Free The Fourth Sacrifice by Peter May Page B

didn’t give me enough time to prepare.’
    ‘OK,’ she said, ‘I’ve got another one for you, then. Much harder this time.’ He nodded, and continued stuffing jian bing into his mouth. ‘Three men check into a hotel. They want to share a room, and the receptionist charges them thirty yuan.’
    ‘That’s a cheap hotel room,’ he cut in.
    ‘Depends what kind of hotel,’ she said. ‘Anyway, for the purposes of the riddle it’s thirty yuan and they pay ten yuan each.’
    ‘OK.’
    ‘So, after they’ve gone up to their room she realises she should only have charged them twenty-five yuan.’
    ‘This hotel gets cheaper and cheaper.’
    She ignored him. ‘She calls the bellboy, explains the situation, and gives him five yuan to take up to the room to pay them back. On the way up, the bellboy figures it’s going to be hard for these guys to split five yuan three ways. So he decides to give them only three – one each – and keep the remaining two for himself.’
    ‘Dishonesty,’ said Li, shaking his head sadly. ‘This is what I have to deal with every day.’
    ‘The question is,’ she ignored him again. ‘If each of the three men got one yuan back, that means they only paid nine yuan each. A total of twenty-seven yuan. The bellboy kept two to himself. That makes twenty-nine yuan. What happened to the other yuan?’
    Li stopped chewing for a moment as he did a quick calculation. Then he frowned. ‘Twenty-nine,’ he said. Then, ‘But that’s not possible.’
    She raised her eyebrows. ‘Therein lies the riddle.’
    He did the calculation again and shook his head. ‘I’m going to have to think about this. Obviously it’s something really simple.’
    ‘Obviously.’ She delved into the bag hanging from her bicycle. ‘Oh, and I nearly forgot. I brought you this. I thought you might be interested to read it.’ She took out a battered, dark blue, hardcover book. ‘ Redgauntlet by Sir Walter Scott.’
    ‘I know the name. I think my uncle might have had some of his books. Who is he?’
    ‘Was. He was a very famous Scottish writer. I saw the movie Braveheart recently, about the Scottish freedom fighter William Wallace. It made me interested in the country. So I’ve been reading Sir Walter Scott. I think you might enjoy him.’
    Li took the book. ‘Thanks, Mei Yuan. It might be a while before I can get it back to you. I’m pretty much up to the neck in a case just now.’
    ‘That’s all right. Whenever,’ she said. ‘What a friend has is never lost.’
    Some people came for jian bings and she turned to cook them, and Li stood silently watching the traffic, reflecting on the tragedy of a dozen years of madness that had stolen the life of a clever, educated woman, and cast her eventually on to the streets to make a living cooking savoury pancakes. But by the time Mei Yuan had finished and turned back, his minded had drifted again to Margaret and the encounter he could not avoid. He came out of his reverie to find her watching him.
    ‘What’s on your mind, Li Yan?’ she asked.
    How could he explain it to her? How could he even begin to explain it? He said, ‘What would you do if your heart said one thing and your superiors another?’
    ‘Is this a riddle?’
    ‘No, it’s a question.’
    She thought about it for a moment. ‘This is a conflict between … what … love and loyalty?’
    ‘I suppose it’s something like that, though not quite that simple.’
    ‘If only everything in life was as simple as the solution to a riddle,’ she said, and touched his arm. ‘Is there no way to accommodate both? It is better to walk on two legs.’
    He shook his head sadly. ‘I’m afraid there isn’t.’
    III
    Li walked past the games court, cracked concrete baking behind a chickenwire fence. A group of students was playing volleyball, shouting and laughing. Li felt envious of their youth, free from the concerns of the real world that lay beyond the campus. He had been a student here himself once.