by Peter May
Li said, ‘She’s asking if you’ve finished being angry now.’
Margaret pursed her lips in a moment of annoyance, and then found herself forced to smile by the wide-eyed innocent appeal that wrinkled Xinxin’s forehead. She sighed. ‘Tell her, yes. Tell her that I was never angry with her in the first place. And tell her that the next time her uncle starts letting his personal feelings cloud his personal judgement, I’ll slap his goddamn face for him again.’
Li spoke to Xinxin who nodded her head in satisfaction.
‘What did you say to her?’ Margaret demanded to know. She was frustrated at always being at the mercy of someone else’s interpretation.
‘That you were very sorry, and wouldn’t speak to her Uncle Yan like that again,’ he said. Margaret narrowed her eyes at him and he grinned. ‘Only kidding.’
They drove north through Chaoyangmen and Dongcheng District, heading for the third ring road. Li and Margaret sat in silence while Xinxin sang popular kindergarten songs to her panda in the back.
‘What did you mean the other night when you talked about “the Little Emperor syndrome”?’ Margaret asked suddenly.
Li smiled sadly. ‘It is what we call the social consequence of the One-Child Policy.’ He thought for a moment. ‘Chinese society used to be built around the idea of family and community, the individual putting his responsibility for others first. Now, with most families having only one child, the child is spoiled and pampered and thinks only of itself. They become Little Emperors. The future of China will be in the hands of selfish, self-seeking individuals. Just like in America.’
‘Maybe, then, you’ll join the rest of us in the twenty-first century,’ Margaret said.
‘And replace five thousand years of culture and history with the hotdog and the hamburger?’
Margaret was sick of hearing about China’s culture and history. Even Michael was full of it. ‘Well, maybe it’s about time you started looking to the future instead of always living in the past,’ she snapped. ‘Maybe that’s why America ended up the most powerful country in the world. We weren’t shackled by five thousand years of tradition. We just looked straight ahead and made it up as we went along.’
‘And when you run out of ideas,’ Li said, ‘you’ll have no history to draw on. No lessons you can take from the past.’
Margaret said, ‘My old history professor always said the only thing you learn from history is that you never learn from history.’
‘But he would be an American.’
Margaret looked at him triumphantly. ‘Actually, he was Chinese.’
Li flicked her a look. ‘Chinese-American. Yes?’
She glared at him. ‘You’ve always got to have the last word, don’t you?’
He shrugged. ‘I usually do.’
*
The west gate of Beijing University was a traditional Chinese gate, with sweeping tiled roofs raised on beautifully painted crossbreams and supported on rust-red pillars. Li parked his Jeep in the shade of the trees that lined the street outside, and showed his Public Security pass to the guard on the gate who waved them through, past stone lions that stood sentinel left and right. Little Xinxin trotted at Margaret’s side, clutching her hand as if she were in fear of her life. The campus within sat in the cloistered seclusion of landscaped gardens and tranquil lakes behind high grey walls, a million miles, it seemed, from the frantic activity and roar of the city they’d left behind.
Students and lecturers strolled or cycled along leafy paths that meandered through the lush gardens, ancient bridges sweeping over green waterways lined with flowers and dotted with lilies. On rocky outcrops, almost obscured by trees, tiny pavilions provided seats in the shade for undergraduates poring over textbooks or reading newspapers, or just sitting smoking and quietly reflecting on life. University departments were housed in large white pavilions with maroon windows and towering columns below elegantly curling roofs.
Margaret was entranced. ‘What a wonderful place to come and study,’ she said. ‘It’s so peaceful. So … Chinese.’
‘Actually,’ Li said, ‘it’s so … American.’
She frowned at him. ‘What do you mean?’
‘This place used to be the site of the American Methodist Yengching University. Beijing University didn’t move here till 1952. All these “wonderful” halls and pavilions were built by the Methodists, designed by an American architect in the Chinese style. In those days, maybe, the Americans still thought there was something they could learn from us.’
