The Firemaker (21 page)

Li laughed. ‘Gimme a break! She’s a
yangguizi
.’

‘So what?’ Yongli punched him mock-playfully on the arm. ‘You could turn on the charm if you wanted to. And she’d fall in a dead faint at your feet.’

III

Margaret cursed Li roundly. He was an arrogant, charmless, chauvinistic bastard! The doors of the elevator slid shut and she pressed the button for the ground floor. She saw herself reflected in the polished brass and realised she hadn’t even bothered putting on any make-up. She had simply changed into her jeans and a tee-shirt, a pair of open-toed sandals, grabbed her keycard and headed for the elevator. A couple of young attendants sitting playing cards cast curious glances at her through the open door of a utility room as she stalked past. She had noticed before that there always seemed to be cleaners or attendants around on her floor when she came and went. Always nodding and smiling and saying, ‘
Ni hao
.’ If she had thought about it at all, she might have been faintly surprised that they were still there at midnight. But her brain was otherwise engaged, and she needed a drink.

She couldn’t get Li Yan out of her head: his initial hostility, then his grudging acceptance of her professional expertise, followed by his warmth over lunch, and then his coldness after it, crowned by his refusal to accept her further help. She was glad, she told herself. She certainly had no desire to be where she wasn’t wanted. And she had no time for the mood swings and preconceptions of some precious Chinese policeman with a thing against foreigners. What was the word Bob had used … ?
Yangguizi
. That was it. Foreign devil! It was sheer bloody-minded xenophobia!

Her mind had been full of such thoughts all evening. Anger, revenge, the things she would say if she ever got the chance. And then she would remember a moment over lunch when he had smiled at her, dark eyes full of mischief, the soft-spoken quality of his voice, his gently accented English with its errant emphasis on odd syllables. And it would infuriate her that there was something about him she found attractive, and then she would recall the humiliation she felt when summoned to Professor Jiang’s office for the second time that day. And the anger would flood back.

The hotel lobby was deserted as she strode through the south wing past reception and down steps to the bar beyond. There were still a dozen or more people sitting at tables in twos and threes, downing nightcaps and indulging in loquacious post-dinner conversation. Margaret paid them little attention, hoisting herself on to a bar stool and demanding a vodka tonic with ice and lemon, then deciding to make it a large one. The barman responded quickly, pouring her drink, and then laying out a square of white paper napkin, a small bowl of raw peanuts, and a tall glass that was misting already from the chill of the ice. She flashed her keycard at him, and as he opened an account, she took a long pull at the vodka and felt the alcohol flooding almost immediately into her bloodstream and into her brain, like a long, cool wave of relief. She started to relax, took a handful of nuts, and looked around the bar. There was a young Chinese couple smooching at a table against the far wall. A noisy group of three Japanese businessmen quaffing large tumblers of whisky. A short, middle-aged man who … Her heart took a jolt as she realised it was McCord. He was slumped in a seat at a corner table looking considerably dishevelled. Strands of greasy grey hair had broken free of the oil he used to plaster it to his scalp, and fell in loops across a forehead beaded with perspiration. His face was the colour and texture of putty, bloodshot eyes rolling drunkenly. A half-empty glass of Scotch was held in his hand at a precarious angle, and he appeared to be muttering to himself. She turned to the barman, flicking her head in McCord’s direction. ‘Has he been here long?’

‘
Long
time,’ the barman said solemnly.

She took another stiff pull at the vodka, warmed up her indignation, and headed across the bar to McCord’s table. ‘Mind if I join you?’ she asked, and sat down without waiting for an answer.

His head jerked up from some alcoholic reverie and he looked at her, startled, and for a moment, she thought, almost scared. ‘What d’you want?’ he barked, screwing up his eyes and peering at her in the gloom of the bar. It was obvious he didn’t recognise her.

‘Margaret Campbell?’ she said, trying to awaken some recollection in him. ‘Dr Margaret Campbell? You ruined my welcome banquet, remember?’ He glared at her. ‘I just wanted to say, thanks a million.’

He curled a lip and drained his glass. ‘Why don’t you fuck off?’ he slurred. And he got unsteadily to his feet and lurched out of the bar.

