The Fourth Sacrifice

I

Li took a bottle of beer from the refrigerator and wandered through a cloud of depression, bare-footed, to dropped himself into an armchair in the living room. His shirt was unbuttoned and hanging loose over his jeans. He swung one leg up over the arm of the chair and took a slug at the bottle. It tasted cold and sharp. A drip of condensation fell from the bottle and landed on the flat, hard muscle of his bare stomach, making him wince. The light from the streetlamp outside cast the long shadow of the window frame across the room. He had no desire to turn on the light, to see Xinxin’s little jacket hanging on the chair opposite, to be reminded that Mei Yuan’s generosity could only be a temporary solution.

He lit a cigarette, letting his head fall back, and blew smoke at the ceiling. None of your fucking business, Margaret had told him. And she was right. It wasn’t. He had no right to be jealous, no right to be hurt, no right to hurt her. So why had he treated her that way on the phone? She had clearly been thinking about the investigation, about the myriad conflicting evidence, and had called him, excited by a fresh thought. A valid thought. If Yuan Tao’s murderer was indeed a copycat, it was entirely possible that he had been there at the previous three murders, and therefore knew exactly how to make the fourth one look the same. It was an intriguing thought but, if anything, muddied the waters even further. Who was the other murderer? There was no clear motive in any of it. The first three victims had been members of the same Red Guard faction, but Yuan had not even been in the country then, nor for thirty years afterwards.

Li was still not convinced that Yuan’s was a copycat murder. One of his team — it was Sang, he recalled — had suggested that the murderer had deliberately adopted a left-handed stance and tied the knot differently in order to confuse the investigation. It was entirely feasible, even if Margaret thought it unlikely.

His mind drifted back to Margaret. He drained his bottle and went to fetch another. Why had he been so short with her when he had wanted so much to say, Margaret, I was wrong, forgive me, we can still find a way? Why, instead, had he deliberately taunted her, provoking her angry response? None of your fucking business! And the sound of the phone slamming in his ear. He slumped again in the chair and lit another cigarette. Was this his destiny? To be alone and in the dark, smoking and drinking and regretting the might-have-beens? He saw his life stretching ahead of him, an endless repetitive cycle of working days and lonely nights. He thought of his uncle and how he had used his work to fill the void left by the death of his wife. But for Li there had never been anything but work. There had been no one in his life who’d left a void to fill. Until now.

He shook his head and sat up. This was ridiculous! Morbid and self-pitying. He tried to clear his thoughts, and Mei Yuan’s riddle found its way into them. What was it again? Three men had paid thirty yuan for the room. But it only cost twenty-five, and when the bell-boy went to return the five they had overpaid, he pocketed two and only gave them back one each. So effectively they had paid nine yuan each, which was twenty-seven, and the bell-boy had pocketed two. Which was twenty-nine. So where had the other one gone?

Li frowned and scratched his head, then tipped it back to drain his bottle. What was it Mei Yuan had said to him that afternoon? The answer is staring you in the face, if only you will stop believing what I tell you. What had she told him? That they had given ten each and each got one back, which meant they had paid nine each. Which was twenty-seven. Li turned it around for a moment and then suddenly he saw it. Of course! How stupid of him! They didn’t get one back each from thirty, they got one back each from twenty-eight because the bell-boy had taken two. So among them they had paid twenty-five, plus the three yuan that had been returned to them. Which was twenty-eight. Plus the two the bell-boy had pocketed. Which was thirty. Mei Yuan was right. He had made the mistake of taking her suggested calculation at face value. And, of course, it was nonsense. So nothing else made sense.

The thought stopped him in his tracks. He sat frozen for several moments. Wasn’t that exactly what was happening with the Yuan Tao murders? All the evidence was suggesting things to them that didn’t add up. They were making assumptions that they couldn’t reconcile. Perhaps the assumptions were wrong. Any of them, all of them. Li cursed himself. He had even recalled to himself the previous day his uncle’s own philosophy. Assume nothing. Let the evidence lead you to the conclusion, do not jump to it yourself. And yet he had continued, for another day, to do exactly that.

He stood up, agitated now, and lit another cigarette and moved out into the glassed-in balcony. Outside the occasional yellowing leaf drifted to the sidewalk below. Stupid! His head had been so full of Margaret and Xiao Ling and Xinxin, he had not concentrated his mind properly at all. What other evidence was there? What had they been overlooking in their attempt to make the big evidence fit the picture they had formed for themselves? Something small, something insignificant. What?

He searched his mind, gathering together all the details, big and small, sifting them, rearranging them. The placards, the nicknames, the numbers, the bronze weapon, the silk cord. What else? Yuan Tao’s illegally rented apartment. What was it for? He walked himself through the apartment again in his mind, as he had done physically the night they found Yuan Tao. He saw the head and the body, the pool of blood draining into the hole in the floor. He paused. The hole in the floor. Boards that had been lifted. A secret cache. Hiding what? Then suddenly he remembered Margaret’s question at the autopsy. Had the linoleum been lifted, or was it torn? It appeared to have been torn, he had told her. Why had she asked? He thought about it. If you had hidden something under the floorboards, you would be very careful with the linoleum that covered them. A tear would draw attention. So it wasn’t Yuan Tao that had opened up his hiding place. It was someone else. Someone who had searched his apartment and didn’t care if they tore the linoleum. Someone who knew he had an apartment.

