The Hua Shan Hospital Murders

by David Rotenberg

  “It could fall within Special Investigations’ mandate, sir.” Fong didn’t bother adding that winter was fast approaching and the foreign population in the city was falling off dramatically, which made things slow in his office since all their cases had to involve foreigners. But the commissioner knew that. So why was he making such a big deal about this? Then he sensed another kind of antagonism in the office.

  Something personal.

  Fong looked at the four men and put it together quickly. They were all younger than him. It was very possible – not likely, but possible – that his return from west of the Wall had scuttled their plans for advancement. Tough, he thought. Then he revised that. The deal he’d struck in far-off Lake Ching had given him back his job. It was a fair deal from Fong’s point of view. But from the point of view of these men, Fong’s actions could well seem like those of a connected man – a party hack. From their perspective Fong had acted very much like an old-style party member – something Fong had fought against his whole life. It made him very uncomfortable, but he wasn’t about to give up his position to appease these men – no matter what they thought.

  He was head of Special Investigations and he’d follow up any damn case he wanted. Besides, Fong, although he would adamantly deny that he was superstitious, was a true believer when it came to intuition. And his intuition was screaming at him that there was something important in this case – although for the life of him he couldn’t even venture a guess as to what that could be.

  “Anything else?” Fong asked.

  “As a matter of fact there is – this,” said the commissioner as he tossed a departmental form on the desk. His smile was unpleasant.

  Fong glanced at the document. “Oh shit,” he thought.

  The commissioner’s smile widened. “It seems you flunked your firing range test . . . again, Detective Zhong.”

  Fong picked up the form. He was a lousy shot. He’d always been a lousy shot. “I’ll retake the test,” he said and paused just a breath then added, “Sir.” Before the commissioner could answer, Fong took his leave muttering, “I’ll be with the skeleton.”

  * * *

  Robert Cowens fingered the sixth 1,000-yuan note, then put it by the eel merchant’s right hand. The man continued slicing the freshwater delicacy with his razor blade and laying the long thin strips side by side on his cutting board. He nodded toward a brown package at his feet. Robert picked it up, handed it to his translator, and they headed deeper into the vast street market. Once they were safely away from the eel merchant, Robert’s translator opened the package. As they made their way through the thick crowd she whispered her translation of the government file just loudly enough for Robert to hear.

  Robert walked and listened trying to envision the Japanese-occupied Shanghai of January 1942. The attack on Pearl Harbor had only been a month earlier and already the German High Consul had arrived with the “final solution” for Shanghai’s latest European guests.

  The picture the document painted was not new to Robert although some of the details brought new issues to life. But as the translator droned on and on, the voice that came into Robert’s ears was that of his youngest brother: “No, Mommy. No Mommy no.” And the smell of fire that was quickly followed by a wave of fear so intense that Robert almost fainted.

  * * *

  “It was what?” Fong shouted.

  Lily gave him a don’t-use-that-tone-of-voice-with- me look. They were in the forensics lab – her domain since the old coroner had died at her side on a plane to Beijing some twenty months ago. She softened her features and snarked in English, “Too much small head for you understand?”

  The two street cops at Fong’s side gave each other a quick look and busied themselves with their notepads. The subject of Fong’s return with Lily from west of the Wall, his reinstatement as head of Special Investigations, his marriage to Lily culminating in the birth of a baby girl some three months ago made for rich veins of gossip throughout the station. But everyone was careful to keep their thoughts to themselves. Fong was their boss, and Lily’s temper was the stuff of legend. And, oh yes, both were extremely good at their jobs.

  “Let’s speak in the Common Tongue – the boys are getting antsy.”

  “Fine,” Lily replied in her beautiful lilting Shanghanese. “Fine, perhaps your small mind is incapable of understanding the facts forensic science clearly has placed before you.”

  “That may well be. So try me in simpler terms.”

  Lily let out a breath, more a sigh of resignation – something deeply Chinese. The two cops waited. She turned back to the autopsy table. The skull, neck bones, clavicle, upper arm bones, part of the rib cage, and one full set of digits were arranged on the metallic surface.

  “What happened to the rest?” Fong asked.

  “Animals maybe. More likely carried away by the construction crew before they spotted what they’d disturbed in the ground.”

  “And the facts that forensic science so clearly puts in front of us – one more time please, Lily.”

  “Male. Caucasian. Mid-life like someone else in the room although he’d be somewhat older now.”

  “You’re losing me again.”

  “Well, Fong, if he were alive today I’d say he’d be close to 350 years old – give or take a decade or two.”

  “Are you saying this Long Nose’s been dead for almost four hundred years?”

  “Give or take ten – maybe twenty.”

  The cops put down their pads. One mumbled, “Is this for real?”

  “We can’t catch guys who committed crimes last week, why are we concerned with stuff like this?” blurted out the other cop.

  “Because . . .” all eyes swivelled to Lily, “. . . of this.” She held up the even-sided crucifix. “And this.” She lifted the topside of the two sets of neck bones and placed the cross, face side down, against the bottom set. After a little prodding it sat in place. Then she put the front set of neck bones on top of the crucifix. The bones fitted perfectly around the metal thing.

