The Fourth Sacrifice

I

A large kitchen knife came down twice in quick succession, and the heads of the fowl dropped from the rung of the ladder and into the ditch. For a few manic moments, the two headless chickens ran blindly around, blood spurting from their necks. The peasant who had delivered the fatal strokes stood watching breathlessly as the life ebbed from the creatures and they toppled over and lay still in the bloodied earth. A hand clamped itself on his shoulder and spun him round. He found himself staring into the perplexed face of Hu Bo.

‘What the hell do you think you’re doing, Wang Qifa?’ Hu demanded.

Wang Qifa held himself erect and said, boldly, ‘Mr Hu, you were the one who warned us about the dangers of the hidden weapons. The old men in the village told me that chicken blood would protect me from harm. “As long as two chickens are killed, all hidden weapons are powerless,” they said.’

‘OK, cut and check.’ The man beside Margaret spoke into a walkie-talkie, and Margaret saw the image on the screen spool rapidly back to the moment before the knife fell. The exchange between Hu Bo and the peasant had already been shot three times — a master shot and two close-ups. The chickens had only been added when they were happy with everything else. They would only have one shot at them. The sight of their headless frenzy was sickening in itself, but there was additional resonance in it for Margaret.

‘Won’t the animal rights people be after your blood for this?’ she asked.

The man beside her grinned. ‘The chickens belong to a couple in the village. They were always destined for the dinner table. All we did was pay them a lot of money to let us kill them on camera. Now they’ll be guests of honour at a banquet tonight, the main item on the menu.’ He turned to watch the playback.

Margaret had liked him immediately. In spite of the enormous pressure he was under to meet schedules and deadlines, he seemed relaxed and easy-going, even when everyone else on set appeared tense. Michael had introduced them when the production car he had sent for her arrived at Ding Ling.

‘Charles has directed all my series to date,’ Michael had said.

Charles had shaken her hand. ‘Pleased to meet you, Margaret. But call me Chuck. Mike’s the only person I know who calls me Charles.’

‘Maybe,’ Michael had said, grinning wickedly, ‘that’s because you’re the only person I know who calls me Mike.’

Chuck had shrugged hopelessly at Margaret. ‘What can you do? The man’s impossible to work with.’

The shot had finished replaying on the monitor and a voice on one of the walkie-talkies said, ‘Clear.’

‘OK,’ Chuck said. ‘Set up the next shot, Dave. Quickly please. These people are waiting for their chickens.’ He turned to Margaret. ‘Anyway, I’m shooting the blood and guts in such a way we can cut around it if the network thinks it’ll put an early evening audience off its pizza and French fries. But, you know, this is how it happened. We’re just trying to show it like it was.’

They were in a truck that had been kitted out as a video control centre and lowered by helicopter on to a wall thirty feet above the set. Cables spewed out a rear hatch like the entrails of a dead animal, and hung down into the long stone corridor that led to the entrance of the underground palace of the tomb of Emperor Wanli.

‘I still can’t believe they let you shoot this in the actual tomb,’ Margaret said.

‘Hey,’ said Chuck. ‘It took Mike six months to talk them into it. That and a very large cheque. The Chinese are big capitalists at heart. They’ll have worked out exactly how much additional tourist revenue this series is gonna generate. And they must have figured it’s worth it, ’cos they’re having to close it to the public for six weeks — so we can set it up, shoot it, then clean it up. And from our point of view, this is the centrepiece of the series, so if we’re gonna spend the money somewhere, this is where it’s gonna go.’

On the monitor, Margaret saw that the camera had been moved into a low position with the dead chickens in centre frame. She watched as twice, the shot panned up, and then the camera rose more than ten feet as it moved back, so that the whole of the paved passageway leading back between high walls towards the steps of the stele pavilion came into shot. It was one smooth, flowing movement.

‘That looks good, Jackie,’ Chuck said into his walkie-talkie. ‘Dave, is Mike ready yet? Does he want to do a walk-through?’

Dave’s soft Irish voice crackled back across the airwaves. ‘Michael’s ready, Chuck. He says he’s happy to rehearse on tape. It’s a long speech.’

Chuck grinned. ‘OK, if everyone else is ready, let’s try one.’ He said to Margaret, ‘We’ll probably only use Mike in vision at the beginning of this, and at the end. In between we’ll lay over various pictures we haven’t shot yet. We’ll probably re-record the whole speech back in sound dubbing, but it’s nice to get location sound. It’s more authentic.’ And into the walkie-talkie, ‘Jackie, remember once you’ve got Mike waist-high and centre frame, keep him there as the dolly moves back, and only when you bring the camera back down again do I want to see him walk into close-up. When you’re ready, Dave …’

Margaret heard the first assistant director’s voice over the foldback warning everyone to be quiet. Then, ‘Roll VT,’ a pause and, ‘Action!’

The camera was close on the dead chickens. Then it started to drift back and lift. Chuck whispered into his walkie, ‘Cue Mike.’

Then she heard Michael’s voice. ‘Whatever superstitions there may have been about the kinds of defences the Emperor had built into his tomb, the fears of the archaeologists and their peasant labourers were based on historical record and the fatal experiences of grave robbers through the centuries. The Indiana Jones world of concealed traps and hidden weapons was not so fantastical.’

As he walked into shot he waved his arm upwards towards a high brick wall sealing the entrance to the tomb. Clearly visible was an inverted ‘V’ shape in the brick.

‘When, on May 19th, 1957, after a year of digging, the archaeologists discovered the “diamond wall” that sealed the gate to the tomb, the rumours that grew about what might lie behind it fed very real fears. Science and superstition, culture and ignorance coexisted in the minds of the team members as well as the peasant diggers. People spoke of crossbows operated by a hidden mechanism that would send poison arrows to pierce the flesh of anyone who tried to open the gate. They indulged in talk of toxic gases that would be released to strike down the tomb’s invaders, sabres that would fall from the vaulted ceiling of the interior. No one could survive.

‘Then, ten days after the discovery of the “diamond wall”, their fears were further fed by the sudden appearance of a mysterious old man …’

Chuck said to Margaret, ‘We’ll see the old guy at this point, talking to the peasants.’

‘He was dressed in ragged clothes and a straw hat, and had a long white, wispy beard. He told the peasant diggers that he possessed an ancient genealogy passed on to him by his ancestors. This document, he said, told of a stream running through the underground palace of the tomb. To reach the coffin they would have to cross the stream, at the other side of which they would find a chasm one hundred thousand feet deep. At the bottom of the chasm were barbed wires bridged by a stepping board. Only those born on a certain auspicious day could cross it. All others would lose their lives.

‘Such was the effect of his story, that the old man made a tidy sum from the peasants who were falling over themselves to have him tell their fortune. But the next day, when the archaeologists heard of it and went in search of this person who was spreading panic among their workers, the “immortal” was nowhere to be found.’

Michael smiled at the camera, reflecting his audience’s scepticism about the old man. ‘Ridiculous? You and I might think so. But Hu Bo and the other archaeologists on the team, educated men all, were not prepared to dismiss anything. For they were studying an ancient account of the construction of the tomb of the first emperor of China, Emperor Qin Shihaung, more than two thousand years ago. Qin not only unified China and built the Great Wall, he constructed a vast army of life-sized terracotta soldiers to guard his mausoleum.’

‘Shots of the Terracotta Warriors here,’ Chuck said. ‘We’ve got loads of stock.’

‘The account of the construction of his tomb told of pearls, jade and all kinds of treasures. Candles made of dugong grease were lit and kept burning. Hidden crossbows and arrows were installed inside with an automatic propulsion system to prevent robbery. The coffin was surrounded by a river of mercury, kept flowing mechanically. Above was a celestial body with the sun, the moon and the stars, and below was a landscape with rivers and mountains …’

Michael walked into close-up and looked very earnestly at the camera. He was incredibly photogenic, Margaret thought. He looked good in the flesh, but the camera made him beautiful. The camera loved him. A tiny, involuntary, frisson made her shiver.

