The Hamlet Murders (20 page)

Then Fong nodded and turned to the window.

“Sir?”

“We all do what we need to do, Captain Chen.” He reached up and touched the cool glass pane of the window. “All of us do what we need to do.”

“Yes, sir.”

A long silence followed. Captain Chen stood very still. Fong stared out at the Pudong. Then Fong turned to Chen. “I’ll see you tomorrow morning, Captain Chen.”

“Sir?”

“We understand each other now. I will see you tomorrow. We have work to do here, Captain Chen. Much work.”

F
ong opened the door to the safe house without knocking. The table in the centre of the room was covered with official-looking documents. A few of the mocked-up photographs were there of Geoff in handcuffs. The room’s windows were all closed and curtained so the place was oppressively hot and stuffy despite the late hour. Fong threw open the draperies and pried open a window. It made little difference. Fong leaned out the window. Far-off he heard the gentle lap of the Huangpo River. Looking up, he thought he saw the moon about to set.

Fong checked the other rooms in the house. The elderly Beijing man wasn’t there. Then he heard the front door open.

The politico with the large raspberry stain on his left cheek whom Fong had seen with the two French contractors in his courtyard, what seemed like years ago, strode into the room. The man hoisted a heavy briefcase onto the table and began to pack up the papers.

“Where’s Sheng, the older man from Beijing?” Fong asked.

“Not here, evidently.”

“Where is he?”

The politico looked up at Fong. “You know better than to ask something like that, Traitor Zhong.”

Fong didn’t reply.

The politico continued to pack his briefcase.

“Doesn’t it ever bother you?” Fong asked, knowing full well it was better to keep his mouth shut – tight.

The man looked up from his packing. “No, it never bothers me, Traitor Zhong.”

The single word
WHY
leapt out of Fong’s mouth. But he wasn’t really asking. He was falling. Begging for an answer. Lost.

The man on the other side of the table was Chinese like him. He was of flesh and would die like him. He probably loved and wanted and yearned like him – yet he did things that were beyond Fong’s comprehension. Then, much to Fong’s surprise, the man answered Fong’s question. “Because, Traitor Zhong, we all need direction. It is wrong to believe that each of us wants to cut our own path. That each of us determines how and where we go. People like you have deluded yourselves into believing that your fellow citizens want to control their destiny. It is not true. It is not even remotely true. Most people, the vast majority of people, want to follow, not lead. They want to be led. We live, we follow, we die. Not hard to understand even for a person as confused as you, Traitor Zhong.”

“And do we leave this world a better place?”

The man looked at Fong for a long moment, then finally said, “How can one possibly know such a thing?” He pushed one of the documents on the table toward Fong. “As chief investigator this requires your signature, just another one of the new formalities, our little step toward transparency.”

The politico snapped his briefcase shut and then, without looking at Fong, turned and headed toward the front door of the safe house.

“People died here,” Fong said to the Beijing man’s back.

The Beijing man stopped for a beat, but he did not turn – did not respond – just left Fong alone – with his thoughts and an empty room.

Fong grabbed the official document and sat. The new state font must have been reduced in size. He held it close but it remained just a blur. He tried it at full arm’s-length – still no go. “Damn,” he muttered as he reached into his coat pocket and put on his new glasses. The fog of dark strokes cleared and the shapes emerged as characters.

As he signed the document, Joan entered the room and sat opposite him.

“Nice haircut,” Fong said.

Joan touched her ragged hair and shook her head. “How nice of you to finally notice. It makes me look Parisian, don’t you think, Detective Zhong?”

Actually Fong didn’t know from Parisian, nor did he care. Joan Shui’s short hair simply allowed him a better view of the strength inherent in her face.

“I like you with glasses, Detective Zhong.”

Fong had forgotten he still had them on. “Thanks.”

“They make you look intelligent.”

“Well, looking intelligent is something.”

“Yes, it is. Let’s get out of this place.”

A half-hour later, Fong and Joan Shui stood side by side on the Bund Promenade looking across the Huangpo River at the Pudong as he finished telling her about his confrontation with Captain Chen.

“It was the right thing to do, Fong. Now you know where his loyalties lie. You know him well enough to work with him.”

“I think so.” A silence fell between them. The distance between her left hand and his right on the railing was a mere four inches – yet it could have been a mile or seven hundred miles.

“So what happens next?” Fong asked.

