The Killing Room

I

What Li found hard to understand was the calm with which Sun Jie had identified the mutilated and decomposed body of his wife. He had stood staring at her for several minutes, unaffected apparently by the stench or by the sight of her. His eyes had closed briefly, then he had simply nodded and walked from the room. In the car park, where spots of rain had begun to fall again, Sun Jie had turned to Li and said, ‘So now I know she is at peace I can be at peace also and know that she has moved on to a better place. For she was a good person.’ And for a moment Li had found himself envying that simple faith, that the end of life on earth was not the end of life. It just all seemed too easy, somehow.

He stood now on the concourse at Hongqiao Airport and felt the warmth of Mei-Ling standing close to him. He was excited by the thought of seeing Xinxin, but apprehensive about Margaret’s return. He knew she would not respond well to Mei-Ling being with him, but he was determined not to give in to her petty jealousies. He only wished that in some way it was possible for him to separate his private and professional lives. And then he remembered again those eighteen women who had been slaughtered in Shanghai, their husbands and children, fathers and mothers, and the thought put his own problems back into their proper perspective.

Xinxin saw Li immediately, standing among the waiting crowds on the other side of the Arrivals gate, and she went running to leap up into his arms. Margaret smiled at the sight of the two of them together. Li liked to present an image of himself as tough and unyielding, a hard man, with his flat-top crewcut and his square, jutting jaw. Margaret knew him, in reality, to be a big softie. But the smile on her face froze as Li turned, with Xinxin in his arms, to introduce her to the woman standing on his right. Mei-Ling was all smiles and sweetness, shaking Xinxin’s hand and then delving into her purse for a pack of candy. Xinxin’s initial shyness immediately evaporated and lights shone in her eyes. How easily the affections of a child could be bought. Margaret remembered that in her panic at seeing the man with the hare-lip in Beijing, she had forgotten to buy the mints for Xinxin.

Li put the child back down, and Mei-Ling spoke rapidly to her, eliciting an immediate smiling response. She held out her hand which Xinxin took without hesitation, and the two of them headed off towards the shops on the far side of the concourse. Li turned self-consciously to meet Margaret. Margaret thrust Xinxin’s case into his chest. ‘Maybe Mei-Ling would like to carry her bag for her as well.’ Li’s heart sank, but Margaret wasn’t finished yet. ‘Did you have to bring her with you?’

Li sighed. ‘I do not have transport here. She offered me a lift. All right?’

‘No, not really. But then, I don’t suppose it matters what I feel.’

‘Look, I thought after last night all that jealousy stuff would be behind us.’

A thousand angry responses ran through Margaret’s mind. About Li’s insensitivity in bringing Mei-Ling to the airport, about last night changing nothing as far as Mei-Ling was concerned — or Li, apparently. About how she’d just spent a gruelling day poking over the remains of a rotting corpse as a favour to Li, and how the least she could expect was some time alone with him and Xinxin. But all she said was, ‘It is.’ Then, ‘When do you want my report on the autopsy?’

He was surprised by the sudden change of subject. ‘In the morning,’ he said. ‘You can brief Mei-Ling and myself, and then we’ll brief a full meeting of detectives at Section Two.’

‘Why can’t I brief the meeting myself?’ she asked.

‘Because not enough of them speak English, and to have to translate everything would just be a distraction.’

‘So now I’m a distraction as well. I suppose that’s another one to add to the list,’ Margaret said. She saw the annoyance in Li’s eyes and knew that she was doing nothing to win back his affections. If anything, her continuing hostility was having exactly the opposite effect. But she couldn’t help herself. It was a natural response to the constant hurt — the need to hurt back. She understood Li’s reasoning for not involving her in the full briefing. It made absolute sense. But it only served to increase her sense of exclusion and underline the fact that being Chinese was like being part of a very exclusive club, a club of which she could never be a member. She glanced over to where Mei-Ling and Xinxin were sharing a joke at a toy stand at the shops, and felt her insecurity wrap itself around her like a blanket. No matter how well she and Xinxin got on together, they would always speak different languages. With Mei-Ling, communication would be easy for Xinxin, not an issue. For a moment Margaret caught Mei-Ling’s eye as she glanced towards Margaret and Li, and Margaret knew that Mei-Ling would try to take Xinxin from her as well. And that she would probably succeed. Margaret turned back to Li. ‘Shall I come back to the hotel to tuck Xinxin in?’

Li shook his head. ‘No, not tonight. I’m taking her to meet her babysitter. They’ll be sharing a room next to mine.’

Margaret tried again. ‘You said she’ll be going to kindergarten here. I could take her there in the mornings and pick her up again in the afternoons.’

Li shifted uncomfortably. ‘Actually, Mei-Ling will be running her to kindergarten in the mornings — or delegating another officer to do it if she can’t.’

‘How very kind of her,’ Margaret said, and Li felt the sting of her tone. But Margaret was losing the will to fight. ‘Look, why don’t I just get a taxi back to my hotel? Then I won’t have to take you out of your way.’ And she pushed past Li and headed for the exit, forgetting that she had meant to speak to him about the man with the hare-lip.

II

‘You look like someone who could do with a drink.’

Margaret turned and found Geller standing at her side. She was perched on a stool in the bar of the Peace Hotel leaning over an empty glass. As usual the bar was deserted. She said, ‘I thought you’d never ask.’

He slipped on to the stool beside her and signalled the waitress. She shimmied along the bar and he ordered a beer and another vodka tonic for Margaret. ‘You look tired.’

‘I am. I’ve been to Beijing and back today.’

