The Firemaker

I

Wednesday Evening

The traffic on the second ring road heading south was nose to tail, crawling through a late afternoon haze of humidity and pollution. Li took a pack of cigarettes from the glove compartment. ‘Mind if I smoke?’

Margaret looked at the cigarettes with distaste. ‘Actually, yes.’ Then she relented. ‘Well, I guess if you open your window…’

‘Then the air-conditioning won’t work.’ He dropped the pack back in the glove compartment. ‘In China,’ he said, ‘it is considered bad manners to refuse someone permission to smoke.’

‘Then why did you ask?’

‘I was being polite.’

‘Well, in the States it’s considered impolite to ask somebody else to breathe your smoke.’

He smiled. ‘We’re never going to agree on very much, are we?’

‘Well, there’s certainly room for improvement on our record to date.’

He blasted his horn at a yellow taxi and switched lanes to gain a couple of car lengths. ‘So what happened that night?’ he asked.

‘What night?’

‘The night of your banquet.’

‘What, with McCord?’ He nodded. ‘The guy’s a total creep.’

‘So why did you invite him?’

‘What?’ She was shocked. ‘Where in the hell did that story come from?’

‘I thought you knew him.’

‘He tried to pick me up in the bar of the Friendship. I’d never seen him before then. It was Lily who told him we were going to a welcome banquet, and he just turned up.’ She gave vent to her indignation. ‘Jesus!’

‘But you got into a fight with him.’

‘I didn’t get into a fight with him. I took issue with the work he does.’

Li was surprised. ‘But he’s a scientist.’

‘He’s a biotechnologist. He tampers with the genetic make-up of foods and then expects us to eat them.’

‘He was responsible for developing the super-rice. What’s wrong with that? It’s feeding millions of hungry people.’

‘Of course that’s the argument scientists use in its favour.’ She stopped herself. One step at a time, she thought. ‘Do you know what genetic engineering is?’

He shrugged, reluctant to admit his ignorance. ‘I suppose not.’

‘And do you know why you don’t?’ He didn’t. ‘Because a lot of scientists think that we laymen are too stupid to understand it. In fact it’s really very simple. But they don’t want to explain, because if we understood it we might just be scared of it.’

He glanced at her across the Jeep. ‘You seem to know a lot about it.’

‘Oh yes,’ she said bitterly. ‘I lived with it for nearly seven years.’ And she remembered Michael’s earnest passion which she had shared, infected by his commitment and enthusiasm. It was strange, she thought now, how that passion lived on in her still, while all feeling for Michael had withered and died.

He recognised the same bitterness he had seen in her at the Sichuan restaurant, and it came back to him that she had told him her husband lectured in genetics. He knew that somehow he had touched on the same raw nerve, then and now. ‘So explain it to me,’ he said.

‘You know what DNA is?’

‘Sort of.’

‘It’s just a code. A sequence of genes that determines the nature of all living things — their substance, their characteristics. So, suppose you grow tomatoes, and all your tomatoes are being destroyed by a certain type of caterpillar. What do you do?’

‘I don’t know. Spray them with an insecticide, I guess, to kill the caterpillar.’

‘That’s what people have been doing for years. Trouble is, it contaminates the food, it contaminates the environment, and it costs a lot of money. But now you discover that a certain type of potato you are growing is never attacked by these caterpillars. In fact, they positively avoid it. And you find out that the reason for this is that the potato, in its genetic code, has a gene that creates a substance that is poisonous to the caterpillar. So, says your friendly neighbourhood genetic engineer, here’s the solution to your tomato problem. You take the gene that creates the poison in the potato and insert it into the DNA of the tomato. And, bingo, suddenly you’ve got a tomato that the caterpillars will avoid like the plague.’

‘It sounds like a pretty good idea.’

‘Of course it does. But hold it in your head for the moment. Because you’ve got another problem with your tomatoes. They ripen too fast. By the time you’ve picked them, packed them and shipped them to the shops they’re starting to go rotten. So along comes the genetic engineer, by now your very close friend, and says he has identified the gene in the DNA of your tomato that makes it shrivel and rot. He tells you he can remove the gene, modify it, and put it back in so that the tomato will ripen later on the vine and stay fresh for weeks, even months. Problem solved.’

Traffic had ground to a halt. Li leaned on the wheel and looked at her. ‘I thought you were trying to sell me the idea that genetic engineering was a bad thing.’

‘Oh, I’m not saying that the idea in itself might not have some virtue. I’m saying that the current practice of it could be disastrous.’

‘How?’

‘Well, you think you’ve just created the perfect tomato. It is impervious to caterpillars, it’s got a long shelf-life in the shops, and you’ve saved a fortune on pesticides. But then the technology doesn’t come cheap. The company which employs the genetic engineer has spent millions on research and development, and they’re going to pass these costs on to you. And it’s not just a one-off cost, because the genetically engineered DNA is not passed on in the seeds. You have to buy them every year.

‘Then you find that the poison that was innocuous to humans in the potato has combined with another substance in the tomato to create something that thousands of people have an allergic reaction to. Some of them die. And modifying that gene to slow down the ripening and rotting? It’s ruined the taste. So even if your customers don’t have an allergic reaction to your tomatoes, they don’t like the taste of them. You’re ruined.’

She grinned at the expression on his face. ‘But do you know what else? In moving these genes about, the geneticists used another gene that had nothing to do with either the potato or the tomato. They call it a “marker” gene. All it does is allow them to check up quickly and easily on the results of moving the other genes about. But this gene was taken from a bacterium which just happened to be resistant to an antibiotic widely used in the treatment of killer diseases in humans. So what’s happening now? The people who eat your tomatoes, who don’t die of an allergic reaction, become resistant to certain types of antibiotic and start dying from diseases that have been under control for decades.’

He stared at her in disbelief. ‘But surely the tomato would have been tested first? These problems would have been seen and they would have stopped growing them.’ A symphony of horns sounded behind them. The traffic had moved on and Li had not. He slipped the Jeep hurriedly in gear and lurched forward.

‘You would think so, wouldn’t you?’ said Margaret. ‘But the companies that put up the cash for research and development want their money back. And the scientists who developed the technology are so arrogant they believe that a technology which is only a dozen or so years old can replace an ecological balance that nature took three billion years to arrive at.

