The Fourth Sacrifice (The China Thrillers 2)

by Peter May

  Mr Lao opened a gate and Margaret followed him into an area off limits to tourists, down stippled metal steps to where a small group of archaeologists was at work: two men, and a young woman perhaps a little younger than Margaret. Mr Lao made introductions in Chinese, and they all shook her hand and bowed their heads and smiled. Mr Lao handed her a short, round-bladed knife with a curved handle that fitted the back of the hand behind the thumb and forefinger. ‘Now you be archaeologist, too,’ he smiled. ‘Miss Zhang show you how.’

  Miss Zhang smiled and handed her a black-bristled brush and led her among a cluster of pottery bodies emerging at strange angles from the soil. Some of them were cracked and broken at the shoulder. Others had heads lying crookedly to one side or another. Some had no heads at all – a strangely evocative image, bringing back to Margaret a sudden recollection of why she was still here in China.

  These were armoured warriors, elaborately carved squares of studded armour draped across their chests, hair piled high in knots on their heads, silk scarves around their necks. Miss Zhang squatted down beside two figures still waist-deep in the earth. One lay at a crazy angle, his head resting on the shoulder of his companion, as if he had wearied of his two-thousand-year existence. Their features were still partially obscured by caked mud.

  Miss Zhang worked carefully with her knife to scrape the earth away to reveal the clean line of the jaw, then brushed away the dust with her brush. She indicated, with a smile and a nod, that Margaret should do the same. Margaret crouched beside her and nervously, very tentatively, scraped away the earth gradually to reveal the good strong features of the warrior: fine, full lips, a moustache that curved up to his cheekbones, almond eyes beneath strong brows. She brushed away the debris and looked at him. He was beautiful. She touched his cool, smooth pottery features and felt a sensation like electricity run through her fingertips. She was touching more than two thousand years of history. A man had carved these features at a time when the Romans had ruled Europe, nearly seventeen centuries before her own country had even been discovered. And for the first time she really understood Michael’s passion. There was more life in this pottery creation of fired clay than in any of the bodies that had passed through her autopsy room; cold, dead, decaying flesh that would simply have vaporised in the kind of temperatures that had brought these ancient warriors to life and preserved them across the millennia.

  There were still occasional traces of the original paintwork, and Margaret saw now that beneath the orange-coloured earth, the figures were a deep blue-black, the dark blue dust shed by their broken bodies gathered around them like the dust of time.

  IV

  Chang Yichun might have been a child of the Communist Liberation, but he was a highly successful capitalist of the post-Mao era, as he took great delight in telling Li and Zhao. The bell had rung some time ago, and through the open windows came the sounds of children playing out in the quadrangle.

  Chang was a short man, but powerfully built, with close-cropped hair and big, callused hands. He considered himself better than all his more academically minded classmates of the sixties. He had done all right here at the No. 29 Middle School, he admitted grudgingly, but what good were qualifications when you just got sent to labour in the countryside? Such had been his fate in the Cultural Revolution.

  He drew on an expensive Western cigarette. ‘Irony was, it turned out to be the making of me,’ he said. ‘Learned my trade as a carpenter, and when I came back to the city in ’72 I got a job on the maintenance and building team of the Xichang Street Committee.’ He scratched his head and then brushed the dandruff off the lapel of his designer suit. ‘There were twenty others, unemployed like me, and six women. We mended central heating systems, built chimneys, did odd jobs around all the houses. It was a farce. Totally unprofessional. It was the social monkeys – you know, the ones who hung around the streets all day – that got us the jobs. They fixed the worksheets, took extra wages, and then kept everything that was left after paying the wages. In seven years we ran up debts of nearly ninety thousand yuan.’

  He cleared his throat and spat unselfconsciously on the floor of the classroom. ‘But I could get us jobs, too,’ he said. ‘And in ’79 they put me in charge. The difference was, I wanted to run it as an enterprise, with control over finance and personnel. Proper contracts, proper structure of management and pay. Made seventy-six thousand yuan in the first year. Within four years we were a properly registered construction company with a workforce of more than two thousand, fixed assets of three million, and liquid assets of more than seven.’ He sat back grinning, pleased with his own success, proud to brag of it and bask in the sunshine of their admiration. ‘I count my cash in dollars now. Deng Xiaoping said, “To be rich is glorious.” Welcome to fucking Gloryville, PRC.’

