The Ghost Marriage

Chapter Six

Li and Margaret drove in silence, south-west out of Beijing on the G109. Meilin’s parents sat in the back of the Jeep, Jiang Jin with his arm around his wife. But there was no consoling her. Li had broken the news to them that afternoon, and Jiang Ning had barely stopped crying since. Her eyes were red raw. There was only one final act now to be played out in the life and death of their daughter. And that was the identification of her body.

It was dark by the time they reached the cluster of houses among the trees at the end of a rough dirt track leading from the road. Li parked in a dusty square. These were poor rural houses with thin brick walls and low roofs, huddled around a badly equipped village store. Goats tied to a stand of willow trees raised their heads and bah-ed into the night. They heard the snuffling of pigs, and smelled them before they saw them.

Li guided the little group up a narrow track between crumbling walls towards a halo of light that broke the darkness ahead. Several Public Security vehicles and a white forensics van were assembled around the entrance to a long, low house beside a rectangular wall that enclosed a hundred square metres of wildly overgrown garden.

They passed through a moongate, and the officer standing guard nodded solemnly. Beyond, they could see where the vegetation had been beaten down and the earth freshly disturbed. The area was enclosed by white canvas stretched between wooden posts, and lit by arc lamps. Four men in white Tyvek suits stood around leaning on the spades they had used to uncover the shallow graves. All chatter ceased as Li led the girl’s parents to the graveside. Margaret stayed behind, leaving a respectful distance.

Li nodded to the nearest white suit, and the man stepped down into the hole where two coffins lay side by side. His shadow fell across the first of them as he prised open the top. Li heard Jiang Ning gasp as the decaying corpse of a young man was exposed to the full glare of the lamps. The maggots had already started to eat his face, which had taken on a ghoulish look, the flesh of his eyes, nose, and mouth receding, a ghastly grimace revealing long yellow teeth.

As the second lid was levered free, Jiang Ning howled: a piercing, desolate sound that came from deep in her throat and sent a glacial chill through them all, in spite of the heat.

Meilin’s body had not achieved the same degree of decomposition. She had been alive, it seemed, at least until the day before the minghun, several days longer than her ghost husband. But there was a strange lividity about her face. It seemed, if anything, slightly more distended than his. But there was no doubting who she was. Her mother turned away, burying her face in her husband’s chest to suppress her tears. He put comforting arms around her and closed his eyes.

Li became aware of Margaret at his side and half-turned. She was looking down into the dead girl’s coffin, and he saw that for once the professional detachment of the pathologist was missing. Moonlight flashed in tear-filled eyes.

‘I want to do the autopsy,’ she said, her voice barely a whisper.