Li was furious with himself. He should never have taken her for lunch. He had been trapped into it by his own weakness, and it was only now, as they drove back to the office, that he realised the full consequences of it. It wasn’t just the ribbing he would receive from his colleagues. That would be embarrassing enough, but he could handle it. What he knew he couldn’t handle was any kind of relationship with this woman. And for a time, as they had talked across the table, he had allowed himself to succumb to some unaccountable attraction to her. And in doing so, had lowered his guard and revealed much more of himself than he would ever have wished. It was ridiculous! And even now, as he manoeuvred the Jeep through the frantic afternoon traffic, he could not for the life of him think what it was about her he found attractive. For a start, she was an American, a yangguizi with a fast mouth. She was arrogant and superior and steeped in a shallow culture that could hardly have been more different from his own. He glanced at her sitting in the passenger seat, stiff and removed. For a time, over lunch, she had seemed almost human, vulnerable, displaying a hint of some deep hurt. Perhaps, he thought, that explained why on the drive back she had become distant again. She, too, had revealed too much and was regretting it.

Lily Ping was furious with both of them. They were more than forty minutes late. She said nothing, of course. Not in the presence of Li. But she sat in the detectives’ office, a brooding presence in the corner, like a black rain-cloud, awaiting their return. Her fury, though, had less to do with their tardiness than the fact that she had been excluded from lunch. She was extremely curious about how it had gone, as were the detectives in the office. But they had other things to occupy them in the interim. A succession of Beijing low lifes had passed through the office—unshaven creatures in dirty tee-shirts and baseball caps, wide boys in cheap suits and oiled hair—before being led down the corridor to the interview room. Pimps and suspected small-time drug dealers who might have known or had some association with the man found stabbed on waste ground out west that morning. The phones had never stopped. Detective Qian must have made twenty calls, and at one stage had sent a police dispatch rider to pick up dental records from somewhere downtown and deliver them to the Centre of Material Evidence Determination. A fax from the Centre had caused some excitement, but no one was sharing any information with Lily. Conversations were cryptic and careful.