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‘Deputy Section Chief, this is the duty officer at Beixinqiao Santiao. There’s been another murder.’ Li had retrieved the rest of the phone by now and turned on a lamp beside the sofa. He sat down and glanced at his watch. It was 4 a.m. ‘Another beheading?’ ‘Yes, boss.’
And it was as simple as that, she thought. Get on a plane, fly away and don’t look back. She had come here in the first place to escape the failures of her personal life back home. She would be returning home to escape the failures of her personal life here.
‘Ah!’ Margaret threw her hands in the air. ‘Of course. Mianzi. That’s what all this is about, isn’t? Face. Or rather your loss of it in front of your boss. To hell with the evidence, let’s not lose face! That it? How very Chinese of you.’
Li sneaked a look at Margaret. But she seemed preoccupied. A long way away. And he was overcome by a sudden depression. He had loved her so much, it had been painful to be with her. And then it had been painful to be without her. And now he was condemned to some state of limbo where he could neither possess her nor escape her.
‘Can I touch her hair?’ Xinxin asked. Li looked at Margaret. ‘She wants to touch your hair.’ ‘Sure.’ Margaret remembered with a jolt that it had been in the Muslim quarter in Xi’an with Michael that she had been asked the same thing by the waitresses.
But it made no sense. What possible connection could there be between the underground chambers in Xi’an where two-thousand-year-old ceramic warriors stood guard over their emperor, and a series of murders in Beijing? A series of murders which, to all intents and purposes, had already been solved.
She glanced at her watch. ‘I can’t.’ She thought for a moment. ‘Could you phone Deputy Section Chief Li with the results?’ ‘Sure,’ he said. ‘No problem.’ He grinned. ‘You clever lady, Doctah Cambo. You should come and work for Chinese police.’ She smiled. Not a chance in hell, she thought.
He glanced up to see the pain in her eyes. She turned away, tears filling them. Her disillusion was complete. She had trusted him totally. Just as she had trusted the other Michael in her life. And they had both betrayed her. She had never felt so utterly empty before. If she was to die now, then at least it would be an escape from her own extraordinary stupidity.
