The Killing Room

I

The briefing meeting lasted less than half an hour. Before it, Li had had a fifteen minute meeting with Huang and the Shanghai Deputy Commissioner of Police, finalising details of Margaret’s inclusion in the investigating team. He had then requested the use of a computer with Internet access and filed a lengthy e-mail to an aol.com address.

There were nearly twenty detectives in the meeting room, ranged around a group of tables pushed together to make a large rectangle. Most of the officers were smoking, and their smoke filled the room like fog. Mei-Ling glanced curiously at Li and Huang as they made their entrance. She had not been made privy to their discussions with the Deputy Commissioner. But she showed no surprise when Huang announced that he was putting Li in charge of the investigation, in collaboration with his deputy. All eyes around the table flickered towards Li, eyes that harboured both interest and hostility. There was no love lost between Shanghai and Beijing.

The briefing consisted of an update on what little they already knew. Statements were quickly accumulating, taken from everybody who had been at the ceremony at Lujiazui that morning. One of the detectives had discovered that there was a night watchman at the site. They had made every attempt to locate him during the day, without success, but he was due back on-site at seven. A number of detectives consulted their watches and realised it was already past that. Mei-Ling brought the meeting up to date on the body count, and Dr Lan’s initial thoughts. The fact that partial autopsies had already been carried out on the victims created quite a stir around the table. But there were no constructive suggestions.

Li then took control. He looked at the rows of guarded eyes looking back at him. He fumbled in his pockets. ‘Anyone got a cigarette? I seem to have run out.’ Several of the officers nearest him immediately held out packs. ‘Okay,’ he said. ‘So now we know who the brown-noses are.’ There was a big laugh around the table, except from those holding out the packs. Li grinned. ‘Only kidding, guys.’ And he took a cigarette from the nearest pack, and everyone was aware of an immediate easing of the tension in the room. He lit up and leaned forward on his elbows. ‘If I was a betting man,’ he said, ‘which of course I’m not, because it’s illegal …’ which got another laugh, ‘… I’d put my money on finding most of our victims in the missing persons files. So it would probably be a good start if we got hold of those files and extracted details on all women between the ages of, say, fifteen and forty. We’re not going to know who killed them, or why, until we know who they are. So our priority should be trying to identify them as quickly as possible. And here’s a thought …’ You could have heard a pin drop in the silence. ‘We found eighteen bodies in a mass grave today. But there could be other graves, other bodies. And there might be other women going about their everyday lives as we sit here, who’re going to end up in one of those graves. So we owe it as much to the living, as to the dead, to get this guy as quickly as we can.’

When the meeting broke up, Huang hurried out without even looking at Li. Mei-Ling approached him. ‘Well done,’ she said. ‘That could have been nasty.’ He grinned and took out a pack of cigarettes, and lit one. She smiled. ‘I thought you’d run out.’

‘They were in an inside pocket.’ As an afterthought he held out the pack towards her. ‘I’m sorry, do you smoke?’

She shook her head. ‘I’ve seen first hand what it does to the lungs.’ She paused. ‘So what now?’

‘I’d like to go back to the site. See if that night watchman’s shown up yet.’

When they arrived back at Lujiazui, the officer on duty at the gate told them that the night watchman had turned up about half an hour earlier and was ensconced in his hut on the far side of the site.

Pathologists and forensics experts still sweated in white plastic suits beneath the floodlights and the polythene sheeting in their gruesome search for any remaining body parts. Digging in the wet, nearly liquid, mud was close to impossible. For several minutes Li stopped and watched their thankless labours, aware of the presence of Mei-Ling’s burning, unasked questions at his side. In the car, she had resisted the temptation to ask about the meeting with Director Hu, and afterwards with the Deputy Commissioner. But now she was barely able to contain her curiosity. He turned and caught her watching him. Rain glistened on her face in the light of the flood lamps and he thought how attractive she was. ‘I guess it wasn’t Huang’s idea to put you in charge of the investigation,’ she said finally. It didn’t sound like a question to Li.

