The next day was about paperwork. Not Fong’s favourite thing, although he was pleased to be able to pawn some of it off on Shrug and Knock. That night Fong picked up his toddler daughter Xiao Ming at Lily and Chen’s rooms as he did every Wednesday. They had dinner outside on Good Food Street, surrounded by the savoury smells of the cooking mixed with the human smell of thousands of people and the gentle hint of Yangtze’s saltwater tang on the evening breeze. Xiao Ming sat on Fong’s lap as they ate. Her dexterity was incredible and she would try anything Fong ordered. As the waitress cleared the last dish, Xiao Ming let loose with a really loud belch. Many other diners looked at her. Several applauded. A smile crinkled her face followed by a rolling laugh that came all the way from her belly. Fong threw his arms around her and gave her a big hug.
She responded by grabbing his arms in her little hands and whispering, “Daddy.”
They hustled through the throngs on Good Food Street and Fong hailed a cab. He had managed to get two tickets to the theatre for them. Xiao Ming was enchanted by the whirling, dancing, juggling, singing thing that was Peking Opera. It gratified Fong, who had always loved it.
They fought their way through the crowd and took their seats near the front of the balcony. As soon as the lights went down, Xiao Ming climbed up on his lap. As the performance unfolded, he explained the magic of what was taking place. “When she carries the stick with the tassels it indicates that she is riding a horse. See how her posture changes as well and her gait. As if she is being carried, as if she no longer has her feet on the ground.” Xiao Ming smiled and imitated the posture while still on his lap. The scene ended as cymbals crashed and the actress struck a stunning pose on one foot. Xiao Ming clapped her small hands and shrieked “Hao” along with the rest of the crowd. As the performance proceeded, she held her father’s hand tight, eyes bright with excitement. And he watched her. Fell into her eyes. Remembered his own joy. How odd it was. The one thing he regretted was that his first wife would never meet his child. How odd.
Another loud clash of cymbals brought him back to the theatre. The lead actor struck a pose, lifted a foot parallel to the ground then reached up and pulled the feather on his headdress down into his mouth. The horns sounded. The actor shrieked. The crowd “Hao’ed” until they were hoarse.
Fong explained the meaning of the juggling and dances to her, just as his father had explained them to him. Then he added new ideas that his father wouldn’t even begin to understand. “This is something that is of us, Xiao Ming. It’s not like McDonald’s or computers that come from faraway. We must keep alive such things as this.” She nodded then turned her eyes back to the stage, to the stylized miracle that is Peking Opera.
Six hours later, the phone on Fong’s night table awoke him from a deep sleep. It took Fong a few short moments to understand that the terrified voice he heard belonged to the janitor of the academy’s theatre. It took a few longer moments for Fong to pull on his clothing and race over to the old theatre. But it took many, many, much longer moments before Fong could believe the information his eyes were sending to his brain.
A body – sirens in the distance – at the end of a rope – sirens louder – dangling from the ceiling or the flies or whatever theatre people called them. Still swinging. Perhaps the earth was in motion. Something important was falling into the caverns of Fong’s troubled heart. His enemy, his rival, the Canadian theatre director Geoff Hyland was no more.
“Something ends but something else always begins,” an old voice whispered inside Fong’s head.
The doors of the theatre crashed open. Police officers. Something infinitely profane in a sometimes sacred place.
“Sir?” Fong had forgotten that he had called Captain Chen before he ran to the theatre. Forgotten that this was a crime scene. “You knew him, didn’t you sir?”
Fong remembered the weight of Geoff’s hand on his shoulder and the writing on the back of a business card – which he had ignored out of anger, folly – jealousy. Fong’s wife had died on an abortionist’s table carrying a child that could well have been fathered by this man, by Geoffrey Hyland.
“Yes. He was my first wife’s lover.”
Fong didn’t wait for an answer. What answer could poor Chen give? As Fong climbed the stairs to the stage to take a closer look, a voice from the darkness stopped him, “Stay off that. This is a crime site. And this time at least we are going to follow procedures.” It was Li Chou, the head of Crime Scene Unit. He didn’t wait for Fong’s response. He waved a fleshy paw and his team of six technicians hopped up on the stage. They taped off the area, set up harsh arc lights and began their work. Fong felt like a child looking in a store window at a toy he knew he’d never be able to touch. Suddenly Li Chou was right there in front of him, on the other side, the right side, of the tape. “You stay there. Don’t even think about coming across.”