‘So they are all prepared to ignore the evidence, or deny it exists. I mean, there’s already been one genetically engineered soybean found to cause severe allergic reactions in people who’ve eaten it. Then there was a bacterium genetically modified to produce large amounts of a food supplement that killed thirty-seven people and permanently disabled another fifteen hundred in the United States.

‘Crops that have been genetically modified to resist herbicides and pesticides can pass on that resistance through cross-pollination, creating “super-weeds” that simply beat the original crop hands down in the fight for space in the soil.

‘Hey, and do you know what else…?’ Her nose wrinkled in disgust as she thought about it. ‘They’re now taking genes out of animals and fish and putting them into plants. A potato with chicken genes in it to increase resistance to disease. Lovely if you’re a vegetarian. Tomatoes with genes from a flounder — can you believe it! — to help reduce freezer damage. In some crops they’ve even used the gene that creates the poison in scorpions to create built-in insecticide.’

Li nodded. ‘It is a great delicacy in China.’

She looked at him, puzzled. ‘What is?’

‘Scorpion. Deep fried. Eaten for medicinal purposes.’

‘You’re kidding me.’

‘No,’ he said very seriously. ‘It is true. But I wouldn’t recommend them. They taste like shit.’

‘Yeah, and I can just imagine how the toxin genes might make my porridge taste.’ Her smile faded. ‘The thing is, all this is just the tip of the iceberg, Li Yan. Scientists are releasing modified bacteria and viruses into the environment in vast quantities through the introduction of genetically engineered crops. And they haven’t a clue what the long-term effects will be. Jesus, in ten years, it’s doubtful if there will be a single food left on the planet that hasn’t been genetically tampered with, and there’s not a damned thing any of us can do about it.’ She took a deep breath. ‘And do you know why?’

‘Why?’

She paused for effect. ‘Money. That’s what motivates the whole science. Research into biotechnology will be worth around one hundred billion dollars by the turn of the millennium. They tell us it’s for “the good of mankind”, to feed the hungry millions of the world. But there is not a shred of evidence that the technology will be any cheaper, or any more productive in the long term.

‘When they ran into trouble with regulators in the States, the big biochemical companies simply started moving their projects to other parts of the world. Like China. Places where there is little or no regulation to govern the commercial introduction of genetically modified crops. And do you know what’s interesting? When one of these companies comes up with a crop that’s resistant to a certain herbicide, guess who also manufactures that herbicide.’

‘The same company?’

‘You’re catching on. And instead of reducing the amount of herbicide we’re polluting our planet with, we’ll be using even more, because the crop we’re growing is resistant to it.’

She slapped her palms on her thighs. ‘Jesus, it makes me so mad! And these goddamn scientists! Philanthropists? Like hell. They’ll do anything to keep the funding coming in from the biochemical companies so they can carry on playing God. And don’t believe the myth about these crops bringing down costs and increasing yield to feed the third world. Remember the guy with the tomatoes — the fact that he has to buy fresh seeds every year? Well, that’s what farmers in the third world are going to have to do, too. And who will they have to buy them from? Well, the biochemical companies, of course — who also control the price.’

Li shook his head. ‘This is all a bit too much for me. I mean, all I know is that they brought in this super-rice three years ago and they have doubled production. There is no hunger in China. For the first time we are major exporters of food to other countries.’

Margaret shrugged, passion finally spent. And she wondered what point there had ever been in it. There was nothing she could do to change the way things were. ‘I guess,’ she sighed. ‘Like I said, it’s not as if the technology might not have some benefits. It’s the long term I worry about. The consequences we can’t possibly predict that are going to affect our children, or our children’s children.’

Li growled and banged the steering wheel. The traffic had ground to yet another halt. ‘What’s the time?’ he asked.

‘Nearly half past.’

He shook his head. ‘We’ll be here all day at this rate.’ He opened his window and placed the red light on the roof, flicked it on and activated his siren. ‘Hold on,’ he said, and started nudging his way out of the gridlock and into the cycle lane, where they picked up speed, bicycles parting in panic ahead of them. He flicked her a glance. ‘Now that the window is down anyway, maybe you wouldn’t mind if I had a cigarette? After everything you have told me it can’t be as bad for me as eating.’

‘Don’t count on it,’ she said. ‘You wouldn’t believe the genes they’ve been putting in tobacco plants.’

II

The great paved concourse in front of Beijing railway station was jammed with rush-hour commuters. Modern twin clock towers separated by a gigantic digital display rose above broad steps leading to the main entrance, where baggage was being run through X-ray machines under the watchful eye of armed policemen. Li nosed the Jeep over the sidewalk and on to the concourse, exchanging horn blasts with buses and taxis. By now he had cut the siren and brought the flashing red light back inside. So he was just another anonymous citizen in a Beijing Jeep. A couple of girls sweeping up litter with old-fashioned straw brooms, and clever shovels with mouths that opened and closed like hungry dogs, shouted imprecations at the Jeep for forcing them to move out of the way. They could have been no more than seventeen or eighteen, dressed in baggy blue overalls and white tee-shirts. They had large pale blue bandanas wrapped around their faces to protect them from dust billowing up from the concrete as they swept. Red motorised baggage trolleys weaved their way among the crowds. Groups of travellers sat patiently on the steps in the shade of black umbrellas, luggage piled high all around them. Margaret followed Li into the ticket hall in the station’s west wing.

Long queues snaked back across marble tiles from a row of hatches that ran the length of the back wall. Destinations were marked above each window in Chinese characters, and Margaret wondered how the casual foreign traveller would know which one to go to. A woman’s strangely disconnected nasal voice droned monotonously over the Tannoy, announcing departures and arrivals. Li joined the back of one of the queues and stood tapping his foot impatiently.

‘Where is your uncle going?’ she asked, more for something to say than out of any real interest.

‘Sichuan,’ he said distractedly.

‘That’s where your family comes from, isn’t it?’

‘He’s going to see my father in Wanxian, and then on to Zigong to talk to my sister.’

There was something in the stress he put on the word ‘talk’ that aroused her curiosity. ‘Is there a problem?’

‘She is pregnant.’

‘That’s a problem?’

‘You ask too many questions.’

‘I’m a nosy bitch.’ She waited.

He sighed. ‘She already has a child.’ He took in Margaret’s frown of puzzlement. ‘You have never heard of China’s One-child Policy?’