He said, ‘Rivers of mercury? If they existed, they would certainly be rivers of death for anyone trying to enter Qin’s tomb. So has anyone tried? Well, actually, no. They have dug up the Terracotta Army, ranged in battalions around the tomb. But to this day, no one has had the courage to attempt to enter the tomb itself. Why? Because soil tests show a dangerously high level of mercury. So was it any wonder that Hu Bo and the others, under the direction of the venerated Xia Nai, approached the opening of the Emperor Wanli’s mausoleum with fear in their hearts?’

He turned away from the camera. ‘Shit! I missed out the bit about the stones painted with cinnabar.’

Chuck leaned forward. ‘That’s OK, Mike, we’re off you at that point. We can pick it up in dubbing. But, really, I don’t think we miss it.’

Michael turned back to camera. ‘We miss it,’ he said firmly. ‘I want to do it again.’

‘Goddamn perfectionist,’ Chuck muttered. Then, ‘OK, cut it and set it up from the top.’ He turned to Margaret. ‘What did you think?’

‘Sounded good to me.’

‘Me, too.’ He sighed. ‘We could be some time at this.’

She stood up. ‘I think I’ll take a wander. Catch up with you later, if that’s OK?’

‘Sure,’ Chuck said. ‘Mind if I join you?’ He grinned. ‘If only.’

Outside, the hot September sun beat down, throwing the mountains that rose out of the north-west into sharp relief. The sweet smell of pine rose from the spruce trees all around. Margaret walked away from the activity surrounding the technical wagons, through the shade of the trees, to the outer crenellated wall that encircled the tomb. A bleak and barren landscape, bleached white by the sun, surrounded this walled oasis. The foothills of the mountains were dotted with the tombs of Wanli’s ancestors, symbolising the desperate attempts of history’s rich and powerful men to maintain their status over the rest of us, even in death. Futile attempts at immortality. And now, centuries later, they served only to provide entertainment for the MTV generation. If only those rich and powerful men had known.

Margaret pushed her hands deep into the pockets of her trousers and scuffed her way idly along the paved top of the outer wall, pushing a pine cone in front of her as she went. It was all interesting enough, and Michael was charming and attractive, but she was still emotionally raw. She would almost certainly recoil from the merest hint of romantic interest. She still ached when she thought of Li.

As she approached the stele pavilion, the third assistant director, a young Chinese girl, put a hand up to stop her, and placed a finger to her lips warning her to be silent. To her right, in the deep slash that cut through the hill to the stone façade of the tomb’s entrance, she saw Michael in the glare of lights mounted all around him doing his piece to camera again. The camera dolly tracked back from him as he approached the design team’s re-creation of the diamond wall. She could hear his voice echoing back from the walls that leaned over him. ‘If they existed, they would certainly be rivers of death for anyone trying to enter Qin’s tomb …’

Ahead, up a flight of broad steps, the stele pavilion towered over everything, one roof atop another, curling eaves supported on ancient wooden beams. The stele itself, a standing stone tablet inscribed with ancient script, stood more than twenty feet high, framed by open arches in each of the four sides of the red-painted pavilion.

Thirty feet below it, in a tree-shaded square, extras in period costume sat round stone tables on seats carved in the shape of elephants. A long paved walkway led off, across three marble terraces, to the distant gates, and the parking lot beyond where production vehicles — make-up, wardrobe, a catering wagon, Michael’s Winnebago — clustered in the shade of the trees around its fringes.

She heard someone shout, ‘Cut!’, and then the third assistant listened intently to a garble of instructions coming over the walkie, before relaying them in Chinese to a cluster of production runners in the square below, who began rounding up the extras. She waved Margaret on, and Margaret walked up the steps to the stele pavilion. From here she could watch the activities in the square below as well as the crew resetting at the diamond wall. Months of preparation, she reflected, dozens of people, hours of filming, all to put a few minutes on screen. She was not sure she would have the patience to survive in a business like this.

When Margaret got back to the control truck Chuck was more animated than she had seen him all morning. A tall, lanky man, with a shock of prematurely grey hair, he seemed to have folded himself over the control console and was talking rapidly into his walkie-talkie. ‘We get one shot at the master, guys,’ he was saying. ‘We get it right, or we spend the rest of the day setting it up again.’ He had lit a cigarette, the first she had seen him smoking. He waved it at her apologetically when he saw her. ‘Sorry about this,’ he said. ‘I only smoke when extremely stressed. So if you ever see me with a cigarette in my hand you know I’m about to implode. Design have been setting this up for days. It’s cost an arm and a leg, and I don’t want to have to reshoot.’

‘What’s the scene?’ Margaret asked.

‘It’s the moment when they remove the first bricks from the diamond wall and open the tomb. Special effects are great.’ He paused. ‘I hope.’ Then he grinned and puffed some more at his cigarette. ‘I’ve got three cameras on it, so it had better be good.’

Margaret saw that two other monitors, which had previously been black, now showed the pictures being fed from the other two cameras. The master shot was set wide and showed the ladder leading up to the top of the inverted V. Dozens of extras dressed as peasants in blue cotton Mao suits were gathered around the foot of it. The actor playing Hu Bo stood at the top of it, a trowel-like implement in his hand, ready to start digging out the bricks.

Another camera had been set somewhere higher up the wall, giving a view from above Hu Bo, down to the upturned peasant faces. The third camera was set low, among the legs of the gathering at the foot of the ladder. In the background Margaret could see camera and crew. She said to Chuck, ‘Are we meant to see them?’

Chuck laughed. ‘They’re supposed to be the film crew that shot the real opening of the tomb. That’s how we know exactly what it was like. We’re going to intercut our stuff with some of the original footage.’

It was another forty-five minutes before they were ready to go for a take. Hu Bo and the peasant Wang Qifa had run through their lines several times, going through the actions of removing the first brick without actually doing so. Sound recordist, camera operators, lighting director, all seemed happy to go for it.

‘OK, Dave,’ Chuck said. ‘When you’re ready …’

Dave, a burly young man with long red hair beneath his baseball cap, gave a thumbs-up to camera and ducked out of shot. Then Margaret heard him on foldback. ‘OK everyone, quiet please. Roll VT. Very still. And … action!’

Wang Qifa, clutching a trowel, climbed the ladder to join Hu Bo. ‘What are you doing?’ Hu Bo asked.

‘I thought we might remove the first bricks together,’ Wang Qifa replied.

‘Ah, but there might be hidden weapons,’ Hu Bo replied. ‘And chickens’ blood is not always foolproof. You’d better wait at the foot of the ladder and I’ll hand down the bricks. That way only one of us will get killed.’

That was enough to send Wang Qifa back down the ladder. It was deathly silent as Hu began scraping with his trowel to remove the first brick. The overhead camera caught, in close up, the concentration on his upturned face. The brick slowly came loose and, using both hands, he pushed and pulled it from side to side until finally it came free of the wall. There was a loud pop and a sucking sound like the rushing of air. A voice shouted, ‘Poisonous gas!’ And almost immediately a thick black mist came belching out of the opening, accompanied by a noise like the growling of an animal.

Hu put his hand to his mouth, dropping the brick, and slid down the ladder, choking and coughing. The peasants had all thrown themselves to the ground as the mist descended and engulfed them. The air was filled with the sound of choking.

Then Margaret saw, on the third monitor, a figure emerging from the mist, incongruous in white shirt and jeans. On some signal she couldn’t see, the coughing stopped and the set became quiet. Michael addressed himself to the camera in an eerie silence while still walking towards it, the black mist billowing around his legs. ‘But it wasn’t poison gas. It was simply an accumulation of rotten organic materials released by the inrush of air after nearly three hundred and forty years of decay. Vile and unpleasant, but not toxic. And if there were hidden weapons within, they were still to be encountered.’

