The Firemaker

I

Thursday Night

Red light refracting in hot humid air hung over the city like a veil as the sun dipped in the west, and darkness drew like a curtain from the east across the Middle Kingdom. Below them the lights of the city twinkled in the dusk. Red tail-lights of traffic in long lines snaked east and west, north and south, the growling of their engines a distant rumble. Somewhere down there, Margaret thought, people were crowding the stalls at the Dong’anmen night market, taking pleasure in eating, happy and free at the end of a working day. She wished she were among them.

They had entered Jingshan Park by the south gate, almost opposite the place where the woman in the blue print dress had been knocked off her bike and Margaret had stopped the bleeding from her severed femoral artery by standing on her leg. They were entering the park as most people were leaving. It would close in an hour. They had followed a winding path up through the trees to the pavilion that stood on the top of Prospect Hill. Halfway up, they had stopped briefly to join a crowd of people watching a very old lady in black pyjamas perform incredible contortions. She had laid a mat on the earth and, lying on her back, had wedged both her feet beneath a pole placed behind her neck, effectively folding herself in two. The crowd gasped in amazement, and there was a little burst of applause. The old lady remained impassive, but she was clearly enjoying showing off the suppleness of her joints and muscles. Margaret had guessed she must be in her eighties.

The pavilion was deserted when they got there, orange-tiled curling eaves supported on maroon-and-gold pillars, late evening sunshine throwing warm light on cold marble. Walking round, beneath the eaves, provided a 360-degree panorama of the city below. It took Margaret’s breath away.

Li squatted on the steps, looking south, over the symmetrical patchwork of roofs that was the Forbidden City, to the vast open expanse of Tiananmen Square. He liked to come here, he told her, in the late evening, when it was quiet and he could watch the city come to life as darkness fell around him. It was the most peaceful place in Beijing, he said, and it released him to think freely and clearly. She sat down beside him, their arms touching, and she felt the heat of his body and breathed in the musky, earthy smell of him.

For a long time neither of them spoke. Swallows darted and dived around them in the dying light, and below, among the trees, the screech of cicadas rose, pulsing, into the night air.

Eventually he said, ‘I’m scared, Margaret.’

She inclined her head towards him and examined his profile, bold and strongly defined. ‘Scared of what?’ she asked softly.

‘If I knew, I wouldn’t be scared,’ he said. ‘I have a sick feeling in my stomach. I think we are both in danger.’

‘In danger of what?’

‘Of knowing too much.’

Margaret released a tiny gasp of frustration. ‘But we know hardly anything. What do we know?’

‘We know that someone with power and privilege and something to hide had Chao Heng killed. We know that a professional hit-man was employed to do it, and that he killed two other, perfectly innocent, people for no other reason than to confuse the investigation. We know, or think we know, that there is a conspiracy to pervert the course of that investigation, involving one of the highest law officers in the land. And we know that the killer is out there, somewhere, watching us getting closer and closer.’ He paused. ‘We know far too much.’

She shivered, in spite of the heat. For the first time she tasted his fear, and she knew it was real. ‘What do you think they will do? Will they try to kill us?’ It seemed shocking, somehow, that she was even suggesting such a thing. It had not occurred to her before that they could be in any real danger.

‘I don’t know,’ Li said. ‘They will be scared of us, because of what we know, or because of what they think we will find out. And we know they are ruthless people. Whatever they are hiding, they have killed three people to protect it. If it is worth three lives, it is worth three more, or thirty more, or three hundred more. How can you draw a line you have already crossed?’

They sat in silence, each with their own private thoughts, and Margaret slipped her arm through his and held on to him for comfort. Below, the darkness among the trees grew around them, secret and hidden and menacing. Margaret felt surrounded. Isolated. What had seemed peaceful was now threatening. Beyond, among the twinkling city lights, people went about their lives, eating, loving, laughing, sleeping. Families gathering in hutongs around flickering blue TV screen light, eating dumplings and drinking beer, giggling at some programme. Normal lives. Something that neither she nor Li could possess. It was all so close, but just out of reach… She had seen Bertolucci’s film, and understood now the isolation of the Last Emperor, Puyi, shut away from the real world behind the walls of the Forbidden City spread out now beneath her in the dusk. Normality was just a touch away, but untouchable.

Her gaze wandered a little to the west, where the last light in the sky reflected on a long, narrow lake. She frowned, unable to place it. She had not been aware of such a large body of water in the centre of the city. ‘What is that place?’ she asked. ‘I can’t remember ever having seen it from the street.’

He followed her eyes. ‘Zhongnanhai,’ he said. ‘The New Forbidden City. It is where our leaders live and work. You have never seen it because it is hidden behind high walls, just like the old Forbidden City.’

She gazed on the dark forbidden lake and wondered if perhaps somewhere in all the villas nestling among the trees along its banks lay the answers to all their questions. The lights of a car briefly flashed across the water and turned into the drive of a distant villa where light leaked out through slatted blinds. She closed her eyes and let her head rest on his shoulder.

They had been up on Prospect Hill for nearly an hour. The sun finally slid down below the ragged line of distant purple hills, and stars twinkled in a dark blue firmament. Li had smoked several cigarettes, and for the last forty minutes they had not spoken much. Margaret’s arm was still through his, her head still resting lightly on his shoulder. The darkness now did not seem so threatening. It wrapped itself around them like a blanket, and she felt safe and hidden. ‘There is one other thing that scares me,’ Li said finally.

She waited for him to tell her, but he said nothing. ‘What?’ she asked.

He swallowed and turned to meet her eye. ‘Losing you,’ he said.

She felt a rush of blood suffuse her with warmth, a trembling inside that was something between fear and pleasure. She understood how big a moment it was for him to have given voice to his emotion. As long as you keep such feelings secret and safe, they cannot hurt you. They cannot be turned against you, or rejected, or laughed at. But the moment you share them you become vulnerable. And once spoken, the words can never be taken back. Her mouth had gone dry, her throat thick. Her voice was husky. ‘I don’t want to lose you either.’ It was almost a whisper. Now she had committed, too. They were equally vulnerable; the genie was out of the bottle.

He put a hand up to touch her face, and tracked his fingers gently down the pale, soft skin of her cheek. Then he ran them back through her golden curls, feeling the shape of her skull through the soft, silken hair. He put his other hand up to cup her face and draw her close. She rested her hands lightly on his arms and closed her eyes as his lips brushed hers once, twice. And she opened her mouth to receive his — soft and warm and smoky. And then their arms were around each other, the first tentative kiss giving way to a fierce, almost desperate passion. They broke apart for a moment, breathless, drinking each other in with restless, hungry eyes. And then they were kissing again. Urgently. Devouring each other. Bodies pressed together. He felt the hardness of her breasts pushing into him. They were on their knees now, his erection pressing hard into her belly. She wanted him inside her. She wanted to suck him in and keep him there. She wanted to consume him.

The crack of a twig snapping under foot cut through the chorus of cicadas from the trees below, and lust was replaced almost instantly by fear. They broke apart, and Li was on his feet. A flashlight shone in his face, and he raised an arm to shield his eyes. ‘Who’s that?’ he called.

The light fell away to the ground, and an old man climbed several tentative steps towards them. He flashed the lamp briefly at Margaret, and said to Li, ‘The gates will be locked in five minutes.’

