The Firemaker

I

Tuesday Morning

Buses and bicycles fought for space among the people and traffic that clogged the narrow artery that was Chaoyangmen Nanxiaojie Street. It ran north to south, dissecting the centre-east of the city. Cycling north along it took Li directly into the heart of Dongcheng District, where the Beijing Municipal Police had sited the new operational headquarters of Section One. The final stretch before the intersection with Dongzhimennei Street was heavily shaded by leaning, leafy trees, and was a deliciously cool escape from the early morning heat. Li coasted the last few hundred yards, enjoying the respite, and pulled over at the corner of Dongzhimennei. Mei Yuan greeted him with her usual ‘Hi, have you eaten?’

And he responded with his customary ‘Yes, I have eaten’. And she began preparing his breakfast. The familiar greeting, ritually exchanged between Beijingers, had little to do with food but much to do with friendship.

Li parked his bike and leaned against the wall, watching Mei Yuan at work. She had a round, unlined face with beautifully slanted almond eyes that sparkled with mischief. Her dark hair, showing only a trace of grey at the temples, was drawn back in a tight bun and wrapped in a green scarf. Dimples in her cheeks became like deep scars when she smiled, which was often. For the moment, her concentration was on the preparation of his jian bing on the hot plate in the replica house that stood on the back of her three-wheeled cycle. Its corrugated roof, pitched and pink, had tiny curled eaves, and sat over sliding glass screens that protected the gas hot plate and Mei Yuan’s cooking ingredients. She splashed a ladleful of watery batter over the hot plate and it sizzled as it quickly cooked and set. Then she flipped the pancake over and broke an egg on to it, spreading it thinly. Smearing this with hoi sin and a little chili, she sprinkled it with chopped spring onion and broke a large piece of deep-fried whipped egg white into its centre. She then folded it in four, wrapped it in brown paper, and handed it to Li in exchange for two yuan. She watched with satisfaction as he bit hungrily into the steaming savoury pancake. ‘Wonderful,’ he said, wiping a smear of hoi sin from the corner of his mouth. ‘If I didn’t have to share an apartment with my uncle I would marry you.’

She laughed heartily. ‘I’m old enough to be your mother.’

‘But my mother never made jian bing the way you do.’

In truth, his mother had never made jian bing. And had the world turned another way, Mei Yuan would not have had to. In another era she might, perhaps, have been a lecturer at the university, or a senior civil servant. Li inclined his head a little to catch the title of the book she had stuffed down the back of her saddle. Descartes’ Meditations. He looked at her plump little hands, scarred by a thousand tiny burns, and felt the pain of her life in his heart. A generation cursed by the twelve years of madness that was the Cultural Revolution. And yet if she had regrets, there was no hint of them in that dimpled smile and those mischievous eyes.

She had not missed him noticing her book. ‘I’ll lend it to you when I’m finished. He was an extraordinary man.’ She smiled. ‘I think, therefore I am.’ It would have taken her a long time to save up enough money to buy the book, so her offer to lend it to him was an extraordinary act of generosity and trust.

‘Thank you,’ he said. ‘I would like that. And I will be sure to return it to you when I have read it.’ He filled his mouth with more jian bing. ‘So. Do you have an answer?’

She grinned. ‘The third person in the queue must have been his wife. You tried to make me think it was a man.’

‘No, no. I didn’t try to make you think anything. You assumed it was a man. It was only when you stopped making that assumption that you realised who she was.’

She shook her head, still smiling. ‘Not very clever. But effective.’

‘So what have you got for me?’ He devoured the last of his jian bing and threw the wrapper in the bin.

‘Two men,’ she said. ‘And there is no ambiguity here.’ She twinkled. ‘One of them is the keeper of every book in the world, giving him access to the source of all knowledge. Knowledge is power, so this makes him a very powerful man. The other possesses only two sticks. Yet this gives him more power than the other. Why?’

Li turned it over quickly in his head, but no solution came immediately to mind. ‘It’ll have to wait till tomorrow.’

She nodded. ‘Of course.’

He winked and glanced at the fob watch he kept in a leather pouch on his belt. ‘Got to go. Zai jian.’ And he flicked his bike stand up with his foot. She watched with affection as the tall figure in short-sleeved white shirt and dark trousers dodged the traffic to cross Dongzhimennei Street. Somewhere in this vast country, she liked to believe, lived the son she had been separated from almost thirty years ago, when Red Guards had dragged her off to the labour camp. He would be about Li’s age now. And it was her fervent hope that he might have turned out something like him.

Li cycled up the gentle slope to the corner of Beixinqiao Santiao, where the square, flat-roofed, four-storey brick building that housed Section One sat discreetly behind a screen of trees. Past the traditional revolving sign of a barber shop, the musty smell of damp hair and the snip of scissors as he passed its door, he was still turning over Mei Yuan’s riddle in his head. Two sticks. Were they chopsticks? No, why would that give the man power? Were they big sticks with which he could beat the other man to death? If so, why would he require two? Focusing his mind on the problem calmed the butterflies in his stomach reflecting the self-doubts that dogged the start of his first day as Deputy Section Chief. He turned in past the red-roofed garage and parked his bicycle. A uniformed officer came down the steps from the door of Section One. He gave Li a wave. ‘Heard the good news, Li Yan. Congratulations.’

Li grinned. ‘My ancestors must have been watching over me.’ Important to seem confident, not to be taking it too seriously.

He went inside, turned right, and climbed the stairs to the fourth floor. Everyone he met in the corridor — a secretary, another uniformed officer, a rookie detective — offered their congratulations. It was becoming embarrassing. There were only two officers in the detectives’ room when he went in, Qu and Gao. Both had been with Section One longer than he, and were now a rank below him. Qu winked. ‘Morning, boss.’ There was a heavy ironical stress on the word ‘boss’, but it was fond rather than rancorous. Li was popular with the other detectives.

‘Come to get your stuff?’ Gao asked. ‘Can’t wait to move into your new office, eh?’

Strangely, Li realised, he hadn’t given that a thought. He had been heading instinctively for his old desk. He glanced, almost with regret, around the cluttered detectives’ office with its jumble of desks and filing cabinets, walls plastered with memos and posters and photographs of crime scenes past and present.

‘Don’t worry about it,’ Qu said. ‘One of the girls’ll put your stuff in a box and take it through. Chief wants to see you.’

Section Chief Chen Anming rose from his desk as Li came into his office and shook his hand. ‘Well done, Li Yan. You deserve it.’

‘Thanks, Chief. That’s what I’ve been telling everyone.’

But Chen didn’t smile. He sat down again, distracted, and shuffled some papers on his desk. He was a lean, silver-headed man in his late fifties from Hunan province. A chain-smoker, years of cigarette smoke had streaked his hair yellow above his right temple. He wore a permanently dour expression, and the girls in the typing pool had been known to run a book on days of the month on which he might smile. ‘Busy start for you. Three suspicious deaths overnight. Two of them look pretty much like murder, the third could be a suicide. A charred body in Ritan Park. Still burning when it was discovered. Can of gasoline near by. Looks like he doused himself, squatted among the trees and lit a match. Bizarre stuff. Qian Yi’s already there. I’ve dispatched Wu and Zhao to the suspected murders. You’d better have a look at the suicide, just in case. Then debrief the other two and let me know what you think.’

Several hundred curious onlookers had gathered by the lakeside among the willows. Word had swept like wildfire through the nearby market streets, and rumours of death in the park held the promise of drama; a kind of street theatre, something to break the monotonous repetition of their daily lives. Nearly sixty uniformed officers had been assigned to crowd control. Several plainclothes policemen moved among the spectators, listening to gossip and speculation in the hope of picking up even the smallest piece of information that might prove useful. From across the water, where people were packed in under the shade of the pavilion, from above the babble of voices, came the mournful wail of a single-stringed violin, like a dirge for the dead. The rest of the park was deserted.

Li inched his way through the crowd in a dark blue Jeep, red light flashing on the roof, horn sounding. People were reluctant to get out of the way. Curious faces stared in at him as he squeezed past, but he was oblivious. Confidence had returned. He was back on home territory, doing what he was good at. Finally, at the north side of the lake, he drew into an area that had been cleared and taped off by the uniformed police. Several other vehicles, including an ambulance and a forensics van, were already there. As he got out of the Jeep, a uniformed officer pointed up a dusty slope to the trees beyond.

