

The doctor nodded. ‘Mr Chao, yes.’

‘I understand that he was unwell for some time.’

‘Has something happened to him?’

‘He was murdered.’

‘Ah.’ The doctor seemed unconcerned. ‘How unfortunate. But he was dying anyway.’

‘What of?’ Margaret asked.

‘I have no idea. I treated his symptoms for about six months but nothing worked for him. Eventually I suggested to him that he see a former colleague of mine at the Beijing Hospital in Dahua Lu. He was not very keen. He was a great believer in traditional remedies. But there was nothing more I could do for him.’

‘What were his symptoms?’ Margaret was curious.

‘They were many,’ the old doctor said, shaking his head. ‘He suffered from exhaustion and diarrhoea, and he had frequent fevers. He had recurrent bouts of thrush and a cough that would not go away. He later developed swollen glands in the groin and the armpits. He was losing a lot of weight latterly. Some of his symptoms responded to treatment, at least for a time. But they always came back.’

Margaret was frowning. ‘These are all possible indicators of HIV. Was he ever AIDS-tested?’

‘Yes, I believe he was tested for HIV at the Beijing Hospital. That was about the last time I saw him.’

‘And?’ Margaret asked.

‘And what?’ the old man responded testily.

‘Was the test positive?’

‘Oh no.’ The old herbalist scratched his chin. ‘Mr Chao did not have AIDS.’

III

Li parked the Jeep in the shade of the trees at the east end of Dong Jiaominxiang Lane, a stone’s throw away from the back entrance to Municipal Police Headquarters where Li and Margaret had had their first encounter the previous Monday. She gazed along the street towards the redbrick building that housed the headquarters of the Criminal Investigation Department and the arched gateway that led into its compound. Was it really only three days since that first meeting? She said to Li, ‘That’s where we first bumped into each other, isn’t it?’ And she grinned. ‘Literally.’

‘Yes,’ he said, smiling and remembering how angry he had been. ‘I was going for an interview for this job. Or, at least, that’s what I thought. I’d spent all morning ironing my uniform so that I would look my best. And I ended up covered in dirt, with my elbow grazed, and my shirt splashed with water where I tried to wash away the blood.’

Margaret laughed. That’s why he had been so annoyed. ‘It got you the job, though, didn’t it? They must have thought you looked like a man of action.’

‘I’d got the job anyway. I’m just lucky they didn’t change their minds when they saw the state I was in.’

She touched his arm where he had grazed it, and he felt the heat of her fingers like a burn. ‘It’s taken a long time to heal,’ she said.

‘That’s a fresh one.’

‘Oh.’ She sounded surprised. ‘Some other girl knock you off your bike?’

He smiled. ‘It’s a long story.’

‘Better not tell me, then. Because we don’t have much time left.’ She had meant it in fun, but no sooner had she said it than they both felt the truth of it, and there was an unacknowledged pain in the fact of her looming departure.

They walked east in silence then, under the leafy canopy of trees, and turned left into Dahua Lu. It was a long street running north, with mature trees down the east side, shading the entrance to Dongdan Park. The Beijing Hospital, a modern jumble of sprawling white buildings of two and five storeys, ran along the west side behind high white-painted railings. There was a constant traffic of white-uniformed nurses in the street, the occasional ambulance coming or going. An old man in slippers and pale pyjamas, with a face as grey as the ash on his cigarette, shuffled at one of the gates, puffing smoke into the late afternoon sky. They passed the smoker on the way in, and Li asked for directions to the administration block from an armed policeman on sentry duty.

When they got inside, Li spoke for several minutes to a receptionist before they were led upstairs to a waiting room on the third floor and left there to kick their heels. It was a square room, with low, khaki-green settees around the walls and glass-topped tables with lace doilies — standard factory-issue furniture for reception rooms across China. After ten minutes a Reception Officer arrived to shake hands and exchange cards with Li and enquire politely about the purpose of their visit. Margaret watched the ritual exchange in Chinese and tried to exercise all three Ps simultaneously. The dialogue seemed interminable. The Reception Officer left and she asked Li what was happening. ‘He has gone to arrange a meeting with the Administration Officer,’ he said. ‘And to send in some tea.’

‘Tea?’

‘We might be some time.’