On the steep path down through the trees, Margaret slipped her hand into his. It felt big and protective as it gave hers a small, gentle squeeze. Staff at the gatehouse waited impatiently to lock up, glaring at them as they passed outside to blink in the bright streetlights of Jingshanquan Street. The traffic was heavy, the sidewalks thick with evening strollers and teenagers wandering in aimless, giggling groups. Despite the life in the street, Li and Margaret felt immediately vulnerable, exposed and open to view. He took her arm to hurry her across the road, dodging vehicles to a chorus of horns. They got halfway and were trapped by a seemingly endless stream, standing with a group of others on the centre line, traffic behind them snapping at their heels. They saw a break and made a dash for it. Crossing from the other side, a woman with a bicycle and a bird in a cage lost control of the bike in her panic to cross. The front wheel turned and twisted. She lost her hold on the cage and it fell to the road, its door springing open. There was a screech of brakes and a blasting of horns as the approaching traffic ground to a halt. A large black-and-white bird, a family pet perhaps, worth many weeks’ wages, flapped up from the road. The woman wailed and tried to catch it. Her fingers grasped at the feathers but could not hold on, and the bird rose from her outstretched hands and spread its wings, making for the opposite side of the street. Margaret reached up and tried to snatch it from the air as it lifted over her head. With a flutter of feathers beating the air in panic, it eluded her grasp and flew off into the night towards the park. The woman wailed at her loss, still juggling with her bicycle, the shopping from her basket spilling on to the tarmac. Margaret bent to help her, but Li grabbed her hand and pulled her away. ‘We must go. We are too exposed.’

Margaret glanced back as they reached the opposite sidewalk. The woman was gathering her things from the middle of the road, traffic all around her honking impatiently. Tears streamed down her face. There was something, Margaret thought, inestimably sad in her loss. Both she and Margaret had come so close to plucking the bird from the air. Margaret imagined she had almost felt its heart beat as her fingers brushed its panicked breast. Its instinct had been to escape. And yet, Margaret knew, it would die in the wild.

Li hurried her away along the sidewalk, turning south into the dark, still backwater of Beichang Street, where he had parked the Jeep under the trees. They stopped on the kerb by the car, and without conscious decision by either of them were kissing almost immediately, all the passion and lust of the park returning in a rush. They broke breathlessly and she held his face and gazed anxiously into his eyes. ‘What are we going to do, Li Yan?’

It was a big question, a question that was many questions in one. A question he could not answer. His only thought was to make her safe while he tried to decide what he should do next. ‘I should get you back to the Friendship Hotel,’ he said.

‘I don’t want to leave you.’

‘Just for a few hours.’

‘I don’t want to leave you,’ she insisted, and kissed him, then shook her head and laughed at herself. ‘Listen to me. Like some teenage girl.’ She took a moment to gather herself. ‘I want to love you. I want to make love to you. We don’t even have anywhere to go. Not your place or mine.’

Li grinned. ‘Not even the back seat of the car?’

Margaret laughed. ‘I wouldn’t dare. Lily Peng’s probably hiding in the trunk.’ And then both their smiles faded as they realised that all the jokes in the world could not put off the moment when they would have to face up to reality. They had no future. And she was scared that if they separated now, she might never see him again. Like the bird broken free from the cage, he would slip through her fingers and disappear into the night. He opened the passenger door for her. ‘What will you do?’ she asked.

‘I need some time on my own to think. Then I will ask my uncle’s advice. He is due home tonight.’

II

Li watched Margaret run across the forecourt of the Friendship Hotel and up the steps to the main door. He still had the taste of her on his lips. There was a constriction in his throat and his eyes were burning. He knew he would not see her again, and his sense of loss was far greater than he could ever have imagined. But it was important that she remain here, away from him, until her plane took her to safety in the morning. The forces arrayed against him would be happy just to see her go. And they could focus on him, alone — as he intended to focus on them. He had no idea how far or how deep the rot had gone, or from what it had grown, but he knew he could no longer trust anyone, and that a difficult course lay ahead of him. He gunned the engine and pulled away with a squeal of tyres.

Margaret turned at the top of the steps and saw the Jeep drive away at speed. Li’s words were still ringing in her ears. Go straight to your room. Lock the door. Do not answer it to anyone, even room service. Wait for me to call. If I do not call, get a taxi straight to the airport in the morning and get on your plane. She knew he had no intention of calling, that he believed she would be safe as long as he stayed away from her, as long as she left the country as planned in the morning. But she had no intention of leaving. Her visa was good for nearly five more weeks. What she felt for Li she had not felt for a man in a long time. And she was damned if she was going to throw away the chance of at least a few weeks of happiness after everything that she had been through. After all, she thought, she could be dead tomorrow, or next week, or next year. And she would have played safe for what? For a few more empty days, weeks, months? If she had learned anything from the last year, it was that you had to grab the good things in life when they were there, because they, or you, might be gone tomorrow.

She crossed the polished marble floor to the reception desk to pick up her key.

‘Margaret.’

She turned, surprised, to find Bob hurrying across the foyer from where he’d been sitting impatiently reading a paper, waiting for her return. It was not a pleasant surprise. ‘What do you want?’ she said, running up the short flight of steps to the elevators.

He hurried after her. ‘I was worried about you. Jesus Christ, Margaret, what have you been up to? Public Security were at the university this afternoon looking for you.’

She stopped and scowled at him. ‘What are you talking about?’

‘Apparently you’re booked on the first flight out of here tomorrow.’

‘You don’t say,’ she said scornfully. ‘I brought the booking forward this morning after our little exchange. Only now, I’ve changed my mind.’

He looked at her in confusion. ‘But you can’t.’

‘I can do what I damn well like,’ she said pressing the call button for the elevator.

‘Not without a visa.’

‘My visa’s good for another five weeks.’

‘That’s the point. It’s not. These guys were from the Visa Section. Apparently your visa’s only good now till your flight leaves.’

The elevator arrived and the doors slid open. She stared at Bob in disbelief. ‘They can’t do that.’

‘Oh yes they can, Margaret.’ He put a comforting hand on her shoulder. ‘What’s going on?’

She shrugged his hand away. ‘None of your fucking business,’ she said, controlling her tears long enough to get into the elevator and press for her floor. As the doors slid shut, the tears came, hot and salty, and a deep sob tore at her chest. It wasn’t fair. How could they make her go? What right did they have? But she knew she couldn’t fight them, and she saw all her choices dwindling to zero.

She ran, still sobbing, along the landing to her room, past two astonished attendants. Inside, she slipped the chain on the door and sat on the edge of the bed, and let the tears flow freely down her cheeks. Her sense of powerlessness was overwhelming, like that of a child manipulated at the whim of an adult world whose power was absolute. The phone rang and startled her. It couldn’t be Li. She let it ring two or three times, fear growing inside her like a tumour, before lifting the receiver.

‘Hello.’

‘Dr Campbell?’ An American accent, the voice oddly familiar.

‘Who is this?’

‘It’s Dr McCord.’

Her relief was almost palpable. ‘McCord? What the hell do you want?’

‘I need to see you.’

‘In your dreams.’ Her fear was replaced by anger. ‘You’re the guy who told me to fuck off twice. Remember? Why would I want to see you?’