She sat for a moment in suspended animation. Handled that well, Margaret, she told herself, and then slumped back in her seat feeling suddenly very tired indeed. As she took the remaining few gulps of her vodka, she glanced at the English-language
China Daily
lying on the seat next to where McCord had been sitting. The headlines washed over her. Something about the House of Representatives approving the US President’s decision to continue China’s Most Favoured Nation trading status. An item about the completion of the laying of a three-thousand-kilometre fibre optic cable to Tibet. A piece about a 20 per cent increase in the export of rice from China to the rest of the world. None of it held her interest. To bed, she thought. To sleep, perchance to dream … She crossed to the bar to sign her bill.

When she got back to her room, Margaret kicked off her sandals and undressed quickly. She caught sight of herself in the mirror, white skin almost blue in the hard electric light. The frail, skinny girl that looked back at her was almost unrecognisable as herself. She was a hard-bitten, experienced forensic pathologist into her fourth decade. She’d been around, she’d seen a bit. And yet it was a child that stared at her out of the mirror. A child abused by life, hiding behind her job, her anger, whatever other barriers she could raise. But in her nakedness, in a strange hotel room on her own, thousands of miles from home, there were no barriers that could hide her from herself. She remembered why she had come here, and was engulfed by a huge wave of self-pity and loneliness. The air-conditioning raised goose bumps all over her skin. She dropped on to the bed, wrapping the sheets around her, curling up into the fetal position. The first teardrop splashed on the pillow, and she cried herself to sleep.

IV

Zhengyi Road was dark and deserted as Li wheeled his bicycle past the shuttered fruit-and-vegetable shop at the entrance to the apartment complex. The slightest breeze stirred the sticky humid night air and rattled the leaves overhead. Li nodded to the night sentry in the guard box as he passed. Row after row of twelve-storey apartment blocks rose up into the murky black sky. Beyond the glow of the streetlights there were no stars visible through the layers of dust and mist in the upper atmosphere.

Li parked and locked his bike and entered the block where he lived with his uncle – superior apartments, behind high Ministry walls, reserved for top Ministry officials and senior police officers. It was late and the elevator was turned off for the night. Li unlocked the stair gate and climbed the two flights to their apartment. There was still a singing in his ears from the music in the club and his hearing felt woolly and dull, but even as he opened the door, he could hear the deep rumble of Old Yifu’s snoring coming from the further bedroom. He went first into the kitchen, where he took a bottle of chilled water from the refrigerator and drank deeply, washing away the bad taste of cigarettes and beer, and then into his bedroom, where he sat on the bed for fifteen minutes or more, thinking, about the day that had just passed, about the day that lay ahead. He was tired, but not remotely sleepy. There was an ache at the back of his head, and acid burned his stomach.

He tipped forward and slid open the top drawer of a dark-wood utility dresser. Under an assortment of clean underwear, he found the collection of leather strapping he was looking for and pulled it out. He had never worn it beyond the first time he had tried it on. He had adjusted the buckles then so that it still fitted neatly to his shoulder, soft tan leather straps holding the holster firmly in place. It had been a gift from his lecturer in Chicago, a full-time cop, part-time lecturer, who had taken a shine to him and arranged for him to sit in the back of a squad car over several night shifts. It had been an extraordinary experience, frightening, sometimes bloody, often intimidating. It had opened his eyes to a crime culture and the means of combating it that was unknown in China. These cops were as hard and ruthless as the petty criminals, muggers and pimps, junkies and prostitutes they had to deal with. It was a world, Li reflected now, almost shocked by the thought, with which Margaret must be only too familiar. He wondered how it was possible to endure prolonged exposure to it without suffering lasting damage. He saw the soft, freckled skin of her forearm, the unfettered breasts pushing against the thin cotton of her tee-shirt, a recurring vision that somehow emphasised her soft, vulnerable femininity. How long could that survive in the dark, creepy-crawly world she inhabited beneath the rock of civilised Chicago society? How long before the shell she would make to protect herself from it enveloped her completely, making her, like the cops he had shared the night shift with, cynical and hard beyond redemption?