In fact it was several cups and another twenty minutes before the Administration Officer arrived with an entourage of assistants and the Reception Officer, who then made the introductions. More ritual handshaking and exchanging of cards. Then they all sat down, Li and Margaret on one side of the room, the reception committee on the other. They had all cast curious glances in her direction, but otherwise made no comment.

Margaret sat in frustrated ignorance during the subsequent exchange between Li and the Administration Officer. It was a short conversation. She saw Li visibly pale, then the Administration Officer stood up, signalling an end to their meeting. More ritual handshaking, and they were led back down to the ground floor. She was itching to ask Li what had been said, but the Reception Officer was determined to see them out of the door himself, and there was some paperwork to be completed at the reception desk. She contained her impatience.

Li retraced their steps down Dahua Lu in long, loping strides, his hands plunged deep in his pockets. Margaret was struggling to keep up with him, half running to do so. ‘But what did they say?’ She was almost beside herself with curiosity, and he was being infuriatingly uncommunicative, concentrating on unshared dark thoughts that swam through his head behind deeply furrowed brows. They reached the Jeep and he got in behind the wheel. She got into the passenger side. ‘For God’s sake, Li Yan!’

He turned towards her. ‘Are you hungry?’

‘What?’

‘I could really go a jian bing. I haven’t eaten all day.’

‘Neither have I, but I’d rather know what they told you in the hospital.’

‘Mei Yuan will still be selling jian bing at the corner of Dongzhimennei,’ he said. He started the Jeep and pulled away from the sidewalk. They had driven north, the length of Dahua Lu, and were turning east on to Jianguomennei Avenue when he said, ‘It seems they ran all sorts of tests on Chao.’ He replayed in his mind the short conversation he had conducted with the Administration Officer at the hospital. ‘But certain results never came back from the laboratory, and the next thing all his medical records were removed from the Beijing Hospital and he was transferred as an in-patient to Military Hospital Number 301.’

Margaret waited. But Li had finished, and the significance of what he had told her somehow escaped her. ‘So what’s Military Hospital Number 301?’ she asked.

‘It is a high-security VIP hospital. It treats the top people in government and the bureaucracy. Deng Xiaoping received treatment there during his final illness.’

Margaret frowned. ‘But Chao wasn’t in that category of VIP, was he?’

‘No, he was not.’

‘So how come he was being treated there?’

‘I don’t know. It doesn’t make any sense to me.’

Margaret thought for a moment. ‘I guess he could only have been admitted to Military Hospital Number 301 if someone very powerful had arranged it, right?’ Li nodded. ‘Someone high up in government, or the civil service?’ Li nodded again, and for the first time Margaret began to understand Li’s retreat into himself. ‘Are we getting into something here that’s starting to get a bit scary?’ she asked, a knot like a fist beginning to turn in her stomach.

‘I’ve had a bad feeling about this all day,’ Li said. He breathed deeply. ‘And it’s not going away.’

He sounded his horn more frequently than usual as they weaved through the bicycles and traffic in Chaoyangmen Nanxiaojie Street. He was more used to manoeuvring his way along this street as a cyclist than as a motorist.

‘But you will still be able to access his medical records, won’t you?’

Li looked uncertain. ‘I don’t know. Dealing with a place like that is outside my experience, perhaps even my jurisdiction.’

‘In the States we’d subpoena the records.’

‘But this is China, not the United States.’

‘You told me no one in China refused to co-operate with the police.’

‘Of course, I will ask for the records,’ he said.

‘And if they won’t give you them?’

‘They’ll have to have a very good reason.’ His words sounded braver than he felt. He felt like a weak swimmer who has strayed further from shore than he intended and is a long way out of his depth.

‘Okay,’ Margaret said. ‘Let’s think about this. We’re dealing here with someone who has a great deal of power and influence. Someone with enough clout to have Chao admitted to a high-security hospital. Perhaps the same person who hired Johnny Ren to murder him and is now trying to stop you from finding out why. But this is not some all-powerful, or even infallible, individual. He’s made mistakes. Like making a mess of getting rid of the evidence, if that’s what Chao was. He clearly thought that burning the body would destroy whatever it was in his blood they wanted to hide. It didn’t. Then they made a real clumsy job of stopping us doing the AIDS test. Incinerating the body, for Christ’s sake, and all the samples! An administrative error? That’s not going to hold up for five minutes if you pursue it hard enough.’