‘Because I know why Chao Heng was killed. And I think I could be next.’

She caught her breath. There was no doubting the fear in his voice, an odd desperation. ‘I’ll meet you downstairs in the bar.’

‘No,’ he said quickly. ‘Too public. Take a taxi to Tiantan Park — the Temple of Heaven. I’ll meet you at the east gate.’

Her fear was returning. ‘No. Hang on a minute…’

But he wasn’t listening. ‘For God’s sake make sure you’re not followed. I’ll see you there in half an hour.’ He hung up, and in the silence of the room she could hear her heart beating.

Li drove with the flow of traffic down Fuxingmennei Avenue towards the Gate of Heavenly Peace. Floodlit buildings on either side illuminated the way ahead. People had taken to the streets again to escape the heat of their homes. The sidewalks were crowded, families gathered beneath the trees on the south side. Li could see the tail-lights of vehicles stretching for miles ahead into the shimmering hazy night. Somewhere in the city Johnny Ren was patiently watching, awaiting further instructions. From whom? Deputy Procurator General Zeng would not be able to sleep for fear that Li had, perhaps, already begun to suspect his involvement. Somewhere, in some dark and secret place wherein power resided, a paymaster or paymasters must be trembling in fear of exposure. But exposure of what? Li’s ignorance seemed limitless. Whatever he knew, whatever they thought he knew, he felt a long way away from enlightenment.

How did one begin an investigation of a deputy procurator general without at least some proof? Who would authorise it? And who else might be involved? Not Chen, surely? But then, he had been so dismissive of the idea that Chao’s body had been deliberately destroyed, of the thought that Professor Xie might have been complicit in the incineration of blood and tissue samples. What was it they were so desperate to prevent him from discovering, and who stood to lose most from it?

Li knew he needed his uncle’s advice. Old Yifu would listen to everything he had to say without fear or favour. He would trust Li’s instincts but have a different perspective. His years of experience, of the police, of the justice system, his ability to calmly rationalise and sift through conflicting evidence, would be invaluable. More than ever before in his life, Li needed his uncle’s help now.

He drove past the Gate of Heavenly Peace, Mao’s portrait gazing down implacably upon the crowds in Tiananmen Square and his own mausoleum, a stern paternal figure remembered now with affection, his excesses and failures forgiven and forgotten. Past the gates of the Ministry of Public Security, and then right into the shady seclusion of Zhengyi Road. Immediately Li stood on the brakes, bringing his Jeep to a standstill. Near the foot of the road, outside the gates to the Ministry-provided police apartments where he lived with his uncle, were the blue and red flashing lights of several police vehicles and an ambulance. The road was blocked off, several uniformed officers milling on the sidewalk. Li felt a knot of nausea turn in his belly, and a cold sweat broke out across his forehead. He jammed his foot on the accelerator and sent the Jeep careering down the street to screech to a halt behind the ambulance. The uniformed officers turned in surprise as he leapt out of the car. ‘What’s happened? he demanded.

‘There’s been a murder,’ said the senior officer.

Li looked up and saw all the lights on in his apartment, the shadows of figures moving around inside. He started running. ‘You can’t go up there.’ The officer tried to stop him, but Li pulled free.

‘I live there!’

There was no sign of the duty policeman as he ran to the front door of the apartment block. But inside, the ground-floor landing was swarming with uniformed officers. Li went up the stairs two at a time. Behind him he heard someone say, ‘That’s Li. Better radio up to the apartment.’

When he got to the second landing it, too, was full of uniformed officers. The door of his apartment stood wide open. Lights were on everywhere. Inside he could see more bodies in uniform and plainclothes, and forensics men in white gloves. He recognised most of the faces. They all stood looking at him, frozen as if in a still frame from a movie. The silence was eerie, broken only by the odd crackle of a walkie-talkie. Li pushed through the figures in uniform and into the apartment. Still no one spoke or moved. He passed down the hall, glancing into the living room. It was a shambles, furniture upturned, the television set smashed. Fear rose like bile in Li’s throat. He carried on down to the bathroom where there seemed to be the biggest concentration of plainclothes and forensics officers. Detective Wu, chewing almost manically on a piece of gum, stood in his way. He looked pale and shocked, and his eyes were full of incomprehension.

‘What’s happened, Wu?’ Li’s voice was husky, almost a whisper. He cleared his throat.

Wu said nothing. He simply stepped out of the way, and Li saw the red spray of blood across the while tiles, and the body of Old Yifu in the dry bed of the bath, impaled by his own ceremonial sword, driven with such force that it had passed right through him, through the plastic of the bath, and into the floorboards below. The shock brought tears immediately to Li’s eyes and he started to shake. He looked at Wu.

‘He put up a hell of a fight,’ Wu said.

Li wanted to scream. He wanted to smash his fist into faces and walls, lash out with his feet. He wanted to inflict maximum damage on everyone and everything within reach. He put up a hell of a fight. But it was Li’s fight, not Yifu’s. Why had they done this? What possible point could there be in killing his uncle? Wu shifted uncomfortably. ‘I’ve got a warrant for your arrest, Li. Issued by the Municipal Procuratorate.’

Li knew now that this was a dream. A nightmare from which he was certain to wake up. ‘A warrant?’ It didn’t even sound like his own voice.

‘For the murder of Li Li Peng.’

Li was almost incapable of taking in this new twist to the nightmare. ‘Lily?’ he heard himself say.

‘Got her head bashed in at her apartment,’ Wu said, almost as though it were the most natural thing in the world. ‘I’m afraid I’m also going to have to hold you on suspicion of the murder of your uncle and the duty police officer here at the apartments.’

Li looked at the body of his uncle, lifeless eyes staring unseeingly at the ceiling, and then back at Wu. ‘You think I did this?’ His breathing was rapid now, and he felt in danger of losing control. He was holding on to reality by the merest thread. When was he going to wake up?

Wu looked embarrassed. ‘To be honest, Li Yan, I don’t believe for one minute that you did it. Any of it. None of us do. But we have evidence, and there are procedures to be gone through.’

‘What evidence?’ His anger almost choked him. He was paralysed now, rooted to the spot.

Wu snapped his fingers in the direction of a forensics officer and was handed a plastic evidence bag containing Li’s fob watch, its leather pouch dark with the staining of blood. ‘It was found in Lily’s apartment beside her body.’

Li looked at it like a man possessed. ‘That was stolen from my desk this morning. When we were all in the meeting room, and Johnny Ren was in my office.’

‘We only have your word for it that it was Johnny Ren. We all just saw some guy. No one else recognised him. And why would he kill Lily?’

Li already knew the answer to that one. She had been witness to Margaret’s request for the blood tests. ‘Why would I kill Lily?’ He couldn’t believe he was having to ask the question.

‘She snitched to Public Security about the American pathologist spending the night at your apartment.’ Wu shrugged uneasily. ‘It’s what they’ll say.’

Li would have laughed if it hadn’t all been so grotesque. ‘So I killed her? Is that it? Because she got me in trouble with my boss?’