At the top of the rise, Li stepped over the line of powdered chalk that ringed the potential crime scene and caught his first scent of burnt human flesh. It would linger in his nostrils for hours to come. He curled his upper lip and clenched his teeth firmly to prevent his stomach from heaving. The dead man, or woman, was still squatting in the centre of the clearing, a stiff, blackened figure in the shape of a human. And yet there was something strangely unhuman about the corpse, as if it might have been the abstract creation of a sculptor chiselling roughly in ebony. The charred debris of the victim’s clothes was scattered around it. The leaves of nearby trees had been scorched by the intensity of the heat. Lights had been erected, and the corpse was being photographed from various angles. Two forensics officers wearing white gloves were combing the area for anything that might throw some illumination on the events of little over an hour before. A doctor from the pathology department at the Centre of Criminal Technological Determination in Pao Jü Hutong, Dr Wang Xing, also in white gloves, stood talking to Detective Qian on the far side of the clearing. Qian saw Li arrive, detached himself from the doctor, and made his way carefully around the perimeter of the clearing. He shook Li’s hand. ‘Congratulations on the promotion, boss.’

Li acknowledged with the faintest nod. ‘What’s the verdict?’

Qian shrugged. ‘Well, all the doc can tell us at this stage is that it’s a male. If he was carrying ID then it’s been destroyed.’

‘Cause of death?’

‘Burning’s the obvious choice, but until they get him on the slab they won’t know for sure. Doc says an autopsy on a body in this state’s a bit specialised. They’ll probably have to send it up to the pathology lab at the university. Identification could be a problem. All we’ve found so far are the remains of a Zippo cigarette lighter, a charred signet ring and a belt buckle. Nothing particularly distinguishing about any of them.’

‘The gasoline can?’

‘Just an ordinary can. They’re dusting it for prints. No sign of a struggle, but then it would be hard to tell. The ground’s baked hard here. It hasn’t rained in weeks. Oh, and we found this…’ He removed a clear plastic evidence bag from his pocket and held it up to let Li see the cigarette end inside. ‘Looks like he had a last cigarette before pouring gasoline all over himself and igniting his lighter.’

Li took the bag and examined the cigarette end closely. It had been stamped out before burning down to the tip, and the brand name was still clearly legible. Marlboro. ‘How come the cigarette end didn’t burn up in the fire?’

‘It wasn’t next to the body. Forensics found it over there.’ He pointed to the west side of the clearing.

Li was thoughtful for a moment. ‘Anyone see him arriving?’

Qian made a moue with his lips and exhaled sharply through them. ‘Nobody’s come forward yet. We’re trying to get the names of everyone who was in the park from six this morning. A lot of them will be the same people who come every day. Someone might have seen a man carrying a can, but it isn’t much of a description to offer them. I’ve already spoken to the ticket clerk but she has no recollection. Until we know who he is and maybe get a photograph…’ He shrugged.

‘What about the people who found the body?’

‘A nanny — a peasant girl from Shanxi province — and a couple of kids. They’re down there in the ambulance. The nanny was in a worse state than the kids. I think the paramedics have given her a sedative.’

When Li stepped into the ambulance, he was taken aback to see that the girls were twins. Pretty girls, unspoilt as yet by the approach of adulthood and the loss of innocence — unaware, perhaps, how lucky they were. Since the introduction of the One-Child Policy to control the population explosion, it was rare for any child to have a brother or sister. And a whole new generation would never know the joy of an extended family with uncles and aunts. There was no way of knowing the long-term effects on a society so orientated around the traditional family. But there was a reluctant acceptance by the Chinese that the alternative was worse — a spiralling population growth leading to inevitable starvation and economic chaos.

The girls regarded him solemnly, a strange outward calm concealing the trauma of what they must have witnessed. Their baby-sitter, on the other hand, was still sobbing feebly, clutching a damp handkerchief to her mouth, sucking on a corner of it for comfort.

‘Hi.’ Li sat down opposite them and spoke directly to the twins. ‘Did you girls see the dancers earlier?’ They nodded eagerly. ‘And those guys that go swinging the swords about? They really scare me.’ The girls giggled. ‘Do you come to the park every day?’

‘No,’ one of them said.

‘Just sometimes,’ the other added. ‘Usually with Mommy.’

Qian watched Li from the door, thinking what a good manner he had with the kids. Gentle, positive. And they responded to him.

‘But you were with your nanny today?’ They nodded again. ‘Did you see anyone near the path out there, before you went up to where the fire was?’ This time it was a solemn shaking of the heads. ‘No one moving away, maybe round the lake?’ Again the shaking of heads. ‘Good girls. You’ve done really well. But I don’t think you want to hang around here any longer, do you?’

‘No,’ they said in chorus.

‘So my friend here…’ He nodded towards Qian. ‘… is going to get a nice policeman to buy you some ice cream and then take you home to see your mom. Okay?’

Their faces lit up. ‘Yeah.’

‘Can we have strawberry?’

‘You can have whatever flavour you like, sweetheart.’ He ruffled their heads and they scrambled out to be led off by Qian. He turned to the baby-sitter. ‘Okay… Just relax.’ He moved over and sat beside her and took her hand. It was a small, fleshy hand used to toil. He felt the line of calluses on the palm. She was probably no more than sixteen or seventeen. ‘This is hard for you, I know. Because you’ve never seen anything like this before.’ He spoke very softly and felt a sob shudder through her body. ‘But we really need your help here, and I know that you want to help us all you can.’ She nodded vigorously. ‘So just take your time and tell me what happened.’

‘It was the smoke,’ she said, breath catching the back of her throat. ‘The children were running to see what it was. I kept shouting at them to stop, but they were in such high spirits.’

‘So you followed them up the path.’

‘Yes.’

‘And the body was still on fire?’

The tears filled her eyes again as she remembered. ‘He was still alive. Reaching out to me, like he was asking for help.’

Li found Pathologist Wang squatting down by the lakeside. Having divested himself of his white gloves, he was having a smoke. Li hunkered down beside him and was offered a cigarette. Without a word, he took one and the pathologist lit it. ‘So what do you think?’ Li asked. He drew deeply on the cigarette and blew the smoke out through his nostrils, trying to get rid of the smell.

‘I think there are times I don’t much like my job.’ He glanced grimly at Li. ‘Looks like some kind of weird suicide ritual. On a cursory examination there’s no sign of blood or injury prior to the burning. So unless an autopsy tells us otherwise, you can probably assume he burned to death.’

‘One of the witnesses says he was still alive when they found him.’ Reaching out, like he was asking for help. The nanny’s interpretation of what she saw had formed a gruesomely indelible image in Li’s mind.

‘Which pretty much fixes time of death, and rules out foul play prior to burning,’ Wang concluded. ‘We get him back to Pao Jü Hutong and I’ll do a preliminary. Should be able to tell a little more about him then. But if you want a full autopsy…’

‘I do.’

‘Then you’re going to have to send him up to the Centre of Material Evidence Determination at the university.’ He stood up. ‘But first we want to get him into the fridge fast — to stop him cooking.’

After the body had been removed, and the ambulance and various police vehicles had gone, the crowd started to break up, reluctantly drawn back to the relentless humdrum of their everyday lives. Li, however, lingered a little longer. He circled the lake and climbed the rocky outcrop at the far side to find himself looking down on the pavilion, now deserted apart from an old man scratching away on his violin, and a woman who might have been his wife, singing a jagged, haunting melody. To his left was the path that climbed through the trees to the clearing where the body had been found. He was still troubled by the image the peasant girl from Shanxi had conjured in his mind, of the hand reaching out from the flaming mass. Like he was asking for help. What an appalling way to die. Li tried to picture the man walking slowly through the park (for if he had had time to smoke a last cigarette he was surely in no hurry), past the early morning dancers, the practitioners of t’ai chi, the old ladies gossiping on park benches, carrying his can of gasoline in his hand, and intent in his heart. What possible horrors could drive a man to such a desperate act? Li imagined him lighting his last cigarette, standing smoking it, almost down to the tip. He lit a cigarette himself and stared down at the still, green water of the lake reflecting the willow trees beyond, and wondered why no one had seen him on that slow walk through the park. Were people so engrossed in their spiritual and physical activities that he had been invisible to them?

Deep in the bowels of the multistorey building of the Centre of Criminal Technological Determination that backs on to Pao Jü Hutong, Pathologist Wang made a preliminary, superficial examination of the body. The charred corpse lay on its side on a metal table, like a toppled Buddha, fixed in its squatting position. Muscle shrinkage had forced the arms up, with fists clenched like those of a bare-knuckled pugilist. Li watched from a distance, the squeak of Wang’s rubber sneakers echoing off white-tiled walls as he moved around the table. And still there was the awful smell. Wang wore a face mask, and worked his way quickly and carefully around the body, taking measurements, making notes. He spent some time opening and examining the mouth that had been pulled shut by contracted muscle, the tip of a charred tongue poking from between blackened lips. Then he nodded to his assistant, who wrapped the body in heavy plastic, securing it with a nylon cord, and wheeled it away on a gurney to be bagged and taken across the city to the pathology labs of the Centre of Material Evidence Determination on the campus of the People’s University of Public Security. Li followed Wang into his office and they both lit cigarettes. Wang slumped in his chair and took a deep breath.