‘But he didn’t have AIDS. We know that. So why were they trying to stop us from testing for it?’

‘In case we found something else. Something they didn’t want us to find.’

‘What?’

Margaret shook her head in frustration. ‘I don’t know.’

‘And what about the other two murders? DNA tests prove that all three were killed by Ren. What’s the connection?’ Li felt the beginnings of a headache. The deeper they got into this, the muddier the waters were becoming.

‘I don’t know,’ Margaret said again. She was beginning to realise how little they really knew about any of it. ‘All I know is that someone must have been watching your investigation every step of the way. Someone with detailed access to your every move, and an understanding of the implications of everything you’ve done.’

Li frowned. ‘What makes you think that?’

‘How else would Johnny Ren have known who was leading the case? How would he have known who to follow? How else would anyone know the autopsy results, or that you had asked for an AIDS test? I mean, who else knew about any of it outside the department?’

‘No one,’ Li said aggressively. He couldn’t believe she was suggesting that someone in Section One was implicated. Then he was struck by a thought that turned his blood to ice. ‘Except…’ He didn’t even dare to voice the thought.

‘Except who?’ When he didn’t respond, Margaret asked again, ‘Except who, Li Yan?’

‘Deputy Procurator General Zeng.’

Her brows furrowed in consternation. ‘Who?’

‘Procurators are a bit like district attorneys. They decide whether to prosecute a case in court. Zeng asked me to provide him with detailed daily reports on the progress of the case. He seemed to know a lot about it already.’ He looked at Margaret. ‘I mean, it was unusual, but he is a DPG. I never really thought anything about it.’

Margaret whistled softly. ‘Well, that tells us something anyway.’

‘What?’

‘Our man’s powerful enough to have the equivalent of a district attorney in his pocket.’ She glanced apprehensively at Li. ‘That makes him pretty formidable opposition.’

‘Thank you for those words of encouragement,’ Li said dryly.

She smiled, and thought at least they could still smile. But the smile faded as she remembered that in the morning she would be boarding a plane and Li would be left to face this on his own. She didn’t want to leave him. She wished he could get on the plane with her and they could both leave all this behind. The game was no longer a game. It had turned dark and frightening.

Li turned right into Dongzhimennei and drew in at the kerb beside Mei Yuan’s jian bing house. Mei Yuan rose from her stool as soon as she saw who it was. She gave Margaret a wide smile and said to Li, ‘You are a little late for breakfast today.’

Li shook his head. ‘No, we are early for breakfast tomorrow.’ Margaret checked the time. It was nearly 6 p.m. ‘Two jian bing,’ Li said. ‘It has been a long day.’

‘It has,’ Mei Yuan said, beginning her preparations for the cooking. ‘I have been waiting for you for hours. I have a solution for your riddle.’

Li and Margaret exchanged glances. ‘The one about the three murders and the cigarette ends?’ Margaret asked.

Mei Yuan nodded. ‘You said he deliberately left the cigarette ends beside each of the bodies because he knew that you would find them and match the DNA.’

‘That’s right,’ Li said. ‘Why?’

‘I think it is so obvious,’ Mei Yuan said, ‘that maybe I have not understood the question properly.’

Margaret was intrigued. ‘So why do you think he did it?’

Mei Yuan shrugged. ‘To make you believe these murders are connected — when there is no connection.’

Li frowned. ‘But why would he do that?’

‘Wait a minute,’ Margaret said. ‘You once told me that you conducted thousands of interviews to track down a man who murdered a whole family during a burglary. And it took you how long?’

‘Two years.’

‘So how long was it going to take you to track down all those migrant workers from Shanghai, and all the petty drug dealers and gay boys?’

It dawned on Li. ‘Long enough to keep me looking in all the wrong places for months on end, trying to make a connection that doesn’t exist. God!’ It was so simple. But anyone who understood the modus operandi of the Chinese police would know that they would follow a painstaking and pedantic process of information-gathering that could take months, even years. ‘The only connection is that there is no connection,’ he said. It was a revelation. He gave Mei Yuan a big hug, and Margaret felt a twinge of jealousy. ‘How on earth did you think of it, Mei Yuan?’

She glowed with the praise and Li’s attention. ‘Maybe,’ she said, ‘because I did not have to.’