The Firemaker (11 page)

So he knew that this girl was wrong. He was not made for better things. He was made to be a policeman, and to Li that was the very best thing he could be. He had never regretted coming to Beijing, and the last he heard the girl he walked by the canal with had married the bully whose skull he’d cracked. He had smiled, for the bully was weak, and she was strong and would mould him into whatever she wanted.

Margaret, he noticed now, was scribbling in a notebook whatever was being relayed to her across the ether. She nodded and smiled and hung up the phone, tearing the page out of the notebook before coming through. She handed it to Li, a gleam in her eyes. ‘Chao Heng,’ she said. ‘That’s the name of your John Doe through there.’ She jerked her thumb towards the autopsy room. ‘About ninety-nine per cent certain.’

Li looked at the piece of paper. She had scribbled,
Chao Heng, graduated microbial genetics, University of Wisconsin, 1972
.

He looked up at her in astonishment. Professor Xie said, ‘How can you possibly know this?’

She held up the ring. ‘In the States, there’s a tradition among university graduates. To mark the occasion they have special graduation rings made that bear the crest of their university. In this case, the University of Wisconsin.’ She handed the ring to Professor Xie. ‘You can see the crest carved in the stone. Even if it hadn’t actually said
University of Wisconsin
on it, I’d have known the university because …’ Li saw a cloud, like a cataract, come across her eyes and the skin darken around them. ‘… because someone I knew well graduated from there.’ The moment was past, and she was back on her roll. ‘The thing is, they very often get them engraved on the inside. A name, a date, initials. In this case, if you look carefully, the initials C.H. and the date, 1972.’

Professor Xie peered at the engraving and passed it to Li.

‘We’re lucky it wasn’t completely melted.’ She shrugged. ‘So fate was kind to us. Anyway, it’s half past ten at night over there, so I couldn’t call the university. I did the next best thing; spoke to a friend on the Chicago force. He goes on-line to the Internet, pulls up the alumni register for Wisconsin, and checks out the initials on all the graduates from ’72. There’s only one Chinese name with the initials C. H. Chao Heng. Graduated in microbial genetics.’

Li clenched his fist around the ring, a gleam in his eye which when he turned it on her might have held a hint of admiration, albeit grudging. She felt a flush of pleasure. She remembered reading something somewhere, once, a very long time ago. She knew it was Chinese. ‘Women hold up half the sky.’ She shrugged it off as if it were nothing.

Li raised an eyebrow, and she saw pure mischief in those dark eyes. ‘Ah,’ he said. ‘You are quoting from Mao Zedong.’ She nodded. So that’s who had said it. ‘Of course,’ Li continued, ‘he meant the lower half of the sky.’

There was a moment’s stand-off, before a wide grin slashed his face. It was irresistibly infectious, and she found herself smiling back when what she really wanted to do was punch him. She turned to Professor Xie. ‘Professor, if I may, I would very much like to assist you in the autopsy. I am sure there is much I could learn from an experienced pathologist like yourself.’ Credentials established, she had no problem with restoring Professor Xie’s
mianzi
.

He responded immediately with a small, dignified bow. ‘It is my pleasure,’ he said.

V

‘There is extensive thermal injury, with fourth- and third-degree burns over greater than ninety per cent of the body surface, with scattered second-degree burns. Portions of the scalp and virtually all of the scalp hair are charred away, with the exception of a small amount of singed, coarse, straight black hair averaging three centimetres in length on the left side of the head. The facial features are not discernible. The nose is absent, as is the right ear. The left ear is shrivelled and charred. The eyes are not recognisable. The teeth are partially charred, but are in excellent repair, with multiple amalgam fillings and porcelain crowns. The maxilla and mandible will be retained for future dental comparison. The skin and soft tissue of the right cheek are charred away and there is char fracturing of the right zygoma. The tongue is protruding slightly; the tip is charred, and there is a small amount of white froth about the mouth. No facial hair is identified.’

Lily’s protestations that she was no longer required had been ignored, and she stood shivering at the back of the autopsy room beside Li, hardly daring to watch as Margaret made her preliminary examination of the body. Margaret measured and weighed, describing her findings as she went for the benefit of an overhead microphone. The recording of the entire proceeding would later be transcribed for the autopsy report.

