Margaret listened in horror and fascination. ‘How do you know all this?’
‘I read up on it before I went to Hong Kong. Yifu was a bit of an expert. Our family came from the colony before they moved to Sichuan.’
‘And all that stuff on the floor. What did it mean, exactly?’
‘I think the bamboo hoop with the red serrated paper was supposed to represent a hole through which the founding monks escaped from the burning monastery. I guess new recruits would have to step through it. The pieces of charcoal laid out on the floor would represent the burned-out remains. The monks are then supposed to have escaped across a river on stepping stones. I think that’s what the circles of paper were. The two lengths of string, I think, symbolise a two-planked bridge which also aided their escape. They would be held up and stretched tight for the recruits to duck under during the ceremony.’
Margaret was wide-eyed in amazement. ‘This is bizarre stuff,’ she said. ‘It’s hard to believe that crap like that still goes on in this day and age.’
Li nodded. ‘It would be laughable if these people weren’t so dangerous. And, believe me, they are.’
‘Why are they called Triads?’ Margaret asked.
‘It was the Europeans who called them that,’ Li said. ‘They were known by all sorts of different names over the years. The term “Triads” might have came from one of them — the “Three United Association”. But I don’t know for sure.’
He told her, then, about the table draped with yellow paper and the strange collection of items laid out on top of it. ‘I figure the table was some kind of altar. When the monks were escaping from the monastery, a huge yellow curtain was supposed to have fallen on them and saved them from the flames. I think that’s what the yellow paper was supposed to represent.’
‘What about the stuff on top of the altar?’ She remembered Mei Yuan telling her about the rice bowl and chopsticks placed on a wedding altar to commemorate a death in the family.
‘Everything’s related to the original legend,’ Li said. ‘I don’t know all the details. I mean, the rush sandal is obvious. That’s what was supposed to have turned into a boat. I think the white cloth with the red stains represents a monk’s robe smeared with blood. The sword would be used to execute traitors. The punishment for anyone breaking one of the thirty-six oaths of allegiance is “death by a myriad of swords”.’
Margaret felt goosebumps rise up all along her arms and across her shoulders. ‘That girl you found in the park,’ she whispered. ‘You said she worked at the club.’ Li looked at her, the thought dawning on him for the first time. Margaret said, ‘She died of multiple stab wounds, didn’t she? Laid out on a stone slab like a ritual sacrifice. Or execution.’
‘My God,’ Li said. ‘They killed her.’
‘But why? She wouldn’t have been a member, would she?’
‘No. It’s an all male preserve. But she must have known something, betrayed a confidence, I don’t know…’ He sat up in bed, all fatigue banished from body and mind. ‘They took her up there and stabbed her to death and laid her out for the world to see. Like they were making an example of her. Or issuing a warning.’
‘Who to?’
‘I don’t know. I just don’t know.’ And then Li remembered something which had got lost in a day of traumas and revelations. Something he had meant to ask Margaret about earlier. He turned to her. ‘Margaret, Wu came up with something at the meeting this morning. It’s maybe nothing at all. But it did seem strange.’
‘What?’
‘All of the athletes, including Jia Jing, had the flu at some point in the five or six weeks before they died.’ He paused. ‘Could that have been the virus that caused their heart trouble?’
Margaret scowled. ‘No,’ she said. ‘The flu wouldn’t do that to them.’ She thought about it some more. ‘But it could have done something else.’
‘Like what?’
‘Activated a retrovirus.’
Li screwed up his face. ‘A what?’
Margaret said, ‘We’ve all got them, Li Yan, in our germline DNA. Retroviruses. Organisms that have attacked us at some point in human history, organisms that we have learned to live with because they have become a part of us. Usually harmless. But sometimes, just sometimes, activated by something else that finds its way in there. A virus. Like herpes. Or flu.’
‘You think that’s what happened to these athletes?’
She shrugged. ‘I’ve no idea. But if they all came down with the flu, and that’s the only common factor we can find, then it’s a possibility.’
Li was struggling to try to understand. ‘And how would that help us?’
Margaret shook her head. ‘I don’t know that it would.’
Li fell back on the pillow. ‘I give up.’
She smiled at him and shook her head. ‘I doubt it. You’re not the type.’
He closed his eyes and they lay side by side in silence, then, for ten minutes or more. Finally she said, ‘So what are you thinking?’
He said, ‘I’m thinking about how I quit the force tonight.’
Margaret raised herself immediately on her elbow. She could barely hear her voice over the pounding of her heart. ‘What?’
‘I want to marry you, Margaret.’ She started to protest, but he forced his voice over her. ‘And if you won’t marry me, then I’ll have to live with that. But it won’t change my mind about quitting.’ He turned his head on the pillow to look at her. ‘I wrote my resignation letter before I left the office tonight. It’s in the mail. So all my bridges are burned. No going back.’
‘Well, you’d better find a way,’ Margaret said brutally. ‘Because I won’t marry you, Li Yan. Not now. I won’t have your unhappiness on my conscience for the rest of my life.’
Chapter Ten
I
Traffic in the city had already ground to a halt. And there was not even light, yet, in the sky. Li hobbled past lines of stationary vehicles blocking all six lanes on Jianguomenwai Avenue. A few taxis were making their way gingerly along the cycle lanes, cyclists weaving past them on both sides, leaving drunken tracks in the snow. He would have to take the subway to Section One, for what would probably be his last time.
Margaret was still asleep when he left. He had no idea when either of them had drifted off, finally, to escape from their stalemate for a few short hours. But he had wakened early and lay listening to her slow, steady breathing on the pillow beside him. She had looked so peaceful, so innocent in sleep, this woman he loved. This pig-headed, stubborn, utterly unreasonable woman he loved.
He walked quickly to burn up anger and frustration. Not just with Margaret, but with everything in his life. With a bureaucracy that wouldn’t allow him to marry her and still keep his job. With an investigation that grew more obscure the more he uncovered. With his father for blaming him unreasonably for things that were not his fault. With himself for not being able to solve his own problems. With his Uncle Yifu for not being there when he needed him most.