‘Do you mind if I ask what for?’ He lit a cigarette and ran a hand back through his mop of unruly hair.

‘No.’

He waited. ‘And …?’

‘And what?’

‘What were you doing in Beijing?’

‘I said I didn’t mind if you asked. I didn’t say I’d tell you.’

He smiled wryly and rubbed a hand across his unshaven jaw. It made a soft rasping sound. ‘Guess I must be slipping.’

Margaret looked at him. ‘Well, you’re certainly not shaving.’

‘I hate shaving,’ he said. ‘If I use a razor I always cut myself. If I use an electric shaver it makes me break out in a rash.’

‘You’re such a sensitive soul.’ She reached out and ran her fingers lightly over his silvery stubble. ‘Having sex with you must be like making love to a sheet of sandpaper.’

‘Hey,’ he said, ‘did you say having sex with me? I mean, is that a thought that even crossed your mind?’ She laughed and he said, ‘Listen, lend me your razor and I’ll shave right now.’

She laughed again, and somewhere at the back of her mind she wondered what it would be like making love to Jack Geller. Less intense, she thought, than with Li Yan. But more fun, perhaps. At least she and Jack could share a joke, have a laugh without stopping to choose their words and wonder if they were the right ones. ‘Sorry,’ she said. ‘All my blades are blunt.’

He said, ‘You could always use your tongue. It’s pretty sharp.’

‘Too sharp for my own good,’ she said. ‘People get too close to me I cut them.’ It was difficult to keep the bitterness out of her voice.

He looked at her for a moment. ‘You’re not a very happy lady.’

‘Is it that obvious?’

He shrugged. ‘You do a pretty good job of hiding it. Most of the time.’

‘But not, of course, to a seasoned student of human nature like yourself.’

‘Naturally.’ He paused and took a long pull at his beer, then studied her for a moment or two as she sipped at her vodka. ‘Have you had dinner?’

‘I did last night,’ she said.

He stubbed out his cigarette, slipped off his stool and drained the last of his beer. ‘Come on, then.’

‘Where?’

‘To a place that’s got the best view of Shanghai in the whole city.’

Shanghai opened up below them. The Huangpu River, reflecting lights from both sides, snaked through the heart of it, the Bund glowing along one side of its length like a bejewelled glowworm, the lights of Pudong on the other, reaching into a sky crisscrossed with coloured searchlights dissecting and bisecting the night. Immediately beneath them a Japanese cruise ship, from here no bigger than a model boat, was docked at the International Passenger Terminal, its lights blazing out across the water, its passengers returning from an exploration of the city’s commercial pleasures. From the twenty-eighth floor of the Shanghai Bund International Tower at number ninety-nine Huangpu Road, the semi-circular sweep of floor-to-ceiling window in the bar of the American Club gave on to an unparalleled view of the city. The bar curved around the central sweep of the window, and Margaret and Geller sat at it in comfortably upholstered bar chairs which looked past what appeared to be two very small barmen to the view beyond.

‘Why,’ Margaret said, ‘are all the barmen here so vertically challenged?’

Geller frowned, for a moment not understanding, then he burst out laughing. ‘Dwarf barmen,’ he said choking on his cigarette, and both barmen glared at him, not amused. ‘They’re not really midgets,’ Geller said. ‘It’s a sunken bar.’

‘Why would anyone want to sink a bar?’ Margaret asked.

‘I dunno. I guess so that when you’re sitting at it the bartender’s looking straight into your eyes. Anyway, listen, vertically challenged or not, these guys make great vodka martinis, and they got olives here the size of apples.’

‘Is that an offer?’

‘You bet.’

They ordered two vodka martinis which each came with three enormous olives on cocktail sticks. Margaret took a sip and nodded approvingly. ‘You’re right, they are good.’ On top of her vodka tonics, she felt the alcohol soothe away her tension and began to wonder vaguely if she was heading for a drink problem. She cast an eye distractedly over a large menu handed to her by the maître d’ from the restaurant next door, and realised with some pleasure that the food was very definitely not Chinese. ‘I’ll just have the roast salmon and some salad,’ she said. Geller ordered a steak and a bottle of Californian Zinfandel.

When the waiter had taken their order, Geller looked at Margaret thoughtfully for some moments. ‘So,’ he said, ‘what progress in the battle of American girl versus Chinese girl for the favours of Chinese guy?’

She smiled and sucked in more vodka martini. ‘No competition,’ she said. ‘The Chinese girl’s winning hands down. In fact, it looks like she’ll even get the kid as well.’

‘The kid?’ Geller frowned. ‘You two have a kid?’

Margaret laughed. ‘I entertained thoughts of children once. But I got talked out of that quickly enough.’ She hesitated, then explained to Geller about Li’s niece and the fact that she had instantly become a new battleground in the fight for affections. She shook her head. ‘The thing is, I’m not sure I care any more. If he doesn’t want me, if he wants her, then she can have him. Kid and all.’

‘Only it’s not true,’ Geller said. She turned to find him looking at her earnestly.

‘What isn’t?’

‘That you don’t care.’

‘And you’d know.’

He shrugged. ‘Like you said, I’m a seasoned student of human nature.’

‘Which of course makes you an expert on fucked-up pathologists with a predilection for self-pity and alcohol.’

He let her bitterness wash over him and added a dash of his own. ‘No,’ he said. ‘But when it comes to fucked-up people with a predilection for self-pity and alcohol, I’m the world’s foremost authority.’ He paused and smiled sadly, adding, in case she had missed the point, ‘Being one myself.’

She looked at him curiously, and for a moment that curiosity made her forget about herself. ‘What are you doing here, Jack?’ she said. ‘What are you running away from?’

