The Fourth Sacrifice (The China Thrillers 2)

by Peter May

  How could he explain it to her? How could he even begin to explain it? He said, ‘What would you do if your heart said one thing and your superiors another?’

  ‘Is this a riddle?’

  ‘No, it’s a question.’

  She thought about it for a moment. ‘This is a conflict between … what … love and loyalty?’

  ‘I suppose it’s something like that, though not quite that simple.’

  ‘If only everything in life was as simple as the solution to a riddle,’ she said, and touched his arm. ‘Is there no way to accommodate both? It is better to walk on two legs.’

  He shook his head sadly. ‘I’m afraid there isn’t.’

  III

  Li walked past the games court, cracked concrete baking behind a chickenwire fence. A group of students was playing volleyball, shouting and laughing. Li felt envious of their youth, free from the concerns of the real world that lay beyond the campus. He had been a student here himself once. He knew how it felt, and he experienced a sense of loss at an innocence long gone.

  He had been angered, on his return to Section One, to discover that the Americans had insisted on carrying out the autopsy at the Centre of Material Evidence Determination on the campus of the University of Public Security in south-west Beijing. Dr Campbell, apparently, had complained that facilities at Pao Jü Hutong were not good enough. He remembered just how much she had irritated him when they first met. She was having the same effect on him now.

  He saw the limousine with its big red shi character, meaning envoy, followed by 224, identifying it as a US Embassy car. It was parked outside the Centre, and for a moment all his anger and irritation was displaced by a huge sense of apprehension. He felt his pulse quicken, and his mouth became dry.

  Detective Qian was already there, and he glanced anxiously at Li as he entered the autopsy room. There was a very young-looking Asian woman with short, dark hair standing at the back of the room. Her face was very pale and she looked as if she wished she were somewhere else. Pathologist Wang had brought his two assistants from Pao Jü Hutong. With Margaret he had been examining photographs of the crime scene laid out on a white covered table, along with the placard that had been hung around the victim’s neck. The room almost crackled with an unspoken tension.

  Li’s first sight of Margaret put him at a distinct disadvantage. Preparations for the autopsy were almost complete, and she was dressed ready to begin, almost unrecognisable beneath layers of professional clothing: surgeon’s green pyjamas, a plastic apron, a long-sleeved cotton gown. Her hair was piled beneath a shower cap, and her face hidden behind her surgeon’s mask and goggles. The soft, freckled skin of her forearms was concealed by plastic sleeve covers, and her long, elegant fingers, by latex gloves. All these layers were like a barrier between them, concealing and protecting her from his gaze. He, on the other hand, in jeans and open-necked shirt, felt exposed and vulnerable to the eyes he sensed piercing him from behind the anonymity of the goggles. She looked long and hard in his direction, then the voice he knew so well said, ‘Late as usual, Deputy Section Chief.’ And he felt himself blush.

  ‘For the record,’ he said. ‘I would like it to be known that I object to this autopsy being carried out by anyone other than our own pathologist, who has conducted the previous three autopsies in this case.’

  ‘Really?’ That familiar acid tone. ‘Perhaps if you had called in a professional sooner, there wouldn’t be the need for a fourth autopsy.’

  Li heard the Asian girl gasp. It was like a slap in the face. A calculated insult. He glanced at Wang, uncertain as to whether his English had been good enough to follow this quick-fire exchange. But if the Chinese pathologist had understood, he gave no indication of it. His loss of mianzi, face, like Margaret’s hurt, was hidden behind mask and goggles.

  Margaret nodded to the two assistants. ‘Now that the boss has finally arrived, I suppose we’d better begin.’

  They glanced at Pathologist Wang, who made some imperceptible gesture of consent, and they went out and wheeled in the body, still fully clothed, on a gurney, and positioned it beneath a microphone hanging from the ceiling.

  It was a bizarre sight, lying on its back, arched over the arms which were pulled behind to where they were still tied at the wrist. The head, propped on a blood-soaked towel, was placed approximately at the neck, but lying at a very odd angle and staring, open-eyed and open-mouthed, off to one side.