Quietly he slipped down the hall and carefully opened the door to Old Yifu’s bedroom. The snoring rumbled on, undisturbed. It would take something approaching ten on the Richter scale to waken his uncle once asleep. Li looked at his face, lying at a slight angle on the pillow, mouth open, and felt a wave of love and affection for him. Those bushy eyebrows were still pushed up quizzically on his forehead. For all his experience of life, of tragedy and struggle, there was still an innocence about him, emphasised somehow by the repose of sleep. His face was remarkably unlined, almost childlike. And for a moment, Li had second thoughts. Then he steeled himself. Uncle Yifu would never know, and what he did not know could not hurt him. He crouched down and opened the bottom drawer of the dresser. At the right hand side, at the back, was the shoe box Old Yifu had kept there for years. Li lifted it out and took off the lid. Inside, on a bed of carefully arranged tissue, lay his old service revolver from Tibet and a box of cartridges. Somehow he had succeeded in hanging on to them over the years, and kept them now as a souvenir. He had only ever fired the revolver in practice, he told Li once, and had never ever pointed it at another human being. Whatever else he might have inherited from his uncle, Li knew that he did not possess his even temperament, his sense of compassion. There was anger and a latent violence in Li, which he strove always to control. But tomorrow, he knew, he was going to ease back a little on that control and take a short cut of which neither his uncle, nor the authorities, would approve.

He lifted the revolver out of its box and slipped it into the holster. It fitted like a glove, almost as if the two had been designed one for the other. He counted out six rounds and dropped them in his pocket. Quietly, he replaced the lid of the box and returned it to its place at the back of the drawer and slid the drawer shut. As he stood up, his uncle turned over, and the snoring stopped. Li held his breath. But a deep grunt signalled its restart, and Old Yifu rumbled on in blissful ignorance of his nephew’s presence. Li drifted silently out of the room, gently closing the door behind him.

CHAPTER FIVE

I

Wednesday Morning

At first it was just a distant glow. But as he drew nearer, he saw that the glow was flickering, flames licking upward in the dark. He continued to close in, peering through the heat, focusing on the dark mass at its centre. Suddenly a hand reached out towards him, shrivelled by the heat, claw-like and blackened, and the face moved out of the flames, mouth open in a silent scream, melting eyes appealing for help. And he realised, in a moment of supreme horror, that he was looking at himself.

He sat up with a start, blinking in the darkness, sweat gathered across his forehead, glistening on his chest, a trickle of it turning cold as it ran down to his belly. He was breathing hard. A red digital display on his bedside table showed 2 a.m. He lay back on the pillow and tried to excise the image from his mind.
Reaching out like he was asking for help
, the baby-sitter had said. But what strange distortions of his subconscious had turned the burning figure of his dream into himself? He forced himself to breathe more slowly and gradually felt the pace of his heart slow, too. He closed his eyes and consciously wiped his mind clean.

Li barely slept the rest of the night, drifting through a dreamlike semiconsciousness until his alarm went off at five, and he rose almost with a sense of relief. The sky was light, but the sun had not yet penetrated the early morning mist, and so it was grey and deliciously fresh as he cycled east then north through the city into Dongcheng District. It was too early for Mei Yuan, who was not at her usual corner at Dongzhimennei, and so he had no breakfast.

The first interviewees of the day were already gathering in the street outside the headquarters of Section One as officers on night shift drifted off to get something to eat before going home to bed, just as their families were getting out of theirs.

‘Hey, Li Yan, you’re looking very smart today,’ an officer greeted him in the corridor. ‘Going for an interview?’

Li was wearing a dark blue cotton suit, trousers gathered in fashionable pleats at the waist, a fresh white shirt open at the neck, and a pair of polished black shoes. He grinned. ‘Just dressing up for the job.’

‘Pity the Chief never thought of that,’ the officer said, safe in the knowledge that Section Chief Chen had not yet arrived for work. Chen always wore a pair of baggy grey pants, shiny at the seat, a blue or light grey shirt, and a cream-coloured polyester jerkin that had seen better days. He had been described by one of his bosses early in his career as a sartorial disaster. But it had done him no harm whatsoever.