by M J Lee
He walked three more steps forward, checking the gravel in front of the entrance all the time, searching it for any footprints, looking for clues that may have been left behind by the killer. He didn’t expect to find any. This man was far too clever, far too meticulous to leave behind such obvious clues. He would find him through his patterns, the way he thought, the way he worked, the way he killed. He would make a mistake, eventually. A small stupid mistake, but it would give him away.
There was nothing on the ground.
The naked body was much closer now. He could see its glaring whiteness, the head staring straight forward at him, the arms outstretched, the legs together, slightly crossed at the feet. It wasn’t Vitruvian man at all. It was Christ that was in front of him. A naked Christ.
Danilov shook his head. Concentrate. Concentrate. He was five feet away from the body now. Even in the low light, he could see the arms weren’t attached to the body. There was a clean edge where there should have been skin. The white of bone where there should have been a shoulder. No blood though. Strange that. The body seemed to have been washed, deliberately cleaned up to present its best face to the public.
His eyes drifted down over the chest and stomach to the legs. They weren’t connected to the torso. He could see the inner muscles, tendons, sinews and bones all clearly displayed like a prime cut of meat in a butcher’s shop, somehow not a part of a living animal, just another piece of meat.
Then he examined the face.
He remembered it well in life. It was Dr Renfrew, looking just as he did during his sermon, scowling as he ranted against the iniquities of Shanghai. The lips were pushed back to reveal the teeth, the eyes bulged from the head, a livid burn seared across the forehead. He looked like he was in the middle of one of his sermons, in full flow, speaking to his flock. A voice railing against Sodom and Gomorrah, against evil and wickedness, against the works of the devil in the city of Shanghai.
It was a vision of hell, not of heaven.
It was apparent to Danilov that Dr Renfrew had met the devil at the gates of hell, not St Peter at the gates of heaven.
Despite himself, his hands came up and made the sign of the cross. It was the reaction of a child, the instincts taught in his youth taking over his logical mind. He was a little ashamed of his action and glanced quickly to check if Strachan had seen his moment of weakness. But Strachan was just staring at the body of the preacher, his mouth slightly ajar.
Danilov nudged him with his elbow. ‘Call Dr Fang, we have another body for him to examine.’ Danilov pointed to the Chinese characters carved into the preacher’s chest. ‘Our killer has struck again.’
‘Yes, sir.’
‘What does it say?’
‘It’s the characters for “revenge”, sir.’
‘Call Dr Fang now. I want this autopsy done by tomorrow morning.’
Strachan ran back to club where he could use a telephone. Danilov turned back to the preacher. He could see now that the arms had been balanced on three nails driven into the wood of the door, to keep them stretched out horizontal, whilst the head and torso had been hung from a rope that ran around the neck and fastened to a nail on the lintel. The legs were propped against the door, one foot crossed over the other.
Danilov stepped back five yards. From this position, the body was whole, only the slight gaps between the arms and the shoulders, and the torso and the legs, revealed something was wrong. Then he took four paces to the side. The arms and legs were against the door while the body hung two feet away and at least two feet in front.
‘Strange, very strange,’ he said out loud.
‘What’s that, sir?’ Strachan had returned silently to his side.
‘It’s like he’s playing a game of perspective with us. From the front, Dr Renfrew looks whole. But when you look closely, really closely, you see it’s just…what do the French call it?’
‘A trompe l’oeil?’
‘Exactly, Stra-chan, you never cease to amaze me.’
‘As I said, sir. Most of the monks at the college were from Belgium. We heard more French than anything else.’
‘A trompe l’oeil. A piece of fakery to deceive the eyes.’ Danilov scratched his nose and then both his ears. ‘Perhaps, the killer is reminding us to look more closely, to see behind what we think is true about the victims.’
‘But Dr Renfrew was a well-known and well-respected member of the community, sir. A Christian missionary of high standing.’
‘Was he? I wonder…’
‘Anything else, sir?’