‘I’ll give you a written preliminary as soon as possible. But the victim was male, aged around fifty. From what’s left to be seen externally, there’s nothing physically distinguishing about him. Apart from his teeth. He’d had some pretty expensive professional work done there.’

Li frowned. This was unusual. General dentistry in China was still very basic and high-quality professional work did not come cheap.

As if reading his mind, Wang said, ‘This guy wasn’t any common labourer. He wasn’t short of a yuan or two. A man of some position, I’d guess. Almost certainly a Party member. If you get any idea of who he is, you’ll have no trouble confirming his identity from dental records.’

II

It was still only 10 a.m., but the heat was already stultifying. A hot wind blew the dust about the streets, coating leaves, grass, cars, buildings. And people. It got in their eyes and their mouths and their lungs and made them hack and spit.

Li’s new office was airless and stifling, and the window would not open properly. His personal belongings had been left on his desk, in two cardboard boxes. The room itself had been stripped of any vestige of its previous occupant, scarred walls divested of their paper history. All that remained of Li’s predecessor were the cigarette burns along the edge of his desk. Even his memory had faded in Li’s mind; a colourless and pedantic man who had always remained tight, like a closed fist, enigmatic. For all the years his colleagues had worked with him they knew very little of his private life. A wife, a daughter at Sun Yat Sen University in Guangzhou, a heart condition. In the last months his face had been putty grey. Li fished an ashtray out from one of the boxes and lit his last cigarette. He looked out of the window through the trees at the All China Federation of Returned Overseas Chinese, gold characters on pale brown marble, and wondered what private thoughts had passed through the mind of this man who had preceded him as he looked down through the same trees at the same buildings. Had he once had the same hopes and aspirations for the future as Li? What cruel spins of fate had spawned his disillusion, reducing him to the grey and secretive man who had sweated out his last weeks in this office when he should have been at home with his family? A knock at the door disturbed his thoughts. Wu poked his head into the office. ‘They’re ready for you, boss.’ And Li felt a flutter of fear. They’re ready for you. Now that he was their boss, his colleagues would have expectations of him. It was possible to be ambitious beyond your ability. Now that this particular ambition had been realised, he would have to prove his ability, not just to those with expectations, but to himself. He slipped a pen into his breast pocket and took a fresh notebook from one of the boxes on his desk.

There were nearly a dozen officers sitting around the big table in the meeting room on the top floor. And nearly all of them were smoking cigarettes, smoke wallowing about in the downdraught from the ceiling fan that swung lazily overhead. Papers and notebooks and rapidly filling ashtrays cluttered the table. There was a brief, spontaneous round of applause as Li walked into the room. He flushed and grinned, waved his hand dismissively and told them to shut up. He pulled up a chair and looked around the expectant faces. ‘Anyone got a smoke?’ he asked. Nearly a dozen cigarettes got tossed across the table. He smiled and shook his head. ‘Crawlers.’ He lit one and took a deep draw. ‘Okay,’ he said. ‘I’ve just been out to Ritan Park. I’ve already had initial reports from Detective Qian and Pathologist Wang. It’s almost certainly a suicide, but the body’s so badly burned we might have a problem identifying it. And it could take some time. We’re going to have to match incoming missing-persons reports with what we know here. Pathologist Wang tells me the victim’s male, aged around fifty, with some pretty expensive dental work. Detective Qian will co-ordinate attempts to identify him ASAP. We can’t consider this case cleared until we know who he is and, if possible, why he killed himself. And we need witnesses, anyone who might have seen him making his way through the park. Any joy on that front, Qian Yi?’

Qian shook his head. ‘Not yet. We’re still compiling the names of everyone who was there, but nothing so far.’

‘Anyone else got any thoughts?’ No one had. ‘All right. Let’s move on for the moment to the stabbing in Haidan District. Detective Wu’s been out there.’ He raised his eyebrows in Wu’s direction.

Wu leaned to one side in his chair and chewed reflectively on a piece of gum that had long since lost any flavour. He was a lean man in his forties, thinning hair brushed back, a wispy moustache on his upper lip designed to disguise over-prominent front teeth. His skin was unusually dark, and he liked to wear sunglasses, whatever the weather. Right now they were dangling from the thumb and forefinger of his left hand, a cigarette burning between the fingers of his right. He habitually wore blue jeans and white trainers and a short denim butt-freezer jacket. Image was important to Wu. He liked being a cop, and Li suspected that he modelled himself on the undercover cops he’d seen in American movies. ‘It’s a murder, all right,’ Wu said. ‘No doubt about that. His name was Mao Mao. Known to us. A petty drug dealer in his mid-twenties. Did time as a juvenile for theft and hooliganism. Reform through labour. Only whatever labour they put him through didn’t reform him.’

‘What was it, a fight?’ Li asked.

Wu cocked his head doubtfully. ‘Well, he was stabbed in the heart, up through the lower ribcage. But there were no signs of a struggle, no bruising or cuts on his hands or face. The pathologist thinks he may have been attacked from behind. Autopsy should confirm. Looks like it might have been some kind of gangland killing. He was lying face down in his own blood on a stretch of waste ground near Kunminghunan Road. A factory worker found him on his way to work this morning. The ground out there’s hard as concrete. No footprints in soil, or blood. In fact nothing for us to really go on at all. Forensics are doing fingernail and fibre tests, but I get a feeling about this, Li Yan. I don’t think they’re going to find anything. In fact, the only thing we picked up at all at the scene was a cigarette end, which is probably entirely unrelated.’

Li was suddenly interested, instincts aroused. ‘Just one? I mean, there weren’t any others lying around near by?’

‘Not that we found.’

‘What brand was it?’

‘American. Marlboro, I think. Why?’

Detective Zhao said, ‘That’s odd. We found a Marlboro cigarette end close to the body out at Di’anmen.’

Qian leaned into the table. ‘It was a Marlboro brand cigarette end we found out at Ritan, wasn’t it, boss?’

Li nodded slowly, his interest fully ignited now. It was a remarkable coincidence, if, indeed, that was what it was. But he knew better than to go jumping to premature conclusions. There was a speculative buzz around the table. He asked Zhao to give them a rundown on the body found at Di’anmen.

Zhao was the baby of the section, a good-looking young man of around twenty-five. What he lacked in flair he made up for in sheer hard work and attention to detail. He was always self-conscious at these meetings, finding it difficult to give coherent expression to his thoughts in the group situation. He was much better dealing with people one to one. Colour flushed high on his cheekbones as he spoke. ‘He was carrying an ID card, so we know he was a building worker from Shanghai. Probably an itinerant. He may well have just arrived in Beijing looking for work, but there’s no known address for him here, no known associates. I’ve already faxed Public Security in Shanghai asking for his details.’

‘How was he killed?’

‘A broken neck.’

‘He couldn’t just have fallen? An accident of some kind?’

‘No. There’s absolutely no sign of trauma. He was found in a condemned siheyuan in a hutong that was cleared about a month ago. But the crime scene is so clean I think he was killed somewhere else and dumped there.’

‘So what makes you think the cigarette end is connected to it?’

‘It was fresh. It was the only one there, and it was about three feet from the body.’

Li lit another cigarette, leaned back in his chair, and blew smoke thoughtfully at the blades of the overhead fan.

‘Do you believe there’s a connection?’ The section chief watched his new deputy carefully. But Li wasn’t being drawn into anything rash — not just yet. He stood by the window smoking one of his chief’s cigarettes. When he’d asked for it, Chen had raised a wry eyebrow and told him dryly, ‘You know, Li, someone in your elevated position really should start buying his own.’ Now he regarded Li with professional interest. While there was no denying his flair, and his record of success, there was an impetuous quality in him, an impatient streak that Chen had hoped would mellow with age. But until now there had been no sign of it. Perhaps responsibility would temper impulsiveness. As long as it didn’t dull a keen instinct.

‘The thing is,’ Li said seriously, ‘we have no reason to believe the man at Ritan Park was anything other than a suicide. If we can establish that the time of death of the two murders was prior to his, and that he smoked this brand of Marlboro cigarette, then it’s conceivable — just conceivable — that he killed the other two before doing away with himself.’ But he couldn’t keep his face straight any longer, and a mischievous smile crept across it.

Chen laughed. Not just a smile. A deep, throaty, smoker’s laugh. Li wished the girls in the typing pool could see it. ‘First day on the job,’ Chen said, still chuckling. ‘A suicide and two murders, and you’ve solved the lot already.’

Li’s smile turned rueful. ‘I wish it was that easy. But there’s something wrong here, Chief. These two murders. There’s not a shred of evidence at either scene. Except for the cigarette ends. Would somebody who obviously took so much care to leave no other evidence be careless enough to leave a cigarette end?’