The man’s voice was unnaturally loud. For a brief moment Fong wondered why, then he got it. Fong’s subordinates were there. He had embarrassed Li Chou in front of his people and now Li Chou was returning the favour.
“You!” Li Chou shouted to Captain Chen. “I want a word with you.” Chen waited for Fong’s approval. Fong nodded and Captain Chen moved toward Li Chou. As he passed, Fong whispered, “Tell him whatever he wants to know.” Chen stopped. Fong said it again with stronger emphasis, “Whatever he wants. It’s time for you to deal with the politics of the department if you want to stay with Special Investigations. You’re married now; think about that sometimes. Now tell him whatever he wants.”
Captain Chen gave Fong an odd look then ducked beneath the tape and hopped up on the stage. Fong retreated to the back of the theatre, where only two weeks ago he had sat with the man who was now swinging gently from the rafters of the stage. A man who had left a business card beneath his collar, on the back of which were the words Help me, Fong.
Captain Chen disappeared into the wings of the theatre with Li Chou as the CSU technicians meticulously laid out a grid on the stage floor with string. It always seemed to come back to this. To a theatre. To the darkness – and of course to his first wife, the actress Fu Tsong, whose image seemed to emerge from the seats, from the smells, from the very darkling light of this place.
This stage on the campus of the Shanghai Theatre Academy had been his wife’s favourite theatre though she had performed all over Asia. Its seats were a wreck. Its lighting system was so archaic that it tripped breakers all over the neighbourhood almost every time they turned it on. Its damp mustiness was so intense it entered your mouth and nose, tainted any food or drink you brought in with you, and left a marked odour on the clothes you wore. It was inescapable. So was this place’s history. “That’s what makes a theatre a place of ghosts, dear Fong,” her sweet voice whispered beside him in the dark. It was a voice he knew so very well. He was going to turn to her but he knew she wasn’t there. Dead people were dead. They did not whisper sweetly in the darkness or hold hands or soothe the yearning of the heart.
He had sat in the exact same seat two weeks before, the ghost of Fu Tsong beside him. Geoffrey Hyland, his wife’s lover, had been on the stage. “Naturally, in a place like this he’d be directing Hamlet. It’s a play about ghosts,” Fong had whispered to the darkness.
Geoffrey’s elegant frame had moved across the stage, his homely translator at his side. For the briefest moment, Geoff stopped as if suspended in space then he was on his frenetic way again. Opening night was only two days away and Geoffrey was jumpier than Fong had ever seen him. He called over the actor playing Rosencrantz and loudly asked for the satchel he carried. The young actor gave the large leather thing over to Geoff, who thanked him, then yelled some instruction in his childish Mandarin all the way to the other side of the stage. His translator quickly corrected his Mandarin without Geoff knowing it and she warned all those within earshot to watch their manners when it came to criticizing Geoff. It struck Fong that the woman was quite protective of Geoff. It made him smile. Then wince.
Geoff called the fight director onstage and spoke to him in a whisper. The fight director called the actors playing Hamlet and Laertes, who entered from stage left. Geoff nodded then headed off into the wings. The fight director set the two actors in their starting positions then dropped a handkerchief. When it hit the stage, the two drew their swords and Laertes lunged at Hamlet. Fong didn’t know this fight director, but he was immediately concerned because the actor playing Laertes seemed to be all anger and little skill. His lunges at Hamlet seemed truly intent upon hurting the other actor. The fight director stepped in just as Laertes seemed about to take a swing at Hamlet’s head.
Geoff returned from the stage-right wings and flipped the large satchel to Guildenstern saying, “Give this to your better half.”
“It contains the letter, sir?” asked Guildenstern.
“Indeed it does. The death letter!” Geoff said in his best booga-booga voice. Guildenstern moved offstage with the satchel, then Geoff turned to the actors playing Hamlet and Laertes, “Fight fixed, boys?”