What had they been looking for? And had they found it there, under the floorboards?

Li paused to think again, rewinding his thoughts. If his murderer knew he had an illegally rented apartment, then he would also know that he had an embassy apartment. Had that been searched, too? Li drew on his cigarette and thought back to the embassy apartment in the diplomatic compound behind the Friendship Store. He and Wu had covered it pretty thoroughly. Forensics had been over it from top to bottom. There were no obvious signs of a search. Li tried to picture the floor, pull it back from somewhere in his memory. He saw a standard, grey linoleum floor covering. He was pretty certain that’s what it had been. And he would have noticed if it had been torn. But there was something else in his memory. Something vague and elusive, just beyond his reach. Something about the apartment.

In his mind’s eye he retraced the steps Wu and he had made through it. The living room with all its personal bric-a-brac, the photographs of Yuan’s parents, the books … The toilet, the shelf above the washbasin crammed with toothpaste, shaving foam, a couple of bars of soap … And suddenly Li knew what it was. The shaving foam and soap had been hypo-allergenic. Unscented. There had been no aftershave or deodorant. And yet, Li recalled, there had been a faint, distant smell of some exotic scent, like an aftershave, lingering on the air. It had only registered at all because it was unfamiliar to him. So the scent could not have been Wu’s or belonged to Forensics. Or to Yuan Tao.

Of course, he realised, it might have been someone from the embassy. Their security officer, perhaps. Americans were fond of their aftershave. But it left Li feeling uneasy. If someone had searched the apartment in the diplomatic compound, had they found what they were looking for? He quickly gulped down the last of his beer and went in search of his shoes, buttoning his shirt and tucking it into his jeans as he went. He was damned if he was going to sit here feeling sorry for himself. If Yuan Tao had hidden something in the apartment he was renting illegally, he might also have hidden something in his embassy apartment. Something that may, or may not, still be there. But it was worth a look.

Li glanced at the time. It was a quarter to midnight. But it didn’t matter. There would be a guard on the gate of the compound all night.

II

Li wheeled his uncle’s bike through the gates of the diplomatic compound, and looked up at the windows. There were lights still on in quite a few of them — embassy staff and their families watching television or working late.

‘Where the hell do you think you’re going?’ The guard hurried out from behind the hut where he had been having a cigarette. He stamped it out under foot as he approached Li. It was not the same guard who had been on duty during his last visit.

Li played dumb. ‘What d’you mean?’

‘I mean, what makes you think you’ve got the fucking right to just waltz in there?’ The guard swaggered up to him. He was young and cocky, and a sneer curled his lip.

‘I’m going to visit a friend.’

‘No you’re not.’ The guard pushed his face close to Li’s. ‘Not unless I say you can.’

Li ignored the guard’s aggression and asked innocently, ‘Why not?’

The guard looked at him as if he had two heads. ‘Because this is a diplomatic compound, dickhead. And Chinese like you don’t get in unless I say so.’

Li drew out his Public Security ID wallet and thrust it in the guard’s face. ‘I don’t know if they taught you to read where you come from — dickhead.’ The guard’s startled face recoiled, almost as if from an electric shock. ‘But in case they didn’t, you’re talking to a senior ranking CID officer of the Beijing Municipal Police. And if I ever catch you talking to another Chinese like that again I’ll see to it that you spend the rest of your career on border patrol in Inner Mongolia.’ The guard blinked and gulped. His face had gone pasty pale. ‘Understand?’ The boy nodded. ‘Good,’ Li said. ‘And is that how you speak to foreigners?’

‘No, boss.’ The guard shook his head vigorously, completing his transformation from snarling hound to grovelling mongrel.

‘So if I was a yangguizi and I told you I was visiting a friend, what would you say?’

‘I’d check who it was you were going to see and then let you in.’

‘Wouldn’t they have to come down and get me?’

‘Only if you were a Chinese.’ He looked at the ground and wouldn’t meet Li’s eye. So it would be difficult, Li thought, for anyone who did not live in the apartment building to gain access to it, unless he was a foreigner.

‘Look at me, son,’ Li said, and the boy reluctantly raised his eyes. ‘That uniform doesn’t make you any better than anyone else. Treat people the way you would have them treat you.’ He tucked his ID into his back pocket and wheeled his bike on into the compound.