He laughed. ‘Oh, I’m not running away from anything. I wish I could, but I wouldn’t know where to run to.’

‘What about home?’

‘This is it. Shanghai. That’s home. I don’t have another one.’

She frowned. ‘How come?’

‘I guess, like Springstein says, I was born in the USA.’ He chuckled. ‘But I never spent much time there. My folks moved around the world. Africa, Middle-East, South-East Asia. My old man was in the ball-bearing business. You’d be amazed how much money there is in ball-bearings. Anyway, I managed to see the inside of just about every American school on every continent you can think of. Just long enough to get to know the name of the kid at the next desk, and then off again. And then my dad goes and dies on us. In Thailand. And my mom gets offered this job in Shanghai. So she flies him back to the US, puts him in the ground in Connecticut somewhere, and then heads for Shanghai. I’ve spent more of my life here than anywhere else in the world.’

‘How did you get into journalism?’

‘Oh, that was an accident. Amazing really how little of our lives we plan for ourselves.’ He lit a cigarette. Down below them, at the International Passenger Terminal, the Japanese cruise liner was pulling out into the deep navigation channel, mid-stream. It looked like a floating Christmas tree as it headed slowly downriver towards the estuary. Geller’s eyes seemed fixed on it for several moments before he said, ‘My mom met this Chinese guy here. Got married again. I’m in my mid-teens and probably a bit difficult, so they send me off to the States to go to college.’ He shook his head, lost in some distant memory. ‘I hated it. What was I supposed to do there? I didn’t know anyone. Didn’t have any friends. No family — at least, not any that I knew. And then, when I finish college, I see this one-year course in journalism advertised in Boston. I sail through it. For the first time in my life somebody actually thought I might be good at something. I spoke fluent Chinese. So after a couple of years as a cub on the Globe, it wasn’t hard to get a job stringing back here for a whole bunch of US publications. It was like coming home. I’ve been here ever since.’

‘What about your mom. Is she still here?’

The brightness in his eyes dulled and he lowered his head. ‘She’s dead,’ he said. ‘So’s my stepdad. Just little ol’ me left.’ He looked up and forced a smile. ‘Goddamn it,’ he said. ‘I could’ve wished for better company.’

‘Oh, I don’t know,’ Margaret said. ‘I’m quite enjoying it.’

He looked at her very seriously for a moment. ‘I come with a lot of baggage,’ he said.

‘Don’t we all.’ She raised her glass. ‘To misfits the world over,’ she said.

He grinned and chinked her glass, and they both sipped from the large conical glasses. ‘So listen,’ he said. ‘You want to give the kid a treat? Put one over on the Chinese chick?’

Margaret grinned and shook her head. ‘I’d be happy just to make Xinxin happy.’

‘Then take her to Tiantan Traffic Park.’

‘What the hell’s that?’

He leaned forward, demonstrating with his hands, a boyish enthusiasm about him. ‘It’s a great place. Out on the west side. You’d never know it was there if you didn’t know it was there — if you know what I mean?’

She smiled. ‘I think so.’

‘It’s just a small park, but it’s laid out with miniature roads and sidewalks and replicas of famous buildings in Shanghai. There are traffic lights at the intersections, and little overhead bridges. Folks take their kids there to teach them the rules of the road from an early age. They rent little battery-powered automobiles, and the kids drive them around, with mom or dad sitting in. I tell you, the kids love it. They just love it.’

‘Sounds neat,’ Margaret said, and it never occurred to her to ask him how he knew about it.

The maître d’ came to tell them that their table was ready, and they followed him through to a large dining room with windows down one side and an elaborate buffet down the other. He seated them at a table by the window, and they saw the Japanese cruise liner just before it disappeared round the curve in the river beyond the Yangpu Bridge. Margaret put her hand over his. ‘Thank you for this,’ she said. ‘You don’t know how much I needed it.’

He shrugged, and was suddenly self-concious. After a moment’s hesitation, he said, ‘Just don’t ever forget why, Margaret.’

She frowned. ‘What do you mean?’

‘You said it yourself the other day. You’re just work to me.’

Margaret felt unaccountably disappointed. ‘I thought maybe I’d become a little more than that.’

Geller said, ‘Even if you had, I couldn’t allow that to get in the way.’ And she saw that he was absolutely serious, and felt the first stirrings of anger with him.

‘So it’s all right for you to bring your work to the dinner table.’ She snorted. ‘You wouldn’t be very happy if I did.’

‘That’s exactly what I want you to do, Margaret,’ he said. He took a deep breath. ‘I want to know what’s happening, what progress you’re making with your investigation. You know that.’

She wondered why she should feel such a sense of betrayal. After all, he had made it clear from the start it was what he wanted. But she really did think they had moved on from there. ‘And you think you can buy my confidence with dinner and a vodka martini?’

He made the smallest of shrugs. Perhaps it was an apology. ‘It’s important to me, Margaret.’ And there was a strange intensity about him.

A waiter was endeavouring to spread a starched white napkin in Margaret’s lap. She took it from him and folded it on the table. She sighed and said, ‘Well, I’m sorry, Jack, I don’t come that cheap.’ She stood up. ‘But thanks for the offer.’ And she turned and made her way back through to the bar and out to the elevators, leaving Geller sitting on his own, a forlorn figure with a medium rare steak in front of him, a piece of roast salmon on the plate opposite, and a very empty feeling inside.

III

‘Jiang Baofu? The medical student?’ Margaret was taken aback. ‘You don’t really believe he did it?’

