Wu leaned back in his seat, cigarette hand dangling from the arm of his chair. His sunglasses were pushed up on his forehead and he was chewing reflectively on a ubiquitous piece of gum. “We still haven’t established motive on this one, boss, have we?”

“Money,” Li said. “He’s a professional. Probably thinks of himself as a poor boy made good. The truth is, he’s a bad boy made worse. What we don’t know is who hired him, or why. And when we get him I doubt if he’s going to tell us.”

“So meantime we carry on trying to find the connection between our three victims?” Wu asked.

“Unless you’ve got a better idea.” Wu hadn’t. “So, anything new on that front?” Heads were shaken around the table. “Okay, we carry on interviewing. But there is one new piece of potentially important evidence. Chao may have had AIDS. I expect the result of a blood test to confirm that today. We know he had a penchant for teenage boys. Until yesterday afternoon we’d been concentrating on trying to make a drugs connection between Chao and Mao Mao. Thanks to our good friend, The Needle, we’ve been able to eliminate that possibility from our inquiry.” Detectives around the table glanced at Chen, but he remained impassive. “Maybe there’s a gay link somewhere in all this. Someone with AIDS looking for revenge. I know there’s been no suggestion of homosexuality with either our drug dealer or the itinerant. But then, we haven’t been looking for it. So, I’m going to have AIDS tests done on blood samples taken from both of them. Zhao”—he turned towards the young detective—“we need to start digging up the boys who were making regular visits to Chao’s apartment. And if someone was supplying them, then we need to know who, and we want to talk to him pretty damn quick.”

“I’m on it straight away, boss.” Zhao scribbled quickly in his notebook.

“Okay.” Li sat back. “Any thoughts, questions, ideas?”

Wu blew a jet of smoke lazily at the overhead fan and watched it scatter in the breeze. “Yeah, I got a question,” he said. “Is that attractive American pathologist still working on the case with us?” His colleagues choked back laughs of disbelief. “Because, I mean, you know, boss, it’s not fair you keeping her all to yourself. Some of us feel we could also benefit from her experience.” He remained deadpan, for all the world as if it had been a serious question.