  He snorted noisily and spat on the floor again. He leaned forward and jabbed a finger at Li. ‘So where are they now, these fucking Red Guards? Well, let me tell you. Nowhere. Bunch of no-use dead-heads!’

  ‘Do you know how many were in the Revolt-to-the-End Brigade?’ Li asked.

  ‘Sure,’ said Chang. ‘The leader lived in my street. An ugly big bastard called Ge Yan. He was a moron. Thick as pig shit. Always at the bottom of the class, always getting disciplined by the teachers. But as soon as their backs were turned, he was beating shit out the other kids. He might have been the school bully, but he never laid a finger on me. I’d have cracked his fucking skull if he had. And he knew it.’ He paused. ‘What was it you asked? Oh, yeah, how many? There were six of them.’ He stroked his chin trying to remember. ‘There was Birdie …’

  ‘Birdie?’ Li asked.

  ‘Yeah, that’s what they called Ge Yan.’ He scratched his head again, frowning, as if trying to sort out some conflict in his memory. ‘Funny thing. A big, hard bastard like him. He loved his birds. He had dozens of them, all sorts of colours. He hung them in cages in his yard. I was in there once, saw him with them. You never saw hands that could punch your lights out handle anything so gently as he handled those birds. Like they were the most delicate things in the world. Breathe on them and you’d break them. Only he loved them. Spent all his spare time in his yard or down the bird market.’

  ‘Do you remember who else?’

  ‘Yeah, sure.’ Chang lit another cigarette. ‘There was Monkey, and Zero, and Pauper … She was the only girl among them. But you wouldn’t have known it to look at her. Ugly bitch. Then there was Tortoise, and … oh, yeah, Pigsy. How could I forget big fat Pigsy?’

  ‘And Yuan Tao?’

  Chang looked at Li and Zhao as if they were mad. ‘Yuan Tao? You’re kidding. He was a nice guy, bit bookish, you know? Bit of a swot. He’d never have been involved with those guys. They were creeps and wasters. The ones with the chips on their shoulders were the worst. Took all their inadequacies out on anyone smarter. Like it was your fault they were born stupid.’

  ‘Yue Shi wasn’t stupid,’ Zhao said.

  ‘No, but he was sleekit, you know? A creep. One thing to your face, another behind your back.’

  ‘How did Yuan Tao get the nickname Digger?’ Li asked.

  Again, Chang cast him a withering look. ‘Where do you guys get your info? Yuan was never called Digger. His nickname was Cat. You know, short for Scaredy Cat.’

  Li frowned. ‘You’re sure about that?’

  ‘Sure I’m sure.’

  ‘Why’d they call him Scaredy Cat?’ Zhao asked.

  ‘Because the other kids were always picking on him, you know? Making a fool of him, kicking the shit out of him behind the bike sheds. And he never fought back, never once. I felt sorry for him, but if he wasn’t going to be big enough to stand up for himself I wasn’t going to do it for him.’

  ‘So how come everyone picked on him?’ Li wanted to know. ‘Just because he was clever?’

  ‘Naw,’ Chang said. ‘There were other clever kids no one never went near. But when your old man’s a teacher at the school …’ Chang shrugged. ‘What can I tell you?’


  Li sat for a moment in stunned silence. ‘His father was a teacher here?’

  ‘Sure,’ Chang said. ‘Old man Yuan. He was our English teacher.’

  *

  The detectives’ office was busy when Li and Zhao got back, a cocktail of voices and telephones and shuffling paperwork. In spite of all the windows lying open, the air was thick with cigarette smoke.

  ‘Qian,’ Li shouted as he went straight through to his office.

  Qian appeared at his door. ‘Yes, boss?’

  ‘Imperative you track down as many of the classmates as you can. Turns out our first three victims were members of a Red Guard faction called the Revolt-to-the-End Brigade. There’s another three. Concentrate on them.’ He consulted his notes. ‘A guy called Ge Yan, nicknamed Birdie. A bird fancier. Apparently he was always hanging around a local bird market when he was a kid. A girl they called Pauper, but nobody seems to be able to remember her real name. And another guy named …’ He searched through his notebook. ‘Gau Huan. They called him Tortoise, apparently because he was so slow.’ He tapped his head. ‘Up here. Suspicion he might have been retarded in some way.’