Joan wasn’t sure exactly what he meant but chose to believe he was talking about her next professional move now that this “unpleasantness” was over. “Well,” she said, “Shanghai’s becoming a modern city. It’ll need its own arson department soon enough. You folks can’t always be calling over to old HK for help.”

“That’s true,” he said – but nothing more.

Somehow their hands, despite the fact that neither had moved, seemed even farther apart – no longer a mile or seven hundred miles – now a light year or twenty.

She took a deep breath and made a decision. “I’ve been in love once before.”

“With Wu Fan-zi.”

“Yes, with Wu Fan-zi,” she agreed. “What about you, Detective Zhong?”

“Once.”

“But not with Lily?”

“No. To my shame, not with Lily.” It was his turn to agree.

“With the actress?”

“Her name is Fu Tsong.”

There it was. Wrong tense. She looked at his delicate features and suddenly she knew he’d done it on purpose. That he’d offered her an opening. Now she needed to figure out if she was brave enough to take it.

She was.

“You meant, her name
was
Fu Tsong.”

Fong nodded slowly.

“She is too much with you, Fong.”

Again Fong nodded. “I can’t seem to let her go.”

“Then don’t. Just give her a place at the table, but not every seat, or the one to which the fish head points.”

“Is that what you’ve done with Wu Fan-zi?”

Now it was her turn to nod.

“What place does he have at your table?”

She thought about that for only a moment then responded, “Fire. Every time my life becomes about fire Wu Fan-zi is at my side, alive as when he first touched me.” She looked at the distance between their hands on the rail. “Can you do that with Fu Tsong?”

Fong didn’t know. Then he looked into the depths of Joan Shui’s eyes. “Yes, I think I can.”

“How?” Joan’s voice was hard. There was no movement in it. If Fong couldn’t answer this she would take the next available flight back to Hong Kong and never again set foot in Shanghai or have any contact with the man who now stood beside her, his hand so close to hers on the railing, again.

“Fire with Wu Fan-zi and you, right? Art, especially theatre and Shakespeare for Fu Tsong and me.”

“Only in those places?” she pressed.

“Only in those places.”

There was a beat – a flutter of gulls moving in an arc high to the west – and the miracle happened. From light years apart hands met, fingers entwined and a sea breeze, all the way from the mighty Yangtze, blessed their coming together.

The darkness came on fast that evening. Time was moving quickly as Fong and Joan sought out a place to be alone – but privacy was the hardest thing to find in a city of 18 million souls.

“I would invite you back to my hotel but I have no room booked and no money on me to purchase one,” Joan said.

He began to laugh.

She liked the sound and joined in. Their laughter grew until they staggered with the force of it. Passersby stopped and stared at them. Older people scolded. Finally Joan got enough control of herself to ask, “What are we laughing about?”

Fong answered through bursts of laughter that caused tears to roll down his cheeks, “I’ll soon be in the same situation.”

“What do you mean?”

“My rooms are going to be part of a new condominium project. They’ve offered me the right to buy them but . . . ”

“. . . but the price is a bit steep?”

“Yeah,” Fong stopped laughing, “you could say that.”

“Do you like these rooms, Fong?” she asked.

“I do.”

Joan looked at the proud newness of the Pudong across the Huangpo River then turned and looked at the Bund behind her. It felt right. She touched Fong’s face, “Would I like your rooms, do you think?”

Fong put his hand up to her hair and felt its bluntness, “I hope you would.”

She put her lips to his and whispered into his mouth, “Ask me to your rooms, Fong.”

Fong turned his head and whispered in her ear, “Would you come with me to my rooms, Joan Shui?”

She whispered back into his ear, “I thought you’d never ask.”

Next in the Zhong Fong series…

The Golden Mountain Murders

As Shanghai surpasses Hong Kong as Asia’s most important city, Zhong Fong’s Office of Special Investigations faces an increasingly sophisticated, and increasingly global, breed of criminal.

When Fong follows a disturbing lead, he finds himself in the rural backwater of Anhui Province. Here, he is shocked to discover a blood-trafficking racket and a massive outbreak of AIDS. In pursuit of the blood traffickers, Fong embarks on what proves to be the longest journey of his life. It will eventually take him to the streets of Vancouver – and to a meeting with a man who holds an old, and potentially lethal, grudge.

For more information about the Zhong Fong series, visit
www.nerobooks.com.au/rotenberg.htm