The Fourth Sacrifice

I

Margaret’s ambivalence was more emotional than consciously thought out. And it wasn’t so much ambivalence as a sense of pleasure edged with guilt. But it was a serrated edge that made its presence felt disproportionate to its size. The net effect had been to cloud her pleasures of the night before with embarrassment the morning after.

She was annoyed, because she still felt warm and satisfied by a sexual encounter that had been all she could have hoped for. Michael had been a caring and sensitive lover, and she had surrendered herself completely to his ministrations. They had lain for a long time afterwards in each other’s arms and talked. About themselves, about their lives, although Margaret had still avoided the subject of the other Michael in her past. But he had not pressed her, and she had felt comfortable and relaxed with him, until she drifted off to sleep, aware as she did so of the myriad tiny kisses with which he was peppering her face and neck and breasts.

The difference a few short hours can make. Awakened from a deep sleep by their early alarm, she had been awkward and embarrassed with him. It was extraordinary how the day could cast such a different light upon events. Michael, on the other hand, had been attentive and affectionate, and if he was aware of her awkwardness, gave no sign of it.

Now, as their plane circled to land at Beijing Capital Airport after the seventy-minute flight, the embarrassment was passing, and in its place Margaret felt a growing apprehension. For thirty-six hours she had escaped from her life, had been able to pretend she was another person in another place. Now reality was racing up to meet her at several hundred miles an hour. She heard the squeal of tyres and the heavy jolt and swing of their China Northern aircraft as it touched down clumsily on the tarmac. Thoughts of Li, of the four murders and the continuing investigation, flooded back, and she wondered if she could achieve a less bumpy landing in life.

All hopes of a smooth transition, however, were quickly swept away as Margaret and Michael passed into the arrivals hall and saw Sophie’s anxious face scanning the crowds. Instinctively, Margaret withdrew her hand from Michael’s, like a schoolgirl caught in an indiscretion. Michael smiled. ‘Ashamed to be seen with me?’

Margaret was annoyed with herself. ‘Of course,’ she said. ‘What self-respecting girl wouldn’t be?’

Sophie caught sight of them and pushed her way through the crowds. Her face was flushed. ‘I’ve got a car waiting for you,’ she said to Margaret. She flicked a look at Michael. ‘There have been developments.’ And she steered Margaret a discreet distance away and lowered her voice. ‘Your friend Deputy Section Chief Li now seems to think that Yuan Tao committed the first three murders.’

‘What?’ Margaret was caught completely off balance. And as she recovered a little, she said, ‘I suppose they think he cut his own head off.’

‘I doubt it very much,’ Sophie said with a tone. ‘The point is, an American citizen now stands accused of the murder of three Chinese nationals.’

‘He must be shaking in his grave,’ Margaret said. ‘What do you want me to do about it?’

‘The Chinese police have set up a briefing meeting at Municipal Headquarters in …’ she checked her watch, … forty-five minutes. We can’t afford to hang around.’

‘You can give me one minute,’ Margaret said, and she headed back towards Michael.

He was engaged in conversation on his mobile phone and looking at his watch. ‘Yeah, OK, Charles, I should be on location by ten thirty at the latest …’ He saw Margaret approaching. ‘Hang on,’ he said and put his hand over the receiver.

‘Michael, I’m sorry, I’ve got to go straight to a police briefing. I won’t be able to make it out to location after all.’

He shrugged and smiled ruefully. ‘Can’t be helped, I suppose.’ He paused. ‘What’s happened?’

Margaret gasped her frustration. ‘Apparently they seem to think that victim number four killed the other three.’ He frowned. She laughed. ‘Don’t even think about it. Will you give me a call?’

‘Tonight,’ he said, and to her surprise he lowered his head and gave her a long, soft kiss. ‘We must do that again sometime,’ he said ambiguously.

She nodded, aware of Sophie’s eyes watching them from somewhere behind her. ‘Soon.’

In the car, Margaret found Sophie looking at her curiously. She turned to meet her gaze.

Sophie said, ‘So you slept with him.’ It was a statement, not a question.

‘None of your business,’ Margaret said.

Sophie shook her head ruefully. ‘You lucky bitch. You know you’ll be the envy of half the women in America? And to think I introduced you.’

‘Well, you were right about one thing,’ Margaret said.

‘What’s that?’

She grinned. ‘He has got a great ass.’

II

Commissioner Hu Yisheng rose to shake Margaret’s hand across his desk. The divisional head of CID was dressed formally in a dark green jacket with two gold stripes on the sleeves above gold cuff buttons, and a pale green shirt with dark blue tie. The Ministry of Public Security police badge at the top of his left sleeve seemed disproportionately large, as did his head on a small body. But he was a handsome man for his age, she thought, with his dark-streaked grey hair swept back from a smooth, unlined forehead. His smile, however, was strained as he waved Margaret to a chair.

‘I would like to offer, Dr Campbell, my sincere thanks for your most excellent work on behalf of the Chinese people,’ he said stiffly.

Margaret was about to tell him the only reason she was here was because of her loyalty to the American people. But Sophie, sensing an imminent breach of etiquette, said quickly, ‘Dr Campbell is more than happy to help, Commissioner.’ Margaret could almost see the Commissioner wondering why she had not been able to say so for herself.

Jonathan Dakers was already there, as was Section Chief Chen Anming. There was a distinct chill in the air as he and Margaret were reacquainted. It was Chen, she recalled, who had first involved her in a Chinese police investigation back in June. He had asked her to perform an autopsy. A perfect example of the Chinese phenomenon of guanxi in action. He had presented her with a lavish gift while a pupil on a course in criminal investigation in Chicago, where she had been lecturing the previous year. A favour was owed, and he had called it in. But as that investigation had escalated beyond anything either of them could have imagined, she knew he had begun to regret involving her. Now it was clear from his manner that he did not want her anywhere near this new investigation. But the decision had not been his to make. She wondered if it was Chen who had ordered Li to stay away from her.