There was tape stuck across the door — black on yellow: ‘CRIME SCENE, DO NOT ENTER’. Li opened the door and ducked under the tape. He was struck immediately by the familiar smells of stale cooking and body odour. But there was no hint of the scent he had detected on his first visit. So it had been fresh. One of the Americans probably. The light in the entrance hall did not work, and he fumbled in the dark into the tiny living room and felt for the light switch. A fluorescent strip hanging from the ceiling flickered into life and washed the room in its cold, harsh light. It seemed very sad and empty. A lonely place where a single man spent long hours with only his books for company. What on earth had drawn him back to China? From a job of position and prestige at a top American university, to a lowly visa clerk in Beijing. What kind of life had he lived, processing paperwork at the Bruce Compound during the day, cooped up here alone at night with his books? And yet there had been another life. A secret life. Why had he needed another apartment? According to his neighbours he spent hardly any time there. It was not a meeting place. If he had received visitors his neighbours in the apartment building would have known. But someone had visited. Someone had entered late at night, unobserved. Someone had torn up the linoleum and found something hidden beneath the floorboards. Someone had murdered Yuan Tao there and left unseen.

Li examined the linoleum in the living room. Bookcases stood along one edge of it, piles of books and magazines along the other. One could not have lifted it without moving almost everything in the room. There were no creases or tears obvious to the naked eye. He felt a tiny stab of disappointment.

He turned his attentions then to the bedroom, stripping the bed and checking the mattress and the base. There was nothing. He moved the wardrobe and tapped it front and back for hidden panels. But it was a utilitarian piece of furniture. What you saw was what you got. The linoleum in here had been tacked to the floor.

He went through to the toilet. But it was too small to hide anything. Plaster walls, concrete floor, one tiny cabinet on the wall. Li unscrewed the top of the cistern and looked inside. A cheap plastic mechanism winked up at him from the clear cold water that filled it. He stooped to remove the hair that had gathered in the drainer in the floor beneath the shower head and tried to prise it loose. But it was stuck fast. He washed his hands and went back through to the living room. He checked the armchair, pulling all its cushions away, then tipping it on to its side and tearing the hessian base to reveal the springs within its frame. Nothing.

He looked around, disappointed. Frustrated. All that remained were the books. He squatted down and began lifting them out in batches of six or eight, piling them on the floor at his feet. There were dozens of political volumes. Books on the history and development of the Communist Party in China, a Chinese translation of the works of Karl Marx, a series on the development of democracy in Taiwan, a fat volume on political changes in Hong Kong since the handover. There was a history of the Kuomintang and the legacy of Chiang Kai-Shek, another on the Chinese Secret Service written by two French journalists. Almost an entire shelf was devoted to the bloody events that had occurred in Tiananmen Square in ’89: The Long March to the Fourth of June; Cries for Democracy; Voices from Tiananmen Square; Death in Beijing. Yet another shelf seemed devoted to books on the Cultural Revolution. Li picked one out. Like most of the others it was in English. A Memoir of the Chinese Cultural Revolution. He opened it and saw that it had been first published in China in the late 1980s by the Workers’ Publishing House, before an American company had published this translation in the mid-nineties. There was a bookmark near the back of the book, and Li wondered if Yuan had been reading it in the days before he died. He flicked through to the marked page and the bookmark fell to the floor. He scanned the pages, but there was nothing of significance in them, and he lifted the bookmark to put it back and realised that it was in fact a sheet of paper twice folded. He put the book down and unfolded it. It had yellowed slightly and was a little brittle. There were handwritten Chinese characters scrawled across it, and Li realised that it was a letter. It was addressed to Yuan Tao c/o the University of California, Berkeley. The sender lived at an address at Guang’anmen in south-west Beijing. Li glanced to the foot of the page and saw that it was signed by Yuan’s cousin, Yang Shouqian.

His mouth was dry as he righted the armchair and sat on the edge of it to read the letter. It was dated May 15th, 1995.

My Dear Cousin Tao,

I wrote to cousin Liu in San Francisco in search of your address, but since the death of his father he was no longer sure where you were living. He was, however, almost certain that you were still teaching at the University of Berkeley, and as I was able to confirm this on the Internet I am writing to you now.

You are probably not aware that my mother died about six weeks ago. She was nearly ninety. She had had a good life, and the end was peaceful. It was only when I was going through her things last week that I came across the enclosed diary. There was a letter with it, from your mother, dated 1970, which I have kept. In it she asked her sister to see that you got her diary. It covers the years after you went to America.

At first I did not understand why my mother had not done as her sister requested. That is, until I started to read the diary. I am sorry that I did so. I did not mean to invade your privacy. As you will see, it is written as a personal account to you. I did not read it all. In truth, I think I would have found it difficult to do so.

I suppose my mother was trying to protect you, but I think she should have sent it, none the less. Although it might be she was afraid that it would not have reached you at that time. And perhaps with the passage of time she thought it better to leave well alone.

However, it all now seems like such a very long time ago, and I think you have the right to know what happened. So here is the diary.

Please write to me to let me know how you are. Did you ever marry? Do you have children? I have a daughter who is at university now. If you should ever return to Beijing, I would very much like to see you again after all these years. I remember you only as a teenager, when I was not much older myself.

With all my very best wishes.

Your faithful cousin,

Yang Shouqian

Li was aware of the letter trembling slightly in his hand. Somewhere, just ahead, there was a door that he felt certain must open on to enlightenment. And in his hand he held, if not the key, then the intimation of its existence. He had the letter, but where was the diary? He had no idea what it looked like, whether it was large or small, black, red, blue … He laid the letter carefully on the table and cleared the bookshelves, checking each and every book, stripping the covers off hardbacks in case they concealed the diary underneath. Nothing.

