The Fourth Sacrifice (27 page)

She tutted with frustration and got up off the bed, catching sight of herself for a moment in the bedroom mirror. With a shock she realised she was still naked. She had not dressed after her shower. And something in her nakedness brought images of Michael into her mind, and she felt the stirrings of sexual desire deep inside. And immediately the guilt returned and she moved quickly away from the mirror to slip into her panties, and the jeans and white blouse she had laid out on the chair. She forced her mind back to blood and headless bodies. She had, she knew, been close to something, something that would make sense both of the things that were different and of the things that were the same.

She had almost given up, and had started clearing away the autopsy and forensics reports when suddenly she realised what it was. It seemed, somehow, so obvious that she wondered why she had not thought of it before. Quickly she searched her purse for her address book, and found the telephone number for Section One that she had previously tried in vain. She hesitated for a long moment, her heart pounding somewhere up in her throat, almost choking her it seemed. Then she sat on the bed, lifted the telephone and called the Beijing number.

There were three long, single rings before a telephonist answered in Chinese. Margaret said, very slowly and carefully, ‘
Qing. Li Yan
.’ A gabble of Chinese came back at her. She tried again. ‘
Qing. Li Yan
.’ She heard an impatient intake of breath, another burst of Chinese, and then the line was put on hold. After what seemed like a very long time, she heard a man’s voice.

‘
Wei?
’ he said.

‘Li Yan?’

There was a pause. ‘Margaret?’ Something in the way he said her name brought goosebumps up on her arms.

‘Li Yan, I’ve thought of something,’ she said. ‘To do with Yuan Tao’s killer …’ She waited for a response.

‘Well?’ he said eventually, and there was a tone in his voice that this time raised hackles rather than goosebumps, and she remembered just what a frustrating man he could be. She drew a deep breath.

‘You know how you said no one outside of the investigating team and the murderer could possibly know all the details of the killings?’ She didn’t wait for his answer. ‘Well, suppose Yuan Tao’s killer was an accomplice, or at the very least a witness, to the other murders. That would explain how he knew what the
modus operandi
was. And if he was simply left-handed instead of right-handed, that would explain why that was the only difference in Yuan Tao’s case.’

Another long silence, then Li said, ‘Well, thank you for the thought. I’ll make a note of it in the file.’

She felt her anger rising. ‘And that’s all you’ve got to say?’

‘How is Xi’an?’ he asked, and when she didn’t, couldn’t, respond, added, ‘You and Mr Zimmerman still just good friends?’

‘None of your fucking business!’ she said, and slammed down the phone. And in a single, furious movement, she swept all the photographs and reports off the bed and on to the floor. Why had she even bothered? He didn’t care about her. He didn’t want her sticking her nose into his investigation. He was just a typical chauvinistic, xenophobic Chinese male! She felt tears springing to her eyes, and turned her fury on herself.
Why
was she upset?
Why
was she feeling guilty?
Why
was she wasting her time on this man?

There was a knock at the door, and she jumped up quickly, brushing the tears from her eyes. ‘Yes?’

‘It’s me. Michael.’

She took a deep breath, blinked furiously and checked her hair in the mirror before going to open the door. His smile of greeting was warm and open and friendly, and after her brief exchange with Li she just wanted him to take her in his arms and hold her there. But ‘Hi’ was all she said. ‘Come on in. I’m nearly ready. Just got to put on a little make-up.’ He came into the room and she saw, with embarrassment, his eyes drawn to the pictures and papers strewn over the floor. ‘A bit of an accident,’ she said. ‘I’ll just pick these up.’

‘Here, I’ll help you.’ Michael crouched to gather up the scattered files.

‘No, it’s OK,’ Margaret said quickly. But it was too late. He was already looking at a photograph of one of the headless bodies.

‘Oh, my God!’ He turned away from it, his face screwed up in disgust.

She snatched it from him. ‘Big mistake,’ she said, ‘letting you see stuff like that. Men usually find what I do for a living a big turn-off.’

He stood up, his face pale and shocked. ‘I’ll try not to think about it,’ he said. ‘It’s just a bit of a jolt seeing someone you know with their head cut off.’

