Shimei gunned the engine and backed out into the compound before swinging round towards the gate. As they passed under the arch, Margaret noticed Supervisor Li emerging from the redbrick building. His whole demeanour had changed—a spring in his step, a smile on his face. He didn’t even see their car. His shoulders were pushed back and Margaret realised that he was very tall for a Chinese, maybe six feet. He pulled his cap down over his flat-top crew cut. Its peak cast a shadow over his square-jawed high-cheekboned face and, as he disappeared from view, she thought how unattractive he was.

“You must be pretty tired.” She turned to find Bob examining her closely. He would be around fifty-five—the age she felt right now.

She nodded. “I’ve been on the go something like twenty-two hours. It seems like one hell of a long day. Only it’s tomorrow already and I’ve still got nearly half of it to go.”

He grinned. “Yeah, I know. You’re chasing the day until about halfway across the Pacific and suddenly you jump a day ahead.” He leaned towards her, lowering his voice. “What happened with Lily?”

“Oh . . .” Margaret didn’t want to go through it all again. “Just a little misunderstanding.”

“You mustn’t mind her really. She’s not all bad. Bark’s worse than her bite. You know, she was a Red Guard during the Cultural Revolution. A real old-fashioned comrade. Only her kind of communism’s not really in vogue any more, so she’ll stay at the bottom of the pile. Never be anything more than a three-star constable.”

The Cultural Revolution was something Margaret had always meant to read up on. She’d heard of it often enough without ever really knowing what it was—except that it had been a bad time in China. She decided, however, not to display her ignorance to Bob.

“So what made you decide to come to China?” he asked.

The truth wasn’t an option for Margaret. She shrugged vaguely. “Oh, you know . . . I was always kind of interested in the place. The Mysterious East and all that. I was doing some lecturing, part-time, at the University of Illinois in Chicago, and this guy from the Office of International Criminal Justice . . .”

“Dick Goldman.”

“Yeah, that’s him. He said the OICJ were looking for someone to do a six-week stint at the People’s University of Public Security in Beijing, lecturing on forensic pathology, and was I interested. I thought, hell, it beats chasing fire engines for the Cook County Medical Examiner’s office. Lot of fires in Chicago in June.”

Bob smiled. “You’ll find they do things a lot differently here than Chicago. I’ve been out here nearly two years and I’m still trying to get my lecture notes photocopied.”

“You’re kidding.”