The Firemaker (The China Thrillers 1)

by Peter May

  He responded immediately with a small, dignified bow. ‘It is my pleasure,’ he said.

  V

  ‘There is extensive thermal injury, with fourth- and third-degree burns over greater than ninety per cent of the body surface, with scattered second-degree burns. Portions of the scalp and virtually all of the scalp hair are charred away, with the exception of a small amount of singed, coarse, straight black hair averaging three centimetres in length on the left side of the head. The facial features are not discernible. The nose is absent, as is the right ear. The left ear is shrivelled and charred. The eyes are not recognisable. The teeth are partially charred, but are in excellent repair, with multiple amalgam fillings and porcelain crowns. The maxilla and mandible will be retained for future dental comparison. The skin and soft tissue of the right cheek are charred away and there is char fracturing of the right zygoma. The tongue is protruding slightly; the tip is charred, and there is a small amount of white froth about the mouth. No facial hair is identified.’

  Lily’s protestations that she was no longer required had been ignored, and she stood shivering at the back of the autopsy room beside Li, hardly daring to watch as Margaret made her preliminary examination of the body. Margaret measured and weighed, describing her findings as she went for the benefit of an overhead microphone. The recording of the entire proceeding would later be transcribed for the autopsy report.

  She and Professor Xie had gone off earlier to change, returning swathed in layers of clothing; green surgeon’s pyjamas covered by plastic aprons, in turn covered by long-sleeved cotton gowns. Both wore plastic shoe covers on their feet and shower caps on their heads. Wondering what had drawn her to such a macabre profession, Li had watched with involuntary fascination as Margaret pulled on a pair of gloves, slipping plastic sleeve covers over her freckled forearms to cover the gap between sleeve and glove. She had drawn a steel-mesh glove over her left, non-cutting, hand, and snapped on a second pair of latex gloves over the lot. The post-mortem mutilation of a human being was a messy business.

  As both surgeons had pulled up their face masks and lowered goggles over their eyes, two assistants had wheeled in the charred body of Chao Heng on a gurney and transferred it to the autopsy table. Lily had let out a small gasp. His upper body was still frozen in the defensive attitude of the boxer, as if preparing to fight off any attempt to cut him open. The chill air of the room had been suffused immediately with a smell like overcooked steak on a grill, an insidious odour that crept into the soul via the too-sensitive medium of the olfactory nerves.

  The assistants had placed covers on the floor beneath and around the table to collect the fine charcoal dust that Margaret had warned would settle all around them and track across the room as they moved back and forth dissecting organs for later microscopic examination. Professor Xie, although nominally the lead pathologist, now that mianzi was restored had deferred to Margaret’s greater experience and asked her to perform the autopsy while he assisted.

  Now, as she examined the feet of the corpse, she found and pulled back a piece of black and stiffened material from the top of the left foot. ‘The charred remains of what appears to be a leather shoe and part of a sock are present over the dorsum and the sole of the left foot and the sole of the right foot. There are no remaining identifying features, other than that the left shoe appears to have been of a laced variety. The skin of the dorsum of the left foot is dark red and blistered and there is an apparent needle track in the skin in the area of the saphenous vein and venous arch.’

  Margaret reached up and switched off the microphone, turning towards Li. ‘Looks like our man might have been a junkie. The top of the foot is quite a common place to shoot up if you want to hide the needle tracks. We can confirm that by checking for narcotics residue in and around the capillaries of the lungs. Blood tests will tell us what he was shooting up. Probably heroin.’

  ‘Will you get sufficient blood and material for testing? I mean, won’t everything be cooked?’ Li’s distaste at his own question was palpable.

  ‘Superficially, yes. Normally we would draw off fluid from the eyes and blood from the femoral veins at the top of the legs, but that will be cooked and solid. Inside, though, should be pretty much protected and preserved. Beyond the accelerant used to set him on fire, there wasn’t much else to sustain the blaze, so he wouldn’t have burned for that long.’

