The Lake Ching Murders - A Mystery of Fire and Ice

by David Rotenberg

  The empty circle at the bottom. There was always an empty circle to be filled at the bottom.

  Then he drew two parallel lines from top to bottom on either side of the page. Fire and ice. “Where do parallel lines meet?” he muttered. “Never,” he said aloud. Then he rethought that. No. No law defies death — or endless life. “Hesheng — in this year of peace,” he whispered. Then he smiled, looked at the piece of chalk, almost said thank you aloud, and set to work.

  An hour later he had almost filled the desktop with circled words and connective lines. A maze of interlocking events finally began to yield up their pattern — evidently parallel lines do meet.

  At the very bottom of the diagram in the empty circle he wrote in heavy letters HOW DID THE GIRL GET TYPHOID?

  Then he recircled it three times.

  “Why all the lines, Fong?”

  He hadn’t heard Lily approach. In fact, he didn’t realize that she had put a hand on his shoulder. Then he did and felt awkward but pleased. She sensed his discomfort and removed her hand. “Why does the girl who died from typhoid get so many circles, Fong?”

  “She might be the link back to the rogue in Beijing, Lily.”

  “That’s what they want you to find for them, isn’t it, Fong?”

  “Yeah. They sure as hell didn’t bring me back from west of the Wall to find out who committed these murders. They really couldn’t care less who slaughtered those men. All they want to know is who their opposition is — the name of the rogue in their midst.”

  “That phone number in Beijing?”

  He nodded, but there were still big pieces missing, pieces that fit in smoothly. Pieces that joined it all together. He stared at the diagram. A phrase popped into his head. Aloud he said, “And they fish in all weather.”

  “Who does?”

  “And one of them helped the whore Sun Li Cha to safety.” Suddenly he was in motion. As if the building had tilted and he was loping down a slope. He would have been surprised to know that the piece of chalk in his hand was spinning rapidly between his fingers.

  “Drawing pictures, Fong?” The coroner had been stirred to waking by Fong’s pacing, but his words were slow and his cough a hoarse rattle.

  Fong looked down at the tabletop. It was as if he’d never seen the diagram before.

  The coroner coughed again. Another rattle. Fong looked at him and his heart sank. “I owe him so much and I’ve given him so little,” he thought. “A parting gift’s the least I can do for this man whom I’ve known so long but know so little.”

  “I need the two of you to go to Beijing,” Fong said quietly.

  “Why?” Lily demanded.

  “To find out whose phone number that is in the phone log from the China news agency office. Right?” The coroner’s words were slurred.

  “Wrong, Grandpa. That number’ll be no more than a place to begin. I can’t imagine anyone would be stupid enough to use their own phone.”

  “But you want to pursue it anyway?” asked Lily with more than a hint of suspicion.

  In English he answered, “Think of it as a free trip to Beijing, Lily.” He allowed her to see that he was asking for a favour and nodded toward the old man. “Don’t ask any more questions — please?”

  Lily nodded and replied sadly, “Okey-dokey. Next time Hong Kong, okay?”

  Fong was surprised that the coroner didn’t complain about their use of English. He had gotten to his feet, which seemed to shuffle although he didn’t move. “Where’ll you go, Fong?”

  “Fishing.” Before they could question him he added, “Then back to Xian, Grandpa.”

  “But we just got back from there.”

  Fong moved to the old man. “True, but there are connectives between that island and Xian which I think I missed. And I think I know what they are.”

  The coroner looked at Fong for a long time. “You mean who they are, don’t you, Fong?” Then he reached out and touched Fong’s face.

  Fong felt a pang of sadness. The old man was being sentimental. “I do, Grandpa.”

  “Be careful, Fong.”

  “You fly safe, Grandpa.”

  “China is beautiful from the air,” said the coroner and returned to his chair. He sat erect but his eyelids were shut, heavy with fatigue.

  Fong watched him for a moment. Was he asleep or had he just closed his eyes for a second? Or was he floating?

