‘How long will it take to DNA-test the cigar end found by Pan’s body?’
‘I gave it to lab last night,’ Wang said.
And Margaret added, ‘I have requested that they fast-track the testing process. We should hear later today.’
Li said, ‘What are you going to put in your report to the Americans?’
Margaret said, ‘For God’s sake, I haven’t finished the autopsy yet!’
‘But you already know the cause of death.’
She sighed, reluctant to commit herself too early. ‘Subject to toxicology, I’ll be telling the embassy that she died from rapid blood loss caused by the severing of the main arteries of the neck. She had been strangled and was probably unconscious when her throat was cut.’
‘Do you think she was killed by the same person who murdered the others?’
She glanced at Wang. ‘What do you think, Doctor? You did the other autopsies.’
Wang pulled a face. ‘Inconclusive,’ he said. ‘She was strangled like others, yes. Throat cut, left to right, like others. Yes. But no other injury. This is not like others. Also, she no prostitute, like others. She no killed in Jianguomen, like others.’ He looked at Margaret. ‘How ’bout you, Doctah?’
‘I agree,’ Margaret said. ‘As things stand, the evidence is inconclusive.’
‘What about the letter?’ Li said. ‘The ears.’
‘Circumstantial,’ Margaret said. ‘It doesn’t prove anything. You have to make your own judgement on that one.’ She stopped what she was doing and looked at him. ‘The unsmoked end of that Russian cheroot is the crucial piece of the jigsaw that we don’t yet have. If they can recover saliva and we get a DNA match, then I think you’d have to say that it was the same killer. If not…’ she blew a jet of air through pursed lips, ‘…I’d say you were heading for confusion freefall.’
II
Li and Wu were stepping out into the carpark when Li’s cellphone rang. Qian’s voice sounded oddly strained. ‘Chief, where are you?’
‘We’ve just come out of the autopsy.’
‘Can you come straight back here?’
‘Sure.’
‘And bring Wang?’
‘Why?’
‘We’ve got something here he’s going to have to check out, Chief. It’s not something I really want to tell you about on the phone.’
Li sent Wu back inside to get Wang, and he stood on the steps staring gloomily toward the traffic which sped by on the expressway beyond a vast area of what had once been housing, flattened now for redevelopment. He didn’t really want to think about what it was that Qian needed Wang to check out. Everything about this case seemed to be slipping away from him. Margaret’s confusion freefall. Each time, it seemed, he turned around there was a new development — before he’d even had time to assimilate the last one.
‘What’s happened?’ He turned around to find Margaret, showered and changed, on the steps beside him.
‘I don’t know. Qian didn’t want to talk about it on the phone.’ He looked at her, and she seemed suddenly very small and vulnerable, her hair still wet and combed back from her face. She seemed thinner. Perhaps she had lost weight and he simply hadn’t noticed. He ran a thumb along the line of her jaw and brushed her cheekbone. Her skin was so pale, dotted with tiny faded freckles across the nose. He remembered how Lynn Pan’s lover had described her loss. One minute she’s there. My whole life. The next she’s gone. And he felt how it would be if he ever lost Margaret. The thought struck him like a blow to the solar plexus. It was too easy to take the people you loved for granted, and too late to take it back when they were gone. He knew that Margaret was unhappy, chained to the home and the child, and he simply hadn’t been dealing with it. In the wake of Lynn Pan’s death, she seemed particularly fragile, and he felt the need to hold her and protect her.
Margaret was taken by surprise when he enveloped her in his arms and squeezed all the breath from her lungs. ‘Hey,’ she protested, laughing, and pulled herself free. ‘Who do you think you are, the Beijing Ripper?’
But he wasn’t smiling. He was gazing into the deep, dark blue of her eyes. ‘I love you, Margaret,’ he said.
And she felt the intensity of it. ‘I love you, too,’ she said quietly.
‘I know things aren’t satisfactory right now,’ he said. ‘I know it. I just…I just need to deal with this first. And then we’ll sort it.’
She nodded seriously. ‘I don’t know how we do that.’
‘Neither do I. But we’ve got to try.’ He squeezed both her hands. ‘I can’t promise, but I’ll try and make it to see my father this afternoon.’
She smiled ruefully. ‘I won’t hold my breath.’
They broke apart as her taxi arrived. It was a Mercedes. Li cocked an eyebrow. ‘Can we afford this?’
‘We don’t have to. The good old US of A is picking up the tab.’ She kissed him lightly on the lips and jumped into the back seat. The taxi was pulling out of the gate when Wu came down the steps with Pathologist Wang.
It took them forty minutes to get back to Section One through the lunchtime traffic, sitting in long, frustrating periods of gridlock on the Third Ring Road before turning south and picking their way through some of the less congested back streets. The restaurant on the corner of Beixinqiao Santiao was packed when Li parked their Jeep outside it. The sounds of diners, the smells of lunch, of barbecue and wok, filled the air, making Li aware of a hunger gnawing at his stomach. But he had no appetite and no desire to eat. Beyond Section One, Noah’s Ark Food Room had fallen under the demolition men’s hammer, and behind a hoarding where it had once stood, a giant crane soared into the blue autumn sky, dominating the skyline.
They went in the side entrance and climbed the stairs to the fourth floor. There was an odd, faintly medical smell in the air as they walked along the top corridor. It was cold, and when they turned into the detectives’ room they saw why. All the windows stood wide open, and officers were sitting around in their coats and typing with their gloves on. Everyone was smoking. In spite of the cold wind blowing in through the open window, and the smoke that filled the room, the smell was stronger here, and carried more than a hint of something rotten.
Qian was sitting on one of the desks talking on the telephone. He hung up when he saw Li and jumped down. ‘In here, Chief.’ Watched by everyone else in the room, Li and Wu and Wang followed Qian into his office. The windows here were also wide open. The desk had been cleared, and on it stood a cardboard box the size of a shoebox. It had been wrapped in brown paper and secured with clear, sticky tape. Someone had cut open the wrapping, and the paper was folded away from the box, its lid lying on the table beside it. The air was thick with the smell of alcohol, and a stink like meat which had been left in the refrigerator a month past its sell-by date.
‘In the name of the sky, Qian…’ Li screwed up his eyes and blew air out through his mouth. ‘What the hell…?’
‘It was addressed to you, Chief. Arrived in this morning’s mail. But it was stinking so bad the head of the mail room thought I should open it.’ Qian looked slightly green around the gills. ‘I wish to hell I hadn’t.’
‘What is it?’ Li and Wu and Pathologist Wang approached the open box with a caution which suggested they thought that something might jump out and bite them. Inside, laid out among crumpled paper packing was a smooth, faintly reddish-brown-coloured arc of something organic. It was wrapped in plastic and oozing a clear fluid. The stench was fierce. Wu put a handkerchief to his face and moved back, gagging. Li stood his ground with difficulty as Wang snapped on latex gloves and lifted it out of the box.