Pirate (11 page)

THE VERY BEST PART OF HIS DAY WAS NIGHT. THE SMELLS OF
the harbor coming through the small window to his left included salt brine, dead plankton, marine fuel, the flotsam and jetsam of centuries, rotting sea organisms, human waste, and much, much more. He closed his black eyes and inhaled, sucking these particulate fumes into the very cellars of his lungs. After a seeming eternity, the small black eyes embedded in the twin hollows above his razor-thin nose reopened.

He took a deep breath, creating a wet sucking noise through the narrow vertical slits that constituted his nose. He opened the wide horizontal gash of his mouth. And, through that hole like an open grave, he exhaled. What did they say? In with the good air, out with the bad.

His name was Hu Xu. He was nearly sixty years old and a death artist by trade. He called himself the “diener,” pronounced DEE-ner, the old German name for autopsy attendant. It can also mean “responsible manservant” or even “slave,” but he was neither of those. It was a private joke. As a young man, living with his parents in America, he had for some years been an autopsy assistant in Tempe, Arizona.

Traditonally, any man (or, rarely, woman) who works in this capacity is called by the German word. To be the diener means pushing the gurneys around and hosing down the table. It means unzipping the body bags. It means sawing open bodies and learning their secrets, the tales of the dead. Hu Xu loved those secrets. It was in his blood.

In Tempe, when the sheriff and his men had discovered his secrets and were chasing him, they called him simply “the Chinaman.” A Chinaman on the run in Arizona has a hard time hiding. Here, in his homeland, he was invisible once more.

Standing now before a pedestal containing a tin basin full of hot soapy water, Hu Xu stared deeply into the steam-misted mirror and regarded the perfect beauty reflected there. Just the sight of his own wondrous face brought shudders of pleasure rippling up his short and slightly deformed spine.

Yesssss,
he hissed through his small, evenly spaced, and very sharp teeth.

I am the beautiful diener.

Indeed, in his natural state, as now, he was a wonder to behold. His body, from the neck down, was decorated in a brilliant tableau of interwoven and intricate tattoos. On his chest, descending beneath the black Tao cross, a two-headed Chinese dragon etched in shades of yellow, crimson, and emerald green. The dragon on his belly spouted twin licks of orange fire that divided to encircle Hu Xu’s small and malformed penis. Despite, or perhaps because of, the warped shape of the organ, his sexual appetites were varied and enormous. His sense of touch was inhumanly acute. As were all the others, taste, hearing, vision.

He grinned, baring his teeth, and murmured his approval at the rewarding sight. Perfect white dentures hid his own stubby points. As to hair, there was a wispy black goatee at the chin and a fringe of stringy black locks at the base of his skull. Normally, he plaited the sparse tresses adorning his tonsure with seven sterling silver skulls that clinked softly whenever he moved his head.

Now, he shaved off the goatee and stretched a latex skullcap over his hair and the tresses disappeared.

Tonight, the perfectly sculpted skulls were in a small silk pouch secreted upon his person. The tinny sound of tinkling skulls: the last sound countless victims heard before they stepped off. Hu Xu smiled, flipping at will through vivid memories of past glories engraved in his diener’s memory bank; no, stop, back up, there,
that one.

He passed his hand over his bony skull, slick with perspiration, licking his thin dry lips. He must hurry. It wouldn’t do to be late for his appointment with General Moon, and he’d much to do before he could leave his barge.

A red leather bag sat on a small wooden table by his dresser. It contained the protean secrets of Hu’s unusual life. He reached inside.

Delicately extracting another rubber prosthesis and any number of jars and tubes of foundation cream, greasepaint, and powder, Hu Xu began to make himself disappear. He liked to sing while he worked, something he had learned as a child in Arizona from the Seven Dwarfs in the movie
Snow White.
A song popped into his head and he gave voice to it, beautifully, as it happened. One of his many skills was an uncanny gift for pitch-perfect vocal impersonations. And so the soulful voice of Eric Clapton began to waft through the floating house.

Twenty minutes later, the wizened assassin had ceased to exist. In his place was a diminutive woman from the upper echelons of Shanghai society. Her name was Madame Li, and she had all the papers to prove it. Elderly and stooped, wearing a black raw silk dress with pearl buttons, Hu Xu leaned forward and studied himself carefully in the mirror. His cheeks were lightly rouged, his eyelashes long and thick with beautifully applied mascara. An artful application of lipstick fleshed out his lips, and his wig of hennaed black hair swept back into a tight chignon held in place by a tortoiseshell pin.