‘I think Huang would have been happier to bury me in the mud with the CEO of the New York bank,’ he said.

Mei-Ling shrugged. ‘Like I said, don’t take it personally. Huang has problems right now.’

‘Yeah, like an extreme loss of face.’ Li was treading carefully. He had no idea how loyal, or otherwise, Mei-Ling might be to her boss. ‘It must be pretty humiliating to have the Mayor’s policy adviser appoint a junior officer over your head.’

Mei-Ling chewed her lower lip thoughtfully. ‘But I doubt if losing face means much next to losing the person you love,’ she said.

Li frowned. ‘What do you mean?’

‘I mean that his wife’s terminally ill. And from the sound of it, I don’t think she has long to live. So don’t flatter yourself, you probably don’t come very high on his list of priorities at the moment.’

Li lit a cigarette and drew on it thoughtfully. It certainly explained, if not exactly justifying, the man’s lack of courtesy. ‘Let’s go talk to the night watchman,’ he said.

They picked their way through the mud and puddles to a small blue-painted wooden hut at the rear of the site. A light blazed at the window, and through it they could see a young man leaning back in an old wooden armchair, feet up on the table, nursing a jar of cold green tea and watching a small portable television. He stood up as soon as they came in, apparently excited by their visit. He drew up two stools for them to sit on, but Li declined the offer. ‘I don’t mind answering anything you want to ask,’ the watchman said. ‘I told the cops I spoke to when I arrived everything I know, but I want to help any way I can. You want some tea?’

Li shook his head and drew on his cigarette. ‘You worked here long?’

‘Only for a couple of months, since they started delivering materials to the site.’ The young man waved a finger at Li’s cigarette. ‘Those things’ll kill you, you know. You ever seen the inside of a smoker’s lungs?’

Li glanced at Mei-Ling, the echo of her earlier words resonating silently between them. Then he took a good look at the night watchman. He figured the boy was no more than twenty-one or twenty-two. He wore jeans and good boots, and a warm winter coat over a heavy jumper. A pair of thermal gloves lay on the table beside a pile of magazines. There was no heating in the hut.

‘And you have seen the inside of a smoker’s lungs?’ Mei-Ling asked.

‘Sure,’ the young man said. ‘They’re all black and full of holes and kind of slimy and pickled-looking. Put me off smoking for life.’

‘And how would you get to look at the inside of someone’s lungs?’ Li said.

‘Easy. You always section the lungs when you do an autopsy.’ He grinned at their consternation. ‘Hey,’ he said, ‘night watchman on a building site is not my idea of a career plan.’

Li said, ‘And what is your career plan?’

‘Surgery. Or pathology. I haven’t quite decided yet. But probably pathology. That way I get trained in forensics, too, and get to work with you guys on cases like this. Spooky stuff, huh?’

Li and Mei-Ling exchanged glances. ‘Are you saying you’re a doctor?’ Li asked.

‘Medical student,’ the young man said. ‘At Shanghai Medical University, out in Xuhui District.’ He put out his hand to shake theirs. ‘Jiang Baofu,’ he said. ‘I heard what had happened earlier today. The university was buzzing with it. I couldn’t wait to get back here tonight. But they won’t let me see anything.’ He seemed disappointed. ‘You know, I nearly stayed on this morning to watch the ceremony. But we had practical surgery today, and I never miss that.’

‘So this is just part-time?’ Li said.

‘Sure,’ said Jiang. ‘I’m not like some of those rich kids at the university. My parents died when I was just young. I live with my grandparents back home, and no way can they afford to put me through med school. I work nights and holidays, anything I can get. Usually at one of the hospitals, but this paid better.’ He waved his hand vaguely at the window. ‘Not that anyone’s going to steal anything here. But the Americans are fussy about security. That’s why the money’s so good.’

Mei-Ling said, ‘Clearly, then, they didn’t get their money’s worth when the night watchman didn’t even notice someone digging a hole big enough to dump eighteen bodies in.’

The medical student looked hurt. ‘Hey, how am I supposed to keep an eye on the whole place? It’s pitch black out there after ten at night. They don’t even give me a flashlight.’