Hamlet gave a nod but the actor playing Laertes glowered and stomped off. “What’s his beef?” asked the fight director.
Before his plain-faced translator could interject, Geoff responded in his ghastly Mandarin, “I broke his rice bowl, I guess” or it could have been “dog go bowl puke” – it was hard to tell since Geoff completely ignored the tones of the words. He had the sounds right, but without the tones who could tell what he was trying to say? The translator quickly clarified Geoff’s meaning while the fight director laughed out loud. The translator glowered him into silence.
Geoff, oblivious to all the linguistic comings and goings, moved gracefully across the stage touching a set piece here, giving a word to an actor there, and finally turned toward the auditorium.
He stopped – as if in mid-air, again.
The assuredness that gave him such elegance evaporated and he reverted to being the fifty-yearold man that he was. He put a hand up to his eyes to shield them from the stage light and stared out into the darkness.
“Could he see me?” Fong wondered. He didn’t know, but it made him squirm. This man had known his deceased wife in a way that he had not, on a plane to which Fong could not ascend. They had met on the field of art and created something that endured for many years in the minds of all who had seen it.
“Who’s there?” Geoffrey’s voice was raspier than Fong remembered. Then something struck Fong.
“Isn’t that the opening line of this silly play?” Fong called back from the darkness.
“Fuck me with a stick!”
It took Fong a moment to translate that, although he couldn’t begin to guess what it meant.
“What is your sorry ass doing here?” Geoff called out.
That Fong got, but he was surprised. Was it possible that Geoffrey Hyland was happy to see him?
“I repeat, what is your sorry ass doing here?”
“Haunting you, I guess.”
“Well, you got the right play for it.” Geoffrey turned to the actors and then called out into the house, “Let’s start at the top.” Geoff hopped off the stage followed at a respectful distance by his translator. Fong wondered why the phrase “at a respectful distance” had such a strong whiff of the hated phrase “no dogs or Chinese” which was common parlance in much of Shanghai before the liberation. He looked at the woman.
In the Chinese theatre, where female beauty was everywhere, this middle-aged woman stood out for her profound blandness. Her features were hard to describe. Plain was the wrong word for them. Homely was better. He looked more closely at the woman. He’d seen, and to be honest, ignored her for years. Although she gave her name to foreigners as Deborah Tong, she actually had the unlikely name of Da Wei. She’d been Geoff’s translator since the first time Geoff directed in Shanghai almost ten years ago. Fong had traded only a few words with Da Wei over all those years. Her English was perfect and up to date with all the colloquialisms that drive any new English speaker mad. She also, apparently, had a good working knowledge of the theatre – an essential for anyone translating for Geoff. No doubt she had to deal with the ostracism ladled out by Chinese to one of their own who dealt with Westerners, but it didn’t seem to weigh heavily on her. But that’s all Fong knew about her – not where she came from, not where on the academy’s campus she lived, not even her marital status – although at her age he assumed she’d be married – not even where or how she learned her English.
Geoff headed toward Fong. The translator stayed “at a respectful distance” from both of them. Fong made a mental note to check on Da Wei’s background then promptly forgot it when Geoff took the seat directly behind him. The work lights dimmed, but just before they were completely out Fong noticed a young Chinese man in a suit slip off the stage and follow Geoff and another, older, man rise from his seat near the stage and move back toward them.
A lengthy silence followed. Then a simple table lamp sitting on the floor near the edge of the stage came on. The dim light revealed a raised roughly hewn wooden platform that was slanted toward the audience. On it was a near-naked figure, face down – screaming. A single violin note came from the back of the auditorium. The figure turned toward it – toward the audience, toward us – and began to silently plead: No, no, please no.
Dark figures approached. One put his hand over the man’s mouth while the other two dressed him – dressed him for his job – to lead us through the dark alleyways of Hamlet’s heart.
“He dies for us every night,” said Geoff from the darkness. Something slithered up Fong’s spine. “Like Prometheus. Those with special gifts must suffer for our edification. It has always been thus.” Then as if conducting he said, “And in just a moment . . . ”
The stage lights shifted, taking the anguished man from sight and exposing a small man in a large ratty overcoat and hard-soled shoes shaking from the cold and trying not to drop his rather large spear.
