by M J Lee
He got up, carefully arranged his long gown and left the room.
Danilov and Strachan glanced at each other. ‘Your uncle is an extremely well read man, Stra-chan.’
‘I know, sir. I always feel so stupid whenever I come to see him.’
‘Not a feeling you are unused to, it would seem.’
They both lapsed into silence. The clock ticked on the wall. Outside, they could hear the sounds of the Ah Yi brushing the path to the house with a reed brush, singing a soft lullaby to herself, trilling the ‘r’ in her Peking accent.
Strachan’s stomach rumbled once more. The food still smelt delicious, its aromas tempting him to reach out and try a morsel. But he knew his uncle would be ashamed if he did. He stood still, trying to think of anything but food, succeeding only in thinking of food.
The door opened once again, and his uncle appeared in the doorway, carrying a large, old scroll that had obviously seen better days. He walked over to the long painting table, moved some Yuan books to one side, and unrolled the scroll carefully, weighing down one end with a large carved rosewood frog.
‘I’m sorry, Inspector, I have been slow this morning. I should have recognised the characters immediately.’
‘You know where they come from?’
‘It’s so obvious once one sees it.’ He pointed to the scroll.
Strachan could see a hideous small painting of what appeared to be a red devil, surrounded by written characters.
‘It’s Di Yu and the eighteen courts of hell.’
The Inspector got up and walked over to the painting table. ‘I’m afraid it’s my turn to say I don’t understand.’
‘Di Yu is the name for our Chinese underworld. Many people think this idea of an underworld, with souls waiting for justice, originates from Buddhist scripture, but I believe it goes back much further and is much darker. In your Christian cosmology, it would be purgatory. A period of reflection and punishment where we can atone for the sins of our life and prepare for reincarnation.’
‘We have a similar idea in the Russian Orthodox church.’
‘But, in the West, this purgatory is individual. People simply have to endure it. In the Chinese underworld, there is a god called Yama who sits in judgement on all who come before him.’
‘So this Yama punishes people?’
‘Yama is the king of the underworld. He has created eighteen courts, the courts of hell, where sinners undergo judgement and punishment depending on their crimes.’
‘Crimes?’
Mr Chang pointed to a long list of Chinese characters, each with a small ink painting next to it. ‘There’s a whole list of crimes. Corruption. Theft. Prostitution. Being unfaithful to your wife.’ His finger followed the list down the page.
Strachan looked at the drawings. Men and women were suffering painfully as the devils and their assistants administered the punishments.
Mr Chang continued to translate. ‘Dishonesty. Lack of respect for your elders. Being unfaithful to your family. The list goes on and on, Inspector. Some sources seem to suggest there may be as many as 134 different crimes. It’s all policed by ten judges, with Yama being the most powerful. Each crime and each court has a particular punishment decreed as the correct retribution for the crime.’
‘You think our victims are being punished?’
‘See there, Inspector.’ He pointed to an ink wash drawing. ‘The Mountain of Knives.’ His finger followed the characters as he translated. ‘Sinners are made to shed blood by climbing a mountain with sharp knives sticking out.’
Strachan stared straight at Danilov. ‘It explains what happened to Elsie Everett.’
‘In the eighteen courts of hell, the sinners are subjected to a whole host of punishments, limited only by the capacity of the gods to inflict pain.’
‘Or, in our case, Mr Chang, by the capacity of our killer to inflict pain.’
Mr Chang returned to his book and once again his finger traced down a long list of characters. ‘Sawing, carving, slicing in half, grinding, crushing by rocks, boiling in oil, being set afire, tongue ripping, eye gouging, skinning, being frozen in ice, pierced by hooks. The list goes on in excruciating detail, Inspector. We Chinese have always been extremely punctilious about the different ways to kill another human being. It is one of our least pleasant characteristics as a race.’
‘Each crime has a particular punishment?’
‘Indeed.’ He returned to the scroll. ‘You said one of your victims was frozen?’
‘The French magistrate.’