Sophie sat between Margaret and Chen, as if aware of the tension between them, and chatted animatedly to the Section Chief while Dakers made desultory conversation with Commissioner Hu. Margaret sat like a lemon, wondering what she was doing here and how long she was going to give it before making an exit. But she was spared from having to take that decision by the arrival of Li.

He knocked and entered, a little flustered she thought. He was in uniform, as she had seen him the very first time they met. Pale green short-sleeved shirt over dark green trousers. His epaulettes bore the three gold stripes and three stars of a Class Three Senior Supervisor. His gold-braided cap sat square on his head, its peak casting his eyes in deep shadow. Seeing him like that made something in her stomach flip over, and her guilt returned to haunt her. He saluted the Commissioner, apologised for being late, removed his hat and drew in a chair. He opened the briefcase he had been carrying and took out some papers.

‘Well,’ Hu said, ‘now that we are all here, why don’t you brief us, Deputy Section Chief?’

Li cleared his throat awkwardly and glanced at Margaret. There was something utterly sad and disconcerting in his eyes. She wondered if she was imagining it, but she also felt she saw betrayal there. As if he knew that only a few hours ago she had been lying in another man’s arms, sexually sated, all memories of Li wiped from her mind. And suddenly she felt utterly exposed, as if she was sitting there naked, on view to everyone in the room. She felt herself blush.

Li said, ‘Following up on our investigations, I last night discovered a diary hidden under the floor of Yuan Tao’s embassy apartment. The diary was that of Yuan’s mother, and covered the period from May of 1966, when he left for the United States, until the death of his father in June of 1967.’ He broke off to hand around several photocopied sheets. ‘These are photocopies of the relevant passages from it. They detail the harassment of Yuan’s parents by a group of his former classmates who comprised the six Red Guard members of the so-called Revolt-to-the-End Brigade. They were part of the then Red-Red-Red Faction which existed during the Cultural Revolution.’ He paused and looked around. ‘I should make it clear now that the first three victims were all members of the Revolt-to-the-End Brigade.’

This was news to Margaret, Sophie and Dakers, and the significance of it was not lost on them. ‘We are having a translation made of the diary in its entirety,’ Li said. And Margaret listened in fascinated and horrified silence as he then outlined the nature of the harassment as described in it, culminating in the final humiliation of Yuan’s father in front of a jeering crowd at the No. 29 Middle School, and his death just a few hours later.

Li concluded, ‘The sign hung around his father’s neck, his name written upside down in red and scored through; the kneeling position and the blows to the back of his neck inflicted with a cane; even the enforced drinking of the ink — all of these can be seen as a template for the modus operandi used in the killings. For ink, read red wine. The administering of the drug flunitrazepam, through the medium of the wine, made it easy to place the victim in a kneeling position. The blow to the back of the neck, only this time with a sword, brought death through decapitation. All three victims had their names written upside down in red ink on white card hung around their necks.

‘Remember, also, that decapitation was an ancient form of capital punishment in China. The killer almost certainly saw himself as an executioner, performing just retribution for crimes committed.’

Margaret said, ‘But if you’re right, then this wasn’t justice. It was revenge.’

Li inclined his head slightly, indicating agreement. ‘True,’ he said. ‘But what is capital punishment but society’s collective revenge on those who commit crimes against it? And history is littered with individuals who have taken matters into their own hands when they feel that society has let them down.’

Margaret wondered if these were the thoughts of Uncle Yifu, carefully collected, and polished and preserved by his nephew to be trotted out on appropriate occasions. She said, ‘It’s an interesting theory, Deputy Section Chief. But aren’t you rather flying in the face of conventional methods of Chinese police investigation?’ She felt ice forming in sheets around her. ‘I understood that only after the painstaking collection of evidence would you even start to form a picture of the crime and who had committed it. I mean, what evidence do you have that puts Yuan Tao at any of the other crime scenes?’

Li was unfazed. ‘The particles of dark blue dust found in Yuan’s apartment are an exact match for the particles found on the body of Yue Shi.’

‘Are you suggesting Yue Shi was murdered in Yuan’s apartment?’

‘No.’

‘Then there is no direct connection.’

‘The wine, then,’ Li said evenly. He was determined not to be rattled by her. ‘The red wine found in Yuan’s apartment was the same as the wine the other three had been drinking before being murdered.’

‘But that still doesn’t place Yuan at any of the other crime scenes, does it?’

‘No,’ Li conceded.

‘And we know that Yuan was killed with the same weapon.’

‘Are you suggesting,’ asked Li with the hint of a sneer in his voice, ‘that Yuan cut his own head off?’

Margaret laughed. ‘Actually, I thought maybe that’s what you were suggesting. Although I think he might have had trouble disposing of the murder weapon afterwards, don’t you?’ But her amusement was not shared by anyone else in the room.

Li said, ‘You suggested yourself that he might have been murdered by someone who was a witness to the other killings.’

Margaret shook her head. ‘That was before we had a motive. A witness would have had to be an accomplice. If, as you suggest, Yuan had gone on a spree of revenge killings, an accomplice would have had to share his sense of revenge. What other motive could he have had? And, then, what would have been his motive for murdering Yuan?’

‘This is all very interesting, Margaret,’ Dakers broke in. ‘But we’re not here to start picking over the evidence. This is a briefing meeting.’

‘What?’ Margaret almost snapped at him. ‘So we’re supposed to just sit here and accept what we’re told without question?’

‘Of course not,’ Dakers said smoothly. ‘We very much want to participate in the scrutiny of the evidence. Which is why we have asked our friends in the Ministry of Public Security if they would allow you the privilege of participating full time in the investigation — at least until Yuan Tao’s involvement in it has been cleared up to everyone’s satisfaction.’ He had stopped addressing himself to Margaret and had turned towards Commissioner Hu. ‘I know that the American Ambassador has already broached this subject at a higher level.’

The colour rose slightly on the Commissioner’s cheeks as he interlaced his hands on the desk in front of him. Margaret noticed that his knuckles were white. He did not like anyone going over his head. ‘I understand this to be so,’ he said. ‘I spoke to the Minister myself less than thirty minutes ago. Your Ambassador has already been informed of his decision to grant your request.’

