The Ghost Marriage Read online

  It was dark by the time they reached the cluster of houses among the trees at the end of a rough dirt track leading from the road. Li parked in a dusty square. These were poor rural houses with thin brick walls and low roofs, huddled around a badly equipped village store. Goats tied to a stand of willow trees raised their heads and bah-ed into the night. They heard the snuffling of pigs, and smelled them before they saw them.

  Li guided the little group up a narrow track between crumbling walls towards a halo of light that broke the darkness ahead. Several Public Security vehicles and a white forensics van were assembled around the entrance to a long, low house beside a rectangular wall that enclosed a hundred square metres of wildly overgrown garden.

  They passed through a moongate, and the officer standing guard nodded solemnly. Beyond, they could see where the vegetation had been beaten down and the earth freshly disturbed. The area was enclosed by white canvas stretched between wooden posts, and lit by arc lamps. Four men in white Tyvek suits stood around leaning on the spades they had used to uncover the shallow graves. All chatter ceased as Li led the girl’s parents to the graveside. Margaret stayed behind, leaving a respectful distance.

  Li nodded to the nearest white suit, and the man stepped down into the hole where two coffins lay side by side. His shadow fell across the first of them as he prised open the top. Li heard Jiang Ning gasp as the decaying corpse of a young man was exposed to the full glare of the lamps. The maggots had already started to eat his face, which had taken on a ghoulish look, the flesh of his eyes, nose, and mouth receding, a ghastly grimace revealing long yellow teeth.

  As the second lid was levered free, Jiang Ning howled: a piercing, desolate sound that came from deep in her throat and sent a glacial chill through them all, in spite of the heat.

  Meilin’s body had not achieved the same degree of decomposition. She had been alive, it seemed, at least until the day before the minghun, several days longer than her ghost husband. But there was a strange lividity about her face. It seemed, if anything, slightly more distended than his. But there was no doubting who she was. Her mother turned away, burying her face in her husband’s chest to suppress her tears. He put comforting arms around her and closed his eyes.

  Li became aware of Margaret at his side and half-turned. She was looking down into the dead girl’s coffin, and he saw that for once the professional detachment of the pathologist was missing. Moonlight flashed in tear-filled eyes.

  ‘I want to do the autopsy,’ she said, her voice barely a whisper.

  Chapter Seven

  The naked body of Jiang Meilin was wheeled into the autopsy room by two assistants, and transferred to a steel autopsy table. The air was chill and suffused with the slightly perfumed odour of decay, like meat that has been left in the refrigerator two weeks past its sell-by date.

  Margaret stood at the table preparing for the initial examination. Beneath a long-sleeved cotton gown, she wore green surgeon’s pyjamas covered by a plastic apron. Plastic covers protected white tennis shoes, and her long blonde hair was secured beneath a plastic shower cap. Now she pulled on a pair of latex gloves, followed by plastic covers, then a steel-mesh glove over her non-cutting hand, before finally pulling on a further latex pair.

  She was being assisted by Pathologist Wang, with whom she had conducted autopsies on many occasions. When she had first arrived in China, young and arrogant, and skilled in the latest Western techniques, he had resented the shadow she cast over him and his department. But such resentments were history now, and they had long ago arrived at something approaching mutual respect. Their working relationship was comfortable, and she enjoyed his irreverent sense of humour. But even Wang could find nothing amusing to say today. He cast his eyes over the slim teenager and shook his head.

  ‘Pity. Pretty girl.’

  Margaret looked at the body on the table before her. Meilin was taller than the average Chinese, much of her height concentrated in the long femurs which had given her the power to run fast. But she did not possess the muscle mass that would have made her a sprinter. Instead her legs were slender and elegant. Margaret began with the feet and worked her way up the body looking for any unusual markings. She found some slight bruising on the forearms, noting them on a body chart she held in a clipboard, but did not consider them significant.

  Wang examined her hands. ‘No sign of trauma,’ he said. ‘And no blood or skin beneath the fingernails.’ He and Margaret exchanged looks, and he nodded to one of the assistants, who drew blood from the femoral artery with a large syringe. ‘What do you think they’ll find in toxicology?’