  Almost without pausing for breath he called, ‘Wu!’ And Wu appeared beside Qian. Li didn’t even look up. ‘Yuan Tao’s father taught English at the No. 29 Middle School. According to our information he died in ’67. But we still don’t know what happened to his mother. I think it’s pretty damned important that we find her. And any other relatives still living. That gets priority, OK?’

  ‘Right, boss.’

  Li looked up and Wu and Qian still lingered hesitantly in the doorway. ‘Well?’

  They exchanged glances, and Qian said, ‘The Chief wants to see you, boss. The minute you came in, he said.’

  And his tone brought memories of Xinxin flooding back. ‘Oh, shit,’ Li said. ‘I’d forgotten about that.’

  Chen’s office was a shambles. His blotter and all his paperwork had been removed from the desk and piled along the windowsill. Xinxin’s jigsaw puzzle, half-finished, was spread across the desktop. Her books lay opened on the floor, and all the chairs had been drawn together in the middle of the room, and an array of soft toys – a panda, a rabbit, a tiger, a lion – arranged side by side.

  As Li entered, Xinxin was sitting on Chen’s knee, and he was reading to her from a big picture book. He looked up and glared at Li over Xinxin’s head. He closed the book, handing it to Xinxin, and lifting her down on to the floor. ‘I need to talk to your Uncle Yan now, little one,’ he said.

  Xinxin pulled a face and she, in turn, glared at Li. ‘He’s always spoiling things,’ she said.

  ‘You go next door and ask Uncle Qian to finish the story for you,’ Chen persisted gently.

  Xinxin’s face lit up. ‘Oh, yeah. Uncle Qian. He’s brilliant.’ And she headed off down the corridor clutching her book, without so much as a second glance at Li.

  ‘I’ve often heard people speak of the Little Emperor syndrome,’ Chen said. ‘All these only children spoiled by over-doting parents. And here I am participating in it. Shut the door.’

  Li closed the door behind him and moved the lion to get a seat. ‘Where did all this stuff come from?’ he asked.

  ‘Uncle Qian,’ Chen said with a tone, ‘took her down to the market stalls on Ritan Lu, where they sell all those soft toys. The guys had a whip round, and that’s the result.’ He nodded towards the collection of furry animals. ‘You were a hell of a long time, Li.’

  Li nodded. ‘But I think we made a breakthrough, chief.’ And he told him about the Revolt-to-the-End Brigade and Yuan’s father, and the fact that whoever had killed Yuan Tao had got the nickname wrong.

  ‘But Yuan Tao wasn’t a Red Guard. Couldn’t have been. He wasn’t even in the country,’ Chen said.

  ‘No,’ Li agreed. ‘But they were all classmates, and they were all taught by his father, and maybe something else, Chief. Something we’re not seeing yet. But we’re looking in the right place now, and if we look hard enough, and keep on looking, we will. I’m sure of it.’

  ‘And I’m sure,’ Chen said glumly, ‘that the situation with your niece cannot continue like this.’ He waved a hand around his office. ‘Look at this place!’

  Li stifled a smile. ‘I thought it looked like you and Xinxin were getting on like a house on fire, chief.’

  ‘That’s got nothing to do with anything,’ Chen snapped. He paused and took a breath, then, ‘I phoned the police chief at Zigong and he spoke to Xinxin’s father.’ He paused again.

  ‘And?’ asked Li.

  Chen said grimly, ‘He says that as far as he’s concerned his wife has left him and taken the little girl with her. He doesn’t want anything to do with either of them.’

  *

  Li wheeled his bike through the afternoon heat, dodging the traffic on Dongzhimennei Street. Xinxin sat in a huff on the rack over the rear wheel, clutching her satchel and panda to her as if she expected someone to try and tear them away. She was distinctly displeased with Li for removing her from all the attention she was getting at Section One, and she was becoming increasingly aware now of how much she was missing her mom. Her lower lip was petted, and tears were welling in her eyes.

  Li felt sick. How could Xinxin’s father expect him to look after her? Li was single, working long hours for a very modest salary. He would have to employ someone full time to look after the child until he could straighten things out with the man. And God knew where her mother was! It was so unfair. There was too much in his head to deal with, without having to cope with this.

  Mei Yuan spotted him crossing the street, and her face lit up when she saw Xinxin on the back of the bike. Xinxin was just as delighted to see Mei Yuan, and she jumped down and ran into the open arms of the street vendor, and burst into tears.