‘Ah.’ Understanding dawned. Of course she had heard. And she had always wondered how it was possible to enforce such a policy. ‘What can they do to you if you do have a second child?’

‘When you get married,’ he said, ‘you are asked to make a public commitment to having only one child. You sign what they call a “letter of determination”. In return you receive financial and other privileges — priority in education and medicine for your child, an increase in income, better housing. There is also strong pressure to be sterilised. But if you then go on to have more than one child, you will lose all your benefits, maybe even your house.’ He shook his head slowly, clearly concerned. ‘And during the second pregnancy there will be other pressures, psychological, sometimes physical, to have an abortion. The consequences can be terrible, either way.’

Margaret tried to imagine the US government trying to tell Americans how many children they could have. She couldn’t. But at the same time she knew what unchecked population growth would do to a country that already comprised a quarter of the world’s population. Starvation, economic ruin. It was a dreadful dichotomy. ‘Is she going to have the baby?’ He nodded. ‘But did she and her husband sign this “letter of declaration”?’

‘Yes.’

‘Then why is she so determined to have another child?’

‘Because their first child was a girl.’

Margaret pulled a face. ‘So? What’s wrong with girls? Some would say they’re a lot better than boys.’ She grinned. ‘And, in my humble opinion, there’d be a lot of merit in that view.’

‘Not in China.’

And she saw that he was serious. ‘You’re kidding. Why not?’

‘Oh, it’s not easy to explain,’ he said, waving an arm in a gesture of futility. ‘It has to do with Confucianism, and the ancient Chinese belief in ancestor worship. But perhaps more than all of that, there is one very practical reason. Traditionally, when a son marries he brings his new wife to live with his parents, and as the parents grow aged the younger couple look after them. If all you have is a daughter, she will go to live with her husband’s parents, and there will be no one to look after you in your old age.’

‘But if everyone only has one child, and every child is a son, there won’t be any women to bear the next generation of children.’

He shrugged. ‘I can only tell you how it is. The orphanages are full of baby girls who were abandoned on doorsteps.’

‘So your uncle is going to talk her out of having the baby?’

‘I don’t know what my uncle is going to say to her. I’m not sure he knows himself. But whatever he says, she will listen, in the way that she will listen to no one else.’ He stretched up to look down the length of the queue. It didn’t appear to have moved at all. ‘This is no damned good,’ he said, and pulled out his Public Security ID wallet from a back pocket and pushed his way up to the head of the queue.

Margaret watched from a distance as several people at the head of the queue began to remonstrate with him. She smiled as he turned and with a few sharp words and a flash of his ID silenced their complaints. And some were more equal than others, she thought wryly.

He hurried back across the concourse with the ticket and she followed him outside into the crowded square. ‘I’m sorry, I’m going to have to take the ticket to my uncle first,’ he said, glancing up at the nearer clock tower. ‘His train is in just over three hours.’

‘How long will he be away?’

‘Oh, he’ll be back tomorrow night.’

‘Short conversation.’

Li shrugged. ‘He’ll say what he has to say then go. At the end of the day it is her decision.’

They climbed into the Jeep. ‘What do you think she should do?’ She watched him closely, interested in his reply.

‘I think she should not have got pregnant,’ he said.

‘That’s not what I asked.’

He looked at her very seriously. ‘It is not my problem. I have enough of my own.’ And she realised that a veil was being drawn over a part of him he did not want revealed.

As he shifted into first gear and started to pull away, he had to brake sharply as a woman in her thirties wheeled a pram across their intended path. It was a strange, crude, wooden pram, with two tiny seats facing each other across a small, square table. Home-made, Margaret might have thought, except that she had seen others just like it in the street. But there was only one seat occupied. The other, empty one was a potent symbol of frustrated Chinese parenthood. Li didn’t seem to see it as he waited for the mother to pass, glaring at them as she did. Then he slipped back into gear and squeezed the Jeep into the main stream of traffic heading west on Beijingzhanxi Street.

III

Songbirds in bamboo cages hung among the pines, competing with wailing renditions of songs from the Beijing Opera. Their voices raised in Eastern discord, a group of a dozen old men, accompanied by the plucks and whines of age-old Chinese instruments, sang behind trembling wisteria in the pergola where yesterday Li had seen a drunken youth sucking alcohol from a plastic bottle. The same white-coated barber was clip-clipping among the trees, tufts of black hair tumbling to the sun-baked dusty earth. Bicycles leaned against tree trunks, their owners gathered around games of cards or chess. Somewhere in the distance, from the park itself, came the sound of a disco beat, insistent and incongruous.

Li and Margaret walked through the dappled early evening sunlight. Li said, ‘In the park there is a lake, Jade Lake, officially designated for swimming. In the winter it freezes over and it is used by skaters. But they cut a hole in the ice at one side for bathers to dip themselves in the freezing water. My uncle does this every morning.’

Margaret shivered at the thought. Li put a hand on her arm to stop her. She glanced at him, then followed his eyes to where an old man with dark, curling hair stood in the shade, legs apart, slowly arcing a sword above his head, before bringing it down in a long slow sweep through 180 degrees to point at the earth. In perfect slow motion, he swivelled on the ball of one foot, folding one leg high to his chest, and turned to swing the sword up and across his body, then out to his right, stamping his raised foot down with a thud, the sword now pointed directly at Li and Margaret. The old man glared at them with fiercely burning eyes and then broke into a broad grin. ‘Li Yan,’ he said. ‘Have you got my ticket?’

Li took the ticket from his pocket and held it out as he approached him. ‘It leaves at eight.’

Old Yifu looked beyond him at Margaret. ‘And you must be Dr Campbell,’ he said, his English almost without accent. He lowered his sword and held out his hand. ‘I am very pleased to meet you.’

Margaret shook his hand, bemused to find that Li’s legendary Uncle Yifu was this smiling, shrunken old man swinging a sword under the trees.

‘My Uncle Yifu,’ Li said.

‘I’ve heard a great deal about you… Mr…’ Margaret didn’t know how to address him.

‘Just call me Old Yifu. When you get to my age people call you “old” as a mark of respect.’

Margaret laughed. ‘That won’t come easy to me. In the States, to call someone “old” would be dismissive, or derogatory.’