For once, Margaret was speechless. She glanced at Li and saw that he was staring, stony-faced at the floor.

A burned-out sun in a pale sky reflected white off the dusty compound outside the redbrick building that housed CID headquarters. Margaret struggled to keep up with Li as he strode across the compound to where he had parked his Jeep in the shade of a line of trees.

‘You knew about this, didn’t you?’ she said.

‘Would it matter if I did?’ he said without turning. ‘The decision was not mine to take. And if it had, you know what it would have been.’ He opened the driver’s door and threw his briefcase inside.

‘Well, of course,’ she said. ‘God forbid that you should need help. Or even ask for it if you did.’

Li turned on her, his face pale with anger. His eyes were shaded by the peak of his cap and she could not see them. ‘I do not,’ he said, ‘appreciate having my inquiry called into question in front of my section chief and the divisional head of CID.’

‘Ah!’ Margaret threw her hands in the air. ‘Of course. Mianzi. That’s what all this is about, isn’t? Face. Or rather your loss of it in front of your boss. To hell with the evidence, let’s not lose face! That it? How very Chinese of you.’

His fury was palpable, but he controlled his voice, albeit with difficulty. ‘This is about the evidence,’ he said. ‘The most important piece of evidence we’ve come up with, and you just … dismiss it.’ He waved his hand dismissively towards the trees.

‘I didn’t dismiss anything.’

‘Well, you made it perfectly clear that you don’t believe Yuan Tao was responsible for the other murders.’

‘Of course he is,’ Margaret said. ‘The diary provides us with the perfect motive. It’s obvious he did it.’ Li was stunned to silence. And she was on a roll. ‘He had both motive and opportunity. And the wine and the blue dust provide us with good circumstantial evidence. But the point I was making is that we don’t have a single scrap of evidence actually tying him to any one of the crime scenes. And we need that.’

‘We?’ he asked.

‘Well, whether we like it or not, it looks like you’re stuck with me and I’m stuck with you until we put this one to bed.’ She stumbled momentarily over her unfortunate choice of metaphor, then added quickly, ‘So the sooner we find out whodunnit, the sooner we’ll be out of each other’s hair.’

‘And the sooner you can get back to your archaeologist.’ It was out before he could stop himself. He could have bitten his tongue off.

‘Oh,’ she said, ‘so that’s what all the hostility’s about. My relationship with Michael.’

He became immediately defensive. ‘Why should I care about your relationship with “Michael”? After all, it’s strictly platonic. That’s what you said, isn’t it?’

Margaret struck back. ‘And what was it you said? Platonic is how you describe your relationship with someone just before you sleep with them?’

He flinched, as he had done when she slapped him in the face after the autopsy. But this was no slap in the face. It was a knife in the heart, and she immediately regretted it. But there was nothing she could say now that would undo the damage. They stood glaring at each other in a tense silence until she could no longer bear to meet his eye and looked away towards the towering municipal police headquarters at the far side of the compound.

‘It’s a pity the AFIS didn’t come up with a match for the fingerprint found at number two,’ she said for something to say.

Li forced his mind back through the red mist of pain that filled it and tried to focus on what she had just said. ‘What?’

‘Your Automated Fingerprint Identification System. If it had matched that bloody fingerprint to Yuan, it would have placed him at one of the crime scenes.’

The red mist cleared as Li remembered the bloody fingerprint found on the edge of the desk in Bai Qiyu’s office. He had forgotten all about it. Margaret clearly had not. But he did not understand her question. ‘Why would the AFIS come up with a match for Yuan Tao when his fingerprints haven’t been entered into it?’

‘What?’ Margaret was shocked. ‘You mean you don’t enter the prints of victims as well as criminals? That’s standard practice in the States.’

In other circumstances Li might have been defensive. But his mind was racing. He said, ‘The system’s new. It’s not fully operational yet.’

‘So no one’s crosschecked to see if there’s a match?’ He shook his head. She said, ‘Well, don’t you think someone should?’

‘Hey, good to see you guys are getting right into it.’ They turned to find Dakers and Sophie approaching across the compound. Beyond them, Li saw Chen getting into an unmarked Section One saloon car.

Dakers was all smiles and bonhomie. He addressed himself to Li. ‘Just been going over the ground rules in there. I think we’re gonna get along just fine. Anything you need, anything we can help you with, you just ask.’ Li nodded curtly. Dakers touched Margaret’s arm. ‘Talk later,’ he told her.

He and Sophie were about to turn away when Li said, ‘Were any of your people in Yuan’s embassy apartment before our forensics people got access?’

Dakers turned back. ‘Sure,’ he said. ‘I checked it out myself.’ He grinned. ‘Just in case there was another body in there we didn’t know about.’ None of the others smiled.

‘Nobody else?’ Li asked.

Dakers shook his head, a little puzzled now. ‘Nope. Just me.’ He paused. ‘Am I missing something here?’

‘No,’ Li said. And then, unexpectedly, ‘Have you always had a beard?’

Dakers’ hand went instinctively to his fine-cropped whiskers and he ran it through the bristles, surprised by the question. ‘Sure have,’ he said. ‘Always had a heavy growth. Had to start shaving when I was fifteen. Brought me up in a nasty rash. So I couldn’t wait to grow a beard. Soon as I finished school.’ He paused again. ‘Sure I’m not missing something?’

Li managed a smile of what he hoped was reassurance. ‘Just curious.’ But he was thinking that men who don’t shave don’t use aftershave. So it wasn’t Dakers who had left his scent in Yuan’s apartment.

Dakers gave him an odd look. ‘OK,’ he said. ‘See ya.’ And he and Sophie went off towards the embassy limo, parked in the shade with its large red shi character prominent on the registration plate.

‘What was all that about?’ Margaret asked. She watched carefully for his response. Li never asked questions for no reason. But he just shrugged. ‘Nothing.’ He reached into the Jeep for the police radio. ‘I’d better get Yuan’s prints entered into the AFIS.’