‘I think we’ve done all we can here, Stra-chan. What time is it?’
‘12.30, sir.’
‘It’s time to go. We have an early start tomorrow.’
***
Danilov opened the door of his apartment. Its cold modernity depressed him straight away. For a moment, he imagined being greeted by his children, them rushing to give him a hug, him responding with a warm smile, his wife placing a steaming bowl of piroshki on the table.
He closed the door. The clang of the security lock echoed through the apartment. He turned back to see the clock ticking noisily above the fireplace. 01.15. It was late, and he was too tired to eat. He realised he hadn’t eaten anything that day, but he didn’t care.
He took off his coat and hat, hanging them on the hook behind the door. He walked into the bedroom, sitting down on the edge of the made bed. The opium pipe stared at him from its tray on the side table, the long stem and the carved bowl looking at him as if selecting him out of all the people living in Shanghai.
Tonight, he would not smoke his opium. Tonight, he would keep his mind free from the dreams of the pipe. Tonight, he would just go to bed and fall asleep.
He looked around his bedroom. The bare white walls and single rattan chair sat alone, unloved by anyone, daring him to be alone too, without the succour of his pipe. There had been many nights like this, too many nights, when the bareness of his existence away from his work had troubled him.
He knew he had been separated from his family because he cared more for his work than he did for them. But he couldn’t help himself. His work was all he had. It was the only thing that shored up his ruins, preventing the whole rotten edifice of his life from collapsing and falling into the abyss.
He picked up the pipe off the tray. It felt heavy as he balanced it in his hands. A small, black ball of opium was sitting ready on a pin. Left over from last night, he thought, I must have drifted off before I had time to smoke it.
He leant back against the wall behind his bed and brought the stem of the pipe up to his mouth. Just one bowl, to chase away the shadows, he thought.
The lighter flared, and the flame touched the pea of opium in the bowl. Danilov sucked deeply, feeling the warm smoke enter his lungs and expand to drill its way into every nook and cranny in his body, filling it with light and shade, black and white.
He blew the smoke out. For a second, he was as weightless as the smoke, hanging between heaven and hell, dangling in the purgatory of the drug. Then his knees relaxed, his whole body went limp, the stiffness leaving it like a soul leaves a dead man.
He slid further down the bed, letting the soft mattress envelope him. The opium pipe dropped from his hands onto the floor. His eyes fluttered closed.
Just before he was lost to the opium dreams, a voice whispered something deep inside his head. His own voice. ‘How does the killer choose his victims?’ it said.
Then, he heard the same sentence again only this time it was in the soft, lilting voice of his wife. ‘How does this killer choose his victims?’
The answer came almost immediately. ‘He knows all about them, Daddy.’ It was his daughter. ‘He knows all about them.’
Then his eyes closed and he floated off to a large park. His daughter was running around with a butterfly net, and his wife was sitting on a picnic rug, taking food out of a large, wicker hamper. His son was throwing a ball for the dog to chase. How he missed that dog.
Hi
s daughter came running up. She stopped in front of him and said, ‘How does he know about them, Daddy? How does he know which ones to kill?’
Then he saw himself, lying on his back staring up at the blue sky, not a care in the world.
In his opium dream, he began to cry.
February 25th 1928.
The 34th day of the Year of the Earth Dragon.
Chapter 26
Danilov stood at the front desk of the Palace Hotel. Not the best hotel in Shanghai, he thought, but certainly not the worst. There was at least a pretence at gentility with rich maroon drapes, linoleum floors and uniforms for the staff. The fact that all the uniforms were two sizes too big was of no account to the management. What was more important was that the staff wore them.
A European reservation clerk was pretending to be busy, reading through the seven messages which he had already read a thousand times that day.
‘I’d like the room number of a guest.’
The clerk took an age to respond before finally lifting his head. ‘I’m sorry, we don’t give out the room numbers of our guests to people who just come in off the streets.’ He turned back and pretended to sort through the notes left in the room pigeonholes.
