The Lake Ching murders

CHAPTER TWO

The darkness in the trunk of the Chaika was almost complete. It was getting colder. Fong slowed his breathing and ordered himself to think. As the head of Special Investigations, Shanghai Division, he’d come across more than one body that had suffocated in the trunk of a car. His eyes slowly adjusted. Murky shadows took on shapes. He reached upward and felt the rusting inside of the Russian-made car’s trunk lid. He had some room above him. He propped himself up on his elbows and his head touched metal. Flakes of corrosion fell into his hair and down his neck.

Then the Chaika hit a bump. The rocklike shock absorbers did little to cushion the blow inside the car and nothing for Fong in the trunk. His head smashed against the lid then his elbows slammed to the floor. Blood quickly matted his hair and dribbled down his forehead. One elbow was skinned almost to the bone. He curled into a ball on the floor of the trunk, ignored the bleeding and tried to think.

Another bump.

His whole body went straight up, hit the lid and then thumped back down.

The car accelerated and took a hard right. He shoved his hands straight out over his head as he slid along the floor of the trunk. He hit hard. As he did, his hands scraped across a cavity in the metal sidewall. He reached in and touched rubber. A small spare tire. He yanked it free of its strappings and skittered back to the centre of the trunk. The tire could protect his head like a cushion.

The air in the confined space was already rank and Fong knew that carbon monoxide was probably coming up from the tailpipe. Chaikas were not famous for their fine workmanship. He turned over and using his fingernails scraped at the edge of the trunk’s shredded carpet. He tore a large patch of skin from the back of his right hand but ignored it as he wedged his hand beneath a corner of the coarse material. Then he leaned back and pulled with all his might. Several square feet of the mouldy stuff came up. He reversed himself so he could work on the section where he’d been lying. It took him time – and two substantial bumps – to make the shift. This side of the carpet came up quickly. Fong gathered it together and pushed it as far forward as he could.

He was breathing hard and his sweat was already mixing with the blood from his head, elbow and hand. He stank of fear.

Another bump. Fong’s head snapped back and he took the blow on his forehead. When he landed, his hand caught on the corner of something on the floor. He yanked it open. He reached in and found a partially inflated inner tube.

He looked into the tire well. The metal was so rusted that it was almost translucent. He searched desperately for something to poke a hole in the metal. Finding nothing, he got himself into a half-sitting position, leaned back on his elbows and stuck his foot into the well. Several kicks later he had a hole – and enough air to stay alive. He repositioned himself beside the air hole and drew his knees up. He put the small tire beneath his head and the inner tube on top of him. Then he covered the mound of himself with the shredded carpet.

Through the hole he watched the road whiz by – China whiz by. He’d been confined to that village west of the Wall for over two years. Before that he’d been in Ti Lan Chou prison for . . . it felt like a very long time. But now he was travelling. Moving. He watched China through the hole. Pebbles and dirt, then moments of pavement, then pebbles and dirt, slush, pavement, dirt, pavement – and finally sleep.

And dreams.

He was on a palette on the ground, his mother standing over him. She was crying. He tried to speak but blood came from his mouth and a deep rattle sounded in his tortured lungs. Fong knew where he was. He was in their home in Shanghai’s Old City. He was a boy. It was before the liberation. He’d gotten typhoid from handling the night soil. He wanted to reach up and tell his mother that it was okay, that she mustn’t cry. But he couldn’t speak.

His grandmother came in and shrieked at his mother who bowed quickly then put on her “brave face” and hurried back to work in the dark streets. Fong looked at his grandmother’s lined, stern face. It betrayed nothing. She barked out, “You’re not going to die. Night soil has been the business of this family for twelve generations. We’ve all had what you have. Don’t be a coward and it will go away – or it won’t then it won’t matter if you are a coward or not.”

He went to call for his beloved father but found himself running.

Running. Wang Jun, his older friend and colleague at his side. It was fifty-four months ago on Shanghai’s waterfront. No, in the Pudong industrial area. Federal troops firing at them. Ting of bullets off brick. Thunk against a car door. Sliding skip of metal jackets against blacktop. A windshield shattering. Then thud. Wang Jun hit and crashing to the ground. Then thwap, thwap, thwap – Fong’s feet on the pavement. Running. Running. Not looking back. Never seeing Wang Jun’s body. Never looking. Just running.

Running – into Fu Tsong’s outstretched arms.

“Be still, Fong, and we’ll get through this.

“This is a dream,” he said.

“Hardly. A nightmare more likely.”

Fong looked up. He was in a theatre, his deceased wife, the famous actress Fu Tsong, at his side.

“But be good Fong and as I’ve said, we’ll get through this.”

The bounce of the stage lights came out into the house just enough to illuminate her beautiful features. Fong held his breath. He didn’t want the illusion to return to drops of mist. He hadn’t been able to dream her for years.

Then she laughed.

Tendrils of joy, the very heart of her life force, spread out through the fetid air of the place. And he gloried in her presence.

Then she reached over and took his hand. Her elegant tapered fingers interlocked with his calloused ones. He caught a hint of her perfume.

He coughed.

For a moment Fong couldn’t figure out what a tire was doing beneath his head.

Then he remembered.

Dust was pouring in through the hole in the wheel well. He rolled away and covered his mouth.

And curled up once more with his memories. A wave of loneliness the likes of which he hadn’t experienced since he entered Ti Lan Chou prison swept over him. For the first time since he had killed the assassin Loa Wei Fen in the construction site in the Pudong, he felt tears coming to his eyes. He blinked them back. He was too old to cry.

The car bounced. Fong’s body rose; the inner tube protected him from the trunk’s ceiling and when he fell the tire protected him from the floor. He wondered where they were taking him. Then he stopped wondering and accepted. The mongoose stopped its pacing and sat at the base of his spine. Where they were going was out of his control. No point wasting energy on that. They’d no doubt get wherever they were going soon enough.