There, on the bed, where Margaret had been so desperately seeking sleep just over an hour ago, was the outline of someone lying on their back, half-wrapped in what looked like black sheets. Margaret glanced back along the hall, then stepped into the bedroom, and almost fell as her foot skidded away from her on the blood pooling there. And in that moment she realised that the sheets were not black. They were soaked in blood. She steadied herself and took a step forward and nearly screamed. Lyang was lying naked in the middle of the bed, her shoulders flat, but the axis of her body inclined to the left side. Her head was turned on her left cheek, her left arm close to her body, the forearm flexed at a right angle and lying across her abdomen. Her right arm rested on the mattress, bent at the elbow, her fingers clenched around a wad of blood-drenched sheet. Her legs were wide apart, and the whole surface of her abdomen and thighs had been removed, the abdominal cavity emptied of its viscera. Her breasts had been cut off, one of them carefully placed under her head along with the uterus and kidneys, the other by her right foot. Her liver was placed between her feet, the intestines on her right side, the spleen on her left.
Margaret knew without looking that the flaps of flesh removed from the abdomen and thighs had been placed on the bedside table. Doctor Thomas Bond’s description came flooding vividly back to her. Words she had read only two days earlier.
The breasts were cut off, the arms mutilated by several jagged wounds and the face hacked beyond recognition of the features, and the tissues of the neck were severed all round down to the bone.
She wheeled away, trying to hold down the vomit rising in her throat. The man was completely insane. He had attempted a full replication of the murder of Mary Jane Kelly, the fifth and most horribly mutilated of Jack the Ripper’s victims. Almost like some kind of game, he had carved her up according to his mentor’s blueprint, placing pieces of her around the body, just as they had been found one hundred and fifteen years before. It was a feast of savagery such as Margaret had never seen. He must surely have slipped now beyond the realms of this world into some dark abyss where the light of human goodness had never shone. Where only evil resided in its purest, blackest form. And if he had been capable of this, what in the name of God had he done to the children?
II
They came up a long, steeply sloping ramp from the platforms below. Steam and smoke filled the air, along with the hissing of old steam-driven boilers and the voices of porters shouting up and down the quays, pushing metal-wheeled trolleys piled with great stacks of mail in canvas sacks.
The stream of passengers, newly alighted from the train, moved slowly, as if in a trance, subdued and still half asleep, about to be rudely awakened by the icy blasts that awaited them above. Li pushed through the bodies ahead of him, heedless of the curses that followed in his wake. When he got no reply from Lyang’s apartment, he had telephoned and got Wu out of his bed for the second night running.
Uniformed ticket collectors stood at the top of the ramp taking tickets from passengers as they filed out through the gates. Li thrust his ticket at the nearest of them and pushed out into the arrivals hall. Wu was waiting by the door, chewing mechanically, scanning the faces as they appeared at the top of the ramp. He raised an arm to catch Li’s eye and called out to him. Li hurried over. Wu looked terrible. ‘We’ve got cars on the way,’ he said. ‘I’ve left the motor running in mine.’
Li followed him down the steps into the bitter cold of the night, new arrivals streaming out behind them in search of buses and taxis. Wu’s Santana was idling in the middle of the concourse, a blue light flashing on the roof.
He called back over his shoulder. ‘You’d better be right about all this, Chief. Or I am in the deepest shit.’
For once in his life, Li hoped earnestly that he was entirely wrong.
It was with a sickening sense of anticipation that Margaret pushed open the door to the children’s room. The curtains had been drawn and it was darker in here. But there was still enough light for Margaret to see that the bed that Xinxin had been sharing with baby Ling was empty. And so was the cot.
She spun around and looked down the length of the hallway toward the Harts’ study at the far end. The door was pulled to. She had been wrong about the trail of blood leading into the master bedroom. It led from it, all the way to the study door. She started walking slowly toward it, the kitchen knife clutched tightly in her hand. Somehow her fear had gone, to be replaced by a slow burning determination that drove her on, like an automaton, toward the study. He was in there. She knew he was. And so was Li Jon. And Xinxin. With that monster. Chinese wall-hangings that Bill and Lyang had chosen together, stirred slightly in the breeze of her passing, their wooden weights clunking gently against the wall. She hesitated for only a second outside the door before pushing it open.
Her eyes fell immediately on two swaddled bundles propped among the cushions on the settee. No trace of blood, just the gentle sound of breathing. The deep, slow breath of sleep. The sound of life. Miraculously Ling and Li Jon were oblivious to the hell unfolding around them. Unharmed. In her relief, Margaret nearly dropped her knife. She took a step into the room, and a sound off to her right made her turn toward the window. A muffled cry escaped from somewhere behind the hand clamped firmly across Xinxin’s mouth. Margaret froze in horror.
Deputy Commissioner Cao Xu had wheeled one of the desk chairs up to the window and was sitting on it, his back to the city below him. Xinxin, still in her little pink nightie, was held firmly between his legs, one hand nearly covering her face, the other holding the edge of a long-bladed knife hard against her throat. Margaret could see the sheer terror in her eyes.
It was something else altogether that she saw in Cao’s eyes. There was light in them, but a light like darkness, like smouldering coals. Something not quite human. As a little girl, Margaret had heard Biblical tales of the Angel of Death. If such a thing existed, then she was staring it in the eye right now. He was smothered in sticky, dark blood. It was all over his hands and face, as if he had gorged himself on poor Lyang. Indulged himself in a banquet of slaughter.
‘Let her go!’ Margaret said. Her only fear now was for Xinxin.
Cao smiled. He moved his head from left to right and Margaret heard bones cracking in his neck. ‘How is poor old Mistah Li?’
‘Let her go,’ Margaret said again, and she took a step toward him. Xinxin squealed as the blade broke the skin on her neck, and Margaret stopped dead in her tracks.
‘Did you recognise her?’ Cao asked, relaxing again. Margaret frowned her confusion. ‘My Mary Jane,’ he added. And she knew that he was talking about Lyang. Except that somewhere in his twisted mind he saw her now only as Mary Jane Kelly. She nodded, and he smiled his pleasure. ‘I am good,’ he said. ‘As good as him.’
‘Let her go.’ Margaret nearly shouted.
‘Of course,’ he said. ‘We make exchange. Little girl for you. You can be my sixth. My Alice. I don’t wanna hurt the little girl. She still have her innocence. Only when she lose innocence do I take life.’
Margaret realised that the best she could hope for was to buy herself some time to try to figure out what to do. She had to get him talking, keep him talking. ‘It’s all over,’ she said. ‘Li Yan is on his way. We know who you are.’