The Fourth Sacrifice

I

Up here felt like that magical world beyond the clouds. Nothing down there could touch you. You could see it all, but were above it all. On the steps up, Margaret had passed the last straggling tourists on the way down as the light began to fade in Jingshan Park. Now she sat all alone on the warm marble steps of the pavilion on the top of Prospect Hill, with Beijing spread out at her feet, the vast empty spaces of the Gobi Desert stretching away to the north, the huge crimson orb of the sun sinking slowly beyond the purple mountains in the west. The scent of pine rose on the warm air with the evensong of birds before sleep.

Three months ago, Li had brought her here for the first time. It was a place, he had said, that he liked to come and think. Where he could be alone in a city of eleven million people and yet still be at its very heart.

She had come here to think now, to try to put her life into some kind of perspective, and make definitive decisions about her future. Less than a week ago she thought she had done just that. But the world had turned, and events since had changed her thinking and her life, possibly for ever. She had met Michael. Earnest, sensitive, intelligent Michael who had asked her to marry him. If he was here now, he would no doubt tell her how this very hill upon which she sat was artificially created with the earth dug out of the vast moat surrounding the Forbidden City below. She smiled at the thought, and then wondered what it was that she really felt about him.

It was not, she knew, the fiery and intense passion she had felt for Li. That had been born out of extraordinary circumstances: fear, hate, love, a cauldron of passions that had forged an extraordinary relationship. But it was Li himself who had extinguished its flame. Snuffed it out between finger and thumb, burning himself in the process, the pain of it a constant reminder of his own regret.

Michael was so different. For a start they spoke the same language, shared the same culture. There were no cross-cultural misunderstandings, no political gulfs to be bridged, no requirement to defend or criticise one country over another, capitalism over communism.

Margaret knew that however much she had grown to love this country and these people, her future could not be here. She could only go home. But home was just a word for a place where everything was familiar and you could be comfortable with the people you loved. And in reality she had no home. Home was a distant memory of a happy childhood, or of the years spent sharing the same space and bed with a man who was now dead. She was thirty-one years old. In ten years she would be into her forties. Forty-year-old Margaret Campbell, fifty-year-old Margaret Campbell. It all seemed too close and too real. Life could just pass you by.

Down there, in the world below the clouds, Li was confronting a shell of a man with the murder weapon that had been used to take the lives of four men. Other people were going about their everyday lives, returning home after work, preparing evening meals, making love, giving birth, growing old, dying. Red taillights stretched off into the distance like visible time. Sometimes it crawled by. Other times it whizzed past. Either way, the journey always ended too soon.

She felt the hopelessness of her life well up inside her.

As the sun slipped lower behind the mountains, it washed the city red, and she looked up, suddenly startled by a flash of lightning and a crack of thunder. Great crimson-edged purple clouds were rolling across the plains from the east. She smelled rain in the breath of it that reached her ahead of the storm, and she knew it was time to go.

II

The sword lay on the table between Li and Sang on one side, and Birdie on the other. He gazed at it uncomprehendingly.

‘It’s not mine,’ he said.

‘Oh, we know whose it is,’ Sang told him. ‘What we want to know is what it was doing in your apartment.’

Birdie shook his head. ‘No, not in my apartment.’

‘It was in your wardrobe. We went to your apartment this afternoon and found it there.’

Birdie dragged his eyes away from the blade and looked up at Li, and for a moment Li was shocked by the appeal he saw in them, as if somehow Birdie recognised in him the doubt, and the possibility of an ally. ‘No,’ Birdie said. And, very directly to Li, ‘I want to go home, please. My birds need to be fed. There is no one to feed my birds.’

And Li saw again the apartment filled with chattering birds in myriad cages, the stink of their shit, the sacks of seed that stood in the corner of the living room. He wondered what would happen to them if they detained Birdie further, if they sent him to Section Seven to be grilled by the professional inquisitors. Perhaps he should detail a couple of officers to clear the apartment and take all the birds down to the market at Guanyuan.

‘I’m afraid that’s not possible,’ he told Birdie.

