The Fourth Sacrifice (The China Thrillers 2)

by Peter May

  His own scream brought him to consciousness, and he heard the distant echo of it reverberating in his dream. He was breathing hard and lathered in sweat, as if he had just run a race. Blood pulsed painfully at his temples. He looked at the digital display by his bedside and saw that it was only one o’clock. He had barely been asleep half an hour.

  He swung his legs out of the bed and reached for his cigarettes. He had only just lit one when he was startled by a fist pounding on his door. ‘Hello?’ he heard a woman’s voice shouting. ‘Is there anyone there?’

  He ran through the dark apartment and unlocked the door, throwing it open to reveal the middle-aged woman who lived across the landing. She was a fearsome creature with a big ugly face and whiskered chin, a very senior officer in the Ministry of State Security which shared its compound with the Ministry of Public Security. She wore a pink cotton dressing gown wrapped around her overample frame, and her face was covered with white cream.

  Li stared at her in astonishment. ‘What is it?’

  ‘I heard someone screaming.’

  He breathed a sigh of relief. Was that all? ‘I was having a bad dream,’ he said, and noticed that her eyes had strayed down to his middle regions. With a shock he realised he was stark naked. ‘Is there anything else?’ he asked.

  Reluctantly she dragged her eyes away from the focus of their interest and glared at him. ‘You’re disgusting!’ she said. ‘Exposing yourself to a helpless woman in the middle of the night.’ But she didn’t sound too disgusted. ‘I’ve a good mind to report you.’

  ‘What for?’ he asked. ‘Failing to get a hard-on? One look at you, comrade, and there isn’t a court in the land that would convict me.’ She flushed. ‘Thank you for your concern.’ And he shut the door on her indignant face.

  He wandered through to get a beer from the refrigerator, but he had drunk it all. He pulled on a pair of jogpants and sat in the dark of the living room taking long pulls at his cigarette. Outside, he could see, the rain had stopped. But the leaves on the trees were still glistening wet in the light of the streetlamps, and dripping on the sidewalk below. He thought about Margaret, and immediately stopped himself. It was too easy. It was all he had done all night. He was damned if he was going to sit here and wallow in self-pity. He got up, walked out on to the balcony and forced his brain to work in other directions.

  An image of Birdie in his holding cell floated into his mind, pathetic and sad and curled up like a foetus on the unyielding boards of his bunk bed. Another thought crowded in, an earlier thought that he had already dismissed. And an image that went with it, of a shadowy figure creeping through the dark of Birdie’s apartment to hide a sword in the bottom of the wardrobe. He heard the birds, screeching, disturbed from their sleep, alarmed by the movement they could not see. And he suddenly remembered Qian fumbling with the padlock on the steel shutter. The lock’s burst, he had said. We didn’t need the keys after all. Li cursed himself. He had not even bothered to look at it. Had it been forced, or was it simply broken? He lit another cigarette and ran a hand back through the stubble of his hair. It had not even been an issue at the time. No one could have suspected then that someone might have broken into Birdie’s apartment to plant the murder weapon. It was by no means certain now. Li checked the time. It was still only one thirty. He went back through to his bedroom, pulled on a tee shirt and slipped his feet into a pair of trainers. He did not have the patience to wait until the morning to ask Qian.

  The air was filled with the smell of damp earth and wet leaves as he cycled north through the dark deserted streets, wondering if his determination to check out the lock on Birdie’s apartment was simply a means of shutting Margaret out of his thoughts. He put his head down and pedalled harder, trying to free his mind from the burden of any conscious thought.

  The duty officer at Section One retrieved Birdie’s keys from the evidence room and handed them to Li. ‘He asked for pen and ink and some paper a couple of hours ago,’ he told Li. ‘Haven’t heard a cheap from him since.’ He smiled at his own sad pun.

  The alleyway leading off Dengshikou Street was deserted. The windows of the apartment block stood in dark, silent rows, one upon the other. Li wheeled his bicycle into the courtyard, and startled a rat foraging among the pile of garbage on the steps. It scurried off into the night. He parked his bicycle under the lamp by the door and went inside. From somewhere in the depths of the building he heard the distant hum of something electrical. Otherwise, the building was deathly silent. The lift doors were shut, and the normally illuminated call button was dark. Li made his way to the foot of the stairs and took out the keys to unlock the stairgate. But the gate creaked away from his hand as he touched it. He took out a penlight from his back pocket and shone it on the lock. It was seized solid, and had obviously been that way for some time. So anyone could have gained access to the building anytime after ten o’clock when the lift was switched off. He began the long ascent.