She watched him as he spoke rapidly in Chinese into the radio handset and a strange metallic voice crackled back at him. She wanted to touch him and tell him she was sorry. Not that she had slept with Michael, but that she had told him — or as good as told him. It was cruel and unfair, and the colour that had risen high on his cheekbones was still there. But she knew it was not something she could discuss with him. To admit his hurt would be to lose face. And that was something he would never do. He finished his call and turned to her. ‘It seems Detective Wu was one step ahead of us. He’s already asked for the prints to be crosschecked.’

‘Well, at least one of your team’s on the ball,’ Margaret said.

He ignored her barb. ‘But the result may be superfluous,’ he said. ‘It looks like we might have found the dealer who sold him the sword.’

III

Li’s Jeep nosed its way along the narrow hutong of Xidamochang Jie running east off Qianmen. It was crowded along its length by pedestrians and cyclists, traders with barrows, lorries, boys delivering coal briquettes. Small restaurants spilled tables and chairs out into the street where men sat barbecuing meat and chicken over hot coals, the smell of it hanging in smoke that obscured the narrow strip of blue sky overhead. Women sat in groups on tiny stools, preparing dumplings or just chatting. Through an open doorway, Margaret saw a man stretched out on a plastic-covered divan, hands tucked behind his head, fast asleep. In another, a woman stood chopping vegetables on a wooden board with a huge cleaver. ‘Where on earth are we going?’ she asked Li.

‘The Underground City.’

She frowned. ‘What’s that?’

‘In the sixties,’ he said, ‘when Mao fell out with Stalin, he thought the Russians were going to drop atomic bombs on Beijing. So he encouraged the population to dig tunnels and shelters under the city. Over ten years, working in their spare time, and with whatever tools they had, the people dug hundreds of kilometres of tunnels and dozens of shelters. Below us right here, there are about thirty-two kilometres of tunnels running in all directions.’ He snorted. ‘But it’s just as well the Russians didn’t bomb us. The tunnels aren’t nearly deep enough. They would have been worse than useless.’

‘So why’s it called the Underground City?’

‘Because the Chinese people are very practical.’ Li swerved to avoid a boy on a bicycle who careered out of a side street without looking. He blasted his horn. ‘Since they had dug out all that space down there, they thought they might as well make use of it. So now there are shops and warehouses, even a one-hundred-bed hotel. The views are not very good, but it is cheap, and at least you get away from the traffic.’ He blasted his horn again, this time at a delivery truck blocking the way. As he edged past it he said, ‘The dealer in reproduction artefacts that we want to speak to has a shop down there.’

A column of primary school children wearing royal-blue trousers and tunics with white shirts and red scarfs marched in ragged single file towards them. They shouted and waved, smiling at Margaret when they saw her in the Jeep. ‘Hello,’ they shouted. ‘Pleased to see you.’

She waved back. ‘An incredible number of these kids speak English,’ she said. ‘It was the same in Xi’an.’ She had mentioned Xi’an without thinking and wished immediately that she hadn’t.

But Li appeared unconcerned. ‘Children are being taught to speak English in all the schools,’ he said. ‘All over China. Soon they will speak three languages. The local dialect, which is the one they grow up with, then Mandarin, then English.’

They pulled up outside a white-tile building with a passageway leading through to a school yard from which children were wandering in and out. At the west side of the building, adjoining an old single-storey block, stood a dusty doorway built in the traditional style, with pillars and crossbeams supporting a sloping green tiled roof. An ornately painted fascia was almost obscured by grime. Dozens of bicycles were parked against the wall on either side of it.

‘This is it?’ Margaret said as they climbed out of the Jeep. ‘The entrance to the Underground City?’

Li shrugged. ‘One of them. My uncle once told me there are about ninety entrances to this particular complex, some of them in shops, others in people’s homes. They say there are many tunnels and entrances the authorities do not even know about.’

As they approached the entrance, Detective Sang stepped out to meet them. He rattled off something quickly in Chinese to Li, and then turned politely to Margaret. ‘This way, please. You follow me.’

In a plain room with scarred, green-painted walls, a young man looked up briefly from his paper as Li, Sang and Margaret passed through from the street. There was nothing unusual about the sight of foreigners here. Up to five hundred of them a day paid to see the Underground City. A staircase with red handrails and paint peeling from the walls led down into the tunnel complex below. The smell of damp, fetid air rose to greet them, and Margaret felt the cold, clammy touch of it on her skin and in her clothes. The tunnels were arched and stippled with white plaster stained by dirt and damp. Fluorescent tubes hung at intervals from a single electric cable running the length of the ceiling. On a concrete ledge, the tools and paraphernalia of the workers who had dug the tunnels were laid out like exhibits in a museum: a broken-handled pickaxe, a knife with a wooden handle, a shovel, three tin mugs, a lunch box. They took a right turn, and in the distance, through several arched supports, they saw an illuminated red map of the tunnel complex beneath a green sign that read ‘beijing air raidshel ter’. An incongruous group of Scandinavian tourists sat on hard seats listening to a lecture on the history of the complex given by a bored-looking Chinese guide.

Sang led them through the group and they turned left along a stretch of tunnel where the supports had been painted a fresh, bright red, and the walls were covered with hand-painted murals. Inset, below two spotlights, was a white bust of Mao Zedong set against a red background. Almost within touching distance, ironically, stood a Buddhist shrine. Marble statues of women riding lions lined the final stretch of tunnel leading to a huge, brightly lit emporium of tourist junk: everything from jade Buddhas and silk dressing gowns to scroll paintings and imitation Ming vases. Attendants raised hopeful eyes as they entered, and then lost interest immediately they saw Li’s uniform. Red lanterns hung from a high arched roof above fluorescently lit glass display cabinets and rack upon rack of silkware.

The visitors passed a tunnel that led off into a dark, misty gloom, and Margaret shivered as she felt the cold breath of it billowing into the comparative warmth of the shop. She saw a sign with an arrow. In both Chinese and English it said, To the Station. But she had no desire to venture into the dark abandoned network of tunnels that ran on deep into the icy bowels of the city, and was relieved when Sang led them through a doorway into a long, narrow shop displaying all manner of reproduction artefacts in tiered glass cabinets. This was, she thought, an extraordinary place. Unless you had prior knowledge, you would have no inkling of its existence from the streets above.