Wu held out his hand and was passed another clear plastic bag. It contained a bloody handkerchief. ‘You can see Lily’s name embroidered on the corner. I reckon we’ll find it’s her blood on it. It was found in your bedroom.’ And he held his hand up quickly to stop Li’s protests. ‘And before you say anything more, I’m as uncomfortable with all of this as you are. But I’m still going to have to take you in.’

‘Let me see the arrest warrant.’

‘What?’ Wu was taken aback.

Li held out his hand. ‘Just show me the warrant.’

Wu sighed and took it from his pocket. Li unfolded it and looked for the signature. ‘Deputy Procurator General Zeng.’ He looked at Wu and waved the warrant at him. ‘He’s your man. He’s setting me up.’

‘What?’ It was Wu’s turn to be incredulous, and Li saw immediately how ludicrous it sounded. He realised just how neatly he had been set up. They wanted him out of circulation. They were going to discredit him, and his investigation. They were going to tie up Section One in a scandal and a sordid murder investigation that was going to divert attention away from Chao Heng — even if, in the long run, Li was cleared. He looked around at the officers eyeing him as if he were a madman. He looked at his uncle and wanted to hold him, and tell him he was sorry, and ask for his forgiveness. He felt the tears spring to his eyes again, and he blinked them back. What was it Old Yifu had always told him? Action is invariably better than inaction. Lead, do not be led. He turned and pushed into his uncle’s bedroom. ‘What the hell are you doing, Li?’ Wu shouted after him.

The bottom drawer of the dresser was partially open, as if, perhaps, his uncle had tried in vain to reach his gun. Li had left it fully loaded. He had intended to replace the rounds in the box the previous night, but with Margaret in the apartment he had forgotten. The revolver was still there, wrapped in tissue in the old shoe box at the back. The cold metal fitted snugly in his hand.

Wu was right behind him. ‘Come on, Li. I’m taking you back to Section One.’

Li stood and turned, grasping Wu by the collar and pressing the barrel of the revolver into his temple. ‘I’m walking out of here, Wu. And you’re coming with me.’

‘Don’t be a damned fool, Li. You and I both know you’re not going to shoot me.’

But Li’s eyes had taken on a cold, dark intensity. He looked unwaveringly at Wu. ‘If you believe I’m capable of any of this, Detective… then you must believe I’m capable of blowing your head off. If you want to test me, go ahead.’

Wu thought about it for a very brief moment. ‘I take your point,’ he said.

‘So tell everyone to back off.’

‘You heard him. Get the hell out of here,’ Wu shouted immediately. No one moved. ‘Now!’

Slowly, uniformed, plainclothed and forensics officers backed out of the apartment on to the landing. Li turned Wu around, pushing the revolver into the back of his neck, and made him follow. They stopped at Li’s bedroom and he pulled Wu backwards towards the dresser. ‘Get my holster out of the top drawer,’ he said. Wu did as he was told. ‘Hang on to it.’

Out on the landing, police officers parted to let them pass. ‘Don’t anyone try anything,’ Wu said. ‘No heroes, please. I’ve got a wife and kid who want to see me again.’

‘Not what I’ve heard,’ Li said.

Wu smiled grimly. ‘Okay, so we’re separated. So I lied. That’s no reason to kill a man.’

Li pushed him down the stairs one step at a time. ‘According to you, I don’t need much of a reason.’

‘Hey, come on, Li,’ Wu said. ‘I’m just doing my job. You’d do the same. You know you would. I mean, I don’t believe any of this is going to stand up. But you’re not doing yourself any favours.’

‘Well, I sure as hell can’t rely on you to do me any.’ And he shoved the barrel harder into the base of Wu’s skull.

‘Okay, okay,’ Wu said. ‘Have it your way.’

They passed silent, watching officers on the ground floor as they went through the front doors and out into the hot night, Wu telling everyone quietly and repeatedly to stay calm. The uniformed officers in the street looked on in amazement as Li pushed Wu towards his Jeep. ‘All right boys,’ Wu said. ‘Nothing tricksy, now. We’re going to let him go, all right?’

Li grabbed his holster and shoved Wu away, still pointing the revolver at him, and opened the door of the Jeep. He leaned in and started the engine. He looked very directly at Wu. ‘I didn’t do this.’

Wu raised his hands. ‘Hey, I’m not arguing. Just go.’

Li jumped in, threw the revolver and holster on to the passenger seat, banged the gears into reverse, and the Jeep screamed backwards up the street, smoke rising from the wheels in white clouds. A small road cut across the parkland that divided the street down its centre. He passed it, crashed into first gear and spun the Jeep across the road on to the opposite carriageway, and then north towards the bright lights of East Chang’an Avenue. The only thing he could see were the lifeless eyes of Old Yifu staring at the ceiling. He put up a hell of a fight, Wu had said. Li could picture it. The old man would not have given his life cheaply. Li’s tears for his uncle flowed now without restraint.

And then, with a sudden jolt, he realised that if they had killed Lily just because she had witnessed Margaret’s request for the blood tests, then they would have to kill Margaret, too.

III

Margaret’s taxi dropped her in Tiantandong Road outside the east gate to the Temple of Heaven. But there was nothing heavenly about Tiantandong Road. It was a wide road in the process of redevelopment, with no streetlights. Piles of rubble and litter lined the sidewalk. Traffic rumbled distantly beyond a deserted cycle lane. Rows of grim apartment blocks opposite cast pale light across the tarmac. In the distance, exotic new buildings based on traditional Chinese designs were floodlit and stood out against the night sky. Another world. Beyond the railings, the park lay in brooding darkness.

In spite of the heat, Margaret shivered. The area was deserted. She felt vulnerable and was already regretting her decision to come. There was no sign of McCord. She walked to the gate and peered through the bars. There was a moon tonight, and as her eyes grew accustomed to its light she saw, beyond a second gate, a long line of cypress trees in an avenue leading towards a distant three-domed temple. The touch of a hot lizard hand on her arm made her squeal with fright. She turned, heart pounding, to find McCord at her elbow. ‘Jesus Christ! Did you have to sneak up on me like that?’

‘Shhh.’ He put his finger to his lips. ‘Come on.’ He pushed the gate and it swung open. ‘Quickly.’ She saw the perspiration beading his forehead, smelled the alcohol sour on his breath, could almost touch his fear. He looked back, frightened eyes darting left and right, as he pushed the gate shut behind them. He started scurrying towards the inner gate. She hurried after him.

‘Where are we going?’

‘Into the park. If we haven’t been followed we’ll be safe there.’

The small gate by the ticket booth was not locked. He held it open for her, and led her quickly away from the light along the avenue of cypresses. As their pupils dilated, shadows grew out of the wash of moonlight that lay across the park, and the lights of the city receded into the distance. ‘For heaven’s sake, McCord, whatever you’ve got to tell me you can tell me now.’

‘When we get to the corridor,’ he whispered breathlessly. ‘It’s safer there.’