‘But whoever buried those bodies must have had light to work by. You’d have seen that surely?’ Mei-Ling’s directness impressed Li.

‘Not if I was sleeping.’ Jiang was getting defensive now.

‘But weren’t you supposed to be on watch?’ Mei-Ling wasn’t going to let him off the hook. ‘I mean, isn’t that what a night watchman’s supposed to do? Watch?’

‘Maybe he was too busy watching TV,’ Li said. He glanced at the set, which was tuned in to the Hong Kong music channel, ‘V’. ‘How come they don’t give you a flashlight but they provide you with a television set?’

Jiang laughed. ‘They didn’t provide the TV! That’s mine.’

‘So you watch TV all night?’ Mei-Ling said.

‘Until about twelve. Then, usually, I sleep for a few hours.’ He glanced from one to the other, absorbing their disapproval. ‘Hey, I said they paid better than the hospital, but not enough to stay awake all night. I’ve got to work all day, too, you know.’

‘So you didn’t notice anything unusual in the last week?’

‘No, I didn’t. And if I had, I’d have told your people when I got here. Look …’ he was anxious to justify himself, ‘… usually I get here about seven, do a tour of the site, then lock the gate. I do another check around before the lights go off at ten. Then the only light out there is from the streetlights way over on the far side — and most of that’s still in shadow because of the wall.’

‘What about the workers’ huts over there?’ Li asked.

‘What about them?’

‘That’s their accommodation during construction, isn’t it?’

‘Yeah, but there’s nobody living there yet. Won’t be until they start the construction proper and take on crew. Then there won’t be any need for me.’

Mei-Ling perched on the edge of the table and looked at the magazines Jiang had been reading. ‘Human Pathology,’ she read out in English and looked at the student. ‘Where did you get these?’

‘Subscription,’ he said. ‘It’s an American journal. They send it every month.’ And then, again, defensively, ‘I’m interested. It’s my subject.’

Li said, ‘Interested enough to go abducting young women and practising your technique on them?’

Jiang grinned. ‘Hey, now you’re joking, right?’ But Li didn’t smile and Jiang’s grin faded. ‘I didn’t kill anybody. The only people I’ve ever cut up were on the practice slab at the university.’ He paused and leaned forward confidentially. ‘One of your guys told me they’d been hacked to pieces — the bodies out there. Is that right?’

Li thought the boy’s relish was unhealthy. ‘You shouldn’t go listening to gossip,’ he said. ‘Or repeating it.’

Mei-Ling took out a business card, scored her name off it and wrote in another. She handed it to Jiang. ‘Go to 803 Zhongshan Beiyi Road first thing tomorrow morning and ask for Detective Dai. He’ll take your statement.’

‘I’ve got classes tomorrow,’ the student protested.

‘Be there,’ Mei-Ling said, and she stood up to open the door.

Li said, ‘One last thing. Where do you live, Jiang?’

‘I got a place up near Jiangwan Stadium.’

‘No, I mean where’s your home? Where do you come from?’

‘Yanqing, in Hebei Province.’

‘That’s just north of Beijing, isn’t it?’

The boy nodded, and as they turned to go, added, ‘Listen, if your people need any help, the pathologists or anyone … If they’re looking for assistants or anything, you know, I’m happy to volunteer my services. It’d be good experience.’

‘We’ll keep that in mind,’ Li said.

As they crossed the site towards the main gate, Mei-Ling said, ‘That boy’s really creepy!’ But Li was lost in thought. She glanced at him. ‘You all right?’

He said, ‘This kid lives with his grandparents, who can’t afford to send him to university. So he has to take on all these part-time jobs and work the holidays. But he can afford a colour TV set. And that was good quality gear he was wearing. Expensive gloves lying on the table. And it must be pretty costly to subscribe to an American medical journal and have it sent to China every month.’

‘What are you saying?’ Mei-Ling asked.

‘I’m saying here’s a kid who has the requisite skills to do what was done to those women. He had the opportunity to dispose of their bodies right here on the site where he’s working as night watchman. And he seems very affluent for a student who’s having to work his way through medical school.’

