M. Lee: Death In Shanghai

At one side, the hawker stirred his pot of sweet potatoes. It was amazing how quickly the hawkers turned up whenever a crowd formed. It was as if they sensed that something was going to happen and were drawn to the scene like flies to sticky paper.

The boat was closer to the sandbank now. He could see the naked body quite clearly. The blonde hair was longer than he thought, the muddy water hiding its length as it waved like yellow seaweed just beneath the waves. The breasts and shoulders were small, almost undeveloped. The face was thin and angular, with traces of mascara around the eyes and a thin smear of lipstick on the lips. The arms were kept in place by weighted stones. Thin sisal ropes wrapped around the wrists ensured they stayed in place, anchored to the sandbank.

Danilov thought for a moment. This was no suicide. Not a person driven to such despair that they had thrown themselves into the river rather than face life.

Then he noticed the long nails with their bright purple nail varnish. Claws rather than nails, he thought, weapons for inflicting damage. He never understood why such nails were seen as beautiful or beguiling in a woman. For him, they appeared like the weapons of a predatory insect.

A flash went off as the photographer manoeuvred to get a better shot. More flashes and more rocking of the boat. He took one last look at the body lying half submerged on the sandbank and gestured for the constables to take it out of the water. They reached over the prow of the boat. One constable untied the ropes from the wrists while the other held the body steady. The constable handed both ropes and the stones to Danilov. He felt their weight. About three pounds he guessed. Enough to keep the arms outstretched even in the face of the tide.

Both constables leant out and grasped the naked blonde underneath the shoulders. As they did so, the body came free of the water and a torrent of snakes issued from the stomach. The constables dropped it back in the river and jumped back into the boat. Danilov leant out and saw the body floating now, the blonde hair still waving in the water. For a moment, all he could see were snakes, their heads raised as if to strike. Then he realised that he was looking at intestines, which had fallen out from a vast dark hole where the stomach had once been.

The constables were next to him, chattering loudly in Shanghainese. The old lady looked at the body and spat a long stream of brown juice into the river. Strachan was just staring fixedly at the naked corpse, his mouth slightly open.

Danilov reached down and lifted the body by the shoulders whilst one of the constables took the feet. As they lifted it into the boat, the other constable pushed the intestines back into the stomach cavity with his hands. But still the guts wriggled out beneath his fingers, slithering away from his touch.

Strachan watched, unable to move, fascinated by the paleness of the corpse, its whiteness in stark contrast to the murky grey of the water. The others ignored him as they heaved it into the boat, where it lay there like a dead fish, the intestines still alive as they oozed out of the cavity.

Danilov knelt down and examined the body at his feet. The stomach and thighs had been slashed with deep, frenzied cuts so all that remained was a dark emptiness where life should have been. Surprisingly though, there were no rat bites. In a city teeming with rats, even they had avoided this particular feast. On the chest, or what remained of it, two Chinese characters had been carved. ‘Stra-chan, come and look at this, will you?’

Strachan wiped his mouth with the back of his hand, and slowly inched his way across the deck, keeping his eyes fixed on the pale body.

‘What do you make of this?’ Danilov pointed to the characters sliced into the flesh. Strachan’s face went bright red as he finally looked away from the body and its intestines lying on the deck.

He reached out and touched Strachan on the hand. ‘Everybody reacts differently, the first time they see a dead person up close.’

Strachan nodded and forced himself to look back at the body. ‘It’s “justice”, sir. The characters for “justice”.’

‘Thank you.’ At a nod from Danilov, the photographer moved into position. Flashes exploded, capturing the body from every angle and every side as he struggled with the rocking of the boat to get his shots.

When he had finished, one of the Chinese constables inched forward to cover the body with a loose tarpaulin. The old woman began to sway backwards and forwards again, propelling the boat towards the shore. Her mouth, with its graveyard of teeth, still held its smile.

‘When we get to shore, fingerprint the body and send it to the morgue. Come back to the station when you’ve finished.’

‘Yes, sir,’ Strachan answered, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand.

‘You’d better get used to bodies, you’ll see many more before you finish working with me.’

***

‘The Chief Inspector’s been asking after you. Just thought I’d let you know.’

Danilov thanked Sergeant Wolfe, and walked behind the desk of Central Police Station past two Sikh guards, into the inner sanctum of the detectives’ office.

The desks were arranged in two neat rows, one behind the other like a deck of cards laid out for a game of patience. Behind each desk was a detective. Some were going through old files. Some were on the telephone. Some were pretending to read old reports. A few were asleep, their heads nestled in the crooks of their arms.

Danilov put his tobacco tin and keys on his desk, walked up to Chief Inspector Boyle’s office and knocked.

There was no answer. He knocked again.

He heard the faint shuffling of chairs and a loud ‘Enter’. He opened the door and took off his hat. A tall, rather dapper man sat behind his desk, two white tufts of hair above his ears contrasting sharply with a florid face. The curtains were half closed, giving the room a dark, cave-like atmosphere. In the corner, a putter and ball leant up against the eau-de-nil wall, a colour that seemed to cover every wall of every British office he had ever entered. Why they loved this particular colour, he was yet to discover. Perhaps its sickly paleness reminded them of home?

Boyle coughed. ‘Inspector Danilov, do take a seat.’ He indicated the only chair in front of him. It was small and hard, forcing all those who sat in it to feel like a penitent schoolboy.

The strong smell of Boyle’s cologne dominated the room. 4711 , thought Danilov, as he took one of the more comfortable seats from its place along the wall and set it down noisily in front of the desk.

Boyle reached forward to open the large silver box in front of him. Inside was a choice of cigarettes: Turkish for smokers who loved a rich aroma, American for the sophisticated and, of course, British Woodbines for those who had acquired the habit in the trenches. Danilov took a Turkish cigarette, lighting it with the onyx lighter that lay next to the cigarette box.

So it was going to be one of those meetings, he thought. Boyle had a particular style: no offer of a seat was going to be a dressing down. A seat and a cigarette was a ‘quiet’ chat. A seat and a cigar was an understanding that Boyle wanted something that only the person blessed with the cigar could provide. All the police dreaded the seat and the glass of whisky, for that meant the miscreant was going to be transferred to some obscure job in the nether reaches of the police universe where the offender would spend the rest of his life arresting dog eaters and night soil collectors.

Danilov inhaled the rich earthy smoke of the Turkish. Fine tobacco, a little elegant for his taste but still a fine smoke.

‘Or would you like a cigar?’ Boyle opened the other wooden box that lay on the table, revealing a selection of the finest Havanas and Dominicans.