A Calamitous Chinese Killing

by Shamini Flint

  “But I thought he was killed by thugs? It was in the newspapers.”

  “Yup, but now it seems it wasn’t random, someone hired those thugs.” He wondered whether to accuse Wang Zhen there and then of being responsible and then decided to keep his powder dry for a few moments while he figured out Professor Luo’s story.

  “And the girl? You mentioned a girl?” she continued.

  “Stabbed at the Silk Market – she was on the way to tell Justin’s mother what she knew.”

  “Oh God…” She buried her face in her hands and he could hear the muffled sobs. He was impressed with her resilience when she took a deep breath and raised her head again. “Who would have done such a thing?”

  “That’s what we’re trying to find out.”

  “Do you think it has anything to do with my father’s arrest?”

  There was no point misleading the girl. “This is the first time we’ve heard of that,” he explained. “I suppose it depends on why he was arrested.”

  “Being falun gong,” she answered. “Nothing to do with Justin.”

  Nothing to do with Justin. Nothing to do with his murder. In a world of infinite potential outcomes, it was possible, of course, but the plump policeman had never been a fan of coincidences. And what had the gorgon at the gate said – that the police who’d been investigating Justin’s death had also mentioned Professor Luo’s ties to the falun gong. As a threat, as leverage. His gut insisted there was a connection and Singh was not one to ignore its insights.

  “My sources did not mention the arrest of Professor Luo so it cannot have been through traditional channels,” said Li Jun.

  “He’s ex-police,” explained Singh in answer to Dao Ming’s questioning look.

  “So who took the professor?”

  “Security apparatus – he was arrested at Tiananmen Square. He was practising falun gong in public.”

  “Most likely he has been taken to a re-education camp,” explained Li Jun, looking away from the man’s daughter. No one in China was under any illusions about the conditions in such detention centres for enemies of the state. Especially for falun gong practitioners. The websites that detailed their punishment, the torture, were taken down as quickly as they were put up, but everyone had seen something, heard something, or known someone. In China, where rumours were currency, information on the treatment of falun gong was the gold standard.

  “Re-education?” asked Singh.

  “Through labour.”

  Singh shook his great head and tried to understand the Chinese dynamic. Re-education through labour? What next? Whatever happened to evening classes and Open University?

  “But why haven’t the family been told?”

  “This is China, Inspector,” said Li Jun, “not Singapore. The security forces do not feel obliged to keep family informed.”

  But there was still one huge puzzle at the heart of the enigma. “He was picked up exhibiting his falun gong tendencies at Tiananmen?” Singh remembered his brief stop – the gawking tourists and the security personnel. Hardly a private spot.

  “Yes,” said Wang Zhen.

  “He was courting arrest. Why?”

  “That’s what I don’t understand,” said Dao Ming, tears running unchecked down her face. “He didn’t tell me anything, didn’t warn me. It is such strange behaviour. He went out that morning…he must have known what he was going to do. I almost can’t believe it – except for the fact that he’s not been home for more than three weeks.”

  “Guilt,” said Singh, his face a grim mask. “Only guilt could drive a man to such extremes.”

  “But what did he have to feel guilty about?” demanded Dao Ming, her voice rising in anger at the implied accusation. “He was a good man. He helped people, he fought corruption, he tried to stop the illegal land seizures…and he would never have left my sister and me in such a way…not knowing…” Her voice trailed off as she uttered the last part of her defence and found it threadbare. The fact of the matter was that that was precisely what her father had done.

  Singh cracked his knuckles together. “I can think of only one plausible reason – he felt guilty over Justin’s death.”

  “Are you accusing Professor Luo of murdering Justin Tan?” asked Li Jun.

  Dao Ming opened her mouth to protest but the only sound she emitted was a soft moan. “It cannot be,” she said at last. “He would never do such a thing.”

  “The killing was done by a third party,” pointed out Li Jun in an almost inaudible voice.

  “He hired the thugs and was then overcome with guilt?” suggested Singh, one eye on Wang Zhen to watch his reaction.

  “We have to find my father,” whispered Dao Ming.

  ♦

  The man being wheeled into the operating theatre was overweight. The large hump of his stomach under the green hospital covering would have done a camel proud. He was still awake, sedation would only occur in the theatre itself. “You are sure? You have found me a good heart?” The orderly nodded but did not speak, just continued with the job of pushing the trolley bed through swing doors at a measured pace. This wasn’t an emergency or a television drama so there was no need to rampage through the corridors at top speed, shouting out incomprehensible medical terminology. This fellow was sufficiently heavy that such speed would have been impossible anyway. The wheels of the bed protested squeakily.

  He noted that the man in the bed was red faced and sweating. Most likely he was nervous, although a man that fat did not need an excuse to perspire. The orderly didn’t envy the surgeon. The procedure would take hours; a heart and lung transplant was not a walk in the park. For a patient like this one, with the layers of fat to cut through and the already heightened blood pressure, it would be a close-run thing.

  “The donor is young?”

  “Young enough,” replied the orderly calmly. He didn’t want to deliver him to the OT on the verge of a heart attack. The doctors and administrators would not be amused. It would be exactly like killing the golden goose.