  Margaret used the moment, when all attention was focused on the corpse, to sneak a proper look at Li. He was thinner than when she had seen him last, the strain showing in shadows beneath his eyes. She was shocked by how Chinese he looked. When she had been with him almost every waking hour, she had ceased completely to see him as Chinese. He was just Li Yan, who touched her with a gentleness she had not known before in a man, whose eyes were soft and dark and full of humour and life, drawing her unaccountably to him. Now all that familiarity was gone. He seemed almost like a stranger, and she succumbed to an odd sense of disappointment. All she really felt towards him now was anger.

  She turned her attention quickly back to the body and switched on the overhead microphone, escaping into a professional world where death took precedence over life. But she paused for a moment, struck by the strange posture of the body, flexed against the hands behind its back, the odd position of the disembodied head. It somehow reinforced the sense of a man forced to his death, much more than a simple stabbing or shooting. There was something in his demeanour that hinted at the terror he had experienced in the anticipation of his own beheading. It was unimaginable. She quickly began the preliminary examination, recording for later transcription, what she saw as she went.

  ‘The body is that of a well-nourished Asian man, appearing to be in his early fifties. The decedent is the victim of decapitation that will be described further below. The decedent is clothed in charcoal grey pants, white socks and black leather shoes, and is wearing a white shirt that is blood-soaked about the anterior and lateral aspects of the collar, and about the chest area.’

  The assistants turned the corpse over, creating the macabre illusion of the body rotating around a fixed head. The ensemble now resembled something far more difficult to see as human than as some unrelated waxwork body parts. Margaret examined the white silk cord binding the wrists, raised the ring-flash camera offered by one of the assistants, and took several photographs. The other assistant handed Margaret an eighteen-inch length of twine. She tied its two ends to the silk cord, a couple of inches apart, and about three inches from the knot, and then cut the cord between the two twine knots, preserving the cord knot intact. Pathologist Wang laid it out on the adjoining table. Margaret photographed the wrists again.

  ‘On removal of the cord, the wrists are seen to bear faint pink contusions that will be described further below.’

  *

  Pathologist Wang’s assistants then carefully removed Yuan Tao’s clothes and laid them out on the table next to the silk cord. They checked and found nothing in the pockets of the trousers. They turned the body again to lie on its back, and Margaret began to examine it in detail.

  ‘The body has been refrigerated and is cold to the touch. Rigor mortis is present in the jaw and extremities, but is not observed in the neck, due to the decapitation. Fixed post-mortem lividity is only faintly observed in the posterior dependent parts.’

  Li interrupted. ‘Can you give me any idea of the time of death?’

  She sighed and switched off the microphone. ‘Why do policemen always insist on asking a question they know cannot be answered with any degree of accuracy?’

  Li thought he could detect a smile somewhere beneath Pathologist Wang’s surgical mask. But Margaret pressed on. Her question had been rhetorical.

  ‘Since the body has been refrigerated, there is no point in my taking liver temperature. I’d say rigor mortis has been set for a few hours, so I would guess perhaps he died somewhere between twelve and sixteen hours ago.’

  That woul
d put time of death between 10 p.m. and 2 a.m. the previous night, Li thought. A little later than Wang’s estimate, but it fitted better with the movements of the people in the apartment below.

  ‘May I proceed?’ Margaret asked. Li nodded.

  She examined the head, turning it freely this way and that, at one stage lifting it up by its hair, leaving soft, currant-red clots of blood on the table. She described the dark, staring eyes that remained fixed as she turned the head, the mouth held open by rigor, as if frozen in the act of screaming.

  ‘There is a two-to-two-and-a-half by four-centimetre area of pink contusion with golden, parchment-like abrasion over the malar area of the right cheek and the lateral orbital rim.’

  Injuries sustained as the head hit the floor and rolled. Now she moved to a description of the trauma, scrutinising the neck wound in detail.

