The Lake Ching Murders - A Mystery of Fire and Ice

by David Rotenberg

  Dr. Roung moved away, but Fong stayed where he was and drank it all in. A cold night. Seven hundred thousand buried souls to one side and the image of a mad emperor seeking the elixir of life on the other. Parallel patterns. His teeth clacked. They hadn’t done that for a while. A surge of anger went through him and in his heart he knew what this was all about. What bound it all together — the elixir of life. Staying young. Fighting against the inevitable. That’s what was in the islanders’ DNA. That’s why the foreigners want the patent. That’s why Hesheng had been given a name that means “in this year of peace” despite the fact that he only looked to be in his twenties. Why there were so few graves in the island’s cemetery, why Iman couldn’t remember the words for the prayer to the dead, why the foreigners were so anxious to get accurate family histories from the islanders: from the farmers who were thought never to intermarry, but not from the fishermen who did. The islanders’ DNA — the elixir of life.

  From the missing piece he had deduced the whole.

  He turned to the archeologist, “What’s your given name, sir?”

  “Chen. My science degree permits me to use the title doctor. So I am Dr. Roung Chen.”

  Fong laughed.

  “What?”

  “Chen is a common name, a very common name for one so unique.”

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  DREAM OF DREAMS

  That night Fong wandered the deserted Xian streets alone. Visions of visions cascaded in his head. Seven hundred thousand bodies crammed in burial. Soldiers ready to attack, frozen in eternal stillness by the rising light. Seven unidentified corpses. Two generals kept apart from each other. Time itself standing still.

  Then there was a shuffling of feet. Fong turned and somehow he was in pit #1 of the terra-cotta warriors. Before he could understand what was happening to him he sensed movement through the rank upon rank of clay soldiers in the pit. And colour. Then a shout. Someone shouting his name. Ordering him.

  Fong moved past a kneeling archer and ran down a row of mounted cavalrymen.

  And there he was.

  Qin Shi Huang, dressed just as he was in the famous woodcut. On his head sat a rectangular, lacquered piece of hide from which hung silk strands — a dozen behind, a dozen in front. Each strand was strung with exquisite jade beads. His dark upper garment was of an almost blue-black silk. His voluminous sleeves were embroidered — light on the outside but dark as blood on the interior. The elaborate frontpiece was held in place by a white jade belt over an obi-like silk sash from which the jade handle of his sword protruded. Below the belt were silk skirts in several layers of light red that just exposed the tips of his wooden platform sandals. Fong vaguely remembered that the entirety of what the emperor wore was called Mian Fu. Both the name and the clothing style went back to the Xi Zhou people in the eleventh century BC.

  “We’ve made it.”

  The man’s gruff voice shocked Fong. The accent was unidentifiable.

  “Help me off with this,” he said indicating the broad obi-like sash around his waist.

  Fong was frightened to touch the illusion lest it return to nothingness.

  “Hurry, the light fades and I must be prepared.”

  Fong undid the white jade belt and put it on the ground. It was surprisingly heavy. Then he reached behind the emperor and untied the thin belt that kept the sash in place. The garment slid through his fingers with a silken whisper. The emperor bowed his head and Fong undid the straps and removed the headpiece, the Tong Tian, being careful not to snag the long ribbon attached to it that is supposed to connect the emperor to heaven.

  A brisk wind picked up. Fong shivered. He looked around him. He was on the crest of a high rugged peak, timeless China down below.

  The emperor stared into the distance. Fong knew that Qin Shi Huang was actually his own age although he looked ancient as the rock.

  With a huge sigh, the emperor sat heavily on the cold ground and lifted a foot. Fong found the delicate straps and snaps and freed the emperor’s feet from the raised platform sandals. Then he slipped off the silk socks. The emperor’s feet were severely arthritic; the joints were swollen or broken and his toes splayed in odd crushed patterns. His toenails were extremely thick and deeply yellowed from fungal growth.

  The emperor lifted his upper garment over his shoulders revealing a sunken chest and sparse growth of greying hair, narrowing to a single line that ran from his navel downward.

