The Hamlet Murders

CHAPTER SEVEN

After unceremoniously kicking Shrug and Knock out of the sweltering meeting room, Fong sat at one end of the large oval table waiting for the others to arrive. At least there hadn’t been any evidence on the table for Shrug and Knock to snoop at. “Count the small blessings,” he reminded himself as he allowed his mind to drift. First to other meetings in this room then to a place in his memory he hadn’t visited for a very long time. He was sitting across his office desk from a middle-aged Englishman. Alternating waves of guilt and relief crossed the man’s handsome angular face. “You can go now, Mr. Paulin,” Fong repeated. “We know you didn’t have anything to do with the death of your wife. You were lucky.” The man stood slowly and headed toward the door. Fong rose from his chair. When he did, Mr. Paulin stopped in mid-stride as if suddenly he had become the icon for “Walk.”

Fong said, “We know you didn’t kill your wife, Mr. Paulin, but we know you wanted her dead. To be exact, we know that you were getting ready to plan her death, but an out-of-control taxi on Wolumquoi Lu solved your problem, didn’t it?”

Mr. Paulin didn’t move – couldn’t move – as if a brittle wire from Fong’s heart to his connected the two men. Then the wire snapped. Mr. Paulin reassumed his stature and looked down on Fong – not just from a height but from a long-held sense of racial superiority. “Can I go, Officer, or is there something else you want to say to me?”

“You can go, Mr. Paulin.”

“Good.”

“But don’t think of coming back to Shanghai, Mr. Paulin.”

The man whirled on Fong, clearly about to defend his right as a British citizen to come and go as he wished, to do business where he damned well pleased – but all he said was, “Anything else?”

“Yes.” Fong made him wait for it. Then on the off breath he said, “Murder eats away the heart. It was only chance that saved you from killing your wife. Don’t forget that. And remember that chance does us a favour once but charges us twice. You owe fortune twice now, Mr. Paulin.”

Fong held out the man’s passport. “You’ll need this to leave China. You have six hours to be gone from the Middle Kingdom. Starting from this very moment.”

Mr. Paulin slammed the door as he left Fong’s office. Fong counted to twenty then released his breath and turned to the window. On the other side of the glass was the world famous Bund and across the Huangpo River the Pudong, which was in short order becoming the very centre of the miracle of economic revival that was Shanghai. He looked at the shiny new buildings but was unimpressed. “Maybe just because I’m getting older,” he said aloud to the empty room and leaned his head against the cool windowpane. He was having more and more trouble keeping the world’s evil at bay. The mangled body of Mrs. Paulin that they had extracted from the wrecked taxicab would now wake in the morning with him and accompany him to sleep at night – as would the relieved look on her husband’s face. So many souls tucked beneath his skin, fighting for space in the membranous sack around his heart. So much ghostly weight.

Fong looked up. The room was filled with officers waiting for him. He wondered how long he had indulged in his memory.

Li Chou was at the far end of the oval table. His men were on either side of him. Lily sat halfway up one side with her young assistant. Chen sat across from her with Fong’s people.

Fong “ahemed” and the room quieted. Cigarette smoke hung in layered clouds in the room. The windows were open and the hazy saturated air of a Shanghai summer afternoon moved in and out like the water at the shore of a placid lake.

Fong looked around the table. He really didn’t have any plan in mind. Just to get started.

“Lily?”

“Message pick up, did you?” she said in her own private version of English. She was about to add her pet phrase for him, “Short Stuff,” then decided against it in public.

“No, I’m sorry but . . . ”

“Fine. No nose off my teeth,” she said.

He had no idea what that meant, but signalled that she should begin the proceedings. She opened a folder and handed out copies of the autopsy report and the toxicology data then said in her beautiful Mandarin, “If you look at the autopsy report, there is no evidence of previous trauma to the body. In other words, he wasn’t killed then hanged. He was just hanged. There were elevated levels of alcohol in Mr. Hyland’s bloodstream but they weren’t high enough to make him lose contact with reality unless he really wasn’t a drinker. Someone should check into that.”