Nine small tables had been pushed together to make one long one in the centre of the room. Margaret sat at one side of it facing Li and Mei-Ling on the other. The skulls of murder and suicide victims watched them from behind the glass doors of a display cabinet at one end of the room. At the opposite end, pieces of human organs hung suspended in jars of preservative: a section of stomach showing the hole where a knife had entered; a bullet hole in a lung. Along the wall facing the window hung a profusion of velvet banners, awards made for police bravery and success in criminal detection.

Li said, ‘Do you not think he would be capable of performing these procedures?’ Jiang had arrived back at his apartment the previous night, as forensics were completing their search of the place. He had been arrested and spent the night in custody and was now sitting in an interview room downstairs awaiting interrogation.

‘Fifth year at med school? Specialising in surgery? He would certainly have the skills. What’s his motive?’

‘Ah …’ Mei-Ling said, ‘… the American obsession with motive.’

‘Okay,’ Margaret said levelly, determined not to be ruffled, ‘what evidence do you have against him? Other than the fact that he’s a bit creepy and was the night watchman at the building site.’

‘Everything we have learned about him would lead us to believe that Jiang may be … mmm …’ Mei-Ling searched for the right word, ‘… unbalanced. You said yourself we should be looking for a psycho surgeon.’ She said the words with a tone.

Margaret raised a sceptical eyebrow. ‘The fact that he might be a little odd hardly constitutes evidence. And, I mean, the collection of evidence, that’s the Chinese way, isn’t it? The painstaking piecing together of the facts, bit by bit. Surely you must have some if you’ve arrested him?’

Li said, ‘His medical background, the testimony of his tutors, his unique access to the site where the bodies were found — all of these things justify our bringing him in for questioning.’

‘Ah, yes,’ Margaret said. ‘“Helping the police with their inquiries.” That’s what the British police say when they’re struggling for evidence, isn’t it?’ She clasped her hands in front of her on the table. ‘So what now? Beat a confession out of him? That how it goes? I mean, why bother with the autopsies? Why bother trying to identify the victims when you can just pull someone off the street and pin a confession on their chest?’ She knew she was being unreasonable, but she was enjoying herself. Enjoying their discomfort. ‘That’s what the Chinese police are always being accused of, isn’t it?’ She paused for effect. ‘So is it true?’

Li kept his anger buttoned down and, after a very long moment of tense silence, said coldly, ‘Perhaps you would like to tell us what you discovered in Beijing.’

‘Ah, so now back to the evidence,’ Margaret said brightly, opening the file in front of her. ‘Good. Makes me think there might be some point in my being here after all.’

‘And you have given us so very much to go on so far,’ Mei-Ling said, her voice heavy with sarcasm.

Margaret looked at her steadily. ‘I can only tell you what’s there, Miss Nien,’ she said. ‘I can’t make it up for your convenience. Although I have been able to provide you with sufficient evidence to identify two of the victims.’

‘Three,’ Li said. Margaret looked at him for elucidation. ‘The girl with the stress fractures in her foot turned out to be an acrobat. She went missing three months ago.’

‘Well, that’s progress. And, of course, there was also the identification made through fingerprints,’ Margaret said, and she turned back to her notes. ‘I’ll give you a full report in due course, but you can take it as read that the girl in Beijing was murdered by the same person who killed the girls in Shanghai. The evidence is overwhelming, from the entry cut to the toxicology.’

‘But there are still major differences,’ Li said.

Margaret said, ‘Yes, there are. Not all of the organs were removed, and those that were, were found with the body.’

‘Can you explain that?’ Mei-Ling asked.

Margaret shook her head. ‘No. I can only give you the facts, and you can draw your own conclusions.’ She paused. ‘The girl was a junkie, a heroin addict. One of several things your pathologist missed. I believe the killer only discovered this after he had removed the heart. And it was at that point that he appears to have abandoned the procedure.’

Li frowned, forgetting for the moment the animosity around the table. ‘Why would discovering she was a junkie change anything?’

‘Risk of infection,’ Mei-Ling said suddenly. ‘She could have been infected with anything from hepatitis to AIDS.’ She thought about it for a moment. ‘Which would make her organs unusable as well.’

Margaret nodded acquiescence. ‘If you chose to believe that organ theft was the purpose of the exercise, yes.’

Li said, ‘Tell me why it would not make sense to keep these girls alive to remove their organs. I mean, the organs would be fresher that way, would they not?’

‘Not if you killed the victims and removed the organs immediately,’ Margaret said. ‘Keeping them alive would be a completely unnecessary complication.’ She shook her head. ‘And, anyway, why would they only take the organs of women?’

None of them had an answer to that. As the evidence accumulated, it made no more sense to them than when they had started collecting it. Mei-Ling said, ‘And no clues to her identity?’

Margaret pulled the x-rays of the victim’s jaw from a large brown envelope. ‘Only her teeth,’ she said, ‘and some pretty expensive gold foil restoration.’

‘We checked those out in Beijing,’ Li said.

‘But not in Shanghai,’ Margaret said. ‘Now we know the murders are connected, it’s quite possible the girl you found in Beijing came from here.’ She slipped the x-rays back in the envelope and pushed it across the table to Mei-Ling. ‘Worth checking out?’

Mei-Ling gave a curt nod, then glanced at Li. ‘I will put Dai on to it.’ And she got up and left the room.

