‘You mean to tell me you didn’t call us as soon as the body was found?’
‘We have to follow protocol. In emergency situations such as these, the senior member present must be consulted before any action can be taken. It’s club rules.’
‘I’ll ask again, when was the body found?’
The manager looked at his watch. ‘I would say around 12.30.’
They walked along the path and across the lawn. On the balcony of the club, three couples were watching them, glasses in hand.
The manager strode ahead. ‘The body is behind the trees. I asked the head gardener to keep watch while I waited for you. I mean, what if a member saw it?’ He seemed to think a little more. ‘Or worse, a member’s child?’
A new path curved around a gingko tree festooned with bright, yellow-gold leaves at the end of the lawn. As they walked around it, an old man, back bent like a branch of hawthorn, stood up from his seat on the ground.
‘This is the gardener who found the body.’
‘Strachan, can you interview him?’
‘Yes, sir.’
The manager pointed to the path as it curved around a rock formation. ‘The body is on a bench over there.’
Danilov followed the path, walking slowly, looking around him as he did so. It felt like he was being watched but he couldn’t see anybody. The high walls surrounding the Country Club prevented the intrusion of interlopers.
He looked back towards the club building. This area was hidden from the balcony. Anybody could have placed the body here, but they would have to have known the layout of the club. And how many people were aware of what lay behind these high, whitewashed walls?
He turned the corner and stopped. It was as if somebody had punched him in the stomach, knocking every last breath out of him
‘Not again,’ he whispered. ‘Not again.’
18
He watched Danilov arrive with his young sergeant. The man never seemed to age. He was still as tall, lean and badly dressed as always.
They were greeted by the bumbling figure of the manager, as obsequious as ever. What a fool the man was, with his love of rules and regulations, and his petty adherence to them. The words of Eliot came to him. ‘These fragments I have shored against my ruins.’
Shame about Eliot. A terrible man, an awful publisher, and an even worse poet.
He followed the inspector and his sergeant as they walked round the side of the building and vanished from view. Strolling quickly through the club to the back terrace, he saw them appear on the path leading to the lawn. On his way, he had almost bumped into that pompous fool Langlands. The last person he wanted to meet right now.
Moving to the side of the casement, hidden from view by a heavy curtain, he watched Danilov cross the lawn heading towards his little surprise. The manager dropped back, refusing to go any further. The young sergeant took the old gardener by the arm and began to speak to him. Danilov strode on, vanishing behind the rocky outcrop.
What he wouldn’t give to see Danilov’s face right now. Would it be a look of shock? One of horror? Or would it be one of realisation?
A pity he would never be able to see it for himself. Alas, he had to forgo some pleasures in order to achieve his final goal.
Such was life. And death.
His final pleasure would be staring into Danilov’s eyes as the man placed the noose around his neck. He would savour the anticipation, enjoy the fear, relish the vision of dangling legs and strangled cries.
Don’t get ahead of yourself. Not now.
He let the curtain fall back into place, obscuring his view.
Let the game begin.
19
Danilov walked slowly forward, the body becoming clearer with each step.
It was sitting upright on the bench, shaded by an old lacebark pine. From a distance, the body seemed to be wearing a long pink shirt. As he moved closer, Danilov could see the material wasn’t expensive. A rough cotton without the easy flow of a good fabric.
He took another few steps forward, his foot stumbling against a stone lying in the middle of the path.
The body had no face.
There were no eyes. Or nose. Or lips. Or mouth. Nothing that could define it as human. None of those facial characteristics that identify and separate us as human beings. Just blond hair flowing from nothing.
Another step forward.
Danilov felt the body was a man not a woman. There was an indefinable solidity to it, a breadth to the shoulders, a roughness to the size and shape of the hands shouting maleness, not the soft elegance of a woman.