A small, shiny, round-faced man with his hair scraped across his bald head from a parting above his ear, came forward to meet them. There was an exchange of Chinese, then Li turned to Margaret. ‘Mr Ling tells us he speaks English.’

‘Just little, just little,’ Mr Ling said, beaming at Margaret. ‘No get much practice.’ He shrugged his shoulders in theatrical apology.

Li said, ‘You told Detective Sang that you sold a bronze reproduction sword about three months ago to a man asking for a very specific kind of weapon.’

‘Sure,’ said Mr Ling. ‘Usually we sell sword for ceremonial purpose, or maybe for wu shu. But this man, he want real bronze sword, like real artefact. Of course, I have no sword like this. But I tell him I can arrange have one made for him. Only, it ve-ery expensive, and it take time.’

‘Did you ask him what he wanted the sword for?’ Margaret asked.

‘Sure, I ask,’ said Mr Ling. ‘He say sword for exhibition.’

‘And he gave you exact measurements?’ Li said.

‘Sure. I don’t remember exactly now, but Mistah Mao in Xi’an, he will still have mould.’

‘Mr Mao?’ Li asked.

‘Mistah Mao Ming Fu of the Xi’an Craft Artistic Products Factory. He ve-ery clever man. He restore bronze chariot found with Terracotta Warrior.’

Li turned to Margaret and with a slight tone said, ‘Of course, you will have seen the bronze chariots at Xi’an.’

‘Of course,’ Margaret said. She addressed herself to Mr Ling. ‘What kind of measurements did he ask for?’

‘Oh, you know. Length. I think one metre maybe for sword. Maybe little less. And he want handle some certain length. And wood. He want wood handle. And he want the weight just so.’ He moved his hands up and down as if weighing an invisible sword. ‘And, you know, this sword he want in style of Warring States period. Mistah Mao make ve-ery good job. He charge only one thousand yuan. Ve-ery good price.’ He grinned. ‘So I make a little on top.’

Li took a photograph of Yuan out of his breast pocket. ‘Is this him?’

Mr Ling put on a pair of spectacles and peered at it. ‘Sure, that him.’ He nodded thoughtfully. ‘You know, not every day someone order sword like that. But I also remember this man for two other reason.’

‘Oh?’ Li tucked the photograph back in his pocket. ‘What were they?’

Mr Ling said, ‘He Chinese man. OK. He have Beijing accent. OK. But he don’t act like Chinese man. I don’t know how describe. But he just not like Chinese man.’

‘And the other reason?’ Margaret asked.

Mr Ling’s face lit up. ‘Oh yeah. He recommend to me by my good friend. Ve-ery famous American archaeologist. Mistah Zimmerman.’

Sang stood at a discreet distance pretending not to listen, but heads in the street were turning, and a group of small children stood by the entrance to the schoolyard staring with gaping mouths as the yangguizi shouted at the policeman.

‘It’s just ridiculous.’ Margaret’s voice rose to a shrill pitch. ‘How can you possibly figure Michael has anything to do with this?’

‘Who said I did?’ Li’s calm was all the more infuriating. He walked off towards the Jeep, and Margaret followed like a dog snapping at his heels.

‘Why else would you want to question him?’

‘To eliminate him from our inquiry, of course.’ He reached the driver’s door and turned back. ‘I mean, you must admit,’ he said, ‘it’s a very strange coincidence that he just happened to know the victim. And not only did he know him, but he recommended a place where he could buy a sword, which in all probability will turn out to be the murder weapon.’

‘It might be a coincidence,’ Margaret came back at him. ‘But there’s nothing strange about it. Yuan worked at the embassy. Michael spent a lot of time there in the last six months. It’s a small community. I mean, there’s nothing more sinister about that than Michael knowing the professor of archaeology at Beijing University.’

Li frowned at her. ‘Yue Shi? Zimmerman knew Professor Yue?’

Margaret could have kicked herself. All she had succeeded in doing was giving him more ammunition. ‘Well, of course,’ she said defensively. ‘He’s an archaeologist. China’s his speciality. Yue Shi was a protégé of the archaeologist Hu Bo — the guy Michael’s making his documentary about. I happen to know that he was deeply shocked by the professor’s murder. It’s not every day someone you know gets their head cut off.’

Li lit a cigarette as Margaret took a breather. He stared hard at the ground for a moment, gnawing reflectively on the inside of his cheek. Then he looked at her very directly. ‘How come Zimmerman knew how Professor Yue was murdered?’

Margaret frowned. ‘What do you mean?’

‘I mean, how did he know the professor had been decapitated? Stuff like that doesn’t make it into the papers here. Very few people know the details of how any of these people were murdered.’

Margaret raised her hands to the heavens in frustration. ‘How the hell do I know? He knows lots of people at the university.’ She stopped, steadied herself, took a deep breath. ‘You’re enjoying this, aren’t you?’ He cocked an eyebrow at her. ‘And don’t pretend you don’t know what I’m talking about. You’re jealous and angry and hurt, and here’s a heaven-sent opportunity to get right back at me.’

Li took a long pull at his cigarette, his face impassive. ‘I don’t know what you think I have to be jealous of,’ he said evenly. ‘But even if I did, I’m smart enough not to let my personal feelings cloud my professional judgement.’ He paused for effect. ‘Unlike someone else I could mention.’ She glared at him, seething inside, but knew that his position was unassailable. He pushed home his advantage. ‘So why don’t we just go and ask Mr Zimmerman all those questions that neither of us has the answers to?’

IV

A large brush in a clenched fist daubed red paint over the two characters representing Ding Ling, and as the camera pulled back, a young peasant appeared on the screen, clutching his pot of paint and scrambling down the ladders that leaned up against the huge stele. Chuck ruffled his white hair excitedly, never taking his eyes off the monitor. ‘Of course, we covered the stone in clear plastic,’ he said, as if anyone might believe the vandalism was real.