In the silence that followed her departure, Li lit a cigarette and blew smoke at the ceiling. Neither Li nor Margaret knew what to say. Margaret was already beginning to regret her petulance. She was driving herself remorselessly and uncontrollably on the road to self-destruction. Li had finally lost patience. And anger with Margaret was a good way of ameliorating his own sense of guilt. But still there were no words. It seemed to both of them then, sitting alone at that large table under the glare of naked fluorescent lamps and the sightless gaze of the yellowing skulls in the cabinet, that their relationship was finally over. And there was something inestimably sad about that, about the loss of the warmth and friendship and humour they had shared, the deep well of emotions that had sustained them for so long. Margaret wondered where these things went. How they could be, and then not be? Had she and Li just thrown them away? Or was it Margaret who had done the damage all on her own, with her petty jealousy and her fiery temper? She picked at a corner of her folder and could not bring herself to meet his eyes. It was extraordinary how articulate the silence between them was. Finally she said, ‘It looks like my involvement here is just about done. It’ll take me a couple of days to write up my reports, then …’ Then what? She had no idea. She looked up, finally. ‘I’d like to spend some time with Xinxin.’ Why? she wondered. To say goodbye?

Li nodded. ‘Sure.’

‘I’ll pick her up from kindergarten then.’

Li said, ‘I will let Mei-Ling know.’

And Margaret felt a brief flare of anger. Why did everything need that woman’s approval? But she said nothing, and let the anger seep out of her. What was the point?

‘And maybe we should talk,’ Li said.

‘About what?’

He shrugged. ‘Things.’ A pause. ‘Us.’

Margaret wondered if there was any point in that either. ‘Let’s meet for a drink at my hotel, then. Around eight?’ He nodded, and she said, ‘I’ll try and stay awake this time.’

Jiang Baofu sat back in his chair, legs crossed and stretched out in front of him, picking bits of food from between his teeth with an old matchstick. He did not appear unduly concerned at his predicament. And when Li and Mei-Ling came in he made no effort to move. ‘Hey,’ he said lazily. ‘What’s happening? Why am I here?’

The two detectives drew up chairs on the opposite side of the table. Mei-Ling said with unexpected aggression, ‘We want some answers from you, you little shit!’ Both Li and Jiang were taken aback. Jiang sat up abruptly.

‘What!’

‘And if we don’t get them,’ Mei-Ling said, ‘then we’ll send you along for interrogation by the professionals.’ She paused. ‘And you wouldn’t like that much.’

‘Hey,’ Jiang protested, ‘all I did was go and spend a couple of nights at a friend’s place. So I didn’t tell Public Security. It’s not a crime, is it?’

‘Actually, yes,’ Li said. ‘But we hadn’t thought of that one.’

Jiang looked as if he wanted to rip his tongue from his mouth. Mei-Ling said, ‘You told the caretaker at your apartment block that you were going to visit a cousin.’

‘You don’t have a cousin,’ Li said.

‘So?’ Jiang was getting defensive. ‘It’s none of her fucking business where I go.’

‘So why tell her anything at all?’ This from Li.

Mei-Ling followed up without waiting for an answer. ‘Why did you kill them, Jiang? Kicks? Profit? Practice?’

For a moment there was panic in Jiang’s rabbit eyes. ‘Me? I didn’t kill them! I didn’t kill anybody. I swear on the grave of my ancestors. Hey, you can’t seriously believe I did it?’ And even as he said it, it seemed to strike him as ridiculous, and he laughed. ‘Come on, guys. This is crazy. You can’t have any evidence against me, ’cos there isn’t any.’

Which was true. A preliminary report from forensics had turned up nothing out of the ordinary in Jiang’s apartment. In fact, the chief forensics officer had been moved to comment on how abnormally clean, almost sterile, the place had been. Margaret’s words came back to haunt Li. The fact that he might be a little odd hardly constitutes evidence. And the words of his uncle came back to him, too. The answer always lies in the detail, Li Yan. The trouble was, they had virtually no detail to work with. They had established the identity of only four of the victims. The autopsies had revealed how the women had been murdered, but not why or when. There was nothing to link them, no common factor other than their sex. And beyond the disquieting coincidence of Jiang Baofu being the night watchman at the building site where the bodies were uncovered, there was absolutely nothing to link him to the murders. It didn’t matter that people thought he was weird, or that he was obsessed with the surgeon’s knife. There was no evidence.

A lack of any response from the detectives seemed to give Jiang confidence. ‘So, are you going to let me go or what? I mean, I’m still happy to help. If you need to draft in any extra assistants at the mortuary, I’m your man.’

Li felt almost as if he was laughing at them. There was something not right here, something about Jiang Baofu that didn’t quite figure. Li searched his mind furiously. He had already ordered bank records to be seized, employment and payment records to be obtained from Jiang’s various employers. He was convinced they would never account for Jiang’s apparent affluence. But the lumbering bureaucracy of state enterprises, and the reluctance of foreign companies to release records, meant that the process would take time. In the meantime there had to be something else, something they were missing. He ran back through the details in his head, and almost immediately tripped over a thought which he had tucked away for later scrutiny and then forgotten. He said suddenly, ‘What did you do last Spring Festival?’

Jiang was caught by surprise. ‘What?’

So was Mei-Ling. Li was aware of her glancing at him. But he pressed on. ‘I mean, what did you do during the holiday? Were you working?’

Jiang made a great show of thinking about this for a bit. ‘No …’ he said at last. ‘No … last Spring Festival I went home for the holidays. Yeah, I’m sure that was last winter.’

‘So the Medical University would be closed for what — a month?’ Li looked to Mei-Ling for confirmation.

She nodded. ‘Usually a month.’

He turned back to Jiang. ‘So you were at your grandparents’ home at Yanqing through most of February.’ The body of the girl Margaret had just re-examined in Beijing had been found mid-February, and had only been in the ground for about a week.

