The Lake Ching Murders - A Mystery of Fire and Ice (19 page)

In furiously quick Shanghanese, Fong spat out, “Tell them to go away.”

“Is that accent real?” She smiled but a tiny crack appeared in her bon vivant mask.

“I won’t ask a second time. Tell them to go.” He almost added, “Tell them to fuck their own daughters, not ours,” but didn’t.

“Bug off, fella,” said the younger one but before he could say more, Sun Li whispered something in his ear that made him glow with expectation. “It’s a deal.” She smiled as he got to his feet and signalled for the other man to follow him.

Fong slid into the booth. The buttery leather gave to accept his weight. Sun Li touched the lip of the martini glass, lit a cigarette. She had the most beautiful hands he’d ever seen. And she knew it.

She blew out a line of smoke and turned to Fong. “So?” Her voice was consciously low and smoky.

“I’m a police officer . . . ”

“No!” she laughed. “Even before you came into the room I knew that. I could smell you. Hey, I got to pee first, then we can chat, okay?” Fong shrugged. She put a hand on his thigh and leaned in close to his face. “Won’t be a second.” She slid out of the booth adjusting her skirt just enough to cover the crease between her long legs and her nether portions.

As Sun Li moved toward the washroom, Lily caught Fong’s eyes with a what-am-I-supposed-to-do look. He mouthed back, “Stop her.”

The woman’s toilet was brightly lit and spanking new. Three stalls. Beautiful swan head faucets. And to one side a partly opened window. Sun Li Cha kicked off her high heels and made a beeline for the window. She already had one of her long legs on the counter beneath the window when Lily, catching her off-balance, yanked her back to the floor.

“Hey . . .”

“You’re a suspect in a multiple murder case, Miss Sun. Consider yourself lucky that I don’t charge you right here. Get back out there and talk to Inspector Zhong.”

Sun Li Cha slowly put her heels back on then looked down at Lily. “I like your blouse, where’d you get it?”

“Could it really be about clothes,” Lily thought. “Sleep with men to get money to buy good clothes so that men will want to sleep with you?”

Sun Li Cha’s beautiful hand touched Lily’s arm.

Lily shrugged off the hand. “Huai Hai Road.”

“What about Huai Hai Road?”

“It’s where I got the blouse.”

“Swell.” Sun Li Cha reached out, allowing her fingers to linger on the top button of Lily’s blouse. Lily didn’t know what to do. The whore smiled at her discomfort but she didn’t remove her hand. She said languidly, “I think I’ll go out and talk to your boss now — or is he something more, honey?” The whore’s fingers expertly undid the button exposing the strong sinew of Lily’s neck. “Sweet,” Sun Li Cha whispered then turned and sashayed out of the toilet. Lily found her eyes drawn to the whore’s retreating figure. She felt a surge of envy followed by a flush of anger.

“Good pee?”

“Yummy. What can I do for you, Inspector Zhong?”

“Three months ago you were on a luxury boat on Lake Ching.”

“Was I?”

Fong tossed Sun Li’s business card onto the table. “You left this there,” he lied smoothly.

“You can get one of those at the front desk of dozens of hotels.”

“Perhaps, but I’m sure the fingerprints on the back of this one would match yours and at least one of the men on that boat. Now, we can throw you in jail for the five weeks or so it will take to finish the fingerprint analysis or you can talk to me here. Your choice.”

After briefly considering her options she smiled and said, “I guess I was there.” Fong nodded. “I said I was there,” she repeated. Fong simply nodded again. She smiled. “So is that it? Anything else in your cute little head?”

“Tell me about it.”

She fluttered her beautiful hands just long enough to attract Fong’s eye. “It was cold. They told me to wait on the dock and greet the foreigners who . . . who were there.”

“Did you?”

“Yeah. So what?” Fong saw fleeting lines of fear cross her face then disappear. Surely she’d heard about the murders on the boat. There it was again. Fear. Like an animal realizing it was trapped. “I didn’t do anything,” she barked. Fong didn’t respond. She reached for her purse and lit a cigarette, forgetting that she already had one smouldering in the ashtray. Fong stubbed it out. She smoked Kents. If he ever took up smoking again, he’d definitely change brands. “Besides, they arrested those three peasants for . . .”

“Do you really think three peasants are capable of planning and executing the murder of seventeen foreigners on a boat?” Fong snapped.