  Qin Shi Huang stood and turned to Fong. Clearly Fong was to undo the ribbons that held the emperor’s lower skirts in place. He hesitated. His eyes were at the emperor’s waist. He glanced up, aware of what this looked like. But the emperor was once again staring deep into the far-off.

  Fong unlaced the ribbons. The emperor’s skirts fell away. Before him, nestled in a bed of grey pubic hair, the man’s penis looked at him like a one-eyed eel, frightened of the world.

  “Cover him.”

  Fong whipped around. Dr. Roung was there holding a round flat stone, almost the size of a dinner plate.

  “Cover him, Fong!”

  The archeologist held out the stone. Fong took it. It was heavy and dropped to the ground with a thud.

  “Pick it up.”

  This voice was different. Familiar but different. Fong looked up. Iman stood there, Jiajia at his side.

  “Pick it up, Fong.”

  This voice was high, lisping. It came from his left. It was the politico.

  Fong picked up the stone. It was suddenly light as the finest porcelain. He handed it to the emperor.

  The old man took the stone and turned away — toward the east.

  Fong turned back.

  There was no one there. Nothing there. Then he looked to the emperor. He too was gone.

  Of course.

  At the end there is only ourselves — and what we know — and time which knows everything but tells us so very little.

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  AT THE RECREATION

  Fong’s phone call to Lily in Ching was brief and to the point. She listened quietly — in shock — then began asking questions. Each one a better question than the one before. Then she, albeit shakily, agreed.

  “How long do we have, Fong?” she asked.

  “Say, four hours. I’ve got to get him and then haul him back. Does that give you enough time?”

  “We’ll make it enough.” As she hung up the phone she was surprised to realize that she was excited. No. Thrilled.

  Dr. Roung Chen didn’t bother rising as Fong pushed his way past the secretary and into the archeologist’s Xian office. The man looked awful.

  Tough.

  “Let’s go.”

  “Where to?”

  “Back.”

  “To what?”

  “Not to Disneyland, Dr. Roung. To Lake Ching. You may recall there was a mass murder there — on a boat.” The man was so flustered that he didn’t notice Fong reach over and palm a small object from his desk. They drove for three hours in absolute silence. “Maybe just as Captain Chen had on that frigid night over four months ago with the specialist,” Fong thought. But Fong didn’t linger on the thought. There was still something missing from the puzzle. A final link that connected the pieces he had to the rogue in Beijing — which in turn pointed his way back home to Shanghai. And Fong was aware that without the connection to the rogue in Beijing everything he knew was as useless as the bits of paper vomited from the shredding machine in the archeologist’s office.

  As he and Dr. Roung walked toward the abandoned factory in Ching, Fong sensed that he’d have only one chance to find that link. He threw open the iron door. They stepped in and Fong slammed the door shut. They stood in total darkness while the clang of metal echoed in the space.

  Once the echo faded, Fong said, “It was a place of revenge . . .” he didn’t wait for Dr. Roung to respond, “ . . . and surprise. Wasn’t it?”

  Fong hit the wall switch that Chen had set up. All four death rooms snapped into being — floors, walls
and ceilings.

  Fong stared into the archeologist’s pale eyes. They were retreating behind his army-issue metal-framed glasses. “Fine,” Fong spat out and took three steps toward the projections. Then he stopped and turned back to Dr. Roung.

  “It was a cold night. The whore, Sun Li Cha, waited on the dock and greeted the foreigners. The other girls couldn’t make it. Some god with a sense of humour, or maybe it was just Soviet drunkenness, produced a vehicle that broke down and kept them from getting to the boat.” Fong looked back into the darkness. It was as if he was about to step onto a great stage and the archeologist was the only member of the audience. “But that wasn’t the only unexpected event of the evening was it, Dr. Roung? Don’t bother answering. We have lots of time.”