He turned then to the piles of books and magazines under the window. Again he found nothing that remotely resembled a diary. He stood in the centre of the room and looked hopelessly around the disarray. He could not think where else it might be concealed. He crossed to pick up the letter again and felt the faintest of creaks beneath his foot. And paused. He stepped back and then rocked forward again. But this time there was nothing. Had he imagined it? And, anyway, what if he hadn’t? Floors creaked. Li followed again the line of the linoleum around the edges of the room with his eyes. If Yuan Tao had hidden anything under it, he had not envisaged requiring quick or easy access. But still, Li figured, if he had hidden something under the floor in the other apartment, might he not have done the same here? His earlier stab of disappointment became a spur of hope and anticipation.

It took him nearly twenty minutes to clear all the furniture and books to one end of the room so that he could pull back the linoleum. It had stuck a little to the floorboards around the edges, then as he rolled it back, he saw that there was a layer of old newspapers underneath it. He checked the dates and saw that they were all about six months old — just around the time Yuan Tao would have taken possession of the apartment. He rolled the linoleum right up to the furniture, then swept the newspapers aside, clearing a space in the middle of the floor where he had felt the boards creak underfoot. Immediately he saw where a single board had been lifted at a join, cut about twelve inches from it, and then nailed down again. Li had no idea whether Yuan had cut it, or whether it had been done long before by some tradesman accessing cables or pipes. He had no idea, either, how he was going to lift it again.

He searched the apartment for something with which he could prise up the floorboard, eventually finding a small box of tools in the cupboard under the sink. Taking a stout screwdriver, he drove it between the boards and forced them apart, levering the cut board upwards. The wood splintered, and the nails groaned as they were forced free of the joist. Eventually the twelve-inch length of board sprang free and clattered away across the floor. Li found himself looking into a space made dark by his own shadow. He moved so that he was not in his own light and saw, among the deadening rubble, the gleam of something plastic and shiny. He took a handkerchief from his pocket and reached in to lift out a small red book wrapped in clear plastic. For a long time he kneeled there, staring at it, hearing the sound of his own breath rasping in the silence of the apartment. A tiny rivulet of sweat ran down his forehead and dripped from his brow on to the bare floorboards.

The duty officer at Section One was astonished to see Li coming down the corridor on the top floor. He checked his watch. It was after 2 a.m. He had just been to refill his flask with hot water and was on his way to make a mug of green tea. He hurried into the detectives’ office after Li. A couple of detectives looked up in surprise. ‘Either you’re very early boss, or you’re very late,’ the duty officer said.

But all Li said was, ‘I don’t want to be disturbed. For any reason.’ And he slammed the door of his office shut behind him.

III

July 17th, 1966

A boy whom I recognised as one of your old schoolfriends came to our house this morning. His name is Tian Jingfu, a pudgy boy whom I seem to remember you called Pigsy. Your father remembered him, too, as a former pupil. Not a very bright one, he said. Anyway, now he wears a red arm band. He is one of the hung wei ping, the Red Guard activists who are spreading the word of Chairman Mao. He told us that all teachers were to report back to the No. 29 Middle School. Your father has not been there since classes were suspended in June. I do not know why Tian Jingfu was sent. He is no longer at the school.

When your father returned, he told me that da-zi-bao posters had been pasted up on all the walls by the pupils, who are being encouraged to criticise their teachers. When he and the other teachers got there the children were all painting slogans. They stopped what they were doing and watched their teachers with great caution, as if they were afraid that they might be punished. But your father said that when they realised the teachers no longer had power, they started to taunt them, calling them ‘rightists’ and ‘counter-revolutionaries’. There were several posters that mentioned your father by name.

You probably do not recall that your father was denounced as a ‘rightist’ in 1958 and sent to work in the countryside for six months. We thought that was all behind us — until today.

A meeting was held in the square and a cadre from the party addressed the whole school and told them it was now the duty of every student and every teacher to take part in the ‘Anti-Four Olds’ campaign. The ‘Four Olds’, he said, were old ideas, old superstitions, old customs, old bourgeois life-styles. The worst exponents of the Four Olds, he said, were persons in authority taking the capitalist road. Then everyone was told to go home.

Your father believes he will be all right because he has already been punished as a ‘rightist’ and can claim that he has been reformed through labour. But he is always the optimist. I am not so sure. I am just happy that you will not be a part of this. And although you are far away, at least I feel I can talk to you by keeping this record of what is happening. I will try to keep it up to date so that like a photo album you will have a record of your family. But I am scared, Tao. Not so much for me as for your father.

Li rubbed his eyes with gloved hands. The concentrated light of his desk lamp on the white pages of the diary were making them water. He sat back and lit a cigarette, blowing smoke into the darkness that lay beyond the ring of light. Then he leaned forward again, and with his white gloves he turned each page with great care in order not to disturb whatever forensic evidence the diary might yield. Reading it was depressing, like a journey back through time to a distant memory of his own childhood and an experience shared with millions of people all over China. July 1966. It was only just beginning.