Off to Paris, dearies!

An old Louis Vuitton bag hung from his shoulder. Inside, a forged passport and fifty thousand Euros in cash. The old ship’s chronometer in the next room tolled. Eight bells. It was time to go. General Moon was expecting him at half past the hour. But first, he must bid fond adieu to the desolate creature waiting so patiently in the dark and fetid spaces beneath his feet.

He pulled open the concealed hatch in the barge’s galley and paused to savor the lovely stink that erupted into his nostrils. Below, a sewer of fear awaited him. His studio. He stepped carefully (he was wearing modest heels) onto the wooden ladder and began his descent. Halfway down, he heard a muffled cry of hope from poor Marge. Grandmother’s coming, Margie! He had expected this confusion on her part and it delighted him no end. Did Marge really believe this elegant septuagenarian was coming to the rescue? The answer was yes!

The bilges of Hu Xu’s floating residence, an aging two-story barge indistinguishable from thousands like it in Hong Kong’s crowded Victoria Harbor, were the death artist’s sanctuary and workplace. In the bowels of his barge he would complete his masterpieces in solitude, working through the night, his subjects lit only by guttering candles as he molded and reshaped their forms and limbs with his scalpels, bread knives, pruning clippers, and, noisy old thing, a vibrating bone saw.

It was dark down here, he saw. All but two of the large candles had expired. Still, it was lovely by candlelight. The walls were lined with large and small jars of formalin holding organs, bits of tissue, and carefully excised body parts. There was a central drain in the floor leading to a holding tank below. The tank emptied into a macerator, the same kind used on larger fishing boats to grind fish guts into thin gruel before the bloody soup was finally pumped overboard into the harbor.

In the center of his busy autopsy suite sat a brand new table. It was the very latest thing in morgue decor. It had two tiers. The top slab, where Margie was now, was simply a perforated metal sheet. The perforations allowed flowing water and bodily fluids to seep through to the lower tier. This level was also metal and served as a catch basin. A pump ensured a continuous flow of water over the lower tier, keeping it clean.

This one’s name was Marge Goodwin. Stupid-sounding name, he felt, even for an unattractive and overweight American. She was the wife of a corrupt corporate executive near the top echelons at the Bank of China. General Moon had demanded one million dollars for the dear wife’s safe return. The deadline had expired. No word from the disobedient banker. It was assumed he had gone to the police. Pointless, since the new chief, like many others in the new Hong Kong, was in Moon’s pocket.

Alas, Moon had decreed death for Marge Goodwin.

The general, through his aide, Major Tang, had forwarded this late-breaking information to his most prized assassin earlier in the evening. It arrived via an encoded message. It was usually a simple transposition code, based on the fact that it was the third day of the week and that the date was the fifteenth of the sixth month. It was also, as always, hand-delivered by an anonymous fisherman on an anonymous sampan.

There were thousands of such nondescript men and women living on sampans in the harbor, large numbers of them on the general’s secret payroll in one capacity or another. In a recent move to solidify his position in Hong Kong, Moon had decided to equip this army of coolies with automatic weapons and grenade launchers. Concealed, but, still, they were a formidable secret militia.

Decoding Moon’s unusually lengthy message in his small study, Hu had further learned that he was to have a new and most exciting assignment. In Paris, yet.
Très chic, n’est-ce pas?
He was so thrilled, he noted the news in one of his black leather notebooks. He wrote much of this diary in haiku form, the poetry being one of the extremely few things Japonais that Hu had cause to admire.

Hu was expected at the Golden Dragon tonight at precisely nine o’clock. A quiet dinner with the general’s aide-de-camp, Major Tony Tang. Tang, whose westernized first name and chic appearance made him a glamorous society figure in Hong Kong, would provide his itinerary. Efficient preparations had already been made on his behalf by the general’s secretarial staff.

According to the general’s message, he was prebooked, first class, on the British Airways flight to Paris next morning. There was a deluxe suite waiting for him at the George V hotel. The loveliest flowers in that hotel, he thought. Brilliantly arranged. He’d have to find out who did them. Buy the boy a drink and then, who knew?

But he had to tidy up his nest before he left, of course. Hu Xu had been only too happy to learn he was to put the distasteful victim out of her misery. As was his habit, he just took his own sweet time doing it.

