The Shanghai Murders - A Mystery of Love and Ivory (4 page)

Geoffrey Hyland handed his Canadian passport over the immigration counter at Shanghai’s Hong Qiao Airport. He always arrived in Shanghai with a sense of sadness but also a feeling of coming home. Eleven years ago, he had been invited to the Shanghai Theatre Academy to direct an obscure Canadian play called
The Ecstasy of Rita Joe
. The school’s acting faculty despised his non-Russian-based approaches, but to their shock and the delight of both students and audience, the play was a runaway hit. Six months later he was invited back by Shanghai’s biggest professional theatre, the People’s Repertory Company, to remount the play using the student leads from the first production to play the younger roles and the professional company’s members in the older parts. This too proved successful. It was not, however, successful for Geoffrey Hyland. This time in Shanghai he met and fell hopelessly in love with Zhong Fong’s wife, Fu Tsong.

That love endured until the day four years ago when, in his turn-of-the-century house in Toronto’s West End, he opened a letter from Shanghai. The words were blunt and seemed to burn, as if etched, on the rice paper. All it said was:
Fu Tsong is dead. Many think her husband killed her. They found her body and the body of a fetus in a construction pit in the Pudong.

So stunned was he by the words that he never thought to question either the identity or the motive of the writer. Had he in fact been able to decipher the scribbled signature he would not have been able to recall the face of the author. All this was as intended by the writer.

Geoffrey became aware that the immigration officer was standing as he handed back his passport. The young man surprised Geoffrey by extending his hand and saying, “High Lan, yes? Lee Ta Jo, yes?” Geoffrey’s eyes brightened. Those productions were a lifetime ago to him, but the repertory company performed them regularly. To him “Lee Ta Joe” had been a time with Fu Tsong. Now was a time without her—a sad homecoming.

He shook the immigration officer’s hand and headed toward the airport’s lounge where he knew the driver from the Shanghai Theatre Academy would be waiting. The man looked exactly like the late American actor, Jack Soo. Geoffrey had told him that once, over lunch, and thereafter the driver insisted that Geoffrey call him Soo Jack. He also insisted that when Geoffrey needed a car, he be the driver.

As Geoffrey left the immigration counter a note was taken, a phone lifted, and an insurance policy put into motion.

Standing rigidly at attention, the rookie cop waited for Fong to finish reading his report. Fong put down the file and looked at the young man in front of him. He was twenty-two years old, square-shouldered with large usually rounded eyes and short spiky hair. There was some Mongolian in his blood lines somewhere. His name was Ling Che.

“Did you speak to anyone after you left the coroner’s office?”

“Yes, as you instructed I contacted the consulates.” The papers could have gotten their information from one of the consulates, Fong knew, but he doubted the leak would happen quickly enough to make the morning press. “You phoned them?”

“Yes, sir. Wasn’t that how I was supposed to do it?

Those who had no operators working late, I faxed.
Isn’t that right?”

“Yes, it’s right, Ling Che, it’s right.”

There was a long pause, there was something here that was escaping Fong.

“May I go now, sir?”

Fong sat perfectly still for several seconds. Ling Che didn’t know what to do. Then Fong stirred. “Did you use a cellular phone to make your calls to the embassies?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Cellular phones aren’t secure! Anyone could intercept your call. You’re supposed to use the precinct phones!” Fong shouted.

The young man, completely cowed, bowed his head and mumbled, “I was at my girlfriend’s place, her parents were in the country for one night. It was the first time in three years that we—”

Fong held up his hand for him to stop. Privacy, in a city where housing was a major problem even for the well connected and the wealthy, was nonexistent on a young policeman’s salary. If you wanted to scratch your ass in Shanghai, you had better be prepared for someone to be watching while you did it. And if the watcher is Shanghanese he will probably offer advice on a better way to go about your task.

He dismissed Ling Che with a nod. He hoped to hell that the young cop wasn’t lying to him. He made a note to check.

The light on his phone came up. “Who?”

“The coroner.”

After a moment the coroner’s smoke-tired voice came on the line. “You’d better come over. I’ve got some frozen viscera here that you ought to see.”