Margaret looked out from the open door of the truck and saw, at the far side of the stele pavilion, the camera and camera operator on a cherry picker at the end of a huge crane. The crane swung back from the pavilion and started slowly delivering the camera towards the ground. She glanced back at the screen and saw the shot pan away from the pavilion to the steps leading down to the square. Michael was already descending the stairway. He looked straight into the lens as it moved down with him.

‘Already they had smashed the stone bridge leading to the square. Then they vandalised the proud stone tablet that had stood sentinel over the imperial burial chambers for centuries. And as the peasants gathered in the square were whipped up to a frenzy by the Red Guards, they were about to deliver the most devastating blow of all. An act that would haunt the young Red Guard leader for the rest of her life, as night after night the Emperor and his Empresses returned in her dreams to try to kill her with a sword.’

The camera stopped moving, and Michael walked out of shot. ‘Cut,’ Chuck shouted into his walkie-talkie. ‘Brilliant!’ He turned to Li and Margaret. ‘When we pick up the reverse of that we’ll be following him down into the square. Of course, by then, there’ll be about fifteen hundred extras there baying for blood.’

‘What happened?’ Li asked. ‘I mean, in reality.’

‘Didn’t they teach you in school?’ Margaret said. ‘Surprise, surprise. I don’t suppose the Cultural Revolution was on the curriculum.’

Li said, ‘When I was as school, the Cultural Revolution was the curriculum.’

There was a moment of stand-off between them, and Chuck leaped in quickly. ‘They smashed up the skeletons of the Emperor and the two Empresses,’ he said and nervously lit a cigarette.

‘Then they made a big bonfire,’ said Margaret, never taking her eyes off Li, ‘of all the royal remains.’

Chuck said, ‘Then it started to rain and everything got washed away in the mud. Lost for ever.’ He sighed. ‘We’re going to have to simulate that rain later today. Not the best of weather for it.’ He nodded towards the door and the palest of clear blue skies outside. The mountains beyond shimmered in the heat.

‘You seem to know a lot about it,’ Li said to Margaret. ‘And I know the Cultural Revolution wasn’t on the curriculum at your school.’

‘Michael told me,’ she said. ‘He knows more about it than most Chinese.’

Li bristled.

Chuck was uneasy with the tension between the visitors to his control truck. ‘Listen, you guys,’ he said. ‘You want to talk to Mike, I can give you about twenty minutes while we’re setting up the next shot.’

To Li’s annoyance, Michael stooped to give Margaret a quick kiss before reaching out his arm to shake Li’s hand. Li felt his face colour. Margaret, too, was embarrassed by this show of affection in front of Li. Only Michael seemed oblivious. And, again, as he had been at Beijing West Railway Station, Li was aware of something curiously familiar about Michael, something he couldn’t quite identify.

‘Hey, guys,’ Michael said. ‘Great you could make it. I didn’t think you were going to manage out, Margaret.’ He seemed genuinely pleased to see them.

‘No, neither did I,’ she said self-consciously.

Michael caught her look and paused. ‘Something wrong?’ He glanced from one to the other.

‘Why don’t we take a walk,’ Li said, and the three of them headed away around the curve of the wall in the dappled shade of the spruce trees that climbed all around them. The sound of crew shouting to each other as they set up the next shot, and ADs marshalling the hundreds of extras waiting patiently in the square below, faded into the distance. Instead, the sound of birdsong and small creatures scuttling through the undergrowth came into earshot, and beyond there was a strange silence hanging in the haze that shimmered across the valley in the lee of Dayu Hill.

‘What’s this all about?’ Michael asked Margaret.

She raised her hands in her own defence. ‘I’m sorry, Michael,’ she said. ‘This is not my idea.’

Li flicked her a look of annoyance. Then he turned to Michael. ‘We understand that you were acquainted with a Mr Yuan Tao who worked in the visa department of the United States Embassy, as well as a Professor Yue Shi of the archaeology department at Beijing University.’

Margaret saw the skin darken behind the tan on Michael’s face, and then felt the full force of hurt and accusation in his eyes as he looked at her, like a dog whose trusted master has just kicked it. He turned back to Li. ‘That’s correct,’ he said. ‘In fact I knew Professor Yue quite well. Though Mr Yuan barely at all.’

Li said, ‘Well enough to advise him on where to purchase a reproduction sword.’

‘Only because he asked. Which is the one time I ever had any contact with him. Someone at the embassy recommended me to him. So he sought me out, and I pointed him in the direction of a dealer in the Underground City. But that was months ago. I haven’t even seen him since.’

‘So you have no idea if he was successful in finding the sword he was looking for?’

Michael shook his head. ‘No.’

‘But you are aware that his is one of the murders we are investigating?’

He sighed. ‘Yes, I am.’

‘How do you know?’

This time Michael looked at Margaret again. ‘Sophie told me,’ he said.

‘And Sophie is …?’ Li asked.

Margaret said, ‘Sophie Daum. She’s the assistant RSO at the embassy. You met her this morning.’

‘Oh. Yes,’ Li said.

The walkie-talkie on Michael’s belt crackled. A voice said, ‘Michael, are you there?’

Michael raised it to his face. ‘Yeah, Dave.’

‘That’s your make-up call.’

‘OK. Be there in a minute.’ He clipped it back on his belt. ‘Is there anything else?’

‘Yes,’ Li said. But he took his time in asking. ‘Are you aware how Professor Yue was murdered?’

‘Yes,’ Michael said. His expression now was resentful, and he was volunteering no more than he was asked.

Li remained impassive. ‘Well, would you like to tell me?’

‘He was decapitated.’

‘How do you know this?’

‘Jesus,’ Michael said, his exasperation finally getting the better of him. ‘Everyone in the department knew what had happened to him. Apparently the place was crawling with cops for days. It was common knowledge.’ He paused and looked at Margaret. ‘Besides, I saw the photographs.’

Li was startled. ‘What photographs?’ And Margaret blushed to the roots of her hair.

‘The photographs that Margaret took to Xi’an with her.’

Li turned an icy stare on Margaret, and clenched his jaw. She couldn’t meet his eye. He said to Michael, ‘Can you tell me where you were and what you were doing the night Yuan Tao was murdered?’