  She looked at Fong.

  “A crucifix bone sandwich. I’m sure the new McDonald’s by Renmin Park will have it on the menu by next week,” said Fong.

  “Only if we tell them about it, Fong,” said Lily. With a wicked smile she added, “No more Dim Sum killer stuff, huh.”

  The men snickered. Fong gave them a look then without raising his voice said, “If it gets out, you’re both on garbage detail for a year. Someone has to make sure Shanghai’s recycling effort is successful.”

  In English Lily said, “You done big bad boss being?”

  Fong replied, “Sure.”

  Lily smiled. In Shanghanese she said, “Besides, Fong, the cross sort of stuck in his throat. That could be bad for business.”

  “No kidding.” He shifted his position and a darkness crossed his delicate features. “So cause of death was a crushed throat, right?”

  “We can’t be sure without more of the skeletal bones, but the damage to these throat bones would be enough to cause death, assuming he wasn’t already dead.”

  “He wasn’t,” Fong said. “The chin’s not broken on the skull is it, Lily?”

  “No, Fong, it’s fully intact.”

  The darkness on Fong’s face intensified as he said to Lily in English, “He was still alive.”

  “How do . . .”

  Fong turned to the taller cop and said, “Lie down.”

  The man looked for an explanation but when it quickly became clear that Fong had no intention of explaining his order the man simply lay down on his back.

  Fong crossed to the man’s right side and raised his foot quickly then snapped it downward, stopping less than an inch above the man’s fully exposed throat.

  The man’s eyes went large – no, huge – and he involuntarily moved his chin up to avoid the foot hitting his face.

  “It’s a reflex,” said Fong. “We protect our faces even when it exposes other more vulnerable parts. Only live people have ref
lex actions, Lily.”

  She nodded.

  Fong removed his foot and the cop rolled to one side.

  “So those neck bones were crushed when the man was still alive. Which leads to one other question.”

  “And that would be, Fong?”

  Fong went over to the skeleton and removed the top layer of damaged neck bones exposing the equalsided cross. Fong counted the neck bones down to the top of the cross then turned to Lily and counted the same number down her throat with his finger. His finger came to rest well below her larynx.

  Lily repeated her question, “And what one other question would that be, Fong?” ignoring the position of Fong’s finger on her neck.

  Fong dangled the crucifix on its chain and said in a hoarse voice, “How did they terrify this guy so thoroughly that he agreed to swallow this?”

  A thick silence filled the room. Fong allowed the cross to dangle from his fingers. Finally he turned to the cops, “Find me someone who knows about things like this.” The light bounded off the crucifix and momentarily flickered across Lily’s face. There was fear in her beautiful eyes. The image of a man on his knees, his mouth pried open and the metal thing shoved down his throat – no matter how far in the past – was a thing of childhood nightmares.

  Fong indicated to the two cops that they should leave. Once they were gone he turned to Lily, “So?”

  Lily opened a side drawer and took out a small object wrapped in a white linen cloth. She put it on the table and pulled aside the cloth.

  The tiny skull looked paper thin and ready to crumble.

  Lily let out a long line of sweet breath then said, “It’s from the same time as the adult skeleton – perhaps the exact same time.”

  Fong waited, knowing there was more to come. Finally Lily spoke, “A quick DNA scan suggests there was a relationship between the adult and the child.” A bitterness, sour, from dark places entered her voice as she added, “They murdered the baby with the father.”

  “So it would seem,” Fong replied, but he wasn’t sure that Lily was right about what happened all those years ago. It was finding the cross and the baby together that had his attention. Could this have been some bizarre religious murder? Such things were unheard of in secular China, but there were always rumblings – troubling rumblings.

  “Fong, please . . .” Lily began in a voice that cried out for Fong to comfort her. But he didn’t. And he didn’t know why he didn’t.

  Angel Michael’s state-of-the-art laptop was blinking when he returned from his late afternoon travels. He shucked off the coat that hid his worker’s overalls and punched two function keys. The website www.uofs.w.alberta.ca came up slowly. Along the left side were highlighted icons – class schedules, campus maps, professors’ bios, etc. The page itself had some basic palaver about the university – the usual totally inept academic advertising. Normal. Nothing to attract attention. Nothing out of the ordinary. Very common in every respect except one – there is no such university.

  Angel Michael quickly scrolled down to Courses and clicked on Political Science. Slowly a new list appeared from top to bottom. He scrolled down to a fourth-year course with the terse title: Justice. He clicked on the underlined word.

  A small box appeared at the bottom of the page. There were no instructions in the box.

  Angel Michael moved his cursor to the left of the small box and clicked once. Then to the right of the box and clicked again. Then above and below. Upon the last click the cursor within the box began to blink.

  Angel Michael typed in his password – FROM THE MOUTHS – and hit enter. The screen went blank then a large black cross filled the space. Eight pop-up boxes snapped on. This was no low-speed peripheral site.

  A counter at the bottom flashed the number 6.

  “So they wanted to talk again, did they?” thought Angel Michael as the blood vessel behind his eye began to pulse.

  He right-clicked on the number and punched in his second password: BY THE LIGHT.

