The Lake Ching murders

CHAPTER NINETEEN

Fong’s phone call to Lily in Ching was brief and to the point. She listened quietly – in shock – then began asking questions. Each one a better question than the one before. Then she, albeit shakily, agreed.

“How long do we have, Fong?” she asked.

“Say, four hours. I’ve got to get him and then haul him back. Does that give you enough time?”

“We’ll make it enough.” As she hung up the phone she was surprised to realize that she was excited. No. Thrilled.

Dr. Roung Chen didn’t bother rising as Fong pushed his way past the secretary and into the archeologist’s Xian office. The man looked awful.

Tough.

“Let’s go.”

“Where to?”

“Back.”

“To what?”

“Not to Disneyland, Dr. Roung. To Lake Ching. You may recall there was a mass murder there – on a boat.” The man was so flustered that he didn’t notice Fong reach over and palm a small object from his desk. They drove for three hours in absolute silence. “Maybe just as Captain Chen had on that frigid night over four months ago with the specialist,” Fong thought. But Fong didn’t linger on the thought. There was still something missing from the puzzle. A final link that connected the pieces he had to the rogue in Beijing – which in turn pointed his way back home to Shanghai. And Fong was aware that without the connection to the rogue in Beijing everything he knew was as useless as the bits of paper vomited from the shredding machine in the archeologist’s office.

As he and Dr. Roung walked toward the abandoned factory in Ching, Fong sensed that he’d have only one chance to find that link. He threw open the iron door. They stepped in and Fong slammed the door shut. They stood in total darkness while the clang of metal echoed in the space.

Once the echo faded, Fong said, “It was a place of revenge . . .” he didn’t wait for Dr. Roung to respond, “ . . . and surprise. Wasn’t it?”

Fong hit the wall switch that Chen had set up. All four death rooms snapped into being – floors, walls and ceilings.

Fong stared into the archeologist’s pale eyes. They were retreating behind his army-issue metal-framed glasses. “Fine,” Fong spat out and took three steps toward the projections. Then he stopped and turned back to Dr. Roung.

“It was a cold night. The whore, Sun Li Cha, waited on the dock and greeted the foreigners. The other girls couldn’t make it. Some god with a sense of humour, or maybe it was just Soviet drunkenness, produced a vehicle that broke down and kept them from getting to the boat.” Fong looked back into the darkness. It was as if he was about to step onto a great stage and the archeologist was the only member of the audience. “But that wasn’t the only unexpected event of the evening was it, Dr. Roung? Don’t bother answering. We have lots of time.”

“The foreigners went to the bar. The boat headed out on the lake. Once it was far enough out, the crew was ushered into a lifeboat and sent home. After all, one of the Taiwanese had a pilot’s licence and what kind of trouble could seventeen foreigners get into on a calm lake? Right? Sorry, seventeen foreigners and a hooker – right, I’d almost forgotten – and Iman. Let’s start in the bar.”

On cue, the other rooms blacked out. Fong stepped into the projected bar room, the images playing across his face and body as he moved through the space. Dr. Roung followed Fong. The projections of the seven faceless bodies somehow stood out. The eldest, the one strung from the ceiling, even seemed to be swaying back and forth as if the boat were in motion on the lake. “Seven dead men. How?” The archeologist stared at Fong, the coloured lines of the projections playing across his face. “If you look about you, you’ll see that there are no half-empty glasses. An odd bar that has liquor and clean glasses but no half-empty glasses, don’t you think? Oh yes, there was the stain on the floor . . . right here.” Fong was at the side of the room farthest from the bar. He opened the satchel he was carrying and pulled out a bottle of champagne. “Remember, Iman was there. You remember him, don’t you, Dr. Roung? Sun Li Cha told me all about him being there. So as soon as the crew left and the boat was far enough out on the lake, Iman proposed a toast. After all, they had just completed a monumental business deal, hadn’t they?” He held up his bottle. “Champagne. The foreigners were all there; hey, this was a big celebration. A deal done. A long march completed! Iman poured them each a glass and then held his aloft. He shouted a toast, ‘To Blood!’” Fong shrieked. Then he paused and shrugged. “Perhaps it was more civilized: To Life or To Money or To Hell. Who knows? Well, of course you do, don’t you Dr. Roung! Well, whatever Iman said, the seventeen men must have cheered and then drunk their champagne – like good little capitalists.”

