But still he kept his eyes on the road. “It’s a pity we’ll never know.” After a moment he glanced across, but she had turned away again and he could not gauge her reaction. In fact, her heart was pounding. Was he really expressing regret that they had not slept together? Certainly, it was characteristically oblique, although paradoxically it was also uncharacteristically direct. She wanted to grab his face and tell him to say what he meant, express what he felt. But she realised that she had done neither herself. Why was it so difficult? But, of course, she knew. It was fear. Her fear of involving herself in a relationship with no future, especially when she was still so raw from the last one. His fear of involving himself in any kind of relationship. She suspected that his career had predominated for so long he had forgotten how to be with a woman.

They turned off Xihuashi Street and into the compound overlooked by the apartment block where Chao had lived. Li parked the Jeep in the shade of the trees and Margaret followed him to the door of Chairwoman Liu Xinxin’s ground-floor apartment. Liu Xinxin answered the door cautiously, glaring at Li for a moment until recognition dawned.

“Detective Li,” she said. And then she stared inquisitively at Margaret.

“Chairwoman Liu, this is Dr. Campbell, an American pathologist who is helping with our inquiry. Do you speak English?”

Liu Xinxin’s face lit up. “Oh, yes. But I am slow now. I no get much practice.” She held out a hand to Margaret. “Am very please meet you, Doctah Cambo.”

Margaret shook her hand. “It is my pleasure.”

“Please to come in.” She led Li and Margaret into her living room. Her two grandsons were squatting on the carpet playing with a toy steam locomotive crudely carved in wood and painted by hand. They gawped at Margaret in awe. “Tea?” Liu Xinxin asked.

“That’s very kind of you,” Li said. “Unfortunately we have very little time today.” He was anxious not to be drawn into another rousing chorus of “Our Country” around the piano. “I wondered if you could tell us which doctor Mr. Chao attended.”

“Hah!” Liu Xinxin waved her hand dismissively. “Very strange man, Mr. Chao. He is scientist, educated in West.” She nodded towards Margaret as if to say, “You should know, you come from the West.” “Everything modern, modern. Expensive hi-fi. CD player. Mobile telephone. But he no like modern medicine. He like traditional, Chinese herbal medicine. He go Tongrentan.”

Margaret glanced at Li. “What’s that?”

“It’s a traditional Chinese medicine store. The kind of place where you pay a year’s wages for a piece of fifty-year-old ginseng root.” He turned back to Liu Xinxin. “What branch?”

“Dazhalan.”

“I don’t understand,” Margaret said. “He went to a medicine store instead of a doctor?”