He did not read it all, flicking carefully forward through the pages, August, September, stopping here and there to read the increasingly harrowing account, as the fate that befell Yuan Tao’s parents unfolded.

September 15th, 1966

Your father and I watched from our window today as Mr Cai from across the landing was attacked in the street by Red Guards. They took his shoes and made him squat on a stool in full view of the street and shaved his head. I do not know why. It seems more and more that they can do what they like to you on whatever pretext they dream up.

Your father has not been at the school for nearly two weeks. His angina attacks are less frequent now, and he has learned to sit quietly and wait with great patience for the pain to pass. It is an awful thing for me to think, but I am glad of his heart condition. It keeps him away from the school. I fear for his life every time he goes there.

October 21st, 1966

They came to the house today. Six of them. All former pupils of your father. To look for ‘black’ materials, they said. This is anything that they believe is opposed to the Communist Party. The leader is a boy who lives in our street, Ge Yan. I think you know him. He is the boy who keeps birds in his yard. It is strange to think of someone who can love such delicate creatures being so violent and filled with hate. He screamed and shouted at me when I refused to let him see your father. He was very red in the face, with veins bulging at his temples. I was very frightened. But your father had not been well earlier, and he was in his bed.

Finally, when he heard all the shouting, he came out in his dressing gown and asked them what they wanted. He was quite angry with them for shouting at me, and they seemed quite taken aback. I don’t think they knew how to deal with him. They still remembered him as their teacher and I think were still a little afraid of him.

The girl that the others called Pauper was the boldest. She told your father that as a teacher of English, he was a lover of things foreign, and all foreigners were opposed to the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution. His interests, therefore, were ‘black’, she said, and he must give up all his ‘black’ materials. I do not think they knew what these materials were, but your father was clever. He said that of course he would give them anything they considered ‘black’, as he wanted to do everything he could to help the revolution. He went into our front room and took all his old magazines from England and America that he has been collecting for years and told them to take them away. They were undoubtedly ‘black’, he said, because they were all in English.

The one they called Zero, whose name your father says is Bai Qiyu, took your bicycle. He said that you had betrayed the revolution by going to study abroad, and that your bicycle must be confiscated. I did try to stop him, but there was nothing I could do. Your father said to let them go.

When they were gone, I asked him if it did not break his heart to lose his prized collection of magazines. But he said they were just paper and ink, and that flesh and blood were more important.

I am so sorry about your bicycle.

February 2nd, 1967

Tao, do you remember Mrs Gu, my friend Gu Yi from the kindergarten? She is dead. When she finished mourning the death of her husband she tried to find herself another man, because she still had two children, and her job at the kindergarten did not pay much. She wore pretty clothes and make-up to make herself attractive. But all she did was attract the fury of the hung wei ping.

Last week they came to her door in a procession, banging drums and gongs and carrying scarlet banners. They made her paste a da-zi-bao on her door, denouncing herself as a capitalist whore. They dragged her into the street and forced her to ‘confess’ and promise to remould herself conscientiously. They hung two torn shoes around her neck, which is a sign of immorality, and made her wash her face publicly, and tore off her ‘black’ bourgeois dress.

Last night she hanged herself.

April 15th, 1967

Your father’s condition continues to deteriorate. He has been in his bed for several days. Still, I am glad he is safe here at home instead of at the school. We hear terrible stories. Your old headmaster and some of the senior teachers have been made to do manual labour. They are supervised by the Red Guards of the Revolt-to-the-End Brigade, who are all former pupils at the school. I think they were all in your year.

We hear that Headmaster Jiang and the others were forced to demolish the school’s lovely old stone gateway with sledgehammers provided by a group of construction workers. And then they had to parade around the square wearing pointed paper dunce hats, just like the landlords during the Land Reform Campaign in 1951. They were made to wear signs around their necks branding them ‘cow-headed ghosts’ and ‘snake spirits’. The schoolchildren, apparently, took delight in calling them ‘monsters’.

I was surprised that Headmaster Jiang was treated in this way, because he is a member of the Communist Party. But your father says many of the people targeted are Party members. They are seen as the persons in authority who have taken the capitalist road. He says he is glad now that he never joined the Party.

April 29th, 1967

They came again today. Oh, Tao. I am so afraid. They have found out that I attended the American university in Beijing before the Liberation, and that my father owned a little land in the north.

They are horrible, these children. Their faces are twisted by anger and hatred. They screamed and shouted at me in our own house. They made Gau Huan, the slow-witted boy they call Tortoise, tear up our family photo album. I don’t think he really knew what he was doing, but he is like a hungry devil who feeds on destruction. I pleaded with them not to do it, and when I tried to stop Gau Huan, the girl, Pauper, struck me with her hand across my face. She hit me so hard I saw stars and black spots in front of my eyes. One of the others, a clever boy called Yue Shi, shouted in my face that I did not have a good class status. I was the daughter of a landlord. I could not choose my class status, but I could choose my future. I was to denounce my family and destroy their ‘black’ history.