  Margaret shrugged. ‘These days, who knows? Rohypnol would have had a sedative effect after fifteen to twenty minutes. She obviously didn’t put up any kind of a fight.’

  They continued the external examination. There was no sign of sexual activity, and no trauma around small, flat breasts with their tiny, dark areolae around the nipples.

  Then they came to the neck, where a skin-coloured cosmetic foundation had dried and cracked. Using moistened cotton pads, Margaret carefully washed it away to reveal the bruising that the facial lividity had suggested would almost certainly be there: four circles on the left side of the neck, two of which were close to half an inch in diameter, one larger oval on the right side.

  ‘Her killer left his mark,’ Wang said.

  Margaret carefully traced the line of the little crescent-shaped abrasions that were associated with the bruising. Tiny flakes of skin were heaped up at the concave side. ‘And took a little of her away with him beneath his fingernails.’

  They moved up, then, to her face, where blood pressure had mounted in her head and caused petechial haemorrhaging of the tiny blood vessels around the eyes and nose. It was not necessary to stop someone breathing to strangle them. It only required around four-and-a-half pounds of pressure on the jugular to prevent blood draining from the head. Death would have come fast.

  Margaret pulled back the eyelids and closed them again. ‘Strange.’

  ‘What is?’ Wang looked more closely.

  ‘There are circles of paler flesh around the eyes, blanched into the lividity.’ Margaret stared at the closed eyes of the dead girl, and could almost have sworn she saw patterns in those pale circles. ‘As if coins might have been placed over them to keep them shut.’ She turned to Wang. ‘Do we have a TMDT kit?’

  ‘We do.’ And he nodded to one of the assistants, who disappeared to return two minutes later with a four-ounce spray bottle of test solution, and a short-wave ultraviolet light source with a 4-watt bulb, sometimes known as a Wood’s lamp.

  Margaret took the bottle, and carefully sprayed the solution around each eye, and they waited in silence for several minutes until it had dried. ‘Lights,’ she said. And the assistant turned out the overhead lights, plunging the autopsy room into total darkness.

  Margaret snapped on the Wood’s lamp, and an eerie ultraviolet glow filled the room. She moved the lamp over the dead girl’s eyes. There over each one, marked in dark purple against the yellow background of the dried solution, were two perfectly round images with clearly engraved markings.

  ‘Coins,’ Wang said. ‘You were right. What metal is denoted by purple?’

  Margaret stared thoughtfully at the circular patterns engraved into the lividity around the eyes. ‘Brass or copper,’ she said. ‘We’ll need to take photographs. And samples.’

  Chapter Eight

  I

  Gan Bo ran a computer-dating agency from an office on the twelfth floor of a new tower block in Sanlihe Lu, overlooking Yuyuantan Park. He didn’t appear to employ any staff, except for a bored-looking young secretary who was painting her fingernails when Li arrived. She seemed pleased by the interruption, and made a great show of calling her boss on the intercom to announce Li’s arrival, before conducting him into the inner sanctum.

  Gan’s office was big and empty with an enormous desk placed before a glass wall with a panoramic view over the park below. Li could see t
he sun reflecting off the lake where he and Margaret often skated with Li Jon when it froze over in winter.

  Gan himself was a broad man with the yellowish skin and Han features of a southerner. A thick head of hair was gelled back from an unlined face that Li guessed had seen maybe thirty summers. He wore immaculately pressed black trousers, a plain white Armani shirt, and shiny black Gucci shoes. A Havana cigar smouldered in an ashtray on his desk, and the room was filled with the rich, toasty smell of it. The desk, too, was almost empty, except for a computer screen and keyboard, a telephone, and a cellphone which lay within easy reach of Gan’s grasp.

  Gan stood up and waved Li nervously towards the only guest seat in the office. ‘What can I do for you, Section Chief?’

  Li remained standing. ‘You can tell me where you acquired the body of a young girl called Jiang Meilin.’

  Gan frowned. ‘I have no idea what you’re talking about.’

  ‘Of course you do. About ten days ago you were contacted by a man called Sheng Dai who had recently lost his son in a motorcycle accident. He asked if you could provide the body of a young girl to take part in a minghun, to ensure their son’s happiness in the afterlife.’