‘Someone you know?’ Margaret frowned and then looked at the photograph she had taken from him. It was Yue Shi. ‘Of course,’ she realised. She had not made the connection before. ‘He was a professor of
archaeology
at Beijing University.’

‘It was a terrible shock when I heard about what happened to him,’ Michael said. ‘I never expected to actually
see
what happened to him.’

Margaret was concerned. ‘I’m so sorry, Michael. Did you know him well?’

He shrugged. ‘He wasn’t a close friend, but we had a lot of contact while I was researching the documentary series on Hu Bo. He was Hu’s protégé. Studied under him at the university and assisted in several major excavations. He knew the old man as well as anyone. He was invaluable in giving me a picture of Hu Bo the man, rather than just Hu Bo the archaeologist.’

Margaret threw her files on the bed. ‘I’m sorry,’ she said, and she put her arms around his waist and stretched up on tiptoe to kiss him lightly on the lips. ‘I didn’t want anything to spoil tonight for us.’

He smiled wanly. ‘It won’t, he said. And he bent to return her kiss, and slip his arms around her. ‘I think I could probably do with a drink first. Then I’ll show you Xi’an. And then we’ll eat.’

‘And then … ?’

He shrugged. ‘I don’t know, Margaret. Let’s just wait and see.’

And she felt a huge surge of disappointment, and she cursed Li and his investigation. Whatever she did, whichever way she turned, somehow he always seemed to be there spoiling things for her. And now he had driven a wedge between her and Michael, brought home to him the reality of her job, confronted him with the death of a friend. As if, somehow, Li had planned it all, to ensure that her relationship with Michael stayed, as she had described it to him, platonic.

*

When they stepped out of the Japanese-owned Ana Chengbao Hotel it was dark, and Margaret looked in astonishment at the transformation of this dusty and undistinguished daytime city into a night-time place of light and life. The towering south gate, immediately facing them, and the crenellated city wall that ran off to east and west, were outlined in yellow neon, for all the world as if someone had taken a luminous yellow marker pen and drawn them against the night sky. Multicoloured lights illuminated the elegantly curled roofs of the ancient gate and the watchtowers that shimmered in the distant darkness.

Michael grinned. ‘A bit Disneyesque,’ he said. ‘Come on.’ And he took her by the hand and flagged down a taxi.

Their car followed the route of the great moat, which was separated from the wall by a park full of quiet walkways and peaceful pavilions completely encircling the city. Above it, for mile after mile, the crenellations of the wall were drawn yellow on black. The sidewalks of the streets outside, empty during daylight, had turned into endless open-air eateries. Row upon row of tables was laid out under the trees, lit by low-hanging red lamps strung from loops of electric cable. Braziers and barbecues burned and smoked in the dark, while people congregated in their thousands, families, friends, eating together beneath fleshy green leaves in the balmy autumn evening.

‘They are night people, the inhabitants of Xi’an,’ Michael said. ‘When the sun goes down this is an exciting city.’

‘Where are we going?’ Margaret asked.

‘To the Muslim Quarter.’ He smiled. ‘An experience not to be missed. I know a little place where we can get authentic Muslim cuisine.’

Margaret raised her eyebrows in surprise. ‘Muslims? In China? I thought religion was banned here?’

‘Ah,’ said Michael sagely. ‘You’ve been listening to the anti-Chinese propagandists back home. The God botherers. The truth is, in the last twenty years people have been free to worship whatever god they want. But, then, after the appalling religious persecution of the Cultural Revolution, it’s not really surprising that it’s taken a little longer for people to become open about it again.’

‘But is religion not a threat to the Communists?’ Margaret asked. ‘I mean, communism’s an atheist philosophy, isn’t it?’

‘The thing is, Margaret,’ Michael said, ‘Communism’s kind of like the state religion here. It has about fifty million members – the numbers go up and down when the corrupt ones get weeded out and shot, and the next batch of young urban technocrats sign up. But, you know, The Word according to Mao, or even Deng Xiaoping, is not what it used to be. Nowadays the Party’s more like a big club. People don’t join it because they’ve seen The Light. They join for the same reasons a businessman in Chicago signs up for the Rotary. To make contacts and connections. To get on in life.’

