Read Online Mandarin Gate by Eliot Pattison - Free Book Online

sat by the front door. A matronly clerk at the counter saw them and fled into a rear corridor.
    Meng led Shan into the same corridor, into the back storeroom. A door leading outside hung ajar. The clerk had not only fled from the counter, she had fled the building. Meng stepped to the closetlike meat locker, opened the heavy metal door, and gestured Shan inside.
    The freshest meat lay outstretched on three long tables, with frozen chickens tossed in a pile at the rear of the metal-lined chamber. Two tables were against the walls and the third so filled the center of the locker that Shan barely had room to squeeze between the tables. The bodies were covered with sheets. Adhesive tape around their thumbs identified them only according to their positions at the crime scene. Bei. Nan. Xi. North. South. West.
    “These should be in a forensics lab,” he said uneasily.
    “Don’t be ridiculous. We’re hundreds of miles from a lab. Such a valuable resource would never be allocated to”—she paused, searched for words—“a local crime.”
    Shan studied the knob officer. They were both treading on dangerous ground now. “I think we are here, Lieutenant, because you know this is not some local crime. Because you know about special troubleshooters called in from afar, you know their priority isn’t to dig into the truth but to dig into the politics. But can it be possible that you are actually interested in the truth?”
    Meng ignored the question. “Nan and Xi died elsewhere and were dragged to the chorten. You were right. The woman Xi died at the wall, where a nine millimeter bullet was recovered. Bei was shot and bled out after being dragged to the chorten. The man Nan had an empty holster but no pistol has been found. He was attacked at the corner of a building by the front gate. His blood stained the wall and pooled on the ground.”
    As she spoke Shan stared at the body of the woman. On the sheet covering her lay a sprig of heather. “Who was here?”
    “No one,” Meng said. “We are watching the place.” She pushed the heather onto the floor.
    Shan glanced at her. She meant the constables were watching the place. Her Tibetan constables.
    “I asked you about that lama,” Meng pressed.
    Shan returned her steady gaze. “Lamas don’t commit murder.”
    The lieutenant frowned, then stepped to the side of the body marked Bei, the faceless man. “That first night the bodies were here Liang came in with a doctor. As far as the major is concerned my job as local liaison means I am his escort, charged with keeping locals out of his way. The doctor was interested only in this one. Liang stepped to his side and ordered me to my station to write a report for him on the local political situation. The next morning I came back. The owner was terrified. He didn’t object when I came back in here. I found this—” She lifted the sheet over the man’s naked thigh. His skin was paler than that of the others. There was an incision eight inches long, closed with fresh sutures.
    Shan bent over the incision. There was no swelling, no bruising, no scabbing. He pointed to the ridge of tissue above the incision. “He cut open the dead man’s leg along an old scar.”
    Meng silently nodded.
    He stared at her warily, sensing a trap. Knob officers were not permitted to be so headstrong. It was unthinkable that one would seek to intrude on the secrets of her superiors. She was only a lieutenant, he reminded himself, when most officers her age were of higher rank. “If you were to cut open these sutures it would be insubordination,” Shan concluded. “So you want me to.”
    There was mischief in Meng’s narrow smile, but also a certain nervousness Shan had not seen before.
    “Do you have the times of death?” he asked as he lifted a knife from a wall rack.
    “Of course. Sometime during the past week, give or take a day. I admire your faith in our abilities. We have their personal belongings, two shell casings and a timber ax that