  There was a pause, then in the chat box appeared the words: “Welcome Michael.”

  “Hi,” he typed.

  “Is Angel Michael’s flaming sword in hand?”

  “Not yet,” he lied. The pain swelled.

  “When?”

  “When I think it’s safe,” he lied again.

  Just for the slightest moment the chat box was empty – as if the person on the other end was holding his breath. Finally text appeared. “God be with you.” The first wave of pain crashed behind his left eye.

  Angel Michael turned off the computer without exiting the program and sat in the growing darkness trying to will away the pain. “Before the light – darkness,” he quoted. The idea comforted him. He crossed to the window and took out five stick matches from his pocket. He scraped them against the glass. They screeched like fingernails on a black board then flared light . . . and the pain started to recede.

  He looked out at the vastness that was Shanghai. He was alone in this strangest of strange cities. Just the way he wanted it.

  And despite what he had said in the chat room, his first message was already in place and ticking its way toward zero – toward the future rising of the light.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  THE IAGO CONUNDRUM

  “This is not a play about a dumb nigger!” shouted the towering Afro-American actor playing Othello as he lifted the middle-aged English actor playing Iago by the throat and held him against the stage-left proscenium arch.

  “The Iago Conundrum,” said Fong under his breath from his seat at the back of the Shanghai Theatre Academy’s decrepit old theatre. It had been his wife’s, Fu Tsong’s, favourite performance space and she had performed all over China and Japan.

  The Caucasian playing Iago was unable to speak. “Good,” Fong thought, “every bad actor silenced was a move in the right direction.”

  “You do that ‘I’m-a-bad-dude’ shit one more time Gummer and I’ll take your stupid British head off your wimpy British body – got it!"

  ” Gummer nodded and the massive black American released his single-handed grip. “Good,” he muttered and stomped away.

  As soon as he was gone, Gummer turned to the auditorium, and shielding his eyes from the lights, shouted, “Roger, I was only doing what you directed me to do – wasn’t I?”

  The Iago Conundrum, Fu Tsong, Fong’s deceased wife, had called it. It was a classic stage-acting problem. Shakespeare insists that Iago dupe Othello over a remarkably short period of time into murdering his own wife – and all on stage. The audience must know what Iago is doing to follow the plot but at the same time Othello must not. If Iago plays his part so that the audience can follow every twist and turn of his scheming then Othello is made to look like a fool – or as the Afro-American actor so charmingly put it – a dumb nigger. However, if Iago plays his cards too close to the chest, thus making his words totally believable to Othello, it is very possible that the audience will miss the joy of following the scheming – point by point. The Iago Conundrum.

  The director wisely sidestepped Mr. Gummer’s question and called for a scene without his two male leads. The actresses playing Othello’s wife, Desdemona, and Iago’s wife, Emilia, were sent for.

  Fong looked around the theatre. Its mustiness was familiar. Comforting. He’d spent many, many joyous hours here watching his brilliant wife rehearse and perform. Since her death, he’d haunted the theatre – finding it a good place to think. There was hub-bub and chaotic energy everywhere, but since none of it concerned him directly he found a profound stillness amidst the whirlwind. A deep peace to which he often retreated. Lily didn’t know. She wouldn’t have approved. He didn’t want to have to explain.

  He fingered his copy of Othello. Fu Tsong had played Desdemona. She had used the very script that sat in his lap with its Mandarin on the left and its English translation on the facing page. On some pages she had written notes about the text – insights etched in her remarkably delicate hand. He treasured them as access points to
her. To her privacy.

  She’d loved Shakespeare’s plays and had made Fong read and discuss them with her as she developed her characters. It was during one of these discussions that she’d told him of the Iago conundrum. Like so many memorable conversations with Fu Tsong it’d taken place mid-coital. He was on his back, she straddling his legs.

  “Inside hug,” she’d announced as she tightened her muscles around his member – and he’d gasped. Then he opened his eyes and saw her staring down at him.

  “What?” he’d protested.

  “You like it when I take control,” she said sliding her right foot forward so she could push off and rise up and down his length. “You like that.”

  “So?” he’d croaked.

  “So why do you resist me?” she’d asked and quickly rose and fell twice. “Don’t you want to be swept away, to be bowled over, to fall hopelessly in love?”

  He nodded slowly.

  “Then why do you resist? Give over!”

  Fong slipped a foot over her bent knee and dragged himself to a sitting position. They were equal now. He rose when she did and fell as she fell.

  She smiled.

  “What?” he demanded again.

  “In your head this feels better – less being swept away – but Fong, in your heart this feels like you’ve stopped a mighty river. And of course in your thing you feel nothing.” Then she’d smiled broadly and announced, “It’s the Iago Conundrum of Sex.”

  “What?” he’d asked yet again.

  “You have to work on your vocabulary husband – how many ‘what’s’ is that in one sex session?” Then she’d explained the conundrum. At the end she said, “However, in the Iago Conundrum of Sex there’s a way out.”

  “How? I’m not backing down, Fu Tsong,” he announced through gritted teeth as he followed each of her rises and falls so that no one led and no one followed. Nor did anyone get much pleasure.

  “How?”