Fong opened the bottle and drank. It scorched his throat and made his stomach do a quick loop. “Don’t worry, Dr. Roung, this is just alcohol. No sedative in this champagne.” Then Fong turned the bottle over and the liquid splashed onto the projected image of the red carpet, beside the stain that was already there. “They didn’t all drink though, did they, Dr. Roung? Iman allowed everyone else to swallow the poison while he tilted his onto the carpet behind him. Thus, the unidentified stain the specialist went to such trouble to photograph.”

“It was the Triads . . .”

Fong didn’t let him complete his sentence, “Right, the Triads. I’d almost forgotten about them.”

“That Triad medallion . . .”

”Found right here. Correct?” Fong pointed to a space two feet to his left. “I worried for a bit about the medallion. Well, not really about the medallion. About the chain. Actually, about the single broken link of the chain. Well now, that’s not quite honest either, Dr. Roung. I was really worried about the four photographs the specialist supplied of the broken link. Four pictures, one link. Not very Chinese, don’t you think? So I had an associate of mine buy some of those medallions in Xian. They’re very popular with the tourists, don’t you know.”

Fong took one from his pocket and put it around his neck. He grabbed the medallion with his right hand and yanked downward. The chain broke. Fong held the broken thing up close to the archeologist’s face. “How many broken links, Dr. Roung?”

“Two.”

“Right. Two. Every time I’ve done it – two. But the medallion in the rug of the bar had only one broken link. Four photographs, one link – one attempt to blame the Triads for . . .” Fong spread his arms and turned, “ . . . this.”

Fong looked at the archeologist, but the man’s face revealed nothing.

“During the toasts, and I assume there were several, Iman’s people boarded the boat.” He indicated a projected portal. When he turned back to Dr. Roung he said, “That’s when he saw them, wasn’t it?”

“Who?” snapped back the archeologist.

Fong grunted. “Fine.” He began to walk and Dr. Roung followed. Quickly he left the bar. It blinked out. The bedroom with the two beheaded Americans snapped on. Fong didn’t bother to check if Dr. Roung was following him; he knew he was. “Sun Li Cha entertained the two Americans – briefly. She claimed they weren’t up to the task. When she left the room the islanders slipped in and slit their throats. These were the first murders. Silent murders that wouldn’t alarm the rest. After all, Westerners were so odd, who could tell what they were doing in their room? It gave the sedative more time to work on the Asians who just may not have drunk all their champagne – champagne is an acquired taste, isn’t it?” Fong looked at the projection of the two dead Americans. “I put my money on Jiajia for this piece of work. The switching of the heads could have been done by any of them. A little chi let loose on the boat, huh Dr. Roung?” He paused for a moment, a new thought coalescing in his mind. “Or all of them,” he muttered. He dismissed a vision of the room stuffed with islanders watching the heads being cut from the bodies.

“Next it was the Koreans’ turn to face their makers.” The bedroom disappeared and the video room came to light. Fong entered the projected room. Chen had set up the VCR and porno film as Fong had requested: a lurid image paused on the monitor. “The film was right here. Thirty-two minutes in. Thirty-two minutes since it had been turned on. At the point of the third copulation, if you’d care to check?” Dr. Roung stood like a man in an open field during a lightning storm, unsure whether to run or stand still. “Well, don’t check then. You’ll just have to take my word for it. Be that as it may, thirty-two minutes was long enough for the poison to almost paralyze the Koreans.” Then Fong turned to Dr. Roung. “These three men watched helplessly as they were hung by wire from that beam and then shot through the armpits and allowed to die. This one’s actually the simplest. Someone had a score to settle. Foreigners always forget that we have long memories, don’t they? Why do you figure that is, sir?”

The archeologist was about to speak then thought better of it.

“I figure it was sometime after they killed the Koreans that our intrepid hooker found her way to the deck and lo and behold, guess who’s there? An old fisherman. Now why would he be there, do you think? Huh?”

The archeologist looked away. “It wouldn’t have anything to do with you, would it, Dr. Roung? I mean this fisherman wouldn’t, for example, be taking you to the boat, would he? Now why would he do that?”

“I don’t know.” The words sounded ancient in the man’s mouth.

“Really! I thought you were the puzzle solver here, Dr. Roung.”