The body’s arms were stretched out in front, resting on its lap, fists clenched. On the wrists, Danilov could see the marks of a thin rope. The arms were crossed horizontally by sharp red lines, as if somebody had taken a pen and ruler to draw across the skin.
The shift wasn’t dyed pink; it was blood giving the garment colour. Blood that had flowed from a deep gash in the neck on to the chest and been absorbed by the fabric like a sponge.
‘Not again,’ he said out loud.
He was standing over the body now, looking down at it. He knelt and touched the back of the hand. It had that peculiar, dough-like softness of death. He could see the hairs growing in profusion above the large knuckles. Definitely male hands.
He looked up into the emptiness of the face. There was something covering it, making it look featureless and inhuman. A thin film of plaster of Paris, or something similar, had been applied and smoothed over the features, removing all definition.
He heard footsteps on the gravel behind him.
‘Oh my God.’
Strachan was standing there, staring at the body on the bench, his mouth slightly open, breathing heavily.
‘Make sure nobody comes anywhere near here,’ Danilov ordered.
There was no answer.
‘Strachan, did you hear me?’
‘She’s like the one before. Elsie Everett. The one we found in the park.’
‘Detective Sergeant Strachan, pull yourself together,’ Danilov snapped. ‘Get those two coppers to guard the area. When they are here, call Dr Fang. Tell him we have a customer for him. Keep everybody away until Fang’s people get here. Understand?’
Strachan stopped staring at the body, his eyes focusing on Danilov. ‘Yes, sir. Of course, sir.’
The detective sergeant ran back to the club building, his feet crunching on the gravel.
Danilov took one last look at the body sitting on the bench. It looked as if it was just enjoying the afternoon sunshine of a pleasant November day in Shanghai. He could see all the cuts; hundreds of sharply defined, bright-red slashes across the arms and legs. And the one deep gash that had once been a throat.
He remembered the day nearly two years ago. An actress with the same blonde hair – Elsie Everett was her name – found sitting on a bench in a park, her body also covered in cuts. They had eventually caught the murderer, Thomas Allen, a member of Special Branch. The Character Killer, the newspapers had dubbed him, because he carved Chinese characters into the bodies of his victims. Danilov had shot him twice in chest, watched as the man tumbled into Soochow Creek.
He had to be dead. Nobody could have survived.
Danilov could see no characters carved on the skin, but they might be concealed beneath the sodden fabric. Dr Fang would be able to tell for sure. The sooner the body was taken to the pathologist the better. Only then could the investigation begin.
He looked away from the body. The bench was in a small clearing, with just one tree shading it. A beautiful place to sit and read or enjoy a quiet game of chess.
A beautiful place, spoilt utterly.
He sniffed the air. For once, the sweet scent of roasting sweet potatoes was missing. The hawkers and their pots of charcoal and sweet potatoes had yet to discover this place. He suspected they would never discover it. The one place in Shanghai where you would never find them.
He walked back to the stone he had tripped over. What
was it doing in the middle of an immaculately groomed path? He bent down and examined it closely. Was it just another stone or something else? A clue? Using a handkerchief freshly ironed by his daughter that morning, he picked it up and placed it in his pocket.
‘Excuse me.’ The man coughed in the peculiar way the British had of announcing an unexpected arrival.
‘What are you doing here? Nobody is allowed here.’
‘Do not use that tone of voice with me. I am the senior British member and I demand to know what is going on.’ He looked past Danilov’s shoulder and saw the body sitting on the bench. ‘My God!’
‘This is crime scene, nobody is allowed here, Mr…?’
The senior British member dragged his eyes away from the body, quickly regaining his composure. ‘Langlands, Geoffrey Langlands. I’m with the bank.’
‘I do not care if you’re with the Bolshoi Ballet, nobody is allowed here. Please return to the club; my men will interview you later.’ Danilov advanced towards him, using his body to move him away and shield the victim from view. Where was bloody Strachan?
Strachan arrived with two new police constables as if he had heard the inspector call his name.
