‘Sure, I’m sure.’
Li was finding it hard to take on board. ‘But if that’s true, then Pan’s killer is the same person who killed the four prostitutes. The Beijing Ripper.’ All the distinctions he had drawn between the Ripper killings and the Pan murder came tumbling down around his head.
Professor Nie moved on quickly, perhaps hoping to distract and deflect from the appalling error committed by his lab. He waved the folder in his hand. ‘Also we have positive DNA match between kidney sent to you and victim number four. And comparison of notes? One with kidney, one with ears? Calligraphy expert believe written by same hand. But no matter. We make chemical analysis of red ink. Same in both. Paper same, too. Ve-ery distinctive watermark.’
* * *
On the steps, Margaret took Li’s arm, and noticed that the crescent of moon was almost imperceptibly bigger tonight. ‘So,’ she said. ‘The Beijing Ripper is a cop. Makes sense, I guess.’
A tidal wave of thoughts he had been diverting elsewhere as a result of the DNA test, were flooding back into Li’s head. The Ripper had known Li’s name, and the address of Section One, to be able to send him the half kidney. Just as Pan’s killer had known his home address and had access to the ministry compound. And he recalled Lao Dai’s words in the park when he first described to him the nature of the murders. You have an enemy, Li Yan, he had said. And in response to Li’s incredulity, This man is not killing these girls only for the pleasure of it. He is constraining himself by following a prescribed course of action. Therefore there is a purpose in it for him beyond the act itself. You must ask yourself what possible purpose he could have. If he does not know these girls or their families what else do all these murders have in common? The police. That is what Old Dai had said. And Li. Someone with a grudge against him. Jealousy or revenge. What had never occurred to either of them was that the killer himself might also be a policeman. ‘Commissioner Zhu,’ Li said.
‘What?’ Margaret looked at him, startled.
‘He attended the lecture given in Beijing two years ago by Thomas Dowman, the Jack the Ripper author. He knew all about the original Ripper murders, and he personally asked for daily reports on our progress on the Beijing killings.’
Margaret pulled a face. ‘Probably half the ministry went to that lecture.’
‘He’s an expert with a knife. He told me himself his father taught him how to gut a deer. They poisoned the animals with salt and then slit their throats.’
Margaret cocked an eyebrow. ‘That’s a little more convincing,’ she conceded. And she recalled Dai’s comment on him the night he made the speech at Li’s award ceremony. He does not much like our young friend. He is full of praise. Noisy praise, like a drum with nothing inside it. He says only good things of Li Yan. His tone is honeyed, but there is vinegar on his tongue.
‘He’s the only one I told about Hart examining the graphs to try and establish the identity of Lynn Pan’s liar,’ Li said.
But Margaret was shaking her head. Still none of it really made sense. ‘But what was the lie she caught him in? I mean what could she possibly have found out about him in the course of those tests? That he was the Beijing Ripper? How?’
Li’s head hurt. He tried to shake it free of confusion. ‘I don’t know. I just don’t know.’ In spite of all his schooling in the traditions of Chinese detective work, Li still needed a motive. The killing of all those young prostitutes. There is a purpose in it for him beyond the act itself, Dai had said. What purpose? To leave Li drowning in a sea of murders he could not solve? To undermine and discredit him? Did the Commissioner really dislike him so much? Li knew, because Zhu had made it clear, that he did not approve of Li’s award, or the use of his image to spearhead the ministry’s poster campaign. But it hardly seemed a motive for murder.
And then the image returned to him of the figure in the CCTV video crossing the hall in the EMS post office. A tall figure, like Zhu. Slightly stooped. Like Zhu. He closed his eyes and let the air escape slowly from his lungs through slightly pursed lips. What a fool he had been to trust him.
III
The area around the window in the balcony had been taped off. Lyang had been told not to touch anything in that part of the living room. But forensics were long gone. So, too, the crowds in the gardens below. The management had sent someone out to clean the blood from the paving stones. A woman in a blue overall with bleach and a bucket of hot water. She had been at it for nearly an hour, but the stain was still visible, however faintly. Which would not do at all. Li had no doubt that a team of workmen would be there first thing in the morning to tear up the old pavings and lay new. It would not do to have the blood of one of its residents staining the reputation of the complex, a constant reminder to all the others of the tragedy which had taken place there. It was the kind of thing that could lower the value of property. And no one would want that.
Li moved away from the kitchen window, carrying with him the three glasses of Bill Hart’s scotch that he had brought in to dilute with water. It was how Bill said true scotch should always be drunk, Lyang had told them. A little water to release the flavour. No ice. That killed the taste. Lyang was sprawled at one end of the settee, her left leg folded up to her chest, an arm around it to hold it there, a cigarette burning in her free hand. It was her first cigarette, she confessed, since the day they told her she was pregnant. It had seemed so important, for the baby’s sake, to give up. Now that she was the only one affected by it, she didn’t give a damn. ‘Bill would have been horrified,’ she said, and then bit her knuckle to stop herself crying.
Li handed her a scotch. It was her third. On an empty stomach. And they were large ones. They were all feeling the effects of fatigue and stress, emotionally drained, physically tired. And the alcohol was providing relief and the promise of oblivion. Except for Li. He felt the whisky burning his stomach, but his head remained painfully clear. It was nearly midnight. An hour ago he could barely keep his eyes open. Now he was beyond tired. He knew he would not sleep tonight.
Margaret was curled up in one of the armchairs. She and Lyang had hugged and cried, and now she, too, was drained. Completely exhausted. Looking back, the events of the day seemed to her like a nightmare. Usually you woke up from a nightmare. Margaret knew that only sleep would provide an escape from this one. Alcohol offered her a route to that escape, and she was only too happy to take it. Xinxin was sharing a bed with Ling, and Li Jon was in Ling’s old cot. They had agreed that Margaret would sleep with Lyang, and Li would take the settee. They had talked and talked, at first about Bill and the case, and then about nothing of any consequence at all. Margaret raised her glass. ‘I’m for bed when I’ve finished this.’ And she drained it in a single pull. ‘Which is now.’
‘Me, too,’ Lyang said, and she also drained her glass.
Margaret eased herself out of the armchair and waited as Lyang got unsteadily to her feet. They knew she had been drinking before they got there, and although she seemed quite lucid, its physical effects on her were obvious now. She half staggered across the room, and Margaret put an arm around her to guide her towards the stairs. Margaret glanced back at Li. ‘Will you be okay?’
He nodded and took a sip at his whisky and listened to their uncertain progress up the stairs. He heard them in the hallway overhead, and then their voices distantly in the master bedroom. After a few minutes there was only silence. Li got up and turned off the lights and stood gazing out over the city. There was a time, not so long ago, when the power supply had been erratic, unpredictable. Demand greater than production. Now there seemed a limitless supply of power to burn. To waste. When he had first arrived here from Sichuan nearly twenty years ago, Beijing had shut down at night. Early. There had been very little to entertain a young man beyond his studies. Now the city never slept, and tonight Li knew he would keep it company.