“Well . . . maybe . . .”

“So you greeted the foreigners on the dock?”

“Yeah.”

“Then what?”

“I went on board the ship when they told me to.”

“Who told you to?”

“The Chinese guy who was in charge.”

“The boat owner?”

“No, the old Taiwanese who piloted the thing.”

“Then what?”

“The boat got out into the middle of the lake and I served drinks.”

“Champagne.”

“Yeah,” she said, surprised that he knew that. “Just champagne.”

“Were there any other kinds of liquor on board?”

“No.”

“That didn’t strike you as odd?”

“Well yeah, but it was none of my business. I was being paid. So I did what I was asked to do. I served them drinks. I danced for them on this corny runway thing then I spent some time with the two Americans.” She paused then added, “You know . . .”

That hung in the air for a bit. Fong asked, “Did you have any champagne yourself?”

“No. They wouldn’t let me.”

“When did the crew leave the ship?”

“Just after I finished with the Americans. They were . . . well, sort of too drowsy to . . . you know. So they didn’t do anything.”

“How long after you left the dock was that?”

“A guess? Maybe an hour and a half . . . two, tops. Then the other guys came on board.” Fong held his breath. She shrugged, “You know, those odd-looking peasant guys.”

“Why do you say they were odd-looking?”

“Well, they all sort of looked the same, you know. Weird. Looked like the old guy who was on board. Farmers, you know.”

“Of course,” Fong thought, “it was a celebration. Iman would have been invited.” He smiled at her and asked, “How many of them were there?”

“Dozens. Hundreds. A lot — counting’s not my idea of fun. They seemed to be everywhere. I don’t think I’ve ever seen that many up close. You may have noticed, I’m a city girl.”

She touched his arm. He shrugged her hand away. “How do you know they were farmers?”

“They carried tools.”

Fong saw the scraped-off faces of the Chinese men in the bar. He closed his eyes and asked, “Hoes?”

“I don’t know what you call them. The wide, short, sharp things used for . . .”

“Hewing. Building terraces. I’ve seen them,” he said almost in a whisper.

“If you say so — how would I know what they are?”

But Fong wasn’t listening to her. He had retreated into the recesses of his mind. A terrible truth sat there. All the island farmers did the killing onboard that ship.

Dizziness threatened to engulf him but he breathed it away and asked, “And these farmer types took over running the ship?”

“I guess. The guests seemed really sleepy, except for that old guy who they all looked like.”

His mind supplied the unwanted image of islanders entering the rooms, slashing blows of the hewers, gunshots, gutting, castration — fury —
chi.
He looked up at her. “How did you get away?”

“The fisherman.”

“What?”

“I was out on the deck and a fisherman . . . you know, one of those guys with the birds, yelled at me to jump. I thought he was nuts. The clothes I was wearing cost me a fortune. Besides, I don’t swim much.”

“How did he get you to jump?”

“When I saw how excited he was I figured that maybe I’d better listen to him. Know what I mean? Anyhow, I didn’t have to jump, he brought his boat in close and helped me down. I didn’t even get wet.” She stopped for a moment. “I didn’t kill anyone. Shit, I didn’t even fuck anyone. Or any other stuff. I just took off my clothes. Is that a crime in the New China? If so, since when?”

They were on their way to the China news agency across town as Fong finished telling them about his conversation with Sun Li Cha.

“It makes no sense, Fong. One girl for seventeen foreigners.” With a smile she added, “Chinese women are extraordinary, but seventeen to one seems . . .”

“You forget the girls pushing the broken-down bus Chen saw outside of Ching that night.”

“Russian craftsmanship strikes again,” added Chen.

“That breakdown probably saved their lives.”

“Sorry, sir, I didn’t mean to be . . .”

He never got to complete his apology. “So how did Sun Li Cha get there, Fong?”

“She drove, Lily.”

“She has a car?” Lily asked, astounded.

“Evidently her business is thriving.” Lily frowned. He didn’t. “Are we getting close to the news bureau, Captain Chen?” The younger man nodded. “Who are we talking to there, Lily?”

“There’s a Reuters correspondent, a CNN guy and an Associated Press stringer.”

“Were they all there in December?”

“Not the Associated Press guy, but the other two were.”

“They’re all covering the story of the murders?”

