Li, too, was wondering why she had told him. It was almost scary to be the recipient of something so personal, to share in so much of someone else’s pain. He felt privileged, too. She had made herself supremely vulnerable, demonstrating an enormous trust in him, even if she was getting on a plane in five weeks’ time to fly out of his life for ever. He had never, in his thirty-three years, felt so drawn to someone as he was to Margaret now. He was frightened to speak, to do anything that would spoil the moment or bring it to an end. Her hand felt very small in his. He ran his thumb lightly over the Mekong delta of blue veins that ran down the back of it, and felt the pulsing of her blood. He wanted to hold her whole body to him, and feel its life and its warmth and keep it safe. But he did nothing. Said nothing.
After a while she made a little sigh and withdrew her hand from his, searching again for another tissue in her purse. But she couldn’t find one. ‘Do I look awful?’ she said.
‘No more than usual.’ He smiled.
She returned the smile, but it was watery and wounded. ‘I think I could do with a drink,’ she said. ‘Something a little stronger than tea.’
II
Outside, the dark night was filled with a sense of anticipation. The rain was so close you could almost touch it. Families still filled the spaces on the sidewalk and under the trees, but were subdued now, children curled up on mothers’ knees, card games in suspended animation. The men sat and smoked in silence; the hot wind of earlier had stilled, and their cigarette smoke rose in undisturbed columns. Dust and humidity hung in the air, turned blue by floodlights on a building site across the avenue. Great yellow cranes stood silently overhead, waiting for the first drops to come. The road was thick with traffic moving in long, slow columns. Cicadas were screaming in the trees. Everyone and everything, it seemed, was waiting for the rain.
Li and Margaret walked slowly east along the sidewalk past brightly lit barber shops, small stores selling shoes and underwear and throwing great rectangular slabs of light out into the darkness. The sounds of washing-up in restaurant kitchens came from open windows up narrow alleys. Li’s hand engulfed hers and she was happy to leave it there, comforted by its warmth and strength. He knew a bar, he said, at Xidan. They could get a drink there. They walked in silence, his mind full of what she had emptied from hers. And she was happy not to think of anything, to have her mind filled by nothing; no regrets, no sadness, no pain. They passed a small shop whose speciality was shoe repair and key-cutting, its window giving on to a workshop where an old man in greasy overalls sweated over a last. Rows of key blanks hung on rods beside the cutting machine.
Margaret stopped, her hand slipping from his. He turned to see her face etched in concentration as she stared in the window. He looked to see what she saw, and saw nothing but the old man at the last and the key blanks on rods. ‘What is it?’
The clouds had rolled back from her eyes and they shone brightly in the light from the shop. ‘The key,’ she said. ‘The key to the stair gate. The killer must have used it to unlock the gate, right? Whether he locked it behind him or not is unimportant. What’s important is he didn’t leave it in the lock or drop it on the floor. He must have put it in his pocket.’
For Li, this had come straight out of left-field, catching him on the blind-side. ‘Hey, wait. Slow down,’ he said. ‘What are you talking about?’
‘Can we go to the park?’
‘What, now?’
‘Yes.’
‘It’s pitch dark. And it’ll be locked up.’
‘That didn’t stop the killer getting in.’ Her eyes were burning now with a strange intensity. ‘Please, Li Yan. This could be important.’
She wouldn’t discuss it further as they took a taxi back to Section One to pick up a car and a flashlight. She might be wrong, she said. She wanted to walk him through it at the scene. There, it would either make sense or not. He didn’t press her.
They drove through the deserted streets of the Ritan legation area, streetlamps smothered by trees, embassy lights twinkling behind high walls and shut gates. In Guanghua Road, alive in the day with street traders and hawkers of every description, the gates to the park were also closed, locked and forbidding. The park lay brooding in the darkness beyond.
‘This is crazy,’ Li said. ‘Can’t it wait till the morning?’
‘No.’ Margaret jumped out of the Jeep and started climbing the gate. ‘Come on,’ she called. ‘It’s not difficult. And bring the flashlight.’
Li sighed and did as he was told. He wondered if he would have indulged her in this behaviour had it not been for her confession of just an hour before, or if she had not aroused in him such intense feelings of … of what? He had no idea. He had never felt like this before.
