Seven years later, a brash new Deputy Chief of Section One, led an investigation into a similar spate of killings, tracking down and catching the perpetrator — a mentally subnormal middle-aged man living with his elderly mother in a siheyuan in the north of the city. Evidence found in his home, and a subsequent DNA test, revealed that he had also been responsible for the killings seven years earlier. Cao Xu had sent an innocent man to his death. And such had been the change in media coverage of such matters during the intervening years, that it had been impossible to sweep it under the carpet. Cao’s shining star had been tarnished and was no longer in the ascendancy. The Deputy Section Chief who had led the investigation which discredited him was Li Yan.
Li turned to the window and watched the featureless agricultural plains of northern China drift past. A small cluster of crumbling brick dwellings on the banks of a murky-looking canal. Stubbly fields lying empty and fallow, the early morning sun casting its long shadows across the land. It had never before occurred to him that Cao Xu might hold that against him. He had not set out to discredit the Deputy Commissioner. Cao Xu’s mistake had come to light quite accidentally in the course of another investigation. But, as the authorities had blamed Cao, so he might well have seen Li as the cause of his ills. The full-stop on his progress to the very top. An ambitious man thwarted, like a woman jilted, could be dangerous and vengeful.
Li had had few dealings with him since then, having left the Beijing force soon after to take up a job as criminal liaison with the Chinese embassy in Washington DC. He had been there for more than a year before returning to take up the position of Chief with his old section, and had only been in that job for about eighteen months. He could count on one hand the number of encounters he’d had with Cao in that time. He could not recall any rancour between them. Was it really possible that beneath his relaxed and languid exterior, Cao had been festering quietly, blame feeding on jealousy and revenge to grow into something dark and sinister?
But to horribly butcher innocent women in the pursuit of that revenge seemed distorted out of all proportion. Surely there had to be more to it than that?
Li drank more green tea and topped up his flask. He gazed sightlessly from the window and saw Lynn Pan’s open, pretty face, the smile that lit it, the warmth of personality that radiated from her eyes and lips and touch. And then he recalled the pale, blood-streaked face on the autopsy table, the ugly gashes where her ears had been hacked off, the gaping wound across her throat. It had all been some horrible accident of fate. Pure chance that an image of Taiyuan had been chosen for that demo. That a ruthless and bloody killer should have been one of its subjects, and that she should have stumbled upon his lie. Not a lie, but a truth. That he could not recognise a place which was supposed to be his home town. If he had been caught in a deception, it was that his whole life was a lie. And she had died to keep it that way.
A solitary figure on a bicycle cycled slowly along the towpath, silhouetted against the rising sun. It was a little girl. Perhaps seven or eight years old, a school satchel slung across her back. She flashed across the frame of the carriage window in a second, an image trapped in the mind. A child. A life. Gone in a moment, like the lives of all those young women that Cao had murdered. Like the life of Lynn Pan. And Li remembered the old saying: the star that shines twice as bright burns half as long.
II
Taiyuan lay six hundred and twenty kilometres south-west of Beijing. It was the provincial capital of Shanxi, in whose central plain the city nestled on the banks of the Feng river, surrounded by mountains on all sides. The change in the countryside had been gradual. It was lusher here, more temperate, and sheltered by the snowy peaks that rose up into the clearest of blue autumn skies. Every slope had been terraced to grow crops, the plain irrigated to grow rice, a slightly sweet, delicious snow-white rice.
It was early afternoon when Li arrived in the city. The station concourse was jammed with travellers, and hawkers selling everything from maps to tiny toffee apples on sticks. It was warmer here than it had been in Beijing. The sun felt soft on his face. He bought a street map of the city from one of the hawkers, and turned east into Yingze Street, away from the old south gate of the ancient city wall, and kept walking. The provincial government administration buildings were somewhere along here before the bridge. He passed a street stall selling the local Yingze beer for three yuan, and crossed through Wuyi Square. Yingze Park, opposite the towering Telecom headquarters, was crowded with people enjoying the late fall sunshine, strolling at leisure around the lake where in three or four weeks from now they would probably be skating. The square was lined with hotels and government buildings. The Hubin Grand Hall, the history museum, the Taiyuan Customs House, and the headquarters of the local Public Security Bureau. Li was tempted to make himself known to them. Their help would have saved him a great deal of time. But he was suspended from duty. He no longer had his Public Security ID. He was just another citizen with no special rights or privileges.
The shops all along Yingze Street were doing brisk business, and Li had to bump and jostle his way through the crowds to make progress east. No one else seemed to be in a hurry. The pace of life here was much slower than he was used to in Beijing. He passed the crowded Tianlong shopping mall and the Shanxi Chinese Communist Party headquarters, before reaching the government buildings on the east side of the Yingze bridge. The area had been completely redeveloped, modern buildings rising all around from the rubble of the old. There was a vast open space in front of the main building, much of which was taken up by a parking lot. He climbed the steps into the main hall.
It took about an hour, being passed from desk to desk, department to department, before he was finally directed to the citizens’ registry office at Taiyuan City Hall on Xingjian Road. Here Li found another formidable group of buildings, older, built in the European style, and fronted by a huge courtyard. This time he tracked down the registry office quite quickly, and found himself opposite an elderly lady with short, silvered hair on the other side of the counter. She was like a throwback from another era, in her blue cotton Mao suit and black slippers encasing tiny feet. But she smiled at him welcomingly enough, and asked what she could do to help. ‘Ah, yes,’ she said when he told her, ‘the Wutaishan Orphanage. It was on the south side of the city, within sight of the Yongzuo Temple.’
‘You mean the Double-pagoda Temple?’
‘That’s right.’
‘You said, was. Does that mean it’s moved?’
‘Oh, no,’ said the old lady. ‘It’s still there. What’s left of it. The place burned to the ground about thirty years ago. They never rebuilt on the site, and the remains of it are still visible. Although it’s pretty much overgrown now.’ She tilted her head and looked at him curiously. ‘I’ve had quite a few enquiries about the place over the years. Mainly from people who grew up in it, wondering what happened. Not so many now, though.’
‘What did happen?’ Li asked.
‘No one knows. It just went up in flames one night. They got all the children out safely, but by the time the fire fighters got there it was too late to save it. An old building, you see. Mostly built of wood. It was all over in an hour.’
Li said, ‘What about the records? All the kids who passed through the orphanage over the years. Presumably you still have that information on file here?’
The old lady shook her head sadly. ‘I’m afraid not,’ she said. ‘In those days all the records were kept at the orphanage itself. Everything was hand-written then. I know, because I was working here all those years ago when the place went up in flames. All our records were hand-written, too. We still have them in the basement. Unfortunately, the records at Wutaishan were destroyed along with everything else. The only thing that burns faster than wood is paper.’ She scratched her head. ‘A great shame. Generations of kids, their history lost forever. And the orphanage was the only family they ever had.’