They asked about you, Tao. They wanted to know when the ‘black whelp’ was coming home. I screamed at them. I told them you would not be back because you were smarter than they were. I told them they were stupid, and all they could do was destroy things. The girl, Pauper, hit me again.

Hearing the raised voices and my sobbing, your father came out from the bedroom. His face was grey. He had your grandfather’s big, stout walking stick in his hand and he bellowed at the little bastards and told them if they raised a hand to me again he’d beat them to within an inch of their lives.

I think they were startled by his appearance and his anger and the threat of violence. They left, then, but said they would be back. I cried for nearly an hour after they had gone, and your father just sat in the chair by the window and gazed out in silence. I could not get him to speak for the rest of the day.

Oh, Tao, much as I would love to see you again, whatever you do, never come back here.

May 1st, 1967

I went to the square today to see Chairman Mao. There were hundreds of thousands of students there, most of them Red Guards. I have never seen so many people in Tiananmen before. On the guan bo public address system, they were playing ‘The Helmsman’ and ‘The Eight Disciplines’, then ‘The East is Red’ just before the great man appeared on the rostrum in front of the Forbidden City. Then everyone was chanting ‘Long live Chairman Mao’. The atmosphere was extraordinary, like some fanatical religious gathering. I did not know what to feel. It is hard not to be swept up in the emotion of it all. But all I really wanted to do was weep. I do not think anyone noticed my tears.

June 5th, 1967

This was what I had been dreading. Yue Shi came to the house this morning and sneered as he told us your father must attend the school today. I told him he was not well enough. But the boy just said that if your father did not turn up, others would be sent to fetch him. He would be forced to go on his knees, if necessary.

Oh, Tao, I am so glad you are not here to see this. But I miss you so much. You are so clever, I am sure you would have known what to do. I wish I could just talk to you and hold your hand for comfort.

Li paused. There were three small round blisters on the paper, yellow and raised, and a fourth that had blurred the ink on the character of Tao’s name. Tears, Li realised, spilled more than thirty years ago. A simple statement of the hopelessness felt by Yuan Tao’s mother as she wept for the son that she knew she would never see again. More eloquent than any words she could have written. And then, with a slight shock, Li realised that they might not be her tears after all. And he thought of Yuan Tao reading his mother’s words all those years later. Of the pain and the guilt that he must have felt. It was more than possible that they were the tears of a son spilled for his parents. He read on.

Although it was hot, your father was shivering, and I dressed him warmly for the walk to the school. He had your grandfather’s stick in his right hand, and I held his left arm, but he could hardly walk, and we had to stop every ten metres for him to catch his breath. It is a terrible thing to see the strong, young man you married reduced to this.

When we got there, there was a big crowd in the square, gathered around a small wooden stage they had built alongside the basketball net. The geography teacher, Teacher Gu, was standing on the stage, bent over with his hands on his knees and his head down. There was a sign hanging around his neck with his name painted on it upside down in red and scored through.

The students and the Red Guards were roaring, ‘Down with Teacher Gu.’ Every time he tried to lift his head one of the Red Guards would push it back down. They kept screaming questions at him but wouldn’t let him answer. And then they screamed at him again for refusing to speak.

When they saw us arrive, some of the Red Guards — Pauper and Yue Shi and Pigsy and Tortoise — came and grabbed your father from me. They hung a sign around his neck like Teacher Gu’s and pushed him through the jeering crowds to the stage. I tried to go after him, but children swarmed all around me like bees, calling me a ‘landlord’s daughter’ and the ‘mother of a black whelp’. I saw your father trying to get on the stage, and when he couldn’t, the big boy, Ge Yan, hit him on the back of the neck with a long cane and he dropped to his knees.

Eventually they lifted him on to the stage and Teacher Gu was pushed aside. Your father became the centre of attention. I could see the tears in his sad, dark eyes, but there was nothing he or I could do about it. One of the girls who used to come to our house for extra tuition took my arm and led me away to a classroom. She wore a red arm band, but I think she was only pretending to be one of them. She got me some water and told me I should not look. But I could not leave my husband to face this alone.

When I went to the door of the classroom, I could see him on his knees on the stage, his head bowed, the sign swinging from his neck. They were shouting, ‘Down with Teacher Yuan.’ They demanded to know why he had neglected his students, why he refused to work. Did he think he was too good to serve the people? What could he say? Even if he were capable of answering, how could he answer such questions? He was ill, so very, very ill.

But each time he failed to answer, they would take it in turns to hit him across the back of his neck with the cane. I could hear the sound of it. I could feel his pain with every stroke. Then Ge Yan pulled his head back by the hair, and the one called Zero forced him to drink a pot of ink. He gagged and was sick, but still they forced it down his throat.

I screamed at them to stop, but no one could hear me over the noise, and the girl who had taken me to the classroom stopped me from trying to reach him. I have the bruises of her fingers on my arms as I write.

It was just their revenge. Because he had shouted at them and threatened them with his father’s stick if they hit me again. I feel so guilty, Tao. It is my fault they did this to him. If I had not tried to stop them tearing up our family photographs, if I had just accepted there was nothing I could do, perhaps they would have let him be.

