The Fourth Sacrifice

I

An occasional cluster of distant lights broke the endless stream of darkness outside the window as their train ploughed slowly but surely south towards the heartland of the Middle Kingdom, and its ancient capital of Xi’an. The empty champagne bottle floated on melted ice, its neck gently clunking on the rim of the bucket. A bottle of Bordeaux, a St Emilion, stood breathing on the table beside two crystal goblets. The debris of their starter, small nuggets of foie gras with salad and toast, on china plates, had been cleared away back into the hamper where a selection of exotic cheeses awaited. Michael had disappeared off to the dining car to organise their main course.

Margaret leaned against the window, the glass cool against the champagne-induced flush of her face. Already it seemed like a lifetime since the train had left Beijing. Flashing glimpses of the floodlit station had illuminated the sky between towering new buildings as they rattled west and south through the city across a great confluence of railroad tracks. She knew she was being romanced and was enjoying every minute of it. It was flattering and exciting, and a little frightening. And it was doing her self-esteem a power of good. She had very deliberately pushed all thoughts of Li off to some distant place where he could not haunt or hurt her. She did not deserve to have to feel guilty. She had to get on with her life. And this seemed as good a starting point as any.

The door slid open and Michael came in smiling. ‘Success,’ he said, and slipped into his seat opposite Margaret. Behind him, a pretty girl in blue uniform with a short-sleeved white blouse and black bow tie carried in a tray with two whole fish on oval plates. The smell of soy, and ginger and onion filled the compartment, rising with the steam from the fish. The girl placed the tray on the table and smiled at Michael. The girls all smiled at Michael, Margaret had noticed. Even the surly attendants who had come to check their tickets and passports. While they had glared at Margaret, their faces had lit up with wide smiles and sparkling eyes when they saw Michael. He had an easy way with women, full of charm and humour. He always made them laugh. When he spoke Chinese to them Margaret had no idea what he said, but they would invariably giggle coyly, responding to the pleasure he so clearly got from flirting with them. She knew that she should feel good about being with someone that other women found so attractive. And she did. But she also knew that it could very quickly become tiresome, breeding insecurity and jealousy.

Michael slipped the girl a few yuan and said something that elicited a giggle before she drifted out into the corridor and slid the door shut behind her. He lifted fish forks and knives out of the hamper and passed a set to Margaret before filling her glass with the pale red St Emilion. ‘I guess the purists would say we should be drinking white with fish,’ he said. ‘But when it comes to Chinese flavours like these, I figure you need something a little more robust to hold its own.’ He raised his glass. ‘To a successful trip.’

Margaret touched her glass to his. ‘You wouldn’t be trying to get me drunk, would you?’

He grinned. ‘If I had to do that,’ he said, ‘it would take the fun out of the chase. Try your fish. It’s usually excellent.’

She took a forkful of soft white flesh and crispy skin, dipping it in the juices before taking her first, tentative taste. The flavours filled her mouth, rich and spicy and sweet. ‘It’s wonderful,’ she said, and washed it over with a sip of wine. ‘So … you do this often, do you?’

‘I’ve made the trip a few times,’ he said. He paused before adding, ‘But this is the first time I’ve had company.’

‘So what’s it like?’ Margaret asked. ‘Xi’an.’

‘Ah,’ said Michael, his eyes widening. ‘Don’t get me started on my favourite subject or we’ll be here all night.’

‘We’re here all night anyway,’ Margaret said. And, then, with a twinkle, ‘Unless you had something else in mind.’

He met her eye very directly, and held her gaze for what seemed like a very long time. The butterflies that had earlier fluttered in her breast were now swarming in her stomach, and she felt the first faint stirrings of desire. ‘Xi’an,’ he said suddenly. ‘Capital of Shaanxi Province. The beginning, and the end, of the Silk Road. Founded before the birth of Christ, and the capital of China for more than eleven hundred years. Once known as Chang’an — the city of everlasting peace — it became the city of western peace, Xi’an, more than six hundred years ago.’ And his eyes shone. ‘All my life, Margaret, I have wanted to reach out and touch the past, to feel history and run it through my fingers. Like desert sand. In Xi’an I can do all that at a single point in space and time.’

Margaret said, ‘Yes, but do they have a McDonald’s?’ And for a moment she wondered if she had misjudged his sense of humour. Then he burst out laughing.

‘You know, for everything I know about Xi’an, that’s one thing that’s escaped me. They do have a Kentucky Fried Chicken, though, I can tell you that. The Colonel and I go back a long way.’

‘I’m glad to hear it.’ She stuffed some more fish in her mouth. ‘The fish is fantastic, by the way. Don’t think I don’t appreciate this.’ She took another sip of wine. ‘What’s the Silk Road?’

‘It was a trade route,’ he said, ‘covering thousands of miles across some of the most barren and inhospitable terrain in the world.’ He refilled their glasses. ‘The peoples of the Middle East and Central Asia sent great caravans of traders to bring back the mysterious silk from China. Only the Chinese knew how to make it. The route was flourishing at a time when the Chinese and Roman empires were in full bloom, each with only the vaguest notion of the other’s existence. Before the Silk Road ultimately led to Rome, the Romans thought the Chinese grew silk on trees. Their name for it was serica, and they called the people who made it the Seres, or Chinese. The silk people.’ By now he’d forgotten about his fish. ‘The thing about the Silk Road is that it brought all manner of culture and literature and religion to China. Chinese Buddhism took root in Xi’an, carried from India on ancient scriptures. At one time the old city had a population of more than two million, including foreigners from Arabia, Mongolia, India, Malaya. You will see the influence of their facial features tomorrow in the faces of the Terracotta Warriors.’

‘Your fish is getting cold,’ Margaret said, nodding towards his plate.

‘Oh. Yes.’ He awoke almost is if from some distant dream, and began attacking his fish again.

‘I guess that must be why you’re not married,’ she said, and he looked at her, frowning his consternation. ‘You reserve all your passion for your history and archaeology.’

‘Not all of it,’ he said, and took another mouthful of fish. ‘Anyway, what makes you think I’m not married?’

Her fork paused midway to her mouth, and the piece of fish on it fell back to the plate. She blushed, caught completely unawares. He leaned forward and gently wiped her blouse with his napkin where soy had splashed from her plate. ‘That’ll stain,’ he said.

But Margaret was oblivious. ‘You’re married?’

‘No.’ He shook his head. ‘Who told you that?’

‘You bastard!’ She grinned and blushed again, only this time with embarrassment. ‘Never?’

‘Never. I did live with someone for nearly ten years. She was an actress.’

‘Anyone I’d know?’

‘I doubt it. She had bit parts in movies and TV shows, but mostly she worked in theatre. She did well for a few years. We hardly saw one another. It was only when she started getting unemployed and we got to spend more time in each other’s company that the relationship started falling apart. Turns out we never really knew one another at all. The relationship had been … how can I describe it? … convenient. But there comes a time when you look for more than that.’

‘And are you anywhere near finding it?’

He shrugged. ‘Who knows? I’m still looking.’

Their eyes held again for a few moments before hers flickered back down to her plate and she picked the final pieces of fish from the bone.

He said, ‘What about you? I see you’re wearing a ring.’

Her right hand went instinctively to the band of gold on her wedding finger. She wasn’t sure why she still wore it. For protection, perhaps. Men were more guarded in their approach to a woman wearing a wedding ring. ‘I was married for seven years,’ she said. ‘His name was Michael, too.’

‘Oh,’ he said. And she saw the colour rising on his cheeks this time. ‘I’m not sure how I’m supposed to feel about that.’

‘You’re not supposed to feel anything. You’re nothing like him.’

‘Divorced?’

‘Separated,’ she said. And then, after a long moment, ‘By death.’

He was clearly shocked. ‘Oh. I’m so sorry, Margaret. I had no idea.’

‘Don’t be. I’m not. It’s history. And I don’t really want to talk about it.’

They concluded their meal in silence then. Somehow a spell had been broken. Margaret declined the cheese, saying she was too full. But they finished the wine, sitting staring out into the darkness, trying to focus beyond their reflections in the glass. Margaret was angry at allowing herself to be ambushed again by the man who had already brought so much pain and misery to her life. She wondered if she would ever be able to excise him finally from her mind, to prevent him from creeping up on her when she least expected it and dumping all his misery on her once more.

The champagne and the wine was having its effect. She felt sleepy and sad, and when Michael slipped across the compartment to sit beside her, she allowed him to pull her gently into his shoulder and close his hand around hers. It was comforting and warm, and she smelled his patchouli, and something in its musky sweetness was distantly arousing. She felt his breath on her forehead and she inclined her head to find his face very close to hers. His eyes, earnest and deep, seemed somehow filled with genuine concern, and she felt safe in his arms, and contented in a way she had not known for a long time. He lowered his head and kissed her. Not a kiss full of passion, but a long, lingering soft kiss full of care and tenderness. She responded, savouring the taste and the smell of him. She ran a hand through his fine, shiny brown hair, and was alarmed suddenly by a sexual awakening that came from somewhere deep inside her. And she remembered Li’s firm, hard body pressed into hers in that distant railway carriage.

She pulled away, flushed and a little breathless. ‘I’m sorry, Michael. I don’t think I’m ready for this.’

He looked at her for a long moment, then smiled and brushed her hair out of her face. ‘It’s OK, Margaret,’ he said. ‘If there’s one thing you learn as an archaeologist, it’s patience. It can be a lifetime, or a millennium, before you finally get what you’re looking for.’ He paused. ‘You tired?’ She nodded.

He stood up and arranged her pillows at the window end of her berth, and gently swung her legs up so that she reclined along its length. She felt him removing her shoes, slowly, carefully, his fingers brushing the unstockinged skin of her ankles, the arch of her foot. And she felt a rush of desire. But it was too late now. The moment had passed, and she felt incredibly sleepy and warm as he drew the quilt over her, tucking it in around her neck. Then his lips brushing gently over hers.

She drifted for a time, somewhere between sleep and wakefulness, aware of him clearing away the debris of their dinner before undressing, and then climbing into his berth and turning off the light.

A final thought, as she drifted into darkness, was a tiny stabbing moment of fear that she might start snoring.

Sunlight slanted over the peaks of mountains to the east, falling in long yellow slabs through the window of their carriage as Margaret opened sleepy eyes and found Michael sitting opposite, watching her.

‘Good morning,’ he said. ‘We’ll be there in under an hour.’

‘Oh, my God,’ she sat up suddenly, remembering her final thought before drifting off to sleep the night before. ‘I wasn’t snoring, was I?’

He shook his head and smiled. ‘Not too loudly.’

‘I wasn’t!’ she said.

His smile widened. ‘That’s for me to know. But don’t worry. Your secret’s safe with me. You know I never betray a girl’s confidence. Would you like coffee?’

‘Talk about changing the subject!’ She grinned sheepishly. ‘I thought the Chinese only drank tea.’

‘They do. But I always travel equipped for any eventuality.’ He took a glass jug and a filter funnel and paper filter from the hamper and set it up on the table. He opened an airtight tin and Margaret immediately smelled fresh ground coffee — an olfactory experience that seemed as far away and long ago as the United States itself. He spooned a generous quantity of it into the filter and reached under the table for a large silver flask. He opened the top and steam exploded out of it. ‘It’s not exactly boiling,’ he said. ‘But it’ll make a passable cup or two.’

She took her toilet bag and went to the washroom to wash the sleep from her eyes, and to brush her teeth and apply a touch of colour to her lips. She examined her face in the mirror. It was still a little puffy from sleep, and the skin was pale, so that her freckles seemed more prominent than usual. Somewhere behind her eyes were the vague traces of a hangover. She remembered the taste and the touch of Michael from the night before, and a small shiver ran through her. She was embarrassed by her reticence, but grateful that he had not pushed her. And she had a sense now, that this day that lay ahead of her could be a defining one in her life.

When she returned, the smell of fresh coffee filled the compartment. ‘That smells wonderful,’ she said. And the taste of it and the caffeine hit kick-started her day.

Outside, fields of cropped corn stretched away into the distance, while on the slopes of the hills that rose around them, every contour of the land had been terraced and cultivated, every feature of it man-made, carved from nature by the blood, sweat and tears of men. A blue wisp of smoke rose into the morning sky from a bonfire of dried corn stalks, an ox led by a bare-chested peasant pulled a plough through stony ground. Occasionally they passed clusters of large standing hoops of what looked like pink and white paper flowers. ‘What are these?’ Margaret asked. ‘They look like giant wreaths.’

‘That’s just what they are,’ Michael told her. ‘Wreaths on fresh graves, or to mark the anniversary of a death.’

‘I thought everyone in China was supposed to be cremated,’ Margaret said.

‘They’re supposed to be. The Chinese government believes burying the dead wastes fertile ground. And they are probably right. But old habits die hard.’

He turned suddenly to business and told her that she was not to worry about her luggage when they got to Xi’an. His production company had employed a runner to pick up their bags and the hamper, and they would be met outside the station by a car and driver. They would go first to their hotel to check in, and then drive out to the museum of the Terracotta Warriors just beyond the town of Lintong, about an hour from the city. He would have to leave her with the warriors for a time while he went to conclude his business with the director of the museum, but he would see that she was in good hands.

