The Murder Game

by The Murder Game (retail) (epub)

  But he ignored everything around him. One thought reverberated around and around his head: Allen had taken his wife. The woman he had lost six years ago. The woman who he loved with all his being. The woman whose absence had carved a hole in his heart.

  A beggar stuck his hand out at Danilov. The man was white, another Russian down on his luck. He wouldn’t last long on the streets. If the cold didn’t get him, the other beggars would. This street, this corner, was their rice bowl.

  Danilov reached into his pocket and gave the man all the money he had, almost twenty dollars. After all, he wouldn’t need it any more.

  The beggar looked at the money in his hand and tried to give it back. ‘Too much, what am I to do with this?’ the man shouted in Russian at the inspector

  ‘Use it to buy food, use it live,’ Danilov said over his shoulder as he walked away. He knew where he was going now and he didn’t need to rush. Allen would be waiting for him. The last message made it clear.

  For a moment, the face of his wife came back to him. Her ruddy cheeks, the oval eyes, hair held back by a headscarf, a smile playing on her lips, teeth as white as a dove’s wings.

  How had Allen found her?

  He had spent six years looking. Six wasted years.

  The great detective who couldn’t even find his wife. And now Allen had discovered her and was going to kill her.

  Unless he could stop him.

  Unless he could stop him.

  And what of their son? The message didn’t mention their son. He must be fourteen now, a growing boy, beginning to enter adulthood. How had he changed? Was he held by Allen too? Why didn’t the message say anything about his son?

  He reached the junction of the Sinza and Myburgh Roads. On his right, he could hear the toot of a boat on Soochow Creek. He ran down to the embankment overlooking the river.

  Only eighteen months ago he had stood near here with his new detective, Strachan, looking at the ‘Beach of Dead Babies’ with the body of Henry Sellars floating in the murky waters, the dead man’s long blond hair flowing like golden silk in the gentle swell of the river.

  The creek looked exactly the same as it had back then, except there was no body. The muddy river still flowed into the Whampoa at Garden Bridge, the grey sampans still tied to the shore, sometimes three deep.

  One of them was being rowed by an old woman in the centre of the channel. She spat a long stream of brown juice into the water where it joined the rest of the rubbish floating in the murky waters.

  He heard a shout of joy. A young boy, with a head the shape of a football, had snatched a ball from the mouth of a dog on one of the boats. Around the boy’s foot a rope was lashed to a dirty wooden cabin, beneath which the family ate and slept and washed and made more children.

  The more it changes, the more it stays the same.

  Up ahead, in the murk of the night, he could see his destination. He should have realised long ago he was being led here by Allen. But it was Strachan who had given him the final clue. The moves of a chess game. He should have worked it out much earlier. He was getting slow in his old age; perhaps his mind was not as sharp as before.

  Which way would Allen expect him to come? It didn’t matter. Allen held all the cards now; he knew all the moves, and there was nothing Danilov could do now except place his head in the mouth of the tiger.

  Back at Central Police Station he had thought about calling out the Rapid Action Force. But he realised his wife, and his son, would die in such a raid. Allen would never let them live. And there was also the tone of the final message. A tone talking directly to him, not to anybody else. He was telling him to come, alone.

  To face Allen, alone.

  That’s why he had sent Strachan back to guard Elina. He must do this by himself; nobody else could help him.

  He walked back to Sinza Road, past the innumerable bric-a-brac and second-hand stores where everything and anything could be bought or sold. Up ahead, his destination stood tall amidst the merchant houses and shops.

  From here, it looked like a piece on a chess board. A King. No wonder Allen had chosen it.

  Danilov kicked himself. He should have worked all this out much earlier. If only he hadn’t been distracted by the Sinza Refuge and Johnstone’s theft.

  Stupid, so stupid.

  Perhaps, he was losing his powers. Perhaps, Cartwright was correct and he wasn’t as good as he thought he was. Old age was creeping up on him as it crept up on everybody. A disease for which there was no cure.

  He looked up at the Sinza Water Tower, dominating the area, its clean Art Deco lines overshadowing the slovenly stained roofs of the surrounding houses.

  There were no lights on in the tower; not that he expected there would be. But it didn’t matter. Allen would be waiting for him.

  And his wife, she would be there too.

  How had Allen found his wife? He didn’t know, but he was about to find out.

  He took one deep breath and pushed open the door of the courtyard in front of the Water Tower.

  His long search was finally over.

  87

  Detective Sergeant Strachan stood in the centre of the Investigation Room, surrounded by the easels and notes and files strewn on the desks. What was he going to do? Run after the inspector and demand to go with him? Or follow him quietly?

  He didn’t see how he could attempt either option. The first would lead to Danilov sacking him. And Danilov would soon notice the second; the man was too clever to be tricked so easily.

  The inspector had asked him to look after his daughter, Elina. He must have been worried about her. Would Allen target her too? Was Danilov afraid for her safety?

  Strachan took one last look at the map on the wall, with its pictures of the victims pasted over the locations where they had been found. For the first time, he noticed each picture had a number on it.