He’d been her host for just forty-eight deliriously happy hours. She was almost complete. A few finishing touches here and there tonight and, voilà, pop her in the oven! My, but wasn’t she the noisy one? He had grown tired of all the fretful blather. He had ceased to be interested in the sound of her. Pausing on the bottom rung, and looking coyly over his shoulder at Marge, he finished his work tune with a dramatic tremolo flourish.

She screamed. Who wouldn’t? A seventy-year-old grandmother who sounded exactly like Eric Clapton? It was enough to drive anyone in their right mind stark raving mad.

First things first, he thought, stepping off the bottom rung and turning toward her. Yes, he was running a little late. But if there was one thing he’d learned at the University of Tempe medical center, it was that it pays to be methodical and organized. A place for everything, and everything in its place.

He plucked the oversize green hospital scrub suit and disposable plastic apron from the hook on the wall beside the table and put them both on. On his hands he snapped thin latex gloves. Over his lovely shoes, little paper booties. He stood for a moment and regarded the woman, shaking his head from side to side as she fussed. Oh, my, what a fuss it was. She’d seen the old woman’s eyes and known at once that it was not her savior who stood gazing longingly at her now. No. In her pale blue eyes, realization bloomed in the widened irises.

“Upsy-daisy, my dear,” he said, sliding a hand under Marge to lift her torso. With the other hand, he inserted a black rubber block under the middle of her upper back. This raised the throat and tilted the head back.

He whipped the delicate knife back and forth, scraping the edge against the whetstone.

Oh, yes, my dear. That tongue will have to come out, I’m afraid.

Shhhh, he said, and raised the scalpel.

SUTHERLAND SPED ALONG THE TAPLOW COMMON ROAD,
slowed imperceptibly at the turning, and whipped through the main gates. After a moment’s study of the National Trust signs, they were motoring at a snail’s pace along the broad curving drive leading to Brixden House.

The drive wound its way through hundreds of acres of formal gardens and parklands, dotted here and there with classical statuary, some of it quite voluptuous, and the occasional temple or folly beyond the odd pond. Dappled June sunlight on the lawns, lakes, and beds made the thing picturesque in the extreme.

It was all a bit much for Congreve’s tastes, but then, he was prepared not to like it. The Brixden Set, as they were called, had quite a reputation. Séances. Masked balls. Orgies. He inclined his head and looked at Sutherland, who seemed quite keen on this visit. Orgies, indeed.

“We might need to stop once or twice for petrol before we reach the house,” he observed, tamping down his fresh bowl of tobacco.

“Impressive,” Sutherland agreed.

“Built originally by the second duke of Buckingham,” Congreve said, suppressing a disapproving sigh. “A scoundrel and rake if ever there was one. Dodged a bullet in a duel with one of his mistress’s husbands, then died shortly thereafter after having caught cold pursuing his second great love after women, foxhunting. He seems to have set the tone.”

But the peach orchards they now drove through and the gardens spoke to Congreve of another age, dotted as they were by extensive greenhouses with walls of nectarines, mind-bending displays of orchids and bromeliads, rare fuchsias and almost extinct varieties of cyclamen, rare Lorraine-series begonias, and benches draped with thick strappy-leaved clivia and yellow Vico. When finally he spied a bed of his beloved dahlias, he found himself softening a bit toward Brixden House, if not its owner.

Anyone who shared his love of dahlias couldn’t be all bad.

The house itself was imposing when they finally caught sight of it. It was in the classic Italian style, and even Ambrose had to concede it was lovely. Built originally in the mid–seventeenth century as a hunting lodge, and rebuilt many times, the present Edwardian country house stood on great chalk cliffs with views of the rolling green Berkshire countryside. The main house overlooked an idyllic bend in the Thames while a large guesthouse in the Tudor manner, Spring Cottage it was called, sat right on the riverbank.

Sutherland drove briskly round a grand fountain at the head of the main drive, down a wide path of crushed stone, and into the car park. He tucked his Mini in the shadows between a spanking new Bentley Continental in racing green and an enormous 1980 Aston Martin Lagonda. Ambrose, despite all efforts to control himself, bent over and had a peek inside the Bentley. This notion of owning an automobile had quite taken him over, and he found himself admiring the rich interior and picturing himself behind the wheel. He now knew how addicts must feel, catching a whiff of burning opium or a sniff of glue.