Gradually the fields and the rolling hills gave way to the industrial outskirts of the sprawling conurbation that was Xi’an, and within fifteen minutes their train had pulled into the station.

Jostled and pushed by crowds anxious to be on their way, frowned at by railway staff inspecting their tickets, pursued by touts selling maps and tourist guides, they made their way across a chaotic concourse and out into the brilliant sunshine of the Xi’an morning, where a frenzied throng of passengers and bicycles and vehicles was fighting its way towards the exit. The runner who had retrieved their luggage materialised from nowhere with a trolley. She looked about sixteen, and barely big enough to lift their bags. But she had managed without help.

‘Car by gate,’ she said. ‘You follow me.’ And they passed through narrow gates, out into a square filled with buses and flanked on one side by high-rise blocks, and on the other by the ancient crenellated city wall that rose twelve metres into the sky and ran twelve kilometres around the old city centre. A large black limousine stood purring outside the gate.

‘Welcome to Xi’an,’ Michael said, and Margaret felt a tiny thrill of expectation run through her.

II

Li watched thoughtfully as Xinxin wolfed down the lotus seed buns that he had steamed for her breakfast. She had already, it seemed, developed a taste for tea, and she washed down the sticky sweet buns with large gulps of steaming green tea from a dragon mug. It was a treat, and for the moment she had forgotten that her mother had gone, leaving her in a strange house with this stranger who was her uncle.

Eventually, the night before, after he had calmed her down, she had slept. Xiao Ling had not even made up a story for Xinxin to explain her absence. She had simply told the child to wait in her room for her uncle. He would not be long. Xinxin had been on her own for nearly three hours before Li turned up.

For the second night in succession Li had barely slept, and this morning had had to concoct a story about how Xiao Ling was not well, how she had had to go unexpectedly to a special hospital somewhere far away. And that Xinxin was to stay with her uncle until she returned. This had elicited a fresh burst of tears, and Xinxin had simply wailed that she wanted to go home. And home, Li had decided, was where she had to go. This was a problem for her father, not for him. He would write to him, explaining the circumstances, and tell him to come and fetch his daughter at once. But this would take time. A week, or more. And he was at a loss as to what to do with the child in the meantime. The only solution he had arrived at during long, sleepless hours, was to seek the advice of Mei Yuan. And the only problem with that was that he would have to take Xinxin with him.

But another, greater, problem awaited.

As Li cycled north, Xinxin sat side-saddle on the bag carrier over the rear wheel of his bicycle, gaping in wonder at the people and traffic in this huge and seemingly never-ending city. She watched the children on their way to school with a wide-eyed fascination, the boys who toiled up the hutongs with their three-wheeled coal carriers, the unbelievable numbers of people on foot and on bikes and clambering off and on buses. Li felt the unaccustomed burden of responsibility for the child on his bike, and now, as he pulled in beside the jian bing stall at the Dongzhimennei corner, his heart sank as the woman at the hotplate turned to greet him, and it was the face of a stranger.

‘Where is Mei Yuan?’ he asked, perplexed.

The woman said, ‘She had to go to the public security bureau to renew her licence. So she asked me to make her jian bings this morning.’

‘When will she be back?’

‘I don’t know. In a few hours, perhaps.’ The woman paused. ‘Who are you?’

‘Li Yan,’ he said, and her face opened up in a smile.

‘Ah, Li Yan. She has told me all about you. I am Jiang Shimei, her cousin.’ She held out her hand to shake his. ‘You looked after Mei Yuan when she was not well.’ She looked at Xinxin. ‘Is this your daughter?’

‘No.’ Li was embarrassed. ‘She is my niece.’

‘She is very beautiful.’ Jiang Shimei stooped to run fingers lightly down Xinxin’s cheek. ‘What is your name, little one?’

‘Xinxin.’

‘Xinxin? What a lovely name.’

‘Can you put my hair in bunches?’ Xinxin asked suddenly, and she dug into the pockets of her little green pinafore to produce two pink elasticated bands with plastic cartoon fox heads. ‘My Uncle Yan is hopeless. He says he doesn’t know how.’

‘Of course,’ Jiang Shimei said, and Li shuffled awkwardly while she quickly arranged makeshift bunches high on either side of Xinxin’s head. ‘There,’ she said. ‘Just perfect.’ And Xinxin’s little round face beamed with pleasure. And she did look perfect, Li thought, with the red piping on her white blouse matching the red tights she wore beneath her green pinafore, her red satchel slung over her shoulder, tiny feet secured in open white sandals.

‘Tell Mei Yuan,’ Li said, ‘that I need her advice. I will come back later.’ He lifted Xinxin on to the bike behind him.

‘Do you not want a jian bing?’

‘I have no time today.’ And he pushed off across the road, weaving through the stream of traffic, whose horns blared angrily. He cycled up the slope, past fruit and vegetable stalls on his left, a barber’s shop open for business already, the smell of wet cut hair and scented oil drifting out of the open door. He parked under the trees next to the front entrance of Section One and took Xinxin by the hand, leading her with great apprehension to the side door, and up three flights to the top floor. The pair drew curious glances from secretarial staff and detectives. Apart from nodded acknowledgements, no one made any comment. Li hesitated briefly outside the door to the detectives’ room, then summoned all his courage and walked in, little Xinxin trotting wide-eyed at his side, as if it were the most natural thing in the world.

Zhao was just putting down the telephone. He turned and caught sight of Li. ‘Boss, I’ve got a car waiting downstairs to take us to the Middle School …’ His voice trailed off as he saw Xinxin. Other heads turned. The hubbub of voices died down.

Wu pushed his sunglasses back on his head. ‘Um … is there something you haven’t been telling us, boss?’

Li decided to brazen it out. ‘Guys, this is my niece, Xinxin. Her mom’s not very well right now, so I told Xinxin that you would keep her amused this morning while I conduct those interviews.’

There was a moment’s stunned silence before Qian, whose own little girl was nearly ten, took the initiative. ‘Hello, Xinxin,’ he said, rounding the desk. ‘Those are beautiful bunches you’ve got. Did your Uncle Yan do them for you?’

Xinxin tutted and raised her eyes to the ceiling as if he was mad. ‘Of course not,’ she said. ‘Uncle Yan’s useless.’ Which elicited much laughter from around the room. She went on, warming to her reception, ‘It was a lady in the street that did it.’

‘Yeah,’ Wu said, ‘we all think Uncle Yan’s pretty useless, too, don’t we, guys?’ There was a general chorus of consent as Li drew Wu a look.

Qian lifted her up to sit on the edge of the desk and looked in her satchel. ‘What have you got here?’ And he pulled out the books that Mei Yuan had left two nights previously, and a jigsaw puzzle in a cardboard box.

‘It’s dead easy,’ Xinxin said. ‘Do you want me to show you how to do it?’

‘Sure,’ Qian said. The other detectives started gathering around, indulging the age-old adoration that the Chinese have for their children. ‘Has Uncle Yan tried it yet?’

Xinxin laughed so infectiously it got all the detectives laughing with her. ‘Silly!’ she said. ‘How could someone who doesn’t know how to do bunches do a jigsaw?’ More laughter at Li’s expense.

‘Li!’ The voice was sharp and imperative, and brought the room to silence. Li turned to see Section Chief Chen Anming standing in the doorway. Chen flicked his head towards Li’s office. ‘A word.’ And he went through. Li pulled a face at the other detectives and then followed Chen through.

Chen turned. ‘Shut the door,’ he said. ‘What the hell’s going on, Li?’

Li shrugged. ‘I’ve got a problem, Chief.’ And he explained how his sister had abandoned Xinxin, literally on his doorstep. It would take a week or more, he explained, to write to her father so that he could come and get her. Meantime he didn’t know what else to do.

‘Well, you can’t turn the detectives’ office into a crèche,’ Chen said. ‘In the name of the sky, Li, we’ve got a serial killer on the loose!’

Li was at a loss. ‘I know,’ he said lamely.

Chen glared at him for a moment, then shook his head, giving way at least a little to the sympathy he felt for Li’s predicament. ‘Where does her father live?’

‘Near Zigong, in Sichuan Province.’

‘I’ll call the police chief there and have him get in touch with your brother-in-law. He could be on a train to Beijing by tonight.’

Li nodded, abashed. ‘Thanks, Chief.’

There was a burst of laughter from the office outside, and Li grinned, embarrassed. ‘She seems to be a big hit with the guys.’ He paused. ‘You’ve got a couple of kids, haven’t you, Chief?’

Chen grunted. ‘A long time since they were that age. My daughter’s in publishing, and my son teaches quantum physics.’

The door to Li’s office swung open and Xinxin strutted in holding out one of Mei Yuan’s books. ‘Will you read this to me, Uncle Yan?’

Li glanced beyond her to the expectant faces of the detectives outside and knew that she’d been put up to it. ‘I can’t, honey,’ he said. ‘I have to go and interview some men. I’m late already.’

Xinxin turned to Chen. ‘Will you read it to me, Uncle Anming?’

Chen flushed, and narrowed his eyes at the detectives in the next room, realising that he, too, had been set up. He flicked a look at Li who was somehow managing to keep his face straight. ‘I’m very busy, little one,’ he said.

Xinxin frowned. ‘What’s that yellow mark on your head?’ she asked, gazing up at him, and the sound of stifled laughter drifted through from the next office.

Chen flushed. ‘That’s from smoking too much,’ he said.

‘Oh.’ Xinxin’s face fell and she said, very seriously, ‘Smoking’s ve-ery bad for you.’

‘Yes, I know,’ Chen said.

Xinxin giggled. ‘Good. So now you stop smoking and read to me, OK?’

She took his hand, quite unselfconsciously, and he blushed to the roots of his hair.

Li said quickly, ‘Now you take good care of Uncle Anming while I’m away, Xinxin.’ He glanced quickly at Chen, hardly daring to meet his eye. ‘Sorry, Chief. Got to dash. Late already.’ And he turned and hurried out, before Chen had time to object. Li collected Zhao as he went, grabbing him by the arm and whisking him through the door.

The two of them stifled their laughter all the way down the corridor, before it finally burst forth in the stairwell and resounded around the building.

‘Oh, shit, Zhao,’ Li said, wiping the tears from the corners of his eyes. ‘I’m going to be in big trouble when we get back.’

No. 29 Middle School was hidden away behind a plain white-tile entrance at the far corner of a bus park just off Qian Men Xi Da Jie, a spit away from the south-west corner of Tiananmen Square. Above the heavy green metal gates, a photograph mounted on a long board showed the school’s original elaborate stone entrance. Zhao parked the Jeep outside, and a janitor hurried out from a brick gatehouse to let them in. As the metal gates swung closed behind them, they entered a strange oasis of calm in the centre of the city. Two-storey, brick-built classroom blocks stretched off to left and right, shaded by neatly cropped trees. Through a tunnel lined with school noticeboards and potted plants with luxuriant leafy fronds, the sun shone directly on to a tree-lined quadrangle with basketball and badminton courts. Classrooms overlooked it from all sides. The sounds of traffic in the street had become a distant rumble.

Li looked around in amazement. ‘I had no idea this place was here,’ he said.

‘It used to be a university,’ the janitor said.

Zhao frowned. ‘What do you mean?’

‘University of China.’ The janitor grinned and nodded. Li thought, perhaps he was a little simple. ‘Sun Yat-Sen founded the university in 1912. We have an exhibition. Come and see.’

And he ushered them into a classroom that had been converted into an exhibition room. Blue panels mounted all around the walls exhibited photographs of the school’s founders and teachers, and other historic memorabilia. The janitor was not simple. It had been founded by the President of the first Chinese Republic, Sun Yat-Sen, and it had indeed been the University of China. Faces from history stared down at them from the walls: the balding Sun Yat-Sen with his neatly clipped silver moustache; the crop-haired Li Da Zhao with his Stalinesque whiskers, a professor of economics there in the twenties who had translated the works of Marx into Chinese for the first time, before being hanged by Chiang Kai-Shek in 1928; the honorary headmaster, General Zhang Xüe Liang, who betrayed Chiang Kai-Shek to the communists in the infamous Xi’an incident of 1936. In a glass case stood the bell that had called the first students to class at the start of the previous century. And it had hung from a tree that today still stood sentinel over the quadrangle outside.

The story of the school’s history written on the walls revealed that when the communists came to power in 1949, the University of China had become ‘The New Beginning Middle School’, then three years later, more prosaically, the No. 29 Middle School.

A young man wearing jeans and a dark zip-neck sweatshirt over a grey tee shirt, hurried into the room, a little short of breath. ‘How do you do?’ he said, shaking their hands. ‘The headmaster asked me to take care of you this morning. I have no classes till the afternoon.’

‘You are a teacher?’ Li asked, surprised. Teachers had not dressed like that in his day.

‘Sure,’ said the teacher. ‘I am Teacher Huang.’

‘There’s quite a history to this place,’ said Li.