He took her arm and steered her towards the low stone table where his chessmen were laid out on their board. ‘Ah, but in China to be old is to be venerated. Age equates with wisdom.’ He grinned. ‘We have a saying: “Old ginger tastes the best”. Sit down, please.’ He indicated a folding canvas chair. ‘Naturally, at my advanced age, I should be very wise. And, of course, everyone thinks I am.’ He laid his sword on the ground and sat opposite her, then leaned confidentially across the table. ‘I would be very wise if I could remember everything I knew.’ He sighed sadly. ‘The trouble is, nowadays I’ve forgotten more than I can remember.’ And his eyes twinkled as he added, ‘That is why I am still learning my English vocabulary. It helps to fill up all the empty places left in my head by everything I have forgotten.’

‘Well, you certainly haven’t forgotten how to charm a lady.’ She smiled back at him, an immediate rapport established.

‘Pah,’ he said dismissively. ‘Not much use to me now.’ He raised an eyebrow and nodded towards Li. ‘If only my nephew had inherited a little of it. But he takes after his father. Slow in affairs of the heart.’ He looked at Li. ‘What age are you now, Li Yan?’

Li was acutely embarrassed. ‘You know what age I am, Uncle.’

Old Yifu turned back to Margaret, mischief all over his face. ‘Thirty-three years old and still single. Doesn’t even have a girlfriend. All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy, I think.’

Margaret stifled her smile, enjoying Li’s discomfort.

‘I’m glad he at least took my advice,’ Old Yifu said.

‘Advice on what?’

‘Uncle, I think you should be going back to the apartment and getting packed,’ Li said.

Old Yifu ignored him. ‘On obtaining your help for the investigation.’

Li wished the ground would simply swallow him up. Margaret cocked an eyebrow at him then turned back to Old Yifu. ‘Oh, so that was your idea, was it?’

‘Well… let’s just say I encouraged him in that direction.’ Old Yifu bared his teeth in a broad smile. ‘Now I can see why he didn’t take too much persuasion. He didn’t tell me how attractive you were.’

‘Perhaps he doesn’t think I am.’

‘Oh, I do not think he would be blushing like that if he did not think so.’

Li could barely contain his embarrassment. He sighed and gazed off through the trees, teeth clenched. Margaret was enjoying herself.

Old Yifu asked, ‘Do you play chess?’

‘You don’t have time, Uncle. Your train is at eight. It is nearly five thirty.’

‘Of course I have time.’

Margaret said, looking at the board, ‘I think the chess you play may be a little different from the version I know.’

‘No, no, no. It is very similar. Instead of your representational carvings, we play with these wooden disks. The character on each disk tells us what it is.’

‘She’s not familiar with Chinese characters, Uncle. Once the pieces are out of position she’ll never remember what they are.’

‘I don’t think that will be a problem,’ Margaret said, a tiny edge to her voice. ‘I have a pretty well photographic memory.’

‘Good, good.’ Old Yifu clapped his hands with pleasure and began explaining the board and the rules. Instead of moving pieces into each square, you moved them on to the intersection. There was a King, but no Queen, just two King’s Guides. The four-square area at the centre-back at each side was the only area in which the King could move — one space at a time at right angles. The same rule applied to the King’s Guides, except that they could only move on the diagonal. The pawns were called Soldiers, the knight was a Horse, and while it moved in the same way as the knight, it could not jump another piece to do so. There were other minor variations in the names of pieces and their movements, but essentially it was the game Margaret knew and played in the States. The board, however, was dissected by a single broad belt representing a river. And you didn’t ‘take’ a piece, you ‘ate’ it.

Margaret was to play with the red pieces, Old Yifu with the black. Li, resigned to the game going ahead, sighed and leaned back against the trunk of the tree that shaded the board and folded his arms across his chest. ‘How is your office?’ Old Yifu asked him as Margaret made her first move.

‘It’s fine,’ Li said.

‘Fine? Just fine? The feng shui man showed me his plan. It looked excellent to me. You will work well in this office.’

‘Yes, of course. Thank you, Uncle.’

Old Yifu grinned wickedly at Margaret. ‘I detect a little scepticism. He thinks his uncle is a superstitious old fool.’

‘Then he is the fool,’ Margaret said. ‘Feng shui or not, I can see sound reasons for all the changes.’

‘Naturally. Superstition grows from the practice of truths. Not the other way around.’ He brought his Horse straight into play. ‘Your move.’ And as she contemplated her next move, he said, ‘I have always been a great admirer of the Americans. Like the Chinese, you are a very practical people. But you are also dreamers who try to make your dreams come true. And that is not at all practical.’ He shrugged. ‘But, then, you have succeeded in turning so many of your dreams into reality. I think it is a good thing to have a dream in life. It is something to aim for, to give you focus.’

‘Is that not a bit too much of an “individual” concept for a communist system?’ Margaret slid her Castle across the back line.

‘You must not give way to that bad American habit, Dr Campbell, of intolerance for other ideas. One must always be pragmatic. I was a committed Marxist myself as a young man. Now I am, I guess, a liberal. We all evolve.’

‘Didn’t someone once say if you are not a Marxist at twenty you have no heart, and if you are not a conservative at sixty you have no brain?’

He smiled with delight. ‘I had not heard that one. It is very clever.’

‘Very paraphrased, I think. I don’t know where it comes from.’

‘The words are unimportant if the meaning is plain. And a truth is a truth no matter who says it.’ One of his Soldiers ate one of her Soldiers.

Li sighed theatrically to signal his impatience, but they both ignored him. Margaret slid her Bishop across the diagonal, eating one of Old Yifu’s Soldiers and threatening his forward Horse. He was forced into a defensive move, conceding the initiative to her. ‘Li Yan told me you were imprisoned during the Cultural Revolution,’ she said.

‘Did he?’

To her disappointment, Old Yifu seemed disinclined to talk about it. ‘For three years, Li Yan said.’

‘He says a lot, it seems.’

There was no eye contact during this. Both were focused on the board, contemplating the next move, sliding a piece here, jumping the river there.

‘You must have been very bitter.’

He ate her Bishop. ‘Why?’

‘You lost three years of your life.’ She swooped on the offending Horse and left his Castle wide open to attack. Again he was forced on to the defensive.