He climbed the gate easily and dropped down on the other side to join her. A long, straight avenue lined by trees and park benches cut north into the darkness. As they moved further into the park, away from the streetlights, he switched on his flashlight to lead her through the maze of paths that would take them to the lake.
The park, so open and friendly during the day, dappled by sunlight, and filled with the peace of people seeking solitude or relaxation, seemed oddly menacing in the dark – the rustle of night animals in the undergrowth, the eerie call of an owl, the splash of something landing in water as they neared the lake. The sweet scent of pine filled the hot night air, and the willows hung limp and lifeless, trailing their leaves along the edges of the still water. Li’s flashlight picked out the bridge to the pavilion, reflected white in the black water. ‘This way.’ He took her hand and led her round the east side of the lake to the dusty path that led up to the clearing where the twins and their baby-sitter had stumbled upon the blazing body of Chao Heng less than forty-eight hours before. A length of yellow tape was stretched between two stakes to keep the public out. Li stepped over it, and Margaret followed him up to the clearing. A line of chalk still ringed the crime scene, glowing white in the glare of the flashlight. A charred area remained in the centre of the clearing, but the smell of burning had long ago been replaced by the pungent spice of spruce and locust. But there was a desolate and haunted feel about the place, bled of all colour, monochrome in the harsh electric light. There was a sudden and unexpected flash in the sky, followed a few moments later by the not very distant rumble of thunder. The first fat drops of rain started falling, forming tiny craters in the dust.
‘Better make it quick,’ Li said. ‘We’re going to get soaked.’
But Margaret was oblivious. She walked carefully around the clearing, pulling at the shrubs around its perimeter, stopping finally, facing the path they had come up on the other side. Li had tracked her round with the beam of the flashlight. ‘He was wearing gloves, right?’ she said.
Li nodded acquiescence. ‘He didn’t leave any prints – in the apartment or on the gasoline can. He must have been.’
‘Okay. So he got Chao here in the dark. He sat and smoked a single cigarette, and waited for daylight. The kids found the blazing body when … ?’
‘Around six thirty.’
‘So the park had been open for about half an hour?’ Li nodded. ‘He poured gasoline all over Chao and struck a match. He wanted the body to be found still ablaze. Why? A macabre sense of theatre, perhaps; or maybe to create a diversion in which he could walk away unnoticed.’ She turned around. ‘He retreats this way, through the undergrowth, right? Because nobody saw him leave by the path the twins came up.’ She plunged through the shrubs and bushes, away from the clearing. Li hurried after her. ‘He’s going to come out on a path somewhere away over there,’ she called back, waving her hand vaguely into the darkness. The rain was still falling in single fat drops that they could have counted had they so desired. Another flash, the thunder nearer this time. ‘But he’s not going to walk away unnoticed wearing a pair of gloves, is he? Not on a sticky hot summer morning. He could have put them in his pockets, but suppose something went wrong and he got stopped.’ She pushed on through the undergrowth. Li followed. ‘Some quirk of fate. The alarm gets raised sooner than he thought. There’s a cop at the gate who stops anyone leaving. The killer doesn’t want to be found with a pair of gloves in his pocket, a pair of gloves stained with gasoline, maybe blood. So he throws them away, somewhere far away into the undergrowth.’ She mimicked the action. ‘What does it matter if they get found. There’s no way to trace them back to him. Then he remembers something. Damn! He’s still got the key to the stair gate at Chao’s apartment in his pocket. Now, that
could
tie him to his victim if he got stopped. It’s a long shot, but this guy doesn’t take any chances. He’ll have left his gun hidden in his vehicle. He’s meticulous. He’s a professional. And here’s a loose end. So he hurls the key away into the undergrowth after the gloves. Nobody’s ever going to find it. Hell, nobody’s even going to look. And nobody would know what it was anyway. Just a key. So he doesn’t worry about the fact that he’s not wearing gloves, and that his fingerprints are going to be on it.’
Her face was gleaming with excitement in the beam of the flashlight. Li’s mind was racing, assimilating what she had said. For a moment he closed his eyes to try to visualise what she had described. He saw very vividly the figure of a man retreating through the undergrowth. He was peeling the gloves from his hands as he went. He threw them as far as he could, then stopped suddenly, remembering the key. He took it out of his pocket, looked at it thoughtfully for a moment, then turned and threw it in the opposite direction, before hurrying off, away from the crackle of flame and smoke behind him. Li opened his eyes, and for a moment night turned to day, thunder crashed overhead, and the rain came down like rods, crashing through the leaves, turning dust to mud beneath their feet as they stood. Margaret’s face had been caught as if by a photographic flash, and the image of it was burned on to his eyes and remained there as he blinked to regain his night sight.