‘Sure. We are very proud of our history,’ Teacher Huang said. ‘But now we are just a Middle School. We have six hundred students and one hundred and fifty teachers. Follow me. You can have my classroom for the interviews.’

Teacher Huang’s classroom had four rows of six desks, with a long blackboard at either end. Tall windows opened out on each side of the room. Li lifted a chair down from a desktop. ‘Are there no classes this morning?’

‘Sure,’ said Teacher Huang. ‘There are plenty of classes. You will know when they have a break, because the students will make plenty of noise.’ He grinned. Then, ‘An old teacher from here, Lao Sun Lian, and some former pupils are waiting in another room. When you want to speak to them let me know.’

‘Send in Teacher Sun,’ Li said. And then as Teacher Huang went to the door, asked, ‘By the way, what happened to the original school gate?’

‘It was destroyed by Red Guards during the Cultural Revolution,’ Teacher Huang said.

‘The same ones who destroyed the school records?’

Teacher Huang shrugged. ‘I don’t know. Possibly. But I am only twenty-eight. I don’t remember.’ And he went out.

Li and Zhao arranged three desks with two chairs for themselves on one side, and a single chair on the other. The smell of the classroom, of stale food and chalk dust, reminded Li of his own schooldays. It had the same pale green and cream walls, the same sense of something institutionalised, uniform and dull. Nothing, it seemed, had changed much over the years.

It was hot in here. Li wandered to the nearest window and opened it as wide as it would go. He looked out on the quadrangle. They had all played here, all four victims. They had shared the same experiences, suffered the same doubts and ignominies, the same hopes and aspirations. Something in this place, in its classrooms, or its quadrangle, something that had happened here more than thirty years before, had sown the seeds of destruction that someone with a bronze sword had harvested all these years later. Somewhere, here, in this cradle of modern Chinese academic history, lay a motive for murder. Li was sure of it.

Teacher Sun was seventy-nine years old, with thin, iron-grey hair scraped back across a scalp spattered brown with age spots. He wore an old blue cotton Mao suit. Not because it signified anything political, he told them, but because he had got used to wearing them, and they were cool and comfortable. It did not look as if there was much flesh on the bones beneath the baggy blue cotton. He walked with a stick and was dragging on the stump of a hand-rolled cigarette. He sat down on the other side of the desks and looked at them reflectively, a light shining still in his dark old eyes.

‘This makes me think,’ he said, ‘of the bad old days.’ And he stamped his cigarette end on the floor.

‘What days were those?’ Li asked.

‘When they brought me into classrooms like this and sat me down and talked rubbish at me for hours. And then wanted me to talk rubbish back.’

‘During the Cultural Revolution?’ Li said. The old man nodded. ‘You had a bad time?’

He nodded again. ‘Not as bad as some. But bad enough. Struggle Sessions, they called them.’ He chuckled. ‘They would struggle to make me confess and I would struggle not to.’

‘What did you have to confess to?’ asked Zhao.

‘Whatever it was they decided to accuse me of. If I didn’t confess I was accused of being arrogant and an active counter-revolutionary. If I did confess I was pilloried and abused. It was like those women accused of being witches in medieval Europe. They threw them into the river, if they survived they were witches, if they drowned they were innocent. There was no way you could win.’

‘But why would they want to accuse their teachers?’ Zhao was curious. Li glanced at him, surprised, then realised that the Cultural Revolution would have been over by the time Zhao started school, and it had been a long time after that before people spoke about what had happened. And now there was a whole generation profoundly ignorant about the events of those twelve tragic years.

But the old man just smiled sadly at Zhao’s ignorance. ‘Had you been here, you could have read why,’ he said. ‘The Red Guards came and pasted da-zi-bao posters all over the walls out there in the square, great handwritten propaganda posters denouncing us all as revisionists.’ He chuckled and shook his head. ‘Of course, usually it was the stupid ones who led all the attacks, and they just copied their slogans from the newspapers. Apparently, although we did not hold bombs or knives, we teachers were still dangerous enemies. We filled our students with revisionist ideas. We taught them that scholars were superior to workers, and promoted personal ambition by encouraging competition for the highest grades. It seems the authorities believed that in trying to raise the standards and expectations of our students we were changing good young socialists into corrupt revisionists. In truth, it was simply that an ignorant peasant was less of a threat than an intelligent thinker. So the leaders believed that the invisible knives wielded by the teachers were much more dangerous than any real knives or guns.’

Li sat back and lit a cigarette. He said, ‘You know why we are here, Teacher Sun?’

Teacher Sun shrugged. ‘I hear rumours.’

‘Four of your former pupils,’ Li said, ‘have been murdered.’ Teacher Sun nodded. ‘I want to know if you remember them.’ And Li rattled off their names.

As he did so, the old man raised an eyebrow, then shook his head. ‘Very sad,’ he said. ‘I remember Yuan Tao well. He was a brilliant student. By far and away the best in his year. A likeable boy, shy and unassuming.’ His eyes flickered and focused somewhere in the middle distance as he remembered Yuan with clear affection. And then a cloud descended on him, and all the light went out of his black eyes. ‘The others …’ he said, ‘… I only remember for one reason. Dull students, except for Yue Shi. He went on to become a professor of archaeology, I believe. Brighter than the others, but an unpleasant boy, easily led.’ He shuddered at some disagreeable memory. Then he looked very directly at Li. ‘They were all members of a group of Red Guards who called themselves the Revolt-to-the-End Brigade. Part of the Red-Red-Red Faction. Stupid, brutish boys, manipulated by much cleverer people much higher up.’

Li felt his pulse quicken. It was the connection they had been looking for. Red Guards! They had all been Red Guards! He leaned forward. ‘Were they the ones who smashed down the school gate and destroyed the school records?’

Teacher Sun nodded. ‘They had already left the school. Most of them were unemployed and simply used the Cultural Revolution as an excuse not to work. They came back to take revenge on their teachers. They went through the school records, destroying any evidence of their poor exam results. And school reports we had written criticising lack of effort, or lack of discipline, were then used against us. In their eyes we were responsible for all their failures, not them. If they were lazy, or stupid, or incompetent, or badly behaved, it couldn’t be blamed on them. It was our fault.

‘They made us wear dunce hats and parade around in the square out there with signs around our necks. Reactionary Monster Sun Lian, they scrawled on mine. They made us beat gongs and shout, “I am a reactionary teacher. I am a reactionary monster.” And they would kick us and whip us with their belts. They tore my classroom to pieces looking for black material.’

‘Black material?’ Zhao asked, puzzled. ‘What’s that?’ Li glanced at him and saw that he had gone very pale, shocked by what he was hearing.

Teacher Sun said, ‘The Communist Party was symbolised by the colour red. Black, being the opposite of red, was used to represent anything or anyone opposed to it. Chairman Mao declared that the Five Black Categories were the worst enemies of the people — landlords, rich peasants, counter-revolutionaries, criminals and rightists.

‘Anything foreign was black. I was a teacher of history, and so of course I had many foreign books and magazines, and many more books on world history. The Revolt-to-the-End Brigade declared all that material black, and I was made to drag it out into the square, all my books and papers, and make a big bonfire of them all.’

Li glanced out of the window and saw that a couple of students were playing badminton. He tried to picture what it must have been like out there. Red-faced adolescents screaming at their teachers, abusing and beating them; teachers with tall, pointed dunce hats banging gongs and denouncing themselves; the smoke from burning books drifting across the court where two students now whipped a shuttlecock back and forth. And he remembered how his own primary school teacher had been beaten to death in the lunch hall. To his surprise he realised that Teacher Sun was chuckling now.

‘It started to rain,’ he said. ‘Quite heavily. And it was putting out the bonfire of my books. The Revolt-to-the-End Brigade were getting agitated, and one of them told another to go and get my umbrella from the classroom. Yang-san he called it. And one of the others accused him of spreading the four olds. The boy didn’t understand why. And the other, I think he was their leader — a big, coarse boy that they all called Birdie — he said that yang meant foreign, and so yang-san meant foreign umbrella. He claimed they were called that because before the Liberation umbrellas were imported from abroad. He said that now they were made in China they should no longer be called yang-san and anyone who did was a xenophile.’ The old man shook his head. ‘No doubt he learned the word from the newspapers. Anyway, I burst out laughing and told him he was just an ignorant boy who had not worked hard enough at school. His face went purple with anger and embarrassment. In the first place, I told him, yang meant sun, not foreign. A yang-san was a sun umbrella, or parasol.’

The smile faded from Teacher Sun’s face. ‘The rest of them went very quiet, everyone wondering what he would do. For a moment, I don’t think he knew himself, then suddenly he flew into a terrible rage and grabbed me by the neck and dragged me back into my classroom. The others followed, and he ordered them to smash all the windows in, and then spread the broken glass across the floor. I was the xenophile, he screamed, and I had to be taught a lesson. And he pushed me down to my knees and forced me to cross the classroom on them, from one side to the other. The broken glass splintered beneath the weight of me, cutting through my trousers and into my flesh.’ He leaned over and pulled up his right trouser leg above the knee, and Li and Zhao saw the intricate lace-pattern of tiny scars where the glass had cut into him all those years ago. ‘There are still some splinters of the stuff in there yet,’ he said. ‘Sometimes they work their way out and I start bleeding again.’

He rolled down his trouser leg and looked at the two detectives. ‘So, yes,’ he said, ‘I remember these boys. I am not likely to forget.’

‘They were all in this Revolt-to-the-End Brigade?’ Li asked. And he went through the names again — Tian Jingfu, Bai Qiyu, Yue Shi, Yuan Tao.

Teacher Sun nodded. ‘All except for Yuan Tao, of course. I heard that he got out and went to some university in America just before the Cultural Revolution began. He was one of the lucky ones. One of the very few, very lucky ones.’

III

The air was thick with huge pennants fluttering in the smoke of battle as armoured soldiers rushed forward, swords raised, the thunder of horses hoofs filling the air behind them. Margaret flinched involuntarily as the soldiers surrounded her, rushing past, the sound of bronze blade on bronze blade ringing out above the bloodcurdling cries of anguish. She felt the warmth of Michael’s body pressed against her as she clutched the rail. A soaring orchestral score, like something from a Hollywood musical, reached fever pitch as the battle neared its climax. And then the pennants flew in her face, one by one, as the flags of the conquered states were laid out before the all-powerful first emperor of China, Qin Shi Huang.

‘Impressive, isn’t it?’ Michael whispered.

Margaret nodded. It was the first time she had experienced surround cinema. Screens entirely circled the auditorium, the action moving freely from one to the other and continuing on behind. The sense of being in the middle of it all was extraordinary, standing clasping metal rails and listening to a surround soundtrack that completed the illusion. ‘This must have cost a fortune to make,’ she said. ‘There’s an incredible number of extras.’

Michael smiled. ‘If there’s one thing the Chinese have in plentiful supply, it’s people.’ Thousands of coolies carrying baskets of earth on bamboo poles, moved all around them. ‘That’s them starting work on Qin’s tomb,’ Michael said. ‘One hundred and twenty thousand craftsmen, labourers and prisoners. It took them forty years. In those days people believed that when you died your soul lived on underground. That’s why Qin built his Terracotta Army and buried them in three different pits, or chambers, around his mausoleum — to guard his underground empire.’

On the screen, semi-naked labourers tramped clay underfoot before pounding it with great clubs and setting it in moulds to make the warriors and horses. The body parts were then assembled, and overlaid with hand-carved armour and delicately shaped faces — each one different, unique. Hair was sculpted in pleats or piled high, fine detail worked even into the treads of their boots. Warriors were divided into generals and officers, foot soldiers and kneeling archers, charioteers, and then fired in huge kilns. All around her Margaret saw Terracotta Warriors standing in rows as artists painted them in vivid primary colours.

‘Are these real?’ she whispered.

Michael laughed. ‘No. They are exact reproductions, handcrafted from the same clay as the originals, and fired at the same temperature. You can buy them, full-sized, have them shipped to America for a couple of thousand dollars to stand in your garden. Most people wouldn’t be able to tell the difference between the reproduction and the real thing. They did paint the originals, though. Just like that,’ he said, nodding towards the screen.

Margaret said, ‘In all the photographs I’ve seen, they just look sort of clay-coloured.’

Michael said, ‘The warriors were buried for more than two thousand years. The paint simply didn’t survive. The clay colour is just a coating of dry, dusty earth. Underneath they are a sort of bluish black, as they were when they came out of the kilns.’

Labourers, their bodies glistening with sweat, dug the pits to house the warriors. Great beams were raised to support the roofs. Then the warriors were put in place, arrayed in battle formation, between high walls of rammed earth. Real weapons were placed in their hands — swords, bows, spears — and then logs laid overhead to form the roof which was covered with straw matting and then buried under tons of earth. The shadowy figures of the warriors were swallowed into blackness.

And then suddenly the screen was afire with battle again. The voice of the commentator relating the story rose above orchestral crescendos.

‘What’s happening now?’ Margaret asked.

‘A peasant uprising, a year after Qin died. They sacked his palace and broke into the three chambers containing the warriors and stole their weapons to use against the real army of Qin’s successor.’