  Gan eased himself back into his chair and lifted his cigar from the ashtray. He puffed on it thoughtfully. ‘Yes, I remember that. But I run a computer-dating agency, Section Chief. A legitimate business finding brides for single men.’ His smile was smooth, like silk. ‘I don’t know where he got the idea I could provide him with a dead one, but I sent him away.’

  ‘Oh?’ Li sauntered towards the window, his hands in his pockets. ‘That’s bizarre, Mr Gan. Because on the day of the funeral someone turned up with the body of a young girl and told the Sheng family that you had found her for them.’

  Gan rotated his chair towards Li. He could not conceal the look of puzzlement in his eyes, but feigned nonchalance. ‘Nothing to do with me.’

  ‘He took twelve hundred dollars for it. But I guess you never saw a cent of that.’

  Something like anger shadowed his face, but there was no trace of it in his voice. ‘Twelve hundred dollars, Section Chief? That’s a lot of money for some dead meat.’

  Li could see the distant figures of barbers cutting the hair of clients at the entrance to the park below. Among the trees beyond, groups of old men gathered around to watch games of chess in progress.

  ‘That “dead meat”, Mr Gan, was a living, breathing human being just a few hours before.’ He turned around. ‘Someone murdered that girl to provide a corpse for a ghost wedding. And I think that someone was you.’

  Gan paled. ‘That’s ridiculous!’

  ‘Do you know how they execute murderers, Mr Gan? They take them into a public stadium and shoot them in the back of the head. It would make a hell of a mess of that expensive designer shirt of yours. All that blood and brain tissue.’

  ‘I run a legitimate business.’

  ‘You trade in human beings.’

  ‘Live ones. I never killed anyone in my life.’

  ‘I think you might have trouble convincing a court of that.’

  ‘In the name of the sky, I didn’t kill her!’

  ‘Then who did?’

  ‘I have no idea.’

  Li leaned over and removed Gan’s cigar from his hand, stubbing it out in the ashtray, then put his own hands on the arms of the desk chair, and placed his face just inches away from Gan’s. ‘You and I both know that this computer-dating crap is just a front. You procure women for desperate men. God knows how. But no doubt that will come to light as we start taking your little empire apart. I don’t know if you murdered Jiang Meilin or not, but there’s enough circumstantial evidence, I think, to get a conviction. Especially when we can demonstrate to the court how you really make your living.’

  He could smell Gan’s fear, even above the stink of rancid cigar smoke on his breath.

  ‘Alright, alright.’ Gan raised his hands in submission, and Li stood up slowly. ‘It’s happened, you know, from time to time, that someone has asked me to procure a body for one of these stupid damned ceremonies. I tell them it’s not what I do. But I’m a nice guy, you know? I like to help if I can.’

  ‘How exactly do you help?’

  Gan drew a long breath. ‘I know this guy. A porter at a hospital.’

  ‘Which one?’

  ‘The Beijing Hospital in Chongwenmen.’

  Li knew it. It was just north of the Temple of Heaven. ‘And?’

  ‘And, well, you know, if there just happens to be a recently deceased person of the right specifications available, then sometimes a deal can be done.’

  ‘How?’

  Gan shrugged. ‘The porter has a friend at the crematorium.’ He paused. ‘Who’s to say whether or not a coffin has a body in it when it goes into the furnace?’ There was a long silence. Then, ‘I swear on the graves of my ancestors, Section Chief, I never killed that girl. And I don’t know who did.’

  For some reason that Li couldn’t quite put his finger on, he believed him. ‘But you asked the porter if he could get you a body, right?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘And he said he couldn’t?’

  ‘That’s right.’

  ‘I want his name.’

  II

  Huan Da was as defiant as he was stupid. But in a detached sort of way, Li almost admired his unshakeable loyalty. He was going to be a tough nut to crack. Gan had collapsed like a house of cards, but Huan was an altogether different proposition.

  The smoke of many cigarettes hung thick in the air of the interrogation room. Years of wheeling cancer patients from the ward to the morgue had not diminished Huan’s enthusiasm for smoking. He had consumed nearly half a pack in the hour since Wu had brought him in from the hospital.