‘You don’t think he did it, do you?’ Mei-Ling was shocked. ‘I mean, I know he’s weird, but usually I have an instinct about these things, and right now it isn’t telling me this is our killer.’

‘Neither is mine,’ Li confessed, and he knew it would have been just too easy. ‘But if someone broke into the site, dug a hole and buried eighteen bodies in it, why didn’t he see them? Why didn’t he hear them? And why would someone dump the bodies some place there was a night watchman?’ He lit a cigarette. ‘I know it’s early in the investigation, but I think our medical student’s got to be the first name on the suspect list.’

‘Maybe,’ Mei-Ling said. ‘Anyway, we’ll have a better idea just what we’re looking for once we’ve got the autopsy reports.’

‘That might be a few days,’ Li said.

Mei-Ling was surprised. ‘Why? Dr Lan can start tomorrow.’

Li said, ‘I’m bringing in another pathologist to do the autopsies.’

She was taken aback, and stopped suddenly, feet squelching in the mud. ‘Does Dr Lan know?’

Li shook his head. ‘No. And he probably won’t be very pleased.’

‘No, he won’t,’ Mei-Ling said. ‘Talk about losing face …’ She paused. ‘Who is it? Someone from Beijing?’

‘An American,’ Li said. He took in her expression. ‘Oh, I know. I got the same speech from Huang. How the Chinese don’t need the Americans to show them how to do anything.’

Mei-Ling shrugged. ‘Jiang Zemin said we must learn from foreign experts.’

Li looked to see if she was sending him up, but she appeared perfectly serious. ‘I’ve worked with her before,’ he said, ‘and she’s very experienced.’

Mei-Ling started for the gates again and said, a little too casually, ‘She?’

‘Margaret Campbell,’ Li said. ‘She’s been lecturing at the Public Security University in Beijing.’

Mei-Ling nodded but said nothing, and they continued picking their way through the mud.

They passed the lights, and the polythene flapping in the wind. Li caught sight of the face of one of the forensics people working in the mud. A young man, his face almost blue with the cold, pinched and distressed. He would never have envisaged this when making his career choice. And Li had a sudden sense of the futility of all their jobs, working as they did on the edge of sanity, picking their way through the dark side of the human psyche, and all the horrors that lay therein.

Mei-Ling suddenly lost her footing in the quagmire and, with a cry, almost fell. Li caught her arm and held her firmly until she regained her balance. She laughed, embarrassed, clutching his jacket, and he felt the swelling of her breast against the back of his hand.

‘Careful,’ Li said, suddenly self-conscious. ‘You almost dropped your half of the sky. Just as well there was a man around to catch you.’

‘Oh, you men are so versatile,’ Mei-Ling said, smiling. ‘You can hold up your half of the sky and pick up women at the same time.’ She steadied herself and checked her watch. ‘Nearly eight. You won’t have eaten.’

‘Not since this morning.’

‘Me neither. If you’re hungry, I know a place that serves till late.’

‘I’m starving,’ Li said.

She smiled, her dark eyes gleaming. ‘Good. Let’s go.’

II

Margaret had heard the news the previous night about the discovery of a mass grave on a building site in Shanghai. She had seen the pictures on CNN, and watched with interest and a slightly remote sense of horror. She did not make any connection with Li, there was no reason why she should. But it had aroused her professional interest. Since the first pictures had come through, the Chinese authorities had imposed a media black-out, much to the annoyance of the news networks. But this morning, statements issued by the New York bank involved were generating plenty of copy, and one of the associates had got an exclusive interview with the CEO who had taken the mud bath with the bodies. There was no accurate information about how many corpses had been recovered from the site, but the CEO’s description of his experience had been fairly lurid — arms, legs, torsos, heads. Margaret felt a pang of regret that she was not involved.