The blackness burst violently to life as the peasants smashed their way into the warriors’ chambers, carrying flaming torches that cast long shadows among their terracotta counterparts. As they took the swords and spears from an opposing army fired in clay, they began smashing the serried rows of warriors. The distinctive sound of breaking pottery was sickening. All that work and artistry. All the years it had taken to achieve. Smashed in a few moments of mindless vandalism. Margaret watched, wide-eyed, as the peasants set fire to the pits, roof timbers blazing and then caving in on the army below.

From its pitch of excitement, the orchestra swooped to a meandering, tranquil melody of violins to match the sudden pictures of peaceful, open countryside that now surrounded them in the shadow of a hill that rose to a central peak.

‘That’s the tumulus of Qin’s mausoleum,’ Michael said. ‘The one they are afraid to open because of the rivers of mercury. The year is 1974. China is still in the throes of the Cultural Revolution.’ A group of peasants in Mao suits was digging in an open field. ‘These guys were digging a well, when suddenly they started unearthing terracotta heads and hands. The first fragments of a great army that had remained buried for more than two millennia.’

Margaret said, ‘You know, you should think about doing this sort of thing for a living. You might be quite good at it.’

He laughed and took her arm. ‘Come on,’ he said.

‘But it’s not finished yet.’

‘Doesn’t matter. Let’s go see the real thing.’

Outside the auditorium, they blinked in the bright sunlight. The huge concourse was crowded with tourists come to see the Eighth Wonder of the World: busloads of Western tour groups, parties of Chinese schoolchildren, families from all over the Middle Kingdom, from every walk of life; all drawn by the extraordinary phenomenon of the Terracotta Warriors, housed in three huge halls constructed over the pits where they had been found.

As they crossed the concourse Michael said, ‘What happened after they discovered the warriors was a comedy of errors. The officials and cadres at the local cultural centre didn’t seem to think the find was worth telling anyone about. They dragged some bits and pieces off to the centre and started reassembling three of the figures, patching them together and then putting them on display. It was only when a visiting journalist wrote an article about it, months later, that the authorities found out. They immediately put the whole site under state protection, and in 1976 built the first of the exhibition halls over the biggest of the pits — Pit No. 1.’ He inclined his head towards the huge domed construction that loomed over them, and took Margaret’s arm, led her up steps and through the pillared entrance.

He spoke to an attendant, who hurried off, and they took a seat in the entrance hall, beneath big squares of yellow light that fell through the glass roof and dazzled on the marble floor. ‘Someone will come and get you in a minute,’ he said. ‘Then I’m going to have to go off to my meeting.’

Margaret flipped through the pages of a book she had bought on the way into the auditorium. It was filled with photographs of the three pits, and an account of the excavations by the lead archaeologist, Yuan Zhongyi. She said. ‘I thought there were only three chambers.’

‘There are,’ Michael said.

‘That’s not what it says in here.’ She read from Yuan Zhongyi’s account: ‘Our drilling also revealed a fourth pit at about 20 metres north of the middle part of Vault 1.’

‘Sure,’ Michael said. ‘But the pit was empty, filled with sand and silt. They figured that the fourth chamber was never finished because the workers all got sent off to fight against the peasant uprising.’

She read on, ‘As no clay figures have been found in this pit, it is not counted in the vaults of the terracotta army. Generally we speak only of the other three.’ She cocked an eyebrow at Michael. ‘Bet that pissed them off. All that digging and the damn thing turns out to be empty.’

‘That’s archaeology,’ Michael said. ‘You can spend years on something and get nowhere. Then start again a couple of metres to one side or the other and discover a whole civilisation.’

A small man with a shock of spiky black hair laced with streaks of steel-grey, came smiling through the squares of sunlight, his hand outstretched. He shook Michael’s hand warmly and they exchanged greetings in Chinese. He was a man perhaps in his middle fifties, with square tortoiseshell glasses on a smooth, unlined face. He wore an open-necked white shirt loose over dark slacks, and blue-cloth rubber-soled shoes.

‘Margaret,’ Michael said, turning to her, ‘this is Mr Lao Chuanfang. He is one of the most experienced archaeologists working on the excavation.’

His handshake was dry and firm, and his eyes sparkled. ‘How d’you do, Miss Margaret,’ he said, bowing his head slightly.

‘It’s very good of you to look after me like this,’ Margaret said, embarrassed. ‘But it’s really not necessary. I could just as easily wait here for Michael.’

‘No, no,’ said Mr Lao. ‘It my pleasure. Mr Michael is ve-ery good friend of Chinese people.’

‘Well, one or two of them, anyway,’ Michael said, grinning. He checked his watch. ‘Look, I’ve got to go, Margaret. I’ll come and get you when I’ve finished my business. Take good care of her, Mr Lao.’ He winked at her and hurried off.

Mr Lao led Margaret into the main hall. ‘I didn’t realise excavations were still going on,’ she said. ‘I thought it was all finished.’

Mr Lao laughed. ‘It ma-any years before we finish, Miss Margaret. There are maybe six thousand warrior and horse in here. We uncover, maybe, one third.’ And they stepped out on to a gantry that ran all the way around the pit.

Margaret was not certain what she had been expecting, but it had been nothing on this scale. An intricate network of scaffolding supported a roof that arched over an excavation site that shimmered off into a hazy blue distance. Immediately below them, between high walls of rammed earth that stretched away both left and right, stood the warriors. Some two thousand of them, in battle formation. In gaps between the ranks, horses stood patiently, harnessed to wooden chariots that had long since decayed and disappeared. Sunlight fell in angled slabs through occasional windows in the roof, and lay across the silent soldiers, casting shadows across ancient faces.

The hair rose up on Margaret’s neck and arms, and she felt tears prick her eyes. She blinked, surprised at her reaction. She had not anticipated anything like this. But there was something startling in the sight of these life-sized figures, something extraordinary in their silent dignity, in their patient vigil. They stood, still guarding their emperor’s tomb, with a mute determination. All around, the voices of chattering tourists filled the hall, and Margaret was consumed by an almost irresistible desire to shout at them. To tell them to shut up. There was something here that deserved the dignity of silence, the awe and respect of all who cast eyes on it. This was a privilege, a rare glimpse of a priceless heritage, an insight into the minds of men, their fears and beliefs, their endless futile attempts to transcend death. And in a way, the men who had created these figures had achieved a kind of immortality. For here their warriors still stood, a testament to their makers’ existence, silent witnesses to a dawn that predated Christ.

She turned to find Mr Lao smiling at her. ‘You are impressed,’ he said.

‘I don’t know what I am,’ Margaret said. ‘Speechless, really. They are …’ she searched for the right word, ‘… fabulous,’ she finished lamely, unable to find an adjective that could adequately describe her feelings.

‘You come,’ he said. ‘I show you more than tourist see.’ And she followed him around the gantry, gazing down on the figures below as they went.

There was a sudden clamour of raised voices, and she turned to see a green-uniformed police officer snatching a camera from a struggling Chinese tourist. The man and his wife screamed at the officer, waving their arms belligerently, as he opened up their camera and ripped out the film, exposing its entire length to the light.

‘It forbidden to take photograph here,’ Mr Lao said. He shrugged philosophically. ‘It happen all the time.’

At the far end of the site, raised on an area that had not yet been excavated, Margaret could see now that there were hundreds of pottery figures crowding together, archaeologists moving amongst them, piecing together the broken bits and pieces that would make them whole again. A large motorised conveyer belt was removing great piles of excavated earth out through a large rear hatch. But this was an area not open to the public. And below them now, crouched in the dust, white-shirted archaeologists of all ages worked among dozens more figures, still immersed in earth, and emerging centimetre by centimetre from their ancient graves as brushes and knives scooped and swept away the layers of time that had buried them.

Mr Lao opened a gate and Margaret followed him into an area off limits to tourists, down stippled metal steps to where a small group of archaeologists was at work: two men, and a young woman perhaps a little younger than Margaret. Mr Lao made introductions in Chinese, and they all shook her hand and bowed their heads and smiled. Mr Lao handed her a short, round-bladed knife with a curved handle that fitted the back of the hand behind the thumb and forefinger. ‘Now you be archaeologist, too,’ he smiled. ‘Miss Zhang show you how.’

Miss Zhang smiled and handed her a black-bristled brush and led her among a cluster of pottery bodies emerging at strange angles from the soil. Some of them were cracked and broken at the shoulder. Others had heads lying crookedly to one side or another. Some had no heads at all — a strangely evocative image, bringing back to Margaret a sudden recollection of why she was still here in China.

These were armoured warriors, elaborately carved squares of studded armour draped across their chests, hair piled high in knots on their heads, silk scarves around their necks. Miss Zhang squatted down beside two figures still waist-deep in the earth. One lay at a crazy angle, his head resting on the shoulder of his companion, as if he had wearied of his two-thousand-year existence. Their features were still partially obscured by caked mud.

Miss Zhang worked carefully with her knife to scrape the earth away to reveal the clean line of the jaw, then brushed away the dust with her brush. She indicated, with a smile and a nod, that Margaret should do the same. Margaret crouched beside her and nervously, very tentatively, scraped away the earth gradually to reveal the good strong features of the warrior: fine, full lips, a moustache that curved up to his cheekbones, almond eyes beneath strong brows. She brushed away the debris and looked at him. He was beautiful. She touched his cool, smooth pottery features and felt a sensation like electricity run through her fingertips. She was touching more than two thousand years of history. A man had carved these features at a time when the Romans had ruled Europe, nearly seventeen centuries before her own country had even been discovered. And for the first time she really understood Michael’s passion. There was more life in this pottery creation of fired clay than in any of the bodies that had passed through her autopsy room; cold, dead, decaying flesh that would simply have vaporised in the kind of temperatures that had brought these ancient warriors to life and preserved them across the millennia.

There were still occasional traces of the original paintwork, and Margaret saw now that beneath the orange-coloured earth, the figures were a deep blue-black, the dark blue dust shed by their broken bodies gathered around them like the dust of time.

IV

Chang Yichun might have been a child of the Communist Liberation, but he was a highly successful capitalist of the post-Mao era, as he took great delight in telling Li and Zhao. The bell had rung some time ago, and through the open windows came the sounds of children playing out in the quadrangle.

Chang was a short man, but powerfully built, with close-cropped hair and big, callused hands. He considered himself better than all his more academically minded classmates of the sixties. He had done all right here at the No. 29 Middle School, he admitted grudgingly, but what good were qualifications when you just got sent to labour in the countryside? Such had been his fate in the Cultural Revolution.

He drew on an expensive Western cigarette. ‘Irony was, it turned out to be the making of me,’ he said. ‘Learned my trade as a carpenter, and when I came back to the city in ’72 I got a job on the maintenance and building team of the Xichang Street Committee.’ He scratched his head and then brushed the dandruff off the lapel of his designer suit. ‘There were twenty others, unemployed like me, and six women. We mended central heating systems, built chimneys, did odd jobs around all the houses. It was a farce. Totally unprofessional. It was the social monkeys — you know, the ones who hung around the streets all day — that got us the jobs. They fixed the worksheets, took extra wages, and then kept everything that was left after paying the wages. In seven years we ran up debts of nearly ninety thousand yuan.’

He cleared his throat and spat unselfconsciously on the floor of the classroom. ‘But I could get us jobs, too,’ he said. ‘And in ’79 they put me in charge. The difference was, I wanted to run it as an enterprise, with control over finance and personnel. Proper contracts, proper structure of management and pay. Made seventy-six thousand yuan in the first year. Within four years we were a properly registered construction company with a workforce of more than two thousand, fixed assets of three million, and liquid assets of more than seven.’ He sat back grinning, pleased with his own success, proud to brag of it and bask in the sunshine of their admiration. ‘I count my cash in dollars now. Deng Xiaoping said, “To be rich is glorious.” Welcome to fucking Gloryville, PRC.’

He snorted noisily and spat on the floor again. He leaned forward and jabbed a finger at Li. ‘So where are they now, these fucking Red Guards? Well, let me tell you. Nowhere. Bunch of no-use dead-heads!’

‘Do you know how many were in the Revolt-to-the-End Brigade?’ Li asked.

‘Sure,’ said Chang. ‘The leader lived in my street. An ugly big bastard called Ge Yan. He was a moron. Thick as pig shit. Always at the bottom of the class, always getting disciplined by the teachers. But as soon as their backs were turned, he was beating shit out the other kids. He might have been the school bully, but he never laid a finger on me. I’d have cracked his fucking skull if he had. And he knew it.’ He paused. ‘What was it you asked? Oh, yeah, how many? There were six of them.’ He stroked his chin trying to remember. ‘There was Birdie …’

‘Birdie?’ Li asked.

‘Yeah, that’s what they called Ge Yan.’ He scratched his head again, frowning, as if trying to sort out some conflict in his memory. ‘Funny thing. A big, hard bastard like him. He loved his birds. He had dozens of them, all sorts of colours. He hung them in cages in his yard. I was in there once, saw him with them. You never saw hands that could punch your lights out handle anything so gently as he handled those birds. Like they were the most delicate things in the world. Breathe on them and you’d break them. Only he loved them. Spent all his spare time in his yard or down the bird market.’