Danilov heard a German accent behind the upturned nose and cold exterior. By ‘people who came in off the streets’ he meant him. He reached out and banged the bell on the desk. Then he hit it again. The tiny bell clanged through the lobby. Three guests turned their heads towards the sound.
‘I don’t think you understood me, I would like the room number of a guest. An American, big man. Fleshy. Tips well. Checked in about a week ago.’
The clerk coughed like a child, his small white fist coming up to meet the thin lips. ‘I don’t think sir understood me. We do not give out the room numbers of our guests to just anybody.’ He saw Danilov staring at him and added, ‘It’s hotel policy.’
Danilov pulled his warrant card out from his jacket. ‘Listen, I want that room number now, or else you could find yourself staring at a damp wall in Ward Road, charged with obstructing the police. Not a nice place Ward Road. The rooms are not so comfortable, and there’s no receptionist on the door. Just a fat warder with a liking for fresh, young meat. Do you know what I mean?’
The clerk nodded. He scrambled for the register. ‘I…think you are looking for…Mr Anderson,’ he said without looking up, his shaking finger turning the page.
‘An American. Checked in about a week ago.’
The finger stopped moving but still shook as it hovered over a name. ‘Room 436.’
‘Thank you for your help.’ Danilov strode across the lobby. He always hated these places with their veneers of sophistication and gentility. Behind the fake marble, plush velvet and humble subservience was a world of hard work and petty rules.
He stepped into the lift. A young boy, no more than thirteen, pulled the iron gates closed behind him. ‘Where to, sir?’ he said in remarkably clear English.
‘Fourth floor.’
‘Going right up, sir.’
Danilov leant back against the far wall, regretting his treatment of the clerk. He should not have shown his temper but there was something about the clerk that enraged him. Being German didn’t help. He felt the lift begin to ascend.
‘Always wanted to say going right side, not up, but nobody get the joke.’ The lift boy was speaking to him. ‘Definitely not hotel manager.’
Danilov laughed. The round eyes and face of the boy had collapsed into one big smile with only the pug nose visible.
‘Fourth floor, what room?’
‘436.’
‘So you visiting big American with long arms?’
‘Long arms?’
The lift boy mimed reaching deep into a pocket to bring out a tip. Danilov laughed again.
‘It’s on the right side, third door. Have a good day.’ The lift shuddered to a stop, and the boy reached across and opened the iron gates.
‘You too.’ Danilov reached into his pocket and gave the boy a dollar. The little hand took it faster than a starving man snatches a grain of rice. ‘Keep going sideways,’ he said over his shoulder.
‘You too,’ the boy shouted after him.
A long corridor stretched in front of him with doors either side. He counted three doors; number 436 in large brass numbers on the white door.
He knocked.
There was no answer and no sound from within. He knocked again, and before he could finish, the door swung open. He was left with his fist hanging in the air.
‘What d’ye want?’
A large man stood in the doorway wearing a white vest and blue pinstripe trousers held up by wide red braces. A nest of black hair struggled to escape from the top of the vest whilst a belly strained the fabric below, dragging it over the trousers to form a sheltered porch of fat. The cheeks and chin were covered in white foam. ‘What d’ye want?’ the man asked again.
Danilov produced his warrant card, holding it up in front of the man’s face. His eyes tracked across the card, reading everything that was written there: Danilov’s name and number, his rank, the address of Central Police Station and a short note regarding the powers of the Shanghai Municipal Police force. The man continued to read as he reached the Chinese version of the information. Eventually though, he looked back at Danilov.
‘So you’re a cop?’
Danilov nodded. ‘You are Mr Anderson?’
‘What d’ye want?’
‘I need to ask you some questions.’
‘Listen, buddy, you may need to ask, but I dun need to answer. Can’t you see I’m busy?’ The man placed his hand on the Inspector’s shoulder.
