The Murder Game

by The Murder Game (retail) (epub)

  ‘Of course, I understand, Doctor. Thank you for performing your work so quickly.’ Danilov and Strachan stood where they normally did during an examination; opposite the doctor so they could see where he was pointing.

  They had met outside at 8.30. As Danilov had already guessed, Strachan had been unable to find any link between the two women.

  ‘They worked in different clubs. And anyway, Rossana only spoke Russian and French. Apparently her English was not very good, sir.’

  ‘It is true of many of my countrymen, Strachan. The lyricism of French trips far more easily off the Russian tongue than the bluntness of Anglo-Saxon.’

  They entered the deathly whiteness of the morgue to find Dr Fang ready and waiting for them as usual.

  He pointed to the face of Lieutenant Deschamps. ‘It seems he died from a myocardial infarction brought on by severe hypothermia.’

  ‘Another heart attack?’ asked Danilov.

  The doctor pushed his thick glasses up to the bridge of his nose with his index finger. ‘You must understand, when the body is placed under extreme stress, as this body undoubtedly was, one of the first places to respond, and fail in its response, is the heart. The body reacts to cold by concentrating all blood flow to the brain and the core. This puts a severe strain on the heart, and poof…’ The doctor snapped his fingers.

  Strachan snapped his fingers too and received a stern look from the doctor.

  Danilov nodded. ‘Please carry on, Dr Fang.’

  ‘On entrance to this facility, his core temperature was eighty-two degrees.’

  ‘Is that bad, Doctor?’

  The doctor pushed his glasses back on to the bridge of his nose again. Danilov wondered why he didn’t find a more permanent way of keeping them in the correct position.

  ‘Put it this way, Detective Sergeant Strachan. According to reports, he had been sitting beneath the Cenotaph for at least six hours before he was moved. In that time, the body should have warmed up through being in the open air, and from the rays of a weak November sun.

  ‘What you’re saying is…?’ Danilov was desperate to hear the conclusions of the doctor.

  ‘What I’m saying is, despite all the time it had spent in the open, the body was still not warm enough to support life.’

  ‘So his body temperature must have been much lower when he was placed beneath the Cenotaph.’

  ‘Precisely, Inspector.’ Dr Fang sniffed. ‘When I was a student at Barts years ago, we had a professor by the name of Murdoch, an old Scot if I remember correctly. He always used to say, “A body is not dead until it’s warm and dead.”’

  He stopped for a moment and pointed to the corpse of Lieutenant Deschamps and then to Rossana Gurdieva. ‘The first thing I did when they arrived in the morgue was warm the bodies up to a normal temperature: 98.6.degrees. It took me over an hour with both bodies. Unfortunately, it merely proved the correctness of my old professor’s words. As you can see, they are both still dead.’

  ‘Any estimate of the time of death?’

  A smile crossed Dr Fang’s lips. ‘I can’t be certain but I would say some time in the last twenty-four hours.’

  ‘Could you be more precise?’

  ‘I’m afraid not. Excessive cold crystallises the internal tissues and prevents the normal degradation of the body. You probably have a better idea of the time of death than I do.’

  ‘He was last seen leaving his office at six o’clock last night. A beggar reported the body was placed at the Cenotaph some time around dawn this morning. That would be around 6.23.’

  ‘There you have it, Inspector. He was murdered between those times.’

  ‘Hmm,’ grunted the inspector. ‘Did you find anything in your autopsy, Doctor?’

  ‘There’s always something to find, Inspector. Monsieur Locard reminds us of that.’

  ‘Locard’s exchange principle holds that the perpetrator of a crime will bring something into the crime scene and leave with something from it, and that both can be used as forensic evidence.’

  Dr Fang raised his eyebrows. ‘I am surprised, Detective Sergeant. Perhaps you are not as stupid as you look.’

  Strachan was about to say thank you when he realised the meaning of the doctor’s words. Danilov jumped in immediately. ‘And what did you find, Doctor?’

  Dr Fang slowly pushed his glasses back towards his forehead, milking the moment for all it was worth. ‘Well, I can tell you where he died.’