“I did,” said Fong. “He wasn’t a drunk or an abstainer, just a guy – he drinks, drank.”

Lily nodded.

From a large plastic bag she took out the noose and tossed it on the table then said, “It has one less turn than a traditional hangman’s noose but outside of that it’s standard issue. The position of the ladder conforms to the mathematical paradigm of something that tall being pushed from that height. The rope was easily strong enough to strangle a man of Mr. Hyland’s weight.”

Fong looked up from his notes.

“Yes, sorry about that, but this man’s neck wasn’t snapped like in a proper hanging. He strangled to death. It probably took several minutes.”

She paused as that sank in.

“That accounts for the ligature burns up and down Mr. Hyland’s neck,” she said.

Fong nodded and made a note. He wasn’t sure Lily was right about that.

“There are threads of the hemp embedded in his fingers and palms, which seem to indicate that he fought the rope at the end.”

Fong experienced a moment of real panic. He didn’t want that image in his head. Geoff, dangling, trying to loosen the rope, trying to scream – no.

One of the detectives put down his copy of the report and said, “He changed his mind, you mean?”

“If . . . ” Lily didn’t complete her sentence.

Fong did. “If this was actually a suicide. Anything else, Lily?”

“There were no defensive wounds on the body. No skin under the nails. The only other toxicological findings of interest were traces of seminal fluid in his underclothing . . . ” She paused for a moment as the usual smirks in response to ejaculation at the end of a life passed over the men’s faces then she added, “mixed with Nonoxynol.”

“What’s that?” Fong asked.

“It’s a spermicide.” The men around the table looked blankly at Lily. None had any idea what she was talking about. Lily sighed her you-poor-benightedpagans smile and said, “Some Western women use it as a contraceptive. It seems Mr. Hyland had a little nooky-nooky sometime before his demise.” Then to Fong in English she added, “On message, Short Stuff. Pickup no surprise. No pickup, surprise surprise.”

“How long before his demise, Lily?” Fong asked.

“Not long. Soon details I get, then you get, you get me?”

Fong nodded. A ripple of confusion circled the table, but Fong didn’t want to get sidetracked on that. “Anything else, Lily?”

“No,” she said in Shanghanese.

“What about the flowers that were in his vest pocket?”

“Marigolds, forget-me-nots and primroses,” Lily replied then added, “is there anything . . . ”

Fong cut her off, “What about the vest itself?”

“What about it?”

“It was a thousand degrees that night. Why would he wear a vest?”

Lily shrugged then said, “Perhaps Mr. Hyland was a slave to fashion. Maybe he wanted to die looking his best.”

“True, but who gets laid then kills himself?” asked Li Chou. “This was no suicide. I agree with Zhong Fong.”

“Well, that’s a first,” Fong said in English to Lily, who raised an eyebrow in response.

“What was that, Zhong Fong?” Li Chou asked.

Fong smiled but wondered why Li Chou’s pronunciation of his name sounded to his ears awfully close to Traitor Zhong. “You’re up, Li Chou. What did you and your crew find?”

Li Chou opened a stained folder and spread out a series of documents. “There were literally fingerprints everywhere. Sixteen partials and twenty-seven full prints. We’ve fingerprinted the theatre’s technicians and actors and are slowly identifying whose prints are whose. However, with so many prints on the ladder it is unlikely that this line of investigation will yield anything of interest.

“The rope was actually cut from a stock of rope that was kept in the west side of the theatre. The cut on the tail of the rope there matches the head of the rope used to hang Mr. Hyland.”

“I’m afraid there are small flesh deposits on the rope within reaching distance of the noose which supports Ms. Lily’s supposition that the man suffocated.”

Fong wondered why Li Chou was being so solicitous. What was with the “I’m afraid” part of his last statement? But before Fong could speak, Lily piped up, “I don’t make suppositions, Mr. Li.”

Li Chou’s hands flew up like he was fending off mosquitoes on Good Food Street. “No criticism intended, Ms. Lily.”

“That would be another first,” Fong thought.