  By the time he reached the ninth floor he was seriously regretting not having given up cigarettes long ago – and his automatic response was to light one immediately and take a deep draw. A faint light from distant streetlamps washed in through the windows and illuminated the corridor. He made his way along it and turned left into the darkness of the hallway where his penlight picked out the number 905 above Birdie’s door. The shutter was lying ajar, and Li felt a surge of anger at the carelessness of his officers for leaving it that way. He crouched down and lifted up the padlock on the end of its chain. The top loop slipped in and out of its hole, but failed to lock. Li focused his penlight on the keyhole and saw several fine scratches in the metal, shiny and freshly made. The lock had clearly been disabled. Recently. And by someone who knew what they were doing. He stood up and let it go and it clanked off the metal of the door. Someone had broken into Birdie’s apartment and planted the sword there. Li stood still for a moment, shocked by the revelation, and puzzled. It hardly seemed possible.

  He turned the handle of the inner door and pushed it open. He heard the beat of wings in the air, a screeching chorus of alarm, and something flew at him out of the darkness. Something big and dark that struck him violently in the chest. He staggered backwards, taken completely by surprise, and robbed totally of his ability to breathe. As the shape emerged from the deepest shadows, he saw that it was the figure of a man, quite a bit smaller than himself, lean and wiry. But he had only the vaguest glimpse of the silhouette before another foot struck him in the chest, and a small, iron-hard fist smashed into his face. His head struck the wall behind him with a sickening crack, and he slid down it to the floor, blood bubbling from his mouth and nose. His attacker leaped nimbly over his prostrate form and was gone in a blur, through the door and away down the corridor. Li heard the footfalls on concrete, the banging of a door, and then steps echoing in the stairwell as his assailant made good his escape.

  Li sat for several minutes, leaning against the wall, gasping for breath. His chest hurt like hell, and he half-choked on the blood that ran back down his throat. He felt like a complete idiot.

  *

  Qian looked at the blood that had dried in streaks down the front of Li’s white tee shirt and shook his head. Li’s face was in quite a state. His bottom lip was split and swollen, and blood-soaked cotton wool trailed from each nostril where a medic had stuffed wads of it to stop the bleeding. ‘Must have been a big guy to make that much mess of you, boss.’

  Li shook his head grimly. ‘Nothing to do with his size. He took me by surprise, that’s all. I wasn’t expecting there to be anyone in the apartment.’ He was embarrassed.

  The whole block was now a blaze of lights. With the arrival of the police, sirens wailing, residents had poured out on to landings and into the courtyard. Neighbouring blocks had also been roused, and there was a crowd of several hundred curious men and women in the street, some with sleepy children clutching parental hands and blinking blearily at the comings and goings of uniformed officers.

  Qian had only ju
st arrived, dragged reluctantly from his bed by a call from the Section One duty officer. His face was puffy with sleep. ‘So what do you think he was doing in there?’ He looked through the doorway at the uniformed officers who seemed to be dismantling the entire apartment. ‘What are they doing in there?’

  ‘Same thing as he was,’ Li said. ‘Looking for something. Only difference is, he knew what it was. We don’t.’

  Qian frowned and scratched his head. ‘You’ve lost me, boss. You mean, you know who he is?’

  ‘Sure. He’s the guy who broke in and planted the murder weapon in Birdie’s wardrobe.’

  This was a new one on Qian. ‘Planted the murder weapon? You mean, you don’t think Birdie did it after all?’

  ‘I never did. And the only reason I can figure the guy came back is he left or lost something while he was here. Something he thought might be incriminating.’

  ‘And do you think he found it before you disturbed him?’

  Li shrugged and winced. The medic had strapped up his ribs, but they still hurt. ‘Who knows. But if there’s something there, I want to find it.’

