The Hamlet Murders (10 page)

Passing by one open door, Joan found herself momentarily transfixed by the gaze of a naked whore perched on the edge of the room’s sink. In front of her, a young man on his knees had buried his head between her thighs in what was clearly a vain effort to bring this whore to the release of clouds and rain. From the sounds emerging from her nether regions he was giving it his best efforts. Lucky for him he couldn’t see the look of infinite boredom on the young woman’s face.

That expression changed when she saw Joan in the doorway of her cubicle. A smile crossed her lips. Her hips began to undulate against the young man’s face as she mouthed the words “Show me your tits” at Joan.

With the ease of a practiced “eloquent,” Joan undid the topmost button of her blouse, then the next down, then the next. The whore’s mouth went slack. Her eyes glazed over. “Good,” Joan thought, “I want to be remembered as being here. I must have been seen entering, might as well leave a real memory.” As a cop she knew that this piece of information would be elicited early in the investigation and would stop everything else – hopefully long enough to let her get back from Shanghai and muddy the water with her Calden Inn alibi. Joan kept eye contact with the whore. The girl’s eyes rolled back in her head and she let out a low sigh. Then she clamped her thighs tight to the young man’s head and grabbed fistfuls of his thick black hair.

As soon as the whore’s eyes closed, Joan raced to the bathroom at the end of the corridor. There were thankfully few people in her way and most were involved at the moment. She flung open the bathroom door, stood on the sink to reach the unlocked window, opened it and slipped out into the alley. The alley led her to a dimly lit street. There, across the roadway was the green Mini – unlocked, keys beneath the floor mat, instructions in the glove compartment and new identification papers affixed to the underside of the steering wheel.

She followed the directions to the ferry docks and guided her car into line for the next boat to the mainland. As the instructions directed, once she parked her car in the belly of the boat, she went up the bow stairway and entered the women’s washroom. She counted four stalls, checked that the fourth was unused, then entered, closing but not locking the door behind her. The place wasn’t overly clean but for a lavatory that serviced both Hong Kong and the mainland she’d expected much worse.

Five minutes later, the stall door was pushed open and a tiny, sharp-faced, older woman came in carrying a canvas bag. She didn’t say a word but signalled Joan to sit on the toilet. There was no seat cover so Joan balanced on the rim. The tiny woman went behind her and sat on the toilet tank. From her bag she pulled out a pair of shears and began hacking away at Joan’s long black hair. At first Joan wanted to resist then she said to herself, “Hey, it’s only my hair.” Then she said to herself, “Fuck, it’s my hair.” But she didn’t say anything aloud. When most of her long hair was on the stall’s floor, the woman hopped off the toilet tank and came around the front. She put a finger under Joan’s chin and lifted it. Then she completed her work with smaller scissors.

When she finished cutting, she stood back and said her first words to Joan, “Take off your clothes.” The first thought in Joan’s head was that this was the only day in her life that two women had asked her to remove her clothing. She did as she was told.

The woman examined her naked body. But this was not the kind of examination that the whore would have done. This one was clearly critical and worried. The tiny woman reached into her bag and withdrew a large rolled tensor bandage and began to bind Joan’s chest. “Let out your air.” Joan did. A few minutes later, Joan’s upper curves were flattened and uncomfortable. The tiny woman noticed and said, “Get used to it. Don’t even think about taking it off until you’re safely back in Hong Kong.” Then a thought crossed the woman’s face. As if the thought were somehow shouted aloud, Joan received the message crystal clear: After what you are going to do, even Hong Kong may not be safe.

The tiny woman took a tattered Mao jacket and the traditional pyjama-like leggings from her bag and held them out to Joan. Joan put them on. It was summer. The jacket was suffocatingly hot – and both the jacket and pants stunk. They were supposed to. She was a peasant. Peasants don’t often smell nice.

“Take off your shoes,” the woman ordered. When Joan did, the woman hissed in disapproval then slopped nail polish remover on Joan’s toes, none too gently, wiped it off with a rag and slid on a pair of cheap sandals.

The woman then took a jar of theatrical “dirt” and rubbed wads of it into Joan’s neck, hands, feet and forehead. Once rubbed in, it looked like stains not dirt, as if Joan had gone for many months without proper bathing.