She lay in bed watching the re-runs of the story on breakfast news. Whatever her mother might think, it was her job, and she missed doing it. She missed China. She missed Li. And still she had not summoned the courage to go to her apartment in Lincoln Park. It was symbolic, somehow, of another life, another Margaret Campbell, someone else whom she used to be and didn’t wish to revisit. But she couldn’t just leave the place to gather dust, junk mail accumulating with the neighbours, pot plants dead in the kitchen sink. If her encounter with David the other night had taught her anything, it was that there was no refuge in the past. Whatever direction she chose to take, she had to move on.

She found herself looking at a photograph on screen of a young woman with short cut fair hair. For a disconcerting moment, the face seemed uncannily familiar, before she realised with a start that she was looking at herself. She sat bolt upright, heart pounding. It was her all right. A few years younger, though. A stock photograph taken at the time she assisted on the autopsies at Waco. The TV announcer was saying, ‘… American pathologist, Margaret Campbell. The authorities in Shanghai have, this morning, taken the unusual step of issuing a Press Release announcing the invitation. Dr Campbell, who has worked previously with police in the Chinese capital of Beijing, grabbed headlines worldwide eighteen months ago when she issued a warning on the Internet about genetically contaminated rice. Latest reports from Shanghai, where it is now nine in the evening, suggest that the body count has risen to eighteen.’ The report switched from news to weather, and Margaret sat very still on the bed, her heart pounding. She was confused, disorientated. From somewhere in the house came the distant ringing of a telephone. Why would the authorities in Shanghai ask for her help? She didn’t know anyone there.

Then she was struck by a thought. E-mail. In the last few months, she had introduced Li to the delights of e-mail as a fast and direct means of communication. He had written to her almost every day since she left to go to her father’s funeral. She leapt out of bed and quickly crossed the room to the dresser where she had set up her iBook laptop computer. She wakened it out of sleep mode and went on-line. Her e-mail software scanned her electronic mailbox before downloading ‘one of one’, and a soft female voice told her she had mail. She double-clicked on an e-mail titled Autopsies. It was from Li.

There was a knock at her bedroom door and her mother entered in her housecoat. ‘Margaret, did you know you’re on television? Diane just phoned to say she’d seen your picture.’

Margaret was scanning Li’s e-mail with increasing excitement and waved her mother to be quiet. But her mother was not to be put off. She advanced into the room.

‘For God’s sake what are you doing, Margaret? Why are they running your picture on television?’ Margaret wheeled around and her mother frowned at her. ‘For Heaven’s sake cover yourself up.’

Margaret realised she was stark naked, and was immediately embarrassed in front of her mother. She snatched her robe and pulled it on. ‘I’m going back to China,’ she said.

‘Did I ever think you were going to do anything else?’

‘Frankly, Mom, I don’t care what you thought. I hadn’t made any decisions about my future. Until now. They want me to do the autopsies on those bodies they found in Shanghai.’

Her mother’s mouth curled in distaste. ‘I’ll never understand you, Margaret. I never have.’

‘And you never will.’ Margaret paused. ‘Mom … I don’t want to fight with you.’

‘Oh, don’t worry,’ her mother said coldly. ‘I wouldn’t give you the pleasure.’ She turned to go, but stopped at the door. ‘And when is it you intend leaving? Just so I can be sure the maid has your laundry ready.’

‘This afternoon,’ Margaret said, and she thought she detected a reaction, like a stoic response to a slap when you don’t want to show how much it has hurt. And she wondered what her mother had expected, why she had talked David into trying to persuade her to stay. Surely she hadn’t thought some kind of reconciliation was possible after all these years of dislocation? And yet, she saw the hurt in her mother’s eyes, and for a moment had an urge to cross the bedroom and throw her arms around her and just hold her, as if that could somehow wipe away all the cruel words, the barbs and the battles. But she didn’t do anything, and her mother turned and walked out of the room, pulling the door shut behind her.

Margaret turned back to the computer and re-read Li’s e-mail, more slowly this time. He signed off, as he always did, with three simple words. I love you.