‘Cut!’ Chuck shouted. ‘Brilliant! Check it. Sound, do you need a wild track?’

A voice came back from somewhere. ‘Yeah. Lots more coughing and choking.’

‘OK, we’ll do it after we’ve checked tape. Dave, kisses all round. Tell Design I owe them a very large drink.’

It was cold in the Underground Palace, and damp, and Margaret shivered. Michael put his jacket over her shoulders, covering her thin cotton blouse. And she wasn’t sure whether it was the cold or his touch that raised goosebumps on her forearms. She shrugged the thought aside and looked around the vast chambers with their arched roofs and shook her head in amazement. ‘I had no idea this would be so big.’

‘Built from giant stone blocks, each one hand-cut and polished,’ Michael said. ‘The cost of building the tomb nearly bankrupted the country.’

‘And there were no hidden weapons after all?’ Margaret was disappointed.

‘I’m afraid not.’

‘Well, isn’t that a bit of a cheat? Building your audience up to think there were?’

‘No,’ Michael said earnestly. ‘I want the audience to experience the same sense of the unknown, of hidden dangers, as Hu Bo and the others. So the tomb wasn’t booby-trapped, but they weren’t to know that. And then once they were inside they had other problems. They couldn’t open the huge marble doors to any of these chambers, including the door to the central vault.’

Margaret looked at the doors. They were massive studded affairs that must each have weighed several tons.

‘They were locked, apparently from the inside,’ Michael said.

‘You mean people locked them and then stayed in here to die?’ Margaret was shocked.

Michael smiled. ‘For a while they thought that might be the case. Then Hu discovered the secret of a hook-shaped key that could be slipped between the doors to move a stone buttress on the other side, and one by one they managed to open all the doors. To find the chambers empty.’

‘Empty?’ Margaret was surprised. ‘So the emperor wasn’t buried here after all?’

‘For a time they thought perhaps the tomb had already been robbed. They found three white marble thrones, one for the emperor and one for each of his empresses. There were various sacrificial objects, but no coffins. Until,’ he said, ‘they opened the very last chamber at the far end.’ And he led her past the marble thrones to the end chamber. ‘And there, on a raised dais, each on its own golden well, sat the coffins of the emperor and his two empresses, surrounded by twenty-six red lacquered wooden chests.’

Three huge red lacquered boxes sat on the dais before them, surrounded by the twenty-six chests.

‘And that’s them?’ Margaret asked.

Michael shook his head. ‘Reproductions.’ He sighed. ‘You must remember when it was that these tombs were being opened up. The late fifties in China was a time of political purges and great social upheaval. The director put in charge here was a political appointee. He knew nothing about the history of the place, and couldn’t care less about the contents of the tomb. The original coffins had deteriorated with age, and reproductions were made to go on public show. So the director ordered the originals to be thrown away.’

‘You’re kidding!’ Margaret was appalled. ‘They didn’t, did they?’

‘When the archaeologists objected, the director ordered some soldiers to throw them over the outer wall where they were smashed on the rocks below.’

In spite of herself, and to her great surprise, Margaret found herself full of furious indignation. ‘But these things were hundreds of years old, priceless historical relics.’

Michael looked sombre. ‘Unfortunately, much worse was to happen to the contents of the coffins. Wonderful, irreplaceable artefacts.’ He put his arm around her shoulder, and she felt his warmth, even through his jacket and her blouse. ‘But you’re cold down here. And the rest of the story can wait. I think we should go and get some lunch.’

It required the fifteen minutes it took them to walk the full length of the paved walkway, down to the parking lot, for the warmth of the sun finally to reach and banish the chill that seemed to have set in Margaret’s bones.

On the walk she asked him, ‘Why are you so fascinated by this Hu Bo?’

He smiled, a little sadly. ‘Because all his life he was a victim. Of circumstance, and of history. And every time fate knocked him down he got up and hit right back.’ His hand clamped itself around her upper arm. ‘Think about it, Margaret. At the age of ten he was sold by his father. Sold to work in the camp of a Swedish explorer, Sven Hedin, who was just setting off on an exploration of the remote western regions of China. A disaster for a young boy, forced to become what was little more than a slave. He suffered great hardship, trekking across the western deserts, crossing uncharted mountain ranges. He lost three fingers to frostbite. But he also learned tailoring, and cooking, and barbering, how to bake bread, how to ride and shoot, how to collect samples of ancient relics in the field. He became familiar with the methods of survey, and the essential principles of excavation. He developed the skills needed to restore and preserve disinterred relics.’ Michael’s eyes were shining with wonder and admiration. ‘He took a disastrous sequence of events, and turned them to his advantage. By the age of twenty, a peasant boy from nowhere, he was studying archaeology at the university in Beijing.’

He became aware that he was gripping her arm and let go immediately. ‘I’m sorry.’ He smiled. ‘I get carried away sometimes.’

Margaret looked at the light in his eyes. His enthusiasm was boyish, verging on the immature. But it was also infectious, and quite compelling. She rubbed her arm, smiling ruefully. ‘I’ll be all bruised tonight.’

‘I’m sorry,’ he said again, suddenly self-conscious.

They walked in silence for a few moments. Behind them, the mountains shimmered in a blue haze, and the double roof of the stele pavilion rose above the blue-green needles of the spruce trees. Ahead of them the parking lot was crowded, and crew and cast and extras clustered around the catering wagon. Out of the blue he said, ‘Have you been to Xi’an to see the Terracotta Warriors?’

She laughed. ‘I’ve hardly been out of Beijing.’

He said, ‘But you must see them. You can’t come to China and not see the Eighth Wonder of the World.’

‘A bunch of ceramic figures?’

He gasped in frustration. ‘Margaret, they are awe-inspiring! Thousands of ancient warriors, my height and bigger. Each one individually cast and hand finished. Every face unique. Made by craftsmen two thousand, two hundred years ago. Just to stand among them, to feel their presence, to touch them, is to be touched by history in a way I can’t even begin to describe.’

That infectious enthusiasm again. She smiled and shook her head. ‘Michael, you’re wasting your time with me. I’m a cultural cretin.’

‘Listen,’ he said. ‘I have to be in Xi’an tomorrow. We’re arranging for the shipment of more than five dozen warriors to the United States as part of an exhibition I’ve organised to coincide with the broadcast of my latest documentary series. It’s called The Art of War, and it’s going to be the biggest exhibition of Terracotta Warriors ever seen outside of China.’ He paused. ‘Come with me.’

‘What?’ She was completely taken aback.

But there was no restraining his alacrity. ‘I’m travelling down on the sleeper tonight. I’m there all day tomorrow and tomorrow night, then fly back first thing the next morning. I can’t afford to be away from the production for any longer.’

‘I couldn’t possibly,’ Margaret laughed. ‘I’m involved in a murder investigation here.’

‘One day, that’s all you’d be away.’ He stopped and took both her hands in his. ‘My production office will book your travel and accommodation. And I can get you right down there among the warriors, touching them, brushing away the earth of two thousand years. Something only a handful of people will ever experience.’ He stopped for breath. ‘Say yes. Don’t even think about it. Life’s too short for that. Just say yes.’

For a moment she looked into his eyes, felt his hands, big and strong, enveloping hers, and was aware of something both painful and pleasurable stirring deep inside her.

II

Blood, and headless bodies, and disembodied heads, and hands tied with silk cord, swam in front of his eyes. Photographs were spread across his desk like the pieces of a jigsaw that were all the same size and gave no clue as to where or how to begin piecing them together. Li had spent the morning sifting through reports and pictures, interviews and statements, all the while distracted by unrelated thoughts that crowded his mind and blurred his focus. You’re just going to have to learn how to separate your personal from your professional life, Chen had told him last night. But Li was finding it impossible.