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  CORMORANTS

  It wasn’t hard to find the local labourers who had worked on the excavation at the shoal, where the sculpture of the half-horse had been found. At first they were reluctant to answer Fong’s questions, but when it became clear that his only interest was in the cormorant fishermen they spoke more freely.

  Over and over again they mentioned one specific elderly fisherman who came by the shoal. Who talked to Dr. Roung, as one of them put it, as if he owned him.

  Through his binoculars, Fong saw the elderly fisherman sitting very still in his bamboo-wrapped boat as he waited for the cormorant to emerge from the deep lake. The lantern on the boat’s stern swayed slowly with the roll of the water. Fong thought the man looked like an aged bird himself.

  Fong put down his binoculars and climbed cautiously into the boat that Chen had supplied for him. He rowed slowly out to the older man. By the time Fong neared the cormorant fisherman’s boat he was breathing heavily. He waved a greeting. The old man spat in the water and muttered, “City idiot.” Fong let it pass and smiled. The old man didn’t return his smile but did signal Fong to keep his distance. For a moment Fong didn’t understand, then he did. The cormorant was still beneath the water, fishing for his master.

  About ten yards to Fong’s left, the cormorant broke the surface. Its elegant head swivelled to see who was in the new boat. The bird’s eyes found Fong and stared at him. Fong returned the gaze and watched the beautiful bird instinctively try over and over again to swallow the fish in its throat. Only when the cormorant broke its eye contact with Fong and headed toward the elderly man did Fong see the glint of the wire that had been twisted around the bird’s neck to stop it from eating its catch.

  Some called the relationship between cormorant and fisherman symbiotic. Fong knew better. This was indentured servitude. The cormorant fisherman is present at the hatching of the bird. The first thing the animal sees is the grin on the fisherman’s face. For days the fisherman never leaves the baby cormorant’s side. The bird comes to know the fisherman as warmth, as the source of all food, as his master. After ten days the bird begins to walk. It follows the fisherman around like a gosling does a goose. It is two months before the fisherman takes the bird on his boat. It sits on the fisherman’s lap and watches the other cormorants work. After two years the slender wire is slipped around its neck and tightened so that the bird cannot swallow its catch. In return for two years of child care, the bird works its entire life for the fisherman. Twenty years of service for two years of apparent kindness. The bird will breed as well as fish. And finally, it will die in the lake.

  Chinese, Fong thought. Very Chinese. But not kind. Fong’s two years in the country had taught him a lot about the rough realities of living, the rareness of kindness in the wilds.

  The old man put his hand on the cormorant’s neck just above the tightened wire and squeezed. The bird gave up its catch and then was committed to the water once again. When the fowl disappeared, the old man looked to Fong. “What?” His voice was oddly high and singsong.

  He’d already guessed that Fong was a cop.

  “Can I ask you a few questions?” Fong began.

  The old man didn’t answer.

  “I could impound your birds.” That got the old man’s attention.

  “I could tip your boat and no one’d know that your stupid ass had sunk to the bottom of the lake,” the old man growled. “Dumb flat-head.” The man lowered his lantern to the merest glow and began to row away.

  Darkness quickly enveloped Fong. The old man could easily do what he threaten
ed. Then anger swept through Fong. He was from Shanghai. He wasn’t some dumb country cop. He wished they’d given him a gun. Then he wished that he’d never been taken from the quiet dustridden village west of the Wall. Then he wished that he knew how to swim. Then he noticed that the ripples of the fisherman’s wake were disappearing, so Fong grabbed his oar, cursed the water and pulled.

  After ten minutes of hard rowing Fong saw a lantern flare. The old man was going in a large circle. Of course he was! The cormorant was valuable and it was beneath the water fishing. If it emerged and the fisherman wasn’t there — well, Fong didn’t know what would happen in that case; but he did know that the fisherman was Chinese and Chinese people did not walk away from valuable investments, which is exactly what the cormorant was. So Fong turned his boat and backtracked. Sure enough, the shadowy presence of the fishing boat appeared only moments later.

  The old man wasn’t pleased. His assumption of the basic urban dumbness of the cop had proven wrong.