‘No. I learned much about human nature. I learned even more about myself. Sometimes learning can be a difficult, even painful, process. But one should never resent it.’ He thought carefully before blocking the line to his Castle with his King’s Guide. ‘Besides, I was only in prison for one and a half years.’

‘You always told me three,’ said Li, taken aback.

‘I was physically there for three years. But for half that time I slept, and when I slept I dreamed, and when I dreamed they could not keep me there. Because in my dreams I was free. Free to visit my childhood and speak again to my parents, free to go to the places I have loved in my life: the high mountains of Tibet, the Yellow Sea washing on the shores of Jiangsu, the Hong Kong of my boyhood, with the sun setting blood red across the South China Sea. They can never touch those things, or take them away. And as long as you have them, you have your freedom.’

Margaret’s eyes flickered up from the board to look at Old Yifu, his attention still focused, apparently, on the game. What horrors must he have endured? And yet he had chosen to take the positive view. Tales of torture and persecution would, perhaps, have been too painful, or too easy. Instead he chose to remember the escape he had made each day, sustaining hope and spirit.

‘My only regret,’ he said, ‘is that I was separated from my wife for that period. We had so little time together afterwards.’

And she saw a moistness in his eyes, and a colour rising on his cheeks. My uncle has never really got over the loss of her, Li had told her. She swooped quickly to eat another of his Soldiers with her Horse, changing the pace of the game and the mood of their conversation. ‘So you were brought up in Hong Kong?’ she said.

‘The family was originally from Canton. But we had been in Hong Kong for nearly two generations, a wealthy family by Chinese standards. Li Yan’s father and myself were in middle school when the Japanese invaded and we fled to China as refugees. We ended up in Sichuan, and I finished middle school there before going on to the American University in Beijing.’

He took the bait and made the mistake of eating her Horse. She slid her Castle two-thirds of the way down the board. ‘Check.’

‘Good God!’ Old Yifu seemed genuinely taken aback, then he looked up at her, smiling shrewdly. ‘Now I see,’ he said. ‘All these questions. You were hoping to distract me.’

‘Me?’ said Margaret innocently, and feigning shock.

Old Yifu brought his remaining Horse into play, blocking her route to the King. It was his only real option, but it left his other Castle exposed and unprotected. He shook his head sadly. ‘I can see my demise.’

Margaret ate his Castle quite ruthlessly. ‘You must have seen a lot of changes in your lifetime.’

But his concentration was on his move, and he did not reply until he had moved a Bishop to threaten a Soldier. ‘Everything has changed,’ he said, ‘except the character of the Chinese people. I think, maybe, that will remain the one great constant.’

‘So what do you think of China today?’

‘She is changing again. More rapidly this time. For better or worse I do not know. But people have more money in their pockets and food in their bellies and clothes on their backs. And everyone has a roof over his head. I remember when it was not so.’

Margaret smiled. It was clear to see where Li’s influences lay. She moved her Horse into a position that would threaten Old Yifu’s King if he took her Soldier, and lose him his Bishop if he didn’t. ‘I read somewhere that in fifty years, as the West declines and the East develops, China will become the richest and most powerful country on earth.’ He was still puzzling over his next move. ‘Do you think that’s true?’

He took her Soldier, effectively conceding defeat. ‘It is difficult to say. China has such a long history, and this period is such a small link in a chain that stretches back five thousand years. Only time will tell. Mao once said, when asked what he thought of the French Revolution, “It is too early to say”. So who am I to predict the future for China?’ He smiled as she moved her Castle.

‘Checkmate,’ she said.

He conceded defeat with a small shrug and a nod of his head, and his smile seemed full of genuine pleasure. ‘Congratulations. It is the first time I have been beaten in many years. One grows complacent. I look forward to more games with you.’

‘It will be a pleasure.’

‘If only my nephew could be such a worthy opponent.’

‘Perhaps if I’d had a better teacher…’ Li responded, stung by his uncle’s rebuke.

‘You can teach anyone the rules,’ Old Yifu said. ‘But the intelligence to use them you must be born with.’ He started packing his chess pieces into their old cardboard box. ‘Anyway, I can’t afford to hang about here wasting time talking to you. I have a train to catch. And I’m going to be late.’ He winked at Margaret.

IV

The uniformed officer unlocked the door and let them into Chao Heng’s apartment. There was that same, strange antiseptic smell as before, Li noticed. They walked around the bloodstain on the carpet, now ringed off by strips of white tape, and into the living room. ‘What is it you are looking for?’ he asked Margaret.

She shook her head. ‘I don’t really know. Like you, I just get the feeling that this whole case is about Chao Heng. I don’t know where the other two tie in, but they seem… incidental, somehow. There’s got to be something we are missing. Something we already know, or should know about him. Something here in this apartment, maybe. Something in the weird nature of his killing.’

Li had offered to run Old Yifu back to their apartment, but he had had his bike with him and said he had already packed and only needed to collect his bag. He would get a taxi to the station, which was just around the corner anyway.

The two had embraced, a strangely touching moment after all the friction there had been between them. They hardly spoke. ‘Tell Xiao Ling I send my love,’ Li had said.

On the drive over to Chao’s apartment, Li hadn’t said a word, his thoughts, she assumed, filled with concern for his sister and the mission his uncle had undertaken at the behest of his father. Now, at Chao’s apartment, he seemed moody and unfocused. Margaret knew only too well how difficult it could be sometimes to concentrate on work when personal problems preyed on your mind. She knew she needed to shift his brain back into gear. ‘So you think he was sitting out there on the balcony,’ she said, ‘waiting for his late-night caller?’ Li nodded. The bottle of beer and the cigarette ends in the ashtray were still there. ‘And the CD is where?’

He crossed the room to the mini hi-fi stack and saw that the forensics boys had forgotten to switch it off.

‘Do you want to put on the track that was playing?’