‘Maybe the killer, or killers, weren’t that clever with the evidence, or lack of it. Maybe they just got lucky.’

‘Hmmm.’ Li wasn’t convinced. ‘Something doesn’t feel right. If there is a connection, it’s… well, very strange.’ He sighed and flicked his ash out of the open window. ‘The first thing we need to do is ID the guy in the park, but it could be some time before we can match the body with a missing person. And the municipal pathologist’s not interested in doing the autopsy. Burn victims aren’t his speciality, he says. Personally I think he’s just queasy about it.’

‘So who’s doing the autopsy?’

‘They’ve sent the body over to the Centre of Material Evidence Determination at the Public Security University.’

Chen looked thoughtful for a moment, then rummaged through some papers in an overflowing tray on his desk. Finally he drew out a sheet of paper, a circular from the Public Security Bureau visa section, and reread it with interest. He looked at Li. ‘The doctor of forensic pathology in Chicago who took my course on criminal investigation when I was at UIC last year? Just happens to be in Beijing at the moment — lecturing to students at the Public Security University.’

Li shrugged, not making a connection. ‘So?’

‘The good doctor’s speciality is burn victims.’

III

Margaret’s nightmare had begun early. It started with a hangover about 2 a.m. She had fallen into a dead sleep after the banquet, but slept for only around four hours. At two she was wide awake with a headache the size of Lake Michigan. Back in Chicago it was early afternoon. She swallowed a couple of Advil and tried to get back to sleep. But two hours later, visions of Michael’s face at their last meeting swimming relentlessly into her consciousness, she was sitting up, fully dressed, watching Hong Kong kung fu flicks on satellite Star Movies. She had already watched an hour of repeat bulletins on CNN and was ready to throw the television set out of the window. How was it possible, she wondered, to be so tired and yet incapable of sleep? If this was how it felt to be an insomniac, it was a condition to which she fervently hoped never to succumb. At five she had gone down to the twenty-four-hour café and washed down another couple of Advil with stewed black coffee, and by six felt woolly-headed and exhausted.

By then it was time to pick up her hire bike and attempt the long and difficult journey to the University of Public Security. Whatever fears her observation of Beijing traffic the previous day had conjured up were as nothing compared to the reality. The roads were sheer and utter chaos. And if she had hoped an early start would avoid the worst of the traffic, then she was wrong again. The whole of Beijing, it seemed, was on the move. And no one, apparently, had priority — at junctions, at traffic lights, between lanes. It was survival of the boldest. Just go, and hope that the bus bearing down on you would give way rather than kill you. Strangely enough, it worked. And in the sticky hour it took Margaret to cycle to the university, she learned the golden rule of biking in Beijing — that there were no rules. Expect the unexpected and you would never be surprised. And for all the honking of horns (she soon realised their purpose was to alert you to a vehicle’s presence, or its impending manoeuvre), and the cutting between lanes, everyone on the road seemed remarkably even-tempered. Road rage had not reached China. It occurred to Margaret that all these drivers were so recently cyclists themselves, used to jockeying patiently for position in overcrowded cycle lanes, they did not automatically assume that they had priority simply because they were behind the wheel of a car, or bus, or lorry. These were Chinese exercising that most enduring of Chinese qualities — patience.

When finally she reached the university at around 7 a.m., there had been loud martial music blaring from speakers all around campus. Bob had found her in her office, window closed, elbows on the desk, fingers pressed to her temples.

‘Got a bit of a hangover?’ he asked. His tone made her glance up at him sharply, but there was no hint in his expression of the sarcasm she had detected in his voice.

‘What is that goddamned music?’

‘I wouldn’t go around calling it “that goddamned music” if I were you,’ he said. ‘It’s the Chinese national anthem. They play it every morning.’

‘Then thank God I didn’t take an apartment here,’ she said.

‘Tried Advil?’ he asked.

She glared at him. ‘I just bought shares in the company.’ She leaned over to lift her rucksack on to the desk. ‘Listen, you said yesterday that after two years you still hadn’t managed to photocopy your lecture notes. I take it that was a joke?’

He shrugged. ‘Well… sort of. It was a kind of metaphor to illustrate that things here don’t always work like you would want them to. I did actually get my notes photocopied. Eventually.’

‘Good.’ She lifted a book out of her rucksack. ‘I want to photocopy a description of an autopsy.’ She dropped the book on her desk. Bob turned it round to face him. EVIDENCE DISMISSED. The Inside Story of the Police Investigation of O. J. Simpson. ‘I take it they’ve heard of O. J. Simpson in China?’ she said.

‘Oh, yes,’ Bob said. ‘They’ve made quite a study of the case here. They use it to demonstrate the failings of the American justice system.’ She flicked him another glance to see if he was being facetious. ‘They may just have a point,’ he added.

She railed protectively, ‘It wasn’t the system that failed. It was sloppy police work and incompetent prosecution. Theirs was the burden of proof. Theirs was the failure. Better that ten guilty men go free than that one innocent man is wrongly convicted. The presumption of innocence is still paramount.’

‘Yeah, well, the Chinese have only just introduced that concept into their legal system. I don’t think they’ve quite got used to the idea yet.’

‘What?’ Margaret looked horrified.

‘What you’ve still not grasped, Margaret’ — Bob had become smug again — ‘is that culturally, historically, American and Chinese societies are a million miles apart. You can’t just come here and expect to apply American values to Chinese society. Or vice versa. The Chinese have always, since the days of Confucius, emphasised the need for the individual to suppress personal ambition in favour of social harmony. The rights of society are given greater emphasis than the rights of the individual. “The nail that sticks up gets hammered down.” And that idea, and the practice of it, was around three thousand years before the communists ever came on the scene.’

‘So what about the rights of the individual in law?’

‘The accused, in the Chinese constitution, has plenty of rights. The trouble is that in China individual rights go hand in hand with a responsibility to society. There is no right without duty. So there’s built-in conflict.’

In spite of her increasing antipathy towards Bob, Margaret found her interest being engaged. ‘Like what? I mean, give me an example.’

‘Okay.’ Bob waved a hand vaguely towards the ceiling. ‘According to Chinese law a defendant has the right to defend himself. But he also has a duty to co-operate with the police and the court in uncovering the truth about his case. You might think that right to defend himself would lead automatically to a right to silence under interrogation, to protect himself, like Americans take the Fifth. Only he also has a duty — to the state, to society — to answer all questions faithfully and truthfully, even if that incriminates him.’

‘Well, that’s crazy!’

‘Is it?’ Bob sat on the edge of her desk. ‘I mean, in America we’re so obsessed with protecting the rights of the individual, we sometimes forget about the rights of society. At least the Chinese are trying to accommodate both.’ He sighed and shook his head. ‘The real problem with China is that while the defendant’s rights are pretty well protected in the constitution, they’re often neglected, or even abused, in practice. But there’s a lot of bright people in this country working hard to change that. And not without success. Things are improving.’

After her lecture from Bob had come her meeting with Mr Cao. He had been very polite and smiled a lot, and told her that while they usually had access to a 35mm slide projector it was not currently available. In that case, she had told him, smiling fixedly in return, the substance of her lectures would be necessarily limited, since they were all based around the visual presentation of real-life material. Perhaps he would like to see if they could borrow a slide projector. He doubted if that would be possible, but said he would see what he could do. And yes, he agreed, it would be an excellent idea if it could be arranged for her students to witness an actual autopsy. Unfortunately, he thought, this might be a little difficult to arrange. He told her he had timetabled three lectures a week, and she had shaken her head sadly and told him that, unfortunately, she had only brought material for twelve lectures. However, if he could arrange access to an autopsy, then she was sure she could fill in the other six hours without any difficulty. There was a further exchange of frozen smiles. He said he would see what he could do.

There had followed a brief period of relative calm before the nightmare resumed with the arrival of Lily Ping. She presented her unsmiling face at the door of Margaret’s office shortly after 9 a.m. ‘You got everything you need?’ she had made the mistake of asking.

‘Well, no, actually,’ Margaret said. ‘I don’t have a slide projector, so most of my lecture material is redundant. I can’t find the photocopier anywhere…’

‘You want something photocopy?’ She held out her hand. ‘I arrange for you.’

‘Oh.’ Margaret was taken aback. This was new. Co-operation. ‘Sure.’ She picked up the O. J. book. ‘I need about twenty copies.’ Lily snatched the book from her and was halfway out of the door before Margaret could call after her, ‘Pages 108 to 111.’ She crossed the office hurriedly and called down the corridor, ‘Before ten. I’ve got a class at ten.’

‘Sure,’ Lily said, without turning, as she disappeared into the bowels of the building.