During his early morning jian bing stop at the Dongzhimennei corner, he had told Mei Yuan about his sister and her intentions. Mei Yuan had listened with grave intensity, making no comment, offering no advice. She understood that all he needed to do was talk. She expressed her sympathy for his troubles with no more than a slight squeeze of his arm. Somehow, even that had been reassuring, and he had remembered her words of the previous evening. Anytime you need me. It was not until he had reached his office that he realised she had forgotten to ask him about the thirty yuan riddle. It was just as well, for he had given it little thought and had no answer.

He had left Xiao Ling, first thing, preparing for her appointment later that morning at the clinic where they would perform the ultra-sound scan. Xinxin, still sleepy and puffy-eyed as she woke from her slumbers, had forgotten that she was being strange with her uncle, and had given Li a hug and a kiss before he left. His sister, huffy and alienated by his disapproval, had not. Neither of them had slept as Xinxin had. And now Li found himself almost afraid to return home tonight, for whatever the result of the scan, his sister’s response to it would be unthinkable.

He screwed up his eyes to try to banish the thought from his mind, and found a picture of Margaret there, staring at him with that knowing, challenging look of hers. How was he going to be able to deal with her in a professional capacity without being affected by his personal feelings? You’re just going to have to learn how to separate your personal from your professional life. How? How is it done? he wanted to ask Chen. And who, he wanted to ask Margaret, was the man she’d been with at the Sanwei the night before?

He opened his eyes and found four victims staring up at him from his desk, almost accusingly. Why had he not found their killer?

A secretary from downstairs knocked on his door and came in with a large brown envelope. ‘That’s the translations of the autopsy reports you requested,’ she said. ‘And copy prints of the crime scene pics.’ She set it down on his desk.

‘Don’t put it there,’ he barked uncharacteristically, and she jumped. ‘They’re for Dr Margaret Campbell at the American Embassy. Get them sent over straight away by dispatch rider.’

‘Yes,’ she said timidly, her face flushing. And she backed out as Zhao came in.

‘What is it, Zhao?’ Li was terse and impatient.

Zhao said, ‘I’ve only been able to track down one teacher who was at No. 29 Middle School back in the early sixties, boss. He’s nearly eighty.’

‘What about the others?’

Zhao shrugged. ‘I don’t know. Some of them are probably dead by now. A lot of the school records were destroyed during the Cultural Revolution, so getting information of any kind hasn’t been easy. It’s the same thing trying to get anything on Yuan’s family.’

‘What about Qian? Is he making any progress?’

Zhao said, ‘He’s having the same problem, boss. We’re having to go by word of mouth. But he’s got the names of some of the victims’ classmates, so it should only be a matter of time before we manage to track down the rest.’

‘Time,’ Li said, ‘is something we don’t necessarily have a lot of, Zhao. The timescale between each of these killings is anywhere between three and fifteen days. And if there are another two victims out there, then we want to find them before the killer does.’

‘You want me to set up interviews?’

Li thought for a moment. ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘But let’s do them at the school. Tomorrow morning. Ask the headmaster to give us a couple of rooms. I’d like to get a feel for the place.’

Wu’s voice called from the detectives’ office. ‘Boss? You got a moment?’

Zhao stepped aside as Li went to the door. ‘What is it, Wu?’

Wu was at his desk, holding his hand over the telephone receiver. ‘That’s the forensics boys out at Yuan Tao’s embassy apartment. There’s some stuff they think you should have a look at.’ He raised his eyebrows. ‘You want to go?’

Li nodded. ‘You’d better sign out a car.’

Wu said into the telephone, ‘We’ll be right there.’

Li went back to his desk. At least something was moving.

Qian came in, almost at his back. He had a sheet of paper in his hand, and his eyes were alive with anticipation. ‘Just in, boss. Fax from the Evidence Determination Centre. The result of those tests that Dr Campbell suggested we do on the signature of the murder weapon …’

Li snatched the sheet and ran his eyes over the tightly printed characters of the report. He felt the skin tighten across his scalp.

The diplomatic compound where Yuan Tao had been allocated an apartment was set just behind the Friendship Store on Jianguomenwei Avenue. Wu parked their dark blue Beijing Jeep in the cycle lane at the front, and he and Li got out on to the sidewalk and looked up at the relatively new apartments. A long-haired beggar with no legs sat on the pavement, leaning against the wall of the compound. A straggling beard grew on his dark, gaunt face and he looked up at them appealingly and rattled a tin cup he held in his hand. Beside him, his tricycle had been fitted with an elaborate mechanism that allowed him to drive the wheels by hand-turning a crank handle. His skin was streaked and dirty, his clothes and hair matted. His face was a mask of disappointment when he saw that they, too, were Chinese.

A few yards further along, propped against a tree, a blind woman with a withered hand called out to them for money. There were others spread out along the length of the sidewalk. Li felt sick to see poor souls like this on the streets.

Wu looked at them with undisguised disgust. ‘What are they doing here?’ he asked, looking along the sidewalk. ‘There must be half a dozen of them.’

Li took out a ten-yuan note and stuffed it in the cup of the beggar with no legs. ‘Foreigners,’ he said, nodding towards the diplomatic compound. ‘Embassy staff and tourists. The guilt of the “haves” when faced with the “have-nots”. It’s fertile ground.’

Wu looked in horror at the note Li had given the beggar. ‘In the name of the sky, boss, what did you do that for?’

‘Because life has no guarantees, Wu,’ he said. ‘One day that could be me. Or you. And that’s not guilt. Just fear.’ He headed off towards the entrance to the compound.

At the gate a po-faced guard of the armed police stood sentinel. ‘Who are you looking for?’ he asked unceremoniously.

‘CID. Section One,’ Wu said, and pushed his ID in the guard’s face.

‘You know this guy?’ Li showed him the picture of Yuan Tao that had come with his file.

‘Sure,’ the guard said, and he pulled a gob of phlegm into his mouth and spat it out. ‘Yuan Tao. Second floor. He’s the guy that got himself murdered.’ He jerked his head towards the building. ‘Some of your people are in there just now.’ A grey forensics van was parked in the forecourt.

‘How well did you know him?’ Wu asked.

‘As well as I know any of them,’ the guard said. ‘Which is not at all. They don’t like us very much.’

‘Why’s that?’ Li asked.

‘They think we’re spying on them.’

‘And are you?’

The guard flicked a look at Li to see if he was joking and decided he wasn’t. ‘We’re told to keep an eye on who goes in and out. If they get Chinese visitors they got to come down and pick them up here at the gate. And they got to see them out again when they leave.’

‘And they don’t like that?’ Wu said.

‘No, they do not.’

‘But you knew Yuan Tao by sight?’ Li asked.

‘Sure. He was unusual. He was Chinese.’

‘And was there anything else you thought was unusual about him? Anything that made him stand out from the others?’

The guard shook his head slowly. ‘Nope. Can’t say there was.’ He hesitated. ‘If anything, I’d say I saw him less than the rest. Don’t remember him ever having any visitors.’

‘Ever?’ Wu was astonished.

‘Not that I can remember. Course, you’d have to ask the guys on the other shifts.’

‘Would you know,’ Li asked ‘if he didn’t stay in his apartment for a night, or even two?’

‘Not necessarily. He might already be in when you came on shift. And he might not.’

‘You don’t keep records?’

‘Nope.’

Li produced photographs of the other victims. ‘Ever seen any of these guys?’

The guard took a long look, then shook his head. ‘Nope.’