  “The foreigners went to the bar. The boat headed out on the lake. Once it was far enough out, the crew was ushered into a lifeboat and sent home. After all, one of the Taiwanese had a pilot’s licence and what kind of trouble could seventeen foreigners get into on a calm lake? Right? Sorry, seventeen foreigners and a hooker — right, I’d almost forgotten — and Iman. Let’s start in the bar.”

  On cue, the other rooms blacked out. Fong stepped into the projected bar room, the images playing across his face and body as he moved through the space. Dr. Roung followed Fong. The projections of the seven faceless bodies somehow stood out. The eldest, the one strung from the ceiling, even seemed to be swaying back and forth as if the boat were in motion on the lake. “Seven dead men. How?” The archeologist stared at Fong, the coloured lines of the projections playing across his face. “If you look about you, you’ll see that there are no half-empty glasses. An odd bar that has liquor and clean glasses but no half-empty glasses, don’t you think? Oh yes, there was the stain on the floor . . . right here.” Fong was at the side of the room farthest from the bar. He opened the satchel he was carrying and pulled out a bottle of champagne. “Remember, Iman was there. You remember him, don’t you, Dr. Roung? Sun Li Cha told me all about him being there. So as soon as the crew left and the boat was far enough out on the lake, Iman proposed a toast. After all, they had just completed a monumental business deal, hadn’t they?” He held up his bottle. “Champagne. The foreigners were all there; hey, this was a big celebration. A deal done. A long march completed! Iman poured them each a glass and then held his aloft. He shouted a toast, ‘To Blood!’” Fong shrieked. Then he paused and shrugged. “Perhaps it was more civilized: To Life or To Money or To Hell. Who knows? Well, of course you do, don’t you Dr. Roung! Well, whatever Iman said, the seventeen men must have cheered and then drunk their champagne — like good little capitalists.”

  Fong opened the bottle and drank. It scorched his throat and made his stomach do a quick loop. “Don’t worry, Dr. Roung, this is just alcohol. No sedative in this champagne.” Then Fong turned the bottle over and the liquid splashed onto the projected image of the red carpet, beside the stain that was already there. “They didn’t all drink though, did they, Dr. Roung? Iman allowed everyone else to swallow the poison while he tilted his onto the carpet behind him. Thus, the unidentified stain the specialist went to such trouble to photograph.”

  “It was the Triads . . .”

  Fong didn’t let him complete his sentence, “Right, the Triads. I’d almost forgotten about them.”

  “That Triad medallion . . .”

  ”Found right here. Correct?” Fong pointed to a space two feet to his left. “I worried for a bit about the medallion. Well, not really about the medallion. About the chain. Actually, about the single broken link of the chain. Well now, that’s not quite honest either, Dr. Roung. I was really worried about the four photographs the specialist supplied of the broken link. Four pictures, one link. Not very Chinese, don’t you think? So I had an associate of mine buy some of those medallions in Xian. They’re very popular with the tourists, don’t you know.”

  Fong took one from his pocket and put it around his neck. He grabbed the medallion with his right hand and yanked downward. The chain broke. Fong held the broken thing up close to the archeologist’s face. “How many broken links, Dr. Roung?”

  “Two.”

  “Right. Two. Every time I’ve done it — two. But the medallion in the rug of the bar had only one broken link. Four photographs, one link — one attempt to blame the Triads for . . .” Fong spread his arms and turned, “ . . . this.”

  Fong looked at the archeologist, but the man’s face revealed nothing.

  “During the toasts, and I assume there were several, Iman’s people boarded the boat.” He indicated a projected portal. When he turned back to Dr. Roung he said, “That’s when he saw them, wasn’t it?”

  “Who?” snapped back the archeologist.