Sang was determined not to be sidetracked. He stood up and lifted the sword. ‘This is the weapon that Cat used to chop off the heads of Monkey and Zero and Pigsy. And then you used it to chop off the head of Cat.’

‘No!’

‘What’s the point in denying it, Birdie? We know it’s true. We know you went to his apartment and found this under the floorboards. We know that you drugged him and tied him up and then cut his head off. We know you did it because you hid the sword in your own bedroom. Why don’t you confess? Get it off your chest. We know you feel guilty about Teacher Yuan. You’ve carried that guilt with you for thirty-three years. You don’t want to have the guilt of Cat on your head for the rest of your life, do you? You want a clear conscience. It’s so much easier when you don’t have all that weight of guilt to carry around. And maybe you could tell the judge it was self-defence. After all, we know Yuan was going to kill you.’ He lay the sword back on the table and leaned across so that his face was inches from Birdie’s. He almost whispered, ‘Confess, Birdie. Just tell us all about it. You know you’ll feel better.’

Birdie’s tears came again. But they were silent this time. He gazed off into the middle distance, right through and beyond Sang, to some half-remembered past. It’s party policy to be lenient with those who confess their crimes, and severe with those who refuse, they had said to him, and when he refused to confess, kicked and punched and beat him until he was almost senseless. Do you really think all we know how to do is feed our faces? Speak up! ‘The revolutionary masses express their devotion to Chairman Mao in every imaginable way because of their profound feelings for their leader,’ he said to Sang, and the rookie detective looked back at him with astonishment.

‘What are you talking about, Birdie?’

‘You are treacherous and slippery, like the prick of an oily dog,’ Birdie shouted, and both Li and Sang were startled. And then he covered his face with his hands and began sobbing, and rocking backwards and forwards as he had done earlier.

Li stood up and drew Sang back from the table. ‘Enough, son,’ he said. He was not sure why, but he felt profoundly sad looking down on the weeping shambles of what had once been a man. He represented a whole generation who had lost their youth, in some cases their lives, in twelve, turbulent, horror-filled years of insanity. In Birdie’s case, he had lost his soul and was consumed by emptiness. He was both perpetrator and victim.

Xinxin sat on Li’s desk in the ring of light cast by the anglepoise lamp and sifted through the pieces of her jigsaw. In her left hand she clutched a half-empty carton of orange juice. The detectives had spoiled her, feeding her all sorts of sweet things and soft drinks, playing cards and helping her with her jigsaw. Now, as most of them drifted home in the early evening darkness, Li stood at the window and was only waiting for Margaret to return, so that they could take Xinxin back to Mei Yuan’s. He had no idea where she had gone. She had been silent and subdued for most of the day after their visit to Beijing university. He knew she had lost interest in the case. And after they had confirmed the sword as the murder weapon she had told him she had things to do, but would be back later.

He didn’t understand why, but somehow Xinxin had briefly built a bridge between them, a bridge that neither of them had had the chance to cross before he had smashed it down again by taking her to the university. He cursed the jealousy that had motivated his attempts to try to discredit Zimmerman. He had tried to justify it to himself as police procedure. But he knew that was just self-delusion. It was as if, in denying her to himself, he was determined to ensure than no other man could have her either. It was neither right nor fair. Was he really so weak? No wonder she had looked at him with such hatred this morning.

His mind wandered back to the pathetic figure of Birdie being led off to a holding cell in the basement. Li still found it impossible to believe that Birdie had possessed either the presence of mind or the intelligence to track Yuan down to his rented apartment, that he had been able replicate so closely the modus operandi of the previous murders, that he could so successfully have made it appear that Yuan was the fourth victim. And there were all the unanswered questions and inconsistencies: the bright blue vodka, the bottles of red wine, the blue-black ceramic dust, the wrong nickname.

And yet he had both motive and opportunity and, most damning of all, the murder weapon had been found in his apartment. Either, Li thought, Birdie was fooling them all with a stunningly convincing performance, or the real killer had planted the sword in his apartment. But that thought, too, was inconceivable. For the killer to do that, he would have had to have known that Birdie was the prime suspect. And outside of Section One no one knew that.