He shrugged and whizzed through the tracks to number nine and pressed Play. As the soprano’s voice soared through the apartment, Margaret wandered to the bookcase and ran her fingers along a line of books with familiar titles. Plant DNA Infectious Agents, Risk Assessment in Genetic Engineering, Plant Virology. Titles that had lined Michael’s bookshelves at home. The same titles that had seemed so alien to Li just twenty-four hours before. She slipped her hands into the neatly tailored pockets of her dress and moved out on to the balcony. She looked at the empty beer bottle, the pack of cigarettes, and wondered what he had lit them with. Then remembered the Zippo lighter among his effects. And something began happening in her mind, something spontaneous, a sequence of electrical sparks making connections that would never have occurred consciously. All that data that the brain holds in limbo, accessed by some pre-programmed instinct. She could taste the jian bing, the salty sweetness of the hoi sin, the burn of the chilli, the sharpness of the spring onion. And she saw Mei Yuan’s round, smiling face. She wheeled round to see where Li was. But he had left the room. She hurried into the hall and called his name. ‘In here,’ he said, and she went into the kitchen.

‘Mei Yuan’s riddle,’ she said.

He looked at her blankly. ‘What about it?’

She shook her head in frustration. ‘It’s just a thought process. Bear with me.’ She fought for the words. ‘The man with the two sticks. If he was going to burn the books, he would do it for a reason, right?’

‘To destroy them.’

‘Exactly. So the keeper of the books couldn’t access them. He would have no way of knowing what was in them.’

Li shrugged. ‘So?’

‘So why set Chao Heng on fire?’

‘To make it look like suicide.’

‘No. That’s incidental. I did an autopsy once on the burned body of a woman pulled from a car wreck. Turned out she had a bullet in her. And that’s what killed her. The guy who’d shot her put her in the car, set it on fire and ran it off the road. He was trying to hide the fact that he’d shot her. He thought maybe the evidence would be destroyed in the fire.’ She ran her hands back through her hair. ‘You see what I’m saying?’

Li thought about it. ‘You think the killer was trying to destroy evidence?’ He paused. ‘Evidence of what? Chao hadn’t been shot, or stabbed, or had his neck broken. He had a bump on his head and sedative in his blood. If the object of the exercise was to try and hide that by burning him, it wasn’t very successful, was it?’

Margaret’s mind was racing. But it was racing in circles. ‘No,’ she had to concede. ‘No, it wasn’t.’ She felt as if she had held something precious and elusive in her grasp for just a moment, and then lost it again. And now it was like some half-remembered face that lurks in the memory somewhere just beyond recall. ‘Hell, I don’t know,’ she said, deflated. ‘There’s something there. Why don’t you take me on a guided tour of this place? In fact, why don’t we retrace events, just as you think they happened?’

‘What for?’

‘For another perspective. Something you’ve already seen that I might see differently. Something you might see differently second time around.’

He was not convinced, but he shrugged and said, ‘Okay.’

So they put on Samson and Delilah again and went on to the balcony. Margaret sat in Chao’s seat, from where she had a view of the compound below. She had been tossing and turning in her hotel bed trying to sleep when Chao had been sitting here, she realised. It had all been less than forty-eight hours ago. He had still been alive when she arrived in China.

‘He would have seen the lights of the car coming in,’ Li said. ‘The elevator was off, so he would have gone downstairs to let his visitor in.’

‘Let’s do it.’

They crossed the living room and Li put the CD on pause.

‘We’ll be back up in a few minutes,’ he told the officer in the hall.

They went into the stairwell and down five flights. The gate at the foot of the stairs was locked. ‘Don’t you have the key?’ Margaret asked, irritated.

‘No. The killer must have taken it to unlock the gate on the way out with Chao.’

‘And locked it behind him?’ It seemed unlikely, somehow.

‘Perhaps. It was locked when we got here yesterday. But it could have been locked by one of the other residents if they found it open in the morning.’

They craned to see round the wall of the lift shaft, but it effectively blocked off their view of the lobby and the main door. ‘So Chao wouldn’t have seen his visitor until he was right at the gate,’ Margaret said. ‘Wouldn’t have seen him crossing the lobby and got alarmed when it wasn’t who he was expecting.’

‘Hold on. I think I might have made a mistake there,’ Li said suddenly. ‘I assumed that Chao was expecting someone else and that his killer was unknown to him. But if it was someone he already knew, a new supplier maybe, or someone he believed might provide him with young boys, there would be no reason for the killer to tip his hand at that stage.’

‘And if Chao knew him he would probably have invited him up,’ Margaret said.

‘So he didn’t have to be forced up the stairs at gunpoint.’ Li began to think there might be virtue in this exercise after all. How often had his uncle told him that the answer almost always lay in the detail.

They went back up the stairs and into the apartment, stopping by the bloodstain on the hall carpet. ‘The killer wasn’t going to hang around making polite conversation,’ Margaret said. ‘It looks like he hit him on the head as soon as they got in. The size of the contusion and fracture would be consistent with your idea that he might have used the barrel of his gun. And he would have injected him with the ketamine straight away. He couldn’t know just how hard he had hit Chao, or how long he would be unconscious. He would have pulled off his left shoe, stripped back the sock and followed Chao’s well-worn needle path into the bloodstream. So either he knew him well, or had been very thorough in his research. He pulled the sock back up and replaced the shoe. Then what?’

‘He waited,’ Li said.

‘Why?’

‘He would have some time to kill before dawn. Safer to wait here than in the park.’

‘Okay. But he needed to be in the park with Chao by sun-up.’

‘Is it not true that the darkest hour is just before the dawn?’ Li asked.

‘I guess it is,’ Margaret conceded. ‘And I’ve had plenty of opportunity to put it to the test the last couple of nights.’ She thought for a moment. ‘So he left, with Chao, some time between three and four a.m. In time to get him into the park under cover of darkness and be there when it opened. How did he get him down the stairs?’

‘Probably over his shoulder.’

‘Down five flights? This guy must have been pretty fit. But let’s not get ahead of ourselves. He could have spent up to two hours in the apartment, right? Would he not have left some trace? Had a coffee, gone for a pee, smoked a cigarette?’

Li shrugged. ‘My guess is he would wear gloves. He wouldn’t have a coffee or a cigarette, because he’s a professional. If he had a pee, it’s long gone.’

‘I’d still like to look around,’ Margaret said.

They spent nearly fifteen minutes going through the apartment room by room, finding nothing, before finally entering the bathroom. It was as dirty as Li remembered it. The creams and ointments in half-squeezed tubes, the bloodstained safety razor, the spattered mirror above the sink. The used towels still lay over the side of the bath, but were dry now. Margaret opened the bathroom cabinet. ‘Jesus,’ she said, and lifted out the plastic tubs and bottles of pills. She looked at Li. ‘Do you know what this stuff is?’