“Hold out your hands.” The woman examined them closely and shook her head. Joan used clear nail polish so that wasn’t a problem but her nails were immaculate, a real source of pride for her. The woman took out her small scissors again and ripped at Joan’s nails, purposefully slashing into her cuticles and cutting jaggedly wherever possible. Once that was done, she looked at a hanging section of nail on Joan’s left ring finger and said, “Close your eyes. This might hurt.” Before Joan could do as she was asked, the woman slipped the offending finger into her mouth, clamped on the hanging section with her teeth and gave a mighty yank with her head. The nail tore and half came out in the woman’s mouth. She spat it to the ground. Joan felt as if she might faint. But she didn’t.

The woman looked at Joan’s hands and nodded. “Good. They might pass. Open your mouth.” The woman took out a small vial with a dark liquid in it. Using a tiny brush she applied the liquid to several of Joan’s teeth. “Tooth black,” she explained as she put away the bottle. The woman then indicated that Joan should turn slowly. Joan did. The woman nodded, “As good as we can do for now.” She reached into her pocket and held out a badly torn and aged identity card. Joan took it. The woman began to pack up, scooping large hunks of Joan’s hair into her canvas bag. When she was done, she said, “Take five more minutes then come on deck.”

“How will I know when five minutes is up? You have my watch.”

“Count.” The woman was clearly not impressed with Joan’s first venture into peasanthood. “When you are on deck, don’t sit. Don’t look around. Get to the rail and stare at the water. When we land, you walk off. Give me the car keys and your other identity card.”

Joan did.

“Good luck,” the tiny woman said, “and if I was you I’d take a good dump here. It may be the last time you see a real toilet until you get back to Hong Kong.”

When the ferry docked, Joan joined a long line of peasants who waited patiently while all the cars from below left the ferry, then the passengers in first class, second class and third class. Waiting without complaint was a new concept for Joan Shui.

At the bottom of the gangplank there was a government official backed by two armed guards demanding papers. When Joan’s turn came, she held out her torn identity card. The man didn’t even look at it as he barked, “Move along.” This was new too. Not even a glance at her face, which was now dirt encrusted, or at her now seemingly non-existent chest, which thanks to the tensor bandage was beginning to really pinch.

She was used to being the object of much male and some female attention and for a moment it really threw her not to be thought of as attractive. Up until that moment she hadn’t realized how much, in the past, she had relied on the unquestioned fact of her beauty.
“Sic transit gloria mundi,”
she quoted to herself. A British education came in handy at the oddest of moments.

On the night train north, in the fourth-class hard-seat compartment, she met her land contact – she almost fell asleep against her shoulder before she knew. “Do the exercises in your mind, they’ll keep you alert,” the middle-aged woman whispered.

“I’m tired,” Joan said but was immediately sorry that she had spoken. The man across the way had ferret eyes. He was a common reality in mainland China. He and the millions like him were the natural product of a system that didn’t reward expertise but did reward those who rat on their fellow citizens. It was the only way that so few could control so many – Beijing had millions like this man working for them.

Joan fell back on instinct – charm your way out. Mistake! With her blackened teeth and cropped hair, her smile and head bob were hardly fetching. His response shocked her. “An ugly whore,” he shouted. “What’s an ugly whore doing on the same train with honest comrades?”

That was enough. Joan swallowed some air, as her younger brother had taught her to do many years ago at a family gathering, and belched right in the man’s face.

He spat on the floor at her feet. She spat at his feet.

He stared at her. She stared right back.

They made quite a pair.

Despite the fact that the train actually did go all the way to Shanghai, Joan and her escort got off as the sun was rising, some 200 miles south of the great city.

“This train comes in to the North Train Station in Shanghai. It is watched. Always watched,” her escort said ominously. Once off the train, the heat hit Joan like a moist blanket. At least on the train there had been the motion of air through the windows. But here the air just hung from the dawning sky like a living, sleeping thing. Joan reached to undo the top buttons of her Mao jacket. “Don’t,” the woman said, “peasants are very wary of showing their bodies.”

Joan took her hands away from the buttons. “These sandals cut my feet.”