  ‘You know where…? But how could you?’

  ‘I think the doctor means the type of location, not the exact whereabouts of the death, Strachan.’

  ‘Thank you for the explanation, Inspector. Our lieutenant and his mistress died in a cold store or industrial fridge. I found traces of meat, beef in this case, under his fingernails. I suggest it was a place where frozen meat had been stored recently. The fibres of the meat hadn’t crystallised completely.’

  Danilov turned to Strachan. ‘We need to check all the cold stores and industrial fridges in Shanghai. I’ll ask Major Renard to check those in the French Concession. There can’t be that many big enough or powerful enough to hold two people.’

  ‘I’ll get on it, sir.’

  The inspector turned back to the doctor. ‘Were there any characters carved on the lieutenant’s skin?’

  ‘I know what you are thinking, Inspector, but I found none at all.’

  ‘Was there anything to link these deaths with those of the man in the Country Club and Sally Chen?’

  ‘Nothing on the lieutenant; however this woman is a different matter altogether.’ He removed the cover from the woman. Her naked body, with its pale flesh and deep Y incision across the chest, lay on the cold steel next to the lieutenant. This woman…’

  ‘Her name was Rossana Gurdieva,’ said Danilov.

  The doctor stopped. ‘Of course, please forgive me, Inspector. Rossana Gurdieva also showed signs of advanced hypothermia. You will notice the blackened feet and toes. She also died of myocardial infarction, a heart attack in common parlance.’

  ‘I understand, Doctor.’

  ‘I examined her body closely. She has Chinese characters incised on her chest. Here, and here.’

  The doctor pointed with a steel rod to the skin beneath Rossana’s pale breasts, the Y incision tracking between them like a railway line going nowhere. ‘The character says Ying Guo. England.’

  ‘So far we have had the characters for America, France and now England,’ said Strachan.

  ‘But the country is not the most important point to remember, is it, Strachan? What did we learn from these characters?’

  ‘They seem to point to the nationality of the next victim?’ said Strachan tentatively.

  ‘Precisely, Strachan. It would suggest our next victim is English. Go back the station and check if any English people have been reported missing.’

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  ‘Now, Strachan. Call me at home later with the results. Well, get a move on, man. Don’t stand there like a policeman on traffic duty. And check the cold stores tonight as well.’

  ‘Of course, sir.’ He strode out of the mortuary.

  ‘You were short with him, Inspector.’

  The inspector wiped his brow with the back of his hand. ‘He needs to be kept busy at this moment. Shall we continue, Doctor?’

  ‘Three more points to make in this preliminary investigation. There is an injection mark on the neck of Lieutenant Deschamps and the woman has one in the crook of her arm, just here.’

  ‘Any idea what they were injected with?’

  ‘ I have an inkling, but I’ll know for certain when the toxicology comes back from the lab. Until then, I won’t be in a position to say anything.’

  ‘I understand, Doctor.’

  ‘The one observation I will make is about the crook of the arm. It’s not an easy place to inject when the victim is struggling.’

  ‘She was subdued first and then injected?’

  ‘You may well surmise that, Insp
ector. I, however, only deal in facts. In this case, there are not enough facts to state what actually happened with any certainty.’

  Danilov looked at the clock. ‘Anything else, Doctor?’

  ‘There are two more findings I would like to bring to your attention. I noticed that the clothes of this woman and the lieutenant both had liquid stains on them.’

  ‘Stains?’

  ‘I can’t be certain until the results come back from the lab, but they had a distinctive smell. I’m so used to it, I worried about contamination at one point, but my men assure me the bodies were moved without coming into contact with any liquid.’

  ‘I’m sorry, I don’t understand, Doctor. What liquid?’

  ‘Embalming fluid, Inspector. Like the jar over there.’ He pointed to a large glass jar in the corner. ‘I’ll confirm it when the lab reports but I’m ninety-nine per cent sure that’s what the liquid is.’

  ‘How did embalming fluid get on the clothes of two people kept in a ice store?’

  ‘I wish I knew the answer, Inspector, but I rather think it’s your job to find out, not mine.’