“Then there were these.” He pushed a large plastic evidence bag marked Floor Findings onto the table. “Pretty normal stuff, nothing you wouldn’t expect on a stage. A few makeup sticks, bits of torn cloth, cigarette butts, stick matches, a hair clip, three pages of some script, a sodden handkerchief, three small-denomination yuan notes, a paperclip, wood chips . . . ”

Fong interrupted him, “Did Mr. Hyland have a rehearsal set up for that morning?”

“Yes,” replied Captain Chen, referring to his notes. “No one was very happy about it. Apparently once a theatrical production starts to perform it is considered bad form to . . . ”

“Who was called?”

“Called?”

“Told to be at rehearsal,” Fong clarified.

Li Chou gave him a who-cares look.

Fong ignored him and looked to Chen, “I want to see everyone who Geoff called to rehearsal for that morning.”

Chen made a note and flipped open his cell, “Odd to call a rehearsal then kill yourself, don’t you think?”

Fong could have added, “Odd to start writing a book then kill yourself,” but he didn’t.

“Odd indeed, unless you wanted those called to rehearsal to come in and find you still swinging.” It was the commissioner who snuck noiselessly into the room behind Fong. The man had changed his demeanour of late. The rumour in the station was that he was modelling himself after the new actor who played the head of the district attorney’s office on the American television show Law and Order - not the original one, but the one who followed the lady who played it for a bit. Fong had never seen the program, but apparently it was very popular throughout Shanghai. For an instant he wondered if Fu Tsong would have liked the show. The man continued, “An odd sort of ‘up yours’ but, I imagine, in some people’s eyes, a very effective one.”

The commissioner shifted his position in the doorway to catch the light better or something. It unnerved Fong that he hadn’t at least sensed the man’s presence.

“Still to kill yourself like that?” the commissioner pressed on.

“True, sir,” Fong said, “but there is every possibility that this was not a suicide.”

“If it’s not then someone went to serious dramatic lengths to make us believe it was a suicide.”

“Very dramatic lengths,” said Fong.

“Who? Who would do this?”

“That would be the question, wouldn’t it, sir?” said Fong.

The man’s clothes may have changed and maybe even his demeanour but his uncanny ability to state the obvious as if he had revealed some great truth had remained firmly intact.

“Carry on,” the commissioner said and turned on his heel.

Fong was sure that if he could have seen the man’s face he would have watched a self-satisfied smile cross his lips. He’d managed to set the investigation on firm legs. Oh yes he had. And now he could tell whomever it is he reports to that he had done the best he could with what meagre resources, both financial and human, he’d been given. It was a classic bit of ass covering.

Then Fong noticed Li Chou’s face – he was calm, serene. It scared the shit out of Fong.

Fong took a breath and turned to Lily, “How many steps up the ladder would he have to have climbed to get his head into that noose?”

“Eleven, maybe twelve, Fong.”

“And how heavy was Mr. Hyland?”

“Fong?”

“How much did he weigh, Lily?”

“Just under a hundred and eighty pounds.”

Fong thought about that for a bit. How do you get a 180-pound man to climb twelve steps up a ladder? Then once he’s up there, how do you get him to put his head in a noose? Then how do you get down the ladder before he takes the noose off his neck and follows you down?

Fong shot to his feet. The words I ascend literally propelled him up. Everyone in the room looked at him but he didn’t care. His mind was on himself and Chen by the pinrail. And the counterweights. Christ and counterweights: “I ascend.”

He smiled as the memory he couldn’t pull forward at the time bloomed full force in his head. She was laughing. Fu Tsong, his wife, was laughing. No, she was roaring with laughter. Laughter was literally thundering out of her mouth so that Fong couldn’t understand what she was saying. They were sitting on the Bund Promenade. She had just come back from adjudicating a drama festival in Taipei. Fong wanted to hear her impressions of the renegade island. She wasn’t interested in talking about that. She wanted to tell him about what she had seen in the theatre – except her laughter kept getting in the way.

“Just take a breath and tell me,” Fong had said.

She did – take a breath, that is. Her laughter stopped then it erupted once again.

Fong got up. Immediately, someone took his seat. This was Shanghai – public seating of any sort was at a premium. He looked at the old lady who had taken his place but before he could speak she said, “Tough luck, Flat Head.”