“I don’t know!” the archeologist said louder.

“Well, there were some things you didn’t know. That I grant. Surprises. Oh, there were big surprises, weren’t there? Follow me.” After a moment of darkness, the bar room with the faceless Chinese men snapped on. Fong crossed to a wall and picked up the broad flat hewer that Lily had placed there. It was the kind the islanders used to build trenches and cleave paths. He held it up. The light glinted off its sharpened edge. “Very effective for removing faces, I’d think. Bloody though. I wouldn’t have thought you’d be so bloody?”

The archeologist stood directly beneath where the swaying man would have been and turned to Fong. “Detective Zhong, I found something on that island – not something – someone. Someone and something of real value. Timeless value.”

Fong stood and waited. He imagined the swaying man, a bizarre pendulum in a world where time stood still.

“The dead girl, Chu Shi, Jiajia’s wife,” Fong stated flatly.

“Not just her. The whole possibility of something that lasts. Something beyond time.”

“And these mutilated men . . . ?”

“These Chinese men were willing to sell our very birthright. To sell something that is us – no, the very thing that is us – to make our entity into stupid little clay statues and sell them to foreigners.”

Fong walked past the projections of the faceless men at the bar and the others by the mirror. Then he turned to Dr. Roung, a surprised look on his face. “This was your idea?” It wasn’t an accusation. Just a simple question.

“Justice for what they were doing to us, don’t you see?”

Fong allowed his head to nod slowly. “Traitors.”

“Traitors to the black-haired people – yes, Zhong Fong, traitors who met their just reward.”

Fong nodded again then slowly walked out of the projected bar. Dr. Roung followed him like a beaten dog on a long leash.

Everything went dark. Then the runway room projection lit up. But this room was more than just a projection. The curtain was there. The runway was there. The six chairs were there – five occupied by dummies.

Fong entered the room. He pressed a wall switch and the runway lights came on. He pressed a second and the Counting Crows song “Angels of the Silences” began to play. He didn’t look back. “The islanders didn’t tell you about this, though, did they? Did they?” he snapped.

A harsh whispered, “No,” came from the darkness.

“Justice is a hard thing, Dr. Roung. It’s not a thing that can be pieced together from whole cloth. You never have all the pieces when you try to find justice. And your justice and the islanders’ justice may not – no – are not the same. Are they?”

“No.” The archeologist took off his army-issue glasses and rubbed his eyes. The last piece fell into place and Fong laughed.

“What?”

“Your glasses.”

“What about them.”

“Glasses are hard to get, aren’t they? Especially designer glasses. Right from the start, your glasses bothered me. Thinsulate vest and old army-issue glasses.” Fong strode over to the dummy of the eviscerated, castrated Japanese man with the fancy Parisian eyeglasses wobbly on his head. Fong pulled them off and turned to Dr. Roung. “Want them back?”

The man went white and stiff.

Fong reached into his pants and took something from his pocket. “Maybe you’d like this back.” He opened his fingers revealing the bronze statue of a horse’s frontquarters that he had taken from the archeologist’s desk.” Dr. Roung lunged at it, but Fong moved quickly aside. “It’s beautiful, isn’t it?” Dr. Roung didn’t answer, then nodded. “The hindquarters are beautiful too.”

“You’ve seen . . .”

He reached into his other pocket and brought out the hindquarters. Fong continued quickly. “What an unusual girl she must have been. She died of the first recorded case of typhoid on the island in – what – a hundred years? Dug up so an autopsy could be performed. You knew that, didn’t you?”

Dr. Roung nodded slowly again.

“Then she was buried a second time.” Fong paused and waited for the archeologist to take a breath. When he did, Fong added, “Then dug up again.”

Fong moved to the light switch and dimmed the lights. Then he plunged the room into darkness. “Did you know the fisherman was her father? That’s why her immune system wasn’t strong enough to protect her from the typhoid.” A long silence followed then another Counting Crows song, “Daylight Fading,” came up loudly. Beside him in the dark, Fong could hear the archeologist sobbing quietly.

Fong took a breath and pressed hard on the light switch. The stage blared into shocking light. And there, wrapped in filthy, night soil-sodden, crimson burial cloth, stood the partially naked body of Chu Shi, her back to them, held up by a pole.

A long tortured breath came from Dr. Roung.