  Confronted with what Li already knew, Huan quickly realized that there was no point in denying his part in the business of supplying corpses for cash. He had taken Li through the whole sordid procedure. There was, he said, not much demand, perhaps one or two a year. But he made more from the sale of a single corpse than he earned in twelve months as a porter.

  An uneducated and stupid farm labourer from Sichuan, he had come to Beijing nearly twenty years ago and found the job at the Beijing Hospital almost immediately. He had been introduced to Gan by a mutual acquaintance nearly three years previously, and had supplied perhaps five bodies in that time. He had not kept count, he said.

  Shrugging his shoulders implacably, he had told Li, ‘I didn’t see the harm in it. After all, they were dead already.’

  When a request was received from Gan, Huan would scrutinise mortalities at the hospital for the previous few days. If he couldn’t find a match, he had colleagues in other hospitals who were always eager for a percentage and would check their own death lists. If a corpse was found that corresponded to the request, then arrangements were made with a contact at the central crematorium to remove the body before the coffin went to the flames. Sometimes, Huan said, the crematorium worker himself would come up with a suitable match, since he had bodies coming in from all over the city.

  But where Gan had shown no scruples about betraying a colleague to save his own skin, Huan remained resolutely silent about the identity of his contact at the crematorium, the only other link in the chain who could have known in detail the requirements of the Sheng family.

  ‘That,’ Huan said yet again, ‘would be a betrayal of trust.’ And he lit another cigarette.

  Li breathed his frustration through his teeth and lit a cigarette himself.

  The door swung open and the duty officer leaned in. ‘Doctor Campbell is here, Chief. I put her in your office.’

  Li hastily stubbed out the cigarette before searching for the peppermints he kept in his pocket. He was supposed to have quit smoking months ago. Of course, Margaret would smell the smoke on his clothes, but since almost everyone around him still smoked, that was easily explained.

  ‘You can tell her I’m on my way.’

  When the duty offi
cer had gone, he popped a peppermint into his mouth and stood up. He looked down at Huan, who seemed calmly unconcerned. Li leaned over him, supporting himself with fists on the table. ‘You said you saw no harm in what you were doing, because the souls you sold were already dead. Well think on this, Huan. That girl wasn’t dead. She was alive and well, with her whole life ahead of her. The chances are, the person whose identity you are refusing to reveal is her killer. There is no honour in that.’ He walked to the door, and held it open for a moment before turning back. ‘Besides which, it makes you an accessory to murder, and just as eligible for execution as he is.’

  Huan remained expressionless. He sucked in more smoke and blew it at the ceiling.

  *

  Margaret had cleared a space on Li’s desk and laid out some photographs, and a preliminary autopsy report. The full report would follow tomorrow. She wrinkled her nose the moment Li entered the room, and sniffed the air. ‘Peppermints,’ she said. ‘I hear they can be almost as addictive as cigarettes.’

  He raised an eyebrow in feigned innocence. ‘Really?’

  Margaret smiled ironically. ‘Yes. I believe some people take up smoking to disguise the smell of them.’

  Li blushed involuntarily. ‘What do you have for me?’

  She sighed and indicated the photographs on his desk. ‘She was strangled. Sedated first, so she didn’t put up a fight. We’ll know what he used when the blood tests come back from toxicology.’

  Li rounded the desk to look at the photographs – sharp, clear colour prints that left nothing to the imagination. He picked up the picture that showed the bruising on her neck.

  ‘Left by the fingers,’ Margaret said. ‘Four on that side, a thumb on the other, and several abrasions caused by the fingernails.’ She picked up another print. ‘The purple colouring around her face is caused by vascular congestion, and the petechial haemorrhaging of tiny blood vessels close to the surface. But . . .’ She cleared more space and laid out the final two photographs – one of each eye, taken under the ultraviolet light of the Wood’s lamp. ‘For some reason her killer placed coins over her eyes, whose weight had the effect of leaving their impression in the purple colouring caused by the congestion. Treated with a chemical spray and photographed under ultraviolet, you can clearly see the markings left by each coin.’