‘Strachan, please escort Mr Langlands to the clubhouse. You two stay here. Form a cordon around the body. Nobody is allowed to come anywhere near until the photographers and Dr Fang’s men have finished their work.
‘Yes, sir,’ all three echoed in unison.
Danilov turned back to the dead body before Langlands could protest any more. It was still sitting there in its blood-soaked shift, eyes hidden behind a mould of plaster of Paris.
For a moment, Danilov imagined he saw a tremor in one of the hands as if it wanted to reach out a finger and point straight at him.
But it was only the wind.
He was sure it was only the wind.
20
Danilov went to see Chief Inspector Rock as soon as he returned to Central. The man was as efficient as before, wasting no time on the niceties of small talk.
‘Give me the details, Danilov.’ He sat there with his pen in his hand, ready to write down everything the inspector said.
‘Definitely murder, sir. An unidentified body found in the gardens of the Shanghai Country Club. Death appears to have been caused by a deep gash to the throat, but I will know more when Dr Fang reports.’
‘The pathologist?’
‘The best I’ve ever worked with. Detailed, exact, he doesn’t miss anything.’
Rock wrote in his notebook. ‘Good. Unlike most coppers, I believe that science has a place in our investigations. As an aid to our plans and procedures, of course.’
‘Dr Fang is more than an “aid”, sir. I find his examination of the victims of murder indispensable in solving the crime.’
Rock stroked his moustache again. ‘Hmm, that’s as may be, Danilov. But police work is about doing the slog, documenting the details, following a plan. We should never jump to conclusions based on the outlandish speculations of some medical doctor.’
‘Dr Fang would never speculate, sir. He only believes in facts.’
‘We should get on perfectly.’ Rock leant forward once more. ‘I’ve heard the murder bears a startling resemblance to the Character killings from eighteen months ago?’
How did he know? How had he found out so soon? Somebody was feeding the Chief Inspector information. ‘There are some similarities, sir. I’ll know more after the autopsy by Dr Fang.’
‘Were the injuries similar to the woman you found yesterday?’
‘Superficially, sir, but I’ll know…’
‘…more when Dr Fang has completed the autopsy. I get the message, Danilov. You place tremendous reliance on this doctor of yours. I hope he delivers.’ Rock closed his notebook. ‘The powers that be have already rung me about the body at the Country Club.’
‘I thought so, sir. We met one of the members, a…’
‘…Mr Langlands.’ Chief Inspector Rock finished his sentence again. ‘He’s made a complaint that you were rude.’
‘I wanted the crime scene to be undisturbed, sir. Nobody was allowed anywhere near it.’
Rock smiled. ‘I understand completely, and you performed your duties correctly, Inspector. Let me worry about Mr Langlands and his complaint. Your job is to find the killer. Do I make myself clear?’
‘Yes, sir.’
Rock stood up quickly. ‘Keep me informed. Come and see me after the autopsy. I will ask Miss Cavendish to tell you the time of your appointment.’
The interview was over. Danilov turned to go, stopping with his hand on the doorknob. Chief Inspector Rock was already reading another file. ‘One question, sir?’
‘What is it, Danilov?’
‘I was wondering what plans and procedures you have for dealing with a serial killer?’
21
Lieutenant Deschamps locked the door to his office. Time to escape before Major Renard called him back for more work. Why was it the major always found new jobs for him at five o’clock?
It had happened today as he was about to leave. Renard called him into his office with its deep-red Aubusson carpet and fine Sèvres porcelain. He stood in front of the man’s desk waiting to see what he wanted. Renard kept him standing there, of course, without looking up, pretending he had something to finish before he could attend to Deschamps.
The games the man played, learnt on Petain’s General Staff during the war. Political games, not war games. Renard knew nothing of war, but he knew a lot about the petty humiliations, studied insolence and partial truths of bureaucracy. He was a master at it.