Jiang nodded hesitantly. ‘Yeah, I guess.’

‘And that’s how far from Beijing? Under an hour by rail?’

‘It’s pretty close.’

‘So you could go into town after breakfast to do a bit of shopping, have some Beijing duck at lunchtime and be home in time for dinner?’

Jiang laughed. ‘You could. If you were mad.’

‘Or even stay overnight at your sister’s.’

Jiang’s smile faded. ‘I haven’t seen my sister in years.’

‘So you didn’t go visit her last Spring Festival?’

‘No, I didn’t.’

‘How often did you go into Beijing?’

‘Never.’

‘Never?’ Li was incredulous. ‘You were home for a whole month and you never went into the city once?’

‘What would I go into Beijing for? I don’t know anyone there except for my sister, and she and I don’t get on.’

‘So you stayed at home the whole time?’

‘Didn’t I just say that? Hey, do I get a prize? You know, like one of these quiz shows on TV, if I answer all your questions?’

‘There are no prizes for fulfilling your obligations as a citizen,’ Mei-Ling said. ‘It is your duty to co-operate.’

‘Well, that’s what I’m doing, isn’t it?’ Jiang held his hands out, appealing for sympathy. ‘And, hey, listen, I don’t hold it against you guys. I know you’ve got a job to do.’

But Li was not going to be deflected. ‘What did you do at home that month?’ he asked.

Jiang shrugged. ‘I studied, watched TV, saw some friends …’

‘And your grandparents would be able to verify that?’

‘Sure. But, listen, don’t go bothering them. They’ll just get worried about me.’

Li sat back and looked at the young man thoughtfully. Apparently he had all the answers, his confidence unshakeable. For a brief moment Li had thought he had made a connection. But if Jiang’s story checked out, they would be no further forward. He began to feel a sense of despondency creeping over him.

Li’s sense of despondency increased at the detectives’ meeting. The room was packed and hot and filled with smoke, and not much else. The proceedings were all conducted under the brooding eye of the sullen Section Chief Huang who sat in his accustomed seat with his back to the window so that Li could not see his face clearly. The investigation was not going well and everyone knew it. The atmosphere in the room was tense.

Li had just started briefing the detectives on the results of Margaret’s re-examination of the body in Beijing when there was a sharp rap at the door, and it opened to reveal the tall, uniformed figure of Procurator General Yue. There was an almost audible intake of breath. It was unheard of for a Procurator General to attend a detectives’ briefing meeting. ‘As you were, Detectives,’ he said, and he closed the door behind him and pulled up a chair beside Huang. He sat down and crossed his arms, and in the silence that followed his eyes found Li’s. His expression was grim. ‘Carry on, Deputy Section Chief,’ he said. Li took a moment or two to collect himself and then continued.

He led them through all the evidence to date: the conclusions of the autopsies, the four victims so far identified, Margaret’s re-examination of the body in Beijing and the possibility that x-rays of her teeth might lead to her identification. He went over the interviews he and Mei-Ling had conducted with Jiang Baofu’s course tutors, the interview with the caretaker at his apartment block, the search of his apartment. Everyone around the table agreed that there were more than sufficient grounds to regard Jiang Baofu with great suspicion, but no evidence whatsoever that tied him to the killings. ‘The best hope we have,’ Li said, ‘of connecting him in any way is by establishing that he was in Beijing at the time the girl we found there was murdered. We know he was at home at Yanqing at that time. He claims he never went into the capital. If his grandparents confirm that, then we’ve reached another dead end. If not, then we’ve got every reason to lean hard on him.’

The most exciting development, he told them, was the description given them by the husband of the murdered acrobat, of a man who she had told him was following her. Li repeated the description for them of the long, greasy hair, the Mongolian features, the protruding teeth and the scarred hare-lip. ‘She saw this man on several occasions, in different locations, in the days before she disappeared. She was concerned enough to tell her husband about it and describe the man for him. There is a very strong possibility that this is the man who seized her. That he had been watching and waiting for his opportunity. And if this is the case, then others might have seen him, too, before they disappeared.’

Mei-Ling said, ‘We need to distribute this description among the families of all the missing women whose files we’ve pulled so far. Some of them might just have reported seeing him. Another couple of confirmations would start to establish a pattern, and might also help us identify more of the victims. It certainly doesn’t sound like he trained as a surgeon, but he might be the grab man.’

The meeting broke up in slightly more optimistic mood than it had begun, but it was clear that morale was beginning to suffer at the lack of any real progress. As Li gathered his papers together he watched Huang and the Procurator General exchange a few words, then Huang hurried out, his head down. Mei-Ling said to Li, ‘I’ll catch you later,’ and dashed out after him.

The room emptied and the smoke began to clear, drawn out into the corridor, as if it, too, were anxious to escape the impending storm. Li and the Procurator General faced each other across the width of the table. The Procurator General stood up, very slowly and deliberately, and closed the door. He remained standing by it. Li lit a cigarette and waited while the older man chose his words with care. ‘Four identifications. A sketchy description of a man with a hare-lip. A medical student who cannot be connected to the crime.’ Very succinctly he had summed up the limited extent of the investigation so far. ‘Not much to show for five days’ work and the entire resources of Section Two at your disposal,’ he said.

‘These things take time, Procurator General Yue,’ Li said.

‘Time,’ Yue said, ‘is not on your side, Deputy Section Chief.’ He raised one eyebrow as if to underline his point. ‘In fact, time is very much your enemy. The Mayor requested that you lead this investigation in the hope that you could bring it to a speedy conclusion. You chose to embarrass his administration by contradicting the press statement issued the day after the discovery of the bodies. And you have since failed to come up with a credible alternative. Our silence is becoming the subject of much speculation in the American media. The Mayor is not happy.’