Lightning flickered briefly in the sky, followed by the distant rumble of thunder, and he turned to find Margaret standing silhouetted in the doorway watching him. Xinxin, engrossed in her jigsaw, had not seen her yet. For a moment, they stood looking at each other across the darkened room, and he sensed something painful in the silence that lay between them like an unbridgeable chasm. Then Xinxin saw her, screeched her delight and scrambled off the desk to rush to give her a hug. Margaret felt the warmth of her little body, the tremble of her excitement, and felt a pang of regret at the decision she had taken just an hour before. Xinxin jabbered at her incoherently.

Margaret looked to Li. ‘What’s she saying?’

‘She wants you to help her finish the jigsaw.’

‘Sure,’ Margaret said and glanced at her watch. ‘As long as it doesn’t take too long.’

It took less than ten minutes to finish the jigsaw, and Xinxin was led, protesting, down to the Jeep, until Li told her they were going to Mei Yuan’s, and then all was sweetness and light again.

The night had turned sticky hot as the clouds rolled in from the east, heavy and dark and prescient with rain. Traffic had thinned in the aftermath of rush hour, and taxis and private cars buzzed in and around lumbering buses and trolleys, like insects driven mad in anticipation of the coming storm. People everywhere knew that rain was on its way. Canopies and umbrellas were raised over smoking stoves and sidewalk braziers, and marketeers drew awnings over goods laid out on open stalls. Normally dilatory cyclists pedalled hard to get home before the heavens opened.

When Mei Yuan opened her door to them she lifted Xinxin into her arms and carried her to the table.

‘This evening,’ she told Li and Margaret, ‘you will stay to eat. Xinxin and I cannot manage all the dumplings ourselves. So I will fry those that are left.’

As she busied herself at her tiny stove, Li and Margaret sat at the table, with Xinxin reading her story books to Margaret for the umpteenth time. Li stole a glance at her and saw that she was not really listening. Not just because she could not understand, but because she was miles away. There was a great distance in her eyes, and her spirit was subdued. But, still, she managed to smile for Xinxin and hide from the child whatever it was that disturbed her. She caught Li looking at her and her eyes flickered quickly away, back to the book, almost as if afraid that by meeting his eye he would be able to read her thoughts.

Mei Yuan served up the spicy dumplings, fried brown and sticky, and they shared a bowl of chilli soy to dip. The taste and texture of them took Margaret back to the eating place that Michael had taken her to in the Muslim quarter in Xi’an, and she was reminded again of the things she had decided on Prospect Hill.

Mei Yuan was aware of the atmosphere, although she did not understand it. She did her best to try to change the mood. ‘So,’ she said brightly to Margaret. ‘I have given much thought to your riddle today, but I still have no answer.’ She looked at Li. ‘What about you, Li Yan?’

Li shook himself free from his thoughts and looked up. He had forgotten all about the riddle, and was about to say so when the answer came to him, quite out of the blue. He smiled and shook his head. ‘I think I know,’ he said. ‘But only a stranger to Beijing could pose such a riddle.’

‘What do you mean?’ Margaret asked defensively.

‘You wanted to know how I could walk from Xidamochang Street to Beijing Railway Station during National Day without being seen,’ he said. ‘And the answer you are looking for is that I went down into the Underground City and followed the tunnels to the station.’

‘What’s wrong with that?’

Li looked at Mei Yuan. ‘Do you want to tell her?’

Mei Yuan put a consoling hand over Margaret’s and smiled. ‘The tunnels do not lead to Beijing Railway Station,’ she said.

‘But I saw a sign,’ Margaret protested. ‘It said To the Station.’

‘That’s the old Beijing Railway Station,’ Li said. ‘It used to be on the south-east corner of Tiananmen Square at Qianmen before they built the new station a couple of miles further east.’

Margaret made a token protest. ‘OK, so they moved the station. How am I supposed to know that?’

Li shrugged. ‘Like I said, only a stranger to Beijing could pose such a riddle.’