  “Soon you will be up and about and twice the man you used to be.” He added this last with a wink that seemed to reassure the patient and even provoked a smile.

  They reached the theatre and the man was wheeled in and then quickly transferred, although not without a grimace from the nurses, onto the cold steel table. The operating surface was one of three. The far end was occupied as well, although this patient, young, thin and tall from his profile under the sheet, had already been sedated. The orderly noted the patient look over and flinch at the sight of the tube running into his mouth.

  “Is that the donor?” he asked in a whisper, as if afraid to wake the sedated man.

  “No, he is also here for a transplant.”

  “How come – what do you mean? I thought this was for me.”

  “Yes,” said the doctor, as he walked over for the first time, all in green and with a white shield over his mouth and nose. It muffled his voice, but the eyes behind the spectacles were alert, albeit underscored by dark shadows and bags large enough to go on holiday with. “You are due for a lung and heart transplant. That guy just needs a couple of kidneys.”

  “Nothing goes to waste, eh?”

  “That’s right,” agreed the doctor. “In fact, we will even keep parts like the cornea in deep freeze for a later transplant…so if you ever have trouble with your vision…”

  The man stared upwards at the ceiling and the bright lights that made the room seem like a waiting room for hell. No secrets could be kept here; there were no dark shadows where the lies could hide. He shivered suddenly and goosebumps popped up all over his luminescent flesh.

  “Cold?” asked a nurse.

  He shook his head but did not articulate his fears.

  “Are you ready?” asked the surgeon.

  The patient nodded, turning once more to look at the other patient waiting for his transplant. The squeaking of wheels informed him that another trolley bed was coming through the doors. He tried to squint in
that direction, eager to catch a glimpse of the donor. He’d been assured of a young and virile man, exactly the sort of person from whom you would want to receive a heart and lungs. He paused to regret a lifetime of good living and the dozens of unfiltered cigarettes that had left him at this medical last resort. The trolley was wheeled into the space between the two men just as the doctor held the anaesthetic mask to his face. He inhaled deeply, felt his eyes roll back and descended into oblivion.

  “You’re late,” complained the doctor, “that guy has been out for half an hour already.”

  The orderly didn’t disagree. “Problem upstairs, some of the donors were not too happy.”

  “He must be at least sixty,” pointed out the surgeon.

  “Patient won’t know.”

  “He might guess when he has a heart attack in three years.”

  “Would have paid in full by then.”

  The surgeon shrugged. The man was right – besides, that aspect of the business was not his problem. He just had to conduct the transplants and in that he was an expert. He’d lost count of the many hundreds he’d performed as medical tourism turned China into a popular destination for those whose life expectancy did not match their ambition. The nurses deftly shifted the donor onto the spotless table.

  “Ready?” asked the surgeon.

  “Ready,” agreed the team of doctors and nurses in unison.

  “We’ll do the kidney transplant first. That procedure should be relatively quick. Then we will conduct the heart and lung transplant.” He glanced at the patient, naked now, his belly like a limestone hill. “Not sure if this guy will survive it. He’s a mess.”

  “Wasting the organs,” said the nurse primly.

  “He paid,” said the doctor, holding out a hand. “Scalpel,” he barked and was handed the steel-coloured instrument with the viciously sharpened blade.

  “Here we go,” and he made a short but deep incision.

  The kidney removal proceeded without complications and he left it to his assistants to perform the transplant into the waiting man. He needed to focus on the removal of heart and lung. The surgeon made an incision starting above and finishing below the sternum, cutting all the way to the bone. He retracted the skin edges neatly.

  “Bone saw,” he urged, turning to the nurse so she could wipe away the sweat on his brow. Despite the cold temperatures maintained in the OT, he was sweating like a pig.

  Using the bone saw, he cut the sternum down the middle.

  He let the nurse utilise the rib spreaders to give him access to the heart and lungs of the patient. His patient had undergone a similar ordeal and was now hooked to a hearth-lung machine to circulate and oxygenate blood. The donor, chest open and soon to be empty, didn’t need that, there were no replacement organs waiting for him. The surgeon carefully removed the heart and lungs and then turned to the obese man, positioned them in the cavity and began the delicate job of sewing them in place. It would be hours before he would be sure that the donor organs were functioning normally so that the hearth-lung machine could be withdrawn and the chest closed.

  He instructed the other doctors to harvest whatever else could be preserved from the donor before his empty chest and removed heart destroyed the value of the remaining organs. Death was quick to render all it touched useless. He wondered for a moment how the donor had ended up in front of him. He seemed a healthy if slightly elderly man. The doctor dismissed the thought as pernicious and continued with his work on the patient who was doing better than he’d expected. Perhaps the freshly harvested organs that he’d been bequeathed would not go to waste after all.

  A short distance away, the nurses began the job of stuffing the empty cavities and sewing up the cadaver, a nicety the surgeon insisted on although in all likelihood the donor body, which had once been Professor Luo, falun gong practitioner and civil rights activist, would be cremated so that the family never became aware of his fate. Ashes to ashes, dust to dust – the best way the surgeon knew to disguise missing organs.