They climbed the stairs to the apartment on the second floor and found the door lying open. The place was tiny: one central room for living, eating and cooking, a stove and a sink set on a worktop over cheap units against the far wall. Through a half-glazed door was a tiny toilet with a shower that drained into an outlet set into the concrete floor. The bedroom was just large enough for a bed, a bedside cabinet and a single, mirrored wardrobe. Apart from the fact that it was smaller, the contrast with the apartment Yuan Tao had rented in Tuan Jie Hu Dongli was stark. Books were stuffed into sagging bookshelves, and piled up on the linoleum beneath the window. Piles of Chinese newspapers were stacked under a gateleg table folded against one wall. There was food decaying on dirty plates on the table, and dirty dishes were soaking in the sink. There was a smell of body odour and cooking and old clothes, a faint, distant hint of some exotic scent that seemed vaguely familiar. The kitchen cupboards were groaning with tinned and packet food. Dirty washing was spilling out of a laundry basket in the bedroom, washing hanging up to dry on a line in the toilet. Unlike the apartment at Tuan Jie Hu Dongli, Yuan Tao had lived here. He had left his smell, his personality and all his traces in this place, and perhaps, too, a clue as to why someone should want to kill him.

There were two officers there from the forensics department at Pao Jü Hutong. They were dusting for prints. The senior officer, a small, wizened man called Fu Qiwei, said, ‘Be with you in two minutes, Deputy Section Chief.’

Li ran his eye along the shelves of books. They were mostly academic volumes, some fiction, almost all of them in English, well-thumbed pages and broken spines.

‘He must have had them shipped over,’ Wu said. And Li wondered, not for the first time, why a professor of political science at a prestigious American university would give up his career to work on the visa line at the US Embassy in Beijing. Was there more to all this than met the eye? More to it than he was being told? Had Yuan Tao been a spy for the Americans, or even the Chinese? But he quickly dismissed the thought. If there were the slightest suspicion of that, he thought, the investigation would have been taken very quickly out of his hands.

All along the tops of the bookcases was an accumulated clutter of miscellaneous personal items and dust: a paperweight, pens and pencils, a dried-up eraser, a couple of unused notebooks, an antique dominoes set picked up at a market somewhere, a chipped and cracked but otherwise clean ashtray filled with fen coins on top of what appeared to be a picture frame lying face down. Li took out a handkerchief and shifted the ashtray so that he could turn over the frame. It contained a haphazard montage of old black-and-white family snaps — a couple in their early thirties with a young boy standing awkwardly between them grinning shyly at the camera; a passport-sized photograph of a teenage boy; a portrait picture of each of the adults, a little older, wearing Mao caps and staring earnestly out from the mists of history.

Wu peered over Li’s shoulder. ‘His family?’

‘Looks like it.’ Li always found pictures like these depressing. He had ones just like them. His sister, his mother and father, himself as a young boy, family groups with aunts and uncles and cousins, reminders of a time when he was still a part of a family, happy and whole, before history had torn them apart. ‘We’ll want these for the file,’ he said, and carefully he opened up the back of the picture frame and tipped the faded and dog-eared photographs out on to the table. On the backs of them someone had written dates and places — Ping Zhen, Ye and Tao, Tiananmen, 1952; Tao, aged seventeen; Ping Zhen, Qianmen, 1964 … Li turned over the family group taken in Tiananmen Square in 1952. In the background, he saw, hutongs and siheyuan where now the Great Hall of the People stood. People were flying kites back then, just as they did today. For a moment or two he scrutinised the faces of Yuan’s parents, Ping Zhen and Ye, as if there might be some answer in their dull, staring eyes. They did not look like happy people in their button-up tunics and Mao caps. They did not look like the same carefree couple who had posed, smiling unselfconsciously with their son in Tiananmen Square twelve years earlier. In just twelve short years life had etched its unhappiness indelibly on their faces. And no doubt, Li thought, the worst had still to come.

He left Wu to slip the pictures into a plastic evidence bag, and looked around the room again. There was a single, well-worn armchair, acquired second-hand, no doubt. The cushion and the chair back still bore the imprint of Yuan Tao’s body. A few short, black hairs clung to an antimacassar. There was a single dining chair at the gateleg table. Don’t remember him ever having any visitors, the security guard had said. He had clearly furnished his tiny apartment in the expectation that he would be its sole occupant. He had not anticipated receiving visitors.

They went into the small toilet. There was no curtain, nor any other attempt to cover up the window in the toilet door. Another indication that Yuan Tao had lived here in absolute isolation. He had had no need to protect his privacy. There was more of his hair trapped in the shower drain in the floor. A small cabinet on the wall contained the usual toiletries: shaving foam, a couple of fresh bars of soap, toothpaste, haemorrhoid cream, several packs of Advil — all American branded.

‘He bring all this stuff with him, too, do you think?’ Wu asked.

‘I don’t know,’ Li said. It was possible now to buy a huge variety of Western consumer goods in ordinary Chinese supermarkets. But these were a little different. ‘Unscented,’ he read off the can of shaving foam. And, ‘Hypo-allergenic,’ off the soap wrapper.

‘What’s that?’ Wu asked.

Li said, ‘Looks like maybe he had an allergic skin reaction to anything highly scented.’ He looked again at the contents of the wall cabinet. ‘I don’t see any aftershave or deodorants either.’

He closed the mirrored door of the cabinet and saw his own face staring back at him, and he was shocked by the dark shadows beneath his eyes and the strain in the lines around them. He looked quickly away, and Wu followed him into the bedroom. The sour smell of body odour and dirty laundry hung in the air. The forensics officers had just finished dusting. ‘What did you want to show me?’ Li said.

Fu Qiwei beckoned him towards the wardrobe and opened the door. It was jammed with clothes, mostly formal suits and white shirts. Several ties hung from a bar attached to the inside of the door. On a shelf above were a couple of pairs of jeans, some sweatshirts, a pile of tee shirts. The officer crouched down to a row of shoes along the bottom of the wardrobe. Again, the shoes were mostly formal, black or brown leather. There was a single well-worn pair of blue and white trainers. With his gloved hand, the officer carefully lifted one of them and Li saw, in its tread and lying scattered in the bottom of the wardrobe, a small accumulation of dark blue-black dust.

Li whistled softly. ‘Is that the same stuff we found on the victim that was moved?’

‘The archaeology professor,’ Fu Qiwei said, nodding. ‘It looks very like it. Same colour and consistency. We’ll be able to tell for sure once we get a sample back to the lab.’

Wu crouched down beside Li, peering in at the blue dust, frowning his consternation. ‘What does it mean, boss?’

Li shrugged and shook his head, as perplexed as Wu. ‘I’ve no idea.’ But they all knew there was significance in it. That Yuan Tao had, somehow, been in the same place, possibly at the same time, as Yue Shi, the professor of archaeology at Beijing University. Here was something else to link them besides the manner of their deaths and the fact that they were former pupils of the same school. A blue-black dust, particles of fired clay — as puzzling and insubstantial as every other piece of evidence they had managed to collect.

‘That’s not all,’ said the forensics officer. He stood up and they followed him through to the living room where he stooped to open the kitchen cabinet below the sink unit. There, amongst a bucket and bottles of cleaning fluid, stood three unopened bottles of Californian red wine.

Li felt the hairs bristling across his scalp. Then wondered why he had reacted in such a way. After all, here was a man who had lived for more than thirty years in the United States. Would it not be the most natural thing in the world for him to keep bottles of wine in his kitchen? To drink a glass or two with a meal was commonplace in the West. He crouched down to look at the labels. They were all the same vintage. A 1995 Mondavi Reserve Cabernet Sauvignon from the Napa Valley. Li knew enough to know that this was no cheap plonk. He also knew that Yuan Tao could not have purchased them in China and could only have brought a limited amount with him. So why, after six months, did he still have three bottles? And even more curiously, why would he keep his expensive vintage wine with the cleaning fluids beneath the sink?

‘Wow!’ Wu said. He was chewing furiously on his gum and rolling one of the legs of his sunglasses back and forth between thumb and forefinger. ‘Can we tell if that’s the same stuff our first three victims had been drinking?’

Fu Qiwei nodded. ‘We can compare it to residue found in wineglasses at the first two crime scenes. Give you a result later this afternoon.’

