The Fourth Sacrifice (6 page)

‘And I need a favour, Margaret.’ He crossed the room and indicated that she should take a seat. She did so, reluctantly. The Ambassador remained standing. He paused for a moment. Then, ‘A member of the embassy staff, a Chinese-American called Yuan Tao, was murdered last night,’ he said. ‘Someone decapitated him.’

‘Jesus,’ Margaret said.

‘And it gets worse,’ Stan said, raising what looked suspiciously like a plucked eyebrow.

‘Really?’ said Margaret. ‘I can’t think of anything much worse than decapitation.’

‘For us, not for him,’ Dakers said, crossing the room to stand beside the Ambassador. The RSO was a solid, square man, an ex-cop, bald and aggressive, with a close-cropped silver-grey beard. ‘He was murdered in an apartment he’d been renting in the Chaoyang District.’ He paused, as if this should mean something to Margaret.

‘So?’ she asked.

Stan said, ‘Embassy staff are allocated apartments in special embassy compounds. In Yuan Tao’s case, a two-room affair in a block just behind the Friendship Store.’

‘Technically,’ Jon Dakers said, ‘he was breaking the law.’

‘Yeah, I know,’ Margaret said. She had bitter experience. ‘You got to register where you’re staying with Public Security, and they get pretty pissed if you spend even one night somewhere else.’

‘And the Chinese are, indeed, pretty pissed,’ said the Ambassador.

‘They’re embarrassed,’ Dakers corrected him. ‘An American citizen’s been murdered on their patch. They’re looking for any way to pass the buck.’

A sudden worm of suspicion worked its way into Margaret’s mind. ‘Wait a minute. When you say this guy was “a member of the embassy staff”, is this some kind of euphemism?’

The Ambassador chuckled grimly. ‘He wasn’t a spy, if that’s what you mean.’

‘And, of course, you’d tell me if he was.’

‘No,’ the Ambassador said, ‘but I’m telling you he wasn’t. He was a low-level official. Only been out here about six months, working on the visa line.’

‘Which probably gives a few thousand people a motive for doing him in,’ Stan said.

‘We’re waiting on the State Department sending his file,’ Dakers said.

There was a pause, then, that no one seemed anxious to fill. Margaret glanced around the faces looking expectantly at her.

‘So what’s any of this got to do with me?’ she asked.

The Ambassador rounded the sofa and sat down. ‘The Chinese police believe they have a serial killer on their hands. They think Yuan Tao is victim number four. The other three were Chinese nationals. But this guy’s an American citizen. And we’d like you to carry out the autopsy.’

‘What?’ Margaret was stunned.

‘You’ve worked with them before,’ Dakers said.

‘Look,’ Margaret said, ‘I came here last spring to lecture for six weeks at the University of Public Security. I did one autopsy as a favour – and spent the next three months regretting it. I do not want to get involved again.’

‘Margaret, I understand perfectly.’ The Ambassador leaned forward earnestly. He was drawing on all his powers of diplomacy. ‘But there’s no way we can get anyone else out here fast enough. Besides which, the Chinese trust you.’

‘Do they?’ Margaret was amazed.

‘Well, they’ve agreed to let you do the autopsy – or, at least to assist.’

‘And if I refuse?’

‘We all have certain obligations to our country, Margaret.’ The Ambassador sat back, playing his trump card – the appeal to her patriotism.

Margaret had always wondered what all that swearing allegiance to the flag and singing the national anthem at school was about. Now she knew. She sighed. ‘I’ll have to rearrange my flight.’

‘Already taken care of,’ Stan said smugly.

‘Oh, is it?’ Margaret threw him a hostile glance and stood up.

‘Oh, and one other thing,’ Stan said, and she saw a strange look of anticipation brighten his eyes. ‘The officer in charge of the case is Deputy Section Chief Li Yan of the Beijing Municipal Police.’ He beamed at her. ‘I think you know him.’

CHAPTER TWO

I

The half-dozen detectives freshly drafted in from CID headquarters at Qianmen had been sitting smoking and talking animatedly for nearly half an hour. Their cigarette smoke hung like a cloud over the top floor meeting room at Beixinqiao Santiao, reflecting the mood of their Section One colleagues, who joined them now around the big table to sift through the evidence which had been collected over the past month. The detectives of the serious crime squad were depressed by their failure to achieve any significant progress, and embarrassed by the need for reinforcements.