‘Do you remember who else?’

‘Yeah, sure.’ Chang lit another cigarette. ‘There was Monkey, and Zero, and Pauper … She was the only girl among them. But you wouldn’t have known it to look at her. Ugly bitch. Then there was Tortoise, and … oh, yeah, Pigsy. How could I forget big fat Pigsy?’

‘And Yuan Tao?’

Chang looked at Li and Zhao as if they were mad. ‘Yuan Tao? You’re kidding. He was a nice guy, bit bookish, you know? Bit of a swot. He’d never have been involved with those guys. They were creeps and wasters. The ones with the chips on their shoulders were the worst. Took all their inadequacies out on anyone smarter. Like it was your fault they were born stupid.’

‘Yue Shi wasn’t stupid,’ Zhao said.

‘No, but he was sleekit, you know? A creep. One thing to your face, another behind your back.’

‘How did Yuan Tao get the nickname Digger?’ Li asked.

Again, Chang cast him a withering look. ‘Where do you guys get your info? Yuan was never called Digger. His nickname was Cat. You know, short for Scaredy Cat.’

Li frowned. ‘You’re sure about that?’

‘Sure I’m sure.’

‘Why’d they call him Scaredy Cat?’ Zhao asked.

‘Because the other kids were always picking on him, you know? Making a fool of him, kicking the shit out of him behind the bike sheds. And he never fought back, never once. I felt sorry for him, but if he wasn’t going to be big enough to stand up for himself I wasn’t going to do it for him.’

‘So how come everyone picked on him?’ Li wanted to know. ‘Just because he was clever?’

‘Naw,’ Chang said. ‘There were other clever kids no one never went near. But when your old man’s a teacher at the school …’ Chang shrugged. ‘What can I tell you?’

Li sat for a moment in stunned silence. ‘His father was a teacher here?’

‘Sure,’ Chang said. ‘Old man Yuan. He was our English teacher.’

The detectives’ office was busy when Li and Zhao got back, a cocktail of voices and telephones and shuffling paperwork. In spite of all the windows lying open, the air was thick with cigarette smoke.

‘Qian,’ Li shouted as he went straight through to his office.

Qian appeared at his door. ‘Yes, boss?’

‘Imperative you track down as many of the classmates as you can. Turns out our first three victims were members of a Red Guard faction called the Revolt-to-the-End Brigade. There’s another three. Concentrate on them.’ He consulted his notes. ‘A guy called Ge Yan, nicknamed Birdie. A bird fancier. Apparently he was always hanging around a local bird market when he was a kid. A girl they called Pauper, but nobody seems to be able to remember her real name. And another guy named …’ He searched through his notebook. ‘Gau Huan. They called him Tortoise, apparently because he was so slow.’ He tapped his head. ‘Up here. Suspicion he might have been retarded in some way.’

Almost without pausing for breath he called, ‘Wu!’ And Wu appeared beside Qian. Li didn’t even look up. ‘Yuan Tao’s father taught English at the No. 29 Middle School. According to our information he died in ’67. But we still don’t know what happened to his mother. I think it’s pretty damned important that we find her. And any other relatives still living. That gets priority, OK?’

‘Right, boss.’

Li looked up and Wu and Qian still lingered hesitantly in the doorway. ‘Well?’

They exchanged glances, and Qian said, ‘The Chief wants to see you, boss. The minute you came in, he said.’

And his tone brought memories of Xinxin flooding back. ‘Oh, shit,’ Li said. ‘I’d forgotten about that.’

Chen’s office was a shambles. His blotter and all his paperwork had been removed from the desk and piled along the windowsill. Xinxin’s jigsaw puzzle, half-finished, was spread across the desktop. Her books lay opened on the floor, and all the chairs had been drawn together in the middle of the room, and an array of soft toys — a panda, a rabbit, a tiger, a lion — arranged side by side.

As Li entered, Xinxin was sitting on Chen’s knee, and he was reading to her from a big picture book. He looked up and glared at Li over Xinxin’s head. He closed the book, handing it to Xinxin, and lifting her down on to the floor. ‘I need to talk to your Uncle Yan now, little one,’ he said.

Xinxin pulled a face and she, in turn, glared at Li. ‘He’s always spoiling things,’ she said.

‘You go next door and ask Uncle Qian to finish the story for you,’ Chen persisted gently.

Xinxin’s face lit up. ‘Oh, yeah. Uncle Qian. He’s brilliant.’ And she headed off down the corridor clutching her book, without so much as a second glance at Li.

‘I’ve often heard people speak of the Little Emperor syndrome,’ Chen said. ‘All these only children spoiled by over-doting parents. And here I am participating in it. Shut the door.’

Li closed the door behind him and moved the lion to get a seat. ‘Where did all this stuff come from?’ he asked.

‘Uncle Qian,’ Chen said with a tone, ‘took her down to the market stalls on Ritan Lu, where they sell all those soft toys. The guys had a whip round, and that’s the result.’ He nodded towards the collection of furry animals. ‘You were a hell of a long time, Li.’

Li nodded. ‘But I think we made a breakthrough, chief.’ And he told him about the Revolt-to-the-End Brigade and Yuan’s father, and the fact that whoever had killed Yuan Tao had got the nickname wrong.

‘But Yuan Tao wasn’t a Red Guard. Couldn’t have been. He wasn’t even in the country,’ Chen said.

‘No,’ Li agreed. ‘But they were all classmates, and they were all taught by his father, and maybe something else, Chief. Something we’re not seeing yet. But we’re looking in the right place now, and if we look hard enough, and keep on looking, we will. I’m sure of it.’

‘And I’m sure,’ Chen said glumly, ‘that the situation with your niece cannot continue like this.’ He waved a hand around his office. ‘Look at this place!’

Li stifled a smile. ‘I thought it looked like you and Xinxin were getting on like a house on fire, chief.’

‘That’s got nothing to do with anything,’ Chen snapped. He paused and took a breath, then, ‘I phoned the police chief at Zigong and he spoke to Xinxin’s father.’ He paused again.

‘And?’ asked Li.

Chen said grimly, ‘He says that as far as he’s concerned his wife has left him and taken the little girl with her. He doesn’t want anything to do with either of them.’

Li wheeled his bike through the afternoon heat, dodging the traffic on Dongzhimennei Street. Xinxin sat in a huff on the rack over the rear wheel, clutching her satchel and panda to her as if she expected someone to try and tear them away. She was distinctly displeased with Li for removing her from all the attention she was getting at Section One, and she was becoming increasingly aware now of how much she was missing her mom. Her lower lip was petted, and tears were welling in her eyes.

Li felt sick. How could Xinxin’s father expect him to look after her? Li was single, working long hours for a very modest salary. He would have to employ someone full time to look after the child until he could straighten things out with the man. And God knew where her mother was! It was so unfair. There was too much in his head to deal with, without having to cope with this.

Mei Yuan spotted him crossing the street, and her face lit up when she saw Xinxin on the back of the bike. Xinxin was just as delighted to see Mei Yuan, and she jumped down and ran into the open arms of the street vendor, and burst into tears.

‘Uncle Yan won’t let me play,’ she sobbed. ‘And my mommy’s not well, and I want to go home.’

Mei Yuan squatted down and held the child tightly to her, looking up over her shoulder to see Li’s helpless expression. He shrugged and shook his head. ‘You know what?’ Mei Yuan said suddenly, holding Xinxin at arm’s length and brushing the tears from her face. ‘I bet you could go a jian bing right now.’

Xinxin frowned. ‘What’s that?’

‘It’s a big pancake.’ She looked at Li. ‘Without the chilli?’

Li smiled. ‘She comes from Sichuan, remember.’

‘Of course.’ Mei Yuan grinned and stood up, taking Xinxin’s hand. ‘Here,’ she said, ‘you watch me make it.’ And Xinxin, for the moment, forgot her tears as she watched Mei Yuan spread the liquid mix over her hotplate and then break an egg on to it and smear it over the bubbling pancake as it formed. ‘My cousin said you came earlier,’ Mei Yuan said to Li. ‘I’m sorry I was not here.’

‘I have a problem, Mei Yuan. But it is not easy for me to tell you right now.’

She nodded. ‘How is your Cantonese?’

‘Rusty,’ he said. Six months in Hong Kong had provided him with the basics, but he had not used it in a long time.

‘Mine, too,’ she said, in Cantonese. ‘So where is her mother?’

‘Pregnant,’ Li said. ‘She had a … I don’t know the word for it in Cantonese.’ He thought hard for another way to say it. ‘They made a picture of the baby with sound. She knows it’s a boy. She’s gone to stay with some friend somewhere in the south to have it. I don’t know where. And Xinxin’s father doesn’t want to know.’

Mei Yuan finished the jian bing and wrapped it carefully to give to Xinxin. ‘There we are, little one. Careful. It’s hot.’

Xinxin bit into it. ‘Hmm,’ she said, her face brightening up immediately. ‘It’s good.’ And she took another big mouthful. ‘How come I don’t know what you’re saying?’ She gazed up at Mei Yuan, a perplexed look in her eyes.

Mei Yuan smiled. ‘Oh,’ she said, ‘we were just practising another kind of Chinese. I’ll teach you some of the words tonight if you like.’

‘Tonight?’ Xinxin’s face lit up. ‘Are you coming to Uncle Yan’s house again?’

‘No,’ said Mei Yuan. ‘You’re coming to stay with me for a day or two. Would you like that?’

‘Oh, yeah,’ Xinxin said, all the sparkle back in her eyes now. ‘That would be brilliant.’

Mei Yuan looked at Li. ‘My cousin will look after the jian bing for a while.’ She paused. ‘Until things get sorted out.’

Li found his eyes filling with tears, and he had to blink them back hard. He reached out and squeezed Mei Yuan’s hand.

‘So, have you worked out my riddle yet?’ she asked.

He shook his head. ‘I still haven’t had a chance to think it through.’

‘OK, but you only get one more day,’ she chided him. She paused to think, then added, ‘But the answer is staring you in the face, if only you will stop believing what I tell you.’

CHAPTER SIX

A warm breeze drifted across the green water of the Nine Dragons Pond, rippling its surface. Beyond it, high above the Sunset Glow Pavilion, ski lifts carried tourists to the summit of a tree-clad mountain.

‘The water remains a constant forty-three degrees centigrade all year round,’ Michael told Margaret. They were walking slowly along the water’s edge towards a white marble statue of a semi-naked woman at the centre of a fountain. On their left a huge green-roofed pavilion rose up on rust-red pillars. ‘In the depths of winter, when the wind blows across the water from the south, it gathers heat and lifts the frost from the roof of the pavilion. And if the sun is shining the air above the roof sparkles and dances with tiny particles of coruscating light. They call it the Frost Flying Pavilion.’

They had arrived here at the hot springs after a short drive along a highway punctuated by peasants selling pomegranates from big bamboo baskets. Margaret had spent more than an hour with the archaeologists excavating warriors, before Michael had returned and taken her on a tour of the other two pits. She had been flushed from the power of her experience of excavation, and her enthusiasm had amused him.

‘What was it you said the other night?’ he had reminded her. ‘Can’t say I’d be riveted by the prospect of looking at a lot of tombs? Something like that?’

She punched his arm playfully. ‘Are you trying to make a fool of me?’

He grinned. ‘Do I have to try?’

‘OK,’ she said. ‘So I was wrong.’ She shook her head ruefully. ‘I guess I just spend too much time with the dead. I had no idea that archaeology could be such a … such a living thing.’ She looked at him very directly. ‘I envy you, you know.’

‘Why?’ he laughed.

‘Because you can do that. You can bring things to life. Reanimate history. I can’t do that for the people who end up on my table. All I can do is cut them up and say how they died. Not very constructive.’

He had suggested that on their way back to town they stop off at the Huaqing Hot Springs, the winter playground of the emperors who had made their capital at Xi’an. It would be quiet there, he had said, after the crowds in the exhibition halls of the Terracotta Warriors, and the feeding frenzy of touts and tourists surrounding the market stalls outside.

And it was. In the weeks before the national holiday to celebrate the anniversary of the Liberation, tourism dipped to its lowest point of the season. Only a few souls wandered among the paths and terraces of these centuries-old gardens that climbed into the foothills of Li mountain.

‘Who’s the bimbo?’ Margaret asked, nodding towards the scantily clad statue.

Michael smiled. ‘Yang Guifei,’ he said. ‘One of the Four Beauties of Chinese history. She was one of three thousand, six hundred concubines of the Tang emperor Gao Zong. He fell in love with her. Passionately. Blindly. They spent all their winter months here, warming their love in the hot springs. He became obsessive, began ignoring the affairs of state. All he wanted to do was spend every waking and every sleeping hour with the woman he loved. Then when her adopted son led an uprising against him, his ministers told him that his army would not fight unless she were put to death.’

Margaret said, ‘He didn’t, did he?’ Michael shook his head and she grinned. ‘You had me worried there for a minute.’