How did they always know he was a cop?

Suddenly Fu Tsong leaned over and whispered something into the old lady’s ear. The crone’s face went dark then she got up and moved along. Fong couldn’t recall ever being able to move someone from a seat on the Bund Promenade before. As he reassumed his seat, he asked, “What did you say to her, Fu Tsong?”

“I told her I had the plague.”

“You didn’t.”

“You’re right, I didn’t. I told her that you were my sweet hard-working husband and you needed to rest your weary feet.”

“That wouldn’t have moved her even an inch.”

“True.”

“So?”

“So I told her that if she didn’t move her fat ass I’d put my fingers up her nose and pull it off her face.”

“You said that?”

“I did.”

“And she believed you?”

Fu Tsong unwrapped a sticky confection and put it in her mouth. “You might recall that I’m a very good actress, Fong,” she said as she munched the gooey thing.

“You are,” said Fong as he looked anew at his wife. Would there ever be a time when she didn’t surprise him?

“So what happened in those plays you had to adjudicate in Taipei?”

“Play, you mean,” she said as she swallowed the candy.

“Do I?”

“You do. I saw the same play thirteen times done by thirteen different groups.”

“Was that what was so funny?”

“Hardly. Watching the same play over and over again is tedious.”

“Unless it’s a great play.”

“Or done by great actors under an inspired director. But no Fong, this adaptation of the Wakefield Crucifixion is not a great play, and these were not great actors and there wasn’t a director to be seen in the group.”

“What’s a Wakefield Crucifixion?”

“It’s a religious play from England.”

“Modern?”

“No. What they call the Dark Ages.”

“Ah, the time that the Russians think didn’t really exist.”

“Right, Fong. You really are a font of truly useless information.”

“I’ll take that as a compliment.”

“I wouldn’t. Anyway, in this play, which was being done by church groups – they didn’t tell me that when they asked me to adjudicate their drama festival nor did they tell me that they were amateurs, Christian amateurs. Anyway, in this play, Christ gathers his followers, he pisses off the authorities, they whip him, crucify him, bury him and then he . . . ” she burst out laughing.

“He what?” Fong demanded.

By now several dozen people had gathered round to hear the story.

“Okay,” Fu Tsong pulled herself together and said, “he ascends.” She broke into peels of laughter.

“To where, does he ascend?” Fong demanded to get her to stop laughing.

“To the Christian heaven or something. How would I know?”

“Okay, so he ascends. What’s so funny?”

“Well, the ascending happens at the end of the second act. Each group attaches a harness of some sort to the actor playing Christ and the play ends by him saying ‘I ascend’ and he is gently pulled up to the fly gallery above the proscenium arch. It’s hokey but cute.”

“I still don’t get what’s so funny.”

“Well, to do the ‘ascending’ smoothly, you have to have counterweights on the flylines that pretty much match the weight of the actor.”

“Yes,” Fong said, prompting.

“Well, on the third day – I was seeing four productions a day and five on the last day – well, on the third day, in the third performance I’d seen that day, a very large actor was playing Christ and it was obvious to me that he was not feeling well. He literally sneezed and coughed his way through the entire first act. I think he fainted at intermission. So at the beginning of the second act the stage manager came out and announced that the poor boy was too ill to go on and that his understudy would fill in for the second act.” Fu Tsong began to laugh. Fong gave her a stern look. She stopped laughing. “Well, the understudy Christ was not a big boy like the first-act Christ. In fact, he was a pretty tiny boy.”

Fong got it. “No!”

“Yes! They forgot to change the counterweights. So when this little guy put on the harness and announced all grave and serious ‘I ascend,’ shit Fong, he didn’t ascend, he rocketed. He zoomed. He disappeared in a puff of smoke and we heard the smack of him hitting the fly gallery. A few moments later, his feet appeared below the proscenium arch and just hung there. Then the feet began to move and we heard this Christian god saviour shout, ‘Get me the fuck down from here you moronic assholes!’”

Fong almost laughed but was glad he hadn’t.