  One for Sally Chen

  Two for the American man at the Shanghai Country Club, Hank Chettle.

  Three for Lieutenant Deschamps and his mistress.

  Four for Miss Cavendish.

  Five for the man in the undertaker’s. What was the name used by Danilov? Victorov, that was it.

  Six for the Princess.

  It was the order in which they were attacked. Why did the order matter?

  Then, he noticed an additional number, 3A, written by the inspector, next to the Burlington Hotel. But no bodies had been found there, just a chess piece.

  Strachan shook his head. He wished the inspector would confide in him more often; at least he would know what was going on. Danilov was exactly like his mother – ‘Only tell people what you want them to know. Your business is your business, it’s nothing to do with nobody else.’ He remembered her telling him that one day before he was about to go to school.

  His mother, gone now.

  He accepted he would never see her again, never hear her voice, never talk to her about the events of his day.

  She was gone but she would never be forgotten. Not by him.

  He shook his head, desperately trying to focus his thoughts. He knew now what he had to do. There would be no more mistakes.

  The inspector had asked him to make sure Elina was safe. Well, he was going to protect her to the best of his ability. The inspector, for once, would have to look after himself.

  88

  ‘He’s done what?’

  Elina was almost shouting at him.

  ‘I think he’s gone to look for the killer.’

  ‘And you let him go alone?’

  Strachan looked at the hat he was twisting in his hand. He would have to get a new one. The pomade from his hair had stained the band so there was a tidemark of oil all around the middle. He put it behind his back to hide it from Elina. ‘Please calm down, Miss Danilova…’

  She shook off his hand. ‘I won’t calm down. My father is out there on his own looking for a killer.’

  Strachan decided it was time to tell her everything; only then would she understand why
he had come to their apartment rather than staying with her father. ‘Elina, we received a message this evening from the killer, placed in the North China Daily News.’

  ‘Yes, yes, my father told me about the messages,’ she said impatiently.

  ‘This time the message was explicit.’ He paused for a while. How could he break the news to her? He decided to plunge on. ‘Your father thought the message was directed at him. It talked about his wife…’

  ‘My mother, what did it say about my mother?’ She seized his coat and began to shake him. ‘What did it say about my mother?’

  He tried to calm her, holding her arms in his. She began to struggle to free herself. ‘You must sit down. I will show you the message.’

  She stopped struggling and stared at him, breathing heavily, her nostrils flaring.

  ‘Sit down and I’ll show you the message,’ he repeated.

  Slowly she took a seat beside the kitchen table and held out her hand.

  He sat next to her, reaching into his pocket to pull out his notebook. She snatched it out of his hand, opening it at the last page. He watched as her blue eyes scanned the page. Once, twice and a third time. She took a deep breath.

  ‘This man, this Allen, has taken my mother.’

  ‘Your father thought he had.’

  Elina went back to reading the message. She began to read aloud:

  ‘Have you worked it out,

  The game we’re playing,

  What’s it all about?

  I hear you saying,

  The choice is for life,

  Yours or your wife?’

  ‘But where’s the location line? Father said there was always a location line.’ She scanned it again. ‘And where’s the quote from Shakespeare? I don’t recognise any of these lines.’

  ‘Your father couldn’t find it either.’

  ‘But you said he went off to meet the killer? How did he know where to go?’

  Strachan shrugged his shoulders. ‘I don’t know, he didn’t tell me.’

  Elina went quiet, staring out of the kitchen window. All Strachan could hear was the ticking of the clock in the hallway and the dripping of the tap into the sink. He would have to fix it for her one day.

  She sat forward again. ‘He must have seen or noticed something? What did he do?’

  ‘When?’

  ‘After he read the message.’

  ‘Well… we talked about it and then he suddenly ran into the Investigation Room.’

  ‘What did he do there?’

  ‘I arrived after him; I didn’t know I was supposed to follow, you see.’

  Elina stared at him impatiently.

  ‘When I reached the room, he was looking at the map on the wall.’

  ‘Looking at the map?’

  The scene flashed back into Strachan’s memory like a movie playing in his mind. ‘Actually, I thought he was touching the map, but I saw later he was writing on it.’

  ‘Writing on it?’

  ‘Chief Inspector Rock had placed pictures of the victims on the locations they had been murdered, or, in Miss Cavendish’s case, assaulted.’

  She stood up and ran out of the kitchen. Strachan heard the sound of slamming doors and drawers, and a shout of ‘Where is it?’

  Then silence. A moment later Elina appeared in the doorway, holding the Municipal Government’s Street Map of Shanghai and its environs. ‘A map like this?’

  ‘Exactly the same. All the police get one…’

  She opened the map out and placed it on the kitchen table, moving unused plates, cutlery and uneaten food to one side. ‘Show me where he was marking the maps.’

  Strachan pointed to each location, explaining where the inspector had marked each number.

  ‘Is that all?’

  Strachan pictured the map in his mind. ‘There was also 3A, marked on the Burlington Hotel. We didn’t find a body but we did find a chess piece. A bishop.’

  Elina wrote the numbers on the map where he pointed.

