“I do.” He got to his feet. “Have you got a passport, Da Wei?”
“Yes.”
“I’ll need to hold that for you.”
She balked for a moment then opened a small drawer in the table and handed over her way out of the Middle Kingdom.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
WITH A MURDERESS
Visitation rights don’t exist in Chinese jails. So when Fong, through Captain Chen, demanded access to the woman who murdered the man she loved, the penal system first had to find the woman then arrange how the meeting could take place. While the authorities worked things out, Fong tried to find a transcript of the woman’s trial. But despite his best efforts he couldn’t even find a record of the verdict. Fong had no doubt she had been found guilty but access to court records, like jail visitations in the People’s Republic of China, are not guaranteed.
The call finally came through. A place. A time.
The woman who murdered the man she loved sat quietly on a small three-legged bamboo stool and did not rise when Fong and Joan Shui entered the dank room. When the jailor began to close the door, Fong turned to him, “Don’t.”
The woman who murdered the man she loved sat looking at her hands. Fong looked at them too. Her slender fingers were now capped by ragged bitten nails. Only the false nail of her right ring finger remained from her fashionable French manicure. She pushed up the sleeves of her prison blouse and lifted her head. Immediately she saw the way he was looking at her. “Wait till they cut off my hair, then I’ll really be a treat to look at. Like her,” she said pointing to Joan, “a real fashion statement.”
Fong had actually been surprised that they hadn’t cut off the woman’s hair. It was pretty much common practice. They claimed it was to keep down the lice but Fong knew otherwise. Like so much of prison life it was to break down any sense of anyone being special, being other than a prisoner at the total behest of the state.
“You’ve been in prison,” she said. It was a statement not a question.
Fong nodded. “This woman knew that I had been in love. Now she knows that I have been in prison,” he thought. He looked more closely at her. But she looked away saying, “Don’t.”
He began to apologize then decided against it. Beauty was to be shared. It was just one of the many talents. Fu Tsong had told him that, then quoted some parable or something from the West’s Bible about hiding money under apple carts or some such nonsense. As with so many things from that most questionable of books, Fong had no idea what it meant – if in fact it meant anything.
“Why are you here, Detective Zhong?” she asked. But he heard the waver in her voice. The inherent pause. The uncertainty that prison had already implanted in her.
“How long is your sentence?”
“Does it matter?”
“Yes. As someone who has been in a place like this, yes, it matters. On that, trust me.”
“Well, they haven’t decided yet.”
“When are they going to decide?”
She made a sound that in the time before the murder would no doubt have been called a laugh. Now, prison had modified the sound and it was little different than the sound made to clear the throat before spitting up phlegm.
Fong made himself go over the timeline. The murder had taken place only ten days ago so it was possible that she would be sentenced shortly but it was not likely. If they were going to sentence her it should have happened by now. If they were going to execute her he wouldn’t have been allowed to see her. Likely she would be imprisoned as long as the authorities thought it useful. That could be as little as three years or as long as her life.
“What are you doing here, Detective Zhong?” she asked again.
“I want to talk to you.”
“Well, that’s good because if you came here to fuck me that could prove above even your ingenuity.” She looked at Joan Shui for a second then said, “Sorry.”
“Don’t be,” Joan said.
“Have you got a cigarette?”
“Sorry,” said Joan.
“I do,” said Fong.
He had brought cigarettes for precisely this situation but now he hesitated. He didn’t want to bribe her to talk to him. He wanted her to want to talk to him.
The woman who had murdered the man she loved lifted her left buttock and farted loudly. She waved her hand in the air in front of her to dissipate the odour. “Sorry, but the food in here isn’t exactly agreeing with my gastric system.”
Fong smiled. Then took the smile off his face. “Why am I at such a loss here?” he asked himself. Before he completed the question he shouted the answer at himself in the recesses of his head, “Because, jerk, you don’t know why you’re here.” He reached into his shirt pocket, tapped out a Kent and held it out to her.
She reached for it, careful not to touch the skin of his fingers or hand. She put the cigarette between her lips. It was only then that he noticed they were bruised.
“Did someone hit you?”
“You’ve been in prison before, right? People get hit in prison. I need a light.”
He struck a stick match on the floor and held it up to her. The flaring of the match touched moments of light to the skin of her face. Little licks of beauty.
She breathed out a thin line of smoke just past Fong’s left ear. Before he could stop himself he breathed in her smoke.
“You smoked too. Interesting,” she said. “Why not join me?”
Fong hadn’t smoked since he’d killed the assassin Loa Wei Fen in the construction site in the Pudong almost seven years ago, but he was direly tempted to break his smoke fast. But he didn’t. “If they hit you again, get word to me and I’ll put a stop to it.”
Again she made the sound that only a few weeks ago must have been a laugh but now sounded like something very different. “Are you really capable of doing that?” she said.
Fong didn’t answer. He didn’t know if he could control events within a prison. He’d never tried.
“It’s better to be hit than raped,” she said.
Fong found himself nodding although he didn’t want to.
She lifted her head, took the cigarette from her lips and stared into his eyes. “Why are you here? Again I ask.”