When he fell over, at first they tried to get him back to his knees, but he was quite unconscious and I think they thought then that he was dead.

It was strange, because suddenly the whole square went quiet, as if somehow the game had all gone terribly wrong. Just children. They had no idea what they were doing.

I ran to the stage, and they all moved aside to let me past. No one stopped me as I got up and removed the sign from around your father’s neck. His mouth and face were black from the ink, and there was vomit all down his tunic. But I could hear him breathing. Short, shallow breaths.

I kneeled down and drew him up into my arms, but he was too heavy for me to lift on my own. I called out, ‘Will anybody help me?’ But no one moved. And then Ge Yan, the bird boy, ordered some of the children to give me a hand to take away this ‘black revisionist’.

When, eventually, I got him home and into bed, I went to get the doctor. But when I told him what had happened he did not want to come, and so I have sat here alone with your father for hours now, keeping him cool with cold compresses, tipping his head forward to make him take some water.

It is dark. I don’t know what time it is. Sometime after two. Outside it is very quiet, and the house is very still. And yet I can barely hear your father breathing. I don’t know what he has done to deserve this. You know what a kind and gentle man he is. Oh, Tao, I am so, so weary.

June 6th, 1967

Tao, your father is dead. Sometime after four this morning, I fell asleep in the chair by the bed, and when I awoke he was quite cold. He died alone, while I slept. I don’t know if I can ever forgive myself. I am so sorry, my son. Please know that I love you. I hope you will make a better life for yourself than this.

It was the last entry, although there were many blank pages after.

Li sat with tears filling his eyes, and saw that the first grey light of dawn had appeared in the sky. As a young boy he had been devastated by his mother’s death in prison, shocked and distressed to see his father reduced to the palest shadow of his former self. But he could not imagine how Yuan Tao must have felt, nearly thirty years on, reading his mother’s harrowing account of his father’s death. Of the sickening humiliation and brutality meted out by barbarous, ignorant youths whom his own father had taught. He could picture tears, and anger, and knew that in reading those lines the seeds of revenge had been sewn deep in Yuan Tao’s heart.

And he also knew now who had killed Zero and Monkey and Pigsy. And why.

He swivelled his chair and sat for a long time staring out of the window at a grey sky shot with streaks of pink. Li felt inestimably sad. How empty Yuan Tao’s life must have been for it to have been consumed so quickly by hate and revenge. A failed marriage. No children. An undistinguished academic career that was going nowhere. How often, Li wondered, had he regretted leaving his home country, destined always to be a stranger in a strange land? What guilt must he have felt, on reading his mother’s diary, to realise that what he had escaped had cost his father’s life? That while he was safe on the far-off campus of an American university, his father had been persecuted and hounded to his death by Yuan’s own classmates. And so hate had filled his emotional void. And revenge had given his life a purpose.

And for five years he had planned his revenge. Engineered his return to Beijing, and methodically set about the execution of his father’s tormentors, in a ritual that closely replicated the manner of his father’s final humiliation.

Although the diary in no way provided conclusive evidence, it made perfect sense. Li had no doubts. But it still left one deeply puzzling question unanswered. Who killed Yuan? And why?

There was a knock at the door and Qian poked his head in. He seemed surprised to see Li. ‘Someone said you were in.’ This, as if he hadn’t believed it. ‘You’re early today, boss.’ And then he noticed the fog of cigarette smoke that filled the room, and the deep lines etched under Li’s eyes. He frowned. ‘Have you been here all night?’

Li nodded and slipped the diary into its plastic bag and held it out to Qian. ‘Get this checked for fingerprints, Qian. Then get copies made for everyone on the team.’

Qian took it and looked at it with curiosity. ‘What is it, boss?’

‘A motive for murder.’

IV

Yang Shouqian lived in a crumbling apartment block just south of Guang’anmen Railway Station. He was, Li reckoned, somewhere in his middle fifties, with thinning hair and a long, lugubrious face. His wife was a short, round-faced woman with a pleasant smile who invited Li into their kitchen. They were just having breakfast, she said, before Yang went to work at the nearby Ministry of Hydroelectricity. She was steaming some lotus paste and red bean buns. Would Li like some? Li accepted the offer and sat with them at their table, trains rattling past every few minutes on the southbound line, which they overlooked from the rear of the apartment. He was grateful for the hot green tea and the sweet buns, and felt the fatigue of a night without sleep sweep over him. The burden of his news weighed heavily.

Yang looked at him curiously. ‘My wife says you have word of my Cousin Tao.’

Li nodded. ‘Have you seen him in the last few months?’

Yang was astonished. ‘Seen him? You mean he is in Beijing?’

‘For about six months.’

Yang’s initial delight turned quickly to confusion, and then to hurt. ‘No,’ he said. ‘I have not seen him. He has not been in touch.’ His wife put a concerned hand over his.

She looked at Li, sensing immediately that something was wrong. Why else would he be here? ‘What has happened?’ she asked.

‘I’m afraid he has been murdered,’ Li said.

Yang went quite pale, and his wife squeezed his hand. ‘I don’t understand,’ Yang said. ‘Murdered? Here in Beijing?’ It seemed extraordinary to him that such a thing was possible. ‘Who by?’