But Li knew that the results would only confirm what his instincts were already telling him. And he felt himself slipping deeper into the mire of confusion in which they were already wallowing.

III

Margaret had thought she would be curious about the place where Yuan Tao had worked. But, in truth, the visa department in the Bruce Compound was just another anonymous legation building. An extension had been built out front to accommodate the queues of applicants, so that they no longer had to clutter up the street, standing in line under the watchful and sometimes intimidating eye of the Chinese armed police guard on the gate. Inside the main building, extensive renovation work had created new, white-walled offices in the US Citizen Services Department where Margaret had been allocated a small room.

Sophie opened the door and waved Margaret through it. ‘Your very own office,’ she said.

Margaret looked around without enthusiasm. There was a small window high up on the wall that she could not see out of. What little daylight it admitted was supplemented by a naked fluorescent striplight overhead. There was a single desk with a telephone extension, a blotter, a pile of thick brown envelopes and a computer terminal, an uncomfortable-looking office chair, a battleship-grey filing cabinet, a yucca tree in a pot, and a map of China pinned to the freshly painted wall. The place smelled of emulsion paint and new carpet, and the fluorescent light reflecting from the white walls hurt her eyes. She wondered briefly who had been de-camped to make space for her, but knew better than to ask. She was sure she would spot some resentful face glaring at her in the corridor before the day was out.

‘You don’t look terribly impressed,’ Sophie said.

‘Should I be?’ asked Margaret. The filing cabinet was locked. She tried the desk drawers. They were locked, too. ‘I’m obviously not expected to be here very long.’

‘As long as the investigation takes.’

‘Which is as soon as possible as far as the embassy’s concerned.’

‘Naturally,’ Sophie said. She pointed to the bundle of envelopes on the desk. ‘That’s all the stuff you asked for from the Chinese police — copy prints from the crime scenes, translations of the autopsy reports …’

‘That was quick!’ Margaret was astonished. ‘They must be as anxious to get rid of me as you are.’

Sophie grinned. ‘It is quick. Jonathan couldn’t believe it. Apparently it would normally take weeks for something like this. Chinese bureaucracy moves at its own, usually very slow, pace.’

‘Just shows what they can do when they want,’ Margaret said, shuffling through the contents of the envelopes. ‘Oh, good,’ she said, pulling out a sheaf of reports. ‘That’s the toxicology results on my autopsy, along with the transliteration of the tape. Means I can get my own autopsy report written up.’ She glanced through the toxicology results and nodded. ‘Nothing unexpected here.’ She looked at her watch. ‘Oops, no time to read them just now,’ and she stuffed them back in the envelope and starting gathering all the papers and envelopes into a pile that she could carry away.

‘Where are you going?’ Sophie asked, disconcerted.

‘To pack. I’ve got a train to catch at six fifty.’

Sophie frowned. ‘But the Chinese police have set up a briefing meeting for you at Section One.’

Which stopped Margaret in her tracks. ‘When?’

‘At five.’

‘Then it’ll have to be a brief briefing.’

She lifted the bundle from the desk and pushed past Sophie and off down the corridor. Sophie chased after her. ‘But where are you going?’

‘Xi’an.’

‘Xi’an?’ Sophie was perplexed. ‘But … what’s in Xi’an?’

‘The Terracotta Warriors. Didn’t you know? Apparently they are the Eighth Wonder of the World and not to be missed.’

‘Michael,’ Sophie said flatly, as realisation dawned. ‘You’re going with Michael.’

‘He asked,’ Margaret said breezily, as she passed the scrutiny of the marine at the front door and was allowed out.

‘You lucky bitch!’ Sophie grinned. ‘He’s only after your body, you know.’

‘Well, maybe I’m after his, too,’ Margaret said with a twinkle. ‘Anyway, it’s only for a day. We’ll be back the day after tomorrow.’

‘Well, I hope you don’t expect the American government to pay you while you’re off gallivanting with Mr Zimmerman.’

‘Of course I do,’ Margaret said. She crooked her arm around the bundle she was carrying. ‘After all, I’ll be taking my work with me.’

The tension in the top floor meeting room of the Section One building in Beixinqiao Santiao was almost tangible. Margaret, shown first into the room, had taken Li’s customary seat with the window behind her. She knew it was the power seat in the room, and almost certainly the seat that Li would have made his own. Despite anxious glances from the other detectives, however, Li gave no sign of having had his nose put out of joint. He sat directly opposite Margaret and seemed concentrated on sorting out his papers. Also present were Zhao, Wu, Qian and Sang. To the annoyance of the others, it had transpired that Sang spoke flawless English, and so Li had nominated him official interpreter for the meeting.

‘OK,’ Li said. ‘You have received the prints and copy autopsies we sent you?’

Margaret nodded. ‘But, since they have only just come into my possession I have not yet had time to study them.’ She paused before delivering the first barb. ‘Twenty-four hours does seem a rather excessive amount of time to have to wait.’

Li felt the anger rising in his throat and took a moment or two to control it before speaking. ‘But time enough for you to have completed your autopsy report?’

‘Without the toxicology results and the transliteration of my tape which, of course, I have been waiting for from your people, that would have been rather difficult.’

Sang struggled to translate this.

Li sat back and exhaled his frustration. ‘Then there’s not a great deal of point in continuing this meeting,’ he said.

‘However,’ Margaret drew a bundle of stapled sheets from her bag, ‘as soon as I received the necessary information this afternoon I booked time in the business centre of my hotel — at my own expense — and produced a preliminary report covering all the essentials.’ She pushed the copies across the desk towards him. ‘There are no surprises.’

Li pulled the bundle to him, pushed one towards Sang, and flicked through the top copy. Without looking up he said, ‘We ran those tests you suggested on the sections of spine, comparing the signature left by the murder weapon on the vertebral bone in each murder.’ He paused.

Margaret could not restrain her curiosity. ‘And?’

‘We matched the first and third murders. Your “sweet spot” theory looked as if it might stand up for a while. But we could not find a match for the other two.’ Margaret was about to comment, but he cut her off. ‘We did, however, run another test, with the scanning electron microscope. On the bronze residue left by the sword that we collected on the tape lifts. The computer was able to report the relative percentages of the constituent elements. They were exactly the same. Which means that the same weapon was used in all four murders.’ He waited long enough to let the frown start to form on her forehead. Then added, ‘Which rather gives the lie to your suggestion that Yuan Tao’s murder was a copycat killing.’

The other detectives, listening intently to Sang, looked quickly to see Margaret’s reaction.

She shrugged. ‘Not really,’ she said. ‘It simply means that the killer had access to the same murder weapon used in the first three murders.’ The detectives turned to catch’s Li’s reaction. But he was impassive. She added, ‘Is that all you have to tell me? Is that the sum total of your investigations over twenty-four hours?’

‘Of course not.’ Li looked more composed than he felt. She had been unfazed by the revelation about the murder weapon, and her calmly suggested explanation was so simple he wondered why he had not thought of it himself. But he knew the answer to that almost immediately. He had found it virtually impossible to believe that Yuan Tao had been murdered by a copycat, and in admitting that to himself now, realised he had been making a basic mistake for which his uncle would have derided him. He had made an assumption, and was trying to make the evidence fit the assumption. Assume nothing, his uncle used to tell him. Let the evidence lead to you the conclusion, do not jump to it yourself.

Margaret glanced at her watch with ill-concealed irritation. ‘Well?’ she asked.

And Li told her about the blue-black powder found in Yuan Tao’s apartment and the forensic confirmation, received less than an hour ago, that it matched similar coloured powder found on the trousers and in the treads of the shoes worn by Professor Yue. This caught her interest and she leaned forward. ‘And this powder is what, exactly?’

He pushed a small sample in a clear plastic evidence bag across the table. ‘Particles of fired clay. A kind of ceramic dust. You’ll find a more detailed breakdown among the documents we’ve provided.’