The parcel that arrived at the Jiang Jing Hotel had been left with the concierge. It had not been brought by a courier. In fact the concierge had been away from the desk when it arrived. The parcel had a room number and a guest’s name on it. The concierge called up to the room and informed the guest that there was a parcel for him. The guest asked that a bellboy bring it up, knock on the door, and leave it outside.

The bellboy took the small parcel up to room 2430 and knocked politely on the door. Then he placed the parcel, as instructed, on the floor and returned to the lobby.

A full five minutes after the bellboy’s knock, the door to the room opened and the parcel was taken inside. Forty-five seconds after that, obscenities in various languages and the clear sound of someone throwing up his lunch on the expensive broadloom came from room 2430 of the Jiang Jing Hotel.

“It’s a part of a heart,” said Fong.

The coroner nodded at the object in his plastic-gloved hand. “Part of Richard Fallon’s heart.”

“Where’s the rest?”

“There’s a good question.” The coroner pointed toward a large table on which the pieces of Richard Fallon had been laid out. If there was an order to the pieces, it escaped Fong. The coroner explained: “The body is divided into those things male and those things female, yin and yang if you will. Those that cause heat and those that cause cold. Those that are of fire, those of air, those of water.” As he spoke he pointed to different sections of viscera and organs. Then he picked up the heart again. “Only the heart, of all the body’s parts, belongs to both yin and yang, both heat and cold, and all of fire, air, and water. That is, when it is whole.” He looked at the cleft heart that he held.

“The crime scene unit didn’t find the other part?”

“If they did, they didn’t bring it to the morgue.”

“And nothing else is missing?”

“A cleaver or a knife or whatever was used would have nicked off small bits, which were probably left in the alley, but everything else is here. This one knows how the body is put together, and he attacked it at its weakest places.” “But how did the heart get cut in half?”

After a moment the coroner sighed. “It didn’t get cut in half, if you mean by that that somehow in the process of eviscerating Richard Fallon something happened to cut his heart in two. That didn’t happen. That couldn’t happen. Once Richard Fallon was cut open his heart was cut out of him. Then the heart was cut in two. One half I hold in my hand. The other half is god knows where.” Before he could stop himself Fong found himself thinking, “It’s part of the message.” But even as he did he reached over and touched the frozen item in the coroner’s hand. He ran his finger along the cut edge. The cut was razor smooth for most of its length but near the top there was a jaggedness.

“Did his knife slip here?” asked Fong with his finger on the spot.

“No, I don’t think so,” replied the coroner with a cold smile. The coroner then put the organ down on the morgue table and removed the plastic glove from his right hand. Before Fong could ask him what he was doing, the old man reached into his mouth and with a tug pulled out a complete set of dentures. With the dentures in his right hand he picked up the heart with his left. Slowly he moved the dentures toward the jagged section of the heart. The jaggedness exactly matched the bite mark that would have been made by the ripping action of the top four front and canine teeth and the bottom six with the eye teeth at either end.

“He chewed it and spat it out. I saw it in the photo,” said Fong.

“You saw that in a crime scene snapshot?”

“In one of them but not the others.”

The coroner put down the heart and reinserted his dentures.

Fong could hear the fluorescent lights buzzing and just for a moment their greenish cast made him feel a little wobbly on his feet.

“You all right?”

Fong nodded.

“This guy’s got a hell of an MO.”

“Personal style brought to new heights.”

The coroner grunted a laugh.

“Not a word of this to anyone. If by any chance this ends up in the papers, I will have your head, old man.”

“More threats of the young? The Cultural Revolution’s over or haven’t you heard?”

“I’ve heard. I want your report on my desk by week’s end, okay?”

“Sure.” The coroner paused and was about to say something, then decided against it and began bundling his gruesome charge back into a large green plastic bag.

When the State Department official handed Amanda Fallon back her passport he flipped it open to show her the forty-day, single-entry visa to China. To him, Red China.

“The State Department picked up the forty-dollar charge for the visa.”

Amanda was going to say thank you but she couldn’t quite think what for, then said it anyway. He smiled at her and mumbled further condolences for her loss and wished her an easy flight to Shanghai.

