The Golden Mountain Murders

by David Rotenberg

  A ZHONG FONG MYSTERY

  THE GOLDEN MOUNTAIN MURDERS

  DAVID ROTENBERG

  NERO

  Published by Nero Books,

  an imprint of Schwartz Media Pty Ltd.

  Level 5, 289 Flinders Lane

  Melbourne Victoria 3000 Australia

  email: enquiries@blackincbooks.com

  http://www.nerobooks.com.au

  First published in Canada

  by McArthur & Company, Toronto, 2005

  Copyright © 2009 David Rotenberg

  All Rights Reserved.

  No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form by any means electronic, mechanical, photo copying, recording or otherwise without the prior consent of the publishers.

  The National Library of Australia Cataloguing-in-Publication entry:

   Rotenberg, David (David Charles)

   The Golden Mountain murders / David Rotenberg.

   ISBN: 9781863954549 (pbk.)

   Police--China--Fiction.

   China--Fiction.

   813.54

  Design & Composition: Mad Dog Design Inc.

  Printed in Australia by Griffin Press

  This book is for Susan, Joey and Beth without whom none of these novels could have come into being.

  As well I’d like to thank:

  my close friend and business partner Bruce; Michael and Kim whose faith in the work has been unwavering; the real Zhang Fang my fabulous translator; and my actors without whose trust I would truly be lost.

  For those of you who don’t know Vancouver — you have a treat awaiting you — it may be comforting to know that the geography described in the novel is correct and yes there is a restaurant where they insult you the moment you enter the j’nt.

  PROLOGUE

  BLOOD HEADS

  Beneath the corrugated iron roof and inside the razor wire-topped fencing is a place of suffering. Wives nurse husbands, brothers sisters, and in the far corner of the large room a sun-scorched peasant father cradles the head of his twenty-six-year-old dying son.

  Armed guards wearing surgical masks keep those outside the fence outside and those inside the fence inside.

  If you suddenly begin to lose weight or feel inexplicably weak or break out in skin lesions in Anhui Province you will be rounded up and brought here or to one of the other two hundred-odd governmentrun compounds like this one.

  And once you are here – you will never leave.

  Blood trickles from the dying man’s nose. His father begs for a bandage and some water. His pleas go unheeded. He rips a panel from his shirt and presses it hard against his son’s nose. The man whimpers in pain. His cries simply enter the cacophony of anguish that forms the soundscape of this place.

  The man’s blood quickly saturates the cheap cotton of his father’s shirt and sluices onto the older man’s hands – hands that have been cut and nicked by so many years of hard labour in the fields that they never really heal. And the blood seeps into one of the open crevices it finds there – and deposits its contagion that will first make the man’s father lose weight then extrude blood that can carry the virus to yet another victim.

  The flies buzz in lazy circles awaiting their daily feast. The sun beats down on the metal roof and bakes the flesh beneath in preparation for the festivities – and Death lifts its spindle legs high, throws back its withered head in glee and dances its celebration to the symphony of sorrow that comes from within.

  Fong was in a small mud-floored room in a small mud-walled hut in the far-off province of Anhui, whose major export may well be mud – or mud products. Fong didn’t know.

  If they didn’t sell mud maybe they sold their second most abundant natural resource, bugs. There were bugs everywhere. Fong really didn’t care for bugs. Especially country bugs. At least bugs in Shanghai were civilized. Here out on the very edge of nowhere who knew what bugs could do – had done – were about to do. Not Fong. He recalled reading an English-language picture book to his daughter Xiao Ming, when she was just two or three. Something about a boy who could fly who had a fairy friend called Tinker-something-orother who also flew. Everybody flew. His daughter had taken one look at the print of the flying, winged sprite and pronounced: Bug!

  Fong was tempted to smile at the memory – but didn’t. Instead he readjusted his butt on the threelegged bamboo stool and wondered if country bugs were attracted to or repelled by human fecal matter. This thought entered his head because the peasant sitting on the stool on the other side of the rickety table had lost his bravura about half an hour ago, the logic of his lies about ten minutes back, and just moments ago control of his bowels. As the son of night-soil collectors, Fong was not bothered by human feces – but he was worried about the country bugs the material might attract.

  Fong shook his head as he glanced at his colleague Captain Chen, whose face even in the dim light of the hut managed to astound with its ugliness. Fong left the hovel, watching where he placed his feet – the crunch of bugs underfoot always took his appetite from him.

  The middle-aged Caucasian woman for whom he had sent awaited him.

  He instinctively reached for his pack of Kents only to remember that he hadn’t smoked for over nine years – since he’d killed the assassin Loa Wei Fen in the construction pit in the Pudong across the Huangpo River from the Bund. He made as if to brush lint from his shirt pocket and turned to the white woman. “You are from . . .?”

  “Yale, an important American university.”

  Fong took that in, then said, “Anhui Province is a long way from America and its universities, whether they are important or not.”

  “Fine,” she said as she widened her stance and put her plump fists on her waist. Then she changed tack. “Your English is very good.”

  “Yes it is,” Fong said, refusing her compliment. “You are here in Anhui Province for what reason exactly?”