She frowned, examining the dark blue dust in the bag and thinking for a moment. Then, ‘What else?’ she asked.

Li said, ‘We found three bottles of vintage Californian wine in Yuan Tao’s apartment. Tests carried out this afternoon show that it is almost certainly the same wine that our first three victims had been drinking. The stuff that their killer spiked with the flunitrazepam.’

Margaret’s interest was well and truly ignited now. She forgot about the time. ‘Three bottles?’

Li nodded.

She scratched her chin thoughtfully. ‘So … one for each of the remaining victims.’

‘We already have four victims,’ Li said. ‘And the countdown began at six.’

‘Humour me,’ Margaret said. ‘Assume that Yuan Tao was never on the hit list—’

Li interrupted. ‘You still think he was killed by someone else?’

She nodded. ‘I’m sure of it. I can’t tell you by who, or why, but the evidence seems quite clear to me. And if you rule him out, then there are still three victims out there, not two. And that’s why there were three bottles of wine.’

‘But why was the wine in Yuan Tao’s apartment?’ Everyone was startled by Sang’s sudden intervention. He seemed taken aback himself, and became immediately self-conscious. The other detectives asked him what he had asked. Still blushing, he told them.

Margaret smiled. ‘I have no idea,’ she said. ‘But that question is still relevant whether or not you believe that he was one of the original intended victims.’ She turned back to Li. ‘Was there anything else in the apartment?’

He shook his head. ‘Nothing relevant. Books, clothes, personal possessions.’

‘And this apartment that he rented privately — have you any idea why?’

Again, Li shook his head. ‘Detective Qian tracked down the owner. We interviewed him this afternoon. He claimed he had no idea that Yuan worked at the embassy — he was Chinese, had a Beijing accent. The owner says Yuan told him that he was lecturing at the university and only required the apartment for a few months. He was prepared to pay well over the going rate, so the owner didn’t ask too many questions.’

‘Do you believe him?’

‘Yes,’ Li nodded. ‘He’s in breach of several public security regulations, but nothing more than that.’

‘Which brings us back to the question of why Yuan Tao felt the need to rent another apartment. Was he keeping a mistress?’

‘No.’ Li had no doubts. ‘There are no female traces in either apartment. But, in any case, Yuan Tao was not the type.’ He lit a cigarette, and wondered what it was he had gleaned about this man that made him so sure he had not been having an affair, or entertaining prostitutes. Instinct, he decided. ‘If I was to make a guess, I would say he rented the apartment so that he could come and go without being seen or questioned. Or perhaps receive visitors he didn’t want the authorities to know about.’

‘And he couldn’t do that at his embassy accommodation?’

‘There is a twenty-four-hour guard on the gate to the compound.’

Margaret nodded thoughtfully. ‘So why would he want to come and go without being seen or questioned, or have secret visitors?’

Li blew a jet of smoke at the overhead fan. ‘If we knew that, we probably wouldn’t be sitting here.’

Margaret suddenly stiffened and checked the time. ‘Oh, my God, I’m going to be late!’ She stood up quickly and lifted her bag on to the desk. ‘Is it possible for you to call me a taxi?’

Li and the other detectives were taken by surprise. They had anticipated that their meeting would go on for some time yet. ‘Where are you going?’ Li asked.

‘Beijing West Railway Station,’ she said. ‘My train leaves at ten to seven.’

Li looked at his watch. It was a quarter to six. He shook his head. ‘You’ll never make it. Not at this time of night. The traffic will be at a standstill. It’ll take at least an hour and a half.’

‘But the station’s not that far,’ she protested. ‘I could walk it in twenty minutes from my hotel. We got the train to Datong from there.’

‘No,’ Li shook his head. ‘That’s Beijing Railway Station. Beijing West Railway Station is way on the other side of town.’

‘Shit!’ Margaret cursed.

Li stood up and gathered his papers together. The other detectives took their cue from him. ‘Where are you going?’ he asked, trying to sound as if he was indifferent to the answer.

‘Xi’an,’ she said. ‘To see the Terracotta Warriors.’

Li looked at her in astonishment. ‘On your own?’

‘No.’ She hesitated for just a moment. ‘Michael Zimmerman’s taking me.’

Li felt the colour rise on his cheeks, and he heard Sang translating for the others. He turned to them. ‘That’s all,’ he said curtly. Disappointed, they lifted their papers, nodded politely to Margaret and went out. Still feigning indifference, he said, ‘Michael Zimmerman … That’s the man you were with at the Sanwei tearoom last night?’

In spite of her anxiety about her train, Margaret had derived some small pleasure from seeing the colour rising on Li’s face at the mention of Michael’s name. ‘That’s right,’ she said. ‘Are you going to call me a taxi or not?’

But he was in no hurry. ‘Who is he, exactly?’

‘I don’t really figure that’s any of your business, exactly,’ she responded tartly.

He shrugged. ‘Well, if I’m going to stick a flashing light on the roof of a police Jeep and get you to the station in time for your train, I think I have the right to expect a civil answer to a civil question.’

She smiled ruefully. He had trapped her. And if she wanted to catch her train … ‘He’s a TV archaeologist,’ she said.

‘A what?’ He had no idea what she meant.

‘He makes documentaries for television about archaeology,’ she spelled it out for him. ‘China is his speciality. He’s very popular in the States.’

‘And why is he taking you to Xi’an?’

‘Now that,’ she said, ‘is not a civil question. So do I get my ride or not?’

Dusk fell over the city like a grey powder slowly blotting out the light. For a time, as their Jeep careered in and out of cycle lanes, siren wailing, red light flashing, the sun had sent long shadows to meet them and blinded them through the windscreen. Now it was gone, and the red streaks in the sky were fading through blue into black. There were times when Li, squeezing between buses and taxis, had turned the three lanes of the westbound carriageway of the third ring road into four. Margaret watched his concentration as he leaned frequently on the horn to supplement the siren, muttering to himself in between drags on his cigarette, almost as if she wasn’t there. He had not spoken to her since they left Section One. And her naked fear had banished all thoughts of conversation as he drove, like a man possessed, through the evening rush hour.

He checked his watch and appeared to relax a little. He glanced across at her for the first time. ‘We might just make it,’ he said.

‘I’m glad,’ she said, a hint of acid in her tone. ‘I’d hate to think I’d aged ten years in vain.’

‘And I would hate to think,’ he said, looking straight ahead again, ‘that a mere murder investigation would get in the way of your love life.’

‘You know what your trouble is?’ she said, controlling the urge to tell him exactly where he could go. ‘Your grasp of English is far too good. Your uncle taught you well, but he should have told you that sarcasm is the lowest form of wit.’

‘Who said I was being witty?’

‘Well, certainly not me!’ She glared at him, then relaxed. ‘Anyway,’ she said, ‘since you are clearly so anxious to know, the relationship between Michael and me is strictly platonic. You know what platonic is, don’t you?’

He nodded. ‘It’s the word people always use to describe their relationship with someone just before they sleep with them.’ But he wasn’t smiling. His mouth was set in a grim line as he swung the Jeep off the ring road on to the flyover leading to the Tianningsi Bridge.

Margaret was stung. Not so much by the barb in Li’s words, but by the truth of them. And she wondered just why she had agreed to go to Xi’an with Michael, and knew at once that it wasn’t to fulfil a life’s ambition to see the Terracotta Warriors. She felt a churning in her stomach, and that fear that fluttered so elusively in her breast. What in God’s name was she doing? She stole a glance at Li. She had stopped seeing him as Chinese again. Just as Li Yan. And she had seen the warmth and sparkle return to his eyes as they had fenced verbally at Section One, and again in the Jeep. She knew, without daring to let the thought crystallise in her mind, that she still loved him. But what point was there in it? It was as foolish and impossible as a teenager falling for a rock star. Li had made it clear. They had no future.