She and Professor Xie had gone off earlier to change, returning swathed in layers of clothing; green surgeon’s pyjamas covered by plastic aprons, in turn covered by long-sleeved cotton gowns. Both wore plastic shoe covers on their feet and shower caps on their heads. Wondering what had drawn her to such a macabre profession, Li had watched with involuntary fascination as Margaret pulled on a pair of gloves, slipping plastic sleeve covers over her freckled forearms to cover the gap between sleeve and glove. She had drawn a steel-mesh glove over her left, non-cutting, hand, and snapped on a second pair of latex gloves over the lot. The post-mortem mutilation of a human being was a messy business.

As both surgeons had pulled up their face masks and lowered goggles over their eyes, two assistants had wheeled in the charred body of Chao Heng on a gurney and transferred it to the autopsy table. Lily had let out a small gasp. His upper body was still frozen in the defensive attitude of the boxer, as if preparing to fight off any attempt to cut him open. The chill air of the room had been suffused immediately with a smell like overcooked steak on a grill, an insidious odour that crept into the soul via the too-sensitive medium of the olfactory nerves.

The assistants had placed covers on the floor beneath and around the table to collect the fine charcoal dust that Margaret had warned would settle all around them and track across the room as they moved back and forth dissecting organs for later microscopic examination. Professor Xie, although nominally the lead pathologist, now that
mianzi
was restored had deferred to Margaret’s greater experience and asked her to perform the autopsy while he assisted.

Now, as she examined the feet of the corpse, she found and pulled back a piece of black and stiffened material from the top of the left foot.
‘The charred remains of what appears to be a leather shoe and part of a sock are present over the dorsum and the sole of the left foot and the sole of the right foot. There are no remaining identifying features, other than that the left shoe appears to have been of a laced variety. The skin of the dorsum of the left foot is dark red and blistered and there is an apparent needle track in the skin in the area of the saphenous vein and venous arch.’

Margaret reached up and switched off the microphone, turning towards Li. ‘Looks like our man might have been a junkie. The top of the foot is quite a common place to shoot up if you want to hide the needle tracks. We can confirm that by checking for narcotics residue in and around the capillaries of the lungs. Blood tests will tell us what he was shooting up. Probably heroin.’

‘Will you get sufficient blood and material for testing? I mean, won’t everything be cooked?’ Li’s distaste at his own question was palpable.

‘Superficially, yes. Normally we would draw off fluid from the eyes and blood from the femoral veins at the top of the legs, but that
will
be cooked and solid. Inside, though, should be pretty much protected and preserved. Beyond the accelerant used to set him on fire, there wasn’t much else to sustain the blaze, so he wouldn’t have burned for that long.’

The assistants turned the body over and Margaret switched on the microphone.
‘The posterior trunk shows a symmetrical external contour. The spine is clearly mid-line. There is charring of the skin of the back and multiple small areas of skin splitting over the latissimus dorsi bilaterally. There is no obvious blunt or sharp force trauma of the back.’

Having placed the body on its back again, the autopsy assistants placed a rubber block around six inches thick beneath the body, in the mid-chest area, to help expose the chest cavity when Margaret made the first Y-shaped incision, starting at each shoulder, meeting at the bottom of the breastbone, and continuing down past the belly button to the pubic bone. She peeled back the skin and musculature of the chest to reveal the cavity.

‘There is diffuse drying and fixation of the soft tissues of the thoracic and abdominal walls, with skin splitting. All organs are present and in their appropriate positions.’

Professor Xie cut through the ribcage with what looked like pruning shears. The snapping of the bones made a sickening sound that echoed back at them off the cold tiles. When he had finished, they removed the breastplate to reveal the heart. Margaret snipped open the pericardial sac so that the blood that poured into it out of the heart could be collected by the assistants for testing in toxicology. Professor Xie slipped his hands into the cavity and lifted up the heart, allowing Margaret to sever the major vessels and arteries so that he could remove it for weighing and later dissection.

They worked methodically down the body, removing the lungs, the stomach – looking like a slimy, fluid-filled purse, its foul-smelling contents drained for further examination – the liver, the spleen, the pancreas, the kidneys; weighing everything, removing blood, fluid and bile samples.