In the difficult silence that followed, Mei Yuan asked if they wanted beer. But Margaret shook her head. It was time, she said, for her to go. Li said he would run her to her hotel. They all stood up. Xinxin’s upturned face looked from one to the other, perplexed by the sudden abandonment of the dumplings. ‘What is it?’ she said.

‘Margaret has to go,’ Li told her.

Xinxin was crestfallen. ‘Will I see her tomorrow?’

Li asked Margaret, and for a long time Margaret seemed lost in tormented thought before suddenly making a decision. ‘Tell her,’ she said, ‘that I will come tomorrow morning and take her to the playpark beyond the bridge. To say goodbye.’

‘To say goodbye?’ Mei Yuan asked, taken aback.

Margaret looked at Li. ‘I am leaving on Monday,’ she said.

Outside, beyond the trees, a slight breeze ruffled the dark surface of Qianhai Lake, and the first fat drops of rain splashed on to the hood of Li’s Jeep, making craters in the dust. Li caught Margaret’s arm as she started for the passenger side. ‘Why are you leaving so soon? The investigation is not yet over.’

This time she met his eyes with a steady gaze. ‘It is for me.’ she said. And the drops of rain, more frequent now, felt cool on the hot skin of her face. ‘Everything’s over, Li Yan. You, me, China.’

‘And Zimmerman?’

But she wasn’t angry with him any more. She smiled sadly. ‘Michael has asked me to marry him.’ And she saw the disbelief and pain in his eyes. ‘I told him no. But the offer’s still open. And I’m going to go home and think about it. Very seriously. Away from you. Away from him. Away from here. For ever.’

A flash of lightning and a crack of thunder immediately overhead, was a prelude to the heavens opening. Rain fell in sheets, and in a matter of seconds they were soaked through. But neither of them moved. He saw the outline of her breasts, wet cotton clinging to their contours. Her hair was stuck in wet curls to her face, a face pale and freckled and lovely. He could not be certain whether it was tears he saw spilling from her blue eyes, or just the rain. Her face shone wet and sad in the sheet lightning that lit up the sky. He knew this was the end. There was no way forward, no way back. She reached up on tiptoe and kissed him softly on the lips. He felt her fingers lightly trace the line of his jaw. And then she was off, running down the hutong into the night, swallowed by the dark and the rain. He knew he would never see her again, and that all those moments they had shared, the fear and the passion, their one physical consummation in an abandoned sleeper in northern China, would be lost for ever, like tears in rain.

From the bar of the Ritan Hotel, Michael saw Margaret step from a taxi, and he hurried across the vast expanse of shiny marbled foyer to intercept her at the door. She took one look at him and burst into tears, to his confusion and distress. He took her in his arms. She was wet and dishevelled, mascara tracks on her cheeks. ‘For God’s sake, Margaret, what’s wrong?’

‘Nothing’s wrong,’ she mumbled into his chest. ‘Nothing’s wrong, Michael. Just hold me.’

III

Margaret had her back to him. He saw Michael approach her. There was something in his hand, but he could not quite see what it was. Then she turned as he raised his arm, and the blade of a dagger glinted in the light as it arced through the air towards her. Li called out, but his voice would not sound. He tried to move, but his hands were bound behind his back, and he became aware for the first time of a white placard hanging round his neck. He could read his own name on it, and realised it was upside down. Now he looked up and saw that it was not a dagger, but a sword, and it was not Michael who held it, but Margaret. She had the strangest smile on her face as she brought the blade slicing down on him.

His own scream brought him to consciousness, and he heard the distant echo of it reverberating in his dream. He was breathing hard and lathered in sweat, as if he had just run a race. Blood pulsed painfully at his temples. He looked at the digital display by his bedside and saw that it was only one o’clock. He had barely been asleep half an hour.

He swung his legs out of the bed and reached for his cigarettes. He had only just lit one when he was startled by a fist pounding on his door. ‘Hello?’ he heard a woman’s voice shouting. ‘Is there anyone there?’