At a quarter to ten Margaret went looking for her, eventually spotting her ten minutes later crossing campus towards the auditorium. Margaret chased after her, the glare and heat of the sun bouncing back at her off the tarmac. ‘Lily! Lily!’ She was breathless and red-faced by the time she caught up with her. ‘Lily, where are my photocopies? I’ve got class in five minutes.’

‘Oh, photocopy take time. Girl busy right now,’ Lily said, and resumed her progress towards the auditorium.

Margaret chased after her. ‘That’s not good enough. I want them now. And I need that book back.’

‘This afternoon,’ Lily said without breaking stride.

Margaret stopped, fists clenched at her sides. ‘All right. I’ll do it myself. Where’s the photocopier?’

‘No need you do it yourself. That what secretary there for.’ And Lily disappeared into the auditorium. Margaret stood, stock still, the sun beating down on her like a physical blow, and felt the most powerful urge to scream at the top of her lungs.

The bleep on the hour from her digital watch had come as a sickening reminder that she should be somewhere else. She had hurried back to the office to collect her stuff and then literally run across campus to the red-brick building that housed the lecture rooms. It had taken her fully another five minutes to find her lecture room. Fifteen students, twelve male and three female, sat in patient and curious silence as the puce-faced and perspiring pathologist made her breathless entrance for her debut lecture.

Her attempt at composure, which consisted of a deep breath and a big smile, was met with blank faces. ‘Hi,’ she said, confidence dissolving fast. ‘I’m Dr Margaret Campbell. I’m a forensic pathologist from the Cook County Examiner’s Office in Chicago, Illinois. And over the next six weeks it had been my intention to take you through twelve real-life murder cases from the US. Unfortunately, a lot of the material I have is visual. Photographic slides. And, sadly, it seems the university is unable to provide me with a projector to…’ Her voice trailed off as she saw a 35mm slide projector on a table at the back of the room — at the same time as most of the students turned to look at it. ‘Ah,’ she said. ‘Looks like they’ve been able to lay their hands on one after all.’ A tense pause. ‘If they’d told me, I’d have brought my slides with me.’ Her cheek muscles were beginning to ache with the effort of holding, for hours it seemed, a smile on her face. ‘I’ll just go and get them. Back in five minutes.’

That, she had reflected, as she hurried back to her office, was what the Chinese would have described as extreme loss of face. But she wasn’t going to be fazed by it. These were simply teething troubles and she was going to deal with them calmly and coolly. She passed Bob in the corridor. He smiled cheerily.

‘Hey, I hear Mr Cao managed to get you a slide projector after all.’

‘Well, he might have damn well told me!’ she snapped, and slammed the door of her office.

Later, as she sat in the gloom of the darkened lecture room, running through slides of burn victims from Waco, it occurred to her that Bob — and everyone else at the university — must wonder what kind of premenstrual maniac the OICJ had dumped on them. From somewhere in the depths of the depression that had descended upon her, a voice told her that one day she would be able to smile about it all. But at that moment, she doubted it very much.

When she had drawn the blinds she noticed that the fifteen faces in her classroom had gone quite pale. One of the girls asked to be excused and hurried out to the toilet holding a hand over her mouth. Margaret had smiled grimly. ‘These are just photographs. If any of you ever become real cops you’re going to see a hell of a lot worse in the flesh.’ She had thrown the class open for discussion. But not a single student ventured a question or a view. And now, as they filed silently out at the end of the hour, she slumped back in her chair and let out a deep and heartfelt sigh of relief. A knock at the door made her turn her head. Her heart sank at the sight of Bob.

‘How’d it go?’

‘Don’t ask.’

He grinned. ‘Don’t take it personally. They’re like that with everyone at first.’

‘What do you mean?’ She sat up.

‘Well, let me guess. You found them unresponsive, reluctant to answer questions, even more reluctant to ask them or discuss a point?’ She nodded dumbly. ‘Chinese students aren’t used to the kind of interactive classes we have in the US. Here, they tend to be lectured to.’

I know the feeling, Margaret thought bitterly.

Bob continued, unaware of her growing desire to stuff her trainers down his throat. ‘The voice of the teacher is the voice of authority. Most students believe there is only one right answer to any question. So they just memorise stuff. They’re not used to discussing, or debating, or expressing a view. But I’m sure you’ll win them round.’

Margaret searched his face for that sarcasm she heard in his voice again. But again there was no sign of it.

‘Anyway,’ he said, ‘you’d better get back over to Administration. There’s an old friend waiting to see you in your office.’

Section Chief Chen Anming rose from one of Margaret’s plastic seats and gave her one of his rare, and warm, smiles. ‘Dr Campbell. What a very great pleasure it is to meet you again.’ He pumped her hand enthusiastically.

Margaret might have been hard pushed to place him had it not been for the yellow nicotine streak in his hair, and the fact that Bob had explained to her who he was. ‘Mr Chen.’ She inclined her head towards him. ‘The pleasure is all mine.’

‘Perhaps you will not remember me?’ he said.

She had only the vaguest recollection of him. So many students on short courses over the last three years. ‘Of course, I remember you well.’ Then suddenly she did remember — a painting mounted on a scroll that hung on her study wall at home. He had presented it to her, almost ceremonially, on his last day. It was something she looked at often and appreciated, something that had nothing to do with her and Michael, but with her alone. An old man with a wicked grin and bristling beard, squatting on the ground dangling a pair of sandals in one hand. ‘You gave me the painting of the Chinese ghost.’

‘Not a ghost, exactly. A good Chinese spirit.’

‘I’ve never been able to remember his name.’

‘Zhong Kui. He is a legendary figure.’

So many hours in his company, and only now did she know his name. ‘I had no idea when you gave me it how much pleasure it would give me.’ She thought of those long, dark nights when Zhong Kui’s roguish smile was the only thing that seemed to keep her sane, when his presence in her home was the only company she could bear. It seemed extraordinary that she should now be reacquainted with her benefactor in this unusual circumstance. And she flushed with guilt at having almost forgotten who he was and, indeed, how the picture had come into her possession. ‘I am sure I must have thanked you at the time. But I am very pleased to be able to thank you again, this time with the knowledge of hindsight.’

‘Forgive me, Doctor.’ He seemed suddenly embarrassed. ‘I know you have only just arrived, and you must be very busy…’ He hesitated. ‘I was wondering… could I, perhaps, ask you for a very special personal favour?’

‘Of course.’ She couldn’t imagine what it might be. ‘Anything.’

‘This is not official, you understand. Just personal,’ he stressed again, and it dawned on Margaret that she was witnessing guanxi in practice. He had presented her with a gift in Chicago. Now he was asking for something in return.

‘We have a suspected suicide, but there are problems with identification. The victim set fire to himself, and the autopsy is, I think, a little specialised. He is very badly burned.’

‘And you want me to do an autopsy,’ she realised. ‘Well, of course. I’d be only too happy to help.’

He relaxed immediately and beamed again. But she was already thinking how she might turn this to her advantage. You’re going to have to start getting yourself a little guanxi in the bank, Bob had said. A window of opportunity was opening up for her students to observe an autopsy — without the help of Mr Cao. Not the burn victim, perhaps. But that particular corpse would put some guanxi in the bank for later.

Mr Chen took her arm and ushered her out into the corridor. ‘I am so very pleased you agree to do me this favour,’ he said.

She was a little taken aback. ‘What, you want me to do it now?’

‘No, no. I want you to come and meet my deputy. He is with Professor Jiang. I have, of course, already asked Professor Jiang for permission to ask you.’

And the professor, Margaret thought, was probably glad to get her out of his hair for a while. In fact, when Professor Jiang rose from behind his desk as they knocked and entered his office, she felt that his smile lacked a little in warmth. He looked at Chen. ‘Well?’

‘Dr Campbell has agreed, of course.’

Jiang seemed relieved, and Chen turned to a younger man who had been sitting by the window. ‘My deputy, Li Yan,’ he said. ‘He is in charge of the case.’ And as Li stood up Margaret realised who he was.

Li hurried to keep up as Chen strode across campus to where they’d parked their car in the shade of some trees. Chen was furious. ‘What do you mean “not necessary”?’ he barked.

Li tried to be reasonable. ‘The pathologist at the Centre of Material Evidence Determination will not be pleased. It will be a loss of face for some American to be brought in.’

‘You didn’t think so when I first suggested it.’

‘I didn’t know who it was then.’

‘And just what do you have against this woman? She is a recognised expert in her field.’

‘I realise that, Chief. It’s just…’

But Chen cut him off. ‘And do you not think I will lose face if suddenly I turn around and tell her we’ve changed our minds? It’s out of the question. I have asked. She has agreed. And that’s an end to it.’ He climbed into the driver’s seat, slammed the door shut, started the engine and drove off with an impetuous squeal of tyres.