“Spear’s a bit long for him, isn’t it?” asked Fong.
“I don’t use props very much, you may have noticed, Fong. Only when they are the quickest way to reveal the truth. Otherwise I find them a clunky nuisance.”
Fong thought about that. Yes, in all of Geoff’s productions there were, in fact, very few props or sets.
“It’s night, Fong. And Elsinore Castle has been under assault from the Poles for almost a decade. It’s the fourteenth century . . .”
“. . . and I assume no one could attack at night in the fourteenth century,” Fong said, completing Geoff’s thought. He turned to Geoff and saw close behind him the young man he had seen slide off the stage and the older man who had been sitting down front. Both were clearly Beijing men. Was Geoff now deemed worthy of having keepers by the powers up north? But why would a theatre director need a keeper? Let alone two?
“That being the case,” Geoffrey prompted, “the king wouldn’t waste the time of real soldiers to guard the walls so he’d . . . ”
“ . . . enlist the clerk and the night-soil collector.”
“Very good, Fong. I think of them as the tinker and the tailor myself,” Geoffrey said, indicating the small man onstage who stood very still for a moment then whirled around. His large spear dropped to the ground with a clang. He fell to his hands and knees trying to find it in the darkness but couldn’t. Then, as if he heard something, he rose slowly and peered out into the darkness. Geoff leaned in close to Fong and said, “And here it comes . . . ”
“Who’s there?” the poor man whispers.
“As I said, the first line of the play.”
“So you do know your Shakespeare, Fong.”
“Thanks to Fu Tsong.” The moment he said it he realized it was the very first time he had ever spoken his wife’s name in her lover’s company. It was as if he’d allowed two separate parts of himself to bleed together. It was as if he’d moved to the other side of a mirror where his image lived.
From the depths of the stage darkness the new watch comes to replace the old. With them is a nobleman, Horatio. The man questions the guard about the sightings of the ghost. Fong immediately liked the young man playing Horatio. Modest, honest and straightforward. But he didn’t like his insights:
“In the most high and palmy state of Rome, A little ere the mightiest Julius fell, The graves stood tenantless and the sheeted dead Did squeak and gibber in the Roman streets: As stars with trains of fire and dews of blood, Disasters in the sun; and the moist star Upon whose influence Neptune’s empire stands Was sick almost to doomsday with eclipse . . . ”
“If only evil were mirrored by a cantankerousness in nature, my job would be easier,” Fong thought. But he’d often found the reverse. A sadistic father’s savagery could as easily take place on a beautiful spring day when the cherry blossoms are scenting the city as in the midst of a torrential sky letting.
The new guards, Marcellus and Bernardo, lead Horatio to the place they last saw the ghost. Horatio sees nothing and is about to leave when he senses something and turns. That single violin note again from the back of the auditorium. There is nothing there that we can see but clearly Horatio sees something. He staggers back.
“The darkness speaks to him,” Geoffrey says into Fong’s ear.
Fong thought about that. Darkness can most assuredly speak.
Hamlet makes his first entrance. The light strikes the man’s face and for a fleeting instant he looks oddly like a younger Asian version of Geoff. Fong’s breath catches in his throat. Then the violin note again and he too is addressed by the darkness. This time we hear the darkness speak too. The voice comes from somewhere high in the rafters of the old building.
Geoff’s staging was spare, almost entirely devoid of props. Only the most essential elements were used, but it had a real elegance – a grace that was present in all of Geoff’s work.
The dreadful message of murder by a brother is delivered and received. But the ambiguity of Geoff’s staging leaves it unclear as to the nature of this message. Is it honest? A message from the darkness that your uncle killed your father and that you are to avenge the murder. Hard to swallow in the light of day let alone in a voice from the darkness. Fong played with the phrase voice from the darkness for a moment. It reminded him of something. Finally he asked, “Is ‘a voice from the darkness’ from your Bible?”
“I’m not sure. I know there is a voice from a burning bush.”
Fong turned around to look at Geoffrey. “From a bush?”
“From a burning bush, actually.”
“Was it important what the bush said?”