Li sat brooding in his seat with his back to the window. He had been reinstated as Deputy Section Chief shortly after the first murder, and he was frustrated by the lack of a single substantial lead. He had even begun to question his own previously unshakable faith in himself, and wonder if the death of his uncle and the events of the past three months had taken a greater toll on him that he had realised. There were times, he knew, when his concentration was not what it should be. He had found himself sitting in meetings, his mind wandering to thoughts of Yifu. And Margaret.

Simply bringing her name to mind was painful, accompanied as it was by a host of memories, bittersweet and full of hurt. He thought back to the only time they had made love, the sun streaming in through the dirt-streaked windows of a neglected railway sleeper on a siding near Datong.

‘Boss …’

He became aware of an insistent voice forcing its way into his thoughts.

‘Boss, are you still with us?’

Li looked up suddenly and saw Detective Wu, sunglasses pushed back on his forehead, eyeing him oddly from across the table. He glanced around at the other detectives, almost twenty of them now, and saw that they were all looking at him.

‘Yeah, sure. Sorry …’ Li shuffled the papers on the desk in front of him. ‘Just following a train of thought.’

‘Perhaps you’d like to share it with us, then?’ Li looked towards the door, startled to see that Section Chief Chen Anming had come in without his even noticing.

‘Not worth it, Chief,’ Li said quickly. ‘It wasn’t going anywhere.’

‘A bit like this investigation,’ Chen said. He pulled up a chair and sat down, folding his arms across his chest and surveying his detectives with a stony gaze. Chen was a lean, sinewy man in his late fifties, a thick head of prematurely silver hair streaked with nicotine. He was renowned for his apparent inability to make the muscles of his face form a smile, although the twinkle in his eyes frequently betrayed the very human person that concealed itself behind the hardman image. But there was no twinkle there now. ‘Four victims,’ he said. ‘And we’ve got nothing. Nothing!’ He raised his voice, and then sat silently for several seconds. ‘And now that this latest victim turns out to be an American, the whole thing is turning political.’ He leaned forward, placing his palms carefully on the table in front of him. ‘I just took a call in my office from the Deputy Minister of Public Security.’ He paused. ‘I have
never
had a call from a Deputy Minister of Public Security. And it’s not an experience I want to repeat.’ He sat back again. The room was absolutely still. ‘So let me make this quite clear. However many more officers we have to draft in, however many hours of overtime we have to work, we are going get a result.’ He waited for maximum dramatic effect before adding, ‘There are careers on the line here.’

‘You mean heads will roll?’ Wu said, grinning, and there was a gasp of smothered laughter around the table.

Chen turned a steely glare on him. ‘Be assured, Detective Wu, yours will be the very first.’

Wu’s grin faded. ‘Just trying to lighten things up, Chief.’

‘OK,’ Li stepped in before ‘things’ went any further. ‘Let’s go over what we’ve got for the benefit of the guys from HQ. And then we’ll have a look at last night’s killing. Wu, you kick us off.’

Wu lifted his file from the desk, tipped his chair backwards and pushed his sunglasses further back on his head. With Wu image was everything, from his faded jeans to his denim jacket and sunglasses. Even the gum he chewed, which must have long since lost its flavour. He was putting on a show for the newcomers.

‘OK,’ he said. ‘Number one. August twenty. Tian Jingfu, aged fifty-one, a projectionist in a movie theatre in Xicheng District. Fails to turn up for work. His wife’s away visiting relatives in the south, so his work unit connects with his street committee, who go to his door. No one answers, but they can hear the television going. So they call the census cop and he comes and bursts the door down. The place is filled with twenty million flies. The guy’s lying in the front room with his head cut off. Pathologist reckons he’s been there for two days. There’s no sign of forced entry. But the guy’s been drinking red wine. Unusual. And the autopsy shows its been spiked, a drug called flunitrazepam. His hands have been tied behind his back with a silk cord, and a white card hung around his neck. It’s got the name Pigsy written on it upside down in red ink and then scored through. Pigsy, I think we’re all agreed, is some kind of nickname. The card also has the number 6 written on it. From the position of the body, it looks like he’s been made to kneel, head bowed, and a bronze sword or similar bladed weapon used to decapitate him. Hell of a lot of blood. Other than that, the place is clean, no rogue footprints, fingerprints. Forensics came up with zip.’