‘I mean, maybe it didn’t happen like that at all,’ Margaret said. ‘But it’s possible. Isn’t it? And if it did, then those gloves and that key are still here somewhere.’ She was having to shout now above the crashing of the rain. ‘Worth looking?’
‘Was he left- or right-handed?’
She frowned. ‘What?’
‘The killer. Can you tell? Maybe from the angle of the blow to Chao’s head?’
‘No.’ She shook her head. ‘Not for certain. But if you wanted to go by the laws of probability, he would be right-handed. Why?’
‘It could affect the direction he threw the gloves and the key.’
‘So you think it’s possible?’
He nodded. ‘I think it’s possible.’
She grinned, and he wanted to kiss her right there and then, cup her face in his hands and press his lips to hers. The rain was streaming down her face now, her hair slicked back by the wet. The silk of her blouse clung to the contours of her breasts, nipples puckered and erect, pushing hard against the soft, wet material. She was still not wearing a bra. ‘You want to look now?’ she asked.
‘It’s raining!’ he laughed, incredulous. ‘And I should organise an official search.’
‘We’re wet already. And before you go calling out half the Beijing police force, it would help to justify it if you’d at least found a glove.’ She fumbled in her purse. ‘I’ve got a key-light in here somewhere.’ And she laughed. ‘Now that’s ironic, isn’t it? A key-light!’ She found it. ‘You take the right side, I’ll take the left. If we don’t find something in ten minutes you can call in the cavalry.’
And before he had time to object, she was off, pushing through the shrubbery, pointing a pencil-beam of light ahead of her. He shook his head. She was in her element. It was as if telling him her story in the tearoom had lifted an enormous burden from her. She hadn’t needed alcohol. She was as high as a kite. And he wondered what on earth he was doing there, soaked to the skin, scrabbling about in the bushes in the dark, in pursuit of something that was probably illusory, the creation of two overactive imaginations on an emotionally charged night.
He scrambled through the bushes to his right, scanning the ground with the flashlight. It had been dry for so long and the ground was baked so hard that the rain wasn’t draining away immediately. It lay in great pools, filling every dip and hollow. Another flash of sheet lightning lit up the park, reflected off every glistening branch and leaf. For a moment he thought he saw a figure darting through the trees, the briefest flickering movement, like half a dozen frames of an old black-and-white movie. He had lost his bearings. It must have been Margaret. He called out, but the rain was still deafening, and he couldn’t hear whether she had replied. He shook his head and wiped the rain from his eyes, and pushed on, swinging the beam of his flashlight from side to side. He went to check the time on his watch, but it wasn’t there, and he remembered breaking the chain earlier in the day. He must have been blundering around in the dark and wet for at least ten minutes by now, he thought. He turned, wondering which way it was back to the clearing. As he did, the beam of his flashlight caught the dark shape of something hanging in the branches of a bush. He swung the light back. It looked like a dead bird. He pushed through the undergrowth towards it, and as he reached out it fell to the ground. He crouched down and shone the lamp on it. It was a sodden leather glove. ‘Hey!’ he called out. ‘Margaret! I’ve found one.’ He heard her footsteps approaching from behind and turned as a fist smashed down into his face. The shock of it robbed him of his senses and he keeled over, blinking blood and rain out of his eyes. His flashlight clattered away into the bushes. He saw a dark shadow looming over him. And the fist smashed into his face again. And again. Hard. Brutally hard. His attacker was strong and very fast. He saw the fist draw back again and knew he could do nothing to stop it.
‘Li Yan?’ He heard Margaret’s voice above the drumming of the rain. ‘Li Yan, where are you?’
The fist paused and hung uncertainly for a moment, then unravelled into fingers and thumb, flying past him to the ground like some hawk diving on its prey. It retreated again, clutching the glove. Lightning and thunder were almost simultaneous this time, a deafening roar from directly overhead. And for the briefest of moments, Li and his attacker were frozen in the hard blue light, looking straight into each other’s eyes. And then darkness, and the man was gone, crashing off through the bushes, his image still burned into Li’s eyes, as Margaret’s had been earlier.