Danilov glanced down, seeing the hairy paw on his jacket, noticing the way the hairs grew in profusion across the back of the hand like a garden that had been left untended for a long while. He thought about hitting the man with a straight right to the side of the face, but then he would just get his hands covered in soap. ‘Just a few questions. We can do it here or down at the station. Up to you.’
The man took his hand off Danilov’s shoulder. ‘Is this a friendly talk or are you puttin’ the squeeze on me?’
‘Friendly…for now.’
The man stood still, thinking. ‘You don’t mind if I carry on, do you?’
‘Be my guest.’
‘Be my guest. You guys are so weird. In Boston, I’d a been flat on my back with a knee on my chest by now.’
‘In Shanghai, we do things slightly differently.’
Anderson walked into the bathroom. Danilov followed him. It was large, almost as large as the detective’s bedroom at home. A large globe light above the silver-etched mirror illuminated the whole room.
Anderson stood in front of the mirror and took the cutthroat razor from the shelf. ‘Ask away.’
‘You were at the Astor House Hotel two days ago?’
‘The dance? Heard it was a lotta fun. Thought I’d drop in. Was kind of cute actually, what with the butterflies and flamingos and stuff. But the music was good, and the dancers were better.’
‘What time did you go there?’
‘I dunno. Around four I guess.’ Anderson took a long strip of foam off his left cheek with the razor.
‘What time did you leave?’
Anderson stopped shaving and turned to face Danilov. ‘Say, what’s with all the questions? You know I’m an ex-cop?’
‘I didn’t know actually.’
‘I didn’t know actually.’ Anderson mimed Danilov’s accent. ‘You guys are weird. Was in the force for nineteen years before I retired and took the pension.’
‘So when did you leave?’
‘About two years ago.’
‘I meant the dance?’
‘I like that. Like a dog with a bone. Around 5.30 pm, but I wasn’t keeping tabs on the time.’ He turned back to the mirror and began shaving again.
Danilov noticed the hand was steady as it approached the foam-covered throat.
‘I’ll ask you again. I
can be a dog too. What’s this about?’ he said as he wiped the foam on a towel.
‘A woman was murdered. She was last seen at the Astor House.’
‘What’s she look like?’
‘Why?’
‘I’m a cop. Never leaves you. Looking at people, you can’t help it. Not after nineteen years anyway.’
‘She was blonde, bobbed hair, five feet four inches tall, wearing a tasseled silver dress.’
‘Cute?’
Danilov nodded. He could see Anderson’s face looking at him, reflected in the mirror.
‘With two sloppy looking guys and a viper of a dame?’
Danilov nodded again.
Anderson turned in mid-stroke, with the cutthroat poised just half an inch from his throat. ‘Cute dame, great legs. Would’ve liked her to come up and see my moves, if you get my meaning.’
‘Oh, I get you, Mr Anderson. May I ask you what you are doing in Shanghai?’
‘You may ask, I may not tell.’ Anderson turned back to the mirror and continued to shave.
‘Normally, I am a patient, non-violent man, Mr Anderson, but in your case I will make an exception.’
Before the razor had touched his throat, Danilov had moved, grabbing the hand holding it and kicking Anderson in the back of his knees so that his legs collapsed. His chin hit the side of the sink on the way down, and the head jerked back as if he had been hit by Max Schmeling.
Danilov gripped the hand holding the razor and forced it to the flare of Anderson’s nose. ‘I’ll ask again, Mr Anderson, what are you doing in Shanghai?’
Anderson’s eyes focused on the blade. The white lumps of shaving foam with their little slicks of black hair glistened on the sharp edge. The Inspector forced his knee into Anderson’s back, thrusting his chin over the sink, the blade just a millimetre away from the nostril.
‘I’m a PI. A private investigator. Was hired to come out here.’ Anderson’s voice quivered, his eyes never leaving the cutthroat razor.
‘Why?’
‘Murders. In Washington. Two murders. Hired by one of the families.’