Margaret watched him talk, eyes twinkling, his voice animated by enthusiasm. He took pleasure in what he knew, in passing it on to others. She saw exactly why he was such a success on television, regardless of his subject.

A couple of whiskies had relaxed him after the shock of seeing the photographs on her bedroom floor. He had been genuinely shaken by the sight of things that Margaret viewed as routine. It made her wonder again if there was something wrong with her, if she had been desensitised by her job, made indifferent by years of exposure to the horrors of death in all its guises. But whatever effect her work might have had on her, she knew that she was not impervious to the emotional slaps in the face that life seemed constantly to deliver: a husband who had betrayed her and died bequeathing her all his guilt; a lover from an alien culture who would neither accept her fully into his life, nor make the transition to be accepted into hers.

She wondered if Michael would be any different. If she succumbed to those desires that pulled and taunted her, would she just end up being hurt again? And yet she felt so comfortable with him. Safe. There was something wonderfully reassuring in his hand holding hers in the back of the taxi. Here was someone taking care of her, guiding her gently through a strange and fascinating world. A world from whose dangers, she felt certain, she would be protected in his company. And after so many years of being the independent, hard-assed career woman, there was something deliciously appealing in the idea of simply delivering herself into his care.

They turned east now, through the west gate along Xi Dajie, and Margaret watched a whole family on a motorbike overtake them. A small boy nestled between the father and the front handlebars. A slightly bigger girl was sandwiched between the father and the mother who was riding pillion. Four of them on the one bike. Margaret was so taken aback by the sight, that it was several moments before she realised how rare it was to see a family of four in a country whose social structure had been so dislocated by the One-Child Policy.

Ahead of them, a huge floodlit building rose up into the night sky.

‘The Bell Tower,’ Michael said. He spoke to the driver and they pulled in at the edge of a large square, neatly manicured lawns crisscrossed by paths and walkways, a broad flight of steps leading down to the bright lights of an underground shopping centre. They got out and Michael paid the driver. Margaret looked around. At the far side, a great long restaurant built in traditional Chinese style, was traced against the sky in neon. The square itself was crowded, families out for an evening stroll, children playing on mini-dodgems on a concrete apron, people sitting on a wall by a pond reading newspapers and books by the light of an illuminated fountain. A woman tried to sell them a giant paper caterpillar that rippled across the concrete with unnerving realism at the tug of a length of string. But Michael just smiled and shook his head.

As he led Margaret across the square people openly gawped and called, ‘Hello,’ or, ‘So pleased to see you,’ in strange English intonations. They passed beneath the shadow of what Michael told her was the drum tower, and turned into a narrow covered alleyway lined on both sides by hawkers’ stalls filled with tourist junk and religious trinkets.

On the other side of the wall, to their left, Michael said, was the Great Mosque. Religion and commerce, it seemed, went hand in hand. They ran the gauntlet of traders trying to sell them everything from teapots to ornamental swords. Occasionally Michael would stop and speak to one of them. You could see the astonishment on their faces as he spoke in fluent Chinese, and whatever he said would invariably make them laugh.

The alleyway was crowded with shoppers and kids on bicycles, the occasional motorbike inching its way past, and soon they turned left, past the entrance to the mosque itself, and into the comparative quiet of a crumbling, dusty
hutong
.

‘It must be wonderful to speak Chinese as well as you do,’ Margaret said. ‘It must open up the whole culture of the place to you in a way that most people could never hope to experience.’

Michael inclined his head doubtfully. ‘It can be a double-edged sword,’ he said. ‘China was once described to me as being like an onion. It is made up of layer upon layer upon layer, with only subtle differences between each one. Most people usually only get two or three layers deep. People and places, a little history, a little culture, become familiar to them. But the heart of the onion, the very core of China itself, is still many more layers away. Out of reach, almost untouchable.’

He thought for a moment. ‘When I first started learning the language people were great. The Chinese love it if you can pay them a compliment, or give instructions to a taxi driver, or order up a meal in Mandarin. But when you’ve been here a while, and your grasp of the language gets good enough so you can start talking politics and philosophy, suddenly they get cautious. The encouragement stops. You’re getting too close to something the Chinese don’t really want foreign devils like you and me getting too close to. The heart of China, the core of Chineseness.’