“Well, it was God speaking . . . ”
“From a bush? A hedge? Not even a tree or the sky? What god would choose to talk from a shrubbery? Surely no one of any importance bothered to obey this voice.”
“No one important, just Moses, patriarch of Jews, Christians and Muslims.”
“That explains a lot.”
“Really?”
“Sure. Jews, Christians and Muslims have lots of problems. Maybe they stem, excuse the pun, from listening to bushes.”
Geoffrey laughed.
Fong had never heard him laugh before. Despite himself, he liked the sound. He didn’t know what to do with that. When he looked up, Polonius’s farewell to his son, Laertes, was taking place.
Fong listened to Polonius’s advice to his son:
“Beware of entrance to a quarrel; but being in, Beaer’t that th’ opposed may beware of thee.
Give every man thine ear, but few thy voice.”
Fong turned to Geoff, “Why is this man thought of as a fool? His advice is sound.”
“I agree, Fong. His outside may be foolish but he is no fool. Remember, he managed to keep his position under two different administrations. Not always an easy thing to do but something that I assume someone like yourself who works for a Communist dictatorship would be able to appreciate.” Before Fong could protest, Geoff continued, “I think Polonius is stupid like a fox. In fact, I have him supplying the poison that Claudius puts in Hamlet senior’s ear.”
“Is that in the play?”
“It’s implied if you follow the logic of the events.”
Fong thought about that too. Events do have logic. They even sequence themselves. He had noticed of late that his life had an odd logic to it. Like a play in three acts. And here he was just finishing his second act, watching Hamlet. He finished his first act watching Twelfth Night with his first wife, Fu Tsong, playing Viola. That production had been directed by Geoffrey Hyland as well.
Geoffrey was still talking. Fong hadn’t been listening but picked up just the very end of Geoffrey’s statement: “ . . . you have good eyes, Fong. You can see, really see.” Geoff put a hand on Fong’s shoulder by the collar of his summer-weight jacket. Fong couldn’t believe he would do that but before he could protest, Geoff continued, “I don’t know about in your work, Fong, but in mine something odd happens when you achieve a certain level of skill. Your life slips into your work. Not obvious. Not open. But absolutely there, for those with good eyes, to see. When I was in drama school, an entire lifetime ago, I assisted the single most talented director I’d ever seen work. He was my only teacher, Fong. He was the reason I went back to school. One rehearsal, he arrived late – really not like him – and he set right into working on a scene. He worked on it with incredible energy, almost frenzy. Then he ran it. When he finished, he turned to me and said, “So what d’you think?”
“Well, I was a student. Stupid. So I told him. ‘It looks like a car crash.’ His face sort of opened up and he began to laugh. ‘What?’ I asked. Then through his laughter he said, ‘I just totalled my car on the way to rehearsal. That’s why I was late.’ It really wasn’t until years later that I realized what was going on. He was so hooked up, so in touch with himself that everything he put onstage was a response to the reality of his life. I always wanted to get that close to myself. I worked at it, Fong, and now somehow it’s happening. Everything important in my life is up there on that stage. Everything that’s happening in my life is right there for anyone to see, so long as they have the right eyes, like yours, Fong.”
Geoff removed his hand from Fong’s shoulder. Fong turned to look at him. Then Fong saw two Caucasian women approaching them. One was small and pinched and clutched a red zippered binder to her chest. The other was tall, dark-haired, older and may have at one time been attractive in a coarse kind of way. Were these some sort of Western keepers? The older, taller woman stood back and brooded. She was the kind of person who leached light from a room. The smaller one strode forward as if she owned the place.
“My producers – I call them my Screaming me-me’s,” Geoff whispered.
“I think we need to work on the opening,” said small Miss Pinch Face Me-me. “It’s flaccid.”
Fong looked to Geoff. Who was this woman? And the opening was anything but flaccid. It was pure liquid. Classic Geoff.
Geoff made a cursory introduction. “Kitty Pants, Inspector Zhong Fong, head of Special Investigations, Shanghai District.”
“Hi,” said Ms. Pants without any warmth or even really bothering to take in Fong.
Fong stood. He wasn’t about to be dismissed by the likes of this sour woman.