The archaeology department stood in a long, two-storey pavilion beyond fresh-cut lawns, lush and verdant from frequent watering. The ground floor had been converted into the Arthur M. Sackler museum of art and archaeology. Administration and lecture rooms were on the floor above. Li took them in through the main door, and they were confronted, across shining marble floors, by two life-sized replicas of Terracotta Warriors standing guard at the far entrance. Margaret was momentarily startled by them, and was transported immediately back to the pit at Xi’an where she had so carefully scraped away the earth to reveal a ceramic face that no one had cast eyes on for more than two thousand years. A bald and wizened caretaker with a speckled face told them they would have to go in by the side entrance and up the stairs to find the head of department.
‘Professor Chang’s not here right now,’ an officious young man in white shirt and dark trousers told them offhandedly in the office. He had a shock of thick hair, dirt under his fingernails, and seemed more interested in the contents of the filing cabinet than in the three visitors.
‘Would you like to tell me where he is?’ Li asked.
‘Not particularly. I’m busy right now.’ The young man was clearly irritated by the interruption.
Li produced his Public Security wallet and held it out at arm’s length. ‘What’s your name?’
The young man turned and saw the ID and his face immediately darkened. His frightened rabbit’s eyes flickered up to Li. ‘I’m sorry, detective, I …’
‘What’s your name?’ Li repeated firmly.
‘Wang Jiahong.’
‘What do you do here?’
‘I’m a lab assistant over in the Art building.’
‘Do you normally speak to visitors like that?’
‘No, detective.’
‘I’m glad to hear it. So maybe now you’ll tell me where I can find Professor Chang.’
‘He’s in the conservation lab.’
‘Where’s that?’
‘In the Art building. All the labs are over there.’ He tried to make up for his earlier gaffe. ‘I’ll take you if you like.’
The Art building, opposite the College of Life Sciences, was older and less glamorous, dusty grey brick and ill-painted windows. Dozens of student bicycles stood in the square outside. Inside it was drab and dingy, and Margaret smelled the perfume of stale urine wafting from open toilet doors. A room full of students at the end of the corridor was listening intently to a lady lecturer.
Wang Jiahong opened a nondescript door and led them into the conservation lab and then backed out, leaving them in the company of Professor Chang. It was a big cluttered room with old bookcases and wooden cabinets around the walls, and a huge wooden workbench that stood in the middle of the floor. The table was strewn with bits and pieces of pottery, a vast array of carelessly discarded tools and cleaning materials, and several weapons — two daggers, and a bronze sword held firmly in the jaws of a clamp. The floor was littered with wood shavings and dust and shards of broken pottery. The green-painted walls were scarred and stuck with posters and charts and ancient memos that went back fifty years. Daylight squeezed in through slatted blinds.
Professor Chang was working on the bronze sword, patiently removing layers of verdigris that had accumulated over centuries. He wore a dirty white apron and rubber gloves, and waved his hand vaguely around the room.
‘Sorry for the mess,’ he said in English when Li had made the introductions. He peered at Margaret over half-
moon spectacles. ‘We’ve been restoring the ancient treasures of China in here for decades. I guess it just never seemed all that important to clean up behind us.’
Xinxin went exploring. Li said, ‘Do you have many staff in the department?’
‘Two hundred students, sixty-seven teachers, twelve professors and nineteen associate professors,’ Professor Chang said.
‘And how many of them would have known the circumstances of Professor Yue’s death?’
The Professor scraped away at the verdigris with a focused concentration. ‘Oh, probably all of them,’ he said.
From the corner of his eye, Li caught Margaret’s head swinging in his direction. He could almost hear her saying, Satisfied? He said, ‘I understood only a few senior members of the department were privy to those details.’
Chang glanced up at him. ‘Well, they were. But you know what people are like. It was a scandal, a gruesome tale. People feed off stuff like that. Archaeologists are no different. It was round the whole department in a matter of hours. Probably the whole of the university.’
