Free The Last Six Million Seconds by John Burdett

was pinched, the skin an ugly puce. Everyone snagged on his own special detail.
    “You okay?”
    “A bit shaken, that’s all.”
    Chan took out two cigarettes, lit them and gave one to Aston. “Smoke, it’s good for you.” Aston nodded doubtfully and took the cigarette. “Really, it can settle your nerves.”
    He watched while the Englishman inhaled. A mild nicotine rush brought life back into the eyes. “That dentist’s a cunt. He didn’t need to do that.”
    Aston looked at Chan, wiped water from his eyes with his sleeve. “Thanks, Chief.”
    Chan touched his arm. “Why don’t you wait here? I want to collect those busts if they’re ready.”
    Aston nodded. Chan hoped he wasn’t going to be sick in the courtyard. He didn’t mind, but there were other Chinese cops who would never let the Englishman forget it.
    On the third floor, next to the identification bureau, the forensic artist, the Australian named Angie, kept a studio. Policemen liked to visit her. You wouldn’t have described her as beautiful, but she glowed with a womanly softness that was beaten out of the female cadets in the first six months.
    Instead of a desk, telephone and files, the FA had an easel, chalk, airbrush, charcoal, acetate paints and a lot of natural light. She worked as close to the window as she could. Under her hand the dead came to life, the unknown fugitive acquired features that could be shown to eyewitnesses. A sideline was cartoons that the men liked to show wives and girlfriends, proof that cops were human too.
    Chan had persuaded her to draw Sandra in the early days of theirmarriage. He still had the sketch. Somehow it was more alive than all the photographs. Angie had caught her eyes: large, Caucasian, sly, hungry.
    “Ah,” Angie said when she saw Chan. “The man who thinks in three dimensions.”
    Chan smiled. Everybody liked Angie. “Are they ready?”
    “As it happens, yes. It’ll cost you a beer, though. Haven’t done plaster busts for ages. Quite a challenge. Three dimensions just isn’t the same as two, as Michelangelo pointed out. I was here at the break of dawn finishing them. Want to see?”
    Angie crossed the room to a heavy varnished cupboard. She took out three identical cardboard boxes, each apparently a perfect cube.
    “Turn your back.”
    Chan turned to face the window. He glanced at the sketch on the easel. A Chinese in his early forties with a low brow frowned out. There had been a number of rapes on a housing estate in Junk Bay; eyewitness accounts all mentioned the low brow and the frown.
    “Okay, you can look.”
    It was true, three dimensions were not like two. There was Polly on a table between her two Chinese companions, smiling, without a care in the world. Jekyll and Hyde were more serious but happy to be by her side. Somewhere in ancient Taoism it was said that all man’s problems came from having a body. Well, these three didn’t anymore.
    “Very good.”
    Angie smiled. She removed the wigs, put the busts back in their boxes, laid the wigs on top. “Charlie, look, I know it’s been a while, but I was really sorry to hear about you and Sandra. I know how much she … well, I’m just sorry.”
    Chan shrugged. “It’s not easy being married to a cop. Not in Hong Kong.”
    “Oh, don’t blame yourself or the police. Look, it’s none of my business, but she was a wanderer. Nice, good-hearted, but a wanderer. Believe me, I’m Australian. We don’t know much, but we do know wanderers.”
    Chan took his eyes off the boxes to hold Angie’s smile. Men talked about her, adored her, even fantasized about her, but not in the usual way. Policemen thought they could be sane and happy with a woman like her: soft, big-hearted, overweight, unambitious, Australian. In Hong Kong underachievers were like gold.
    Angie laid the boxes one on top of the other. He could carry them like that until he found help. “Don’t forget, you owe me a beer.” She smiled.
    Chan picked up the boxes,