“We have work to do, Mr. Fong.”
“Inspector Zhong,” Fong corrected her. She was clearly surprised that he spoke English.
“Yes, well, could you excuse us for a moment?” It wasn’t really a question. “Come.” She signalled for Geoff to follow her. Fong had met many theatre people during the time he had been with Fu Tsong. He could sense who was and who wasn’t of that world. Geoff most assuredly was. Miss Pants certainly wasn’t. So what was Geoff doing answering to this tightassed little woman?
As Geoff moved up the aisle with Miss Pinch Face, the two Chinese watchers flanked them. What the fuck was going on here?
Fong shifted in his seat. Something fell from beneath the collar of his coat, where Geoff’s hand had rested so uncomfortably. Fong eyed the business card that now lay on the floor. He noted the position of the watchers and when he thought it safe, leaned over as if to tie up his shoe and picked up the card. Under the italicized words The Play’s the Thing were Geoff’s name and contact numbers in both Mandarin and English. Fong turned the card over. There, in a scrawling hand, were slashed the words: I have no right to ask, but help me, Fong.
And now Geoffrey Hyland was no more. Fong sat back in his seat and thought about the card. The request for help – and how out of bitterness, and jealousy, he had ignored it.
Four hours later, Li Chou handed over the crime site to Fong with the pointing of a fat index finger and the warning that his people would be back to “pack it up” later. As he left the theatre, Li Chou said loudly to Fong, “Don’t make a mess.”
“I’ll wash my hands and everything,” Fong snarked back, but he felt small the moment the words were out of his mouth. Once Li Chou and his men had left the theatre, Fong ducked under the tape and headed toward the stage.
He’d seldom ventured onto a stage. In fact the only time he remembered actually being on a stage was in an attempt to hide himself and an American woman, Amanda Pitman, in the days before his internal exile.
A stage was Fu Tsong’s domain. Not his. His place in a theatre was in the darkness of the audience. Fu Tsong’s place was in the light. She somehow seemed to bring the light.
He took a deep breath and let it out slowly, then hopped up on the stage.
The platforms were arranged like a shattered cross. Fong knew the basic Christian significance of this but it carried no resonance for him. He walked over to the body that still hung by its neck. It seemed to be in motion as if it were the bell at the bottom of a long pendulum. As Fong approached, an unwelcome thought flitted through his consciousness. “Fu Tsong had loved what this body encased.”
He took a breath and then another. His heart was racing. He bent over from the waist. “Fuck, I’m going to faint,” he thought. He yanked off his jacket, crumpled it and held it to his mouth. His breathing became less laboured. His heart stopped racing. Slowly he regained control. Then he turned back to the body.
Fong knew his men were watching him.
A young detective stepped forward. Fong held up his hand. The man stopped. Fong hoped that when he spoke his voice wouldn’t wobble. “Get me the forensic report as soon as it’s available.” The young detective gave a curt bow and left through the side door by the pinrail.
Chen waited for him to issue more orders. He was careful to keep his eyes down. Finally he asked, “It’s a suicide, isn’t it, sir?”
It sure as hell looked like a suicide. The ladder Geoff had climbed and then kicked aside was lying where it ought to be forward and downstage from him. The knotted rope around his neck had the traditional look of a hangman’s noose. “Was there a note?” Fong asked.
“No one has found one yet,” said Chen.
“Get me access to his room. Was he staying at the theatre academy or in a hotel? He usually stayed on the grounds.”
The cops looked at Fong. They all digested the information that Fong had known the deceased. More mystery for them about their boss. “I’ll find out,” said another young cop and headed out.
“Chen, photograph the scene, I’m more confident in your abilities than in Li Chou’s.” There was a chorus of muffled chuckles.
Fong turned to his men. “Enough. We have work to do.” Turning to the nearest cop, he said, “Find me the stage manager. I want to know which actors were last to leave the theatre.” Before anyone could question him, he added, “Find me another ladder.” Then, to everyone’s surprise, Fong turned and walked over to the stage-right proscenium arch. He pointed to a smudge mark of some sort on the pillar eight feet above the ground and said, “Take a photo of that too, will you Chen? And bag a sample.”