The corridor was a long, cobbled passageway raised on stone slabs. It dog-legged for several hundred metres towards the distant temple. A steeply pitched tiled roof ran its length, resting on maroon pillars and an understructure of intricately patterned blue, green and yellow beams. Margaret and McCord passed under a brick gate with a pale green roof, through the shadow of a large tree, and up a broad sweep of steps to its east end. McCord seemed relieved. It was dark here, he said, and safe. Through the pillars they could see the park around them in the moonlight, and anyone who might approach. But still he was unable to stay in one place and say his piece. He was driven, nervous and restless, almost on the verge of hysteria, it seemed to Margaret. He continued to walk agitatedly along the corridor, past long lines of shuttered and padlocked counters from which vendors sold cheap mementos to tourists during the day. But his pace had slowed now and he seemed more thoughtful, hands pushed deep into the pockets of his jacket. He glanced nervously in her direction as she kept pace with him along the corridor. He sensed that her patience was wearing thin. ‘I need your help,’ he said eventually, as if he had had to summon the courage to ask.

‘What for?’

‘I want you to go with me to the American Embassy. They won’t have anything to do with me.’ He chuckled sourly. ‘I guess I kind of burned my boats with the good old US of A. But they’ll believe you.’

‘Believe me about what?’

‘That they’re trying to kill me.’

Margaret was at a loss. ‘Who is trying to kill you?’

‘The same people that killed Chao Heng and those others. They’ll do anything to try and cover up.’ He pulled a handkerchief from his pocket and wiped his neck and his forehead. His breath was coming now in short asthmatic bursts that wheezed and gurgled in his throat. ‘Though God knows what the point of it all is. They’re all going to die, the same as everyone else.’ There was something chilling in the way he spoke so glibly of death, raising goose bumps on Margaret’s arms. He glanced at her again, but couldn’t meet her eye for long. ‘I didn’t know anything about it. That’s the God’s honest truth. Not until that night at the duck restaurant. They sent a car for me. It was waiting outside. Took me to Zhongnanhai. You know what that is?’

‘The New Forbidden City.’

He nodded. ‘Where the bigwigs are.’ He fumbled a pack of cigarettes from his pocket and lit one, sucking smoke deeply into his lungs through the crackling phlegm in his tubes. ‘Gave these things up years ago,’ he said. ‘But lately I thought what the hell.’ He took another draw. ‘The thing is, Chao was going to go public. You see, he had nothing to lose.’

Margaret shook her head. McCord was just rambling. ‘I don’t know what you’re talking about,’ she said.

‘Pang Xiaosheng,’ he said, stabbing his cigarette at her. ‘You heard of him?’

‘Vaguely.’ Margaret tried to remember. Something Bob had told her. ‘Minister of Agriculture. Sponsored your research into the super-rice.’

‘Ex Minister of Agriculture,’ McCord corrected her. ‘Future leader of China.’ He smiled grimly. ‘Or so he thought.’

Margaret was losing patience. ‘You’re still not making any sense, McCord.’

‘Oh, please,’ he said, turning towards her, an unpleasant sneer on his face, ‘call me Doctor. Even Mister. I’m not one to stand on ceremony.’

‘Look…’ She stopped and stood her ground. ‘Either you tell me what this is all about or I am going. Right now.’

‘Hey, cool it.’ He tipped his ash on the cobbles. ‘I’m coming to it, okay?’ They had reached the end of the corridor, and a cobbled slope led up through an arched gate to the temple beyond. A strange smile spread across McCord’s face. ‘Jeesus,’ he said. ‘Know where we are?’

‘In a park?’

He ignored the sarcasm in her tone. ‘Never even thought about it,’ he said. ‘Kind of ironic really. Come and see.’ And he headed up the ramp through the arch. She sighed and stood for a moment before following him, frustration bubbling up inside her. They emerged from the shadow of the gate into planes of shimmering silver marble, rising on three tiers to the blue-and-gold domes that rose, one on the other, more than a hundred and twenty feet into the Beijing sky. McCord wandered out across the paving stones towards the temple, the moon casting his shadow blue in his wake. He flicked his cigarette away, and it showered red sparks across the marble. He had suddenly become diminutive in the scale of things. He raised his arms on either side of himself like a bird and spun round to face her, grinning maniacally. ‘I feel washed in the light of heaven,’ he said. ‘Welcome to the Hall of Prayer for Good Harvests.’ And he turned away again to tilt his head back and gaze up at the vast temple that loomed over him. He laughed out loud. ‘The Son of Heaven came here twice a year to pray. The first time was on the fifteenth day of the first lunar month to ask for a good harvest.’ He turned around again to face her, still grinning like an idiot, and she saw tears brimming in his eyes. ‘And then again at the winter solstice to give thanks for blessings received.’ And suddenly the grin vanished and he stepped towards her, tears running silently down his cheeks. ‘But Pang Xiaosheng didn’t have to pray for a good harvest. He had me to engineer one for him.’ He shook his head, and with bitterness in his voice said, ‘And he won’t be giving thanks for blessings received.’

Margaret stood stock still, absorbed by a performance that was both terrifying and sad, a tragedy played out on an ancient stage, a bizarre script performed by a grotesque clown. ‘Do you want to tell me what happened, Dr McCord?’ she asked quietly, in a voice that whispered back at them from among the terraces.

McCord seemed spent, and very small and insignificant in the shadow of the Hall of Prayer for Good Harvests. ‘It was Chao Heng who set up the super-rice research programme for the Ministry of Agriculture. He was Pang’s man. And it was Chao who brought me in. That meant doing a deal with my employers, Grogan Industries. They were happy to put up the money, because Pang was in a hurry and they’d have a free hand. None of the interference they’d have got from government bodies in the States. The chance to put all their theories into practice on a grand scale. If it came off, they got the patent on the super-rice and the chance to sell it worldwide. Worth billions. Billions and billions. And the Chinese? Well, they’d just be happy because they could feed themselves, and Pang could sell himself as the man to lead them into the next millennium. And me? I was the man who was going to create the super-rice. And I did.’

He turned away, wandering off across the flagstones, talking at the night. ‘Jesus, it was so beautiful. A grain of rice impervious to insects or disease or fungus. Indestructible. Guaranteed one hundred per cent return from planting.’

‘How did you do it?’ Margaret asked.

He spun round, eyes gleaming. ‘How did I do it? It was easy. It was so simple it was perfection. I took a cholera toxin gene — you know, the stuff that makes cholera fucking lethal — and I put it in the rice.’

Margaret looked at him, horrified. ‘But that’s… insane.’

McCord shook his head, almost laughing at her shock. ‘No, it’s not,’ he said. ‘The cholera toxin killed everything. Insects, bacteria, viruses, fungi.’

‘And people?’

‘Well, that was the beauty of it. You cooked it, it was harmless, and the rice tasted every bit as good as it always had. But the really clever bit was getting it in there. Smart stuff, state of the art. But I told you all this.’ He waved his little finger at her. ‘Remember?’

‘Oh, yes,’ she said dryly. ‘Your little penis.’

He grinned. ‘So I took my cholera toxin gene, stuck it on the back of a friendly virus, and sent it in to multiply in the DNA of the rice.’

‘A friendly virus?’ Margaret asked, unable to keep the scepticism from her voice.

He clouded. ‘Sure. In this case the cauliflower mosaic virus. Makes all those patterns on the leaves of a cauliflower. We’ve been eating it for thousands of years and it’s never done us any harm.’

‘So you thought it would be a good idea to feed people cholera toxin genes and cauliflower viruses when they thought they were eating rice?’