  It was almost five o’clock before Qian emerged from the apartment holding up a small, clear plastic evidence bag. Li was squatting in the corridor, small piles of ash and cigarette ends around him. The analgesics he had taken earlier were wearing off and he was starting to hurt again. He got painfully to his feet. ‘What have you got?’

  Qian shook his head despondently. ‘Maybe something, maybe nothing.’

  The first light was appearing in a sky washed clear by the previous night’s rain. The clouds had all moved on. Li took the bag and examined its contents. It was a small diamond stud not much bigger than a match head on the end of a short, blunt pin. ‘What the hell is it?’

  ‘It’s a stud earring,’ Qian said. ‘The kind of thing people wear in pierced ears to stop the hole healing up. I don’t think it’s Birdie’s.’

  Li looked at him with undisguised dismay and pointed at his own face. ‘Are you telling me it was a woman that did this to me?’

  Qian grinned, amused by the thought. ‘Not very likely, boss. Lot of young men get their ears pierced these days. A nasty habit picked up from the West.’

  Li looked beyond him, disappointed, towards the apartment. ‘Nothing else?’

  ‘Afraid not, boss. At least, nothing that would raise an eyebrow. We were lucky we found that in the mess in there. If it hadn’t caught the light …’ Qian went to take the bag from Li, but his boss hung on to it.

  ‘Could be Dr Campbell’s,’ Li said. ‘She was in the apartment yesterday. What room was it in?’

  ‘The bedroom.’

  Li nodded thoughtfully. To Qian his face was impassive, but inside his heart was pounding painfully against bruised ribs. He had a reason to see her. It was stupid and self-defeating, he knew, and it would probably only lead to more pain. But it was a valid reason.

  ‘I’ll get cleaned up,’ he said, ‘and go and ask her.’

  *

  The stalls of traders in furs and toys that lined the west sidewalk of Ritan Lu were shuttered and padlocked. In the park opposite, groups of men and women were gathering to dance the foxtrot or practise their tai ch’i or wu shu. Li could already hear the sound of scratchy music issuing from ghetto blasters mingling, among the trees, with the plaintive wail of a violin and the haunting voice of a woman singing a song from the Peking Opera. The first rays of watery yellow sunlight slanted and flickered among the leaves. The air was fresh in a way that it rarely was in Beijing these days.

  Although it had barely gone six, the street was already thick with cyclists on their way to the park or factory or office block. A few vendors had established themselves at street corners selling freshly baked sweet potatoes hot from the coals of their braziers, or jian bing or roasted chestnuts. The smell of sweet things cooking for early breakfast drifted across the street in the smoke.

  Li cycled slowly north. Each revolution of the pedals hurt his ribs. He had a splitting headache, and his lower lip throbbed painfully with the swelling. But he was almost unaware of these things as he looked up and saw the white-tile façade of the Ritan Hotel rising behind the trees. As he reached the gate he braked and slowly dismounted. A taxi honked its horn at him as it drove by, skirting a neatly arranged flowerbed and drawing up under the red painted framework of steel and glass that formed a canopy over the hotel entrance. Li was about to follow it through the gates when he saw a familiar figure hurrying out of the hotel and climbing into the taxi. It was Michael Zimmerman, looking happy and relaxed, and with a marked spring in his step. The sight of him leaving her hotel struck Li with more force than his assailant at Birdie’s apartment. Zimmerman could afford to be pleased with himself, Li thought bitterly. He had Margaret.

  Li immediately pulled back, withdrawing behind a car parked on the sidewalk, and watched as the taxi emerged from the driveway and headed off down the street. Zimmerman did not notice him. Why would he? After all, Li was just another Chinese face in a city of eleven million Chinese faces. He caught sight of two security guards in brown uniform watching him with undisguised suspicion from where they stood smoking outside the gatehouse. He hesitated for a long time. He could not go in now. She would know he had seen Michael leave. He did not want to confront the reality of that. He never had.

  Slowly he turned his bicycle round and remounted it. Later today he would send Sang to ask her about the stud earring. It was not something he had to do himself.

