David Rotenberg - The Lake Ching murders

Fong looked back toward the road. Nothing much there. A tall-fenced landfill, a deserted industrial site. A good place to dig a tunnel and deliver a snaky message. For a moment he wondered if the message was for all three men. Then he rejected that. It was for Hesheng, and somehow it had found its mark.

It was for Hesheng because the man was becoming frightened.

Fong remembered the man’s fear. It hung like a cloud before him. Fong had seen it. And so had they – the politico and Chen and the thug and the warden. They’d all seen the fear, and he’d added to that fear. He cursed himself, his stupidity, his vanity, his involvement in another death. His wife’s – his friend Wang Jun’s – and now Hesheng’s.

Fong hitched up his pant legs and got down on all fours. He ran his palm along the base of the wall. The hole had to be there somewhere. Something gave beneath his hand. He pulled away some litter. At first he couldn’t see it. Then he did. A single piece of dislodged mortar had fallen inward. He carefully removed the other pieces. The gap in the wall was almost square, cut by a sharp tool. He measured the square by spreading his fingers. The hole was wider than his outstretched fingers. He brought his hand, fingers spread, to his face. His fingers reached past his cheekbones.

A sharp cutting tool wider than a face – for an instant an image of the hanging man on the boat came to him – the face, one bloody scream.

He forced himself back to the present and cleared the area of debris. He looked into the passageway. It was grooved both top and bottom, about eight inches in diameter. As if it had been dug by a long corkscrew. Fong traced one of the grooves with his hand and imagined the yellow serpent rolling gently in the contours as it moved toward its prey.

An extremely long, sharp-tipped, corkscrew-like instrument, with an eight-inch diameter. Like the widebladed hoe they postulated was used to remove the faces of the Taiwanese men on the boat, this was another implement Fong had never seen.

Back at the factory, Fong filled in the others on the murder at the jail. The phone beeped the code for an incoming long distance call.

As Lily went to answer it she said, “A whole lot of death for a little place.”

“I agree,” said Fong.

“Where are the two brothers who avoided the serpent?”

“They didn’t avoid it. They’d been moved several hours earlier,” Fong replied. Before they could question him he added, “That’s why there was only one cup by the water pitcher.”

“More with the cups. You’ve become a specialist in disappearing drinking devices, Fong.”

“Who took the brothers out of their cells, sir?”

“Don’t know, Chen, but until it’s answered I’ve ordered the brothers kept in holding cells apart from each other.”

“Do you think they had something to do with this snake thing, Fong?” asked the coroner. “Fuck, who kills with snakes?”

“Farmers,” said Chen. “Farmers kill with snakes. By the way, the water on the floor was laced with insecticide.”

“As a backup,” asked the coroner, “in case the snake got tired or something?”

“The snake wouldn’t get tired. It would have been starved for days to get it ready to kill on sight,” said Chen.

“Snake through the wall, insecticide through the bars,” Fong said softly.

“What’s the sense in that?” asked the coroner.

“Hesheng was ready to talk. He had fear in his eyes when I interrogated him.” Fong failed to mention that he hadn’t insisted on being alone to interview the man. Others had seen Hesheng’s fear. The politico, Chen, the warden and the thug. Chen had just saved his life so Fong was disinclined to finger him. The warden was just a labourer in a uniform. That left the politico and the thug. The old team reunited.

“What, Fong?” asked the coroner.

“Snakes from outside, insecticide from within. Dead bodies set up to be seen, but the boat torched,” thought Fong. “Parallel patterns,” he muttered.

Before anyone could comment, Lily snapped into the phone, “Are you sure?” That drew every eye. She nodded her head. “Thanks. As long as you’re sure!” She waited for a moment, nodded again then hung up.

“What is it, Lily?” Fong demanded.

She raised her shoulders with a “here’s another mystery” look on her face. “The two American lawyers specialized in patent law dealing with DNA.”

Chen asked Lily to clarify what she had said, but Fong wasn’t paying attention. He was staring out the grime-encrusted windows. The sun was fading. Another day was ending. More questions had presented themselves. Good questions. But it was a bad day. One more dead body. One more soul on his conscience.

Fong divided up the assignments for the next day and retired to his sleeping mat. From his time west of the Wall he was used to falling asleep shortly after dusk and rising when the sun came up. But Lily had seldom been outside of Shanghai. Her day was only beginning when it got dark.

She wandered around the grimy, emptied factory unable to find sleep. Somehow, the men had all managed to drift off without a problem. Their snores attested to that.

Without thinking about it, she found herself in the far corner of the factory, where Fong had laid out his mat. She sat on the floor beside him and watched. He slept with his lids slightly open. It was eerie when his eyes began to move rapidly beneath. Eerie, but beautiful.

She still remembered the day he had held her in his arms after she’d been assaulted. She remembered how he had tried to help. His rough, tactless kindness.

She reached out and moved a strand of hair away from his forehead. Her nail traced a thin red line that appeared and then disappeared into his skin. Like love, she thought.

His eyelids fluttered, then opened. He looked up at her. “Thanks for the telegram,” he said. Then his lids closed and his breathing deepened.

“He looks older,” she thought. Then she reached out and touched his face. His head rolled over, nestling his cheek in her palm. As she watched him sleep, she had only one thought in her head: “Why had they let that telegram get through. She’d sent many others and all had been turned back. But that one got through. Why?”

The vigorous old man shifted on his sitting mat and stared through the open doorway at the terraced fields of the island. He and his had built those terraces from nothing. Brought something – wealth – from barrenness. Every ridge they had built. Every water barrier. Every path hewn from the stone. Even the soil they had made. They had put into the land and then reaped from that land. And they had kept to themselves. For centuries they had kept to themselves. Unwanted by their Han Chinese neighbours on the mainland, they had turned inward. For their sustenance. For their mates. For their lives. The wind off the lake momentarily swirled into the hut. The dense aroma from the fermenting pails of human fecal matter wafted into the room. “Must never forget that we are nothing more than the stuff that passes through us,” he thought. Then he laughed. His many, many years entitled him to laugh without explaining why. The others waited.

Finally he spoke. “You’re sure it was necessary, Jiajia?”

“Hesheng was losing hope, Iman,” said his first greatgrandson.

“And it is now done?”

“Yesterday, Iman.” The old man looked at Jiajia. Many years divided them. Many years. But Iman felt for this one above his many other progeny. He had insisted at the boy’s birth that he be placed on the highest, most exposed, hill of the island for a full day – sundown to sundown – his life or death to be determined by his own strength. And Jiajia, unlike many others, had survived – without a whimper – just as Iman himself had done all those many years before.