Li picked up and examined one of the daggers, still avoiding Margaret’s eye. ‘Do you know the American archaeologist, Michael Zimmerman?’ he asked.
Professor Chang laid down his tools and removed his half-moons. ‘What’s he got to do with this?’
‘Nothing,’ Li said. ‘I just wondered if you knew him.’
‘Oh, yes, I know him,’ said the professor. He took the dagger from Li and laid it back on the table. ‘He came here when he was researching the background for his documentary on Hu Bo. Professor Yue had been a protégé of Hu’s. Yue and Zimmerman became very friendly.’ There was something in his tone that gave Li cause for thought.
‘You sound as if you don’t approve.’
‘I don’t like Michael Zimmerman,’ Professor Chang said bluntly, and Margaret felt the colour rising on her cheeks, stinging as if from a slap.
Li glanced at her. ‘Why’s that?’
‘Because under all that superficial charm, Deputy Section Chief, he’s a driven man. I don’t know what it is that drives him. Ambition. Greed. But he uses people, manipulates them for his own ends.’
‘Is that what he did to Professor Yue?’
‘I don’t know.’ The professor thought about it for a moment. ‘But Yue seemed to fall under his spell. They became very close. Too close. I didn’t like it. I didn’t think it was healthy.’
*
The sidewalks in Haidian Road were piled high with multicoloured boxes filled with computers and printers, scanners and modems, monitors and hard drives. Every shop blazed out names like IBM, Microsoft, Apple, Pentium. This was the silicon sales valley of Beijing, awash with computing power: microchips, software, every peripheral imaginable. Unlike the Russian fur trade, business was good. People jammed the stores, and traffic had ground to a halt.
They had left the university in silence and were now gridlocked in the Haidian Road log jam.
Li glanced across at Margaret. The colour was still high on her cheeks and she was sitting staring straight ahead. In the back, Xinxin was mercifully engaged in a complex game of make-believe with her panda.
Finally, Li said, ‘I thought no one had a bad word to say about him. They’ll all tell you he’s a really good guy, you said.’
Margaret’s words came back to haunt her. She turned and looked at Li with something close to loathing in her eyes. ‘One person’s opinion, that’s all.’ She would never admit to Li how shocked she had been to hear it. Professor Chang had not been describing the Michael she knew. It was as if he had been talking about someone else. But it had hurt.
‘Everyone loves him, that’s what you said. Talk to anyone who knows him. Well, we did.’
She shook her head. ‘You’re pathetic, you know that? What did you go to the university for? To find out if people there knew the details of Professor Yue’s death. And what did you find out? That they all knew. So, naturally, Michael would have heard, too. But does that satisfy you? Oh, no. Someone doesn’t like him. So fucking what? The only thing we’ve learned here today is that you’re a sad, jealous fool.’
Xinxin had abandoned her panda and was staring at Margaret in wide-eyed alarm. ‘Fuck,’ she said, aping Margaret. ‘Fuck, fuck!’
Li glared at Margaret. ‘Thank you,’ he said. ‘You’ve just taught my niece her first English word.’
The police radio crackled and Li heard his call sign. He unhooked the receiver angrily.
She turned and stared out the window at nothing, biting back the tears. She was determined not to spill them. At least, not in front of Li. It was incomprehensible to her that someone could think so badly of Michael. Was she blind? Were all his other friends and colleagues blind, too? Of course not. It was just the view of one twisted individual, she told herself. Who knew what history there was to it? She heard Li finish his call.
‘That was Detective Sang,’ he said quietly, and she turned to look at him defiantly. ‘Apparently Birdie’s alibi doesn’t hold up. He wasn’t playing checkers at Xidan the night Yuan was killed. We’re asking the procurator’s office to issue a warrant for his arrest.’