‘The stomach contains 125 grams of grey-brown, pasty, partially digested food material. No medication residue is grossly identified. No ethanol odour is noted.’

Working quickly now, with dexterous hands, Margaret cut the guts free and, starting at the duodenum end, began pulling the gut towards herself, an arm’s length at a time, using her scalpel to free its loops from the sheet of fat to which it was attached. When it was straight, she sliced down its length with a pair of scissors, holding them partially open and drawing the intestine along them, as if she were cutting a piece of Christmas wrapping paper. The stink was almost unbearable. Li and Lily moved instinctively away, mouths closed, breathing shallowly.
‘The small and large intestines are examined throughout their entire length and are grossly unremarkable.’
The intestine was discarded into a stainless-steel bucket lined with plastic.

Urine samples were drawn from the bladder for toxicology, and Margaret examined the prostate and testes, cutting sections from each for testing, before discarding the remains in the bucket.

She turned to the neck now, pulling the top flap of skin from the Y-shaped incision up over the face. ‘
The bony and cartilaginous structures of the neck are intact and without evidence of trauma. The musculature of the neck shows marked heat fixation, but there is no evidence of haemorrhage in the strap muscles or soft tissues of the neck.’

Attention turned, then, to the head, a head-block placed under the neck to raise it from the table. An incision was made at the back running from one ear to the other, and the skin peeled down over the face to reveal the skull. Using a circular saw, one of the assistants cut through the skullcap so that it could be removed, with a sucking and popping sound like feet being withdrawn from mud, to reveal the brain. Margaret had warned everyone to stand back as the saw cut through bone. ‘Try not to breathe this stuff,’ she said. ‘It smells kind of smoky-sweet, but latest thinking is that it might carry HIV and other viruses.’

She examined the skull.
‘Reflection of the scalp reveals a 2 by 3.2 centimetre area of subgaleal haemorrhage over the left parietal bone, with a possible contusion of approximately the same dimensions of the scalp – impossible to say for sure because of heat artifact. There is a small amount of subdural haemorrhage deep to the area of subgaleal haemorrhage. On removal of the dura, an irregular-shaped fracture, measuring 2.6 centimetres in length, is clearly visible. There is no charring or eversion of the fracture.’

She concentrated then on removing the brain from the skull, pulling it gently back towards her, examining its worm-like surface as she did.
‘The meninges are slightly dried, but thin and translucent. There is a small contusion of the left parietal lobe, with a trace of haemorrhage
.’ She snipped it off at the stem and it plopped out into her hands for weighing. Lily put a hand over her mouth and fled from the room.

Margaret let out a deep breath as she relaxed her concentration. ‘Well, apart from breadloafing the organs, there’s not much else we can do just now. It’ll take some time to prepare permanent paraffin sections for microscopic examination …’

Professor Xie interrupted her. ‘If you wished, we could examine fresh frozen sections in about fifteen minutes.’

‘You’ve got a cryostat here?’ She was unable to hide her surprise.

He smiled. ‘This is a very modern facility, Doctor. We are not
so
far behind the Americans.’

The cryostat was about the size of a small washing machine with a crank handle on its right side and a window on top with a view into its icy interior, kept at a chilly minus 22 degrees Centigrade. Margaret was happy to let Professor Xie demonstrate his expertise, and watched as he prepared sections of lung tissue and skin from the left foot for freezing. He squeezed globs of a jelly-like support medium into metal chucks that would provide holding bases for the tissue. The tissue samples were then placed on the chucks which were, in turn, set on a rack in the cold working area in the cryostat. Working with practised ease, the professor pressed metal heat sinks against the face of the tissue samples, both to flatten and to freeze them.

Li had attended many autopsies over the years, but this was a procedure that was new to him. He watched, fascinated, as only a few minutes later the professor removed the frozen lung tissue from the freezer and transferred it, in its chuck, to the cutting area. Placing it hard against the blade, he turned the crank handle, drawing the sample across the cutting edge, for all the world like a ham slicer, cutting a wisp-thin section of tissue only microns thick, which was then touched to the surface of a room-temperature glass microscope slide. The sample instantly melted. The professor stained it with hematoxylin and eosin and handed it to Margaret for examination under the microscope.