‘She saved him from having to do it by taking her own life,’ he said.

She gasped in frustration. ‘Do you have to spoil every story?’

He laughed. ‘I don’t make them up. It must be the way I tell them.’

She wondered if it was a true story and decided it probably was, although romanticised by time, and by storytellers like Michael. All the same, it cast a slight cloud of sadness over the place. Even the privileged lives of emperors could be touched by tragedy. They were, after all, only human.

‘But there’s another story associated with this place,’ he said, ‘that is not quite so tragic. Although I’m sure Chiang Kai-Shek probably wouldn’t agree.’ He took her hand, without any apparent self-consciousness, and led her away from the lake over a hump-backed bridge, through scholar trees and up steps to a paved terrace. His hand felt warm and strong, and Margaret found herself responding to his touch. ‘You do know who Chiang Kai-Shek is?’

She shook her head apologetically, and she felt the overwhelming scale of her ignorance. It made her feel small, and insignificant. ‘Any relation to Barry?’ she asked.

He drew her a look. ‘When the Qing Dynasty was finally overthrown in 1911,’ he said, ‘the first Republic of China was born. But its founder, Dr Sun Yat-Sen, did not live long, and the country was torn apart by factional warlords. His successor was Chiang Kai-Shek, a brilliant and ruthless leader who crushed the warlords in 1928, and then spent the next two decades engaged in a civil war with the Communists.’ They stopped and leaned on a stone balustrade, looking down on the jumble of stairways and terraces below, and watched the first amber leaves of fall float down on to the water. ‘Am I boring you?’ he asked.

‘Don’t worry. I’ll let you know.’

‘Good.’ He turned her round, taking her hand again, and led her across the terrace to a shady villa on the far side. ‘Because in December of 1936 Chiang Kai-Shek lived here, in this house. The Japanese had invaded and were occupying large tracts of the country. But some of Chiang Kai-Shek’s generals thought he was spending too much time fighting the Communists when the real enemy was the invading foreign devils. They wanted him to join forces with the Communists to fight off the Japs. So, with a small band of soldiers, they came here to kidnap him. There was an exchange of fire.’ They were now on the covered terrace that ran the length of the villa. ‘See,’ he said. ‘They have covered the windows here with plastic to protect the bullet holes in the glass.’

Margaret peered beyond the perspex and saw the round bullet holes in the fractured windows. ‘Yeah,’ she said sceptically. ‘Like these are the original bullet holes.’

Michael said, ‘You’re such a cynic, Margaret.’ She grinned and he smiled and shook his head. ‘Anyway, they didn’t get him without a chase. He had been in his bed when they attacked, and when they finally caught up with him in a tiny pavilion up on the hillside there, he was still in his pyjamas, wearing one shoe, and without his false teeth.’

Margaret laughed. ‘So much for his dignity. And did he join forces with the Communists?’

‘Reluctantly, yes. Then after the Japs were finally defeated in ’46, the two sides went at it again until the Communists won in ’49, and Chiang Kai-Shek fled to Taiwan where he set up the Republic of China.’

‘As opposed to the People’s Republic of China.’

‘Exactly.’

‘There,’ she said. ‘I’m learning something. Three months in this goddamn country and I’m finally learning something about it.’ She smiled up at Michael and found a curious intensity in his eyes and immediately felt a churning sensation in her stomach. He cupped her face in his hands and tilted it towards his. For a moment he hesitated, almost as if giving her the chance to draw back before he either made a fool of himself, or committed them both to a course of action that would take them deep into unknown territory. But she did not draw back, and he kissed her. A long, tender, lingering kiss, and she felt her body drawing into his, felt its hardness and its warmth against her.

They broke apart and for a moment she closed her eyes, breathing hard, feeling his breath on her face. When she opened them again, she found him looking at her very intently. Then she grinned, and then laughed.

‘What’s so funny?’ he said, almost a sense of hurt in his bewilderment.

‘Oh, I don’t know,’ she said. ‘Some girls get romanced under starlit skies and told how beautiful they look. Me? I get seduced with tales of Chiang Kai-Shek and his missing dentures.’

He laughed, too, then, and as gradually his smiled faded he said, ‘OK, so tonight we’ll find a starlit sky somewhere, and I’ll tell you just how beautiful you are, and just how much I want to make love to you.’

She was a little shocked, a little pleased, a little scared. ‘Better be careful,’ she said. ‘I might just take you up on it.’

The faces of dead men looked up at her from the bed. Four men who had all been separated from their heads by a single sword. They had all been sedated with the same drug, but only three of them had swallowed it with red wine. The same three had been executed by a swordsman standing on their left, and had their hands bound by a length of silk secured with a conventional reef knot. The fourth had been killed by an assassin standing on his right, and tied with a reverse reef knot. He had drunk vodka turned blue by a drug he could not have failed to notice. In every other detail the killings were identical.

Margaret shook her head. Her initial conclusion, she remained certain, was correct. Yuan Tao had been murdered by someone who had attempted to make it look as if he had been a victim of the same person who had killed the other three. And yet, they had all attended the same school, so there was clearly a link. So what was she missing? What were they all missing?

She ran the other evidence through her mind. The three bottles of wine found in Yuan Tao’s apartment. Three bottles, three more victims. But what were they doing in his apartment? The dark blue dust there too, that matched the substance found on the shoes and trousers of one of the other victims. Another link. But what was the connection? And what had been hidden beneath the floorboards in the illegally rented rooms? She looked again at the photograph of Yuan Tao’s body, the blood draining into the hole in the floor where the linoleum had been ripped back and the floorboards removed. Li had said the linoleum was torn. That suggested a search. Someone looking for something.

Margaret had spent an hour or more reading the autopsy reports, looking at the photographs. She had felt a sense of guilt when she and Michael arrived back at their hotel in the late afternoon. Four men had been murdered, the fate of perhaps another three depending on their killer being found quickly. And here she was in Xi’an, hundreds of miles away, flirting with a man who found her attractive and wasn’t afraid to say so, but who had nothing whatsoever to do with the investigation. She had told herself that this was not her investigation. She had been drawn into the whole thing quite against her will. But still she felt guilty.

She wondered what fresh developments there had been today, and toyed briefly with the idea of trying to phone Li to find out. But she quickly dismissed the thought. She knew that Li would probably be difficult with her, and that she would probably be awkward with him. Which, in turn, made her wonder if her feelings of guilt were not so much about the investigation as about Li and her relationship with Michael. But, damnit, why should she feel guilty? Li was the one who had turned his back on her. An anger flared briefly in her breast, and then subsided, leaving her feeling empty and sad. And she knew that whatever she felt for Michael she was still in love with Li.

She dropped the autopsy report she had been holding on to the bed, and one of the photographs flipped over. She turned it the right way up and looked at it for a moment. It showed the blood-stained placard that had been hung around the neck of the second victim. She looked at the strange and impenetrable Chinese characters, which meant nothing to her, and was struck by a sudden revelation. Handwriting! Surely the Chinese would have experts in calligraphy able to tell if the characters on the cards had been drawn by the same hand. It had not occurred to her before, she realised, because normal practice would be to compare a written specimen with the handwriting of a suspect, not to compare specimens from different crime scenes. She quickly laid out the photographs of the four placards. But even as she did, her excitement gave way to disappointment. There were only two characters on each one — a nickname and a number. And each was different. The sample was not big enough to make any definitive comparison.

What about the ink? It might be possible to establish that the same ink had been used in each case. But what conclusion could they draw from that? Only, she supposed, that the killer had access to the same ink, in the way that he had access to the same murder weapon. Which simply raised more questions than it answered.

But what if — her mind kept returning to the Chinese characters — what if a calligrapher had been able to establish that they had all been written by the same hand? What would that have meant? There was something in the thought that was only just eluding her.

She tutted with frustration and got up off the bed, catching sight of herself for a moment in the bedroom mirror. With a shock she realised she was still naked. She had not dressed after her shower. And something in her nakedness brought images of Michael into her mind, and she felt the stirrings of sexual desire deep inside. And immediately the guilt returned and she moved quickly away from the mirror to slip into her panties, and the jeans and white blouse she had laid out on the chair. She forced her mind back to blood and headless bodies. She had, she knew, been close to something, something that would make sense both of the things that were different and of the things that were the same.

She had almost given up, and had started clearing away the autopsy and forensics reports when suddenly she realised what it was. It seemed, somehow, so obvious that she wondered why she had not thought of it before. Quickly she searched her purse for her address book, and found the telephone number for Section One that she had previously tried in vain. She hesitated for a long moment, her heart pounding somewhere up in her throat, almost choking her it seemed. Then she sat on the bed, lifted the telephone and called the Beijing number.

There were three long, single rings before a telephonist answered in Chinese. Margaret said, very slowly and carefully, ‘Qing. Li Yan.’ A gabble of Chinese came back at her. She tried again. ‘Qing. Li Yan.’ She heard an impatient intake of breath, another burst of Chinese, and then the line was put on hold. After what seemed like a very long time, she heard a man’s voice.

‘Wei?’ he said.

‘Li Yan?’

There was a pause. ‘Margaret?’ Something in the way he said her name brought goosebumps up on her arms.

‘Li Yan, I’ve thought of something,’ she said. ‘To do with Yuan Tao’s killer …’ She waited for a response.

‘Well?’ he said eventually, and there was a tone in his voice that this time raised hackles rather than goosebumps, and she remembered just what a frustrating man he could be. She drew a deep breath.

‘You know how you said no one outside of the investigating team and the murderer could possibly know all the details of the killings?’ She didn’t wait for his answer. ‘Well, suppose Yuan Tao’s killer was an accomplice, or at the very least a witness, to the other murders. That would explain how he knew what the modus operandi was. And if he was simply left-handed instead of right-handed, that would explain why that was the only difference in Yuan Tao’s case.’

Another long silence, then Li said, ‘Well, thank you for the thought. I’ll make a note of it in the file.’

She felt her anger rising. ‘And that’s all you’ve got to say?’

‘How is Xi’an?’ he asked, and when she didn’t, couldn’t, respond, added, ‘You and Mr Zimmerman still just good friends?’

‘None of your fucking business!’ she said, and slammed down the phone. And in a single, furious movement, she swept all the photographs and reports off the bed and on to the floor. Why had she even bothered? He didn’t care about her. He didn’t want her sticking her nose into his investigation. He was just a typical chauvinistic, xenophobic Chinese male! She felt tears springing to her eyes, and turned her fury on herself. Why was she upset? Why was she feeling guilty? Why was she wasting her time on this man?

There was a knock at the door, and she jumped up quickly, brushing the tears from her eyes. ‘Yes?’

‘It’s me. Michael.’

She took a deep breath, blinked furiously and checked her hair in the mirror before going to open the door. His smile of greeting was warm and open and friendly, and after her brief exchange with Li she just wanted him to take her in his arms and hold her there. But ‘Hi’ was all she said. ‘Come on in. I’m nearly ready. Just got to put on a little make-up.’ He came into the room and she saw, with embarrassment, his eyes drawn to the pictures and papers strewn over the floor. ‘A bit of an accident,’ she said. ‘I’ll just pick these up.’

‘Here, I’ll help you.’ Michael crouched to gather up the scattered files.

‘No, it’s OK,’ Margaret said quickly. But it was too late. He was already looking at a photograph of one of the headless bodies.

‘Oh, my God!’ He turned away from it, his face screwed up in disgust.

She snatched it from him. ‘Big mistake,’ she said, ‘letting you see stuff like that. Men usually find what I do for a living a big turn-off.’

He stood up, his face pale and shocked. ‘I’ll try not to think about it,’ he said. ‘It’s just a bit of a jolt seeing someone you know with their head cut off.’

‘Someone you know?’ Margaret frowned and then looked at the photograph she had taken from him. It was Yue Shi. ‘Of course,’ she realised. She had not made the connection before. ‘He was a professor of archaeology at Beijing University.’

‘It was a terrible shock when I heard about what happened to him,’ Michael said. ‘I never expected to actually see what happened to him.’

Margaret was concerned. ‘I’m so sorry, Michael. Did you know him well?’

He shrugged. ‘He wasn’t a close friend, but we had a lot of contact while I was researching the documentary series on Hu Bo. He was Hu’s protégé. Studied under him at the university and assisted in several major excavations. He knew the old man as well as anyone. He was invaluable in giving me a picture of Hu Bo the man, rather than just Hu Bo the archaeologist.’

Margaret threw her files on the bed. ‘I’m sorry,’ she said, and she put her arms around his waist and stretched up on tiptoe to kiss him lightly on the lips. ‘I didn’t want anything to spoil tonight for us.’

He smiled wanly. ‘It won’t, he said. And he bent to return her kiss, and slip his arms around her. ‘I think I could probably do with a drink first. Then I’ll show you Xi’an. And then we’ll eat.’

‘And then …?’

He shrugged. ‘I don’t know, Margaret. Let’s just wait and see.’

And she felt a huge surge of disappointment, and she cursed Li and his investigation. Whatever she did, whichever way she turned, somehow he always seemed to be there spoiling things for her. And now he had driven a wedge between her and Michael, brought home to him the reality of her job, confronted him with the death of a friend. As if, somehow, Li had planned it all, to ensure that her relationship with Michael stayed, as she had described it to him, platonic.