“Good,” said the woman as they left the train station and headed toward the old section of the small city.

A
s the heat of the day began to mount, Fong and Chen climbed up on the stage. Behind them, several other cops lugged a large black bag into the auditorium.

“What now?” demanded the old worker from the far reaches upstage.

“Thanks for joining us,” said Fong in an effort to calm the waves of open aggression coming from the man.

The old worker looked at Fong then did a double take as he glanced at Chen. Chen was used to that. “What do you and your intensely ugly friend want?”

Fong started to defend Chen, but the younger man spoke first, “You work the fly rail here?”

“Some nights,” the old worker replied warily.

“Which nights?” asked Fong.

“Whichever they assign me. What is this? I was told I had to work on this shit. I don’t know squat about it. It’s ridiculous. I’m a rigger. A professional, not some stupid rope puller. I worked on skyscrapers in the Pudong then all of a sudden I’m told to go pull ropes for faggots. What’s that?”

“These ropes that you pull, they are all your responsibility?”

“Yeah, there are seven sets of lines and they are all mine to work – on the nights I have to waste my time here.”

“And each of the ropes . . . ”

“Lines. They’re called lines.”

“Okay each of the lines has counterweights on them?”

“Naturally. Some of the flying units weigh close to half a ton. Without counterweights no one could lower the thing in without smashing it to the ground, let alone fly it out.”

“Yeah, I get that, but whose responsibility is it to set the counterweights?”

“Mine . . . for the . . . ”

“ . . . nights you waste your time and talent here. Right. So this was the line Geoffrey Hyland was hanged from?”

“Who?”

“The director who was hanged. You may recall that incident.”

“Yeah. It was tied off to the pinrail when I arrived that morning.”

“How much counterweight was there on that line?”

“A lot.”

“More than usually is on the line?”

“Way more.”

“Do you know how much more?”

“I’m a professional, of course I know how much weight was . . . ”

“How much?”

The man went into the small production office in the back and came out with a well-kept leatherbound notebook. He turned to the date and pointed to a figure. The man’s handwriting was like a draftsman’s. The columns were perfectly in line. The whole thing was a work of mathematical precision. Fong looked at the man. Perhaps his talents were, in fact, wasted here.

“So there were three hundred and forty pounds of counterweight on that line that night?”

“That’s what it says, so that’s what was there.”

Fong nodded. “How much does that line usually carry?”

The man checked his notes. “Forty pounds when I work it and sixty when the other guy does.”

“Because . . . ?” Fong prompted.

“Because I’m stronger than the other guy who isn’t a guy at all but an old woman who needs the extra counterweight to move the damn thing.”

“What do you pull up and down on this line?”

“You mean what’s flown in and out on this line?”

“Yes, I guess I mean that.”

“Several vertical white panels. Used for the ghost’s appearance in the bedroom and for Ophelia’s madness walk with the flowers.”

“Just canvas panels?”

“That’s it. Pretty light but that director was very specific about how he wanted the panels flown in and out. It was in time to this real slow music so we needed enough counterweight to make the move smooth. When it worked it was . . . good, you know.”

Fong nodded. Even this resentful old man saw the beauty in Geoff’s work. “Where are the counterweights kept?” He pointed to four stacks of iron weights on a rolling cart upstage of the last pinrail line. Fong thanked him for his help. “Just one more thing.”

“What?”

“Did actors use the chair that was here?”

“There’s not supposed to be any chair here.”

“No?”

“No. I wouldn’t allow actors here. This is my territory and I’m . . . ”

“A professional, you’ve told us already.”

“Yeah. And I wouldn’t use a chair because it was my job to be ready.” He was clearly about to reiterate that he was a professional but decided against it. He just harrumphed. Then he said, “Anything else?”

“No. Thanks again for your help.”

As the man left, Chen went to get the counterweights, and four cops shut the various doors to the theatre and then stood by. The rest of the cops muscled the black bag onto the stage and cracked it open. First, they took out a duplicate of the noose that had suffocated Geoffrey Hyland. Then they propped up a mannequin weighted to be just under a hundred and eighty pounds. Geoff’s weight.