He ran through the dark apartment and unlocked the door, throwing it open to reveal the middle-aged woman who lived across the landing. She was a fearsome creature with a big ugly face and whiskered chin, a very senior officer in the Ministry of State Security which shared its compound with the Ministry of Public Security. She wore a pink cotton dressing gown wrapped around her overample frame, and her face was covered with white cream.

Li stared at her in astonishment. ‘What is it?’

‘I heard someone screaming.’

He breathed a sigh of relief. Was that all? ‘I was having a bad dream,’ he said, and noticed that her eyes had strayed down to his middle regions. With a shock he realised he was stark naked. ‘Is there anything else?’ he asked.

Reluctantly she dragged her eyes away from the focus of their interest and glared at him. ‘You’re disgusting!’ she said. ‘Exposing yourself to a helpless woman in the middle of the night.’ But she didn’t sound too disgusted. ‘I’ve a good mind to report you.’

‘What for?’ he asked. ‘Failing to get a hard-on? One look at you, comrade, and there isn’t a court in the land that would convict me.’ She flushed. ‘Thank you for your concern.’ And he shut the door on her indignant face.

He wandered through to get a beer from the refrigerator, but he had drunk it all. He pulled on a pair of jogpants and sat in the dark of the living room taking long pulls at his cigarette. Outside, he could see, the rain had stopped. But the leaves on the trees were still glistening wet in the light of the streetlamps, and dripping on the sidewalk below. He thought about Margaret, and immediately stopped himself. It was too easy. It was all he had done all night. He was damned if he was going to sit here and wallow in self-pity. He got up, walked out on to the balcony and forced his brain to work in other directions.

An image of Birdie in his holding cell floated into his mind, pathetic and sad and curled up like a foetus on the unyielding boards of his bunk bed. Another thought crowded in, an earlier thought that he had already dismissed. And an image that went with it, of a shadowy figure creeping through the dark of Birdie’s apartment to hide a sword in the bottom of the wardrobe. He heard the birds, screeching, disturbed from their sleep, alarmed by the movement they could not see. And he suddenly remembered Qian fumbling with the padlock on the steel shutter. The lock’s burst, he had said. We didn’t need the keys after all. Li cursed himself. He had not even bothered to look at it. Had it been forced, or was it simply broken? He lit another cigarette and ran a hand back through the stubble of his hair. It had not even been an issue at the time. No one could have suspected then that someone might have broken into Birdie’s apartment to plant the murder weapon. It was by no means certain now. Li checked the time. It was still only one thirty. He went back through to his bedroom, pulled on a tee shirt and slipped his feet into a pair of trainers. He did not have the patience to wait until the morning to ask Qian.

The air was filled with the smell of damp earth and wet leaves as he cycled north through the dark deserted streets, wondering if his determination to check out the lock on Birdie’s apartment was simply a means of shutting Margaret out of his thoughts. He put his head down and pedalled harder, trying to free his mind from the burden of any conscious thought.

The duty officer at Section One retrieved Birdie’s keys from the evidence room and handed them to Li. ‘He asked for pen and ink and some paper a couple of hours ago,’ he told Li. ‘Haven’t heard a cheap from him since.’ He smiled at his own sad pun.

The alleyway leading off Dengshikou Street was deserted. The windows of the apartment block stood in dark, silent rows, one upon the other. Li wheeled his bicycle into the courtyard, and startled a rat foraging among the pile of garbage on the steps. It scurried off into the night. He parked his bicycle under the lamp by the door and went inside. From somewhere in the depths of the building he heard the distant hum of something electrical. Otherwise, the building was deathly silent. The lift doors were shut, and the normally illuminated call button was dark. Li made his way to the foot of the stairs and took out the keys to unlock the stairgate. But the gate creaked away from his hand as he touched it. He took out a penlight from his back pocket and shone it on the lock. It was seized solid, and had obviously been that way for some time. So anyone could have gained access to the building anytime after ten o’clock when the lift was switched off. He began the long ascent.