  IV

  As soon as he turned his bicycle into Beixinqiao Santiao, and saw a dozen uniformed officers standing smoking in the dappled shade of the trees, he knew that something was wrong. An ambulance stood half on the sidewalk at the side entrance to Section One. The officers turned and looked at him as he appeared, and the hubbub of lively conversation died away. He parked his bike and hurried inside.

  There were more officers gathered at the far end of the corridor, at the top of the half-flight of stairs that led down to the holding cells. Li had a sick sensation in his stomach. He ran the length of the corridor, pushing past the officers, and down the steps two at a time.

  Birdie’s cell was full of plain-clothes and uniformed officers. Two medics were crouched over a prostrate form on the floor. Bodies parted to let Li in. Birdie’s head rested at a peculiar angle. His eyes were wide, and staring lifelessly at the wall. The tip of his tongue protruded through blue lips. A short length of dirty rope lay on the floor beside him, its weave still visible in a dry, golden-red abrasion furrow around his neck.

  ‘He hanged himself, boss. Sometime during the night.’ Li turned to find Wu at his shoulder.

  ‘How the hell did he get the rope!’ Li’s shock was turning to anger.

  Wu said, ‘Seems he used it to hold up his pants. He wore his tunic out, so no one saw it.’ He paused and added significantly. ‘And no one checked.’

  Anger was now turning to despair. Li let his head drop and squeezed his eyes with his thumb and forefinger. He released a long, slow exhalation of frustration and looked at Birdie again. Grotesque though his features were, contorted by strangulation, there was a strange peace in his eyes. He had escaped. After thirty-three years he was finally free of his guilt. Free, like the birds he had loved all his life.

  ‘He left a confession, boss.’ Wu was watching him carefully.

  Li turned to him, frowning. ‘A confession?’

  Wu nodded. ‘The chief’s got it.’

  *

  Chen handed him the two flimsy sheets of paper, characters scrawled across them in a clumsy, childish hand. He said grimly, ‘There’s going to be hell to pay for this, Li Yan. The Ministry does not like prisoners killing themselves in police custody. There will be an investigation.’

  Li nodded. He scanned Birdie’s confession with a sinking heart.

  ‘At least,’ Chen said, ‘we have his confession. The case has been cracked, so the political pressure will relax. You have no idea just how much pressure I’ve
been protecting you people from.’

  Li could imagine only too well. He shook his head. ‘It is just a pity the “confession” does not stand up.’

  Chen glared at him. ‘What do you mean?’

  Li waved the sheets of paper dismissively. ‘All he’s done, Chief, is repeat, almost word for word, the accusations that Sang levelled at him yesterday. Go and listen to the tape. He’s just told us what we wanted to hear. It’s like the kind of self-criticism they would have made him write in the Cultural Revolution. Confess, confess, confess. That’s all they ever wanted. Whatever “crimes” they dreamed up, that’s what they wanted you to confess to. And that’s what he’s done. Confession is the path of least resistance – even when you didn’t do it.’

  Chen glared at him angrily. ‘Rubbish!’ he said. ‘He gave us a false alibi, he had the perfect motive, and we found the murder weapon in his apartment.’

  ‘Motive isn’t proof of guilt, Chief. You know that. He was confused about where he was last Monday night, that’s all. And the murder weapon was planted in his apartment.’

  ‘What proof do you have of that?’

  Li pointed a finger at his face. ‘What do you think this is?’

  ‘You got a bloody nose when you interrupted a burglar at Ge Yan’s apartment. What does that prove?’

  For a moment Li was stumped. Of course, he knew he had no proof that the sword had been planted in Birdie’s bedroom, no matter how certain he was of it. ‘There are a dozen other inconsistencies, chief. The nickname, the wine––’

  Chen cut him off. ‘I don’t want to hear it, Li. And I don’t want you repeating it.’

  ‘But, Chief––’

  Chen’s voice was low and threatening. ‘As far as I am concerned, Deputy Section Chief, we have proven beyond doubt that Yuan Tao murdered the victims known as Monkey, Zero and Pigsy. It was an act of revenge for their victimisation of his father during the Cultural Revolution. We now have a confession from an individual who believed he was next on the list, that he murdered Yuan before Yuan could murder him. His confession is given credence by the fact that the murder weapon was found in his apartment. End of story. End of case.’ He paused for a long time. ‘Do you understand me?’