Fong walked the stage floor while, with the use of ladders, the noose was threaded through the pulleys and then brought down to the pinrail stage left. Then Chen added 340 pounds of counterweight to the flyline.

The mannequin was set centre stage and the noose put around its neck. “Captain Chen, are you ready?”

“Yes,” said Chen as he took up a position by the pinrail.

“Now, unloop the line and pull.”

Chen untied the line and gave it a yank. The mannequin rose easily off the stage toward the fly gallery. The cops were impressed. Fong signalled Chen to drop the line back in. He did and the mannequin slid gracefully to the stage. “Do it harder, Chen.”

Chen did and the mannequin moved faster toward the fly gallery. “Let it back down, Chen.” The dummy moved smoothly back to the stage. “Now do it hand over hand as fast as you can?”

Chen did and the mannequin moved rapidly all the way up to the fly gallery and stayed there.

Fong shook his head and began to pace. Chen approached him. “It works, sir. With the counterweights, the murderer didn’t need to get Mr. Hyland to climb the ladder. So it answers that question, doesn’t it?”

“That question, perhaps, Captain Chen.”

“But it shows how someone could have hanged Mr. Hyland.”

“Partly.”

“Why partly? The counterweights make it easy enough to lift him.”

“Fine, Chen, but how did they get the noose around his neck? He wasn’t drugged. Even if you could get the noose around his neck, how do you stop him from taking it off if he’s in the centre of the stage and you are all the way over stage left at the pinrail?” Then Fong stopped and looked at the scuffmark on the stage-right proscenium arch. He flipped open his cell phone and punched the speed dial for Forensics. “Lily, have you done the paint match yet?”

“Yes. Very simple. The paint on the arch and Mr. Hyland’s shoe match.”

“Thanks, Lily,” Fong said and snapped shut his phone.

Fong took off his right shoe and tossed it to a cop standing by the pinrail door. “Smear mud on that.” The man was about to ask why then thought better of it when he saw the set of Fong’s jaw. Moments later, he returned and gave Fong his now muddy shoe. Fong took the shoe and put it on the mannequin’s right foot, lacing it up, careful not to get mud on his hands. “Bring the mannequin over beside you at the pinrail, Captain Chen.” He did. “Now put the noose around its neck. You’ll have to let in more line to do it.”

Fong closed his eyes for a moment. A new horrific image was ready to force its way into the sack around his heart, increasing the ghostly weight yet again.

“It’s ready, sir,” said Chen

“Now pull hard, hand over hand.”

Fong hopped down off the stage and headed to the back of the auditorium.

“Ready, sir?” Chen called out.

Fong didn’t turn around; he didn’t have to. “Yes, Chen. I’m ready.” Fong knew exactly what would happen.

The mannequin rose out of stage left in a large arch, flew across the stage like the base of a pendulum. The mannequin’s right shoe hit just above the scuffmark on the stage-right proscenium, leaving a muddy slash, and then the mannequin swung obscenely back and forth as it was hauled to its resting place just below the centre of the proscenium arch.

Chen was ecstatic. “Right. Perfect . . . ” But he stopped before he completed his thought.

Fong had left the theatre. He now knew two things for sure that he’d been uncertain of before. He knew that it was possible to hang Geoff and that Geoff’s hanging was the work of at least two people:
one to put the noose around Geoff’s neck, one to pull the counterweighted flyline.

Sometimes knowledge sets you free. Sometimes it makes you want to puke.

Standing in the shadows at the back of the auditorium, Li Chou didn’t want to puke. He wanted to jump for joy. He already had motive: jealousy – and now he had means: counterweights. All he needed was opportunity.

As the men packed up the equipment, Captain Chen found Fong outside the theatre. “That leads to something else, doesn’t it, sir?”

Fong nodded. “My place is just around the corner. Let’s talk there.”

Once in Fong’s rooms, Chen didn’t know where to look. His wife, Lily, had lived here with Fong. The shadowed outline of the antique lintel piece she had bought that caused so much trouble was still on the wall beside the window.