  The woman reached into the pocket of her khaki pants and produced a folded sheaf of papers and held them out to Fong. The documents were festooned with official stamps and seals. Fong read the first page of what he thought of as Beijing wingowango and got the gist. “You’re here to train nurses in dealing with a disease.”

  “AIDS. You Chinese have to start calling it by its name.”

  Fong didn’t care for the “you Chinese” part of the nurse’s statement but agreed with the rest of it. He accepted that to acknowledge a problem is the first step in solving it. So he said, “AIDS,” then added, “happy?”

  “Not much. What are you going to do with the man in there?”

  “Are you concerned for his health?”

  “Hardly. I want vermin like him stopped from coming to villages like this and collecting blood from these poor people.”

  “I understand your concern, but that’s how he makes money. He’s a blood head.”

  “Blood head? Is that what you call them? What he is, is a walking disease. An infected rat ready to bite these people.”

  Fong didn’t agree. What this man was, was a poor man who had seen a way of making a few extra yuan. Extra yuan that could allow him to change his life. Although, now that he sat in his own shit, that opportunity was gone. Now he was no more than a link. Hopefully the first link in a chain that would lead Fong back to the money behind all this.

  The American nurse lit a cigarette. Fong allowed himself to breathe in the smoke-scented air. “Do you want one?” she offered, holding out her pack of Marlboros.

  “No thanks,” his mouth said while his mind screamed, “Why not?”

  “You’re a better man than I,” she said with a smile.

  Fong almost corrected her, “than me, not than
I” but was stopped when the nurse reached into her pocket and came out with a palmful of hard candies, each wrapped in cellophane. “Then how about a sweet?”

  “Thanks, no.”

  “Come on, I’m trying to make peace. We’re on the same side, you know.”

  Fong wasn’t sure about that. “I have no taste for sweets anymore.”

  “Funny, isn’t it? You crave sweets as a kid then you lose your taste for them.”

  “Until you get old.”

  “True. Until you get old. So, what are you going to do with that man in the hut?”

  “Get him to tell us where he takes the blood he collects.”

  It didn’t take long. The blood head was terrified. He kept appealing to Captain Chen as a fellow “countryman.” To have a little sympathy, to just let him go.

  “Tell us where you take the blood you collect from these villagers and we’ll see what can be done.”

  The man began to cry. “They’ll kill me and burn my house to the ground.”

  Fong knew that both were distinct possibilities. He turned to Chen, “Call the office. Get them to authorize the money to move this man and his family west.” Chen pulled out his cell phone, turned away and placed a call.

  The man turned to Fong. “You can do that for us?’

  Fong nodded but did not speak. After all these years as a cop he still found bald-faced lying difficult, even though in this case he understood that a lie now could lead to a lot of good later.

  Chen snapped the cell phone shut and nodded, “It’s been authorized.”

  Fong turned to the blood head, “You heard him. No more excuses. Where do you take the blood you collect?”

  Three hours of hard travelling later, Fong and Captain Chen stood across a dirt road from an inn that had been a point of commerce since the early days of Manchu rule back in the 1600s. Its sweeping roof, wide hardwood porch and open-slat exterior gave it a pleasing aspect. If you had to be in the country at least you could stay in one of the old Imperial Inns. Behind the inn a river widened as it made its way slowly towards the sea.

  “Are we waiting for something?” Chen asked.

  Fong ignored the question and watched a large brown bug with several million hairy legs wend its way up Captain Chen’s pant leg. “You have a bug on your leg.”

  Chen shrugged, “It’s the country – there are bugs in the country.”

  The thing curled into a tight ball about the size of a small plum. “Why does it do that?”

  “It’s scared, I guess.”

  “I’ve been scared lots of times, Captain Chen, and I’ve never done that.”

  “You’re not a bug, sir.”

  Fong looked hard at Chen. There wasn’t even a hint of sarcasm in this profoundly ugly countryman who now was married to his ex-wife, Lily.

  “Say that again, Chen.”

  Without a moment of hesitation, Chen repeated, “You’re not a bug, sir.”

  Still no hint of the sardonic. Fong suspected that Chen didn’t even know what sardonic was or that such a thing as sardonic existed. Chen was the most honest man Fong had ever met and a fine influence over his daughter Xiao Ming, who lived with the Captain and Lily. “You’re right,” Fong found himself saying, then added, “Who did you call when the blood head thought you were calling Special Investigations?”

  “Lily.”

  “Ah. How is she?”

  “Good.”

  “And Xiao Ming?”

  “Growing like a weed in spring.”

  After a moment Fong responded, “Yes.” Then he seemed to drift off as if some completely extraneous thought had taken hold of him. Chen was about to speak when Fong returned from his reverie. “Have you got a gun with you?”

  “Yes sir, we’re supposed to carry them at all times.”

  “Really? I must have missed that memo.”

  “I don’t think so, sir. I put it on your desk and you asked me to shred it.”

  “Did I?”

  Before Captain Chen could reply Fong held up his hand and pointed towards the road. A man on a bicycle was approaching. A tall wicker basket was strapped to the rusted back fender. He stopped the bike across the road from the inn and rocked it back on its ancient triangular kickstand. Then he hoisted the basket on his back and headed towards the inn.