He shook his head. ‘The man was sick.’

‘He sure was.’ She rattled a bottle at him. ‘Epivir. Or 3TC as it’s known. A reverse transcriptase inhibitor. You know what that is?’

‘No idea.’

‘Reverse transcriptase is an enzyme that helps replicate DNA.’ She shook one of the plastic tubs and the pills inside rattled like dried beans. ‘Crixivan. A protease inhibitor, another enzyme involved in replication.’ She picked up another bottle. ‘And AZT. Well, there’s hardly anyone in the West who hasn’t heard of that.’

He was still in the dark.

‘Taken simultaneously, these three comprise the triple drug therapy that’s now being used to combat HIV. They act to prevent the virus from replicating.’ She paused. ‘Looks like our friend Mr Chao had AIDS.’

The elevator man watched them with the same intense curiosity on the way down as he had on the way up. He was irritated by the fact that they were speaking English and he had no idea what they were saying.

In his mind, Li was warming to Margaret’s idea that Chao had been burned to try to hide something. ‘Do you think,’ he said, ‘that Chao could have been set on fire to try and disguise the fact that he had AIDS?’

Margaret didn’t. She used the same reasoning Li had earlier to dismiss her initial idea. ‘If he was, they didn’t do a very good job. He’d need to have been really fried for us not to be able to get blood or tissue samples to test for it. Anyway, you never routinely test for AIDS during autopsy, not without a reason. And they left his medicines in the bathroom cabinet. Bit of a giveaway. But more than any of that, why would they? Why would anyone have any interest in trying to hide the fact that Chao Heng had AIDS?’

He couldn’t think of one. He replayed what she had just said and frowned. ‘Why do you say “they”, when we are pretty sure the killer was acting alone?’

‘Because he was a hired gun, right? I mean, we’ve agreed on that, haven’t we? So he had nothing personal against any of his victims. It was someone else who wanted them dead. “They.” It would help a lot if we knew why.’

It was one of the fundamental differences, Li thought, between the American approach and the Chinese approach. The Americans placed more stress on motive. The Chinese preferred to build the evidence, piece by tiny piece, until the accumulation of it was overwhelmingly conclusive. The ‘why’ was not the key to the answer, but the answer itself. Perhaps by working together they could combine the virtues of both systems.

They criss-crossed the lobby, re-examined the lamp over the door, and retraced the killer’s footsteps to his car, where Li’s Jeep was now parked. Looking up, Margaret could see that the trees along the farther edge of the sidewalk would have blotted out the light from the streetlamps, and with the lamp over the door out of action, the killer would have been able to carry Chao across the fifteen feet to his vehicle in deep shadow. ‘Can we go to the park?’ she asked. ‘Follow this guy’s spoor all the way to where he set poor old Chao on fire?’

‘Are you beginning to have sympathy for Chao Heng?’ he asked, surprised.

Margaret shrugged her shoulders. ‘He probably wasn’t a very nice man, Li Yan. But he was dying of AIDS, and someone burned him alive. Maybe that was a little more than he deserved.’ She paused. ‘Are you going to take me to the park?’

‘Okay.’ He got into the Jeep in time to hear his call sign on the police radio. He checked in, and as Margaret climbed into the passenger side was frowning at the message he was receiving in response.

‘We’ve got to go back to headquarters,’ he said thoughtfully. ‘The Chief wants to see me. Urgently.’

‘What for?’

He frowned. ‘I don’t know. They wouldn’t say.’

V

The atmosphere on the top floor of Section One was thick with tension and cigarette smoke. Margaret had noticed Lily’s driver, Shimei, sitting in the BMW in the street outside. Lily was ensconced in a corner of the detectives’ room waiting for her, something smug in her smile.

Li hadn’t even noticed her. He was more aware of the atmosphere when he stepped into the detectives’ office. It was uneasy, and anxious, and filled with expectation. Detectives lifted grim expressions from their desks to greet him. ‘What the hell’s up?’ he said

Wu said, ‘The Needle and some fancy lawyer are with the Chief.’ He allowed a moment for this to sink in. ‘Chief wants to see you straight away.’

Li was impassive. He nodded and went out into the corridor and straight down to Chen’s office. Margaret looked to Lily for illumination. ‘What’s going on?’

‘Deputy Section Chief Li in bi-ig trouble,’ she said happily. ‘I come pick you up. Been waiting very long time.’

‘Yeah, well, you can just wait a little longer,’ Margaret snapped at her.

The Needle and his lawyer sat in soft seats by the window. The lawyer was young, perhaps thirty, one of the new breed of legal eagles cashing in on recent changes in the justice system allowing accused persons legal representation at an earlier stage in proceedings. He was confident and cocky, wearing a sharp suit and an expensive haircut. The Needle eyed Li with a slow-burning hatred. Chen sat behind his desk, his face grey and severe.

Li gave The Needle and his lawyer a friendly nod. ‘You wanted to see me, Chief?’

‘Serious allegations, Li, have been made against you by this gentleman and his legal representative,’ Chen said gravely. He did not invite Li to sit.

Li raised his eyebrows in surprise. ‘What allegations are those?’

The lawyer said, ‘That you coerced my client into accompanying you to the Beijing Workers’ Stadium. That you put a single round in the barrel of a revolver, placed that revolver against my client’s head and repeatedly pulled the trigger until he told you what you wanted to know.’

Li laughed. ‘You’re kidding me. A revolver?’ He looked at Chen. ‘You know we haven’t used revolvers since the year dot, Chief. We use semi-automatic pistols that are only issued to officers on your specific authority.’ Chen visibly relaxed. ‘And what possible information could I coerce from him that as a concerned citizen he wouldn’t be perfectly willing to volunteer?’

‘You bastard!’ The Needle hissed, and his lawyer placed a restraining hand on his arm.

‘You did go to the Workers’ Stadium, though?’ Chen asked.

‘Sure. But there was nothing coercive about it. I went to the Hard Rock Café and asked him if I could have a word. Must have been two hundred witnesses in the place saw him walk out with me of his own free will. We went to the stadium for some privacy, because he wasn’t too keen on being seen in public talking to a cop.’ He turned towards The Needle. ‘Something about street cred, you said, wasn’t it?’

The Needle glared back at him. His lawyer said, ‘There was a witness.’