  “You row your boat like a girl.”

  The man’s accent was so dense that it was difficult for Fong to understand him.

  “A girl?”

  “A girl, a whore, who’s just had every orifice filled.”

  “Like the girl on the lake boat?”

  A shadow crossed the old man’s face. Or was it anger? And what kind of talk was it for an old man to refer to women’s orifices being filled?

  The cormorant broke the surface with a plop. The fisherman reached down and lifted the sleek bird into the boat, which rocked gently.

  Fong changed tack. “It’s a beautiful bird.”

  “It’s my last.”

  Fong wondered if that was because of age or something else.

  “Is it a good bird?” Fong asked.

  The fisherman relieved the bird of the contents of its neck — two small fish — then recommitted it to the deep. The man’s hands trembled as he released the creature. Fong was surprised by the gentleness. But it fit somehow and led him to his next question. “Have you got a daughter, Grandpa?”

  The old man turned so quickly that his boat almost tipped. The glow from the swinging lantern picked up the rage in his eyes. He reached over and slapped the side of his boat with his open palm. Two quick thwacks. Seconds later the cormorant surfaced and headed toward the boat. There were no fish in its throat. The fisherman lifted the bird into the boat then stared at Fong. “Go away, stupid man. Go home. Or to hell. Just go.” Before Fong could answer, the old man snapped the glass shut on his lantern. Instantly the darkness was complete.

  Fong couldn’t see his hand in front of his face. He strained to hear the man’s oar but couldn’t. The man must be sitting in the dark staring at him. Fong settled back and waited. An odd connection grew between the two men. Finally Fong repeated his question. “Do you have a daughter, Grandpa?”

  The plunk of an oar broke the silence. Fong reached for his oar and tried to follow the sound, but every time he paused to listen the noise seemed to be coming from a different direction. Finally he stopped rowing and just listened. He didn’t hear anything.

  Hours later Fong managed to reach a rocky point of land. He had no idea where he was. He got out of the boat and did his best to hook the bowline to a tree stump.

  He sat on the smooth rocks and listened to the lapping of the lake.

  Then, as if from the water itself, the fisherman appeared — a spectre from the nether worlds. He didn’t get out of his boat. He just sat there lolling with the waves and stroking the cormorant. Finally he spoke.

  He told Fong everything. The small statue of the horse’s hindquarters he’d found in the cormorant’s throat. Meeting the archeologist. The man’s affair with Chu Shi. The coming of the foreigners. The resistance to them. The Beijing people. The acceptance. The taking of blood. The party high up on the island terrace. The wine. The typhoid. The death. The disinterment of Chu Shi. The celebration on the lake boat. Finally, of saving the whore, Sun Li Cha.

  When he was finished, Fong sat quietly looking at the great lake with the island just coming to light in the dawn. All he could think of saying was, “Thank you.”

  The old fisherman shrugged and began to row away.

  “One more question?”

  The old man stopped. “What more could you possibly want to know?”

  “Just one thing — why did you tell me?”

  A long silence followed. The old man looked away from Fong and stared at the dawn. When he spoke, something had broken in his voice. Something had given up. “You ask why I told you all this — because I have no children left. Because I’m old. Perhaps, because I’m a fool.” He patted the cormorant. The bird nuzzled its beautiful head into the old gnarled hand. Then the man sighed and finally unleashed his burden. “Because Chu Shi, the girl who died from typhoid, was my daughter. Her mother and I met — once — when I was young.” A smile softened his ancient features.

  Fong nodded but didn’t speak.

  The fisherman reached down and picked up something from the floor of the boat. Then tossed it to Fong. Fong caught the object and turned it in the light.

  It was the small bronze of the hindquarters of a horse.

  “What . . .?”

  “I found that thing, down there.” He pointed vaguely toward the shoal. “I gave it to Dr. Roung. He gave it to Chu Shi. She arranged to get it back to me before she died. I think that thing killed her. No, I lie. My greed killed her.”