He dropped his file on the desk, tipped his chair forward and held his hands out, palms up. ‘I talked to just about everyone who ever knew him. Workmates, neighbours, friends, family. Parents are dead, an aunt still living in Qianmen. Everyone says he was a nice guy, lived quietly. No one knew why anyone would want to kill him. No one saw anything unusual the day he was murdered.’ He shrugged. ‘Zip.’ And with finger and thumb he smoothed out the sparse growth on his upper lip that he liked to think of as a moustache.

Li turned towards Qian Yi. ‘Detective Qian.’

Qian took a breath. ‘OK. Number two. Bai Qiyu, fifty-one, same age as victim number one. Married, with two kids at college. He’s a businessman, manager of a small import-export company in Xuanwu District. August thirty-first, the staff arrive at work in the morning to find him lying in his office. Decapitated. Same thing. Silk cord tying his wrists behind his back – and forensics tell us it’s cut from the same length as the killer used on the first victim. An identical piece of white card round the neck, the same colour ink. Only this time the nickname is Zero and the number is 5. So now we assume we’re counting down the victims. A tape lift from the severed vertebra during autopsy tells us it is a similar, or the same, bronze-bladed weapon. Bai Qiyu has also been drinking red wine, also spiked with flunitrazepam. Like Tian Jingfu, his wife was away visiting relatives. His kids were still there, but not particularly concerned when he didn’t come home before they went to bed. The crime scene is clean, except for one smudged, but printable, bloody fingerprint found on the edge of the desk. But it doesn’t match with anything we’ve got in the AFIS computer.’

Qian took a deep breath and concluded, ‘I personally interviewed nearly fifty people. Same as victim number one. No one knows why anyone would want to kill him. He had no appointments marked down in his diary for that night. He was alone in his office when the last person left the building.’

The detectives from CID headquarters were scribbling furiously, making copious notes, and referring frequently to the files with which they had been supplied. The others watched them apprehensively and with mixed feelings. While each was keen to achieve a break in the case, none of them wanted some smart-ass from HQ to pick up something they’d missed.

Li was aware of the additional tension. He turned to Zhao, at twenty-five the youngest in the section, still lacking a little in self-confidence, but sharp and diligent and shaping up as a prospect for future promotion. ‘Tell us about number three, Detective Zhao.’

Zhao flushed a little as he spoke. ‘September fifteen. Yue Shi, a professor of archaeology at Beijing University, has an arrangement to play chess and drink a few beers with his uncle. His uncle arrives at his apartment in Haidan District near the university campus and finds his nephew lying dead in the sitting room. He has been beheaded, hands tied behind his back, again with the same silk cord. A placard, half-soaked with blood, is lying beside the body. It bears the number 4 and the nickname Monkey. It’s written in red ink, upside down and crossed through.’ He paused for a moment. ‘I’ll stick with the parallels first. He has red wine with flunitrazepam in his stomach and blood specimens, just like the others. Tape lift again shows that the weapon used was bronze, suggesting it is probably the same one. But this is where it starts to get a bit different. There is hardly any blood at the scene, but the body is virtually drained of it.’

‘So he was killed somewhere else, then taken to his apartment.’ This from one of the newcomers.

‘Yeah, very clever,’ said Wu. ‘Like we never spotted that one.’

The detective blushed.

‘On you go, Zhao,’ Li said.

Zhao glanced nervously around his listeners. ‘Like the man said, the body had been moved. Fibres recovered from it show that it had been wrapped in a grey woollen blanket of some sort. He had a fine, blue-black, powdery dust in the treads of his shoes and on his trousers. Forensics tell us they are particles of fired clay, some kind of ceramic. But the clay’s not of a type found around Beijing. Apparently it’s a soil type found more commonly in Shaanxi Province.’ He shrugged. ‘We don’t know what that tells us.’ Then he went on, ‘There were smudges and traces of blood in the hall, but no readable footprints or fingerprints anywhere. And the pathologist thinks he’d been killed about twenty-four hours before the body was discovered.’

‘What about the university?’ one of the other detectives from HQ asked.

‘We were all over the place,’ Zhao said. ‘His office, his classrooms, the laboratories. If he’d been murdered in any of these places we’d have found traces. You just can’t clean up that much blood without leaving something behind. His colleagues in the department were stunned. Again, no one could think of a single reason why anyone would want to kill him. He wasn’t married, he didn’t have many friends. He lived for his work, and spent ninety per cent of his waking day absorbed in it.’