‘It worked. And it was perfectly harmless.’ McCord was almost aggressive in his defensiveness. ‘We had extensive field trials in the south. The research team lived on the stuff for a year before we ever went public with it. The returns were terrific and it tasted great.’ It was his turn to be sarcastic. ‘And no one died of cholera toxin or mosaic virus.’ He lit another cigarette. ‘So we launched it three years ago. All over China. The results were phenomenal, Dr Campbell. Phenomenal. Yields increased by up to a hundred per cent. Goodbye hunger.’

‘And hello profit.’

‘And why the hell not!’ McCord turned on her. ‘You put up the money, you take the risk, you reap the rewards.’

‘Why do I get the feeling there’s a “but” somewhere in our future?’ Margaret asked.

He gave her a sour look and took a couple of long pulls on his cigarette before he spoke again. ‘They never told me about Chao getting ill. Nearly a year ago. At first they thought it was AIDS. He liked boys, you know.’ He wrinkled his nose in disgust. ‘They were treating him for AIDS, but it wasn’t that, and they started getting worried, and Pang had him admitted to Military Hospital Number 301.’ He stood staring at the ground, breathing stertorously, as if he had been running. ‘It was some new fucking virus no one had seen before. A retrovirus. Lies dormant in the brain for five years or more. You don’t even know it’s there. Then for no reason it decides it’s going to screw you. Starts attacking the white blood cells and ends up completely fucking your immune system. Bit like AIDS, only worse. And harder to pin down, ’cos it mutates faster than you can say “Gotcha”.’ He dragged his eyes up to meet hers and held them for a long moment before the truth suddenly dawned on her.

‘Oh my God,’ she said. ‘It’s in the rice.’ And the hair rose upon the back of her neck and along her arms and on her thighs.

His eyes filled up again and he flicked his cigarette vindictively at the night. ‘Somehow,’ he said, ‘somewhere along the line, our innocent little cauliflower mosaic virus recombined with another virus, probably something equally innocuous somewhere out there in the test environment.’ He paused to catch his breath, coming now in increasingly short bursts. ‘And we got a mutation. A third and, this time, lethal virus. RiceX Virus they’re calling it. RXV. Inherent in the genetic make-up of the rice. We never even knew it was there.’

There was a long silence as Margaret absorbed what he had just told her. She was aware of the blood pulsing behind her eyes, in her throat, in the pit of her stomach. She felt sick. ‘You mean it’s still there in the rice?’ she asked eventually. He nodded. ‘The stuff that people are growing and eating?’ He nodded again. ‘And anyone who eats it has got, or is going to get, this virus… this RXV?’

He dragged his eyes away from his feet for a moment to stare off into the trees. His voice was trembling. ‘Of course, it won’t show itself for another couple of years yet. Chao was eating it long before it went into production.’

Margaret simply found herself unable to deal with the scale of what he was saying. ‘But that’s more than a billion people,’ she gasped.

He shrugged. ‘More than that. They’ve been exporting super-rice all over the world. And once the virus is out there, who knows how else it’s transmitted? We could be looking at half the world’s population or more.’

And in that moment, Margaret was struck by the sickening realisation that she, too, had eaten the rice. For a moment she simply couldn’t believe it. There had to be a mistake, some way of undoing it. She couldn’t be going to die just because she’d eaten some rice. It was like the moment she had heard that Michael was dead. She couldn’t accept it. It just didn’t seem possible. She wheeled round on McCord, fear turning to anger turning to rage.

‘You fucking people!’ she screamed at him, her voice echoing back from every marble surface and rising into the hot pine-scented night. ‘You stupid fucking people! What nature took three billion years to achieve, you thought you could do in three. You thought you could play fucking God!’

McCord flinched, but he did not speak for a long time. ‘Irony is,’ he said finally, ‘I haven’t eaten rice since I was a kid. Got an allergic reaction to the stuff.’

Margaret was riven between despair and anger. She wanted to fly at him, punching and kicking and tearing at his face. But her despair robbed her of strength and she stood helplessly in the night, crushed and burdened by the weight of what she knew — that she had eaten death and there was no way back; that before she died she would see two billion people, maybe more, die ahead of her; that there was nothing she could do about any of it.

Hot, salty tears filled her eyes, blurring and distorting the image of McCord in front her. ‘Why are they even bothering to try and cover it up?’ she asked hopelessly. ‘What’s the point?’

‘Because they’re scared and they’re stupid,’ he said. ‘Grogan figured if they could keep it under wraps, they’d have two years to unearth a cure before they got found out.’

‘They’re mad!’

‘That’s what I told them. Jesus Christ, the world’s been searching for a cure for AIDS for nearly two decades, and they think they’re going to find a cure for RXV in two years?’ He snorted his derision. ‘But Pang Xiaosheng went along with it, basically ’cos he’d got no fucking choice. Soon as the Chinese government finds out what he’s done he’s a dead man. And Chao… well, Chao was dying already, and he was going to tell the world. So Grogan brought in this pro from Hong Kong. Some Triad hit-man who was going to be invisible in China, they thought. He took care of Chao and reckoned he’d destroyed the evidence by setting him on fire. And then you came along and started cutting him up and asking for blood tests. It was all getting out of hand…’

Through all her emotions — of self-pity, of horror and shock — her brain was sending tiny alarm signals to her conscious mind. She forced herself to stop and think and focus. She stared at him, and he became discomfited. ‘What are you fucking staring at?’ he demanded accusingly.

‘Those gates into the park shouldn’t have been open, should they? This time of night, they should have been all locked up.’ Her mind was racing now. She looked around. Great red doors with gold studs closed off all the gates on to the marble terrace, except for the one through which they had come from the corridor. She stabbed a finger towards it. ‘That should have been locked, too, shouldn’t it?’ Maybe she didn’t have five years to live. Maybe she didn’t even have five minutes. She wheeled round on him. ‘You never wanted me to go to the American Embassy with you, did you?’ How could she have been so stupid? ‘You bastard, you set me up! That’s why you’ve been telling me all this, isn’t it? It doesn’t matter that I know. Because you’re going to kill me.’

He took a step towards her. ‘They made me do it,’ he said, his jowls trembling, his eyes black and scary now. ‘They said just to get you here. It was me or you. And, hey, you’re going to die anyway.’

‘We’re all going to die some time,’ she said bitterly.

He took another step towards her.

She stepped back. ‘Don’t you come fucking near me,’ she hissed at him.

‘Hey, I’m not going to do it.’ He seemed shocked that she should think him capable of such a thing. ‘I never hurt anyone in my life.’

‘Of course not. You only infected half the world’s population with a lethal virus.’

‘Hey, come on,’ he said, still advancing as she backed away. ‘I didn’t do that on purpose. It was an accident.’ His eyes were darting all around now, in expectation. ‘I’m sorry, all right?’

But she wasn’t listening any more. She was looking past McCord. She was sure she had seen something move in the shadows beyond the temple.