“Sir?” Fong ignored Chen’s question and marched across the stage to the other proscenium arch and looked at it carefully. “Is there something . . . ?”
“Later, Chen, later. Let’s stand that ladder up now.”
After carefully noting its position, marked by Li Chou’s people on the stage floor, they righted the ladder. Fong looked up at the hanging body then allowed his eyes to follow the noose. The rope went up to a pulley attached to a wooden batten dead hung from the ceiling by thick chains. The rope then continued from the pulley offstage until it met another larger pulley then headed down to the floor stage left, where it was tied off to a pinrail. Fong headed over to the pinrail. He reached out and held the rope. Its thick tautness was not pleasing. He gave it a yank. Immediately yelps came from the stage as the body twitched. Fong ignored them and looked around. Chen pointed toward a set of iron weights attached to the pinrail. “Counterweights, sir, to make it easy to lift a dead weight. Sorry, sir, no offence intended.”
Fong looked at Chen. “None taken. Thanks.” But Fong wasn’t really paying attention. He was trying to recall a story Fu Tsong had told him about counterweights. Something about Christ and counterweights. Fong shook his head. That couldn’t be right – Christ and counterweights? He sat heavily in the chair that was by the pinrail. Then he stood and looked at the chair. A simple school chair. He looked up and down the wings. It was the only chair there. He looked at it a second time then strode back onstage and climbed the ladder to Geoff.
It was only later, when Fong recalled Fu Tsong’s story, that he realized he hadn’t noted a crucial fact: how much counterweight was on the line.
Face-to-face with Geoff, everything else receded into a misted background – the theatre, his cops, Captain Chen – as if in a film when the camera zooms in tight. Here, with death, Fong was at the apex, in the very centre. In focus.
He snapped on a pair of latex gloves and touched Geoff’s face.
The flesh was almost hard to the touch. Already dense, spongy. The blood had, upon death, pooled in the lower extremities of his body leaving a tough plastic-like consistency to the skin. But beneath the skin, Fong knew that rot was setting in quickly. Nothing dead resisted rot long in Shanghai’s summer heat. Fong leaned in to look at the rope marks. There was a lot of ligature burn up and down the neck. Fong hoped Geoff’s neck had snapped. The image of Geoff strangling slowly on the end of the rope was not pleasing – Fong had seen hangings that didn’t go off well, the phrase “without a hitch” came to him but he put it aside. If it’s not done right it can take several terrifying minutes before a man suffocates at the end of a rope. A scent caught Fong’s attention. He couldn’t identify it but it was not a body odour.
Captain Chen had set up the other ladder and was climbing up to take pictures of Geoff.
Fong waited until Chen was at body level then pointed to the neck. “Shoot this.”
Chen did, then asked, “Is there something I’m not seeing? Those marks are to be expected in a suicide, aren’t they?”
“Maybe,” Fong said and descended a rung to get a better look at Geoff’s fingers. Long. Tapered. He bent the wrist to look beneath the fingernails.
Chen took another picture then asked, “Scrapings?”
Fong shook his head and descended.
“I don’t see any defensive markings, sir. Do you?”
On the stage floor, he stepped back and looked at the body again. Trying to get a fuller picture. “I want the body to go to Lily first. I want a full toxicology report.” Chen nodded. Then Fong remembered the odour. He raced quickly up the ladder.
“What?” said Chen surprised.
“Hold him still.”
Chen did and Fong pulled aside Geoff’s jacket. He was wearing a vest. Odd for a hot day. On the inside pocket of the vest Fong found them.
“Flowers, sir?”
Fong took a deep breath of the fragrance. “Yes. Three different types of flowers.”
“Tell Lily I want these identified.” Fong said then as Chen descended his ladder Fong added, “and get me a Shakespeare expert too.” Before Chen could ask why, Fong turned his attention back to Geoff.
It was only then that Fong noticed a slight paint stain on the outside of Geoff’s right shoe.
From the back of the auditorium two men in suits, the Beijing men, watched and smiled. The older of the two took out a cell phone, punched in a speed-dial number and gave an order. Then he turned to the younger man. “You agree?”
The younger man smiled, “I do.”