Read The Fourth Sacrifice for Free Online Page B

guy woke up to find the top sheet of their bed soaking wet. He thought for a minute he’d pissed himself during the night. Till he got the light on. The sheet’s bright red. He starts screaming, thinking it’s his own blood. His wife wakes up and she starts screaming, too. Then she sees the big red patch on the ceiling, and the blood dripping through. They were both pretty shaken up.’
    He followed Li through to the bedroom and watched him as he carefully pulled back the top covers and examined the sheets, then checked inside the bedside cabinet before getting on his knees to look under the bed. ‘What is it you’re looking for, boss?’
    Li stood up and was thoughtful for a moment. ‘No one’s been living here, Qian,’ he said. ‘Someone’s been using the place, cooking the odd meal, staying over the odd night. But it’s not been lived in. There are no clothes or personal stuff, no food …’
    Qian shrugged. ‘There’s washing hanging out there on the balcony.’
    ‘Let’s take a look.’
    They moved with great care back through the living room and out the screen door on to the glassed balcony. A circular drying rack was suspended from the ceiling, and hanging from it were a shirt and two pairs of socks. Li put out his arm to stop Qian from touching it. He rummaged in his pockets and brought out a small pocket flashlight. He shone it towards the ceiling above the drying rack, and in its light they saw the complex silver traces of an elaborate cobweb. A big, fat, black spider scurried away from the light. Li switched it off. ‘There was certainly a washing done here. But it was some time ago.’ He looked thoughtfully at Qian. ‘Let’s talk to the folk downstairs.’
    *
    The officer who’d been sitting with old Hua seemed glad to get away. As he passed Qian on the way out he put his hand up to his chest and made a mouth with it that opened and closed, and he raised his eyes to the heavens. The apartment was the same layout as the one above, but old Hua and his wife used it differently. They dined in the same central room, shelves of crockery hidden behind a checked drape, but slept in the smaller back room, and lived in the front room that looked down on to the street. The contrast with the apartment above could not have been greater. Here was a place that was lived in, every corner crammed with furniture, every surface cluttered and piled with the stuff of daily living. There were family photographs pinned to the wall, a calendar, some old posters from the twenties and thirties advertising soap and cigarettes. The place smelled of soiled clothes and body sweat and cooking. It smelled of life.
    ‘Have some tea.’ The old man waved his hand at the table. ‘The water’s still hot.’ But Li and Qian declined. From the bathroom they heard the sound of running water. ‘That’s her third shower,’ old Hua said. ‘Silly old bitch thinks she’s still got blood on her. I told her she was clean. But she won’t listen.’
    The old man was almost completely bald. What little hair remained he had shaved into his scalp. He was wearing blue cotton trousers and a grubby-looking white shirt that hung open, exposing a buddha-like belly and breasts. He had nothing on his feet and was smoking a hand-rolled cigarette.
    ‘I mean, it’s not as if I’m not used to death,’ he said. ‘I was only scared when I thought it was my blood. Other people’s blood doesn’t bother me.’
    Li pulled up a chair. ‘How is it that you’re used to death?’ he asked. He had encountered death himself, many times, and had never got used to it.
    Old Hua grinned. ‘I work for the Public Utilities Bureau,’ he said. ‘Have done for thirty years. It’s not unlike your Public Security Bureau. We’re both in charge of people. Only with you it’s the living. With me it’s the dead.’
    Qian frowned. ‘Public Utilities … You work at a crematorium?’
    ‘I don’t just work there,’ Hua corrected him. ‘I’m a