“Come along, Sutherland, we’ve no time to dawdle,” he said, righting himself and buttoning his tweed jacket. He was wearing a stylish young check for his meeting with Lady Mars. A black-and-white dog’s-tooth pattern, three pieces, and, on his feet, his favorite double-buckle Derbys. The fine brown calf leather shoes were bespoke, John Lobb, and were slender with a beveled waist and a delicate hourglass contour. Precisely the kind of footwear, he reflected, a man with a vintage Bentley might wear on a country sojourn.

They were expected and shown immediately into the Great Hall to wait for her ladyship. Sutherland gravitated to the famous Singer Sargent portrait of Lady Diana Mars’s great-grandmother hung to the left of the fireplace while Ambrose inspected a fine suit of Spanish armor, one of a pair standing guard at the foot of a great sweeping staircase. You didn’t see armor much these days. It had become such a cliché in the mid–twentieth century that it had largely disappeared. Congreve, noticing the delicate filigree work on the breastplate, thought perhaps the stuff was due for a comeback.

“You must be Chief Inspector Congreve,” he heard a voice at his back say. “I’m delighted to have you here at Brixden House.”

“Lady Mars,” Ambrose said, turning to face her. “I am—” The words froze on his lips. He felt as if he had slammed into a wall of beauty.

“You are quite a celebrity, is what you are,” Lady Mars said, quickly covering for his obvious embarrassment. “I googled you just this morning, Chief Inspector. The ‘Demon of Deception,’ one newspaper called you. ‘The International Master of Mystery.’ My, my. I shall certainly have to watch my every word around you, shall I not?”

The chief inspector was beginning to perspire. “Well, I shouldn’t go that far, Lady Mars, I—I think anyone in my circumstances would have done as much. Why, these criminal cases I’m handed are all simple logic usually and—and—”

“Yes?” she said.

Sutherland, seeing his colleague’s inability to supply further dialogue, came to his immediate rescue. “Good afternoon, Lady Mars,” he said loudly, crossing the room in a single bound. “Detective Inspector Ross Sutherland, Scotland Yard.”

“How do you do, Detective Sutherland? Another good-looking policeman. I’m so very pleased to meet you. Diana Mars. Would you two like tea? A cold drink? You’ve come a long way and it’s brutally hot out, isn’t it? I believe service is waiting in the library.”

Sutherland looked at Congreve, who now seemed wholly incapable of responding to even the simplest question, and said, “That would be lovely, thanks very much.”

“Follow me, then, won’t you?” Lady Mars said, and then she was gliding over the highly polished parquetry floors and disappearing through a set of gleaming double doors.

Sutherland looked at Congreve and found him rooted to the spot. “Do I need to run get the defibrillator out of the boot, then, sir?” he asked.

“What? What’s that?”

“Are you quite all right, sir?”

“Indeed. Yes. What seems to be the problem, Sutherland?”

“Lady Mars is serving us tea. In the library. It’s over there.”

“What is your point, Sutherland?”

“She’s waiting in there for us, sir.”

“Ah. Well, let’s get moving then, shall we?”

“There you are!” Lady Mars exclaimed as they came through the doorway. “I thought I’d scared you two off. Come sit and have some tea, won’t you? Oakshott here has provided us with a wealth of lovely cakes as well. Haven’t you, Oakshott?”

“Indeed, Madame,” Oakshott said. He was quite tall and thin, with blond, curly hair, and when he bowed slightly from the waist his boiled shirt rose up uncomfortably under his chin.

After the two detectives had been seated in a deep brocaded velvet sofa, Lady Mars poured for Ambrose and then Sutherland. Congreve lifted the cup to his lips, desperately trying to steady his hand. There was a noticeable rattle of cup and saucer.

“You like dahlias, I take it, Lady Astor?” said Congreve, managing a sip, but just barely.

“Lady Astor?”
she said, smiling politely enough for a woman who’d just been wrongly addressed as someone who’d been dead for nearly four decades.

“Sorry. I mean,
Lady Mars.
How silly of me. You see, I’m feeling a trifle warm. Terribly sorry, but—”

“Good heavens,” she said. “It is stifling in here. How rude of me. Oakshott, would you mind nudging the air-conditioning down a notch? The chief inspector here is burning up.”

“Not at all, Your Ladyship,” the butler said and, with a slight bow, he pushed his thick black glasses up on the bridge of his nose and slid silently from the book-lined room.