McCord toppled forward as a dull crack split the night air, pawing at Margaret as he fell, dragging her down and pushing her over so that he landed on top of her. Something hard rattled away across the flagstones and she felt warm, sticky, wet stuff all over her hands. Blood, she realised. She wanted to scream, but she couldn’t get the breath. She dragged herself out from beneath McCord’s dead-weight and tried to stand, feet slipping on the patch of dark blood oozing across the stone. She fell again and found herself looking into McCord’s wide, staring eyes. An expression of complete surprise was frozen on his face in death. This time the scream came, quite involuntarily. But it sounded to her as if it had come from somewhere far away. She scrambled on all fours away from his body and her hand came down on something cold and hard — whatever it was that had rattled across the marble when McCord fell. A small handgun. She grasped it, and got to her knees, and saw a figure coming towards her from the shadows of the Hall of Prayer for Good Harvests. Raising the gun at arm’s length and clutching it with both hands, she closed her eyes and fired once, twice, three times in the direction of the approaching figure. But when she opened them again, she could see nothing and no one. She got to her feet, tucked the revolver into the waistband of her jeans, and starting running, slipping as she went, leaving bloody footprints in her wake. Across the marble terrace to the gate they had passed through from the corridor, all the time waiting for the bullet in the back. It didn’t come.

In the darkness of the corridor she felt momentarily safer. She stopped, gasping for breath, and looked back. Still she saw nothing, but she had no intention of waiting around. She turned and started running again, on weakening legs that wanted to buckle under her, pillars flashing past, the shadows of trees blurring beyond, dark and sinister. She could hear nothing but the air rasping in her lungs, the smack of her feet on the cobbles. She looked over her shoulder. She thought she saw a figure moving through the shadows, maybe a hundred yards away. She let out a little cry of despair and almost fell down the steps at the end of the corridor.

She staggered through the green-roofed gate and saw the cypress-lined avenue stretching ahead, exposed and bright in the moonlight. Beyond that, the lights of the city. It seemed an eternity away. She knew she would never make it. She heard a clatter from somewhere in the darkness of the corridor behind her, and found the motivation to get her legs moving beneath her again. She staggered more than ran, gasping for breath, a pain in her side. The heady scent of pine in the hot night air was almost intoxicating, like some drug robbing her of the will to fight for life. It would be so easy just to give up, and lie down and wait for death. But something more than fear drove her now, something more than anger. There was a reason to live, a secret to share.

She reached the first gate. But it was locked now. She grabbed the railings and almost collapsed, tears of despair running down her face. The gate was maybe seven or eight feet high. She had no strength in her arms to pull herself up. She was sure she could hear footsteps running down the avenue behind her, but could not bring herself to look. Then she saw the big round hinges at the gateposts. Big enough to provide footholds. Deep sobs tugging at her breast, she got one foot, then the other up on the hinges and pushed herself upwards, flinging an arm over the top and dragging herself over to drop with a clatter to the other side, sprawling on the warm tarmac. Her knee hurt like hell. Her jeans were torn and she was certain there was blood oozing down her shin. She glanced back through the railings and saw a figure jogging towards her between the rows of cypresses. Fifty, maybe sixty yards away.

It was enough to get her back on her feet and limping the thirty or forty feet to the outer gate. It, too, was locked now. She didn’t know how she would ever have the strength to get over it. She lunged up and caught hold of the top bar. She could see the blood on her hands in the light from across the street. Her feet slithered and scrambled for a solid hold, but the hinges were smaller. ‘Come on, come on, come on!’ she shouted at herself. Her right foot got little more than a toehold. But it was enough to give her the leverage to swing her other leg up and over the top. For a moment she hung there, waiting to hear the shot that would signal an end to it all. But still it didn’t come, and with one last effort she dragged herself over the gate and fell on to the sidewalk.

This time she didn’t linger. She was on her feet and limping across the deserted cycle lane towards the stream of traffic in the road. She saw a flash of yellow. A taxi. One of the crude baby vans they called ‘bread cars’ because they looked like loaves of bread. She ran into its headlights, waving her arms, and it skidded to a halt, the driver banging on his horn. She ran round the side of it, ignoring his curses, slid the door open and fell in. He looked back at her in astonishment. This blonde-haired, blue-eyed yangguizi covered in blood, her face blackened and tear-stained, shouting at him over and over again. ‘The Friendship Hotel! The Friendship Hotel!’ He saw the gun tucked into her jeans and decided not to argue. He crunched into gear and accelerated north towards the city lights.

IV

By the time the bread car reached the Friendship, Margaret’s hysteria had subsided, to be replaced by a deep, black depression. She was physically and emotionally numb. Fear had left her, and she was consumed now by only one thing: a dark, simmering anger. She wanted justice, revenge. She wanted to expose these people: Grogan Industries, Pang Xiaosheng, whoever else was complicit in this madness. She despised their brave new genetically engineered world that had put her under sentence of death, and threatened the very existence of the human race. She despised their greed for money, their hunger for power, the bloody-minded arrogance of the scientists who had used mankind as their guinea-pigs in a world they had turned into a laboratory. And most of all, she despised their cowardice in the face of overwhelming failure. There were, it seemed, no depths to which they would not sink in order to hide their guilt, to squirm away from responsibility. And she knew that since she was now the only bearer of the torch that could illuminate their culpability, they would do everything in their power to eliminate her. But she was not daunted or afraid. For she was already dead. They had done their worst. They could not kill her twice. And the worst that could happen to her was that she would fail.

She made the taxi stop in the street a hundred yards short of the hotel and thrust some notes into the driver’s hand. It was far too much, but he was not about to take issue. He was just glad to get her out of his cab so that he could report as quickly as possible to Public Security that he had been forced to pick up a wild-eyed, crazy foreign lady covered in blood and carrying a gun. It was not the sort of thing that happened to you every day in Beijing. He lit up and puffed anxiously on a cigarette as he drove hurriedly away, watching her vanish in his rear-view mirror.

She stood for a moment or two in a pool of darkness between streetlights considering what she was about to do. It was too soon, she hoped, for anyone to be waiting for her at the hotel. However, the moment she walked in covered in blood to ask for her key, she knew that the desk staff would call Public Security — probably about the same time as the taxi driver, who had watched her so carefully in the rear-view mirror all the way across town. But she desperately wanted to change her clothes, and to pick up her passport. When she went hammering on the door of the American Embassy at this hour of the night, she wanted to be able to identify herself without difficulty.

She wondered briefly about Li, what had happened, what his uncle had advised. And she felt sick at the thought that he would only have two years left before the rice virus would start destroying his life. And not just Li. Everyone in this country, and millions more beyond. She could not imagine how the hospitals and doctors would cope. They couldn’t. It was a nightmare, beyond visualisation, beyond comprehension. She looked at the traffic, the cyclists passing in the street, lights in the windows of apartment blocks. All these people. They had no idea that they had already eaten the seeds of their own destruction.

The burden of that knowledge weighed almost unbearably on her. She desperately wanted to shed and share it. But who would want to know? She had no words of comfort, could hold out no possibility of hope. The secret she wished to share with others was the intimation of their death.

Bitter tears burned her face as she turned towards the lights of the hotel and walked determinedly in the direction of its floodlit forecourt. As she passed beneath the shadow of the hoardings that marked its boundary, heading for the steps, a figure moved out of the darkness to block her way and whisper her name. She almost fainted with fright. The man stepped forward and his face was caught in the light cast by a distant streetlamp. It was Ma Yongli. He was clearly shocked by her appearance, and looked at her in open-mouthed amazement. ‘What has happened to you? Are you all right?’