If he had not realised it before, Li knew then that he had been handed a poisoned chalice. ‘Perhaps, Procurator General, in such a high-profile case as this, it would be more appropriate for the investigation to be taken over by your department.’ Li saw the Procurator General’s expression harden. It was not without precedent for the investigation of sensitive cases to be handled by the Procurator General’s office. But the last thing that Procurator General Yue would want was to have the poisoned chalice passed on to him. He understood immediately that Li was, in effect, telling him to back off — unless he wished to have the investigation landed on his own desk. And he realised he had underestimated Li’s political acumen, something that might also have surprised Margaret. This was not someone who would be easily intimidated.

The Procurator General glared at Li. Now he would have to find an exit line that would allow him to leave without loss of face. Li had just made an enemy. ‘If the Mayor had thought that appropriate, then I have no doubt that is the course he would have followed,’ he said. ‘However, he and his policy adviser have chosen to put faith in you, Deputy Section Chief, and the reputation which precedes you. I am quite certain they would not like to be proven wrong in that choice.’ He forced his lips into a smile that found no echo in his eyes. ‘I look forward to hearing that real progress has been made in the very near future.’ He made his exit then, dignity intact and leaving Li with a sick, sinking feeling in his gut.

Other officers avoided Li’s eye as he walked down the corridor. They knew that he had been involved in some kind of confrontation with the Procurator General, and they did not want any part of it. Li stopped outside the door of Section Chief Huang’s office. It stood half open, and he could see Huang standing grim-faced by his desk, Mei-Ling next to him talking earnestly. Li could not hear what they were saying. Mei-Ling touched her boss’s hand lightly, and put her other hand on his arm. There was something so strangely and casually intimate in this that Li immediately felt a restriction in his throat, and his heart quickened. He realised that what he felt was jealousy. The same feeling, although he did not know it, that Margaret had experienced when she saw Mei-Ling touch his hand in almost the same way.

Mei-Ling turned towards the door, and Li started guiltily along the corridor, as if he had been caught in some illicit act of voyeurism. He heard Mei-Ling exiting from Huang’s office behind him and then her footsteps hurrying in pursuit. ‘Li Yan,’ she called, and he half-turned, trying to appear natural. She fell into step beside him and lowered her voice. ‘Huang Tsuo’s just had word from the hospital. They’re sending his wife home. Reading between the lines, I think they’re expecting her to die there.’

Li felt an odd sense of relief. It was sympathy he had witnessed, not intimacy. And then he immediately felt guilt at the thought that news of a woman’s approaching death had prompted him only to feel relief. ‘Will that put you in charge during his absence?’ he asked.

Mei-Ling shook her head. ‘He won’t take time off. Not while this investigation’s on-going. Apparently he’s employing a nurse to look after her.’

Li wondered briefly why Huang felt it necessary to remain in situ while his wife was dying. After all, he was only nominally heading the investigation. In truth, while he may have had a watching brief, he had had virtually no involvement in it.

They turned into Li’s office and found the young forensics officer who had attended the autopsies waiting by the window. He was cleaning his gold-rimmed spectacles with a white handkerchief, and staring blindly out at the apartment blocks opposite. He turned as they entered, hurriedly pushing his spectacles back on his nose. His green uniform looked faintly rumpled, and the ubiquitous stubble still clung to his jaw. He pulled a folder from under his arm and thrust it towards Li. ‘That’s my final report on the search of Jiang Baofu’s apartment,’ he said. Li still remembered the look on the officer’s face when Margaret had asked him to slip his hand inside the degloved skin of the seamstress’s hand to take her fingerprints. ‘I don’t think you’ll find it any more helpful than my initial verbal,’ he said.

Li took it and dropped it on his desk. ‘Thanks,’ he said listlessly. More bad news was not what he needed right now.

‘But you might be interested in this.’ The officer took a clear plastic evidence bag from his pocket and handed it to Li.

‘What is it?’

‘It’s a girl’s bracelet. We found it at the back of a drawer in the apartment.’

Li held it up for Mei-Ling to see and they looked at it closely. It comprised a fine gold chain about six inches in length, with four tiny carved jade Buddhas dangling from it at half-inch intervals either side of a jade nameplate engraved with the character for the word Moon. Li looked at the forensics officer. ‘What’s the significance?’

The young man shrugged. ‘Maybe none. I just thought, you know, you said he was a loner. No friends. So probably no girlfriends. And it doesn’t look like something he’d wear himself.’

Li dropped the bracelet, still in its evidence bag, on to the table. ‘You want to tell me about this?’ he said.

Jiang sat forward to look at it and immediately blushed to the roots of his hair.

‘Don’t tell me we’ve discovered your little secret,’ Mei-Ling said. Jiang looked at her with something like panic in his eyes. ‘You’re a cross-dresser.’ He frowned, not understanding. ‘Oh, never mind,’ she said. ‘I take it you don’t wear this yourself — secretly or otherwise?’

He shook his head.

‘You recognise it, though,’ Li said. At last, he felt, they might have caught him out on something.

‘Of course.’

‘So …?’

‘So what?’

‘So what is it?’

‘It’s a bracelet.’

Li bristled. It felt as if Jiang was playing for time. ‘I can see that. Whose is it?’ he snapped.

‘It’s mine.’

Li leaned his elbows on the table and clasped his hands slowly in front of him. He said very quietly. ‘Don’t fuck with me, son. Tell me about the bracelet. Who is Moon?’

