Ryuchi was lying on the dirty floor, still wearing his thin T-shirt and school shorts, a knife sticking out of his chest.
Danilov knew immediately that he was too late to save the boy. He had seen enough death to know when the vital spark that animated all living things was missing.
The constable ran out of the cell and began to vomit in the corridor. Danilov ignored him, trudging slowly to the small, slight, lifeless body.
He knelt down next to it, reaching for a thin wrist to check the pulse.
Nothing.
The hand was limp and white, the fingers hanging down as if reaching for the ground, fingers covered in dirty grey plaster. They were still slightly warm to his touch; the eternal cold of death had not seized hold of them yet.
He thought of his son, two years ago. Lying in his arms, dying.
An immense tiredness washed over him.
Too late. Always too late.
More footsteps in the corridor. A few hushed words. Strachan appeared at the door, his mouth opening and closing soundlessly, until a few words finally forced their way through his lips.
‘We killed one of them, sir. The other, the man with the scar, escaped. It seems there were only two people guarding him.’
Danilov nodded and looked back to the silent boy. The skin around his eyes was red and bruised. He checked the neck. No marks of strangulation. They must have heard the door crashing open downstairs and plunged the knife into his chest.
But why was there bruising around the eye?
With the boy dead, he would never know, and perhaps it didn’t matter.
It was then that he saw the words inscribed in Chinese above Ryuchi’s head. ‘What does it say, Strachan?’
The detective sergeant stepped forward, leaning down to see the marks more clearly. ‘It says “Save me” in Chinese.’
Why had a young Japanese boy written in Chinese?
Perhaps it hadn’t been written by him. Had one of the other victims scratched it into the plaster?
And then Danilov remembered the iron nail, and the plaster found under the fingernails of the first victim. Locard’s exchange principle in action. Everyone leaves a trace, sometimes infinitesimal, sometimes far more obvious.
He stared at the two deeply etched Chinese characters. ‘Save me.’ A plea? A demand? A prayer? A cry for help to escape the damp, mouldy walls of the cell?
Again, he would never know for certain.
He leant in closer. There was something else above the characters, more scratches, fainter, not as deep. Three letters in the plaster.
He looked at the boy’s hand again. The nails were broken and ingrained with plaster.
Had he left a message?
And then it hit him. He had been so slow, so careless in this case. How had he missed so many clues?
The boy had finally provided him with the answer he should have seen a long time ago.
‘Come on, Strachan, we have work to do.’ He stood up, took one last look at the boy’s body, and left the cell
‘Where are we going, sir?’ Strachan called after him.
The detective sergeant took a second to lean in closer to the scratches on the plaster. He could just make out three letters.
C. A. P.