Eliot Pattison - The Skull Mantra

"What if something else is planned for his absence? Before the inspection team arrives."

He had Tan's attention now. "I don't know. I don't even know if he's reached Dalian yet." Tan studied the ember of his cigarette. "What would you have me ask?"

"Ask him about pending cases. Was he putting pressure on someone."

"I don't see-"

"Prosecutors look under rocks. Sometimes they stir up a nest of snakes."

Tan blew a stream of smoke toward the ceiling. "Did you have a particular breed in mind?"

"Potential informers get killed. Partners in crime lose trust. Ask if he was compiling a corruption case."

The suggestion stopped Tan. He crushed his cigarette and walked to the window. Staring out the window for a moment, he absently picked up a pair of binoculars and raised them toward the eastern horizon. "On a clear day when the sun is right, you can see the new bridge at the bottom of the Dragon Throat. You know who built that? We did. My engineers, without any help from Lhasa."

Shan did not reply.

Tan set down the binoculars and lit another cigarette. "Why corruption?" he asked, still facing the window. Corruption was always a more important crime than murder. In the days of the dynasties, those who killed sometimes simply paid fines. Those who stole from the emperor always died by a thousand slices.

"The victim was well dressed," Shan observed. "Had more cash than most Tibetans earn in a year. Statistics are kept in Beijing. Cross-references between cases. Classified, of course. Murders typically are the result of one of two underlying forces. Passion. Or politics."

"Politics?"

"Beijing's way of saying corruption. Corruption always involves a struggle for power. Ask your prosecutor when you reach him. He will understand. Meanwhile, ask him for a recommendation."

"Recommendation?"

"A real investigator, to start the fieldwork now. I can finish the form, but the real investigation needs to start while the evidence is fresh."

Tan inhaled and held the smoke in his lungs before speaking again. "I'm beginning to understand you," he said, letting the smoke drift out. "You solve problems by creating a bigger one. I wager that has a lot to do with why you are in Tibet."

Shan did not answer.

"The head rolled off the cliff. We will find it. I'll send squads out tomorrow. We'll find it and I'll persuade Sung to sign the report."

Shan continued to stare at Tan in silence.

"You're saying if the head isn't found the Ministry will expect me to offer up a killer."

"Of course," Shan agreed. "But that will not be their primary concern. First you must offer up the antisocial act. Your responsibility is detailing the socialist context. Provide a context and the rest will follow."

"Context?"

"The Ministry will not care about the killer as such. Suspects are always available." Shan waited for a reaction. Tan did not even blink. "What they always seek," he continued, "is the political explanation. Murder investigation is an art form. The essential cause of violent crime is class struggle."

"You said passion. And corruption."

"That is the classified data. Private, for use by investigators. Now I am talking about the socialist dialectic. Prosecution of murder is usually a public phenomenon. You must be ready to explain the basis for prosecution here. There is always a political explanation. That will be the concern. That is the evidence you need."

"What are you saying?" Tan growled.

Shan looked at the photograph and spoke to Mao again. "Imagine a house in the country," he said slowly. "A body is found, stabbed to death. A bloody knife is found in the hands of a man asleep in the kitchen. He is arrested. Where does the investigation start?"

"The weapon. Match it to the wound."

"No. The closet. Always look for the closet. In the old days you would look for hidden books. Books in English. Western music. Today you look for the opposite. Old boots and threadbare clothes, hidden away with a book of the chairman's sayings. In case of a new resurgence of Party enforcement. Either way it shows reactionary doubts about socialist progress."

"Then you check the party's central files. Class background. Find out that the suspect previously required reeducation or that his grandfather was an oppressor in the merchant class. Maybe his uncle was a Stinking Ninth." Shan's father had been in the Stinking Ninth, the lowest rank on Mao's list of bad elements. Intellectuals. "Or maybe the murderer is a model worker. If so, look at the victim," he continued. He realized with a shudder that he was repeating words he had last spoken to a seminar in Beijing. "It's the socialist context that's important. Find the reactionary thread and build from there. A murder investigation is pointless unless it can become a parable for the people."

Tan paced in front of the window. "But to get this behind us, all I really need is a head."

Something icy seemed to touch Shan's spine. "Not just any head. The head."

Tan laughed without smiling. "A saboteur. Zhong warned me." He sat and studied Shan in silence. "Why do you want so badly to return to the 404th?"

"It is where I belong. There's going to be trouble. Because of the body. Maybe I can help."

Tan's eyes narrowed. "What trouble?"

"The jungpo," Shan said very quietly.

"Jungpo?"

"It translates as hungry ghost. A soul released by a violent action, unprepared for death. Unless death rites can be conducted on the mountain, the ghost will haunt the scene of the death. It will be angry. It will bring bad luck. The devout will not go near the place."

"What trouble?" Tan repeated sharply.

"The 404th will not work at such a site. It is unholy now. They are praying for the release of the spirit. Prayers for cleansing."

Anger was building in Tan's eyes. "No strike was reported."

"The warden would never tell you so soon. He will try to end it on his own. There will have been stoppages by the crews at the top first. There will have been accidents. Guns have been issued."

Tan abruptly moved to his door and called for Madame Ko to dial Warden Zhong's office. He took the call in the conference room, watching Shan through the open door.

His eyes flared when he returned. "A man broke a leg. A wagon of supplies fell off the cliff. The brigade refused to move after the noon break."

"The priests must be permitted to perform the ceremonies."

"Impossible," Tan snapped, and strode back to the window. He pulled the binoculars from the sill, futilely looking through the gathering grayness for the worksite on the distant slope. When he turned, the hardness was back in his eyes. "You have a context now. What did you call it? A reactionary thread."

"I don't understand."

"Smells like class struggle to me. Capitalist egoism. Cultists. Acting to relieve their revisionist friends."

"The 404th?" Shan said, horrified. "The 404th was not involved."

"But you have convinced me. Class struggle has once again impeded socialist progress. They are on strike."

Shan's heart lurched at the words. "Not a strike. It's just a religious matter."

Tan sneered. "When prisoners refuse to work, it is a strike. The Public Security Bureau will have to be notified. It's out of my hands."

Shan stared helplessly. A death in the mountains might be overlooked by the Ministry. But never a strike at a labor camp. Suddenly the stakes were far higher.

"You will compile a new file," Tan explained. "Tell me about class struggle. How the 404th caused this death as an excuse to halt their work. Something worthy of an inspector general. The kind that the Ministry will not challenge." He scrawled something on a sheet of onion-skin paper, then studied Shan for a moment. With a slow, ceremonial motion, he fixed his seal to the paper. "You are officially on detail to my office. I'll give you a truck and the warden's Tibetan clerk. Feng will watch. Permission to go to the clinic for interviews. If asked, you are on trusty duties."