He couldn’t think of one. He replayed what she had just said and frowned. “Why do you say ‘they,’ when we are pretty sure the killer was acting alone?”

“Because he was a hired gun, right? I mean, we’ve agreed on that, haven’t we? So he had nothing personal against any of his victims. It was someone else who wanted them dead. ‘They.’ It would help a lot if we knew why.”

It was one of the fundamental differences, Li thought, between the American approach and the Chinese approach. The Americans placed more stress on motive. The Chinese preferred to build the evidence, piece by tiny piece, until the accumulation of it was overwhelmingly conclusive. The “why” was not the key to the answer, but the answer itself. Perhaps by working together they could combine the virtues of both systems.

They criss-crossed the lobby, re-examined the lamp over the door, and retraced the killer’s footsteps to his car, where Li’s Jeep was now parked. Looking up, Margaret could see that the trees along the farther edge of the sidewalk would have blotted out the light from the streetlamps, and with the lamp over the door out of action, the killer would have been able to carry Chao across the fifteen feet to his vehicle in deep shadow. “Can we go to the park?” she asked. “Follow this guy’s spoor all the way to where he set poor old Chao on fire?”

“Are you beginning to have sympathy for Chao Heng?” he asked, surprised.

Margaret shrugged her shoulders. “He probably wasn’t a very nice man, Li Yan. But he was dying of AIDS, and someone burned him alive. Maybe that was a little more than he deserved.” She paused. “Are you going to take me to the park?”

“Okay.” He got into the Jeep in time to hear his call sign on the police radio. He checked in, and as Margaret climbed into the passenger side was frowning at the message he was receiving in response.

“We’ve got to go back to headquarters,” he said thoughtfully. “The Chief wants to see me. Urgently.”

“What for?”

He frowned. “I don’t know. They wouldn’t say.”

V

The atmosphere on the top floor of Section One was thick with tension and cigarette smoke. Margaret had noticed Lily’s driver, Shimei, sitting in the BMW in the street outside. Lily was ensconced in a corner of the detectives’ room waiting for her, something smug in her smile.

Li hadn’t even noticed her. He was more aware of the atmosphere when he stepped into the detectives’ office. It was uneasy, and anxious, and filled with expectation. Detectives lifted grim expressions from their desks to greet him. “What the hell’s up?” he said.

Wu said, “The Needle and some fancy lawyer are with the Chief.” He allowed a moment for this to sink in. “Chief wants to see you straight away.”