  ‘There has been complete decapitation as mentioned above. The posterior edge is three centimetres inferior to the anterior edge and the wound edge is sharpest on the left posterolateral aspect. There is a thin rim of abrasion at this posterolateral edge, and its anterior aspect bears a one-by-two-and-a-half-centimetre flap of skin. This flap of skin rests against the anterior, exterior aspects of the neck. There is vital reaction at the wound’s edge. The wound crosses the spinal column at the fifth-sixth intervertebral space. There is complete transection of all soft tissue structures of the neck: the trachea at the level of the third tracheal ring; the carotids inferior to their bifurcations. The soft tissue edges indicate a forward direction of the instrument.’

  ‘Meaning what exactly?’ Li asked.

  She threw him a withering look. ‘That I’ve seen a cleaner cut,’ she said.

  She proceeded to photograph the neck from various angles, before examining the grey-green discolouration on the pale tan cut surface of the spinal column. She indicated that she wanted a tape lift. Pathologist Wang cut a length, several inches long, of broad, clear, sticky tape. Holding it by the ends, he placed it over the cut surface of the tough, fibro-cartilaginous tissue between the fifth and sixth vertebrae, and Margaret pressed it home. Wang then peeled it away, taking with it some of the microscopic metal or mineral particles left by the blade of the murder weapon, and preserved them by sticking the tape across the rim of a glass petri dish.

  Margaret looked up at Li. ‘I take it you’ve followed similar procedures on the previous victims?’

  ‘We have.’

  ‘And?’

  ‘The particles were subjected to analysis under a scanning electron microscope. The primary elements detected were copper and tin.’

  ‘Bronze,’ she said. ‘Some kind of ceremonial or ornamental sword? Perhaps even a genuine artefact?’

  ‘Perhaps,’ Li conceded.

  ‘Well, it must be one of the three,’ she said. ‘No one’s made bronze swords for serious use since they discovered iron.’ She paused for thought. ‘What about the signature?’

  Li frowned. ‘I don’t understand.’

  Margaret was impatient, and addressed him as if talking to a child. ‘Even the smoothest blade has nicks and imperfections that leave microscopic striations on the cut bone – a signature. I assume you have taken sections of vertebrae from the previous victims?’

  Li glanced at Wang who nodded.

  ‘Good,’ said Margaret. ‘Then there’s an outside chance that if you examine the cut surface of the bone or disc, using a comparison microscope, you can match up the striations and tell if the same murder weapon was used in each case. An experienced swordsman would normally strike with the same part of the blade each time, what you might call a sweet spot. So it might have left the same signature each time. And, of course, if you ever recover it, you will certainly be able to match the sword to the murders – a little like a ballistic comparison. It’s called toolmark examination.’

  ‘This is not … mm … a procedure we have previously employed,’ Pathologist Wang said, and Li was surprised at the fluency of his English.

  ‘Well, I’d like you to employ it now,’ Margaret said. ‘It could be important. If your criminalist needs advice on the procedure I’ll be happy to help.’ She gave the nod to one of the assistants to cut a section of the spinal column. Using the same oscillating saw he would later employ to remove the top of the skull, he cut through the spinal column a few inches below the wound and put the severed chunk of vertebra into a formalin-filled storage jar held by his colleague.

  The sound of the saw had been sharp and mournful, for all the world like some unearthly creature wailing for its dead. Sophie, who had been standing at the back of the room, sweat gathering across her scalp, her complexion like putty, put a hand over her mouth. But she caught Margaret’s eye and knew that one way or another she had to stick this out. She swallowed hard, breathed deeply, and tried to think herself somewhere else.

  Margaret stood back to let the assistants collect blood and vitreous samples for toxicology. Again she took the opportunity to steal another look at Li, who kept his eyes steadfastly on the procedure. She wanted to grab him and shake him and ask him why. But she felt the tears start to fill her eyes and she looked quickly away again, as the needle inserted by one of the assistants to draw fluid from the right eye of the decedent caused the eyeball to collapse. She refocused on the job in hand. The rest of the autopsy was largely routine and would take around forty-five minutes. Just forty-five more minutes.

  The assistants placed a block of wood under the body, mid-chest, to help expose the chest cavity when she made the initial ‘Y’ shaped incision, starting at each shoulder, meeting at the bottom of the breast bone, then continuing on down past the umbilicus to the public bone.