Eventually, the major picked up his pen and signed the bottom of the document with a flourish. ‘Lieutenant, how many years have you worked in the French Concession?’
‘Four years in the Surete, sir. I came here in 1926.’
‘Good. You will be the perfect man for this job.’ He pushed a bulky file across his desk. ‘Paris has asked for the numbers and variety of hats issued to the French police in the Concession.’
‘Hats, sir?’
‘Yes, hats, Lieutenant. The things you put on your head.’
‘Why would they want to know, sir?’
Major Renard shrugged his shoulders in a typically Gallic manner. ‘Why does Paris want to know anything?’
Deschamps picked up the bulky file. ‘I’ll start work on it, sir.’
‘Good.’
Major Renard began rereading the document he had signed. Lieutenant Deschamps knew the interview was over. He saluted, turned and walked across the lush carpet to the exit.
‘Oh, Deschamps…’
The lieutenant stopped in his tracks.
‘Paris needs the figures by tomorrow morning.’
Putain. Espèce de con.
Deschamps then did what all good bureaucrats do when faced with an impossible deadline for a meaningless task: he made the figures up.
Of course, they were couched in a cloud of caveats and subjunctive clauses, referencing obscure documents and statistics, but made up they were. He calculated that, by the time Paris had checked the figures against its own, had twelve meetings about the discrepancy and finally asked for clarification, it would be 1933 and Deschamps would be long gone. When that time came, if it ever did, another poor lieutenant could make his own figures up.
Deschamps smiled at his cleverness as he left Renard’s office and walked the long corridor on the third floor of the Surete. Only seven o’clock; he had managed to type the document quickly, leaving the file on Renard’s desk.
An Annamese constable saluted as he left the building and he returned the salute, still smiling broadly.
Rossana would be waiting.
His lovely Rossana.
It wasn’t her real name but he didn’t care. He had discovered her one night in a brothel on rue Doumer. She was waiting for customers in the living room and he had gone there to relax after a particularly trying day with the major. He hadn’t intended to indulge in the favours
of any of the ladies that evening, but as soon as he saw her his commitment to celibacy disappeared.
She was Russian, of course, with long chestnut hair and those cat-like eyes that are a peculiar feature of women from the Caucasus. Her French was charming; just enough to make conversation without becoming boring. She claimed to be the daughter of a prince, as they all did. But he didn’t care. She could have been the daughter of a street sweeper for all it mattered to him; he wasn’t screwing her lineage.
A short time later, he had set her up not far from his office, in a small flat on rue du Consulat. She spent a small fortune making it look ‘just so’ but he didn’t care. In her arms and body, he found a refuge from the petty games of Major Renard. That escape was priceless.
Occasionally, he wondered if he was Rossana’s only lover. Did she share her charms with others? But as soon as the question crept into his mind, he dismissed it. What did it matter if there were others? Such petty jealousies were for the likes of Renard, not for him.
He stopped in front of a flower stall on the street. The shopkeeper produced a bowl of lilies of the valley.
She loved their rich scent and bell-shaped flowers against the verdant green of the leaves. He loved the fact that, in November in Shanghai, he could buy a flower reminding him of May Day in France.
He paid the woman and carried the bowl up the steps of Rossana’s apartment block in rue du Consulat. One of the apartments built in the new Art Deco style, all the rage in Paris and a fashion statement of modernity in Shanghai. Out with the old and in with the new was the city’s motto. If only that applied to Major Renard too.
Balancing the pot of flowers in one hand, Lieutenant Deschamps took out his keys and let himself into the apartment. Strange – Rossana usually ran to greet him as soon as the door opened. ‘Rossana,’ he shouted.
The apartment was silent.
‘Rossana, I’m home.’
Again no response.
Damn the woman, she’s supposed to be here waiting for me. He stomped into the living room. Empty. A pile of fashion magazines lay strewn on the couch alongside the morning’s paper.
The Murder Game Page 6