When she left the State Department office on Canal Street she turned left and headed toward the Quarter. The intensity of New Orleans’s summer had not yet arrived but in the bright sunshine of mid-April it was hanging in the corners of the Quarter’s old buildings, waiting to fill five full months with heat and humidity, sweat and loving as only ol’N’orl’ns can. Although she was from the north, she had lived in New Orleans since she was seventeen and a student at All Fun U, known to the world as Tulane University. She had been accepted by the women’s college on campus but upon arriving had decided that the men’s side offered more opportunities for study in her area of greatest concern. Men. After going through the undergraduate male population in alphabetical order, she decided that forays into the realm of the faculty merited her attention. And despite the published university policy of a total ban on student/faculty “fraternization,” Amanda found few who could resist her casual offer of a drink down in the Quarter.

So it was with a series of ghosts at her side that she stepped into the courtyard of her favourite watering hole off Talouse. If the Creole barman recognized her, he never let on. But he wasn’t surprised when she ordered a tall rum on ice. A literature professor had introduced her to the glories of this particular drink on hot days. He had consumed several that first day as they sat French style side by side on a banquette with the table in front of them. He talked about Tennessee Williams’s work. She had smiled and listened and wondered if there was anything more here than chat and great eyes. Then he had put a hand on her knee beneath the table. She smiled at him and reached down to touch his hand. He started to withdraw it, thinking that she was offended, but as he did she closed her fingers around his wrist. Then sliding closer to him on the banquette she parted her legs and drew his hand up past her thighs. All without taking her eyes from his.

She flushed slightly as she tasted her rum on ice. She had been a wild kid but that was a long time ago. Now she was in her mid-thirties and was about to get on an airplane and head to Shanghai to pick up the corpse of her husband of eight years. A husband whom she had wished dead more often than she could recall. A husband who had “tamed” her. A husband who had in a very real way killed what was most Amanda Pitman in her and replaced it by a creature named Mrs. Richard Fallon.

She had finished her second rum on the rocks when the salesman on the other side of the bar finally decided it was time to make his move. “Can I buy you a drink?” he said in a midwestern twang.

Without missing a beat she called over her shoulder to the barman in her very deepest southern accent, “This Yankee carpetbagger thinks I’m a whore for sale. I could use your assistance.”

With a thousand apologies, the scuffling of white shoes and touching of white belt, the salesman made his way to the exit.

Once gone, the barman came over to her table with a tall cold rum on ice. “You got style, lady, this one’s on the house.”

She smiled wanly at him and took the drink, wondering vaguely if she’d ever enjoy the dalliance of hands under tables and up skirts again, the way she had done so many years ago with the literature professor.

Fong hated being summoned. “Asked to appear,” “Could I have a word,” “We need to meet”—all were fine, but “In my office now” was not his favourite. So it was with more than a little ire that he approached Police Commissioner Hu’s office.

The commissioner’s secretary wasn’t at her desk when Fong entered. Her computer, a new acquisition, had been left on and its monitor screen was flashing a series of numbers: E-M-29-7976. Fong didn’t even know how to turn on a computer, let alone what these numbers meant. With a rush of silk, the commissioner’s secretary entered from the main office. She appeared angry that Fong was looking at her screen. Fong momentarily wondered what she would do if he looked at her nonexistent tits. With a hrumph, as if she’d been able to read his thoughts, she ushered him toward the commissioner’s office. As she did, she refused to meet his eyes. Fong got the distinct feeling that she didn’t want to be infected by him.

When Fong entered the office, Commissioner Hu was sitting at one end of a couch, a piece of computer paper in his hands. Upon seeing Fong he quickly folded the paper but in his haste did it inside out, showing the same numbers: E-M-29-7976. A detail that did not escape Fong.

The commissioner signalled Fong to the far side of the couch. As he sat, Fong couldn’t get over the notion that they must have looked like the famous pictures of Nixon and Mao—one at either end of a couch—or was it Kissinger and Mao? For the longest time he had had trouble distinguishing among westerners. It wasn’t until he headed Special Investigations and had many more opportunities to deal with them that his eye became attuned to the nuances of Western physiognomy.