“To try and understand.”
“Understand what?”
“Understand how you could kill the man you loved,” said Joan Shui.
“Is that really what you want to know?” she asked Fong. He nodded. The woman who killed the man she loved opened her mouth to answer then put her face in her hands. For a moment Fong thought she was going to cry. But she didn’t. “Answer your own question, Detective. You’ve loved, you’ve been in prison, maybe you’ve even killed.”
Fong looked away. The desire to get out of that room roared up from his depths. This woman somehow knew him. How? But he needed her. The simple Chinese word long, dragon, came up to his lips. Dragons always guarded treasure. They had to be defeated to gain the knowledge – or wooed.
“How did you first meet Mr. Clayton?”
“How do you think?” Her voice was harsh. Suddenly the practised whore.
“You were a hired date for him?” Joan asked, careful to keep any annoyance out of her voice.
“I was given to him by a Chinese client. I was there in his hotel room when he returned from a night of drinking. Naked. Waiting. All greased up and ready to go.” She noticed Fong wince at that last. “Nothing to be embarrassed about, Detective Zhong. Ready to go because I didn’t want to get pregnant. Greased up because it wasn’t likely that I’d produce much lather at the possibility of fucking this Long Nose or any Long Nose for that matter. Or so I thought. Can I have another smoke?”
He gave her the pack and was about to give her the matches then remembered that it was forbidden. He struck a match and held it out. She leaned forward and cupped his hands.
Then held them.
Over the flame, amidst the veil of her cigarette smoke, he saw her more clearly. Her eyes were the eye
s of a ghost.
He made sure his voice was calm before he spoke, “So you slept with Mr. Clayton?”
“No, Detective Zhong, I didn’t sleep with him. Whores aren’t paid to sleep with clients.”
Fong nodded.
Then a single line of tears emerged from the corner of her right eye and fell straight to the floor. “He bought me breakfast.”
The phrase was so simple but it carried so much weight. Somehow she knew that if he hadn’t bought her breakfast they would never have started what ended with him dead and her in this awful place.
For a moment he wanted to ask if the breakfast was good. But he knew the answer to the question. The food had tasted as exquisite as food could taste. The sun had been as brilliant as the sun can shine – and the world seemed gracious, open and full of hope. Fong knew that.
Sensing the momentum slip, Joan asked, “When did you see him next?”
“He drove me home and gave me money to rent a hotel room. It was the first time I ever had a room to myself. I almost didn’t know what to do with all that space.”
“Did he come by that night?” asked Joan.
“No. Not for a week.”
“Why?”
“He told me that he wanted to be sure.”
“Sure of what?” asked Fong.
“Oh, fucking hell, sure that the breakfast was good, sure that I was a woman, sure that Korea is a peninsula of idiots, what do you think he wanted to be sure of?”
Fong took a breath. “Sure that he cared for you.”
“Whites don’t come back again if they only care about a Chinese girl.”
“No, they don’t.” Fong considered lighting up but forced that thought out of his head. “So he loved you?”
She looked away. “That word sounds silly coming out of your mouth.”
“I’m sorry.”
“Have you been so hurt by love that love is now a joke to you, Detective Zhong?”
“No . . . ”
“Then what?”
“Doesn’t it take longer to fall in love than . . . ”
“Then one fuck fest? Is that what you’re asking?”
He was, but he knew the answer to that. He had fallen hopelessly in love with Fu Tsong within the first fifteen minutes of her saying hello to him. They hadn’t even touched. They’d hardly exchanged words. It sounded foolish – but he knew it was true.
“So what happened to your love?”
She began to answer but she was crying. Big sobs came from a place very deep in her. Tears fell on her cigarette. The thing hissed.
“Like a dragon,” Fong thought. But he said nothing. He sat and watched waves of anguish take the woman who murdered the man she loved down down down into places of despair that had yet to be named. A place where only ghosts lived.
And as he watched he knew both the question he needed to ask and the answer to his question. He had known it before he came to this small prison room. Question: Can love kill? Answer: No, but things that begin with love can end in murder.
He looked to Joan who looked away, clearly trying to stop herself from crying.
“Are you all right?” Fong asked as he got into his car beside Joan.
“Yes. I’m fine. In fact, I’m better for having seen that.”
“Really?”
“Yes. Where to?”
Fong took a moment and then replied, “To those who loved Geoff.”
She nodded slowly and sat back. While Fong made his way through the densely tangled traffic, Joan soaked in the great city. As they drove, a small smile came to her face. Shanghai flaunted itself – like a young woman in her first sexy dress – as if it were a thing newly made and proud – and finally open for public viewing.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
FOR LOVE
Once again the day’s heat had decided to spend the night inside the old theatre. While the rest of Shanghai had a momentary respite, the air inside the theatre was sultry, almost hazy in its dampness.
“You wanted to see us?” The voice came from the darkness at the back of the theatre.
“Another voice from the darkness,” Fong thought but he said nothing.
“I said, you wanted to see us?” The voice was demanding, angry. It belonged to Ho Tu Pei, the actor who played Laertes.