His focus appeared to be entirely on the traffic as he weaved between vehicles along Lianhuachidong Road. Suddenly he leaned forward and pointed out to their left. ‘Beijing West Railway Station,’ he said.

Margaret looked out, and in the fading light saw a vast structure rising out of sweeping flyovers to east and west, outlined in neon and dazzling in the glare of coloured arc lights. Huge towers rose in ascending symmetry to a colossal centrepiece of three roofs, one atop the other, curling eaves raised on towering columns. ‘Jesus,’ she whispered breathlessly. ‘It’s vast!’ It was bigger than most airports she had been in.

‘Biggest railway station in the world,’ Li said. And he swung off the road on to a ramp that swept them up and round to a multi-lane highway running parallel with a main concourse thick with arriving and departing passengers. He drew the Jeep into the kerb, jumped on to the concourse and lifted Margaret’s bag out for her as the siren wound down and tailed off to a throaty splutter.

Margaret grasped her bag and looked up in awe at the station looming over her. ‘My God,’ she said. ‘How will I ever find Michael?’

But to Li’s disappointment he saw an anxious-faced Michael pushing through the crowds towards them. ‘I think he’s found you,’ he said.

Michael arrived breathless and flushed and immediately took Margaret’s bag. ‘Thank Heaven, Margaret. I thought for a while there you weren’t going to make it.’

‘With my own personal police escort, there was never any danger,’ Margaret said, glancing at Li.

Michael looked at him and nodded. He held out his hand. ‘We meet again, Mr Li.’

Li was taken aback that Michael remembered his name and wondered if he had been a subject of discussion between Michael and Margaret. ‘Mr Zimmerman,’ he said politely. Their hands clasped firmly. Perhaps a little too firmly, and the air between them stiffened with an electric tension. And Li became aware, vaguely, almost sub-consciously, of something familiar about this man. He searched his face for some sign, some clue, but the familiarity, strangely, seemed somehow not quite physical.

The moment passed, as quickly as it had come, and they let go each other’s hands. Michael checked his watch and said to Margaret, ‘We’ll have to hurry.’ And to Li, ‘Thanks for getting her here on time.’

Li resisted a powerful urge to punch him and turned instead to Margaret. ‘Enjoy your trip.’ His words seemed stiff and formal.

She nodded. ‘Thank you,’ she said, and then she and Michael were off, hurrying through the crowds towards the main entrance. Li stood for a moment, watching them, and a cloud of depression, as dense as the darkness that had fallen, enveloped him.

The interior concourse of Beijing West Railway Station was daunting, cavernous and crowded with people responding to a bewildering array of electronic information displayed from gantries on all sides. Above the hubbub of thousands of passengers rose the soft voice of a female announcer, hypnotically repeating the arrival and departure times of trains in Chinese and English. A huge, gaping hole fed escalators up and down to lower levels. Along either side, between banks of ticket desks, shops sold everything from pomegranates to pop sox. You could buy what Margaret thought were polystyrene containers of noodles smothered in spicy sauces from an array of fast-food joints. The polystyrene, Michael assured her, was not polystyrene, but compressed straw. Biodegradable. China’s contribution to world ecology.

A broad corridor shimmered off into the multicoloured neon distance, feeding left and right into huge waiting rooms for the various platforms. Giant multiscreen television displays were playing environmental awareness ads in between pop videos. Michael took Margaret’s hand and led her quickly through the crowds, past the escalators, turning left towards the entrance to the No. 1 Soft Seat Waiting Room.

At the door, a young girl in green uniform and a peaked cap several sizes too large, checked their passports and tickets before granting them access to the rarefied atmosphere and spacious luxury of the soft sleeper waiting room where only the privileged and wealthy were allowed. Comfortable green leather seats were ranged around coffee tables beneath a copper-coloured mural depicting scenes from Chinese history. Margaret caught a whiff of burning incense as they passed the toilets, before being whisked to the far end of the waiting room. There a ticket attendant clipped the tickets that Michael presented, and they were waved through. They ran along a corridor, past hard-class waiting rooms, before turning left down a steep flight of steps leading to platform six.

‘Wait!’ Margaret said suddenly. ‘Your luggage!’

Michael smiled. ‘It’s already on board.’

As soon as she reached the platform, Margaret recognised the smell of coal smoke funnelling back from the impatiently chuffing steam engine that stood somewhere up ahead in the blackness. Michael hurried her along the platform to coach number seven where they climbed up into a long, narrow corridor. Patterned nets hung on the windows, and blue floral curtains were draped on either side. A red carpet with a gold patterned border led them up to their compartment. It was a far cry, Margaret thought, from her only other experience of travelling by train in China. Then, she had been in hard class, in cold uncomfortable compartments where people spat on the floor and crowded together on butt-numbing hard seats.

‘Here we are,’ Michael said, and waved her into their compartment. Here there was more netting and blue curtain, lace covers on the four berths, and antimacassars on the seat backs.

‘Oh,’ Margaret said, surprised. ‘We’re sharing.’

Michael shrugged apologetically. ‘I’m sorry, the production office wasn’t able to get you another compartment at this short notice.’

Margaret laughed. ‘I don’t mean you and I,’ she said. ‘I mean with someone else.’

Michael looked at the bunks and smiled. ‘Well, actually, no,’ he said. ‘I’ve bought all four berths, so we’ve got it to ourselves.’

It was then that she noticed the ice bucket on the table, the gold-wrapped neck of a champagne bottle jutting from it, and a large wicker hamper on the top berth.

Michael slid the door shut. ‘It’s a fourteen-hour journey,’ he said. ‘So I thought a little good food, washed down with some fine champagne, might help pass the time.’

IV

By the time Li returned the Jeep to Section One and cycled home on his uncle’s old bike, his depression about Margaret had turned to apprehension about having to face his sister. If the scan had been successful, then she would know the sex of her unborn child and her decision would have been made. If the scan had been ambiguous in any way, then they would have had to draw fluid from her womb, and a decision would be delayed for four weeks. It was not in Li’s nature to procrastinate, but right now he was praying to his ancestors that the scan had been inconclusive. Much could change in four weeks.

He parked his bicycle in the compound, beneath a corrugated plastic roof, and wearily climbed the two flights to his apartment. He had seen the lights in the windows from the street below, so he knew that Xiao Ling and Xinxin were home. They had probably been back for hours.

Li thought about the sleepy little five-year-old who had kissed him before he left that morning, cuddly, affectionate, pretty — a sweet-tempered little girl, bright and full of life. How could his sister even contemplate having her adopted? She had tried, desperately, to justify it to him. There were thousands of childless Western couples, she said, who were just desperate to adopt little Chinese girls. Xinxin would have a much better life than Xiao Ling could ever give her. Li had shaken his head in despair. He could only assume that Xiao Ling had succumbed to some kind of hormonal insanity that was robbing her of her senses.

He could hear Xinxin crying even before he unlocked the door to the apartment. In the hall, he called out to Xiao Ling, ‘Is everything all right?’ But she did not reply, and Xinxin’s wailing became, if anything, more plaintive. The living room was empty. He hurried down the hall to his uncle’s old bedroom and found Xinxin sitting on the bed alone, breaking her heart. Her eyes were swollen and red, and her voice hoarse. The little bib front of her dress was wet from her tears. In consternation, Li called back down the hall, ‘Xiao Ling?’ But there was no reply. He crouched beside Xinxin and pulled her to him. Her little arms went around his neck and clung on tightly. ‘Where’s your mummy?’ he asked. But the sobs that tugged at her chest made it impossible for her to speak.

Then he saw the envelope on the bedside table, his name written on it in his sister’s hand. He freed an arm from Xinxin’s grasp and tore it open with trembling fingers. ‘Li Yan,’ it said. ‘Please forgive me. I know you will do what is best for Xinxin. I have gone to the home of a friend in Annhui Province to have my baby boy. No one knows me there, so there will be no trouble. All my love, Xiao Ling.’