By the time he reached the ninth floor he was seriously regretting not having given up cigarettes long ago — and his automatic response was to light one immediately and take a deep draw. A faint light from distant streetlamps washed in through the windows and illuminated the corridor. He made his way along it and turned left into the darkness of the hallway where his penlight picked out the number 905 above Birdie’s door. The shutter was lying ajar, and Li felt a surge of anger at the carelessness of his officers for leaving it that way. He crouched down and lifted up the padlock on the end of its chain. The top loop slipped in and out of its hole, but failed to lock. Li focused his penlight on the keyhole and saw several fine scratches in the metal, shiny and freshly made. The lock had clearly been disabled. Recently. And by someone who knew what they were doing. He stood up and let it go and it clanked off the metal of the door. Someone had broken into Birdie’s apartment and planted the sword there. Li stood still for a moment, shocked by the revelation, and puzzled. It hardly seemed possible.

He turned the handle of the inner door and pushed it open. He heard the beat of wings in the air, a screeching chorus of alarm, and something flew at him out of the darkness. Something big and dark that struck him violently in the chest. He staggered backwards, taken completely by surprise, and robbed totally of his ability to breathe. As the shape emerged from the deepest shadows, he saw that it was the figure of a man, quite a bit smaller than himself, lean and wiry. But he had only the vaguest glimpse of the silhouette before another foot struck him in the chest, and a small, iron-hard fist smashed into his face. His head struck the wall behind him with a sickening crack, and he slid down it to the floor, blood bubbling from his mouth and nose. His attacker leaped nimbly over his prostrate form and was gone in a blur, through the door and away down the corridor. Li heard the footfalls on concrete, the banging of a door, and then steps echoing in the stairwell as his assailant made good his escape.

Li sat for several minutes, leaning against the wall, gasping for breath. His chest hurt like hell, and he half-choked on the blood that ran back down his throat. He felt like a complete idiot.

Qian looked at the blood that had dried in streaks down the front of Li’s white tee shirt and shook his head. Li’s face was in quite a state. His bottom lip was split and swollen, and blood-soaked cotton wool trailed from each nostril where a medic had stuffed wads of it to stop the bleeding. ‘Must have been a big guy to make that much mess of you, boss.’

Li shook his head grimly. ‘Nothing to do with his size. He took me by surprise, that’s all. I wasn’t expecting there to be anyone in the apartment.’ He was embarrassed.

The whole block was now a blaze of lights. With the arrival of the police, sirens wailing, residents had poured out on to landings and into the courtyard. Neighbouring blocks had also been roused, and there was a crowd of several hundred curious men and women in the street, some with sleepy children clutching parental hands and blinking blearily at the comings and goings of uniformed officers.

Qian had only just arrived, dragged reluctantly from his bed by a call from the Section One duty officer. His face was puffy with sleep. ‘So what do you think he was doing in there?’ He looked through the doorway at the uniformed officers who seemed to be dismantling the entire apartment. ‘What are they doing in there?’

‘Same thing as he was,’ Li said. ‘Looking for something. Only difference is, he knew what it was. We don’t.’

Qian frowned and scratched his head. ‘You’ve lost me, boss. You mean, you know who he is?’

‘Sure. He’s the guy who broke in and planted the murder weapon in Birdie’s wardrobe.’

This was a new one on Qian. ‘Planted the murder weapon? You mean, you don’t think Birdie did it after all?’

‘I never did. And the only reason I can figure the guy came back is he left or lost something while he was here. Something he thought might be incriminating.’

‘And do you think he found it before you disturbed him?’

Li shrugged and winced. The medic had strapped up his ribs, but they still hurt. ‘Who knows. But if there’s something there, I want to find it.’

It was almost five o’clock before Qian emerged from the apartment holding up a small, clear plastic evidence bag. Li was squatting in the corridor, small piles of ash and cigarette ends around him. The analgesics he had taken earlier were wearing off and he was starting to hurt again. He got painfully to his feet. ‘What have you got?’

Qian shook his head despondently. ‘Maybe something, maybe nothing.’