IV

The sky was lost in a dazzling wash of haze and dust. The diffused glare of the sun reflected back from every surface, and the world seemed burned out, like an overexposed photograph. Margaret slipped sunglasses over her eyes to bring back definition, and hurried to keep pace with Lily on the long walk from the administration block, past the playing fields, to the squat, four-storey concrete building at the far end which housed the Centre of Material Evidence Determination. Her spirits were high for the first time since her arrival in China, lifted in large part by the look on Deputy Section Chief Li’s face when she had walked into Professor Jiang’s office with Mr Chen. All his irritated superiority of the previous day had been replaced first by astonishment, and then dismay. His handshake had been cursory, his eyes distant. He had said almost nothing. Enough, and no more, to remain polite. And now he would be waiting for her impatiently in an autopsy room, the stink of disinfectant and formaldehyde wrinkling his nose. They were the perfumes of her profession, an olfactory sensation so often experienced it no longer registered — except as something familiar, almost comforting. But not to Li, she was sure.

In fact there were five metal autopsy tables in the room, with gutters and reservoirs perfectly placed to collect blood and other fluids draining from the bodies during dissection. Li stood stiffly by the door making desultory conversation with a pathologist in a white gown. Both turned as Margaret entered with Lily.

‘Dr Campbell, Professor Xie.’ Li made the bleak introduction. There was no warmth in either hand or eye as Professor Xie shook her hand. Margaret understood immediately that the professor had lost face, being made to play second fiddle not only to an American, but to a woman. She was, she realised, beginning to learn something about the psychology of the Chinese. She decided not to indulge in appeasement for the moment. She turned to Lily.

‘No need for you to hang around, Lily.’

‘No, I stay in case there be anything you need, Doctah Cambo.’ Lily was determined not to miss out on this moment between Margaret and Li, especially after what had passed between them yesterday afternoon.

‘Actually,’ Margaret said acidly, ‘there is some photocopying I was wanting done.’

‘All taken care of, Doctah,’ Lily replied, quite unfazed.

Margaret turned to Li. ‘So — you have no idea who the victim is?’ she asked.

‘No,’ Li said. ‘We will have to wait and match dental records with missing-persons reports as they come in. It could take some weeks.’

‘Weeks?’ She was astonished.

He took her tone as criticism. ‘Time is unimportant. Results are.’

‘In the States both are.’

‘Yes, but in China we pride ourselves on getting things right.’

She bit her tongue. After all, she had no ammunition with which to fight back. The Chinese might make studies of well-known cases in the US, but Americans were profoundly ignorant of headline crimes in China.

‘I was once involved in a murder investigation that lasted more than two years,’ Li went on, to illustrate his point. ‘A family were found slaughtered in their home. A mother, father, grandfather, child. There was a forced entry, a night-time burglary we believed had gone wrong. Blood everywhere. Footprints in blood, fingerprints. But our national fingerprint register is, as yet, limited. We had to trace and interview nearly three thousand migrant workers known to have been in the area at the time.’

Margaret interrupted. ‘How did you know it was a migrant worker?’

‘In China,’ Li said, ‘people respect the police. They know it is their duty to help the police. If they have a job, their danwei provides their apartment, pays for their medical treatment. Someone on their street committee will know if they are at home or not at home. There is a network of information about people’s lives and movements that we can call on. We call it the masses line. The masses line is the single biggest reason for low crime figures in China. People do not commit crime if they know they will be caught. And if they are caught they lose everything — job, house, medical treatment, pension…’ He shook his head and scuffed his foot on the floor. ‘Everyone agrees, economic reform in China is good. Deng Xiaoping said: “To be rich is glorious.” But now the iron rice bowl is broken…’

‘Iron rice bowl?’

He seemed annoyed by the interruption. ‘Job for life. We call it the iron rice bowl. Now that the rice bowl is broken, there are many unemployed people. Many workers are itinerant. They move about the country looking for work. They are what we call the floating population. And as the floating population grows, so does the crime rate.’

Margaret nodded, beginning to understand just how such fundamental differences in a society can affect its criminal activity. ‘So you went after your three thousand itinerant workers.’

‘We found eleven had gone missing. One by one they had to be found and eliminated from our inquiry. Finally we got our man.’

‘Two years?’

‘Two years.’

Margaret shook her head in wonder. ‘In the States we wouldn’t have had the money, or the manpower, to pursue one case that long. And anyway,’ she grinned, ‘there’d have been a few hundred other homicides in the meantime.’

‘I know,’ Li said seriously, and Margaret wondered if this was straight-faced sarcasm. But he gave no indication of it.

Professor Xie glanced pointedly at his watch and sighed audibly.

‘Okay,’ Li said. ‘You want to have a look at the body?’

‘Are there any belongings?’ she asked.

‘Don’t you want to see the body first?’ Li seemed surprised.

‘No. Sometimes you can tell a lot from what a person was wearing, or carrying.’

Professor Xie spoke to one of several hovering assistants, who hurried away, returning a few moments later with a small plastic bag containing the few effects that survived the blaze. He tipped them out on one of the tables and they gathered round to have a look, Lily squeezing in between two assistants to catch a glimpse. If she had been expecting something macabre, then she would have been disappointed by the charred belt buckle, Zippo lighter and signet ring.

Margaret picked up and examined the buckle closely. It was a simple loop with a long, thin tongue. Quite unremarkable. She dropped it with a clatter on the metal table and picked up the Zippo, turning it this way and that with dexterous fingers before flipping open the lid. Inside was a blackened mess, the interior working melded to the exterior sheath, the cotton and wick incinerated in the fire. She asked for a pair of rubber gloves, a piece of cotton cloth and some cleaning fluid. An irked Professor Xie relayed the request to an assistant, who rushed off to comply.

Margaret continued examining the lighter, and Li took the opportunity to cast a discreet eye over her. She was dressed casually, in sneakers and jeans, a baggy white tee-shirt tucked in at her belt. He marvelled at the colour and texture of her hair, tumbling in golden curls from grey clasps. But her eyes were compelling. He had met many blue-eyed Westerners, but these were startlingly blue, as if lit from within. Her eyes met his for a fleeting moment, and he glanced away self-consciously. When he looked again, she seemed absorbed still in the lighter, scratching at the carbon coating with long, elegant white fingers. It was looking at her hands which drew his attention to her freckles. Her bare forearms were covered in them, beneath a mesh of fine, downy blonde hairs. He noticed, then, the sprinkling of them across her nose and forehead. She wore little or no make-up, a hint of brown on her eyelids, a scraping of red on her lips. His gaze dropped a little, following the smooth line of her neck, and he saw that she was not wearing a bra, breasts moving freely against the cool cotton of her shirt. Unaccountably, and to his intense annoyance, he felt a tiny knot of desire unravel somewhere deep inside his loins.

The assistant returned. Margaret snapped on the rubber gloves, soaked the cloth with fluid, and rubbed the lighter with it, slowly working off the carbon coating along its bottom face. ‘There’s some kind of engraved lettering here.’ She found a pair of half-moon reading glasses in her purse and squinted at the lettering, disappointed to bring into focus the ZIPPO registered trademark, and beneath it, Bradford PA, Made in USA. ‘Well, that’s a bit of a let-down.’ And as she said it, she wasn’t quite sure who she was saying it to. She glanced up self-consciously, then turned back to the lighter, working quickly with the cloth and fluid over its other surfaces. ‘Something else.’ More, very faint, lettering appeared as the carbon lifted along the bottom edge of the flip-lid. She had to turn it to catch the light to read ‘Solid Brass’. She dropped the lighter with a clatter back on the table and lifted the ring. ‘Signet ring,’ she said, and rubbed at it with the cloth. ‘It appears to be set with a flat, engraved, semi-precious stone of some kind.’ But no matter how hard she rubbed at the stone it refused to come up anything other than black, even though its metal setting began revealing patches of tarnished silver. ‘Could be ebony.’ She held it up and turned it to catch the light, screwing her eyes up behind her reading glasses. ‘There’s a symbol of some kind on it, and some lettering.’ As she turned it through the light, and the engraving fell into relief, she suddenly realised what it was, and her heart skipped a beat. She examined the rest of the ring more closely. It had been deformed by the heat, but not entirely melted. Perhaps his ring hand had been resting on the ground, half protected from the upward-licking flames. She squinted at the inner surface of the ring, rubbed it for a few furious seconds with the cloth, and then squinted at it again. Now she removed her glasses. She glanced at her watch and made a quick mental calculation. ‘Damn.’ And she looked up to find a row of curious faces watching her with affected patience. ‘Is there a phone I can use to call the States?’

Li looked at Professor Xie, who nodded. ‘In my office.’