Li frowned. ‘A witness?’ Then, ‘Oh, you mean “observer”. Dr Campbell is an American pathologist helping us with a case.’

‘Where is she, Li?’ Chen demanded.

‘In the office.’ For the first time, he seemed uneasy. A close inspection of his veneer of confidence might have shown hairline cracks. Chen picked up the phone and asked for Margaret to be brought in. They waited in tense silence. There was a knock at the door and Margaret made a tentative entrance. She saw The Needle and immediately felt sick.

Chen said, ‘Does everyone here speak English?’ The Needle’s lawyer nodded. Chen turned to Margaret. ‘I am very sorry, Dr Campbell, to drag you into this. But these gentlemen here have made a very serious allegation about the conduct of Deputy Section Chief Li. You might be in a position to help us clarify the matter.’

Margaret felt the colour rising on her face. She glanced at Li. But he was steadfastly avoiding her eye. ‘Of course,’ she said.

‘Do you know this gentleman?’ Chen said, indicating The Needle.

‘Sure. Deputy Section Chief Li spoke to him this morning.’

‘Where?’

‘We met him at the Hard Rock Café and…’ Her hesitation was almost imperceptible, but she felt as if it lasted minutes. ‘… drove to some stadium or other.’ She glanced again at Li, but his face was giving nothing away.

‘And what happened?’

‘We went inside.’

‘And?’

‘I don’t know. They were speaking in Chinese. I didn’t know what they were saying.’ Until now everything she had said was true.

Chen took a deep breath. ‘It is alleged that Li put a revolver, armed with a single bullet, to this man’s head and repeatedly pulled the trigger. Is this the case?’

Again, her hesitation seemed to last a lifetime. ‘Not that I saw,’ she said finally. After all, it was partially true. She had turned away, hadn’t she?

There was a long silence. Margaret could hear distant voices on another floor, a far-off rumble of traffic and horns from Dongzhimennei Street. The Needle glanced at his lawyer. His English had not been up to the exchange. But his lawyer sat stiffly, lips tightly pursed. Chen leaned across the desk towards The Needle and said, ‘Get the fuck out of here before I charge you with making false allegations against the police.’

Li was shocked. In all the years he had known Chen, he had never before heard him swear. As his lawyer pulled him to his feet, The Needle turned his hate-filled eyes on Margaret before being drawn reluctantly towards the door. The two men left the room.

There was another long silence. Chen looked at Li dangerously, and in Chinese said, ‘What’s going on, Li?’

Li shrugged. ‘Beats me, Chief.’

‘It’s not how we conduct our business.’

‘Of course not.’

Chen turned to Margaret, and in English said, ‘Thank you, Dr Campbell. You have been very helpful.’

And again to Li, in Chinese, ‘Do it again and I’ll have you drummed out of the force.’

In the corridor, Margaret said to Li, ‘I want to talk to you.’

He knew what was coming and sighed. ‘Can’t it wait?’

‘Now!’

They walked into the detectives’ room, faces turning towards them in eager anticipation. Margaret marched straight through and into Li’s office, her face like the thunder rumbling among the storm clouds gathering in the heat outside. Reluctantly, and to the disappointment of the detectives, Li followed her in and closed the door behind him.

‘You bastard!’ Margaret almost spat at him. ‘That’s why you took me along this morning. So I would lie for you!’

Li shrugged innocently. ‘How could I know you would lie for me?’ Her eyes narrowed angrily and she wanted to punch him and kick him, to hurt him any way she could. ‘Why did you?’ he asked.

She turned her head away, counting up to five to herself, trying to keep control. ‘That’s a good question. I’ve been asking it myself. I think…’ She tried to keep her breathing slow and steady. ‘I think because I didn’t want to make your uncle ashamed of you.’ A sudden thought made her turn to face him again, eyes blazing. ‘Is that why you took me to see him this afternoon? So I would like him, and not want to see him dishonoured by the behaviour of his nephew?’

‘Of course not.’

‘I can’t believe how stupid I was not to realise this morning why you took me to the stadium. You wanted a witness. Someone of unimpeachable character. Someone you knew wasn’t going to rat on you, no matter how much they disapproved of what you did.’ She waited for some kind of reaction. None came. ‘Are you going to deny it?’

He couldn’t think of anything to say. She stood for several moments, glaring at him, and then quite unexpectedly started to laugh. He looked at her in amazement. ‘What’s so funny?’

‘You. No, not you. Me. I actually thought you were shy. And sensitive.’

‘I am,’ he protested, a smile breaking across his face.

‘You’ — she jabbed a finger at him — ‘are a selfish, insensitive, calculating, cold-blooded bastard. And you’d better buy me dinner, ’cos I’m fucking starving!’

It was after seven thirty as the BMW swung south down the west side of Tiananmen Square. Great dark storm clouds were gathering in the evening sky. The light was a strange pink colour, as if the world were covered in a film of it. The air was oppressive, the heat almost unbearable. A hot wind gusted among the crowds in the square, blowing kites high into the blue-grey sky above the Great Hall of the People.

The atmosphere in the car was oppressive, too. Lily was clearly displeased at not being apprised of events in Section Chief Chen’s office. She was even less pleased to be excluded from the arrangement that Li and Margaret had made to meet that night. Margaret was getting very tired of Lily Peng, and their last exchanges had been terse and tetchy. She was no longer sure whether Lily had been given some watching brief, or whether she was simply being officious and nosey. A third possibility that Margaret had toyed with was the notion that Lily might be jealous, that she had some secret fantasy about Deputy Section Chief Li. Whatever the truth was, Margaret was just anxious to shake her off.

They turned on to West Qianmen Avenue and headed towards the university to pick up her bicycle. Shimei, the diminutive driver, had assured her that it would fit in the trunk. Lily had insisted that they drive her back to the hotel, and Margaret wasn’t about to argue. She also needed to call in at the Centre of Material Evidence Determination and ask Professor Xie to arrange further tests on Chao’s blood, to confirm that he actually had been infected with AIDS. Then back to the hotel, another quick shower, a change, and a taxi to meet Li outside the Foreign Languages Bookstore in Wangfujing Street.

She felt a thrill of excitement at the prospect. She was hopelessly confused about her feelings for him now. All she knew was that for the first time in months her mind was being stretched, her emotions engaged, and she felt alive again.