  Once the rib cage had been cut away, providing easy access to the organs, Margaret worked her way systematically through the heart and lungs, finding nothing abnormal, until she came to the stomach. She clamped and transected the oesophagus, freeing the stomach from its fatty connections, then cut it from the duodenum. Everyone was hit by the smell of alcohol. Margaret sniffed two or three times and raised an eyebrow.

  ‘Smells like vodka to me. A man after my own heart.’

  She held up the stomach and, making a small incision, drained its contents into a measuring jug. The stink of it filled the room. She opened the stomach up for inspection.

  ‘The oesophagus is lined by grey-pink mucosa. There are no diverticula or varices. The stomach contains four hundred and seventy-five cubic centimetres of thin, blue-brown liquid containing multiple tiny, pale blue particles resembling medication residue. No recognisable food is identified. An ethanol-like odour is noted. The gastric mucosa is stained pale blue, apparently by the gastric contents, and the rugal pattern is normal.’

  She switched off the microphone again. ‘Roofies,’ she said. ‘Classic date rape drug. Two or three 2 mg tablets and the recipient becomes looped, spacy, sleepy … Even more effective when taken with alcohol. Explains why he submitted so placidly to his execution. Except for the minor bruising around the wrist ligature, there is absolutely no sign of trauma to indicate that he put up any kind of a fight.’

  ‘It was a drug called flunitrazepam that was identified in the stomachs of the other … mm … victims,’ Pathologist Wang said.

  ‘Same thing,’ said Margaret. ‘Roofies is the street name. Rohypnol is the trade name. Made by the Roche Company. Very popular in the wrong hands when it was first marketed because it was colourless, odourless and tasteless when dissolved in drink. So Roche changed the formula to make it turn blue. Kind of hard to slip into someone’s drink without them noticing.’

  Wang said, ‘In the other three it was mixed with red wine.’

  Margaret thought about it for a moment. ‘Hm. I guess that would probably do it. Might make it a bit turbid, though if you weren’t a practised wine drinker you might not know the difference. But in this case,’ she indicated the open carcass on the autopsy table, ‘it would sure as hell have turned bright blue in vodka.’

  Li frowned. ‘Then why wo
uld he have drunk it?’

  Margaret shrugged. ‘Who knows? It’s amazing what most people will do with a gun pointed at their head.’ She nodded towards the blood-stained placard lying on the adjacent table. ‘I guess they hung that placard around his neck before they gave him the chop.’

  ‘That’s our assumption,’ Li confirmed.

  She waited, but he volunteered nothing further. ‘So what does it mean?’ she asked.

  He returned her gaze and spoke evenly. ‘The top character represents the number three.’

  Margaret furrowed her brows. ‘But I thought Yuan Tao was the fourth victim?’

  ‘He is. The killer started at six and seems to be counting down.’

  ‘So there are another two victims on his list?’

  ‘That’s how it looks.’ Li paused for a moment, then carried on, ‘The character scored through is a nickname. They all had nicknames – Zero, Monkey, Pigsy. They were all at the same middle school together.’

  Margaret raised an eyebrow and thought about it for a moment. ‘But not Yuan Tao?’

  ‘Until we get the file from your embassy, we don’t know anything about him. But given that he’s an American, that would seem unlikely. His nickname, apparently, was Digger. The name character for it, as with all the others, is upside down’

  Margaret was intrigued. ‘Why? Does that have any special significance?’

  ‘During the Cultural Revolution,’ Li said, ‘people who were held up to ridicule as “revisionists” or “counter-revolutionaries” were sometimes publicly paraded with such nameplates hung around their necks, their names written upside down and crossed through. It was to signify that they were considered “non-people”.’

  She wondered what it must have been like to be a “non-person”. During these last months she had learned enough about the Cultural Revolution to know that almost everyone in this room would have been a target for such persecution. The humiliation, degradation, and sometimes death inflicted on intellectuals, educated or professional people, during those dark years was unimaginable. And it was only just over twenty years since it had all come to an end. Still too close for comfort.