While she made the call, Margaret could see, through a large window, the others waiting in an outer office. Professor Xie was a small man, almost effeminate, in his early forties, Margaret thought. He was dark-complexioned and his jet-black hair was swept back from a remarkable widow’s peak that seemed to begin halfway up his forehead. He was perched on the edge of a desk and appeared lost in his own gloomy thoughts.

Li, too, seemed preoccupied. Smoking, she saw with distaste. Lily was babbling away to him, but it was obvious he wasn’t listening. Margaret took a good look at him, but saw no reason to reappraise yesterday’s assessment. He was ugly, bad-tempered and moody. And he was a smoker. The ringing in her ear was suddenly interrupted as someone answered at the other end.

‘Twenty-third Precinct,’ said a woman’s voice.

‘Detective Hersh, please.’

Li looked past his reflection in the window and saw Margaret in its shadow. She had been talking animatedly for some time, laughing easily. Someone she knew well at the other end. And now she seemed to be waiting, tapping a pencil on the polished surface of Professor Xie’s immaculately tidy desk. He could not imagine the purpose of the phone call, or what she had seen in the ring. She still had it with her, and as she waited on the phone, she kept examining and re-examining it, a girlish excitement apparent in her inability to sit still. He noticed the ring on her wedding finger, and in spite of himself felt curious about the man who had married her.

It was Li’s firm belief that he would never marry. The few relationships he’d had at university had gone nowhere, and since joining Section One there just hadn’t been the time. He was still embarrassed by the recollection of half-remembered adolescent fumblings with teenage girls in his home town of Wanxian in Sichuan province. He had been an ugly boy, always tall for his age, and clumsy. The more experienced girls had made fun of him, teasing and taunting.

But there had been one girl, shy, not like the others. Like him she was no beauty, but also like him she was gentle, in body and spirit, strong in character. They had walked by the canal together during long, dusky summer evenings before he left for Beijing and the Public Security University. She had not wanted him to be a policeman. He was made for better things, she had told him. He was a sensitive soul, he had no place among brutish criminals in the big city. His family was pushing him into it, she said, because his uncle was a famous policeman in the capital. But Li knew that wasn’t why, at least not entirely. There was an anger in him that seemed to burn on a constant simmer. An anger at all the unfairnesses in life, the inequalities, the triumphs of evil over good.

Once, at his school, it had boiled over. A bully, the biggest boy in his year, was mercilessly baiting one of the juniors, a soft boy with a deformed hand of which he was crushingly self-conscious. He was almost hysterical with shame and embarrassment at the bully’s cruelty. A crowd had gathered, the way that crowds do, scared, fascinated, glad that it wasn’t them. Li broke through the circle of boys and told the bully to stop. The boy was not used to being challenged. He turned, wild-eyed, and demanded to know who the hell Li thought he was. Li said, ‘I am Li Yan. And if you do not stop I will break your skull.’ And he meant it. And the bully saw in his eyes that he meant it. But he was trapped by his own weakness. He could not back down without losing face. So Li had to crack his skull. He was in hospital for nearly two weeks and Li was visited by the juvenile delinquency officer and almost expelled from his school. But no one ever bullied the boy with the deformity again, not while Li was around. And Li had never had to fight anyone else again since.

So he knew that this girl was wrong. He was not made for better things. He was made to be a policeman, and to Li that was the very best thing he could be. He had never regretted coming to Beijing, and the last he heard the girl he walked by the canal with had married the bully whose skull he’d cracked. He had smiled, for the bully was weak, and she was strong and would mould him into whatever she wanted.

Margaret, he noticed now, was scribbling in a notebook whatever was being relayed to her across the ether. She nodded and smiled and hung up the phone, tearing the page out of the notebook before coming through. She handed it to Li, a gleam in her eyes. ‘Chao Heng,’ she said. ‘That’s the name of your John Doe through there.’ She jerked her thumb towards the autopsy room. ‘About ninety-nine per cent certain.’

Li looked at the piece of paper. She had scribbled, Chao Heng, graduated microbial genetics, University of Wisconsin, 1972.

He looked up at her in astonishment. Professor Xie said, ‘How can you possibly know this?’

She held up the ring. ‘In the States, there’s a tradition among university graduates. To mark the occasion they have special graduation rings made that bear the crest of their university. In this case, the University of Wisconsin.’ She handed the ring to Professor Xie. ‘You can see the crest carved in the stone. Even if it hadn’t actually said University of Wisconsin on it, I’d have known the university because…’ Li saw a cloud, like a cataract, come across her eyes and the skin darken around them. ‘… because someone I knew well graduated from there.’ The moment was past, and she was back on her roll. ‘The thing is, they very often get them engraved on the inside. A name, a date, initials. In this case, if you look carefully, the initials C.H. and the date, 1972.’

Professor Xie peered at the engraving and passed it to Li.

‘We’re lucky it wasn’t completely melted.’ She shrugged. ‘So fate was kind to us. Anyway, it’s half past ten at night over there, so I couldn’t call the university. I did the next best thing; spoke to a friend on the Chicago force. He goes on-line to the Internet, pulls up the alumni register for Wisconsin, and checks out the initials on all the graduates from ’72. There’s only one Chinese name with the initials C. H. Chao Heng. Graduated in microbial genetics.’

Li clenched his fist around the ring, a gleam in his eye which when he turned it on her might have held a hint of admiration, albeit grudging. She felt a flush of pleasure. She remembered reading something somewhere, once, a very long time ago. She knew it was Chinese. ‘Women hold up half the sky.’ She shrugged it off as if it were nothing.

Li raised an eyebrow, and she saw pure mischief in those dark eyes. ‘Ah,’ he said. ‘You are quoting from Mao Zedong.’ She nodded. So that’s who had said it. ‘Of course,’ Li continued, ‘he meant the lower half of the sky.’

There was a moment’s stand-off, before a wide grin slashed his face. It was irresistibly infectious, and she found herself smiling back when what she really wanted to do was punch him. She turned to Professor Xie. ‘Professor, if I may, I would very much like to assist you in the autopsy. I am sure there is much I could learn from an experienced pathologist like yourself.’ Credentials established, she had no problem with restoring Professor Xie’s mianzi.

He responded immediately with a small, dignified bow. ‘It is my pleasure,’ he said.

V

‘There is extensive thermal injury, with fourth- and third-degree burns over greater than ninety per cent of the body surface, with scattered second-degree burns. Portions of the scalp and virtually all of the scalp hair are charred away, with the exception of a small amount of singed, coarse, straight black hair averaging three centimetres in length on the left side of the head. The facial features are not discernible. The nose is absent, as is the right ear. The left ear is shrivelled and charred. The eyes are not recognisable. The teeth are partially charred, but are in excellent repair, with multiple amalgam fillings and porcelain crowns. The maxilla and mandible will be retained for future dental comparison. The skin and soft tissue of the right cheek are charred away and there is char fracturing of the right zygoma. The tongue is protruding slightly; the tip is charred, and there is a small amount of white froth about the mouth. No facial hair is identified.’

Lily’s protestations that she was no longer required had been ignored, and she stood shivering at the back of the autopsy room beside Li, hardly daring to watch as Margaret made her preliminary examination of the body. Margaret measured and weighed, describing her findings as she went for the benefit of an overhead microphone. The recording of the entire proceeding would later be transcribed for the autopsy report.

She and Professor Xie had gone off earlier to change, returning swathed in layers of clothing; green surgeon’s pyjamas covered by plastic aprons, in turn covered by long-sleeved cotton gowns. Both wore plastic shoe covers on their feet and shower caps on their heads. Wondering what had drawn her to such a macabre profession, Li had watched with involuntary fascination as Margaret pulled on a pair of gloves, slipping plastic sleeve covers over her freckled forearms to cover the gap between sleeve and glove. She had drawn a steel-mesh glove over her left, non-cutting, hand, and snapped on a second pair of latex gloves over the lot. The post-mortem mutilation of a human being was a messy business.

As both surgeons had pulled up their face masks and lowered goggles over their eyes, two assistants had wheeled in the charred body of Chao Heng on a gurney and transferred it to the autopsy table. Lily had let out a small gasp. His upper body was still frozen in the defensive attitude of the boxer, as if preparing to fight off any attempt to cut him open. The chill air of the room had been suffused immediately with a smell like overcooked steak on a grill, an insidious odour that crept into the soul via the too-sensitive medium of the olfactory nerves.

The assistants had placed covers on the floor beneath and around the table to collect the fine charcoal dust that Margaret had warned would settle all around them and track across the room as they moved back and forth dissecting organs for later microscopic examination. Professor Xie, although nominally the lead pathologist, now that mianzi was restored had deferred to Margaret’s greater experience and asked her to perform the autopsy while he assisted.