  She sat back, crossed her arms and stared at the layout in front of them. ‘There’s no link. Some are in the French Concession, some in the International Settlement. Some are in the centre of the city, one is to the east and another to the west.’ She threw the pen down on the map. ‘There must be a link. What did my father see?’

  89

  Above him, the stark cigarette of the Water Tower stood outlined against the night sky. Danilov realised it never went dark in Shanghai; there was always the glow of activity somewhere. But there were no people to be seen. Almost as if the area around the place was a void where Shanghailanders were reluctant to roam.

  He listened to the sounds of the night. Off towards the river a baby was crying. The cry of hunger, thought Danilov, of demanding to be fed. A boat was chugging along the creek, its motor a staccato tap, tap, tap as it pushed through the muddy waters. Behind him, far off in the distance, a drunken man was singing an English song, a sailor’s song. An off-key ‘early in the mornin’ slurring into the night air.

  He rattled the handle of the door facing him.

  Locked.

  He picked up a half-brick lying at his feet, smashing it hard against the glass. The small pane shattered and dropped to the ground. He picked out the shards wedged in the frame and reached in.

  The bolt on the inside was easy to pull back and the handle turned as if it had been freshly oiled.

  He stopped to listen once more. Inside the Water Tower all was quiet, deathly quiet.

  The sailor had stopped singing now.

  The boat had stopped its painful tap, tap, tap.

  The baby had stopped crying.

  He stepped inside the room and let his eyes adjust to the lack of light. Gradually, the greys and blacks resolved themselves into shapes and distances. The ceiling was high, with a glass chandelier hanging from it. The ambient light from outside reflected through the hanging glass teardrops of the chandelier, creating a pattern of light on the wooden floor.

  Strange. It looked more like a house than the ground floor of a Water Tower.

  Over to one corner, about five yards away, the area was darker, hidden in shadow.

  Had he seen movement or just imagined it?

  He took two steps towards the corner and suddenly the whole world erupted in light.

  Danilov closed his eyes, shielding them with his hand.

  ‘I wondered when you would arrive. You came quicker than I thought.’

  Danilov forced his eyes open, using his hand to shield them from the glare of the chandelier. A man wearing a black mask stood in front of him.

  ‘You can take off the mask, Mr Cipher.’

  A muffled laugh came from behind the mask and the man began to clap. ‘You worked it out, Danilov. Congratulations. A little slow, perhaps, but you got there in the end.’ The man removed the mask and recombed his hair across his balding head. ‘Just one question. How did you know it was me?’

  ‘I was suspicious of the timing of the messages. They seemed to arrive just after the victim had been kidnapped. A little too timely and they all came from you.’

  ‘Except for the last one…’

  ‘You gave that to Mr Trainer to throw me off the scent, but it did the exact opposite. And then, of course, your name…’

  ‘Lou?’

  ‘Lou Cipher. Lucifer.’

  ‘I thought that was very funny. The devil in disguise. The plastic surgery in Japan is rather good, though, don’t you think?’ Allen modelled his face. ‘You didn’t recognise me at all.’

  Danilov stared at Allen’s smirking face. For a second, the image of the Princess, the skin dripping off her face flashed into his mind. He ran towards the corner, thrusting his hands at Allen’s throat, forcing the shorter man up against the wall.

  Allen staggered backwards, his body smashing against the stuccoed walls. Danilov forced his hands deeper into Allen’s throat. ‘Where’s my wife?’

  Allen’s tongue was sticking out of his mouth. He was making gagging sou
nds. His feet kicking against Danilov’s legs, desperately trying to escape from the tightening grip around his throat.

  Danilov pressed harder.

  The gagging became louder. Allen’s face was bright red, his pink tongue hanging out of his mouth.

  ‘Where’s my wife?’

  Allen lifted his arm, pointing back over Danilov’s shoulder to a door at the end. He let Allen drop to the floor and ran to it.

  He burst through it into another room, smaller than the entrance room. It was lit by a single electric light bulb hanging from a flex in the ceiling. At the end, only twelve yards away, his wife was standing on a wooden platform built against one wall.

  Alone.

  After all this time, six years and more, they were together again. ‘Masha,’ he shouted.

  His wife held up her arms, stopping him from rushing to them.

  He saw the fear in her eyes as she glanced to her left. Standing next to the stage, a Chinese man with a bald head and scars on his face held a lever in one hand and a revolver in the other.

  The gun was pointing at his wife.

  Danilov forced himself to look again. A rope stretched from the ceiling down behind his wife’s head and around her throat. She was standing on tiptoe, trying to keep the rope as loose as possible.

  Behind him, Allen was coughing. The man had struggled to his feet and was holding his throat, ‘That… wasn’t… smart… Danilov,’ he said through gasps of air.

  Allen’s chest heaved and he spat on the wooden floor. For a moment, he staggered as if he was going to fall, then he regained his balance and the smirk reappeared on his face. ‘I see you still have a temper, Danilov.’ He sucked a large gulp of air into his lungs, coughed three times and continued speaking. ‘Not smart, not smart at all. One word from me and your once-pretty wife dances on the end of a rope.’