‘We do not know,’ Li said. ‘Was he in touch with you at all? At any time over the last few years?’

Yang shook his head. ‘Never. I have never heard from him in all this time. He was a spotty teenager when I last saw him, shortly before he left for America.’

‘But you wrote to him?’

Yang looked up quickly, surprised. ‘How do you know that?’

‘Because I have the letter you sent him in 1995.’

‘I didn’t know you’d written to Cousin Tao, Shouqian,’ his wife said.

He nodded. ‘You remember, when I sent him the diary?’

‘Oh, yes.’ She looked at Li and shook her head sadly. ‘Such a tragedy.’

‘You read it?’ Li asked.

‘Not all of it. Shouqian showed me it before he sent it.’

Li said, ‘You told him that you were keeping the letter Tao’s mother had written to your mother.’ He paused. ‘Why?’

‘Because, as you say, it was written to my mother,’ Yang said. ‘It belonged to her, and therefore to me, not Cousin Tao.’ He examined his nails for a moment in studied silence. ‘Besides,’ he said eventually, ‘it was probably better that he never saw it.’

‘Why?’

‘On top of the diary …’ He shrugged. ‘It would have been too much.’

Li said, ‘May I see it?’

Yang darted him a quick look, and Li saw something that was almost like shame in his eyes. He nodded and got up and crossed to a dresser against the far wall. He opened a drawer and began searching through a bundle of papers.

‘Did you know any of the Red Guards who hounded Tao’s father?’ Li asked.

Yang shook his head. ‘No. They were all younger than me, and we went to different schools.’

Li said, ‘In the last month three of them have been murdered.’

Yang’s wife gasped. Yang turned to look at Li, and the shame Li had seen in his eyes had turned to something else that he could not quite identify. ‘Dear God,’ Yang said. ‘Tao killed them, didn’t he?’ And Li knew that it was fear in his eyes.

‘I think it is very possible,’ Li said.

Yang’s wife was quickly on her feet, and she held his arm as he staggered momentarily before steadying himself. He moved back to the table, clutching an old yellowed envelope in his hand and sat down heavily. ‘Because I sent him the diary,’ he said, his fear realised and turning quickly to guilt. ‘I might as well have killed them myself.’ And he was struck by an even more horrifying thought and looked up at Li. ‘Is that why Cousin Tao was murdered?’

Li shrugged hopelessly. ‘I don’t know.’

Yang’s head dropped. ‘I should never have sent it to him. But after all these years I thought he had a right to know. I never for a moment thought …’ He broke off, his voice choked with emotion.

His wife hugged him and said, ‘How could you possibly have known, Shouqian?’

‘Is that the letter?’ Li asked and held out his hand.

Yang nodded and handed it to him. The envelope was unstamped. There was no address, just the name of Yang’s mother in clear, bold characters. Li slipped the letter out from inside. The paper was thin and close to tearing at the fold. Li opened it carefully. It was dated July 1970.

My dearest sister, Xi-wen,

I have received word today that my son, Tao, has graduated in the subject of political science at the University of Berkeley in California and is to stay on for another two years to complete his doctorate. I am so pleased for him. His success is assured and he will have no need ever to return here. In a sense it is all I have lived for since the death of my beloved husband. But it is still hard to think of him living somewhere on the other side of the world, watching the same sun rise and set, the same moon as I see on a clear night in Beijing, and not be able to speak or touch. I still remember the feel of him curled up inside me. But he is as removed from me now as my husband.

The Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution seems to be entering a new phase of madness, with faction fighting faction. I am still disgraced because of our father’s history and my education and I have not been allowed to work at the kindergarten for nearly two years now. I am so weary of it all and wonder where it will end.

I have spent long hours going through the scraps of our lives before it all began. There is not much of it that has survived. A few photographs, some treasured letters that my husband and I exchanged in the months before we were married, a letter from Tao that, miraculously, reached us not long after he arrived in the United States. And this. It is the diary I kept for Tao after he left. It was meant to be a record for him of the things he missed and could catch up on when he returned.

I could not bring myself to continue with it after his father died. But I would like him to have it. He should know what happened to his family. I entrust it to you, because I know that you will keep it safe and see that Tao gets it when future circumstances allow.

Please tell him I love him. I am sorry for the trouble.

Your loving sister,

Ping Zhen.

Li looked up and found Yang watching him, that sense of shame returned to his eyes. ‘It was a crime back then,’ Yang said. ‘Chairman Mao described it as “alienating oneself from the people”.’ A tiny explosion of air escaped from his pursed lips. ‘Quite a euphemism. In reality what it meant was that we were not allowed a private room at the crematorium, we could not wear mourning armbands, or play funeral music. The whole family was made to feel the shame.’ And Li saw that he still felt it, even after all these years.

‘What happened?’ Li asked.

Yang shook his head. He could barely bring himself to recall the horror of it. ‘She threw herself out of the window and was impaled on the railings below. No one would go near her. Apparently she took hours to die.’ He met Li’s eye. ‘Tao never knew.’