Li found himself oddly affected by the music, the hair rising on his neck and across his scalp. It was strangely apposite to his mood, the sense of sadness and desolation in this dead woman’s apartment, his memory of her forever stained by the bloody corpse lying at the base of the Millennium Monument.
He sat down and picked out a print-sized photo album from the mess on the floor. It had clear plastic sleeves, two photographs in each. They were mostly pictures of Pan and a friend in backpacks and boots, posing on a hillside somewhere, spectacular backdrops behind them. Pan’s face was red with the cold, and radiant in its smile. The two girls were clearly on their own, the remote on the camera snapping pictures of them together. Both were laughing hysterically. There were more sombre pictures of each of them individually, and several panoramas of the plains of northern China laid out below them. In one, Li could detect the plume of pollution hanging over a distant Beijing.
The other girl seemed strangely familiar. And then Li placed her. She had been in the graduation photograph with Pan on the wall in Pan’s office. An old friend from back in the States. A plain girl, with an attractive smile.
He heard a sharp intake of breath, and a muted, throaty exclamation of fear. A woman’s voice. He turned his head to find himself looking at the plain girl with the attractive smile. She was standing in the open doorway to the hall, but she wasn’t smiling. Her hand went to her mouth. ‘Oh, my God, what’s happened here? Who are you?’
Li stood up immediately and switched off the stereo. The silence seemed deafening in its absence. ‘Didn’t the caretaker tell you?’
‘She never said a thing.’ It was a Californian accent.
‘There’s been a break-in.’
‘I can see that. Who are you?’
‘Section Chief Li Yan, Criminal Investigation Department of the Beijing Municipal Police.’
‘Where’s Lynn? Does she know about it, yet?’
Li felt sick. Of course, he realised, an American in Beijing was hardly likely to buy the Beijing Youth Daily. He didn’t even know if she spoke or read Chinese.
‘What’s your relationship to Miss Pan?’ he asked.
‘We’re friends. We were at university together. Where is she?’ There was a hint of panic, now, in her voice.
Li said, ‘I’m sorry to be the one to break it to you, but Miss Pan was murdered last night.’
He had not known what reaction to expect, but the feral howl that escaped the girl’s mouth punctured him like a cold, steel blade, nearly bringing tears to his eyes. He quickly crossed to the door and led her to the settee. She slumped into it like a woman falling. A dead weight. But apart from that single howl, not another sound issued from her lips. Big, silent tears rolled down her cheeks, and she clutched her hands in front of her, wringing them so hard her knuckles were turning white. Li sat down beside her and gently prised her hands apart, holding one of them in both of his. ‘Can I get you water or something?’
She shook her head. She spotted the photo album Li had been looking at and pulled her hand free of his to pick it up. As she flicked through it, Li could see the pain every image inflicted on her, each one with its own special memory. She snapped it shut again and sat silently shaking. Li allowed her some time to regain control. Finally, she said, without looking at him, ‘Of course, you didn’t know her.’
Li said, ‘I met her yesterday afternoon for the first time. Just a few hours before she was killed.’
The girl turned to look at him. Through her tears she examined his face, and he saw a sad smile in her eyes. ‘And, naturally, you fell for her.’ Li felt the colour rise on his cheeks. ‘It’s okay,’ she said. ‘Everybody does.’ She corrected herself. ‘Did. Everybody fell for Lynn. I never knew anyone who wasn’t madly in love with her after five minutes.’
‘Which makes it all the more difficult to understand why someone would want to kill her,’ Li said.
‘How…?’ The girl hardly dared to ask. ‘How did it happen?’
Li sighed heavily. ‘I don’t think…’
‘I want to know!’ the girl insisted.
Li said, ‘She was strangled, and had her throat cut.’
‘Oh, my God!’
For a moment Li thought the girl was going to be sick. But she controlled herself. He said, ‘Do you know if she had any special relationship? I mean, do you know if there was someone she was seeing?’
The girl nodded. She was wringing her hands again and staring at the floor. After a long silence she said in a voice that was almost a whisper, ‘Me.’
Li frowned in consternation. ‘I don’t understand.’
The girl said, ‘We were lovers. Ever since we met at university. There hadn’t ever been anyone else.’
Li was still struggling to come to terms with what the girl was saying. ‘You mean, you and she…? She was…’
‘A lesbian?’ the girl asked the question for him. She shook her head. ‘I suppose that’s what people would call us. But we were really just two people who loved each other.’ She bit her lip hard to stop herself from crying, and Li saw blood on her front teeth. ‘When she got the job offer out here, there was no question that I wouldn’t come with her. Not that I had the first idea what I would do. In the end I got a job teaching English at a private school near the university.’
Li was stunned. It had never once occurred to him that Pan might have been gay. There had been no hint of it in the way she had flirted with him. But then he remembered how she’d had them all in the palm of her hand the previous day. Every one of the six Ministry officials who had gone for the MERMER test had been smitten by her. I never knew anyone who wasn’t madly in love with her after five minutes, the girl had said. Did that suggest her killer might have been jealous? There was no indication that he knew any of his previous victims. But if he had known Pan, perhaps fallen for her, and then discovered that she was forever beyond his reach…A motive? But then why would he break into her department at the Academy to steal all her files? And what did he hope to find in her apartment? Li was in no doubt that the murder and the break-ins were connected. But none of it made the least sense to him.
He was still trying to come to terms with Pan’s sexuality. ‘You didn’t share the apartment with her,’ he said.
For the first time, the girl showed apprehension. ‘It’s frowned upon here, isn’t it? Officially?’
Li understood. ‘You’ve nothing to fear from me,’ he said.
‘We decided it would be safer if we had separate apartments. At least, that’s how Lynn wanted it. She always liked her own space. Somewhere she could retreat to, to be on her own.’ The sadness in the girl’s face was nearly unbearable. ‘Me? I would have wanted to be with her every living minute.’
Li heard the sound of a vehicle drawing up out front. He stood up and went to the window. It was the forensics van from Pau Jü Hutong. Fu Qiwei’s second team spilled out into the car park. He turned back into the room. ‘That’s the forensics people arriving,’ he said. ‘Before they come in and start taking this place apart, do you think you could have a look around, maybe tell me if anything’s missing?’
She took a deep breath and nodded her head.
‘Thanks,’ he said. ‘Try not to touch or disturb anything.’ He helped her to her feet and squeezed her hand. ‘Take your time. I’ll keep them out of here until you’re done.’