  ‘Uncle Yan won’t let me play,’ she sobbed. ‘And my mommy’s not well, and I want to go home.’

  Mei Yuan squatted down and held the child tightly to her, looking up over her shoulder to see Li’s helpless expression. He shrugged and shook his head. ‘You know what?’ Mei Yuan said suddenly, holding Xinxin at arm’s length and brushing the tears from her face. ‘I bet you could go a jian bing right now.’

  Xinxin frowned. ‘What’s that?’

  ‘It’s a big pancake.’ She looked at Li. ‘Without the chilli?’

  Li smiled. ‘She comes from Sichuan, remember.’

  ‘Of course.’ Mei Yuan grinned and stood up, taking Xinxin’s hand. ‘Here,’ she said, ‘you watch me make it.’ And Xinxin, for the moment, forgot her tears as she watched Mei Yuan spread the liquid mix over her hotplate and then break an egg on to it and smear it over the bubbling pancake as it formed. ‘My cousin said you came earlier,’ Mei Yuan said to Li. ‘I’m sorry I was not here.’

  ‘I have a problem, Mei Yuan. But it is not easy for me to tell you right now.’

  She nodded. ‘How is your Cantonese?’

  ‘Rusty,’ he said. Six months in Hong Kong had provided him with the basics, but he had not used it in a long time.

  ‘Mine, too,’ she said, in Cantonese. ‘So where is her mother?’

  ‘Pregnant,’ Li said. ‘She had a … I don’t know the word for it in Cantonese.’ He thought hard for another way to say it. ‘They made a picture of the baby with sound. She knows it’s a boy. She’s gone to stay with some friend somewhere in the south to have it. I don’t know where. And Xinxin’s father doesn’t want to know.’

  Mei Yuan finished the jian bing and wrapped it carefully to give to Xinxin. ‘There we are, little one. Careful. It’s hot.’

  Xinxin bit into it. ‘Hmm,’ she said, her face brightening up immediately. ‘It’s good.’ And she took another big mouthful. ‘How come I don’t know what you’re saying?’ She gazed up at Mei Yuan, a perplexed look in her eyes.

  Mei Yuan smiled. ‘Oh,’ she said, ‘we were just practising another kind of Chinese. I’ll teach you some of the words tonight if you like.’

  ‘Tonight?’ Xi
nxin’s face lit up. ‘Are you coming to Uncle Yan’s house again?’

  ‘No,’ said Mei Yuan. ‘You’re coming to stay with me for a day or two. Would you like that?’

  ‘Oh, yeah,’ Xinxin said, all the sparkle back in her eyes now. ‘That would be brilliant.’

  Mei Yuan looked at Li. ‘My cousin will look after the jian bing for a while.’ She paused. ‘Until things get sorted out.’

  Li found his eyes filling with tears, and he had to blink them back hard. He reached out and squeezed Mei Yuan’s hand.

  ‘So, have you worked out my riddle yet?’ she asked.

  He shook his head. ‘I still haven’t had a chance to think it through.’

  ‘OK, but you only get one more day,’ she chided him. She paused to think, then added, ‘But the answer is staring you in the face, if only you will stop believing what I tell you.’

  CHAPTER SIX

  A warm breeze drifted across the green water of the Nine Dragons Pond, rippling its surface. Beyond it, high above the Sunset Glow Pavilion, ski lifts carried tourists to the summit of a tree-clad mountain.

  ‘The water remains a constant forty-three degrees centigrade all year round,’ Michael told Margaret. They were walking slowly along the water’s edge towards a white marble statue of a semi-naked woman at the centre of a fountain. On their left a huge green-roofed pavilion rose up on rust-red pillars. ‘In the depths of winter, when the wind blows across the water from the south, it gathers heat and lifts the frost from the roof of the pavilion. And if the sun is shining the air above the roof sparkles and dances with tiny particles of coruscating light. They call it the Frost Flying Pavilion.’

  They had arrived here at the hot springs after a short drive along a highway punctuated by peasants selling pomegranates from big bamboo baskets. Margaret had spent more than an hour with the archaeologists excavating warriors, before Michael had returned and taken her on a tour of the other two pits. She had been flushed from the power of her experience of excavation, and her enthusiasm had amused him.