  The assistants turned the body over and Margaret switched on the microphone. ‘The posterior trunk shows a symmetrical external contour. The spine is clearly mid-line. There is charring of the skin of the back and multiple small areas of skin splitting over the latissimus dorsi bilaterally. There is no obvious blunt or sharp force trauma of the back.’

  Having placed the body on its back again, the autopsy assistants placed a rubber block around six inches thick beneath the body, in the mid-chest area, to help expose the chest cavity when Margaret made the first Y-shaped incision, starting at each shoulder, meeting at the bottom of the breastbone, and continuing down past the belly button to the pubic bone. She peeled back the skin and musculature of the chest to reveal the cavity.

  ‘There is diffuse drying and fixation of the soft tissues of the thoracic and abdominal walls, with skin splitting. All organs are present and in their appropriate positions.’

  Professor Xie cut through the ribcage with what looked like pruning shears. The snapping of the bones made a sickening sound that echoed back at them off the cold tiles. When he had finished, they removed the breastplate to reveal the heart. Margaret snipped open the pericardial sac so that the blood that poured into it out of the heart could be collected by the assistants for testing in toxicology. Professor Xie slipped his hands into the cavity and lifted up the heart, allowing Margaret to sever the major vessels and arteries so that he could remove it for weighing and later dissection.

  They worked methodically down the body, removing the lungs, the stomach – looking like a slimy, fluid-filled purse, its foul-smelling contents drained for further examination – the liver, the spleen, the pancreas, the kidneys; weighing everything, removing blood, fluid and bile samples.

  ‘The stomach contains 125 grams of grey-brown, pasty, partially digested food material. No medication residue is grossly identified. No ethanol odour is noted.’

  Working quickly now, with dexterous hands, Margaret cut the guts free and, starting at the duodenum end, began pulling the gut towards herself, an arm’s length at a time, using her scalpel to free its loops from the sheet of fat to which it was attached. When it was straight, she sliced down its length with a pair of scissors, holding them partially open and drawing the intestine along them, as if she were cutting a piece of Christmas wrapping paper. The stink was almost unbearable. Li and Lily moved instinctively away, mouths closed, breathing shallowly. ‘The small and large intestines are examined throughout their entire length and are grossly unremarkable.’ The intestine was discarded into a stainless-steel bucket lined with plastic.

  Urine samples were drawn from the bladder for toxicology, and Margaret examined the prostate and testes, cutting sections from each for testing, before discarding the remains in the bucket.

  She turned to the neck now, pulling the top flap of skin from the Y-shaped incision up over the face. ‘The bony and cartilaginous structures of the neck are intact and without evidence of trauma. The musculature of the neck shows marked heat fixation, but there is no evidence of haemorrhage in the strap muscles or soft tissues of the neck.’

  Attention turned, then, to the head, a head-block placed under the neck to raise it from the table. An incision was made at the back running from one ear to the other, and the skin peeled down over the face to reveal the skull. Using a circular saw, one of the assistants cut through the skullcap so that it could be removed, with a sucking and popping sound like feet being withdrawn from mud, to reveal the brain. Margaret had warned everyone to stand back as the saw cut through bone. ‘Try not to breathe this stuff,’ she said. ‘It smells kind of smoky-swe
et, but latest thinking is that it might carry HIV and other viruses.’

  She examined the skull. ‘Reflection of the scalp reveals a 2 by 3.2 centimetre area of subgaleal haemorrhage over the left parietal bone, with a possible contusion of approximately the same dimensions of the scalp – impossible to say for sure because of heat artifact. There is a small amount of subdural haemorrhage deep to the area of subgaleal haemorrhage. On removal of the dura, an irregular-shaped fracture, measuring 2.6 centimetres in length, is clearly visible. There is no charring or eversion of the fracture.’