“You were speaking of dahlias, I believe, Chief Inspector,” Diana Mars said, looking at him over the rim of her cup with her impossibly large china-blue eyes.

“Was I?” Congreve said, swallowing a mouthful of hot tea. He seemed incapable of supplying further dialogue.

“Yes,” Sutherland said, somewhat frostily, “you were.”

“Would you care for an eclair, Chief Inspector?” Lady Mars asked.

“What?”

“I said, would you care for an eclair, Chief Inspector.”

“Oh. Right. Sorry. I was listening to your voice and not what you said.”

Sutherland coughed discreetly into his fist.

“Lady Mars,” the younger man said while reaching inside his navy jacket to withdraw a manila envelope. “We don’t want to take up too much of your time. We’ve come here to Brixden, as I mentioned to you on the telephone this morning, to discuss a possible suspect in an attempted murder that occurred recently.”

“Yes, Detective Sutherland. How may I assist you?”

“I’d like you to take a look at this photograph,” Sutherland said, handing her a glossy eight-by-ten he’d had printed up.

“Yes?” she said, scanning the snapshot.

“Do you recognize anyone?”

“Of course. This photograph was taken right here at Brixden House. Last New Year’s Eve, as a matter of fact. Right out there in the Great Hall. See? There’s my great-grandmother’s portrait on the wall.”

“Why, she’s quite right, Sutherland! The Sargent on the wall. Her great-grandmother.”

“So,” Sutherland said to her, with a glance at Congreve, who was still plainly trying to compose himself, “these persons are all, shall we say, friends of yours?”

“God, no. I just fling open the doors every year and see what fetches up. I’ve held this party annually since my dear husband died. He passed away on New Year’s Eve, you see. One minute into the new millennium. Chunk of ham lodged in his throat. Choked to death. Dear Nigel.”

“My condolences, Lady Mars,” Sutherland said.

“So,” Congreve said, rallying to the cause at last, “you are a widow, I take it.”

“Excellent deduction, Chief Inspector,” Diana Mars said with a warm smile in his direction. “Yes, I am.”

“There are rumors afoot that you plan to sell Brixden House,” Congreve said, mopping his brow with his soggy linen handkerchief. “Turn it into some sort of hotel.”

“My dear man, it’s always
been
a hotel.”

“Getting back to the photo, Lady Mars,” Sutherland said. “I’d like to ask you about this gentleman here. With the orange hair.”

“Yes?”

“He’s naked.”

“So it would appear. You see, I retire precisely at the stroke of midnight. To be alone with my memories, as they say. The party, naturally, continues full bore into the wee hours. I usually import a band from the States. Last year it was Jimmy Buffett. He was simply marvelous. Breakfast is served at five next morning. What goes on in the house after witching hour doesn’t interest me. Only that everyone wakes up next morning with a terrible head remembering what a splendid time they had in dear Nigel’s honor.”

“Marvelous,” Ambrose stated for the record.

“Yes,” she said. “As for me, I don’t tipple. One reason I don’t drink, you see, is that I do want to know when I’m having a good time.” She looked from one man to the other, her eyes alight.

“If you drink, don’t drive,” Congreve said. “Don’t even putt!”

“Now, that’s a good one, Chief Inspector. Wonderful! You play golf, I take it? So do I.”

“About the photograph,” Sutherland said, with a hard glance at his superior.

“Yes, yes. Is there anyone that you do recognize, Lady Mars?” Ambrose asked, leaning forward with his hands on his knees. Sutherland breathed a sigh of relief. The man was back, or at least making a brief appearance.

“This woman here,” she said.

“Which one?” Congreve said.

“This one. Bianca Moon is her name. Quite notorious. She’s been here a few times, I think. She and her twin sister, Jet. At this party or that. Never for luncheon or supper, naturally.”

“And may I ask why not?” Sutherland said.

“No one is comfortable talking about things in her presence, that’s why. We all think she’s a spy.”

“Of course she’s a spy,” Congreve said, all his prior consternation seemingly vanished. “The question is, why is this particular spy so—interested—in an English employee of the French embassy?”

“Why, the Chinese and the French have gotten very cozy lately, it seems,” Diana Mars said. “A big oil deal. Of course, you knew that. Everyone does.”

“Of course,” Congreve said, his innocent baby’s eyes doing their utmost to convey genuine sincerity. “We knew that.”

And, before he could stop himself, Sutherland blurted out, “We did?”