Everyone around the table was still looking at him. He turned to Li Chou, “Isolate those fingerprints. Did you print the counterweights by the pinrail?”

“No.”

“How about the chair by the pinrail?”

“No, not that either, but I . . . ”

“Do it. I want to know everyone who touched the ladder, the chair or the counterweights. I also want fibres collected from the ladder, the noose and the whole area around the counterweights on the pinrail.”

To Fong’s amazement, Li Chou leapt to his feet and signalling his men to follow him said, “Will do, Zhong Fong.”

There it was again. Zhong Fong pronounced like Traitor Zhong.

Once Li Chou was gone, Fong turned to Chen, “Find out how the wooden batten that the rope was threaded through is lowered and who has control of that. While you’re at it, test the pulleys. I want to know if they both work. I also want to know if there are prints on the pulleys.”

“You still want to see the people called to rehearsal, sir?”

“And the actors last to leave the theatre that night.”

“I’ve already arranged that.”

“Good. What about that Shakespeare expert?”

“His contact numbers are on your desk.”

“Good.”

Chen divided up assignments among his men and headed out, leaving Fong alone with Lily. “You can tell Chen that he’s allowed to look at you in these meetings. He’s your husband.”

“Chen is very formal. You are his superior officer, Fong. I may be his wife but this is a business meeting not a cocktail party.”

“True, Lily,” and without a beat of segue he asked, “What kind of paint was used in the theatre?”

“I don’t know offhand. You want the paint used on the platforms or on the thing that . . . ”

“The proscenium arch?”

“Yeah, you would know the name for that.”

“I would. It’s called the proscenium arch.”

“Fine. So you want to know the kind of paint used on the arch?”

“Yes.”

“Fine. I’ll check.”

“Good. Then would you check if it matches the smudge of paint on Mr. Hyland’s right shoe?”

Lily looked at him with a wry expression on her face. “Sure, I can do that.”

“How long to get that information, Lily?”

“Not long.” Suddenly she shifted and leaned forward. “How are you managing, Fong?”

“Okay,” he said, very uncomfortable to be talking like this.

“You miss Xiao Ming?”

“Yes. But I get to see her almost as much as I did when we . . . ”

“Were married, Fong. You’re allowed to say that.”

“Yes.” Fong began to pack up his things. “You look happy, Lily.”

“I am Fong.”

“I’m glad. I’ll be on time picking up Xiao Ming Sunday.”

“If this case is solved by then.”

“Yes, Lily, if this case is solved by then.”

Fong stopped packing up.

“Something I can help you with, Fong?”

“Yes. But I don’t know what just yet.”

“You’ll let me know?”

“I will. . . . Lily . . . ”

She stared at him closely, “What Fong?”

“What happens to people when they lose a sense of purpose?”

Fong went directly to his office. Captain Chen was waiting there. “Who’s that, sir?” Chen asked, pointing at Shrug and Knock who had stationed his desk across the hall from Fong’s door. Fong ushered Chen into the office, closed the door and explained the who and what, if not the why, of Shrug and Knock. Chen nodded. “Men like him are a reality in the politics of this place. If you want to work here, you have to deal with the politics as well as the job but if you look at things closely, almost every situation can lead to either problems or opportunities. It’s all a matter of seeing the possibilities.”

Chen nodded. “Can I have a word, sir?”

“Sure, take a seat.”

Chen sat then began without preamble, “So you believe this is not a suicide, sir?”

“Yes. I believe this was a murder made to look like a suicide.”

“Are you sure, sir? How do you keep a noose on a man’s neck, make him walk up ten steps of a ladder then kick the ladder aside. There were no signs of any real struggle. No defensive wounds, no . . . ”

Fong cut him off. “Mr. Hyland never climbed that ladder. It was placed on the stage after Mr. Hyland was dead. Get me six men, access to the man who pulls those fly ropes and a hundred-and-eightypound dummy and I’ll show you how it was done.”

“Now?”

Fong looked at his watch. The theatre would just be opening. He had other things he could do before he proved his point, so he said, “No. Tomorrow. Get us in there tomorrow first thing.”