  Eleven

  “So that was Wang Zhen…”

  “Yes,” said Li Jun. “According to Han, it was his bodyguards that tried to beat up Justin.”

  “That time you intervened outside the nightclub,” agreed the inspector. “At least we know the connection between Justin and Wang Zhen now. Presumably, it was some sort of altercation over the girl, Professor Luo’s daughter.”

  “It seems the most likely explanation,” said Li Jun. “She was Justin’s girlfriend, now she is with Wang Zhen. You think he ordered a second attempt on Justin and succeeded in having him murdered?”

  “It’s possible, I suppose. It seems that he got what he wanted anyway.” Singh was not wholly convinced. Surely, there were other ways to get the girl. Whatever happened to flowers and poetry?

  “So maybe this is a simple case, after all,” remarked Li Jun. He continued with real feeling, “And I know very well that the H.C.C. believe they are above the law.”

  “So Wang Zhen might not expect to face any consequences even if he was responsible for Justin’s death?” asked Singh.

  “That is correct. There are some who think that the father might be elected Premier the next time the People’s Congress meets.”

  The men reached the front gate and stopped to admire the red Ferrari parked outside. Singh had no doubt that his wife would be shocked at such indulgence of a child. Any hypothetical child of his would have had to beg to borrow the car key or been told to use public transport. And that was the way it should be, argued Mrs Singh, from her temporary residence in his head. How will they learn discipline and hard work if they are given everything they want without having to earn it? The plump policeman chewed on his lower lip ruefully. It was never a good sign when he agreed with his wife’s remarks, imagined or real.

  “Are you hungry?” asked Li Jun.

  Singh abandoned his efforts to bite off his lower lip. “Who do you think gave Dao Ming the bruise on her cheek?” he mused. “It looked fresh.”

  “I have no idea,” said Li Jun.

  “Well, I think it was Wang Zhen,” insisted Singh. “A young man who treats women like possessions finds it much easier to give in to violent instincts.”

  Li Jun looked dubious.

  “Also,” he added, “there was a small cut in the centre of the bruise.”

  “Why does that matter?”

  “Because Wang Zhen was wearing a signet ring.”

  “I too saw the ring,” said Li Jun, “but I do not have your ability at deductive reasoning.”

  Singh stared at his colleague suspiciously. Was he being sarcastic?

  “Why would she run straight into the arms of such a nasty piece of work right after the death of a fine young man like Justin?” he demanded.

  Li Jun shrugged. “Who can understand the young?”

  “The young are exactly the same as us except with less facial hair,” said the Sikh, scratching his beard. He turned his face to the last of the evening rays and enjoyed the warmth for a second.

  “She must feel very lonely after Justin’s death and her father’s disappearance,” suggested Li Jun with lugubrious empathy.

  “Or she might have hoped to get information from him,” suggested Singh. He was always happy to credit ulterior motives to unlikely romances. He’d seen too many corpses of wives and girlfriends to be a romantic. “And it worked. He found out what happened to her father.”

  “I will ask my colleagues if they can find out anything further about the fate of Professor Luo,” said Li Jun. “It will be easier now that we have an idea why he has been taken.”

  “Do they ever get released?” asked Singh.

  “Those who have been sent for rehabilitation? Sometimes.” He grimaced. “But they are not always in great condition – the food is bad, the work hard and there are rumours of torture and much worse.”

  “What’s worse than torture?”

  “Death.”

  Singh felt as if he was standing on the edg
e of a precipice. Everything that he believed about justice and law enforcement was turned on its head in China.

  “But how do they get away with that?” he demanded.

  “Accidents, suicide, killed attempting to escape, fighting with other inmates, sickness – there are so many different ways to die in custody.”

  The Singaporean sighed. Was it so different in any other country? Death in custody was a blot on many penal systems.

  “And for falun gong, it is worse.”

  Singh looked up expectantly. What could be worse than death?

  “There are a rumours that prisoners are being used to make profits for government officials.”

  “What do you mean? Some sort of free labour scam?”

  “Their organs are being harvested for the black market.”

  Singh shook his head as if trying to clear his ears. “I beg your pardon?”

  “There is a huge organ transplant business here in China. People come from all over the world for new kidneys, hearts or lungs. Executed prisoners were a source of organs. But now there are rumours that officials are using live prisoners – especially falun gong – because there is so much demand but not enough supply.”

  The policeman closed his eyes. Was this a further example of China’s new capitalism?

  They both heard the front door slam and knew that Wang Zhen would soon be upon them. Singh tried to get his mind back to the matter at hand and forget, pretend he’d never heard, what Li Jun had just told him. He ran a hand down the smooth bonnet of the car. If he’d been a teenager he would have considered scratching the paintwork with a coin, a blow for the oppressed masses against the capitalist freeloaders. In the circumstances, he merely wondered what Mrs Singh would think if he ever came home in a car like this one.

  The bonnet was still warm – Wang Zhen had not been at the house for long when they had barged in and interrupted the tête-à-tête and he was leaving already. Whether he’d arranged Justin’s murder or not, all was not well between him and Dao Ming.