III

Mei-Ling steered Li through the crowds that thronged the narrow streets leading to the heart of the Chinese old town, streets that were alive with traders selling all manner of cooked and cold foods from barrows and braziers, street vendors trading in everything from chopsticks to walking sticks, silks to silverware. Shiny wet cobbled streets ran off to left and right, lit by neon strips and long slabs of bright yellow light flooding out from dozens of shop fronts. Banners and lanterns waved in the breeze. They passed a window where two women in white coats and chef’s hats were making dumplings, folding tasty nuts of spiced minced meat into rolled-out circles of dough for steaming. A crowd was gathered to watch them, hungry eyes following every move.

‘This was all slum land until just a few years ago,’ Mei-Ling said. ‘They’ve spent a fortune restoring it.’ A narrow tunnel ran off an alleyway, and beyond it Li saw the lights of a Buddhist temple, incense burning at the altar, saffron-robed monks moving about in the dull light of an interior room.

The street opened out into a packed square, the four-storeyed Green Wave restaurant dominating the far side and looming over the five-sided Huxinting teahouse which sat in the middle of a rectangular lake, bounded on one side by the walls of the ancient Yu gardens. Every sweep of curling eave was outlined in yellow neon against a black night sky. The teahouse was packed, hundreds of faces crammed together in lit windows, sipping tea and smoking and watching the crowds outside. A zigzagging bridge crossed the water to its main entrance. ‘The bridge of nine turnings,’ Mei-Ling said. ‘To keep out the evil spirits. Apparently they can’t turn corners.’ She laughed, and Li was affected by her enthusiasm.

‘Shanghai your home town?’ he asked.

‘Is it that obvious?’ Her eyes sparkled in the flickering neon light.

‘There’s a pride you only ever take in showing off the place you come from.’

‘Actually my family come from Hangzhou, which is a couple of hours away. We have a saying, maybe you know it. Above there is Heaven, and on earth there is Hangzhou and Suzhou. But I was born right here in Shanghai and it’s my idea of heaven. I wouldn’t ever want to leave it.’ She smiled. ‘Come on.’ And she slipped her arm through his to lead him across the square. It was a completely natural and unselfconscious act, far too intimate for two people who had just met. She realised it almost immediately and withdrew her arm quickly, blushing and trying to pretend it had never happened. ‘I thought we’d eat at the Green Wave,’ she said hurriedly to mask her discomfort. ‘If we can get a window seat on the third floor we’ll get a view out over the tearoom and the lake.’

For Li, it had all happened so fast it was over almost before he realised, and he knew at once that it was an act of intimacy she was accustomed to indulging in with someone else, someone who, in a dangerous moment, she had mixed up with Li. What was more disconcerting to him, was the tiny frisson of pleasure it had given him.

The third-floor salon was still busy, waitresses in traditional full-length qipao dresses flitting between pillars and among tables, feeding dish after dish on to Lazy Susans on banqueting tables, delivering plates of food and glasses of beer to more intimate tables of fours and twos. Mei-Ling acquired them a table by an open window with the view over the tearoom she had hoped for. Above the chattering at the tables, and the crowd out in the streets, the sound of running water filled the air from a fountain on the lake. Mei-Ling ordered for both of them, half a dozen dishes and half litres of Tsing Tao beer.

‘So what’s the story with your American pathologist?’ she asked out of the blue.

Li felt himself blushing. ‘What do you mean?’

‘You said you’d worked with her before.’

‘That’s right.’ He wondered why he was being evasive.

‘Well, is it just a professional relationship … or is there something personal as well?’

Li chose his words carefully. ‘I make a point of never letting my personal life intrude on my job.’

She laughed. ‘Which doesn’t really answer my question.’

He grinned. ‘So what would you say if I told you it was none of your business?’

‘I’d say you were trying to pull the wool over my eyes and failing miserably.’

He accepted defeat then, nodding reluctantly. ‘Okay, so we have a relationship that isn’t exactly professional. But that had absolutely no bearing on my asking to have her brought into the investigation.’

She leaned her elbows on the table and rested her chin in her cupped palms, smiling at him. ‘Pity.’

‘What is?’

