“Of course.” She paused. “You were very rude to me in the bar last night.” He looked at her blankly. “You probably don’t even remember.”

“So what are you doing here?” he persisted.

“Oh, nothing much. Lending my expertise to the fight against Chinese crime would probably be a good way of putting it.” He frowned. “I did an autopsy on a murder victim who used to work here.”

McCord stopped in his tracks. “You did the autopsy on Chao Heng?”

“Yes. Why? Did you know him?”

McCord brought out a grubby white handkerchief and mopped his face, avoiding her eye. “Worked with him for five years. A real weirdo.” Then he looked at her very strangely, she thought. “I heard he committed suicide.”

But her mind was riffling back through the things Li had told her earlier about Chao Heng, making a connection that hadn’t occurred to her before. “Wait a minute. After his postgrad year at Wisconsin, he spent seven years at the Boyce Thompson Institute at Cornell University. Isn’t that the place you got kicked out of?”

“I didn’t get ‘kicked out’ of anywhere.”

“So you knew him back then?”

“So what? It’s not a crime.” He dabbed furiously at his face with his handkerchief. “You’re not suggesting I had anything to do with his murder, are you?”

“Of course not. I doubt if you could hold a match steady long enough to strike it.”

His mouth relapsed into its earlier sneer. “Why don’t you fuck off?”

“Hey,” Margaret said, “you already asked me that. And you know what? I can’t think of a single reason why I should.”

He glared at her for a moment, thoughts flitting through his mind like clouds on a windy day. But he thought better of giving voice to any of them. And suddenly he had that frightened-rabbit look again, and he turned without a word and hurried off towards the main building. He passed Li in the doorway but didn’t acknowledge him. Li walked across the compound to where Margaret stood waiting.

“Renewing old friendships?” he asked.

“You know, that man seriously pisses me off,” Margaret said.

“He didn’t look too happy about seeing you either.” They walked towards the Jeep. “You know he and Chao Heng worked on the super-rice project together?”

“He just told me. Well, not in so many words. But I guessed that’s what it was.” She glanced at him. “You learn anything new in there?”

Li sighed. “Not a lot more than we already knew. Just that Chao was responsible for setting up the research project that led to the development of the super-rice. Apparently he was the one who suggested bringing McCord in. It seems they knew one another in the States.”

“Yes, they were both at the Boyce Thompson Institute. I just put that one together.”