‘Oh, for God’s sake, Li—’ Margaret wheeled on him, patience at breaking point.

But Michael interrupted, ‘Why don’t you ask Margaret?’ he said.

Margaret was momentarily perplexed, and then with a huge sense of relief, realisation dawned. ‘The pre-production party at the Ambassador’s residence,’ she said.

‘As I recall you left about ten,’ Michael said. ‘The party went on until about eleven thirty, and then a bunch of us went on to the Mexican Wave bar in Dongdaqiao Lu. It must have been about two when we left.’ He turned his focus briefly on Li. ‘Frankly, I resent these questions, Detective.’ Then he turned back to Margaret. ‘And I’m disappointed that you should even think that I could have any connection with this.’

‘I don’t,’ Margaret said flatly. She turned to Li. ‘I think we should go.’

Michael’s walkie-talkie crackled again. ‘Michael?’ The voice was insistent.

‘On my way,’ he said, and with a curt nod he headed back along the top of the wall.

Li and Margaret stood for a long time saying nothing, before finally Margaret turned away to lean on the crenellation and stare out bleakly over the sun-scorched valley.

‘You let him see confidential photographic evidence?’ Li’s voice was very level, but there was no mistaking the anger in it.

She closed her eyes and gritted her teeth. She was in the wrong and knew it. ‘I didn’t mean to.’

‘Oh, I see,’ Li said. ‘You just happened to show him the photographs by accident?’

‘Actually, yes.’ She spun to face him. ‘I’d been going through all the evidence in my hotel room. The stuff was spread all over the bed. You might remember, I phoned you. You more or less told me to fuck off.’ Li did remember. He had spent several hours regretting it afterwards. She said. ‘Michael came to fetch me. We were going to dinner. I’d dropped some stuff on the floor and he helped me pick it up. That’s when he saw the photograph. And he was pretty shaken up by it.’

‘Not enough to spoil your night out, though.’

It took a great effort of will to stop herself from slapping him again. ‘You bastard,’ she said. ‘All that stuff about not letting personal matters cloud professional judgement? Crap. You kicked me off like an old goddamn shoe. OK, I’ve had to accept that. But you can’t stand to see me with anyone else, can you?’ She glared at him. ‘Well, congratulations. You’ve probably just ruined my relationship with Michael. And for what? To confirm what we both always knew. That he has absolutely no involvement in this whatsoever.’ And she turned on her heel and marched angrily away.

He stood for a moment, reeling from the force of her tirade. Of course, he knew she was right. Zimmerman’s connection to the killings was tenuous at best. And Li wondered exactly why he had wanted to come out here and press those questions about Yuan and Professor Yue. Was he really letting jealousy cloud his judgement?

Margaret was halfway across the square, pushing her way through the mass of extras, before he caught up with her. He fell into step beside her, and they crossed the little stone bridge that the Red Guards had smashed thirty-four years earlier.

‘So what now?’ he said.

It was a long time before she responded. Finally she said, ‘I think it’s probably about time we talked to those people with a motive for wanting to kill Yuan Tao.’

‘And who would that be?’

She stopped, and he was a couple of paces past her before he realised it, and could turn back. ‘Who do you think?’ she asked contemptuously.

She clearly was not going to share her thoughts with him, and he realised that he had not given it any serious consideration. The discovery of the diary, tracing the vendor of the weapon, the connection with Zimmerman, had all distracted him from focusing on the question that the diary itself had thrown into sharp focus by revealing Yuan as the killer of the other three. Who had a motive for killing Yuan? And even as the thought formed, the answer seemed obvious. ‘The remaining members of the Revolt-to-the-End Brigade.’

‘Congratulations,’ said Margaret. ‘You have just won a sunshine holiday for two in Florida.’ And she marched off down the paved and cobbled walkway.

Li hurried after her. ‘But how would they have known about the other three being murdered?’

Margaret breathed her exasperation. ‘Oh, for heaven’s sake, don’t give me that stuff about murders not appearing in the papers. You and I both know just how efficient the Chinese grapevine is. There’s no way those three didn’t know about their old Red Guard pals getting whacked. And it wouldn’t take too much intelligence to work out who was next.’

V

Margaret sat staring at the computer screen, aware of the eyes that flickered in her direction in constant curiosity. Most of the girls in the computer room had probably never seen a yangguizi this close up before. And here was a particularly good example of the species. Fair, curling hair, startling blue eyes, pale freckled skin. There was a strange hush in the room, broken only by the soft chatter of keyboards and the occasional giggle.

Li was upstairs somewhere taking a meeting of his detectives. Full co-operation, it seemed, stopped short of admitting her to the holy sanctum of the inner circle. But since virtually none of the detectives spoke any English, Margaret was not inclined to push the point. She had asked instead for the use of a computer with access to the Internet.

Li’s attitude towards her since their return from Ding Ling had been cool and formal. But there had been the faintest tinge of a smile in his expression when he took her to the computer room and asked one of the girls to vacate a computer for her use. It had not taken her long to find out why. Every pull-down menu was in Chinese, an incomprehensible collection of character pictograms that left her struggling to find her way about a computer screen that was otherwise very familiar. Finally she had found the Internet Explorer icon, clicked on it with her mouse, and found herself dumped on to the home page of an equally impenetrable Chinese server. She clicked on the Stop symbol to prevent the computer downloading more Chinese, and typed in www.altavista.com, and was quickly transported to the comfortingly familiar territory of the main page of the Alta Vista search engine. She typed in tameshi giri. Less than half a minute later, the search for references on the Internet to Tameshi Giri threw up more than twenty thousand Web pages, links to the first ten of which came up on the screen.

She shook her head. It would take her hours to sift through. She thought for a moment, and then clicked in the New Search box and typed in Yuan Tao. Her request was fired off across the ether, through a mind-boggling inter-connection of telephone lines and computers around the world, returning a few seconds later with a response. To her astonishment and dismay there were links to nearly one hundred and sixty thousand Web pages. She scanned the first ten which came up on the screen. The yuan and tao all seemed to be reversed. There was a link to a place called Tao Yuan in Taiwan, another to a Web page at an American university, several more to pages on an ancient Chinese poet called Tao Yuan-ming. But, then, at the head of the list, the best and only exact match for her query: Yuan Tao. It was a link through to a news-sheet on Japanese martial sword arts.