Fong stood on the slanted stage platform from which the naked Hamlet began his nightly voyage. His back was to the house. Fong assumed the “us” in Laertes’ repeated question meant that he had brought along the actress Yue Feng, who played Ophelia, as Fong had requested. Good.
Fong continued to face upstage and raised his hand. Slowly a hangman’s noose descended from the flies. Fong reached up and took the noose in his hands. Then he turned to the darkened auditorium where he knew Laertes and Ophelia were watching him. “So once I figured out that this all had to do with love – not nefarious plots,” Fong said, “the only thing that confused me was how to get the noose over Geoff’s head then tighten it around his neck – and, of course, keep it there.” Fong took a few steps stage left then turned, “Do you mind if I call you by your character names? I’m sorry but that’s the way I think of you both. Is that okay with you two?” He didn’t wait for an answer. “So my problem wasn’t how to yank Geoff off the ground – counterweights answered that. But, as I said, that wasn’t my problem. My problem was: how did you manage to get the rope around Geoff’s neck. Mr. Hyland is a white man – well it’s not his colour that’s the issue here but the height that often accompanies a white man’s skin. Geoff was just over six foot two inches tall – so you see my problem? I mean how does a five-foot-six-inch Chinese man – or a five-foot-two-inch Chinese woman – manage to get a noose around a six-foot-two-inch white man’s neck – who was not drugged or drunk. You follow me so far?”
Again Fong didn’t wait for an answer.
“Then I thought about that chair by the pinrail. At first I thought it was there for actors to rest on or for the flyman to loaf on between cues. But the flyman was a proud professional, as he told me many times, and would not put up with actors in his territory or in any way slack off while on duty – therefore he had no need for a chair.
“So what was the chair doing there? Ms. Shui, would you bring out the offending chair, please.”
Joan emerged from the stage-left wings carrying the chair.
“Put it there, would you, thanks. Now would you hold the noose for me? Thanks.”
Fong indicated the chair, “Ophelia, this is for you.”
“For what?” Her voice was husky with anger.
“Ah.” Fong paused. “Just do me the favour of sitting in the chair, would you?”
Slowly Ophelia climbed the stairs to the stage. As she did, Joan retreated to the darkness upstage. Fong pointed to the chair. Ophelia sat in it. She was slender and young – Fong could see how some could see her as attractive – a poor substitute for Fu Tsong, but a substitute in the eyes of some – Geoff’s, for example.
“Could you loosen your hair, please?” Fong said.
She looked at him then unknotted her hair. It fell like a black silken curtain almost to the floor – very much like Fu Tsong’s had.
Fong closed his eyes for a moment. When he opened them, he saw that Ophelia dangled the clip that had kept her hair in place from the index finger of her left hand. He nodded slowly.
“So you two, you and Mr. Hyland, had just been together, had it off, brought on the clouds and rain – you pick. We can trace your contraceptive to stains on Mr. Hyland’s clothing.”
Fong sensed Captain Chen staring at him from the pinrail and realized that he had been shouting at the girl. He lowered his voice, “You had managed it, I assume, in his room, and your boyfriend didn’t even know – or so Geoff thought. He never really understood us, did he? He never understood our patience, our willingness to wait for revenge.
“So you were done and the night was still young. Couldn’t stay in his room; couldn’t chance being spotted by a key lady coming out of Geoff’s room;
at least not that night. But you and Geoff wanted more time and privacy. Now where could you find that amidst the eighteen million of us who live in this town? In the theatre, of course. Geoff surely had a key. It was late so no one else would be there. Now to go back a bit, you must have left Geoff’s room first. Leaving together would definitely have caught someone’s attention – you know how nosey we Shanghanese are – especially when one of our women is with one of their men, no? So you leave and, using Geoff’s key, you enter the theatre through the pinrail door, there. But, oh yes, you didn’t just let yourself in – did you – this hanging took two, didn’t it?”
She began to get up from the chair but Fong’s crisp, “I wouldn’t do that,” made her rethink standing up. “Good,” Fong said taking a step away from her. Then he began again. “So you let Laertes into the theatre and he hid behind the pinrail door – with the noose of course. Would you please, Captain Chen?” Fong waited as Chen took the noose and got into place behind the door. Fong surveyed the situation then crossed downstage and addressed the darkness, “Playing Laertes gave you lots of time to watch the flyman and figure out what he does. After all, Laertes is in the whole play but he’s hardly ever onstage. You do get to wait in the wings and watch the most famous speeches in Shakespeare performed by Hamlet; that must have been a real treat for you. But that’s not the point. The flyman and his counterweights are the point.”
“At any rate, Laertes hides with the noose and you, dear Ophelia, position this chair with its back to the pinrail door. You sit on the chair and when you hear Geoff enter you lean forward, your elbows almost on your knees, and pull your hair to one side and forward to reveal the nape of your neck.”
“Do it!” Fong barked.
She did.
The simple line of her neck was exquisite.
“Geoff stepped forward like this, didn’t he, and he leaned over to kiss the nape of your neck like this, didn’t he?”
Ophelia shuddered and began to cry. Her slender body suddenly taken by tremours.
The Hamlet Murders Page 19