Margaret smiled at his squeamishness. “Oh, I guess I got interested when I was assisting a pathologist at Waco. And then during my residency at the UIC Medical Centre I got lots of experience dealing with victims in trauma, fire victims from automobile accidents, home fires, airplane accidents, even a couple of cases of self-immolation, like you thought your guy in the park was. Then when I got a job as a pathologist with the Cook County Medical Examiner’s Office, I just sort of developed the speciality. I can’t say it had ever been an ambition. But then, we don’t always end up doing or being what we started out to do or be, do we?” She looked at him. “Did you always want to be a policeman?”

“Yes,” he said.

She laughed. “Short conversation.”

“Why did you want to come to China?” he asked, and it was as if, in asking the question, he had flicked a switch and turned out a light somewhere inside her. She lost all vivacity, and her eyes took on a dull cast.

“Oh . . .” She shrugged. “It was just something that came up, when getting away from Chicago was what I most wanted to do in life. It didn’t have to be China. Anywhere would have done.”

A sixth sense told him that he had now entered dangerous territory, and that to venture any further down this particular path would be both fruitless and damaging. He slipped his watch from its pouch on his belt and checked the time.

“May I see?” She leaned across and held out her hand. He passed it to her, the chain fully extended. It was a very plain, hexagonal watch set in a heavy pewter-coloured casing. A bald-eagle badge decorated its leather pouch. “It’s very unusual,” she said. “Did you get it in the States?”

“Hong Kong.” He slipped it back in its pouch. “I really must get back to the office.”

“Of course.” She washed down her remaining noodles with the last of her beer, and they headed out into the afternoon heat that beat down so relentlessly from the burned-out sky. “My mouth is still on fire,” she said.

He took her arm and steered her south along the sidewalk. “Chinese are very practical people,” he said. “Which is why when you have a Sichuan restaurant, you have an ice-cream parlour two doors along.” And they stopped outside a small glass-fronted shop with multicoloured plastic strips hanging down over the door. Above it, white letters on blue, was the legend Charley’s Ice Cream Parlour. And beneath that, Sino-America Joint Venture.

Margaret laughed. “I don’t believe it!”

Li said, “Specially to cool the palates of over-sensitive Americans.”