Li and Wu wandered between stalls peddling paintings and wall-hangings, watched by suspicious, dark-eyed vendors nursing glass jars of green tea or sitting around fold-up tables playing cards. It was clear the two men were neither tourists nor casual Chinese. Which could only mean one other thing. At the far end of one of the aisles, a group of tourists was gathered around a table watching an artist at work, carefully crafting a pen and ink scene of ancient China. Next to him a group of men and women, wrapped up warm against the cold, was playing Great Wall on a rusted metal table. Li interrupted them, flipping open his ID. ‘I’m looking for Mrs. Guo. She sells antiques.’ One of them nodded toward the far aisle, but none of them spoke.
‘Chatty types,’ Wu muttered to Li as they passed a big-bellied shiny Buddha on a plinth. A wooden pig rose up on its hind legs snorting its derision, and a line of bronze warriors gazed upon them impassively. They turned into the aisle at the end and it stretched ahead of them in gloomy half-darkness for sixty or seventy metres. There were stalls and tiny shop units and tables groaning with junk: teapots and door-knockers; small figurines in armour; inlaid wooden boxes; wristwatches displaying Mao heads that nodded away the seconds. Behind glass, shelves of traditional chinaware, ornate wooden carvings. Two teenage girls sat beside a table of polished gramophone horns. ‘Looka, looka,’ one of them said, not yet savvy enough to recognise police out of uniform.
Wu said curtly, ‘Mrs. Guo.’
The other one nodded toward a shop unit two doors along. ‘Police there,’ she said conspiratorially.
‘Thanks for the warning,’ Li said.
There were three people squeezed around a wooden table in the tiny, cluttered shop unit. A woman with long dark hair who looked in her middle forties, a very old man in a wide-brimmed hat drowned by a heavy coat two sizes too big for him, and a young uniformed community police officer. The shelves were lined with blue-ink china vases, and the ceiling was hung with dozens of bells on chains. The young policeman looked up with what seemed like relief when Li and Wu arrived. The old man stared into some unseen place with glazed eyes, and a large, clear drip of mucus hung from the end of his nose. The woman’s eyes were red, her cheeks blotched and tearstained. Li saw something like hope in her eyes when she looked up at them, as if she thought that somehow they might have come to say it had all been a terrible mistake, and that Guo Huan was really alive and well. He ached for her, and the false hope she was conjuring out of the depths of her despair. He said, ‘I’m Section Chief Li Yan, Mrs. Guo. Detective Wu and I are investigating your daughter’s death.’ And whatever hope she might have fostered, he knew he had just stolen away.
He saw her face go bleak. ‘The uniform says she was murdered,’ she said.
‘I’m afraid so.’
‘Found her up Silk Street Market,’ the uniform said. ‘Isn’t that right?’ He looked to Li for confirmation, not remotely awed by the presence of superior ranks. ‘Hacked to pieces apparently.’
The girl’s mother gasped her distress and tears blurred her eyes.
Li glared at him. ‘I think you can go now, officer.’
‘That’s alright, Chief. They said I should stay down here and offer support. It’s part of the job in the community branch.’
The mother turned to Li. ‘What was she doing in a place like that at night, alone with a man?’
‘Well, you should know,’ the uniform said, wearing his disapproval like a badge.
Li turned to Wu. ‘Get him out of here.’
Wu grabbed the uniform by the arm and yanked him out of his seat. ‘Hey!’ the officer protested. But Wu had him out of the door and into the alley before he could give further voice to his indignation.
Mrs. Guo looked at Li in consternation, her cheeks shining with silent tears. ‘What did he mean?’
Li shook his head and sat down where the uniform had been. ‘He doesn’t know what he means,’ Li said. ‘These community police are just messenger boys. They don’t know anything.’ Outside in the alley, they heard raised voices, and the sound of something breaking. Li glanced at the old man. He hadn’t moved since they came in. ‘Is he alright?’
A dead look fell across the mother’s face. ‘Who knows? He’s my father. He’s been like that since he had his stroke ten years ago. And what does the state do for him? Nothing. I have to pay for all his medical care. I have to nurse him at home. Me and Huan, with one bedroom among the three of us. That’s why she had to work nights. We needed the money.’
‘Where did she work?’
She shrugged. ‘Different places. Bar work mostly. She said there was always casual work in Bar Street up in Sanlitun.’ Her face crumpled in consternation. ‘Is it true? Was she really…cut up?’
Li nodded. There was no way he could conceal it from her. She would have to identify the body. ‘I’m afraid so.’ And he wondered if Guo Huan’s mother really believed that she was working in bars in Sanlitun all those nights she went off on her own. But, then, if her daughter was bringing in good money, perhaps she didn’t want to know any different.
Wu reappeared and stood in the doorway. He nodded to Li almost imperceptibly. Li said, ‘Did she ever tell you she was meeting anyone? Ever mention a name, a rendezvous?’
The mother held her hands out helplessly. ‘We didn’t talk much,’ she said. ‘About anything. She left school four years ago, and we’ve been working in the shop here together every day since.’ She glanced at her father. ‘With him.’ She paused, dealing with some painful private memory. ‘We ran out of things to talk about a long time ago.’
Li nodded and allowed her a little space before he said, ‘Mrs. Guo, I’d like your permission for a team of forensics people to go into your house and go through all your daughter’s things.’
Her mother sat upright suddenly, as if offended by the idea. ‘I don’t think I’d like that. What difference does it make now anyway? She’s dead.’
Li said patiently, ‘She might have known her killer, Mrs. Guo, in which case we might find some clue to his identity among her things.’ He paused. ‘She wasn’t his first victim. We want to stop him from doing it again.’
Mrs. Guo sank back into her despair and nodded desolately. ‘I suppose.’
‘And if you have a recent photograph of her, that would be very helpful.’
She reached into a cupboard and pulled out a cardboard shoebox tied with pink ribbon. She placed it carefully on the table, undid the ribbon and lifted the lid. It was full of photographs. ‘I always meant to put them in an album.’ She looked around her shop. ‘I sit about here all day and do nothing. The more time you have, the more time you waste.’ She started taking out pictures and laying them in front of her.