‘I’m fine.’ She had difficulty controlling the urge to fall into his arms and weep. ‘I have to change and get my passport.’ Her brain, it seemed, was only capable of following a single track. Any deviation to left or right might allow other thoughts to crowd in and overwhelm her. Her voice sounded strained and very polite. She was hanging on by a thread and said, absurdly, ‘I have to get to the American Embassy. Do you know where it is?’

‘You cannot go into the hotel,’ Yongli said. ‘The police are waiting in there.’

She frowned, confused now. She felt as if she were drunk and the world was spinning out of control. ‘How can they be there already?’

‘Things have happened,’ Yongli whispered. ‘Terrible things. Li sent me to find you.’ He took her arm. ‘I will take you to him.’ She allowed him to lead her through the darkness, away from the hotel. They turned down a side street to where a battered old Honda was parked at the kerbside. He opened the door and she slipped into the passenger seat like an automaton pre-programmed to do his bidding. All she could think was that Yongli, too, had the virus in him; that he, too, would have his life taken prematurely. Her tears fell silently in the dark. And there was so much to live for. Perhaps it would be easier for those who went first. Easier than living on while everyone around you was dying, and knowing that your turn would come. The only thing worse than death, surely, was the knowledge that your own was imminent.

‘Are you sure you are all right?’ Yongli touched her arm.

She nodded. ‘Yes.’

He peered at her for a long time in the dark, then started the engine and drove carefully off into the night.

The Honda eased its way gingerly through the maze of crumbling hutongs, picking out the life of the back streets in its headlights — card games and family meals, and groups of people just sitting about talking and smoking. Men in singlets stared curiously as the car inched by, their eyes glassy in the lights. They were all dead, Margaret thought. They just didn’t know it yet.

They were somewhere in the north of the city. Margaret had no idea where. She hardly cared. They had left the bright lights of the main street behind them more than ten minutes ago. Yongli turned left, and then right, and they found themselves in a long, narrow lane running down a slight slope. Telegraph poles rose into the night, power cables looping from one to the other. But there were no lights here. The surface of the lane was potholed and bumpy. Margaret saw that every few yards the crumbling brick walls had been daubed with large white characters within circles. Her curiosity finally aroused, she asked, ‘Where are we? What is this place?’

‘Xicheng District,’ Yongli said. ‘All these hutongs are condemned, marked for demolition. They will be pulled down to build new workers’ apartments.’ Near the foot of the lane, he bumped the car up on to a sliver of sidewalk and told her to get out. He got out himself, took her arm and led her away down another deserted lane, constantly glancing back to make sure they were not seen. But the area had been cleared of people in preparation for demolition. It was completely deserted. They turned through a broken archway into a courtyard littered with rubble. It was very dark, and they had to pick their way carefully to the other side. Windows all around were boarded up, and there was a stench of rotting garbage and old drains. Yongli nudged a broken old pram away with his foot and knocked softly on a wooden door with no handle. After a moment there was a soft-voiced female response from within. Yongli whispered a reply and the door creaked open. Lotus peered out at them, pale and frightened. Even without a trace of make-up she was still very pretty. She saw the state that Margaret was in and beckoned them inside. ‘Quick,’ she said. ‘Come quick.’ Yongli pushed Margaret gently ahead of him and Lotus took her hand, guiding her into the dark interior. ‘You okay?’ she asked. Margaret nodded, but Lotus could not see it in the dark. With great concern she led her cautiously across a floor strewn with the remnants of someone else’s life, and into a tiny back room where a candle burned in the far corner, sending flickering shadows dancing around the walls. Behind them, Margaret heard Yongli shut the door.

Li sat on a cot bed, his back to the wall, knees pulled up to his chest, smoking a cigarette. Margaret saw the tracks of tears on his face. He looked dreadful. His jaw slackened when he saw the blood on her jeans and her blouse, and he threw his cigarette away, unfolding his legs from the bed and reaching her in three easy strides. He held her by the shoulders. ‘My God, Margaret, what happened to you?’ She looked up into his face and saw the concern in his eyes, felt the heat of his hands on her shoulder.

‘It’s not my blood,’ she said in a dead voice that seemed to belong to someone else. ‘It’s McCord’s. They killed him.’ She saw a frown form between his eyes and then his face blurred as tears started to run down her cheeks. Her legs buckled and she felt his arms around her, lifting her, carrying her quickly through the flickering light to the bed and laying her down. Fingers lightly brushed away her tears and she saw his face very close. Beyond it, Lotus and Yongli looked on, disembodied masks among the shadows.

‘Can I get her anything?’ she heard Lotus say, but it was in Chinese, and she couldn’t understand why the sounds formed no words.

Li shook his head. ‘I don’t think so. We’ve got plenty of water. You’d better go.’

Yongli pulled her gently away. ‘Come on.’

‘I hate to leave her like this.’

‘She’s in capable hands,’ Yongli said. And to Li, ‘We’ll be back at first light. If not, you’ll know we’ve been picked up.’

Li nodded grimly. ‘Thanks,’ he said. He turned and the two men made a brief eye contact that forestalled the need for more words.

‘I’ll bring her some clean clothes,’ Lotus said, and let Yongli lead her by the hand away through the outer room and out into the courtyard.

When he heard the door close behind them, Li turned back to Margaret, but her eyes were shut and she was sleeping.

When she emerged from the strange, dark, dreamless chasm into which she had drifted, she was curled up on the cot bed and Li was sitting on the end of it smoking another cigarette. A candle still burned in the corner. He turned as she raised herself on to one elbow. ‘How long was I sleeping?’

He shrugged. ‘An hour maybe. I don’t know what time it is.’

She peered at her watch in the dancing half-light. ‘It’s just after one.’ She swung her legs off the bed and sat up, rubbing her eyes. He moved alongside her and put an arm around her, and she let her head fall against his shoulder. The familiar musky-sweet smell of him was reassuring. ‘Why are we here?’ she asked. ‘What’s happened?’

She felt him tense and he drew a deep, tremulous breath. ‘They stitched me up, Margaret,’ he said. ‘I walked right into it. Never even saw it coming.’ She lifted her head and pulled away so she could look at him. His eyes were moist and wouldn’t meet hers. ‘They killed Lily and murdered my uncle…’

Margaret uttered a tiny, involuntary cry. ‘Oh God, no…!’ Not that lovely, harmless old man. ‘Why? Why would they kill him?’

Silent tears rolled down Li’s cheeks. ‘To make it look like I had done it.’ He gasped in frustration. ‘As if I ever would.’ He turned towards her, the futility of it etched in the pain on his face. ‘I don’t know why, Margaret. But I feel like it’s my fault, that I got something wrong, that if I’d done something differently my uncle would still be alive. I don’t know what it is that would make them want to kill an old man, just to discredit me and stop my investigation. If only I knew what it was we’d got too close to, maybe I’d understand.’ His despair was heartbreaking.

She lowered her head and looked at the floor. She no longer wanted to share her secret, for the pain and the horror and the hopelessness it would bring. She wished she could keep it to herself, close and hidden, so that maybe she would just wake up one morning and it would be gone. But she knew it wouldn’t. And she knew she had to tell him. She looked up again and wiped the tears from his face. He should save them, she thought, for there were many more to spill. ‘I know,’ she said. ‘Both why, and who.’