III
Birdie was lost without the creatures which had given him his nickname. He looked naked and vulnerable without his birds around him. It was hard to define, but the man who sat before them was like a human shell, empty and vacant. Almost, Li thought, like a man who had lost his soul. He sat on the edge of his chair, shoulders slumped, hands lying limp together in his lap, staring back at them from behind dark, frightened eyes. His face was streaked by the tears he had spilled when they refused to let him bring his birds. His blue Mao suit was crumpled and dirty, and hung loosely on his gaunt frame. The room was warm and airless, a place devoid of human comfort; naked cream walls scarred and chipped, and scored with the names and thoughts of the thousands of people, both innocent and guilty, who had faced interrogation here during many long hours. Sunlight slanted in through a slit of a window high up on the back wall, slashing the side wall with burned-out yellow. Cigarette smoke, in slowly evolving strands, was suspended in its light. The cassette recorder on the table hummed and whirred in the still of the room. From outside they could hear the distant rumble of traffic from Dongzhimennei Street and, closer, the incongruously innocent sounds of children playing in the hutong.
A trickle of sweat ran down Detective Sang’s forehead. He leaned forward, strained and intense. He had been very anxious to participate with Li in the interrogation, and Li had allowed him to take the lead while he tried to remain detached and objective. Sang was neither. He was blunt and aggressive, and frustrated by Birdie’s apparent confusion over where he had, in fact, been on Monday night. Birdie was certain, he said, that he had been playing checkers with Moon, but if Moon said he wasn’t, then he must have been doing something else. He just couldn’t think what it was. Usually he spent nights alone at home. Sometimes he would watch television, although he could not remember what programmes he might have watched on Monday night. But usually he went to bed early, when his birds tucked their heads under their wings. He had an early start, he said. He always went to the park before going to the bird market.
‘OK,’ said Sang eventually. ‘So you agree — you don’t have an alibi?’
Birdie shook his head despondently. ‘But I don’t need an alibi. I haven’t done anything.’
‘Are you saying you didn’t know anything about the murders?’
‘No. I told you. Me and Pauper talked about them.’
‘So you admit you knew that three of the former members of the Revolt-to-the-End Brigade had been murdered?’
‘I told you we had heard.’
‘And had you heard how they were murdered?’
Birdie winced. ‘We heard they were … executed.’
‘What do you mean by “executed”?’
‘That …’ he shifted uncomfortably, ‘that their heads had been cut off.’
‘Who told you that?’ Li aske
d.
Birdie shrugged. ‘I don’t know. People just knew.’
‘What people?’ Sang pressed him.
‘A woman at Zero’s factory.’
‘That’s Bai Qiyu?’
‘Yes.’
‘What woman?’
‘I don’t know. I think maybe she was the one who found him. Pauper could tell you. She knew more about it than me. She talks to people, she hears things.’
‘So you and Pauper figured that someone was going around killing the members of the Revolt-to-the-End Brigade, and that sooner or later you were going to be next?’
‘That’s what Pauper thought.’
‘Did Pauper always do your thinking for you?’ Sang sat back. ‘Was it Pauper’s idea to kill Yuan Tao before he killed you?’
Birdie was rocking slowly backwards and forwards in his chair. His hands were no longer limp in his lap. They were clasped and wringing one another. ‘We didn’t kill Cat!’ He almost shouted it in tearful defiance. ‘We didn’t know he was in Beijing. We never even thought of him.’
‘There’s no point in lying to us, Birdie,’ Sang said reasonably. ‘We’ll find out the truth in the end.’ But Birdie just stared back at him. ‘How did you find out Cat was back? Did someone see him by chance? Or maybe he contacted you. He must have made arrangements to meet his other victims. Is that what happened? Did he come to the bird market and arrange to meet you somewhere?’
‘No!’
‘What did he say? That he wanted to talk about what happened back in the sixties? That it was too late now for recriminations, but that he wanted to know why? That he wanted to understand? Is that what he said to the others, do you think? Is that why they agreed to meet him? Because they felt guilty? Even after thirty years?’
‘I don’t know,’ Birdie protested. ‘How would I know what he said to them?’
But Sang was on a roll. This was his chance to impress Li, and he was taking it. ‘You must have been scared, Birdie. You must have known he was going to kill you, too.’