‘She was a girlfriend I had back in Yanqing. Years ago.’

‘You had a girlfriend?’ Mei-Ling said incredulously.

Jiang blushed again. ‘Well, she wasn’t exactly my girlfriend. She was … well, you know, I kind of hoped she would be. So I bought her the bracelet. Cost me a small fortune.’ He glanced from one to the other and then shrugged. ‘But she wouldn’t take it. Said she wasn’t interested in me.’

‘Surprise, surprise,’ Mei-Ling said.

‘And she could corroborate this?’ Li asked.

Jiang shook his head vaguely. ‘I don’t know. If you could find her. Her family moved away years ago. I can’t remember what the family name was.’

‘Well, try,’ Li said dangerously.

Jiang met his eyes briefly but couldn’t hold them. ‘She probably wouldn’t even remember,’ he said.

‘The name,’ Li said.

Jiang scratched his head then picked up the bracelet to look at it again, and Li saw that his hands were shaking. ‘Zhang,’ he said eventually, uncertainly. ‘Zhang. I think that was the family name. They lived near the middle school.’

Li took the bracelet from him and stood up. ‘Go home,’ he said.

Jiang looked at him, surprised. So did Mei-Ling. Jiang said, ‘What!’

Li said, ‘You’re free to go. Just don’t even think about leaving Shanghai without asking this office first.’

Jiang stood up quickly, all smiles, relief written all over his face. ‘Hey, thanks. You know, I’m still happy to help. Any time. Just give me a call.’

‘Go home,’ Li said, and the boy nodded and hurried from the room.

Mei-Ling looked at Li. ‘What did you do that for?’

Li shrugged. ‘We’ve no reason to hold him. We know where he is if we need to find him.’

‘What about the bracelet?’

‘It’s a feasible story. We should find the girl and see if she remembers. Even if she doesn’t, that’s not proof of anything.’ He handed the bag to Mei-Ling. ‘But let’s get it photographed and circulate a description round the team.’

For the first time, Li sensed that Mei-Ling did not agree with him, and she appeared to think long and hard about whether or not to express that disagreement. Then she gave him a curt nod. ‘Sure,’ she said, and she turned and left the interview room. Li was beginning to feel a little embattled, and very much on his own.

IV

Xinxin’s kindergarten was in a large international hotel on the west side of the city, in a suite of rooms off the first-floor mezzanine. There was a large play area, and several classrooms. The children were aged between three and six, and as Margaret waited in the hall, she could hear the tuneless screeching of children playing violins in a music class. From other rooms the sound of laughter, the imperious voices of children raised in inquisitorial clamour, demonstrating in a thousand questions that earliest of human passions, the hunger for knowledge. Parents, mostly mothers, were gathering in the hall overlooking the reception area below, waiting for the big doors to open and the children to come flooding out. These were wealthy Shanghainese who could afford to send their children to kindergarten in a place like this, but wealth did not necessarily equate with sophistication, and they stared as curiously at Margaret as if they had been peasants at a market.

When, eventually, a bell was rung by hand somewhere that sounded very far away, the children did not come out in the expected rush, but in twos and threes, chattering excitedly, being gathered up by parents finished work for the day and heading home for family meals. Margaret felt out of place here in more ways than one.

Finally she saw Xinxin heading out on her own, but before she could greet her, a uniformed policewoman stepped forward to take her hand. Margaret pushed through the waiting mothers and called out the child’s name. Xinxin turned, and as soon as she saw her let out a yelp of delight. She broke free of the policewoman’s grasp and ran to Margaret for a hug.

Almost immediately the policewoman was there, pulling Xinxin away and shouting at Margaret, her face contorted in anger and indignation.

‘What the hell do you think you’re doing?’ Margaret shouted back, and she reached for Xinxin’s hand.

But the policewoman yanked the child away and stabbed a finger in Margaret’s chest, her voice raised in anger. Xinxin started to cry. Mothers drew their children to them for safety and looked on in amazement. The Chinese are born spectators. Any spectacle or argument will do. One of the teachers came hurrying out from the kindergarten and there was an exchange between her and the policewoman. The teacher looked at Margaret. ‘You speak English?’ she asked.

‘You bet,’ Margaret said.

‘What you want?’

‘I’m here to pick up Xinxin. She’s the niece of my colleague, Deputy Section Chief Li Yan of the Beijing Municipal Police.’

The teacher looked uncertain for a moment. There was a further exchange between her and the policewoman, and then she spoke to Xinxin who responded rapidly and eagerly, glancing up several times at Margaret.

‘Well?’ Margaret said. ‘Did she tell you who I am?’

The policewoman spoke again, still full of aggression, and the teacher translated. ‘She say it no matter. You are foreigner. You need special permission for visit kindergarten. This policewoman say she have instruction to collect girl. You go away now.’

‘Jesus Christ!’ Margaret’s frustrations bubbled over. There was no doubt in her mind that this was Mei-Ling’s doing. Li had said he would tell her that she was going to collect Xinxin. She stabbed a finger at the policewoman. ‘You’re in big fucking trouble, lady,’ she shouted, and turned to the teacher. ‘Tell her that. Tell her she’s in big fucking trouble.’

The policewoman pushed Margaret’s hand aside, took Xinxin firmly by the arm and headed for the stairs, Xinxin pulling against her the whole way and calling back for Margaret. Margaret stood rooted to the spot, anger welling up inside. She knew there was nothing she could do. She had neither the language nor the power to make a difference here, and all she could do was listen to Xinxin’s cries all the way down the stairs. It was breaking her heart.