A letter from the condo people awaited Fong on the floor just inside the door. He opened it and was informed that he had only two weeks left “to make his intentions known.” It went on to suggest to him that an “insider’s price” like this was a once-in-alifetime thing. Ignoring Chen, Fong went into the bedroom and put the “offer sheet” on his desk. So much money to buy what was already his. When had this place that he and Fu Tsong had loved in stopped being his? When had it become theirs? Whoever they were. He remembered the French guys with blueprints and “bum-winged” silk jackets and their Beijing keeper with the raspberry-stained cheek.

So they were the ones who offered him the special insider’s price. And what a price! He moved the offer sheet to the top-left corner of his desk. Then to the top-right corner. Then to the centre – yep, everywhere he put the thing, the price was still completely beyond his means, way beyond. The only people he knew who had this kind of money were people he had arrested and were now spending time in jail. How could anyone, anywhere, make this kind of money, let alone have it just lying around to spend on buying back something that was already theirs?

Finally he made a decision. He folded the damn thing and shoved it in the desk drawer. That felt better. Then he remembered that Chen was waiting for him in the other room. When he entered, Chen was looking out the window at the courtyard with the ludicrous Henry Moore–esque statue in it. “Tea, Captain Chen?”

Chen nodded and Fong poured hot water from a large Thermos he kept on the floor into a simple ceramic teapot. “So this was definitely a murder then, sir?” asked Chen bluntly.

“A murder made to look like a suicide,” said Fong as he swirled the water around inside the pot to get the tea to infuse the liquid.

“Then shouldn’t we start with opportunity, sir?” asked Captain Chen.

Fong noted the strength in Chen’s voice, wondered about it for a moment then nodded. He poured the hot liquid into a clean jelly jar and held it out to Chen.

The man didn’t take the proffered
cha.
“Keys for the theatre then? Isn’t that where we should start? Who had keys to get into the theatre. Keys provide opportunity. Opportunity is the place we should start.”

Fong nodded. Chen took the
cha.
Fong hesitated. Suddenly new vistas of danger were opening as this very sturdy, very dogged cop stood before him drinking his tea. “Let’s get a list of those who have keys to the theatre, Chen.”

“Shouldn’t the custodian have a list, sir?”

Fong thought of saying that he would pick up the list then put that idea aside. He would just have to weather the storm that list would let loose.

“Surely he’d know who has keys,” said Chen.

Again Fong nodded – that old man knew. He knew too much.

The old geezer rummaged through a stack of papers on the floor and mumbled angrily. Chen stood patiently waiting for the standard Shanghanese complaints about authority to run their course. They finally did. “Keys? It’s keys you want? To the theatre?”

“No,” Chen almost shouted. The man was clearly hard of hearing but it was also possible that he was delaying for some reason. “I want to know who has keys to the theatre.”

Then the man brightened and pushed aside a desk to get at an old filing cabinet. He opened it by twisting the handle and giving it two sharp knocks to the side – your basic Soviet-made locking mechanism. The cabinet, surprisingly, had only one tall drawer. The old man took out several large, mounted, theatre posters and dropped them onto the desk with a thud.

The poster on top featured a lithograph of a profoundly beautiful actress. Chen read the information. The play was by an English playwright whose name he didn’t recognize. But the name of the actress was extremely familiar – Fu Tsong. Chen looked at the image, the exquisite skin, the deep deep eyes, and marvelled.

“She was more than just a looker,” said the old custodian. “She made birds sing in the trees when she acted. I never missed a performance when she was acting. And her Peking Opera work was . . . ” Unable to find the words, he waved his liver-spotted hands like a fan in front of his face. Then he smiled unabashedly showing off an almost toothless maw.

“Have you found the list of theatre keyholders?”

“Yep,” the man replied and handed over a muchrumpled pad of paper and then returned to admiring Fu Tsong’s likeness.

Chen read the handwritten list on the top page. Names were printed, then a signature appeared beside each name. Chen assumed you signed out the keys. The list was predictable: Mr. Hyland as director had one, as did his two Canadian producers, as did the old man in front of him – those names were expected. Chen flipped through the following pages. Each entry was signed and then crossed off when the key was returned. Nineteen pages later he saw the first entry that had not been crossed off. The name there was Zhong Fong.

Back in Fong’s office on the Bund, Chen reported most of his findings.

“I’ll want to interview each of the keyholders at the office. Out of courtesy we’ll see the custodian in his room.”