  She concentrated then on removing the brain from the skull, pulling it gently back towards her, examining its worm-like surface as she did. ‘The meninges are slightly dried, but thin and translucent. There is a small contusion of the left parietal lobe, with a trace of haemorrhage.’ She snipped it off at the stem and it plopped out into her hands for weighing. Lily put a hand over her mouth and fled from the room.

  Margaret let out a deep breath as she relaxed her concentration. ‘Well, apart from breadloafing the organs, there’s not much else we can do just now. It’ll take some time to prepare permanent paraffin sections for microscopic examination …’

  Professor Xie interrupted her. ‘If you wished, we could examine fresh frozen sections in about fifteen minutes.’

  ‘You’ve got a cryostat here?’ She was unable to hide her surprise.

  He smiled. ‘This is a very modern facility, Doctor. We are not so far behind the Americans.’

  The cryostat was about the size of a small washing machine with a crank handle on its right side and a window on top with a view into its icy interior, kept at a chilly minus 22 degrees Centigrade. Margaret was happy to let Professor Xie demonstrate his expertise, and watched as he prepared sections of lung tissue and skin from the left foot for freezing. He squeezed globs of a jelly-like support medium into metal chucks that would provide holding bases for the tissue. The tissue samples were then placed on the chucks which were, in turn, set on a rack in the cold working area in the cryostat. Working with practised ease, the professor pressed metal heat sinks against the face of the tissue samples, both to flatten and to freeze them.

  Li had attended many autopsies over the years, but this was a procedure that was new to him. He watched, fascinated, as only a few minutes later the professor removed the frozen lung tissue from the freezer and transferred it, in its chuck, to the cutting area. Placing it hard against the blade, he turned the crank handle, drawing the sample across the cutting edge, for all the world like a ham slicer, cutting a wisp-thin section of tissue only microns thick, which was then touched to the surface of a room-temperature glass microscope slide. The sample instantly melted. The professor stained it with hematoxylin and eosin and handed it to Margaret for examination under the microscope.

  ‘Microscopic examination of multiple sections of the lungs shows granulomata and multinucleated giant cells containing polarisable material.’

  The process was repeated with the skin samples taken from the areas of needle track on the left foot. Margaret pushed her goggles up on to her forehead. ‘Same thing,’ she said.

  ‘Meaning what?’ Li asked.

  ‘Heroin users often grind up whatever other narcotics they can and inject the powder the way they do heroin. Particles of the pill residue get trapped in the tiny capillaries of the lungs and the surrounding lung tissue. Where the particles remain they get engulfed by inflammatory cells. There is clear evidence of that in this man’s lungs, as well as in the tracks in his foot.’

  ‘So what does this tell us?’

  ‘Nothing, except that he was probably a heroin user.’

  ‘And cause of death?’

  ‘As we all thought. Extensive thermal injury. Burning.’

  ‘You said something about contusion, haemorrhaging, a fracture of the skull … What does all that mean?’

  ‘It means someone hit him on the head with a blunt instrument. Not enough to kill him, but it would certainly have rendered him at least semiconscious, if not wholly unconscious.’

  Li was startled. ‘It couldn’t have been accidental, or self-inflicted?’

  She said dismissively, ‘Oh, I don’t think so. With an injury like that he’d have been in no condition to go walking around and setting himself up as a bonfire. And, as I understand it, he was found still in the lotus position. So he didn’t fall and hit his head on anything once he’d started burning. I believe he was knocked on the head and then sedated.’ She paused. ‘Are you familiar with the term Special K?’ Li frowned, clearly not. She smiled. ‘At least, that’s what they call it on the streets. A drug called ketamine. They used to use it as an anaesthetic induction agent in the States. Got some pretty nasty hallucinogenic side effects. My guess would be that when we get the blood tests back we’ll find he had been injected either with ketamine, or a very high dose of heroin. That would have made him more compliant and easier to handle.’

  ‘You’re telling me he didn’t kill himself.’ Li was stunned.

  ‘Suicide? Good God, no. This man was murdered.’