The first light was appearing in a sky washed clear by the previous night’s rain. The clouds had all moved on. Li took the bag and examined its contents. It was a small diamond stud not much bigger than a match head on the end of a short, blunt pin. ‘What the hell is it?’

‘It’s a stud earring,’ Qian said. ‘The kind of thing people wear in pierced ears to stop the hole healing up. I don’t think it’s Birdie’s.’

Li looked at him with undisguised dismay and pointed at his own face. ‘Are you telling me it was a woman that did this to me?’

Qian grinned, amused by the thought. ‘Not very likely, boss. Lot of young men get their ears pierced these days. A nasty habit picked up from the West.’

Li looked beyond him, disappointed, towards the apartment. ‘Nothing else?’

‘Afraid not, boss. At least, nothing that would raise an eyebrow. We were lucky we found that in the mess in there. If it hadn’t caught the light …’ Qian went to take the bag from Li, but his boss hung on to it.

‘Could be Dr Campbell’s,’ Li said. ‘She was in the apartment yesterday. What room was it in?’

‘The bedroom.’

Li nodded thoughtfully. To Qian his face was impassive, but inside his heart was pounding painfully against bruised ribs. He had a reason to see her. It was stupid and self-defeating, he knew, and it would probably only lead to more pain. But it was a valid reason.

‘I’ll get cleaned up,’ he said, ‘and go and ask her.’

The stalls of traders in furs and toys that lined the west sidewalk of Ritan Lu were shuttered and padlocked. In the park opposite, groups of men and women were gathering to dance the foxtrot or practise their tai ch’i or wu shu. Li could already hear the sound of scratchy music issuing from ghetto blasters mingling, among the trees, with the plaintive wail of a violin and the haunting voice of a woman singing a song from the Peking Opera. The first rays of watery yellow sunlight slanted and flickered among the leaves. The air was fresh in a way that it rarely was in Beijing these days.

Although it had barely gone six, the street was already thick with cyclists on their way to the park or factory or office block. A few vendors had established themselves at street corners selling freshly baked sweet potatoes hot from the coals of their braziers, or jian bing or roasted chestnuts. The smell of sweet things cooking for early breakfast drifted across the street in the smoke.

Li cycled slowly north. Each revolution of the pedals hurt his ribs. He had a splitting headache, and his lower lip throbbed painfully with the swelling. But he was almost unaware of these things as he looked up and saw the white-tile façade of the Ritan Hotel rising behind the trees. As he reached the gate he braked and slowly dismounted. A taxi honked its horn at him as it drove by, skirting a neatly arranged flowerbed and drawing up under the red painted framework of steel and glass that formed a canopy over the hotel entrance. Li was about to follow it through the gates when he saw a familiar figure hurrying out of the hotel and climbing into the taxi. It was Michael Zimmerman, looking happy and relaxed, and with a marked spring in his step. The sight of him leaving her hotel struck Li with more force than his assailant at Birdie’s apartment. Zimmerman could afford to be pleased with himself, Li thought bitterly. He had Margaret.

Li immediately pulled back, withdrawing behind a car parked on the sidewalk, and watched as the taxi emerged from the driveway and headed off down the street. Zimmerman did not notice him. Why would he? After all, Li was just another Chinese face in a city of eleven million Chinese faces. He caught sight of two security guards in brown uniform watching him with undisguised suspicion from where they stood smoking outside the gatehouse. He hesitated for a long time. He could not go in now. She would know he had seen Michael leave. He did not want to confront the reality of that. He never had.

Slowly he turned his bicycle round and remounted it. Later today he would send Sang to ask her about the stud earring. It was not something he had to do himself.

IV

As soon as he turned his bicycle into Beixinqiao Santiao, and saw a dozen uniformed officers standing smoking in the dappled shade of the trees, he knew that something was wrong. An ambulance stood half on the sidewalk at the side entrance to Section One. The officers turned and looked at him as he appeared, and the hubbub of lively conversation died away. He parked his bike and hurried inside.

There were more officers gathered at the far end of the corridor, at the top of the half-flight of stairs that led down to the holding cells. Li had a sick sensation in his stomach. He ran the length of the corridor, pushing past the officers, and down the steps two at a time.