‘The most attractive men are always taken.’ But she didn’t give him time to dwell on this. ‘Is she pretty?’

He shrugged. ‘I guess.’

‘I bet she’s got blonde hair and blue eyes.’

‘Why would you think that?’

‘Because if a Chinese man is going to have a relationship with an American woman, he’s not going to pick one with black hair and brown eyes. China’s full of them already.’

Li cocked an eyebrow. ‘You disapprove?’

But she wouldn’t commit herself. ‘Each to his own,’ she said, and turned to gaze out of the window. ‘I suppose men don’t have the same choice these days, with so many fewer women to choose from in China.’ Li was not sure if there was a barb in this. It was true that with the One Child Policy, and so many women aborting baby girls when ultrasound tests revealed the sex of the foetus, the male population was rising in direct relation to the fall in the numbers of females. He decided to switch the focus of their conversation.

‘That would work to your advantage then.’

She looked at him.

‘How’s that?’

‘Puts women in demand. Particularly if they’re attractive, and intelligent as well.’

She lowered her head and looked up at him with a demure smile. ‘You’re not very subtle, Mr Li.’

He shook his head. ‘No, it’s not something I’ve been accused of very often.’ And she laughed, and he found himself laughing with her. When the laughter died there was a moment, a temporary lull between them, and he said, ‘So … who’s the lucky guy?’

Her face clouded immediately and she gave a noncommittal shrug. ‘There isn’t one.’ And he knew that there was pain here, a raw nerve that he had touched, and that he should proceed with care.

‘You live alone, then?’

‘No.’ She shook her head. ‘I live with my family.’ He looked at her again, and tried to gauge her age. At least thirty, perhaps even thirty-five. She caught his look and smiled wryly. ‘Thirty-seven,’ she said, as if she had read his mind. ‘And, no, I’ve never married. Never wanted to.’

‘Never wanted a kid?’

‘Sure. But I always thought I’d wait. Career first, then settle down and start a family.’ She gazed off ruefully into the middle distance. ‘But, then, you turn around and you’re thirty. You turn around again and you’re thirty-five. Suddenly you see forty on the horizon, and you begin to think you’ve missed your chance.’

‘Thirty-seven isn’t so old,’ Li said. ‘It’s never too late.’

Her eyes flickered back to meet his. ‘Maybe not,’ she said.

The food arrived then. A plate of fried dumplings, brown and crispy with a soy and chilli dip. Spring rolls. A dish of chicken pieces in a very hot Sichuan sauce. Deep fried tofu in hot and sour sauce. Butterflyed shrimp in batter. A bowl of noodles. They ate for a time in silence, chopsticks clicking. ‘This is great food,’ Li said.

‘It is,’ she said. ‘But next time I’ll take you somewhere better. Somewhere special. I just need more notice.’

‘Where’s that?’

‘Home.’ He paused with a shrimp caught in his chopsticks, midway between his plate and his mouth, which was open to receive it. She laughed, that strange braying laugh again that made him smile, too. ‘My father and my aunt own a restaurant,’ she said. ‘Nothing much to look at. A small family place tucked up a back alley near the Hilton. We may not be very grand, but we’ve got posh neighbours, and the food’s fantastic.’

Li popped the prawn in his mouth. ‘I’ll look forward to it.’ He chewed thoughtfully for a moment. ‘Your father and your aunt?’

‘My mother’s dead. Has been for years. My dad’s sister never married.’ She chuckled. ‘Maybe I take after her. Anyway, she’s a sort of surrogate mom. My dad’s brother’s boy is the chef, and a couple of local girls come in to chop the veg. It’s …’ she searched for the right word to describe it, ‘… cosy.’

‘I’ll look forward to it,’ Li said.

They finished their beer and ordered more, and Mei-Ling said, ‘You never married either?’

He shook his head. ‘I’m like you. The job always came first.’

‘But you’re younger than me.’

‘A little,’ he conceded.

‘So did you never want a kid?’

For a moment or two he avoided her eye. Then he said, ‘In a way I’ve got one.’

She was taken aback. ‘What do you mean?’

