That recollection brightened her again now. She remembered apologising to Professors Tian and Bai and Dr. Mu for having displaced them from their office and, in a grand and magnanimous gesture, offering to let them have it back. After all, she had told them, now that she was assisting Section One with a murder inquiry she would not be spending so much time at the university. She was excited by the prospect.

“But where will you prepare your lectures?” Dr. Mu had asked Veronica to ask her.

“In my hotel room,” Margaret had replied. “There’s plenty of space, it’s air-conditioned, I have access to a telephone, and downstairs there’s a business centre where I can get anything I want photocopied, faxed, e-mailed, you name it.”

They had clearly thought she was mad, but were happy enough to get their office back, and so were not going to argue.

“You should have gone back to your hotel,” Bob told her.

She shook herself to try to clear her head, but only succeeded in producing a pain that felt as if it would crack open her skull. “Ow.” She rubbed her temples. “I know. I meant to. I must just have put my head down for a minute, and then . . . well, bang. What time is it?”

“Five thirty. Professor Jiang would like a word.”

“Another one? What, now?”

Professor Jiang smiled uneasily when she came into his office. Veronica sat primly in a chair, hands folded neatly in her lap. She regarded Margaret with some caution. The professor indicated a chair and Margaret sat and listened while he spoke to her earnestly for about two minutes. Then he sat back and allowed Veronica to translate.

“Professor say Section Chief Chen call to say sorry, but his deputy think you are . . . how to say? . . . superfluous to the inquiry.” She sat back, pleased with her “superfluous,” unaware of its connotations of uselessness and rejection which hit Margaret like a slap on the face.

CHAPTER FOUR

I

Tuesday Evening

Beijingers get their hair cut at all hours of the day and night. And so the ladies in their white coats and peak caps were still doing brisk business outside the gates of Yuyuantan Park on Sanlihi Road at six o’clock. No sooner had one customer vacated a stool than another would replace him. The sidewalk was littered with locks of black hair which the barbers would meticulously sweep up when they finished work. The park, too, was busy, people shifting back and forth in waves beneath the rainbow that arched across its entrance, joining dance groups on their way home from work, or catching some air after long hours in a factory or shop. Early evening traffic, beyond the trees that shaded the cycle lane, was manic.