Mr Chang gazed at the scroll, his eyes tracking the lines of characters as they ran down the page. ‘Here it is. Being frozen in ice is a punishment reserved for corrupt officials.’
‘The Russian prostitute was drowned in pig’s blood.’
Once again, Mr Chang’s eyes danced down the page as he stroked his beard. ‘A punishment doled out to those who sell their bodies.’
‘The others were almost severed in two, cut on the Mountain of Knives, and last night, we discovered Dr Renfrew had his body dismembered.’
Uncle Chang scanned through the scroll, his finger tracing the characters downwards. ‘Being severed in two is a punishment for the crime of…unnaturalness. The Mountain of Knives is reserved for those who have lied and killed. The final one, having the body dismembered, is the punishment for perversity.’
‘So it seems our killer is acting as Yama, the god of the underworld, punishing people for crimes they were supposed to have committed here on Earth,’ said Danilov.
‘Oh, Yama is much more, Inspector. He not only punishes people, he is judge, jury and executioner. He decides who is to be punished and for how long.’
‘Crime and punishment. We Russians are familiar with this idea.’
‘I believe there is a precedent in the Christian world too.’
Inspector Danilov raised his eyebrows.
‘Didn’t your Christian God punish Sodom and Gomorrah for its sins?’
Chapter 28
Strachan shifted the gear of the Buick. There was a loud screech as the engine refused to engage.
‘Sounds like a herd of strangled cats, Stra-chan.’
‘Sorry, sir.’
‘Your uncle’s information was vital, Stra-chan. It’s the first real break we’ve seen in this case. Up until now, we’ve had lots of information, quite a few clues, but nothing has coalesced into a cohesive pattern. At least we now know the motivation of our killer. He sees himself as a judge, sitting in a court, trying the miscreants of Shanghai.’
‘He’s going to be busy here, sir.’
‘That’s the point, Stra-chan. There were time gaps between the first three murders, but now he has started to kill every day.’
‘It’s almost as if he feels he’s running out of time, sir.’
‘I wonder. You could be right, Stra-chan. We’re getting close now.’
‘Are we, sir?’ Strachan scratched his head.
‘What did you find out this morning?’
‘I met the old man. He described someone he had seen at the tea dance.’ Strachan reached into his pocket and passed his notebook to Danilov. The Inspector read it carefully.
‘This is good, Stra-chan. But it presumes this man is our killer.’
‘He’s a suspect, sir. We should check the chits to find out who he was.’
‘Perhaps.’ Danilov thought for a moment and decided not to tell Strachan about his meetings with Victorov and the American. If his hunch was correct, it was better that he didn’t know.
Strachan changed gear once again. ‘I didn’t realise you had a family, sir.’
Danilov’s face went pale. ‘My family has nothing to do with you or this investigation, Stra-chan. Is that clear?’
Strachan bit his lip, concentrating on avoiding the dense traffic. ‘Yes, sir.’
Danilov turned back to look out of the window. They were crossing Garden Bridge, close to the morgue. As usual, it was dense with rickshaws, wheelbarrows and hawkers pu
shing their carts. He was sorry he had snapped at Strachan. It was a perfectly reasonable observation, but not one he wanted to deal with right now.
They accelerated to a stop outside the morgue.
Dr Fang was waiting for them at the entrance. ‘At last, you’re here. I’ve got a piece of liver waiting for me.’ He ushered them through the door.
‘Is it fried or steamed?’ said Strachan.
‘It’s stabbed, young man, with a five-inch blade. The liver is a highly sensitive organ which has to be examined quickly if one is to get the best out of it.’
‘Sorry, sir, I just thought…’
‘Thinking is bad for you, Detective. Let me do the thinking while you do the detecting.’ He pushed open the door of the mortuary.
Strachan bit his lip once again.
