Free The Firemaker by Peter May Page B

Di’anmen.
    Zhao was the baby of the section, a good-looking young man of around twenty-five. What he lacked in flair he made up for in sheer hard work and attention to detail. He was always self-conscious at these meetings, finding it difficult to give coherent expression to his thoughts in the group situation. He was much better dealing with people one to one. Colour flushed high on his cheekbones as he spoke. ‘He was carrying an ID card, so we know he was a building worker from Shanghai. Probably an itinerant. He may well have just arrived in Beijing looking for work, but there’s no known address for him here, no known associates. I’ve already faxed Public Security in Shanghai asking for his details.’
    ‘How was he killed?’
    ‘A broken neck.’
    ‘He couldn’t just have fallen? An accident of some kind?’
    ‘No. There’s absolutely no sign of trauma. He was found in a condemned siheyuan in a hutong that was cleared about a month ago. But the crime scene is so clean I think he was killed somewhere else and dumped there.’
    ‘So what makes you think the cigarette end is connected to it?’
    ‘It was fresh. It was the only one there, and it was about three feet from the body.’
    Li lit another cigarette, leaned back in his chair, and blew smoke thoughtfully at the blades of the overhead fan.
    *
    ‘Do you believe there’s a connection?’ The section chief watched his new deputy carefully. But Li wasn’t being drawn into anything rash – not just yet. He stood by the window smoking one of his chief’s cigarettes. When he’d asked for it, Chen had raised a wry eyebrow and told him dryly, ‘You know, Li, someone in your elevated position really should start buying his own.’ Now he regarded Li with professional interest. While there was no denying his flair, and his record of success, there was an impetuous quality in him, an impatient streak that Chen had hoped would mellow with age. But until now there had been no sign of it. Perhaps responsibility would temper impulsiveness. As long as it didn’t dull a keen instinct.
    ‘The thing is,’ Li said seriously, ‘we have no reason to believe the man at Ritan Park was anything other than a suicide. If we can establish that the time of death of the two murders was prior to his, and that he smoked this brand of Marlboro cigarette, then it’s conceivable – just conceivable – that he killed the other two before doing away with himself.’ But he couldn’t keep his face straight any longer, and a mischievous smile crept across it.
    Chen laughed. Not just a smile. A deep, throaty, smoker’s laugh. Li wished the girls in the typing pool could see it. ‘First day on the job,’ Chen said, still chuckling. ‘A suicide and two murders, and you’ve solved the lot already.’
    Li’s smile turned rueful. ‘I wish it was that easy. But there’s something wrong here, Chief. These two murders. There’s not a shred of evidence at either scene. Except for the cigarette ends. Would somebody who obviously took so much care to leave no other evidence be careless enough to leave a cigarette end?’
    ‘Maybe the killer, or killers, weren’t that clever with the evidence, or lack of it. Maybe they just got lucky.’
    ‘Hmmm.’ Li wasn’t convinced. ‘Something doesn’t feel right. If there is a connection, it’s … well, very strange.’ He sighed and flicked his ash out of the open window. ‘The first thing we need to do is ID the guy in the park, but it could be some time before we can match the body with a missing person. And the municipal pathologist’s not interested in doing the autopsy. Burn victims aren’t his speciality, he says. Personally I think he’s just queasy about it.’
    ‘So who’s doing the autopsy?’
    ‘They’ve sent the body over to the Centre of Material Evidence Determination at the Public Security University.’
    Chen looked thoughtful for a moment, then rummaged through some papers in an overflowing tray on his