Birdie’s cell was full of plain-clothes and uniformed officers. Two medics were crouched over a prostrate form on the floor. Bodies parted to let Li in. Birdie’s head rested at a peculiar angle. His eyes were wide, and staring lifelessly at the wall. The tip of his tongue protruded through blue lips. A short length of dirty rope lay on the floor beside him, its weave still visible in a dry, golden-red abrasion furrow around his neck.

‘He hanged himself, boss. Sometime during the night.’ Li turned to find Wu at his shoulder.

‘How the hell did he get the rope!’ Li’s shock was turning to anger.

Wu said, ‘Seems he used it to hold up his pants. He wore his tunic out, so no one saw it.’ He paused and added significantly. ‘And no one checked.’

Anger was now turning to despair. Li let his head drop and squeezed his eyes with his thumb and forefinger. He released a long, slow exhalation of frustration and looked at Birdie again. Grotesque though his features were, contorted by strangulation, there was a strange peace in his eyes. He had escaped. After thirty-three years he was finally free of his guilt. Free, like the birds he had loved all his life.

‘He left a confession, boss.’ Wu was watching him carefully.

Li turned to him, frowning. ‘A confession?’

Wu nodded. ‘The chief’s got it.’

Chen handed him the two flimsy sheets of paper, characters scrawled across them in a clumsy, childish hand. He said grimly, ‘There’s going to be hell to pay for this, Li Yan. The Ministry does not like prisoners killing themselves in police custody. There will be an investigation.’

Li nodded. He scanned Birdie’s confession with a sinking heart.

‘At least,’ Chen said, ‘we have his confession. The case has been cracked, so the political pressure will relax. You have no idea just how much pressure I’ve been protecting you people from.’

Li could imagine only too well. He shook his head. ‘It is just a pity the “confession” does not stand up.’

Chen glared at him. ‘What do you mean?’

Li waved the sheets of paper dismissively. ‘All he’s done, Chief, is repeat, almost word for word, the accusations that Sang levelled at him yesterday. Go and listen to the tape. He’s just told us what we wanted to hear. It’s like the kind of self-criticism they would have made him write in the Cultural Revolution. Confess, confess, confess. That’s all they ever wanted. Whatever “crimes” they dreamed up, that’s what they wanted you to confess to. And that’s what he’s done. Confession is the path of least resistance — even when you didn’t do it.’

Chen glared at him angrily. ‘Rubbish!’ he said. ‘He gave us a false alibi, he had the perfect motive, and we found the murder weapon in his apartment.’

‘Motive isn’t proof of guilt, Chief. You know that. He was confused about where he was last Monday night, that’s all. And the murder weapon was planted in his apartment.’

‘What proof do you have of that?’

Li pointed a finger at his face. ‘What do you think this is?’

‘You got a bloody nose when you interrupted a burglar at Ge Yan’s apartment. What does that prove?’

For a moment Li was stumped. Of course, he knew he had no proof that the sword had been planted in Birdie’s bedroom, no matter how certain he was of it. ‘There are a dozen other inconsistencies, chief. The nickname, the wine—’

Chen cut him off. ‘I don’t want to hear it, Li. And I don’t want you repeating it.’

‘But, Chief—’

Chen’s voice was low and threatening. ‘As far as I am concerned, Deputy Section Chief, we have proven beyond doubt that Yuan Tao murdered the victims known as Monkey, Zero and Pigsy. It was an act of revenge for their victimisation of his father during the Cultural Revolution. We now have a confession from an individual who believed he was next on the list, that he murdered Yuan before Yuan could murder him. His confession is given credence by the fact that the murder weapon was found in his apartment. End of story. End of case.’ He paused for a long time. ‘Do you understand me?’

The two men glared at each other for several more long moments. Li was seething. He wanted to throw Birdie’s confession in Chen’s face and tell him what he could do with it. But the longer he restrained the urge, the more he realised just how futile a gesture it would be.

In the end, all he said was, ‘Yes, Chief.’