As he entered behind the doctor, Danilov couldn’t help but feel an immense sadness. Perhaps it was the white walls or the astringent cleanliness of the place, or even the sharp tang of formaldehyde that produced this reaction in him. When Dr Fang pulled back the white sheet covering the body, Danilov knew what it was that upset him. It was death that inhabited this room. The white-faced solitude of death. All the bodies lying here on their marble slabs, covered by their starched white sheets, would never know the warmth of human contact again. For them, all that remained was the cold embrace of death.
Imagine working in a place like this, day after day, he thought. He glanced at Dr Fang as he bustled about the corpse, arranging his knives and forceps close to the head. What sort of man would spend his life surrounded by the solitude of death? What sort of man would choose to be in the business of death?
The same kind of man who decides to become a detective, he thought ruefully. But, at least in his job he dealt with living people. How can you have a relationship with a corpse?
Dr Fang began speaking. ‘This is the 46-year-old man brought here last night.’
The corpse of the preacher lay on the cold, white marble slab of the mortuary. The arms and legs had been placed in their usual positions on the body, but Danilov could still see the gap where the arm didn’t quite meet the shoulder, and the leg was separated from the torso.
‘The arms and legs have been separated from the body by a large knife with an extremely sharp edge, rather like a butcher’s cleaver. The separation was not performed with any professionalism or accuracy, however.’ He sniffed. ‘It’s the work of an amateur. Quite a good amateur but still an amateur, you’ll understand. The cuts are quite clean, and the knife work is solid rather than spectacular.’
‘So not a surgeon or a doctor?’ he asked.
‘No, I don’t think so. A butcher not a surgeon. See here…’ He pointed to the leg. Danilov could see the white of the thigh bone as it shone through the pinkness of the muscle and skin. ‘The femur has been sawn through with a blade. It would have been much easier, if one wanted to remove the leg, to simply place the blade in here,’ he picked up a scalpel to demonstrate, ‘and pop the joint here.’
‘Pop?’ asked Strachan.
‘That’s the medical term,’ answered Dr Fang.
Danilov coughed. ‘Was the victim already dead when this was being done?’
‘No, he was still alive. There must have been copious amounts of blood.’ Dr Fang pushed his glasses back onto the bridge of his nose. ‘I don’t normally comment on the manner of a victim’s death. I never believe such details are relevant to my investigations. But, in this case, I will make an exception.’ There was a slight pause as Dr Fang gathered his thoughts. ‘This death was very painful. Excruciatingly painful. The amputations were performed while this man was still alive.’
‘Alive?’
‘This man would have been conscious. And this work wasn’t carried out all at the same time. It was spread out over a number of hours.’
‘Why?’
‘I couldn’t possibly comment, Inspector. The man’s motives are none of my concern, simply his actions.’
‘Of course, Dr Fang, please continue.’
‘From the angle of the cuts, we can conclude the man was right-handed, working from the right hand side of the body. There are more characters carved into the chest. This time, they read “revenge” as I am sure you are already aware.’ The doctor sniffed and pushed his glasses back onto the bridge of his nose. ‘However, following the principles of Song Ci, I have undertaken some experiments on a pig’s body over the last few days. I believe the knife that carved the characters would look something like this.’ From beneath the mortuary table, he produced a short, rather stubby, triangular blade with a sharp point. He placed it next to the skin of Dr Renfrew. The blade seemed to fit exactly into one of the cuts of the stroke on the character. ‘The knife is not common. Used by sailors on the Yangtse to splice ropes.’
‘Thank you, Dr Fang, you have been diligent. Is there anything else?’
For the first time the pathologist smiled. ‘There are no other marks but we have found this.’ He pulled up the torso and turned it over to reveal the back of the left shoulder. ‘The body had been washed after the amputations, removing all the blood. He is a clean operator our killer. I remember that the English actress had been washed in exactly the same way. And, of course, our first victim had been cleaned by the waters of the creek, not that they are particularly clean.’
‘I don’t believe he is being clean, Doctor, I think he is removing any trace of evidence that might remain with the body,’ said Danilov.
‘If that is the case, Inspector, he must be aware of Locard’s theories also. It suggests an educated man who is aware of the latest advances in forensic science.’
