CHAPTER SIXTEEN

DA WEI

Da Wei, Geoff’s homely translator, indicated that Fong and Joan Shui should sit at the small table in the cubicle that passed as her room at the Shanghai Theatre Academy. They did.

Ignoring Joan, Da Wei said, “I’ve been expecting you, Detective Zhong.”

“Have you?”

She stopped and stared at him. “I said as much.”

“You did,” he said nodding. It startled Fong to realize that they were speaking English.

“Your English is very good, Detective Zhong.”

“Thank you, but not nearly as good as yours, Da Wei.”

She nodded and poured tea from a large Thermos into the empty glass jars on the table. The tepid-coloured liquid swirled around the slender languid leaves of the tea that stood on the bottom of the jars, waving like sea plants.

He thanked her. She poured some for herself and sat directly opposite him.

He tasted the dark earthiness of the cha and knew that it was a special treat for Da Wei to serve such an exotic blend. He was about to comment on it when she said, “I was very fond of your wife, Fu Tsong. She was a great, great actress, a true artist. I was honoured to help her prepare her English for . . . ” Her voice ended as if somehow a finger had been placed over a stop.

He looked at her. So she had prepared Fu Tsong’s English for the production she had never gotten to do with Geoff in Vancouver.

“I’m sorry,” she said, “it’s inexcusable of me to mention such things.”

Fong looked away. A futon was folded to one side and a night table stood beside it. On the night table were small mementoes from her life. A set of tiny bells aligned between two wooden poles, an ornamental teapot in the shape of a dragon, three oblong, flat, polished blood stones from the Yangtze River and a round black rubber disk of some sort with a logo of a sporting team on it. Fong couldn’t identify either the disk or the logo. But that didn’t concern him now. Something about the way the objects were arrayed on the table did. It was as if there was a missing item – maybe two small missing items.

He looked at Da Wei then at the walls of the cubicle. Standard-issue pictures of a southern water town, two posters from plays she’d worked on at the theatre academy, a “new school” rendition of a classical pastoral scene executed in watercolours on a hanging scroll.

Again something missing. The visual aesthetic of the room was consistent, consistent, consistent, then absent.

Then he noticed a slight area of brightness peeking out from behind the scroll painting. It was like the section of wall in his room that at one time had been covered by Lily’s antique frescoed sculpture. He got up and moved the scroll painting aside. An eight-byten- inch rectangle showed brighter on the wall than the surrounding area. Da Wei’s cubicle was extremely clean but uncovered walls collected dirt in Shanghai; the pollution is inescapable. So an area that was covered then uncovered would show bright against the rest of the wall.

Fong looked from the eight-by-ten brightness to the round black rubber disk with the logo on Da Wei’s night table.

Then he looked at the theatre posters. “Don’t you have any posters from the shows you worked on with Mr. Hyland?”

“I do. Several.”

“May I see them?”

“They’re in communal storage. You may notice that I have no closet space here.”

Fong nodded and said, “Ah,” then he glanced at the blank brightness on the wall again. He crossed over and picked up the rubber object from Da Wei’s night table. He held it close to read the writing on the logo. “What’s a Canuck?” he asked.

“A hockey player from Vancouver, I believe. That’s called a puck. Do you know about hockey, Detective Zhong?”

No, he didn’t, but he knew about someone who did. He remembered Geoff’s reference on the CDROM and an incident years ago when Geoff was directing in Shanghai and frantically tried to find a newspaper that would tell him who won the Larry Cup – or Gerty Cup – some kind of hockey cup. “So Mr. Hyland gave you the puck as a souvenir?”

She nodded. Then poured herself more tea and hid her face in the mist from her cup.

“Not a particularly romantic gift, wouldn’t you say?”

“I don’t understand you, Detective Zhong.”

“Should we speak in the Common Tongue? Would that help you understand me?”

She was instantly on her feet, no doubt about to demand he leave her room, but before she could speak, Fong pulled down the scroll painting and pointed at the eight-by-ten inch brightness on the wall. “So was this where you kept Mr. Hyland’s picture?” She stared at him. Her mouth was open, revealing cracked teeth. “Did he sign it for you? Maybe with the words: With all my love, Geoff?”

“No,” she said and sat heavily. “Not those words. ‘I couldn’t do it without you, Da Wei’ it said.”

“You cared for him,” Fong said.

She nodded slowly.

“But he didn’t reciprocate your affection? Is reciprocate the right word?”

“You know it is,” she snapped. Then she took a deep breath and let her air out slowly. “No, Detective Zhong, he did not reciprocate. I was not blessed with . . . ” The words failed her. She just shook her head and tears began to well in her round eyes as she contemplated the whole injustice of beauty. “I am not beautiful like your wife or Yue Feng.”

Fong stood very still. “Mr. Hyland was seeing Yue Feng, the actress who plays Ophelia?”

“Now it is I who must ask about word selection. What do you mean by ‘was seeing’?” She reverted to Mandarin. “Do you mean being attracted to – yes. Touching her backstage – yes. Having her in his rooms – yes. Fucking her – that, not having been there, I wouldn’t know.” She smiled wanly. “If you follow my meaning, Detective Zhong.”

“I do.” He got to his feet. “Have you got a passport, Da Wei?”

“Yes.”

“I’ll need to hold that for you.”

She balked for a moment then opened a small drawer in the table and handed over her way out of the Middle Kingdom.

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