  Fong nodded. Captain Chen moved towards the man, his gun raised. “Police, hold it right there.”

  The man stopped like a deer in a forest having heard a snake slither in the underbrush. He snuck a quick look to his left then dropped the wicker basket, which tilted over on the mud road and spilled its contents. Chen approached carefully, his gun pointing directly at the man’s head. Suddenly, the man feinted to the left then ran right at Chen, knocking him to the ground then raced behind the inn and sprinted along the river.

  Chen scrambled to his feet and turned to pursue, but Fong stopped him. “Let him go Chen, he’s just a courier.” Fong was looking at the basket’s contents on the hard-packed mud road. Sealed blood packs, stored in dry ice. Hundreds of hypodermic needles – used hypodermic needles, several with small pools of blood still in their chambers. “Don’t touch them,” Fong ordered. “Come around the back with me.”

  They circled the inn and emerged from a vinecovered alleyway on the river side. Two kitchen workers were cleaning utensils, woks and chopsticks in the slowly moving brown water. Beyond them, on a small dock sat four large wooden crates with markings on them in numbers and English letters. Three with V5S 9W2 and one with V6P 2Y7.

  “Is it code, sir?”

  “I guess.” Somevhing itched on the edges of Fong’s mind. He’d seen these codes before – or codes like them – but where? Before he could answer his own question, a voice boomed from the deep shadows of the inn’s wraparound porch. “Are you the smart asses terrorizing my people?”

  Fong looked to the shadows but could only discern a vague shape there. A vague fat shape.

  The two dishwashers quickly gathered up their things and with much bowing and scraping made a quick exit down a set of steps that Fong assumed led to the inn’s basement.

  A man stepped into the light. He was a heavy-set Han Chinese male with a ruddy complexion. He either used rouge on his face or drink had had the better of him quite recently. Maybe both. The man was several years younger than Fong and already had a pronounced paunch and seemingly no muscles whatsoever. Like a pear rotting in a bowl. Fong couldn’t help remembering the old days when no one was fat in the Middle Kingdom. Now obesity was a rising problem in the PRC – especially amongst the young. The man’s silk suit cost more than Fong made in a month but there was a stain on one of the white lapels. Maybe from the soup he balanced in his left hand. He pointed his soupspoon at Fong and said, “You. I asked you a question.”

  Fong wondered if this was the kind of man the Western press liked to call a warlord. He looked more carefully at the man, but he could see absolutely no “war” in him and very little “lord.” He thought of calling the man by an old slander – “monkey king” – then thought better of it and said, “Do you own the inn, sir?”

  “Who wants to know?” the man asked, coming down the steps, careful not to spill his hot soup.

  “Show him,” Fong said to Chen.

  As Captain Chen approached the warlord he reached into his pocket and withdrew his ID. He held it out at waist level for the man to see. As the warlord, evidently a short-sighted warlord, leaned forward to get a better look, Chen grabbed his arm and with surprising agility side-stepped behind the man’s back, bending the arm as he went, and applying pressure. The warlord let out a cry, then fell to his knees. When he finally managed to look up, Fong was standing over him. But Fong wasn’t looking at the warlord, he was looking behind him.

  The soup bowl had landed right side up – seemingly without losing a drop of its steaming liquid. What were the odds against that? Fong wondered. Fong took one last look at the soup bowl, then knelt so he could look the warlord right in the eyes. “So. Are the boxe
s on the dock yours?”

  “Communist!” the man shouted then spat straight into Fong’s face. Fong sensed its wetness before it actually splatted against his cheek just below his left eye. Chen tightened his grip on the man’s arm. “I’ll take that as a yes,” Fong said to the man. “Have you got a handkerchief, Captain Chen?”

  “Yes, sir,” Chen said, holding it out.

  Fong cleaned his face then handed the handkerchief back to Chen. “Go back to the front of the inn. Bring me one of the syringes on the ground. Get me one that has blood in its chamber. Lots of blood. Use your handkerchief, don’t touch the thing with your hand, and be careful not to prick yourself with the needle. That pleasure we’ll save for this proud man.” Chen began to move off. “Captain Chen?”

  “Sir?”

  “Leave me your gun.”

  Within five minutes of Chen’s return with a bloody hypodermic, the warlord told Fong once that the crates on the dock contained blood products, and twenty-eight times that those blood products were totally legal and that “I’m just a businessman, a businessman conducting business – totally legal business.” He also insisted that he had no idea where the crates went. It was his job to collect and send onward.

  “What about the numbers and letters on the sides of the crates?”

  “I’ve got no idea. I was told to mark three of every four with one set of numbers and letters and the rest with the other set of numbers and letters. But it’s all legal. Totally legal.” The man produced a series of stamped export licences with the contents clearly listed as: Blood Products.

  Fong examined the documents. It was only then that he realized that the man on the ground had no bodyguards. What kind of self-respecting warlord had no bodyguards – the businessman kind, he thought.

  Fong considered making the fat man eat the documents, then thought better of it and simply ripped them into little pieces and dropped them into the soup.