When they stepped out of the Japanese-owned Ana Chengbao Hotel it was dark, and Margaret looked in astonishment at the transformation of this dusty and undistinguished daytime city into a night-time place of light and life. The towering south gate, immediately facing them, and the crenellated city wall that ran off to east and west, were outlined in yellow neon, for all the world as if someone had taken a luminous yellow marker pen and drawn them against the night sky. Multicoloured lights illuminated the elegantly curled roofs of the ancient gate and the watchtowers that shimmered in the distant darkness.

Michael grinned. ‘A bit Disneyesque,’ he said. ‘Come on.’ And he took her by the hand and flagged down a taxi.

Their car followed the route of the great moat, which was separated from the wall by a park full of quiet walkways and peaceful pavilions completely encircling the city. Above it, for mile after mile, the crenellations of the wall were drawn yellow on black. The sidewalks of the streets outside, empty during daylight, had turned into endless open-air eateries. Row upon row of tables was laid out under the trees, lit by low-hanging red lamps strung from loops of electric cable. Braziers and barbecues burned and smoked in the dark, while people congregated in their thousands, families, friends, eating together beneath fleshy green leaves in the balmy autumn evening.

‘They are night people, the inhabitants of Xi’an,’ Michael said. ‘When the sun goes down this is an exciting city.’

‘Where are we going?’ Margaret asked.

‘To the Muslim Quarter.’ He smiled. ‘An experience not to be missed. I know a little place where we can get authentic Muslim cuisine.’

Margaret raised her eyebrows in surprise. ‘Muslims? In China? I thought religion was banned here?’

‘Ah,’ said Michael sagely. ‘You’ve been listening to the anti-Chinese propagandists back home. The God botherers. The truth is, in the last twenty years people have been free to worship whatever god they want. But, then, after the appalling religious persecution of the Cultural Revolution, it’s not really surprising that it’s taken a little longer for people to become open about it again.’

‘But is religion not a threat to the Communists?’ Margaret asked. ‘I mean, communism’s an atheist philosophy, isn’t it?’

‘The thing is, Margaret,’ Michael said, ‘Communism’s kind of like the state religion here. It has about fifty million members — the numbers go up and down when the corrupt ones get weeded out and shot, and the next batch of young urban technocrats sign up. But, you know, The Word according to Mao, or even Deng Xiaoping, is not what it used to be. Nowadays the Party’s more like a big club. People don’t join it because they’ve seen The Light. They join for the same reasons a businessman in Chicago signs up for the Rotary. To make contacts and connections. To get on in life.’

Margaret watched him talk, eyes twinkling, his voice animated by enthusiasm. He took pleasure in what he knew, in passing it on to others. She saw exactly why he was such a success on television, regardless of his subject.

A couple of whiskies had relaxed him after the shock of seeing the photographs on her bedroom floor. He had been genuinely shaken by the sight of things that Margaret viewed as routine. It made her wonder again if there was something wrong with her, if she had been desensitised by her job, made indifferent by years of exposure to the horrors of death in all its guises. But whatever effect her work might have had on her, she knew that she was not impervious to the emotional slaps in the face that life seemed constantly to deliver: a husband who had betrayed her and died bequeathing her all his guilt; a lover from an alien culture who would neither accept her fully into his life, nor make the transition to be accepted into hers.

She wondered if Michael would be any different. If she succumbed to those desires that pulled and taunted her, would she just end up being hurt again? And yet she felt so comfortable with him. Safe. There was something wonderfully reassuring in his hand holding hers in the back of the taxi. Here was someone taking care of her, guiding her gently through a strange and fascinating world. A world from whose dangers, she felt certain, she would be protected in his company. And after so many years of being the independent, hard-assed career woman, there was something deliciously appealing in the idea of simply delivering herself into his care.

They turned east now, through the west gate along Xi Dajie, and Margaret watched a whole family on a motorbike overtake them. A small boy nestled between the father and the front handlebars. A slightly bigger girl was sandwiched between the father and the mother who was riding pillion. Four of them on the one bike. Margaret was so taken aback by the sight, that it was several moments before she realised how rare it was to see a family of four in a country whose social structure had been so dislocated by the One-Child Policy.

Ahead of them, a huge floodlit building rose up into the night sky.

‘The Bell Tower,’ Michael said. He spoke to the driver and they pulled in at the edge of a large square, neatly manicured lawns crisscrossed by paths and walkways, a broad flight of steps leading down to the bright lights of an underground shopping centre. They got out and Michael paid the driver. Margaret looked around. At the far side, a great long restaurant built in traditional Chinese style, was traced against the sky in neon. The square itself was crowded, families out for an evening stroll, children playing on mini-dodgems on a concrete apron, people sitting on a wall by a pond reading newspapers and books by the light of an illuminated fountain. A woman tried to sell them a giant paper caterpillar that rippled across the concrete with unnerving realism at the tug of a length of string. But Michael just smiled and shook his head.

As he led Margaret across the square people openly gawped and called, ‘Hello,’ or, ‘So pleased to see you,’ in strange English intonations. They passed beneath the shadow of what Michael told her was the drum tower, and turned into a narrow covered alleyway lined on both sides by hawkers’ stalls filled with tourist junk and religious trinkets.

On the other side of the wall, to their left, Michael said, was the Great Mosque. Religion and commerce, it seemed, went hand in hand. They ran the gauntlet of traders trying to sell them everything from teapots to ornamental swords. Occasionally Michael would stop and speak to one of them. You could see the astonishment on their faces as he spoke in fluent Chinese, and whatever he said would invariably make them laugh.

The alleyway was crowded with shoppers and kids on bicycles, the occasional motorbike inching its way past, and soon they turned left, past the entrance to the mosque itself, and into the comparative quiet of a crumbling, dusty hutong.

‘It must be wonderful to speak Chinese as well as you do,’ Margaret said. ‘It must open up the whole culture of the place to you in a way that most people could never hope to experience.’

Michael inclined his head doubtfully. ‘It can be a double-edged sword,’ he said. ‘China was once described to me as being like an onion. It is made up of layer upon layer upon layer, with only subtle differences between each one. Most people usually only get two or three layers deep. People and places, a little history, a little culture, become familiar to them. But the heart of the onion, the very core of China itself, is still many more layers away. Out of reach, almost untouchable.’

He thought for a moment. ‘When I first started learning the language people were great. The Chinese love it if you can pay them a compliment, or give instructions to a taxi driver, or order up a meal in Mandarin. But when you’ve been here a while, and your grasp of the language gets good enough so you can start talking politics and philosophy, suddenly they get cautious. The encouragement stops. You’re getting too close to something the Chinese don’t really want foreign devils like you and me getting too close to. The heart of China, the core of Chineseness.’

‘Wow!’ Margaret was taken aback. ‘I always thought the Chinese were very welcoming.’

‘They are,’ Michael said. ‘I love them. They are warm and friendly and wonderfully loyal.’ He paused. ‘Just don’t get too close, that’s all. Because you’re not one of them.’

And Margaret wondered if that’s why her relationship with Li was doomed to failure. Because she was not Chinese, because she could never hope to understand him the way another Chinese could.

A couple of chickens, startled by their approach, skittered away up an alley. A Chinese labourer humping coal into a siheyuan shouted, ‘Ni hau,’ and then laughed raucously as if he had said something funny. They passed a tiny girl displaying remarkable skill in keeping a weighted pink ribbon in the air by kicking it up repeatedly with the instep of her foot. A group of her friends watched patiently waiting for her to make a mistake so that they could take their turn. At the far end of the hutong they turned into the outer edges of the Muslim Quarter, passing beneath a large character banner that straddled the street. Up ahead, shop fronts and food stalls blazed light into the road. Tables, with the now familiar red shades hanging over them, were set out down the middle of the street as far as you could see, lost in a blur of lights and people.

As they approached the frenzy of eating and cooking, they passed a wagon piled high with ox livers crawling with flies. A little further on another wagon groaned with great heaps of stinking intestine. Other smells rose to greet them on the warm night air. The ripe stench of an open sewer, the stink of dead animals as they walked past lines of pelts hung between trees. Then, as they left the gloom on the outer fringes of the Quarter, and wandered deep into the very heart of it, the olfactory sensations became a little more pleasant. Indian spices. Cumin, coriander, garam masala. The smells of cooking. Spiced lamb and roast chicken. Braziers were pumped up to extremes of heat and light by electronic blowers placed directly beneath them. Long troughs of charcoal glowed and smoked and filled the air with the mouthwatering smells of barbecued meat. Savoury chestnuts and black beans were being roasted together in huge woks, great vats of brown sesame sludge brought to high temperatures on fiercely burning fires to separate the oil from the tahini. There were barber shops, seed stores, sweet sellers, hardware stands. A boy was rolling out noodles on a sidewalk cooking table while a woman behind him washed dishes in a big stone sink. Through a doorway, Margaret saw a man stretched out on a barber’s chair, sleeping under green covers as he waited for the barber to finish reading his paper and give him a shave.

In a butcher’s shop, men in white coats hacked at carcasses with great cleavers, and a boy threw joints of meat through the open doors of a van backed up to the shop. They passed racks of barbecued chicken legs, and tables laid out with tray upon tray of candied fruits and baskets of nuts.

Old men in round white hats sat eating at tables and watched with a dull-eyed curiosity as Michael and Margaret strolled by, hand in hand. This circuit was not on the tourist itinerary, and white faces were almost unheard of here. But all the young children, clinging to mothers’ hands, were desperate to try out the English they were being taught in school. ‘Hello,’ one of them said. And then, bizarrely, ‘So happy you could come.’

Banners and flags fluttered in profusion overhead in the evening breeze. And above them, the leaves of overhanging trees whispered into the night sky.

‘Told you it was an experience,’ Michael said.

Margaret was wide-eyed and held his hand tightly. ‘That’s the thing about you, Michael,’ she said. ‘You never take me anywhere interesting.’

‘Come on,’ he said suddenly, and drew her off the street, past a young man tending a brazier, and into a tall, narrow room that opened directly on to the street. Hanging fluorescent strips reflected light harshly off cracked white tiles lining the walls and floor. There were several round fold-up tables with melamine tops and low wooden stools. An open concrete staircase led off, it seemed, to nowhere.

‘What are we coming in here for?’ Margaret asked, alarmed.

Michael grinned. ‘To eat,’ he said.

‘You’re kidding!’ Margaret was shocked. She had recurring visions of flies crawling over piles of ox liver and intestine.

‘It’s OK,’ Michael said. ‘Muslims are very particular about preparing and cooking their meat.’

‘Yeah, I’d noticed,’ Margaret said. She remembered the boy throwing joints of meat into the back of his van. ‘Like the health inspector would be redundant here.’

Michael was amused by her fastidiousness. ‘It’s perfectly safe,’ he said. ‘Honestly. I’ve eaten here many times and lived to tell the tale.’ He sat down on a low stool, and reluctantly she followed suit. A gaggle of graceless young girls in pink and white immediately flounced around their table, bringing dishes of plain soy and chilli soy for dipping. They couldn’t take their eyes off Margaret. One of them spoke quickly to Michael and he grinned. He said to Margaret, ‘They want to know if they can touch your hair.’

‘Sure. I suppose,’ Margaret said apprehensively, and they all tentatively touched her soft, blonde curls, withdrawing their hands quickly as if it might burn them. They giggled and gabbled excitedly. Another one spoke to Michael and drew a laugh from him. He shook his head and spoke quickly, making them laugh in return. ‘What was that about?’ Margaret asked, a little put out by her sense of exclusion.

‘They wanted to know if I was a film star,’ Michael grinned.

Margaret snapped her fingers. ‘I knew I’d seen you somewhere before. The Creature from the Black Lagoon, wasn’t it? Must be sickening being so good-looking, huh?’

He smiled. ‘And they want to know if you want chicken feet.’

Margaret pulled a face. ‘No thank you. I’m quite happy with the ones I’ve got.’

He sighed patiently. ‘To eat.’

She pulled another face. ‘Why would I want to eat chicken feet?’

‘The Chinese believe they are good for your skin. Make you look younger.’

‘Oh, yeah? Ask them how old they think I am?’

He asked them and they looked at her and had an animated discussion. Then, ‘Twenty-two,’ Michael said.

Margaret laughed. ‘Yeah, well, I’m thirty-one.’ She stuck a finger in her face. ‘And if they want to know how I keep this looking so young, you can tell them it’s McDonald’s. Quarter-pounders with ketchup and French fries.’

First they brought steaming bowls of soup filled with noodles and pieces of chicken and mushroom. It was scalding hot and full of flavour. And then came a plate piled with fried dumplings filled with pork and spring onion and beansprouts and coriander. Margaret struggled to handle them with her chopsticks. But they were worth the effort, spicy and delicious dipped in chilli soy.

‘What do you want to drink?’ Michael asked.

She said, ‘Something cold and plenty of it to cool down my mouth. Beer would be good.’