“Well, they were until the government threatened to remove their credentials.”

“So there’s been no coverage overseas of the murders?” Fong asked incredulously.

“There was a furor for a while, then came the arrests. The recreation model was displayed prominently to the press as proof that prosecutions were imminent.”

“And now?”

“I think not much.”

“But that’s not the point, is it, Fong?” asked Lily. “Isn’t the issue how they got word of the story in the first place?”

“It sure is Lily, which is why I think maybe you ought to conduct these interviews.”

“Me?”

“Who else knows CNN and that other Western stuff better than you?”

Lily thought about that for a moment. “True. But I can’t meet them looking like this.”

“What’s wrong with the clothes you’re wearing. They look fine to me. Right, Chen?”

Chen blushed. “Maybe Lily has different standards than we do, sir.”

It had never occurred to Fong that Chen would be attracted to Lily. Well, why not? The young man’s marriage was falling apart. And Chen was a lot closer to Lily’s age than he was.

“Turn here, Chen,” Lily said, indicating a street at the right. It led to an area of high-class restaurants and fashionable shops.

“There.” Lily said, pointing at a large, Western-style store. “Stop the car, Chen. That looks promising.” She hopped out and leaned in the window. “What’s my budget?”

Fong had no idea if they even had a budget. Chen reached into his wallet and withdrew a credit card. “It’s got about four hundred American dollars left on it.” As Lily took the card, Fong stared at Chen. “Left on it?”

“It’s a smart card, sir.”

Fong nodded as if he understood what was said to him. But he didn’t. He’d been on the wrong side of the Wall for a long time. How could a credit card be smart — or dumb for that matter?

The store spread out before Lily like a cave freshly opened to the light. She stood on the entry dais some six feet above floor level. The Western influence was evident everywhere. This was a place for the privileged. There seemed to be more shopgirls than buyers in the store. To one side a few Western women were speaking too loudly as their bored husbands tried their best to be interested in more than just the price of their wives’ selections.

Two Chinese women moved with cool precision through the aisles, careful not to catch each other’s eyes. Each knew the compromises necessary to have the money to shop in such a store. Neither was anxious to broach the subject. Both were beautiful. Both were young. Both made Lily feel ugly and old for a moment. But only for a moment.

A shopgirl approached Lily and bowed slightly. Lily put on her best I’m-a-ranking-party-member look and moved past the girl who obediently followed in her wake.

Lily didn’t look back. She liked the unobstructed view. She liked shopping, especially on someone else’s budget — no, not someone, the government’s.

The selection was not as varied as in her favourite shops in Shanghai, but the quality of the merchandise was extremely high. The prices were shocking.

“Good,” she thought, “Beijing owes me something for my trouble.”

She paused by a display of eyeglass frames made in Paris. Such things were still extremely hard to find, even in Shanghai. A small sign indicated that these glass frames were for display purposes only but the frames could be ordered and that delivery would take between three and five months. “Probably closer to a year,” Lily thought.

At the end of the next aisle she saw one of the Chinese women looking at an array of mannequin torsos displaying lacy bras from Los Angeles. The woman’s beautiful figure hardly needed the accents offered by the expensive lingerie.

“Would you like to look, also?” asked the salesgirl from behind her.

“I’ll call for you when I need you,” Lily announced contemptuously. But the moment she’d spoken, she wished she could take back her words. This was a country girl. Pretty. Trained, but a country girl. Not a hardened Shanghai store clerk. Lily turned around. “Perhaps you can help me.”

The girl’s eyes lit up.

Lily came down the stairs of the store like a queen descending from her throne. The two shopping bags dangling from her arms swayed to the rhythm of her hips.

The men were standing by the car. Chen stared openly at her, his mouth a little too agape. Fong examined her as he would a work of art. His eyes were not easily deceived. The black silk shirtwaist was delicately embroidered with silver threads. The garment accentuated her narrow waist and the length of her slender upper body. The leather skirt just peeked out enough to announce its presence. Her long elegant legs were silvery grey in sheer stockings that led the eye to black pumps with high heels. She was a corporate vision in black and grey. Her always-deep eyes were now alive and bright.

She raised her hands and executed a half-turn while keeping her eyes on the men. “So?” She looked at Chen, whose mouth had opened even a little more than before. “Good,” she murmured, “You may comment if you wish.”