  CHAPTER THREE

  I

  Tuesday Afternoon

  They stood outside blinking in the sunlight – a very different kind of light from the bright lamps that illuminated the subterranean gloom of the autopsy room. Margaret slipped on her sunglasses. Lily had still not reappeared after her dash to the toilet, and Li and Margaret stood uncertainly, unsure how to conclude their business. Each exhibited a strange hesitancy about saying goodbye. To share the experience of something as traumatic and revealing as the dissection of another human being had an almost bonding effect, inducing a shared and heightened sense of mortality.

  Margaret looked up and down the street. ‘Did you leave your car up at Administration?’

  ‘No, the Chief took it. I’ll take the bus back.’

  ‘Bus?’ Margaret was shocked. ‘Surely police resources would stretch to a taxi.’

  He shrugged. ‘I don’t mind the bus.’

  ‘In this heat? I’ve seen the buses in this city. They’re jammed full. Standing room only. How far is it?’

  ‘Other side of Beijing.’

  Lily appeared, looking distinctly pale. Her heightened sense of mortality had clearly manifested itself in an emptying of her stomach. ‘Lily,’ Margaret said brusquely, ‘I need to go back to Section One with Deputy Section Chief Li.’ She waved her hand vaguely. ‘Administrative detail.’ She paused. ‘So I won’t be needing you any more.’

  ‘That not possible, Doctach Cambo.’ Lily puffed up her indignation. ‘How you get back to university? I get car and take you there.’

  ‘Thought she might.’ Margaret smiled sweetly after her as Lily strutted off in the direction of Administration to find their car. Margaret turned to Li. ‘Can I offer you a lift?’

  Li returned a wry smile, perfectly well aware of how she had just manipulated Lily. ‘There’s really no need.’

  ‘Oh, but I insist. I have no further classes today, and I’d be intrigued to see the operational headquarters of Beijing’s serious crime squad. I’m sure Section Chief Chen would have no objections.’

  *

  On the long drive across the city, Margaret had ample time to regret her impulsiveness. Lily sat up front with the driver, and Margaret sat in the back with Li in uncomfortable silence, a very awkward space between them that could easily have accommodated a third person. After the adrenalin rush of the morning, her body and brain were once again crying out for sleep, and she found herself having to blink frequently to stay awake. She should, she realised, have gone back to her hotel and slept for the rest of the day. After all, it was bedtime back home. But then again, she persuaded herself, if she had done that her body clock would never adjust to Beijing time.

  Li was regretting accepting the lift for very different reasons. He was going to have to take her into the office. Already he could see the smirking faces, hear the whispered comments at his expense. And he knew that he would be unable to co
nceal his embarrassment. He blushed too easily. And yet it was a measure of his growing ambivalence towards her that he almost relished the opportunity to demonstrate his status and authority.

  They approached Section One from the west along Beixinqiao Santiao, passing, at number five, an impressive building studded with colourful mosaic patterns beneath traditional upturned eaves. Marble gateposts were guarded by ubiquitous lions. ‘What’s that place?’ Margaret asked as it slid past their window.

  ‘Hotel for Overseas Chinese,’ Li said.

  Margaret frowned. ‘You mean they have their own hotels?’

  ‘Some overseas Chinese think they are better than us poor mainlanders,’ Li said. ‘They think their money makes them better.’ He did not approve of the status awarded these overseas Chinese, some of them second and third generation, who returned from places as diverse as Singapore and the United States to flash their wealth and shower gifts upon poor relatives. It was true that for many years the money they had sent back to relatives in China had made an important contribution to the Chinese economy. But that was changing now. So much so that with the rapidly changing economic and political climate, many of these exiled Chinese were returning for good. China itself was becoming a land of opportunity, a place to make money.

  As they passed the red-tiled façade of Noah’s Ark Food Room on their right, Li peered in the window, hoping that at this time of day a number of his colleagues would be grabbing a quick lunch – the fewer to snigger at his enforced association with the yangguizi. But the place appeared to be empty. He sighed.