‘Sorry,’ Michael said. ‘No can do. Muslims don’t drink. No alcohol in the Muslim Quarter.’

‘Of course,’ Margaret said. ‘Coke, then.’

Michael spoke to one of the girls who ran across the street to an old woman selling soft drinks off the back of her bike and returned with two plastic bottles.

‘Love the glasses,’ Margaret said, and she took a long pull from the neck of the bottle. But, then, she thought, it was probably more hygienic this way.

The lamb arrived. Great bunches of metal skewers laden with tiny pieces of barbecued lamb, half of them marinaded in a chilli sauce. They were tender and sweet and full of flavour. Margaret watched Michael as he stripped the meat from a skewer and into a dish of soy with his chopsticks, and then delicately picked out the pieces to eat one by one. This was an experience, she thought. Extraordinary, exciting, unlike anything she could have imagined. And yet Michael seemed completely at home, confident and relaxed. She watched how dexterous he was with his chopsticks, and felt the butterflies starting up again in her stomach. She had been attracted to him from the first moment they had met, but now she found herself being drawn inexorably towards him, like a moth to the light.

He caught her eye and smiled. ‘Enjoying it?’

She nodded. She wanted to get closer to him, draw him in, drink from the vast pool of his knowledge, find out everything there was to know about him, his life, his dreams.

‘You were going to tell me about the stuff they found in the coffins at the Ding Ling tomb,’ she said.

He waved a hand dismissively. ‘You don’t want to hear about that.’

‘I do. You said much worse was to happen than the smashing of the coffins.’

Lights shone in Michael’s eyes as he leaned towards her and took her hand. ‘They found the most wonderful things in the coffins, Margaret. Beautiful Ming vases, Buddhist scriptures, dozens of pieces of jade, which the ancient Chinese believed would stop the bodies from decaying. But most extraordinary of all was an array of stunning hand-embroidered quilts and brocades. In the coffin of one of the empresses they found an exquisite jacket embroidered with one hundred boys at play. In the other, they found the body of the empress dressed in a jacket and skirt embroidered with dragons and bats and swastikas. All in perfect condition.’

‘Swastikas?’ Margaret was taken aback. ‘Ancient oriental Nazis?’

Michael smiled. ‘No. Hitler only borrowed it from the Chinese. It was the ancient Chinese character for long life. The cretin even managed to get it the wrong way round.’ He paused, and she saw that intensity in his eyes again. ‘The thing is, all these wonderful embroideries, quilts and jackets and skirts, gold brocades — they had been in there for hundreds of years at a constant temperature, never exposed to the air. No one knew what the effect of oxygen and different humidity levels would be. Hu Bo and the others were still pioneers. They had no idea how to preserve materials like this.’

‘Oh, God,’ Margaret groaned. ‘What happened?’

‘Politics happened,’ Michael said grimly. ‘The great Anti-Rightist Movement of 1958. The leadership ordered work on the tomb to stop. And it ground to a halt for six whole months. The brocades, which the team had tried to preserve by sticking down to plexiglass, hardened and turned brittle. Their colours faded. The wonderful embroideries developed large black spots and began to rot.

‘Hu Bo and his mentor, Xia Nai, had been summoned to Beijing to take part in the political movement. But when they heard what was happening, they hurried back to the tomb. There they found the warehouse, where they had stored the treasures, filled with the smell of mildew. The brilliant colours of the brocades and embroideries had turned into dark clouds. The materials had puckered and shrunk, and when Hu reached out to touch them, they disintegrated in his fingers. Lost for ever. All that remains now are a few sketches made and photographs taken when the coffins were first opened.’

Margaret let out a tiny gasp. ‘It’s unimaginable.’ She shook her head. ‘It must have broken their hearts.’

‘It did,’ Michael said. ‘But there was worse to come.’

‘Jesus,’ Margaret breathed her exasperation. ‘Don’t any of your stories have happy endings?’

Michael shook his head. ‘Not really. After all, are there any really happy endings in life? There may be heart-warming tales en route, but the journey always ends in death, doesn’t it? No one should know that better than you.’

Margaret thought of her poor dead husband, of the murder victims whose photographs she held in her hotel room, of the conveyer belt of corpses that had passed through her autopsy suite. He was right. She herself, Michael, Li, all of them would end up on a cold slab somewhere, sometime. It was a depressing thought. ‘Sure,’ she said. ‘But none of us would ever embark on the journey if we thought too much about where it was going to end.’

Michael smiled. ‘Which is why people invented gods. To give meaning to their lives, and the hope that death was not the end.’

‘So you’re an atheist?’

‘No.’ He shook his head.

‘You believe in God, then?’

‘I don’t know what I believe in. The indomitable spirit of man, perhaps. Of his will to survive, his ability to create, of his propensity to destroy. I believe in history, and that in history we all live on in some small way.’ He chuckled. ‘Anyway, this is all getting a bit serious.’

‘So what was the worse still to come,’ she asked, ‘for poor old Hu Bo?’

Michael smiled and shook his head sadly. ‘Poor old Hu Bo,’ he said. ‘When they were finally allowed to restart work on the tomb, a very important member of the government, and his wife and son, came to visit. It just happened that while they were there, Hu and some others were spraying the place with a mixture of formalin and alcohol to prevent further mildew. The man’s wife started choking and crying, and the boy complained that Hu had tried to poison him.

‘Within a week, Hu was accused of releasing toxic gases, of being the recipient of undeserved privileges. They had also discovered that as a boy he had been in the Youth League of the Kuomintang, Chiang Kai-Shek’s party. Poor old Hu was sent to the countryside for re-education.’

‘Didn’t have much luck, did he?’ Margaret said. ‘And what happened to the tomb?’

‘It was turned into the museum that you see today. Except that what you see today is minus what was destroyed during the Cultural Revolution.’

‘For heaven’s sake, Michael, what next?’ Margaret was incredulous.

‘The museum was stormed by Red Guards,’ Michael said. ‘They dragged the remains of the emperor and his empresses out into the square in front of the stele pavilion and smashed them to pieces, then made a huge pile of everything they could get their hands on and set it on fire. The contents of the tomb represented the Four Olds, you see — everything that the regime was trying to wipe out. We’re filming a re-creation of that scene tomorrow. You should come out and see it.’

‘I’d love to,’ Margaret said, and she realised he was still holding her hand.

‘Everything would have been destroyed,’ Michael said, ‘if it hadn’t been for the courage of the museum’s caretaker. Li Yajuan was just a housewife. She had four children at home. But she defied the Red Guards and refused to give up any of the other relics. They beat her and kicked her until she bled, and finally she locked herself away in the warehouse with the relics, day and night for nearly three years.’ Margaret was shocked to see his eyes filling up. ‘She was a real heroine, Margaret. She had extraordinary courage.’ He paused. ‘It’s people like her that I believe in. That’s the spirit that I was talking about. Just an ordinary housewife. But her life had meaning, and she has her place in history. She died in 1985, anonymous and unsung. She should have been declared a Hero of the People.’

Margaret was uncertain whether it was the story he had told, or the effect it had had on him, but she too found herself deeply moved. She squeezed his hand. He blinked back his tears and smiled, embarrassed. ‘Stupid!’ he said. ‘I’m sorry.’ He took a gulp of Coke. ‘Let’s get out of here.’

They left the Muslim Quarter through an elaborate gate over the entrance to the main hutong, and turned east to the bell tower, and then south down Nan Dajie to where a Kentucky Fried Chicken joint had insinuated itself between a supermarket and a department store. Michael put a strong arm round Margaret’s shoulders and drew her close to him. But they walked in silence. All the shops were still open, and the streets were full of families and young lovers, and teenagers of both sexes on the prowl for partners. The Colonel smiled past them as they entered the fried chicken shop, and Michael bought them a couple of ice creams to cool their still burning mouths. They sat at a table by the window. On the other side of it life streamed past in a never-ending blur.

‘How the hell did you ever get into all this?’ Margaret asked. ‘I mean, television.’

He shrugged. ‘Pure accident. It’s certainly not what I set out to do in life.’ He toyed with his plastic spoon, pushing the tasteless pink ice cream around in its carton. ‘I did a video project at university. A friend showed it to someone on a small cable network which had a few bucks to make a documentary on a local archaeological landmark. They asked me to do it.’ He shook his head. ‘Don’t ask me why, but it got really good figures, and the cable company sold it on all over the States. They got more money, we made a couple more shows, then I got asked to do a series for the Discovery Channel. That was it. Someone did a piece on me in Cosmopolitan, a picture spread. Suddenly archaeology was sexy. Ratings went through the roof and I got offered a deal by NBC. The rest is history.’ He examined her face for a moment or two. ‘Now you know nearly everything about me, and I know virtually nothing about you.’

She smiled. ‘I wouldn’t want to disillusion you.’

‘You mean you don’t want to tell me.’

She cocked her head. ‘It amounts to the same thing.’

‘That’s not fair, Margaret.’

‘Maybe not. But that’s how it is.’

He pursed his lips. ‘Sometimes animals curl up to protect themselves when they’ve been hurt. Is that what you’re doing?’

‘What if I am?’ she said defiantly. ‘I’m not like you, Michael. You’re open and honest and … I don’t know, just you. Like you’ve never been hurt. Like you’ve no reason not to trust people. Me? Every time I open up someone puts the knife in. And turns it. You’re like the big friendly dog that comes running up to a stranger looking to get its ears tickled. I’m the dog that cowers in the corner if someone looks at it the wrong way.’

‘Or growls if anyone gets too close.’

She smiled reluctantly. ‘You got it.’

‘So if I get any closer, do you think the dog’ll bite?’

She met his gaze. ‘I’m not sure if the dog knows that yet, Michael.’

‘So … approach with caution.’

She nodded. ‘That would be the sensible course.’

He scratched his chin thoughtfully. ‘You know, usually I’m pretty good with dogs. Never been bitten yet.’

She grinned. ‘There’s always a first time.’

A profusion of white and pastel green and pink flags hung down from the atrium-style glass roof seven floors above the sprawling marble foyer of the Ana Chengbao Hotel. A scattering of guests looked down from the Wisteria bar on the second floor, their desultory conversation a distant whisper. Margaret glanced at the full-size bronze reproductions of two Terracotta Warriors just inside the sliding doors, and remembered the sense of wonder she had experienced in the burial chambers earlier that day as she had slowly brushed away the dust of history to reveal the features of an ancient general. Had it really only been that morning? Already it seemed like a faraway, magical memory.

Michael steered her past the lifelike statues of a Silk Road trader and his Bactrian camel to the elevator, and they rode up to the top floor. From the open corridor, they could see down through the flags to the white marble below, the bronze warriors reduced to tiny, insignificant figures. At the far end they reached her room first and stopped at the door. They had said virtually nothing on the long walk down Nan Dajie, under the south gate and out to the vast circle that led them round to the hotel. Now the easy conversation of earlier seemed to have dried up. This was good night, awkward and stilted, nothing resolved. Let’s just wait and see, he had said earlier, still affected by the photograph of his friend’s headless body.

‘Well,’ Margaret said. ‘I guess it’s an early start tomorrow.’

He nodded. ‘Got to be at the airport for seven.’

‘I hope I don’t sleep in.’ But she thought it was highly unlikely that she would sleep at all.

‘Better set your alarm.’

She shook her head. ‘I’m hopeless with these things. They never go off at the right time.’

‘I’d better do it for you, then,’ he said. And he stood expectantly, and she realised he was waiting for her to open her door.

Her mouth was dry as they walked into her hotel room. The curtains were still open on French windows leading to the balcony. Below, they could see the yellow tracery of the city wall and the floodlit south gate, the reflected lights of Xi’an casting a soft glow around the room. Margaret went to switch on the light, but Michael put a hand out to stop her, and his hand held hers. ‘I want you, Margaret.’ His voice was little more than a hoarse whisper.

The wave of desire that washed over her almost made her buckle at the knees. ‘Aren’t you afraid I’ll bite?’ she said.

He smiled. ‘I don’t care,’ he said. ‘I figure your bark’s much worse.’ And he kissed her. Slowly at first, gently. Then, as she responded, their passion and hunger took control, and their mouths and bodies pressed hard together. To her sudden surprise she found her feet swept away from under her, and he had her in his arms, carrying her across the room to the bed as if she were no more than a rag doll. No man had ever carried her like that before, and she felt as if all control had been taken from her. But, still, she felt completely safe.

He laid her on the bed and kissed her again and stripped off his shirt. She saw light reflecting on the curve of his pectoral muscles, the concave arch of his belly as he slipped out of his trousers. Then she felt his breath on her face, his hands on her breasts, and she fought to rid herself of her blouse and her jeans in her haste to feel his flesh on hers, warm and firm and smooth. And finally they were naked and he was poised over her, his face looking down into hers, a light in his eyes. She reached up and grabbed his buttocks and pulled him towards her. His mouth fell on hers again and then she felt his lips warm and wet on her neck, on her breast, sucking, biting, teasing the nipple. And the breath escaped from her in a long sigh as she felt him slip inside her and all memories and thoughts of Li were finally banished.