  ‘Of course, Doctor. You said you had two discoveries.’

  The doctor pushed his glasses back up to the top of his nose. ‘I found one of these gripped in the hand of Rossana Gurdieva.’ He held up a clear bag containing a white queen. ‘They are carved in the same style as the pawn found in the man’s hand at the Country Club.’

  ‘First a pawn, then a queen…?’

  ‘What was that, Inspector?’

  ‘Nothing, Doctor. I was speaking to myself again. I seem to be doing so more often in this case.’

  ‘At least you haven’t started talking to your customers yet, Inspector.’ He pointed to the two bodies lying on the bench. ‘I’m afraid the same cannot be true of me.’

  ‘It’s when they answer back you should worry.’

  Dr Fang looked down sheepishly, pretending to adjust a lock of Rossana Gurdieva’s hair. ‘Oh, they do that all the time. They speak to me constantly,’ he said quietly

  Danilov coughed. It was the first time Dr Fang had ever said anything as personal to him. He looked at the clock on the wall. ‘It’s getting late, Doctor. Can I escort you home?’

  Dr Fang waved all around him. ‘This is my home, Inspector. And besides, I still have two more customers to look at before I leave. I will send my report across in the morning.’

  ‘Thank you, Doctor. Your work is as detailed as ever.’

  ‘Oh, I almost forgot, Inspector. Lieutenant Deschamps had one thing in his pockets.’ He held out a small box of sweets, French violets. ‘He must have liked sweets for some reason. But there was nothing else; no money, no identification, no keys.’

  Danilov stared at the square lilac box. It was small, only two inches by three inches, with wonderfully ornate Art Nouveau type in deep purple etched on the cover.

  A phantom pianist played an arpeggio on his spine. ‘You found this in his pocket? Nothing else?’

  ‘Nothing, Inspector. I tried them once in Geneva when I was studying with Locard. People seemed to love them. I couldn’t see the point myself.’

  Danilov looked at the tiny object nestling in Dr Fang’s hand and another shiver shook his body. He recognised the small lilac box and it filled him with fear.

  48

  Danilov stepped out of the morgue on to the busy street, glad to be leaving the sterile, white cleanliness of the world of the dead, and entering the dirty, decaying and decadent world of the living.

  Despite its being nearly ten o’clock, the pavement was full of people returning from visiting the Huangmei Opera, shopping for the latest fashions from France, out for a late snack, or simply enjoying the sights, sounds and smells of the Shanghai night.

  He inhaled the air. The mixture of coal smoke, frying food and fear stung his nostrils. The fear came from him.

  Was Allen still alive? If he was, how had he survived the shooting? The doctor finding a packet of French violets in the pocket of the unfortunate lieutenant seemed to confirm it. But what if the box had been planted on the body to throw him off the scent of the real killer, to muddy the waters of an already opaque case?

  But only a few people knew of Allen’s addiction to those sweets; himself, Strachan, Chief Inspector Boyle, and the secretary, Miss Cavendish. They were one of the major clues that had allowed him to pinpoint Allen as the Character Killer in the first place.

  Danilov shook his head, trying to clear it of the fog of murder. A young Chinese man and his elegant girlfriend stared at him strangely as they strolled past.

  Get a grip, Danilov. Think, man, think.

  He took three deep breaths.

  It couldn’t be himself or Strachan. He thought Chief Inspector Boyle had already left Shanghai, but he would check. And Miss Cavendish was incapable of killing a spider, never mind another human being. If you have eliminated the possible, only one answer remains: the impossible.

  It must be Allen; it could be nobody else. How had he escaped death?

  The question was pointless. He was here. He was killing again. That’s all that mattered.

  He took a few strands of tobacco from his pouch and rolled a cigarette. His one remaining vice. For a moment, he caught another scent on the air, the cloying sickly smell of opium.

  His mouth began to salivate and he drifted back to his dreams of lying on the mat, the pipe in his hand, the warm smoke drifting lazily about his head.