‘My sister’s kid, Xinxin. She’s only six. But when her mom got pregnant again, then found it was a boy, she left Xinxin on my doorstep — almost literally. And she went off into hiding somewhere to have the boy she’d always dreamed of.’ He looked grim. ‘Sometimes I wonder if the One Child Policy doesn’t create as many problems as it solves. All those unwanted little girls. All those kids growing up without brothers or sisters. A whole generation with no aunts or uncles.’

‘What about Xinxin’s dad?’

‘He didn’t want to know. He’d wanted my sister to have an abortion, and when she ran off he just washed his hands of her and the kid.’

‘So you’re bringing up the kid on your own?’ Mei-Ling was incredulous.

He shrugged his frustration. ‘She stays in my apartment, but I have to make arrangements for someone to take her when I’m working, which can be all hours of the day or night.’

‘Who’s looking after her now?’

Li said, ‘A friend. But it looks like I could be here for a while. So I’m going to have to try and make arrangements to bring her to Shanghai.’

‘Anything I can do to help …’ She looked at him earnestly across the table, her sympathy written clearly on her face. ‘I mean it. I can get the department to fix things.’ She put her hand over his, and he smiled.

‘Thanks.’ And he gave her hand a small squeeze of gratitude. It felt small and warm and smooth, and he was aware suddenly of how dry his mouth was.

Mei-Ling turned the Santana off the Bund into Yan’an Dong Road. The light show was over for the night, and the city looked very ordinary and dull under its pale yellow wash of sodium street lights. The river was extraordinarily black, a train of barges toiling upstream, its reflected lights scattering across the broken water. Mei-Ling drove west in the shadow of the viaduct road overhead before cutting left across the flow of traffic to pull up outside number 343, the Da Hu Hotel, yellow paint peeling off seven floors of anonymous concrete. Above them, traffic roared past on the viaduct no more than six feet from the windows of the hotel’s second floor. She smiled apologetically at Li in the passenger seat. ‘Cheap and cheerful,’ she said. ‘The best the department has to offer visiting cops. I’m sorry.’

Li shrugged. ‘It’s somewhere to lay my head.’

There was an awkward moment between them then, when neither of them knew how to say goodnight. Finally she said, ‘I’ll pick you up in the morning.’

He said, ‘Thanks for tonight.’

She said, ‘Shanghai hospitality. If I was to wait for a Beijinger to put his hand in his pocket I could grow old in the process.’ She reached across, and for a moment he thought she was going to kiss him. He moved quickly to avoid her, a knee-jerk reaction.

She laughed and said, ‘Hey, what are you so jumpy about?’ And she unlocked the door to swing it open. ‘I don’t usually attack men the day I meet them. Normally I wait till day two.’

Li grinned stupidly, feeling very foolish. ‘I’d better wear my protective gear tomorrow, then.’

She said, ‘You’d better believe it. Seven a.m. Sharp.’

He slammed the door shut when he got out and went round to retrieve his bag from the trunk. She peeped the horn and pulled away with a squeal of tyres. He watched the car go for a minute, then walked under the overhang of the building to the hotel entrance, a revolving door of shiny chrome and glass. Inside, a girl in black at reception sat beneath a row of clocks showing the time around the world and watched unsmiling as he filled in his registration card.

His room was on the third floor, looking directly on to the traffic on the viaduct. He almost felt he could reach out and touch it. The room was basic but clean. A net curtain hung in the window. He pulled it aside and slid the window open and let in the cold night air and the growling of the traffic. The circular tower of the Agricultural Bank of China, still lit, punctured the sky. Out there, in this city of fourteen million, people made love and slept and ate and worked and died. He wondered how many felt as lonely and confused as he felt right now. He thought of Margaret arriving tomorrow, of those poor women in their collective grave, of Xinxin, and of the dangerous feelings that Mei-Ling had aroused. And he felt a wave of fatigue wash over him.

He slid the window closed, undressed and slipped between the cool starched sheets and drifted quickly away into a dark, dreamless sleep, the only escape he ever had from life.