Now, as she examined the feet of the corpse, she found and pulled back a piece of black and stiffened material from the top of the left foot. ‘The charred remains of what appears to be a leather shoe and part of a sock are present over the dorsum and the sole of the left foot and the sole of the right foot. There are no remaining identifying features, other than that the left shoe appears to have been of a laced variety. The skin of the dorsum of the left foot is dark red and blistered and there is an apparent needle track in the skin in the area of the saphenous vein and venous arch.’

Margaret reached up and switched off the microphone, turning towards Li. ‘Looks like our man might have been a junkie. The top of the foot is quite a common place to shoot up if you want to hide the needle tracks. We can confirm that by checking for narcotics residue in and around the capillaries of the lungs. Blood tests will tell us what he was shooting up. Probably heroin.’

‘Will you get sufficient blood and material for testing? I mean, won’t everything be cooked?’ Li’s distaste at his own question was palpable.

‘Superficially, yes. Normally we would draw off fluid from the eyes and blood from the femoral veins at the top of the legs, but that will be cooked and solid. Inside, though, should be pretty much protected and preserved. Beyond the accelerant used to set him on fire, there wasn’t much else to sustain the blaze, so he wouldn’t have burned for that long.’

The assistants turned the body over and Margaret switched on the microphone. ‘The posterior trunk shows a symmetrical external contour. The spine is clearly mid-line. There is charring of the skin of the back and multiple small areas of skin splitting over the latissimus dorsi bilaterally. There is no obvious blunt or sharp force trauma of the back.’

Having placed the body on its back again, the autopsy assistants placed a rubber block around six inches thick beneath the body, in the mid-chest area, to help expose the chest cavity when Margaret made the first Y-shaped incision, starting at each shoulder, meeting at the bottom of the breastbone, and continuing down past the belly button to the pubic bone. She peeled back the skin and musculature of the chest to reveal the cavity.

‘There is diffuse drying and fixation of the soft tissues of the thoracic and abdominal walls, with skin splitting. All organs are present and in their appropriate positions.’

Professor Xie cut through the ribcage with what looked like pruning shears. The snapping of the bones made a sickening sound that echoed back at them off the cold tiles. When he had finished, they removed the breastplate to reveal the heart. Margaret snipped open the pericardial sac so that the blood that poured into it out of the heart could be collected by the assistants for testing in toxicology. Professor Xie slipped his hands into the cavity and lifted up the heart, allowing Margaret to sever the major vessels and arteries so that he could remove it for weighing and later dissection.

They worked methodically down the body, removing the lungs, the stomach — looking like a slimy, fluid-filled purse, its foul-smelling contents drained for further examination — the liver, the spleen, the pancreas, the kidneys; weighing everything, removing blood, fluid and bile samples.

‘The stomach contains 125 grams of grey-brown, pasty, partially digested food material. No medication residue is grossly identified. No ethanol odour is noted.’

Working quickly now, with dexterous hands, Margaret cut the guts free and, starting at the duodenum end, began pulling the gut towards herself, an arm’s length at a time, using her scalpel to free its loops from the sheet of fat to which it was attached. When it was straight, she sliced down its length with a pair of scissors, holding them partially open and drawing the intestine along them, as if she were cutting a piece of Christmas wrapping paper. The stink was almost unbearable. Li and Lily moved instinctively away, mouths closed, breathing shallowly. ‘The small and large intestines are examined throughout their entire length and are grossly unremarkable.’ The intestine was discarded into a stainless-steel bucket lined with plastic.

Urine samples were drawn from the bladder for toxicology, and Margaret examined the prostate and testes, cutting sections from each for testing, before discarding the remains in the bucket.

She turned to the neck now, pulling the top flap of skin from the Y-shaped incision up over the face. ‘The bony and cartilaginous structures of the neck are intact and without evidence of trauma. The musculature of the neck shows marked heat fixation, but there is no evidence of haemorrhage in the strap muscles or soft tissues of the neck.’

Attention turned, then, to the head, a head-block placed under the neck to raise it from the table. An incision was made at the back running from one ear to the other, and the skin peeled down over the face to reveal the skull. Using a circular saw, one of the assistants cut through the skullcap so that it could be removed, with a sucking and popping sound like feet being withdrawn from mud, to reveal the brain. Margaret had warned everyone to stand back as the saw cut through bone. ‘Try not to breathe this stuff,’ she said. ‘It smells kind of smoky-sweet, but latest thinking is that it might carry HIV and other viruses.’

She examined the skull. ‘Reflection of the scalp reveals a 2 by 3.2 centimetre area of subgaleal haemorrhage over the left parietal bone, with a possible contusion of approximately the same dimensions of the scalp — impossible to say for sure because of heat artifact. There is a small amount of subdural haemorrhage deep to the area of subgaleal haemorrhage. On removal of the dura, an irregular-shaped fracture, measuring 2.6 centimetres in length, is clearly visible. There is no charring or eversion of the fracture.’

She concentrated then on removing the brain from the skull, pulling it gently back towards her, examining its worm-like surface as she did. ‘The meninges are slightly dried, but thin and translucent. There is a small contusion of the left parietal lobe, with a trace of haemorrhage.’ She snipped it off at the stem and it plopped out into her hands for weighing. Lily put a hand over her mouth and fled from the room.

Margaret let out a deep breath as she relaxed her concentration. ‘Well, apart from breadloafing the organs, there’s not much else we can do just now. It’ll take some time to prepare permanent paraffin sections for microscopic examination…’

Professor Xie interrupted her. ‘If you wished, we could examine fresh frozen sections in about fifteen minutes.’

‘You’ve got a cryostat here?’ She was unable to hide her surprise.

He smiled. ‘This is a very modern facility, Doctor. We are not so far behind the Americans.’

The cryostat was about the size of a small washing machine with a crank handle on its right side and a window on top with a view into its icy interior, kept at a chilly minus 22 degrees Centigrade. Margaret was happy to let Professor Xie demonstrate his expertise, and watched as he prepared sections of lung tissue and skin from the left foot for freezing. He squeezed globs of a jelly-like support medium into metal chucks that would provide holding bases for the tissue. The tissue samples were then placed on the chucks which were, in turn, set on a rack in the cold working area in the cryostat. Working with practised ease, the professor pressed metal heat sinks against the face of the tissue samples, both to flatten and to freeze them.

Li had attended many autopsies over the years, but this was a procedure that was new to him. He watched, fascinated, as only a few minutes later the professor removed the frozen lung tissue from the freezer and transferred it, in its chuck, to the cutting area. Placing it hard against the blade, he turned the crank handle, drawing the sample across the cutting edge, for all the world like a ham slicer, cutting a wisp-thin section of tissue only microns thick, which was then touched to the surface of a room-temperature glass microscope slide. The sample instantly melted. The professor stained it with hematoxylin and eosin and handed it to Margaret for examination under the microscope.

‘Microscopic examination of multiple sections of the lungs shows granulomata and multinucleated giant cells containing polarisable material.’

The process was repeated with the skin samples taken from the areas of needle track on the left foot. Margaret pushed her goggles up on to her forehead. ‘Same thing,’ she said.

‘Meaning what?’ Li asked.

‘Heroin users often grind up whatever other narcotics they can and inject the powder the way they do heroin. Particles of the pill residue get trapped in the tiny capillaries of the lungs and the surrounding lung tissue. Where the particles remain they get engulfed by inflammatory cells. There is clear evidence of that in this man’s lungs, as well as in the tracks in his foot.’

‘So what does this tell us?’

‘Nothing, except that he was probably a heroin user.’

‘And cause of death?’

‘As we all thought. Extensive thermal injury. Burning.’

‘You said something about contusion, haemorrhaging, a fracture of the skull… What does all that mean?’

‘It means someone hit him on the head with a blunt instrument. Not enough to kill him, but it would certainly have rendered him at least semiconscious, if not wholly unconscious.’

Li was startled. ‘It couldn’t have been accidental, or self-inflicted?’

She said dismissively, ‘Oh, I don’t think so. With an injury like that he’d have been in no condition to go walking around and setting himself up as a bonfire. And, as I understand it, he was found still in the lotus position. So he didn’t fall and hit his head on anything once he’d started burning. I believe he was knocked on the head and then sedated.’ She paused. ‘Are you familiar with the term Special K?’ Li frowned, clearly not. She smiled. ‘At least, that’s what they call it on the streets. A drug called ketamine. They used to use it as an anaesthetic induction agent in the States. Got some pretty nasty hallucinogenic side effects. My guess would be that when we get the blood tests back we’ll find he had been injected either with ketamine, or a very high dose of heroin. That would have made him more compliant and easier to handle.’

‘You’re telling me he didn’t kill himself.’ Li was stunned.

‘Suicide? Good God, no. This man was murdered.’