The music increased in volume and Chu Shi seemed to move to the rhythm despite being dead and propped up on a stick.

“The Japanese were already dead when you arrived in the room. Weren’t they? Sure they were. After the fun with the Americans, the islanders split up, didn’t they? You and Iman led the revenge against the Taiwanese, but Jiajia had plans of his own in here, didn’t he? He and his men killed them and cut them open. Their intestines in their hands facing the stage. When you finally arrived, all the islanders were here, waiting. This was the finale, after all! Sure it was. Absolutely. Except it wasn’t the finale you thought. This wasn’t for them. This was for you. For the one who dared to sleep with one of their women. This wasn’t political. This was personal, wasn’t it? This was to prove to you that Chu Shi was nothing more than a whore who’d take off her clothes for anyone who had money. Who’d fuck anyone, from anywhere – after all, she was just a whore – wasn’t she?”

Dr. Roung fell to his knees and retched. His glasses fell off.

Fong knelt beside him. The vomit was surprisingly odourless. Fong whispered in his ear, “But what they did to her, to your precious Chu Shi, was not as bad as what you did to her. Was it?”

A torrent of bile spewed from the archeologist’s mouth and slapped to the floor.

“How did the typhoid get to the island? It was manmade, cultured typhoid that killed her. How did it get there?” A moment of silence and then Fong screamed, “Tell me!” He grabbed Dr. Roung’s arm and dragged him to his feet. Then he pushed him toward the empty chair at the head of the runway.

Throwing him into the seat Fong shouted, “This was your chair, wasn’t it?” Then he tilted Dr. Roung’s head up and toward the stage – toward the dead woman in the tattered, scarlet burial cloth on the runway – the tattered, scarlet burial cloth covered in night soil-laden earth.

Lily heard Fong yell. She had been holding her breath. Trying not to breathe in the filth. Trying not to imagine the horrible figures of the Japanese men watching her. Trying not to hear the music. Hoping this would be over before she shrieked or fainted or both. Then she stumbled forward.

Dr. Roung screamed and held his head in his hands.

Fong yanked the man’s face up so it looked right into his. “Tell me how the typhoid got to the island!”

“From Beijing. They sent it in the ceremonial wine, from Beijing. The wine at the island banquet.”

Fong stood and looked down at the man. “Did you know?”

Dr. Roung looked up at Fong and screamed, “No!” The sound of the single word echoed off the walls of the old factory and repeated itself over and over and over again as it spiralled downward, like water from a dirty tub, into the nowhere beneath.

Fong knelt in close. “Where in Beijing, Dr. Roung? What box in that city of boxes sent you the typhoid?”

Dr. Roung Chen shook his head.

Fong got to his feet and turned up the music. “Dance for him, Chu Shi!”

Lily felt an odd relief to be able to move. Then a horror at what she was doing. She imagined men watching her coming to life. Their hands moving. Their mouths cheering her. The death shroud seemed to be falling off her of its own accord. As if seeking a way back to its mistress thrice buried on the island.

Fong turned the archeologist’s face once again to the stage and using his fingers kept the man’s eyes wide open. “Look, Dr. Roung. Look what they did to your Chu Shi.”

The archeologist tried to pull his face away from the horror but Fong held him tight. Finally the man barked out, “The ministry.”

“Which ministry, Dr. Roung?” snapped Fong.

“The Interior Ministry,” the man cried out.

Fong found himself unable to breathe. The Interior Ministry! That was no small box of dissidents or hotheads. Not some solitary rogue. This was a full-fledged insurrection!

Dr. Roung fell to the floor on his knees. Tears streamed from his eyes. Saliva dripped from his mouth. Then he shouted, a haunted cry to the ceiling. “My mother did this!”

Fong turned slowly, “Madame Minister Wu is your mother?”

Lily heard it but didn’t hear it. Her own terror was rising. She was somehow or other back in the forensics lab all those years ago. The man on her. His hands ripping aside her skirt. Tearing her panties. Hurting her. Then Fong was there and somehow the man was gone and Fong was holding her, telling her, “It’s okay, Lily. It’s okay. You did great. We’ve got all we need.”

But that’s not what he’d said back then. He’d just held her. He’d hardly said anything. Then she felt his hard body holding her tighter. And she wrapped her arms around him and held him to her as if he were the last way out of a dawning nightmare.