  The opium house was only ten minutes’ walk from here. Perhaps one pipe would help clear his head, would make the case go away for a few moments and allow him to dream of his wife and their son and the life they had had in Minsk before the Revolution.

  Just one pipe.

  A pipe full of dreams.

  He lit the cigarette and found his hand was shaking. He jammed it in his pocket, so nobody could see.

  Weakness. Nobody should see this weakness.

  He began walking in the opposite direction, away from the opium house. A voice in his head was whispering, what harm can one pipe do? Only one pipe. You need to forget the case. Forget the Character Killer. Forget everything for an hour.

  Just one pipe.

  He turned back.

  One pipe to take the edge off his mind, to still the thoughts that raced through it like demented wolves.

  He threw the half-smoked cigarette in the gutter. A beggar rushed from out of nowhere to pick it up, blowing on the still-burning end before placing the dimp in his mouth and inhaling deeply, a look of sheer pleasure creeping over his face.

  Danilov reached into his pocket and gave the beggar his pouch with all the remaining tobacco. The man stared at it for a moment before he said ‘Xie Xie’ and ran off into one of the alleys, being swallowed up by the Shanghai night.

  What was he thinking? How could he let his daughter down? How could he let himself down? His job was to catch this man, stop the killing.

  Nothing else mattered.

  He pulled his hat low on his forehead, shoved both hands in his pocket and began the long walk home.

  Around him the rest of Shanghai dreamed on.

  About money.

  About food.

  About opium.

  Only the Character Killer dreamed about death.

  And Danilov, that night he dreamed of it too.

  Day Four

  49

  ‘Right, gentlemen… I moved the meeting this morning from my office to this room. We’re going to call it our Ongoing Investigation Room, same as we used at Scotland Yard.

  ‘A snappy title,’ whispered Meaker behind his hand.

  Chief Inspector Rock was standing in front of a chalkboard. On either side, four wooden easels with large sheets of paper pinned to them were headed Sally Chen, Lieutenant Deschamps, Rossana Gurdieva and Unknown Man. The sheets of paper were blank. On the left of the blackboard, a large map of Shanghai was pinned to the wall, and another sheet of paper, with the words ‘TO DO’ in prominent capitals, posted next to
it.

  ‘This is the latest technique from Scotland Yard. In a major investigation, all relevant information is written down and posted here.’ He pointed to the easels and blackboard. ‘It’s much better to see information visually than leave it lost in one man’s mind.’ Here, he looked pointedly at Danilov. ‘I’ve had to set it up myself as Miss Cavendish hasn’t shown up for work this morning.’

  ‘Not like her,’ said Danilov.

  ‘Maybe she was in the Black Cat Club last night, had a few too many and can’t face the office this morning,’ laughed Meaker.

  ‘She is not you, Inspector,’ replied Danilov.

  ‘Gentlemen, gentlemen, let’s move on, shall we? I’m sure Miss Cavendish will turn up soon.’ He turned to the map. ‘As you can see, I’ve marked where the bodies were found on this standard plan of the city.’ He pressed one black cross on to the location of the Shanghai Country Club and two black crosses on the War Memorial. ‘I’ve also marked where Sally Chen was first seen.’ Another black cross was next to Soochow Creek near the junction with Wenchow Road.

  Strachan put his hand up. ‘Actually, she was first seen near the Sinza Water Tower, sir. She ran down the side of the creek towards Garden Bridge.’

  ‘No need to raise your hand, Strachan; we’re not at school now.’

  ‘Feels like it, though,’ whispered Meaker through his lush moustache.

  ‘What’s that, Inspector Meaker?’

  ‘Nothing, sir. A tickle in my throat.’

  Rock turned back to the map. ‘We have to ask ourselves, what ties these locations together?’

  He waited for an answer.

  No response.

  Danilov looked at his watch. This was wasting time; they had so much to do and follow up.

  He wrote LOCATION in capitals on the blackboard and underlined it, stepping back to admire the work. ‘Come on, gentlemen.’

  ‘They’re not concentrated in just one of the concessions.’

  ‘Good.’ He wrote ‘In both concessions’ on the blackboard. ‘Anything else?’