  He sat very still for a moment then turned away from Fong, toward the rising sun. His shoulders lifted and dropped convulsively. Fong heard nothing but assumed the man was sobbing.

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  IN THE AIR

  The coroner had the window seat. Lily sat beside him, her head buried in a fashion magazine she’d bought at the airport. As soon as the plane levelled off, he leaned his forehead against the cool Plexiglass — and drank it in.

  China.

  Home.

  Bands of colour melded into the patterns of intricate tapestries — then into rainbows. Hills became the contours of women’s bodies. Space became infinite and soft. Things that do not meet, met.

  Then clacking. Clacking. An express train slowing as it passed through a local station. Then him, seated on the express train, looking at the platform across the way through the windows of the stationary local train.

  A young man and a woman. Standing on the platform. Holding hands. She facing the tracks, he turned away — peeing through the boards. Simple. Just holding hands and peeing.

  “Are you done?” she asked.

  He looked up into her round, calm face, into her coal black eyes and nodded.

  “Then button up, the train’s ready to go.”

  “Is it far?” His voice was surprisingly young.

  “Beyond the mountain,” she said and smiled.

  “That far?”

  “It’s not far, dear. In fact, it’s always been very near.”

  He wanted to look at her but found himself looking at his hand. And her hand. And recognized it — his mother’s hand. He looked up into his mother’s proud face and grinned.

  “You know the way?”

  “I do.” She touched his forehead and brushed away his hair. “Do you?”

  He felt himself smiling and crying at the same time. He took a deep breath then said, “I do.”

  Then he let go.

  Lily saw Grandpa’s tears running down the windowpane. She heard him mumble. She heard him take a deep breath then let out the air in one long single line of life. In the reflection, deep in the double Plexiglass windowpane, she saw the smile on his lips. She felt his hand. It was cold and so very still.

  When the plane landed in Beijing, she sat beside the dead man until everyone left their seats. A steward came down the aisle to them. “Is he all right?”

  Lily looked at the young man. She didn’t know how to answer his question.

  * * *

  Within six hours Lily had the basic information on the
telephone number and was back on a plane to Xian. This time it was she who stared out the window at the terrifying, intense beauty of China from the air.

  A small porcelain vase with a sealed top sat on her lap.

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  ALL ROADS LEAD BACK TO XIAN

  A great desert storm cloud enshrouded Xian as Fong approached in the Jeep. There was no water in the dingy cloud, only darkness and sand blown all the way from the vast desert to the west. “Here the West is to the west of you,” Fong thought. “At home, in Shanghai, the West is to the east. Old and new.”

  Fong guided the Jeep carefully into the darkness. It was colder than he thought and the streets were empty. Gaudy tourist hotels, then crumbling Chinese buildings momentarily pierced the gloom as the vehicle’s headlights swept past them.

  Fong took a corner and suddenly emerged from the cloud. He stopped the Jeep and hopped out to glory in the beauty of the night sky. Brilliantly bright stars, pinpricks in the black, black dome of the heavens shone down on him. On the horizon, a perfect crescent moon.

  For an instant he considered getting back into the Jeep and driving as hard and fast as he could in any direction. Just drive until the gas gave out. Then walk until his legs failed him. Then crawl until — but only for an instant. He checked his street map and got back into the Jeep, slamming the door. He liked the angry sound of the metal against metal. It bespoke action. Maybe even justice.

  Dr. Roung wasn’t particularly surprised when Fong barged into his office, but he was definitely not pleased. The man excused himself and went out of the room, leaving Fong alone. Fong fingered the small bronze statue in his pocket. It and the four stacked stones linked the archeologist to Chu Shi. Xian to the island. But he still needed the link back to the rogue in Beijing.

  Fong’s eyes scanned the broad desktop and landed on the small bronze of the forequarters of the horse sitting to one side.

  Then the man’s cold hand touched his shoulder. Fong hadn’t heard him return. Or perhaps he hadn’t actually left. Just stepped toward the door. Before the taller man could speak, Fong said, “I have a few questions I’d like you to answer.”