‘Oh, he’s clever all right, too clever perhaps.’
‘But cleverness is not everything, is it, Inspector? Sometimes, the truly clever make the simplest mistakes.’ The doctor turned the shoulder and pointed to a small red mark with distinctive whorls and ridges. ‘In this case, he wasn’t as punctilious as he was with our English actress. Do you see it?’
Both Danilov and Strachan leant over the body to get a better view.
‘I think the killer reached around with his left hand and gripped the shoulder, whilst his right hand severed the remaining sinews and muscles attaching the arm to the shoulder. Something like this.’ The doctor demonstrated what he meant to the two detectives using the small scalpel as a knife.
‘I’ll call the fingerprint squad right away,’ said Strachan.
‘I have taken the liberty of calling them already, Inspector.’ Dr Fang looked at his watch, ‘they should be waiting outside.’
Danilov gestured for Strachan to get the fingerprint team.
‘I think it’s the left index finger. Fingerprinting from skin is notoriously difficult, but I think your team should be able to get something from this. This is a classic example of Locard’s theory. When two humans come into contact there will always be a transfer of some sort. Humans always have relationships, just not the sort we normally think about.’
‘Thank you, Dr Fang, your examination has been most useful. I wonder did you have time to look at the lid of the barrel?’
Strachan and the fingerprint team burst through the doors and marched up to the mortuary table. Dr Fang stared down at the wet feet spoiling his pristine white tiles.
He sniffed again and pushed his glasses up onto his nose. ‘I did, Inspector. Most interesting.’ He walked over to a stainless steel table in the corner. Beneath a white sheet lay the lid, looking as though it was yet another corpse awaiting its autopsy.
‘It’s made of oak. French oak, I believe, but wood is not really my field. Far too healthy for me, I’m afraid.’ He picked up the lid. ‘As you will have worked out, there are traces of bitumen all around the edges. A common enough material, used on boats up and down the China coast. The blood stains are pig’s blood. It seems to have seeped into the wood, giving this peculiarly pink tinge to the oak.’
‘What about the scratches on the inside of the lid, Doctor?’
‘Patience,
Inspector, I was coming to those. Made with the fingers I believe. It seems to be the words, HATE ALL. But the last “L” is noticeably fainter than the rest of the letters.’
‘You said, made with the fingers?’
‘The nails of the fingers to be precise. And probably a woman’s hand.’ Dr Fang held up a small glass bottle with a minute fleck of something lying on a white cotton ball in the bottom. ‘There are traces of nail polish on this fragment. Scarlet nail polish. Not a colour I would recommend to anybody.’
Danilov scratched his head. ‘Let me understand you properly, Doctor, you are saying that a woman made these scratches?’
‘I am, Inspector. And given the context, I would be quite confident in stating these scratches were made by the victim.’
‘Maria Tatiana Stepanova?’
‘Of course, without examining the nails, I can’t be 100% certain but…’
‘Thank you, Doctor. That is most interesting.’
‘It’s my pleasure, Inspector. And now, I must return to my liver.’
Danilov looked across at Strachan and the fingerprint technicians carefully taking an impression of the print on Renfrew’s shoulder. To find a match was painstaking as they searched the records by hand. And that was pre-supposing they had the killer’s fingerprint on file.
This case was becoming more and more complex. He desperately needed time to think and smoke. ‘Stra-chan, leave those men to their jobs, they know what they are doing. We need to take a walk.’
***
They both stepped out of the morgue, leaving the sterile smells of death and loneliness behind them. Danilov immediately began to roll a cigarette. ‘Walk with me, Stra-chan. I always find a walk and a good smoke clear the mind of the cobwebs. A shot of vodka sometimes helps too.’
‘I don’t drink, sir.’
‘Not at all?’
‘No, sir. Never developed a taste for it. I prefer tea.’
‘Do you enjoy any of the vices, Stra-chan?’
The detective stared at the back of a lorry laden down with freshly cut bamboo. ‘I suppose my one vice is food, sir. I love my food.’