They didn’t appear to be in any date order, as if they had been taken in and out of the box often. There were family groups, taken in happier times, a man on Mrs. Guo’s arm whom Li took to be her husband. There were pictures of a little girl smiling toothily at the camera, cheap prints on which the colours were faded now. Guo Huan in school uniform — a blue tracksuit and yellow baseball cap. Guo Huan with short hair, Guo Huan with long hair. All appeared to have been taken several years earlier. Her mother fingered every photograph with a kind of reverence, each with its own memory, every one with its own baggage. And then she pulled out a strip of four photographs of a much older Guo Huan. She handed it to Li. ‘These were taken a month or two ago. In one of those booths.’
Li examined them closely. The smile was self-conscious, and each photograph in the sequence was almost identical. She had shoulder-length hair, and a pretty face all made up for the occasion. Having seen her in Silk Street and at the morgue, Li would still never have recognised her. She had a freshness about her, an absence of cynicism, the anticipation of youth for a life ahead. A life that would never be. ‘May I take these?’ he asked. ‘I promise to return them.’ The mother nodded and he handed the strip to Wu. ‘And I’m sorry to ask, Mrs. Guo, but we will need you to make a formal identification of the body.’
A look of panic flitted across her face. ‘Oh, no, I couldn’t.’
‘Is there someone else, then?’
She thought for a moment, and then her face collapsed into resignation as she shook her head. ‘When do you want me?’
‘I’ll have a car come and pick you up in the next hour.’ Li glanced at the old man. ‘Will he be alright?’
‘I’ll have someone watch him,’ she said. And Li saw her lower lip start to tremble as she tried to hold back the tears. But they came anyway, big and silent, making wet tracks down her cheeks. ‘They only let you have one child.’ She took a deep breath. ‘And I’m too old to start again.’ She looked at her father, and Li was sure it was resentment he saw in her eyes. ‘He’s all I have left.’
As they made their way back through the gloom of the antiques alley, Wu said to Li, ‘That goddamned community cop was determined he wasn’t leaving. Actually put up a struggle. Bust a vase.’
‘Put in a complaint,’ Li said.
Wu grunted. ‘Not worth the paperwork, Chief.’
But if Wu was content to put it behind him, the community cop was not. He was waiting for them out front, lingering in agitation beneath a moongate leading to a neighbouring compound. He came chasing after them. ‘Hey,’ he said, catching Li’s arm. ‘Your detective assaulted me.’ He barely had time to draw breath in surprise before Li wheeled around and pushed him hard up against the wall, his forearm against the officer’s throat. The hapless policeman’s hat went spinning away across the cobbles.
‘You’re lucky I don’t break your neck,’ Li hissed at him. ‘I guess you were off the day they taught sensitivity at cop school.’ He released him. ‘Don’t go near that woman again.’
The incident had lasted only seconds, but already a crowd was gathering. It was unheard of for a police officer to be handled like that, and those who had been witness to it were enjoying the moment. The officer straightened his coat and stooped, with as much dignity as he could muster, to retrieve his hat. ‘You haven’t heard the last of this,’ he called after the two detectives. And then he turned and glared at the crowd. ‘What the fuck are you looking at!’
The trishaw driver was still asleep under his candy-striped canopy as Li and Wu turned out of the main gate. Wu was chewing furiously on his gum. ‘I don’t know about you, Chief, but I’m starving.’ He checked his watch. ‘How about we stop somewhere for a bite of lunch.’
Li said, ‘I’m never hungry after an autopsy.’ He sighed. ‘But I’ve got a lunch appointment at twelve, so I’m going to have to find an appetite from somewhere.’
Wu was not impressed. ‘Lucky you. Who’s buying you lunch?’
‘An American polygraph expert from the Chinese Academy of Sciences. He’s set up a demonstration this afternoon for a group of top Ministry of Public Security people.’
Wu was unimpressed. ‘A polygraph demonstration?’
‘No,’ Li said. ‘It’s a new thing called MERMER.’
‘Mermer?’ Wu pulled a face. ‘What the hell’s a Mermer when it’s at home?’
‘Some kind of foolproof way of detecting guilty knowledge in the brain,’ Li said. ‘At least, that’s what they claim.’ He cast a wry smile in Wu’s direction. ‘A good job your wife never had access to it.’
Wu laughed. ‘If she had, we’d only have got divorced all the sooner.’
III
The Mo Gu Huo Guo mushroom hotpot restaurant stood on a corner, in the shadow of the tall cylindrical tower of the Central Music Conservatory, just off Pufang Lu. Its speciality was mushrooms from Sichuan and Yunan Provinces. Margaret stood on the steps in the sunshine with Li Jon in her arms. The American polygraph expert had wanted to meet her. He had married a Chinese cop and thought that the two couples might have quite a lot in common. She watched as the Santana pulled up under the trees, a chill wind rustling stubborn leaves that refused to fall. As Li climbed out, Wu slipped into the driver’s seat and drove off.
Margaret eyed the father of her child as he approached her across the broad curve of pavement, his shadow falling away to his right. He looked good in his long coat, tall and broad-shouldered, his black hair cropped in its distinctive flat-top crew cut. His pants were still sharply creased, although a little crinkled around the knee, and his white shirt was tucked tightly in at his impossibly narrow waist. Clothes hung beautifully on the Chinese frame, and Margaret marvelled at how she was still attracted to Li, even after all this time. Her stomach did a little flip, and she remembered how their passion had been frustrated by the call on his cellphone in the early hours of that morning. And she saw a weariness in his face that she recognised as owing more to what the call had led him to confront than to the simple interruption of his sleep.
He smiled and stooped to kiss her, and ran a hand through the black hair beginning to grow more thickly now on his son’s head. ‘Been waiting long?’
‘Just arrived.’
‘They’re probably already here then. We’d better go in.’
He wasn’t volunteering anything about his call-out this morning, and she knew better than to ask.
The restaurant was drum-shaped, like its taller neighbour, the Central Conservatory. It had dining halls on three floors, with private rooms around the outside on the second and third. A pretty waitress in a red jacket and skirt led them up a circular staircase and around a pillared corridor which skirted the second-floor dining room. The American and his wife were waiting for them in a private room about two-thirds of the way around. They stood up from a table with a large pot sunk into its centre, over a concealed gas ring. Steam rose from bubbling stock. The room was ablaze with sunlight, and Li and Margaret were dazzled by it, entering from the dark inner hall.
The polygrapher was tall and slim, a man in his forties with a head of thick, greying hair. He wore a baggy brown suit and checked shirt, with a tie loose at the neck. ‘Yeh, blinding, isn’t it?’ He grinned at them as they shaded their eyes. ‘But, then, I always figure I look better when you can’t see me.’ He shook Li’s hand warmly. ‘Good to see you again, Li Yan. You haven’t met Chi Lyang, have you?’
‘No.’ Li shook hands with a slight but attractive-looking Chinese woman in her mid-thirties. Her long black hair was drawn back in a ponytail. She wore jeans and sneakers and a white blouse. ‘Ni hau,’ he said.