‘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.’