  Fong grunted. “Fine.” He began to walk and Dr. Roung followed. Quickly he left the bar. It blinked out. The bedroom with the two beheaded Americans snapped on. Fong didn’t bother to check if Dr. Roung was following him; he knew he was. “Sun Li Cha entertained the two Americans — briefly. She claimed they weren’t up to the task. When she left the room the islanders slipped in and slit their throats. These were the first murders. Silent murders that wouldn’t alarm the rest. After all, Westerners were so odd, who could tell what they were doing in their room? It gave the sedative more time to work on the Asians who just may not have drunk all their champagne — champagne is an acquired taste, isn’t it?” Fong looked at the projection of the two dead Americans. “I put my money on Jiajia for this piece of work. The switching of the heads could have been done by any of them. A little chi let loose on the boat, huh Dr. Roung?” He paused for a moment, a new thought coalescing in his mind. “Or all of them,” he muttered. He dismissed a vision of the room stuffed with islanders watching the heads being cut from the bodies.

  “Next it was the Koreans’ turn to face their makers.” The bedroom disappeared and the video room came to light. Fong entered the projected room. Chen had set up the VCR and porno film as Fong had requested: a lurid image paused on the monitor. “The film was right here. Thirty-two minutes in. Thirty-two minutes since it had been turned on. At the point of the third copulation, if you’d care to check?” Dr. Roung stood like a man in an open field during a lightning storm, unsure whether to run or stand still. “Well, don’t check then. You’ll just have to take my word for it. Be that as it may, thirty-two minutes was long enough for the poison to almost paralyze the Koreans.” Then Fong turned to Dr. Roung. “These three men watched helplessly as they were hung by wire from that beam and then shot through the armpits and allowed to die. This one’s actually the simplest. Someone had a score to settle. Foreigners always forget that we have long memories, don’t they? Why do you figure that is, sir?”

  The archeologist was about to speak then thought better of it.

  “I figure it was sometime after they killed the Koreans that our intrepid hooker found her way to the deck and lo and behold, guess who’s there? An old fisherman. Now why would he be there, do you think? Huh?”

  The archeologist looked away. “It wouldn’t have anything to do with you, would it, Dr. Roung? I mean this fisherman wouldn’t, for example, be taking you to the boat, would he? Now why would he do that?”

  “I don’t know.” The words sounded ancient in the man’s mouth.

  “Really! I thought you were the puzzle solver here, Dr. Roung.”

  “I don’t know!” the archeologist said louder.

  “Well, there were some things you didn’t know. That I grant. Surprises. Oh, there were big surprises, weren’t there? Follow me.” After a moment of darkness, the bar room with the faceless Chinese men snapped on. Fong crossed to a wall and picked up the broad flat hewer that Lily had placed there. It was the kind the islanders used to build trenches and cleave paths. He held it up. The light glinted off its sharpened edge. “Very effective for removing faces, I’d think. Bloody though. I wouldn’t have thought you’d be so bloody?”

  The archeologist stood directly beneath where the swaying man would have been and tur
ned to Fong. “Detective Zhong, I found something on that island — not something — someone. Someone and something of real value. Timeless value.”

  Fong stood and waited. He imagined the swaying man, a bizarre pendulum in a world where time stood still.

  “The dead girl, Chu Shi, Jiajia’s wife,” Fong stated flatly.

  “Not just her. The whole possibility of something that lasts. Something beyond time.”

  “And these mutilated men . . . ?”

  “These Chinese men were willing to sell our very birthright. To sell something that is us — no, the very thing that is us — to make our entity into stupid little clay statues and sell them to foreigners.”

  Fong walked past the projections of the faceless men at the bar and the others by the mirror. Then he turned to Dr. Roung, a surprised look on his face. “This was your idea?” It wasn’t an accusation. Just a simple question.

  “Justice for what they were doing to us, don’t you see?”

  Fong allowed his head to nod slowly. “Traitors.”

  “Traitors to the black-haired people — yes, Zhong Fong, traitors who met their just reward.”

  Fong nodded again then slowly walked out of the projected bar. Dr. Roung followed him like a beaten dog on a long leash.

  Everything went dark. Then the runway room projection lit up. But this room was more than just a projection. The curtain was there. The runway was there. The six chairs were there — five occupied by dummies.

  Fong entered the room. He pressed a wall switch and the runway lights came on. He pressed a second and the Counting Crows song “Angels of the Silences” began to play. He didn’t look back. “The islanders didn’t tell you about this, though, did they? Did they?” he snapped.