‘Yes!’ she said out loud, as her mood swung immediately from despair to elation. And she was aware of half a dozen heads turning towards her. She smiled, embarrassed, around the quizzical and astonished faces, then turned her concentration quickly back to the screen. She clicked on the link, and her computer whirred and chattered as it downloaded the contents of the North California Review of Japanese Sword Arts. Somewhere in here was a reference to Yuan Tao. She scrolled down the pages, through adverts for genuine Japanese cutting swords, an account of a Tameshi Giri competition in Kyoto, Japan, during Shogatsu in 1997, the list of winners at the 34th Annual Vancouver Kendo Taikai … Margaret stopped scrolling and backed up. There it was. Yuan Tao. Joint second place in the category Forty-one Years and Over. At the foot of the list were brief biographies of the winners.

Yuan Tao, according to his notes, had joined a San Francisco-based Kendo club affiliated to the Pacific North West Kendo Federation in 1995, later switching membership to a club in Washington DC. He had taken part in several competitions, achieving extraordinary results in a very short period. One judge at a competition had described him as ‘the most focused competitor I have seen in a very long time’.

Margaret sat back and wondered what Yuan had been focused on. Had it been his role as executioner of the Red Guards who had driven his father to a premature death? And what images had he held in his mind as he practised his Tameshi Giri on those rolled up bundles of straw? She shook her head in wonder at the extraordinary lengths he had gone to in order to exact revenge for his father’s murder — for that’s clearly how he saw it. He had planned it coldly, meticulously, practising the means of execution until he had achieved a high degree of expertise, changing the course of his life, following a new career plan that would bring him back, in anonymity, to the Old Country and his old home town. Revenge, she had always heard it said, was a dish best served cold. Yuan Tao had placed his carefully in the freezer and brought it halfway around the world to dish it out with chilling effect.

But that revenge had been cut suddenly, and unexpectedly, short. Someone had done to Yuan as he had been intent on doing to others. Someone who knew in exact detail how Yuan had dispatched his first three victims. Could it really have been one of the remaining three Red Guards? Certainly, they would have had the motive. But how could any of them possibly have known the details of Yuan’s modus operandi well enough to have replicated the murders so precisely? She had glibly thrown at Li the idea of Yuan being murdered by one of his intended victims, but wondered now just how well it would stand up to detailed scrutiny.

‘Are you finished?’ Li’s voice startled her out of her reverie.

She turned to find him standing in the doorway. ‘Just a moment,’ she said, and she selected Print, and crossed the room to the printer as it spewed out two copies of the half-dozen pages of the North California Review of Japanese Sword Arts.

Li appeared beside her. ‘What’s this?’

‘Report on a sword arts competition in Vancouver two years ago. Yuan Tao came second in his category. Apparently he took up the practice of the Japanese sword art of Kendo shortly after he got his mother’s diary in 1995. Seems he was pretty good at it by the time he got here.’ She handed the copies to Li. ‘Not much doubt now about Yuan being our man.’

‘None,’ Li said. ‘That bloody fingerprint in Bai Qiyu’s office? It was Yuan’s.’

Margaret clicked her tongue. ‘That’s it, then. We’ve got motive, opportunity, a whole bunch of circumstantial evidence — the blue dust, the wine, the sword expertise — and now evidence that puts him at one of the crime scenes. Enough to get a conviction in any court.’

‘Except that someone beat us to it and took the law into their own hands. Here,’ he handed her a loose and weighty folder and turned towards the door.

She headed after him, struggling not to spill its paper content all over the floor. ‘What’s this?’

He strode off down the corridor. ‘All the latest updates for your records,’ he called over his shoulder. ‘Transcripts of all the interviews we conducted with teachers and former pupils of Yuan’s old school, a translation of the diary, profiles on the remaining Red Guards …’

‘Could you not just have had these sent over to the embassy?’

Li turned at the top of the stairs and there was something in his smugness that infuriated her. ‘I wanted to deliver them personally into your hands, so no one can ever accuse me of failing to keep you fully informed.’ He started off down the stairs.

‘Where are you going?’ A bunch of papers slipped from the folder and fluttered down the steps in his wake. But he didn’t turn.

‘We.’ His voice reverberated around the stairwell.

‘We what?’ she gasped in frustration as she tried to retrieve the dropped sheets.

‘Where are we going.’ His voice rose up to her as he started on the next flight down.

She picked up the last of the papers and ran after him. ‘OK, where are we going?’ She caught up with him at the foot of the stairs, the file clutched to her bosom, arms wrapped around it. She was breathing hard.

He stopped and tucked a copy of the computer print-out into the top of the folder. ‘To see Pauper,’ he said.

‘Who’s Pauper?’

But he seemed lost in thought for a moment before tentatively meeting her eye. ‘You might as well know, I did a check on Michael Zimmerman’s whereabouts during the first three murders.’

‘Jesus Christ!’ Margaret exploded.

Li said, ‘Chinese police work requires meticulous attention to detail, Dr Campbell.’ He paused, but before she could tell him what she thought of his Chinese police work, he added, ‘You’ll be pleased to know he wasn’t even in the country when the first two murders took place.’

And he went out into the glare of afternoon sunshine. She caught up with him again at the Jeep. The few moments it took allowed her temper to cool just a little, enough at least for good sense to prevail. There was no point in pursuing it. It was over. ‘So, who’s Pauper?’ she asked again.

‘One of the Red Guards.’ He opened the driver’s door and got in behind the wheel, then watched as she struggled to keep her folder intact and open the passenger door at the same time.

‘Don’t help or anything,’ she said as she finally slipped into the passenger seat and unloaded the files on to the floor behind her. ‘So you think this Pauper person’s a potential suspect?’

He shook his head. ‘Not a chance.’

‘Why not?’

‘She’s blind.’