The Ghost Marriage

Book 7: China Thrillers

by Peter May

Genres: International Crime & Mystery; Police Procedurals; Crime Fiction

Synopsis

LI YAN AND MARGARET CAMPBELL RETURN IN A NEW SHORT STORY, YEARS AFTER THE DRAMATIC CONCLUSION OF CHINESE WHISPERS. 'I saw your missing girl at a ghost wedding last week. She was the bride.' It has been a whirlwind few years for Li Yan and Margaret Campbell. Nowadays, both are busy juggling their huge professional workloads - Li as the newly promoted chief of Beijing's serious crime squad, and Campbell as lecturer at the University of Public Security - with the day-to-day raising of their young son, Li Jon. When a desperate mother appeals to Campbell's own maternal instincts, Li agrees to look into the disappearance of a 17-year-old Beijing girl, Jiang Meilin. Yet Li's investigation soon turns from a favour into a full-scale murder enquiry. And when he receives an anonymous note he learns Jiang Meilin's death is tied to a dangerous underground trade, and a dark marital rite from China's past.

Release date: March 31, 2017

Publisher: RiverRun

Print pages: 41

Sample

I

Sweet though it was, the perfume of the incense could not disguise the odour of putrefying flesh. And the summer heat was not helping.

The cadavers were at the back of the room on a long table, surrounded by bowls of fresh fruit, boiled eggs in bowls of rice, dim sum still warm from the steamer, buns, a bottle of chilled white wine running with condensation.

The guests assembled at the far side of the room, near the door, and the window with a view on to the siheyuan courtyard. In the hutong beyond, children played unaware of the bizarre marriage taking place behind high walls.

The spirits of the dead man and his fiancée stood before a temporary altar: paper effigies to be burned, along with paper money, a paper car, and paper furniture that stood outside as comforts to be treasured in the afterlife. A gong sounded in the hands of the priest, and with a swirl of his red robe he placed a ring on the left hand of the paper groom. From the back of the observers, Feng Qi watched as the dead boy’s mother placed a ring on the paper finger of the bride, and he let his eyes return uneasily to the open coffins behind them and the dead girl, whose face was troublingly familiar.

II

The No. 1 Kindergarten in Anzhenxili was not far from the No. 3 Ring Road, just north of Tiananmen, and the Forbidden City. As she waited for Li Jon, Margaret gazed from a window across the almost unrecognizable cityscape of post-Olympic Beijing, reflecting on how rapidly much of this city had transformed itself from medieval to ultra-modern in the ten years since she first arrived.

She turned at the sound of children’s voices filled with the euphoria of freedom after a long day of educational incarceration. Li Jon wrapped himself around her legs, and she lifted him up into her arms: something she would not be able to do for very much longer. He was growing like bamboo. She brushed dark hair from his eyes and saw only his father in him: fine Chinese features that owed nothing to her fair-haired, blue-eyed Celtic heritage. But he had, she knew, inherited his mother’s fiery, querulous spirit, and she took pleasure from his father’s frustration that he had not transmitted to his son more of his gentle Chinese fatalism.

‘Did you get my iPod, Mommy?’ He spoke English with her distinctive American accent. But also Chinese, like a native. Both she and Li spoke to their son in their native tongues, sending him to this bilingual kindergarten where he would learn to be a citizen of the world – bridging the cultural divide that had so often caused misunderstanding and conflict between his parents.

‘Sure I did, honey. It’s waiting for you back at the apartment.’

He descended from her arms and took her hand, impatient to be home as soon as possible.

But he was forced to temper his excitement by a lady who intercepted them at the front door. She wore blue overalls, and a white cloth cap, a few strands of greasy black hair hanging down from one side of it. Her hands were. . .