David Rotenberg - The Hamlet Murders

Her initial steps toward Dalong Fada had seemed so natural. A flirtation with a high-ranking member. A contact with an American-Chinese man. A series of discreet meetings and she was – a part of it.

Now there was a message and an assignment. For the briefest moment she wondered if this was what an al-Qaeda freak felt like. One moment a normal working stiff, the next a man with a bomb. Then she shook that off. She was not involved with bombs. Nothing that she was doing had anything to do with hurting people. She was a member of Dalong Fada because China needed a real opposition to the Chinese Communist Party – period, the end.

The phone on her desk rang. Joan let it ring as she remembered a call at almost exactly this time two days ago – when life was considerably simpler, a different reality. It had been a young lab technician with the results from her investigation of a fire on Peak Road. Insurance companies were taking a bath as fear of Beijing’s control gripped Hong Kong and drove land values down. Many fashionable buildings were no longer financially viable. Better to burn them down and collect the insurance than to declare bankruptcy and face the shame, even in a financial centre like Hong Kong, that accompanied monetary failure.

Joan had nodded as she jotted down notes from the lab. Traces of accelerant had been found in the apartment building’s basement. No planch was discovered, but the burn pattern was nothing if not suspicious. She thanked the technician and made a series of further requests for data. She sensed his hesitancy. “What?” she asked. The young man hemmed and hawed then finally said, “Are you doing anything Saturday night?” His question was no surprise to Joan. She was an attractive, unmarried, educated woman in her mid-thirties. She had a good job, beautiful if hard facial features and curves that attracted many eyes. What was she doing Saturday night? It was Wednesday. Did any who, who was any who in Hong Kong, have any idea what or who they were doing three days ahead? No. “Give me your cell number and I’ll get back to you,” she said to get him off the line. The young man evidently couldn’t believe his good fortune. He had thanked her more than he should have and gave her not only his cell number, but also the apartment number of the place he shared with three men and even his mom’s phone number.

The phone on her desk stopped ringing. Joan found the silence that followed strangely unnerving.

She pulled open a drawer of her desk and found the scrap of paper on which she’d scribbled the lab tech’s numbers. He was clearly either too young or too stupid or both for her to date, but he might be just perfectly equipped to account for at least some of the days she’d be out of Hong Kong.

She put his phone numbers to one side and stood up. She looked around her. After what she was about to do, all of this could change – to be frank, it could be no more. She didn’t know what she thought of that. She loved her work and she’d been adequately rewarded for her considerable expertise. Now she could be throwing it all away. She looked again at the coded e-mail from Dalong Fada and memorized the instructions and the single contact number there. She knew that once she dialled that number she might never be able to return to her life here. Before she met Wu Fan-zi in Shanghai she would never have considered giving all this up. But now, after Wu Fan-zi, she would. She picked up the phone and dialled the Dalong Fada number.

The phone was answered with a stiff “Dui.” The use of Mandarin in Hong Kong was unusual, but it was what she expected. Quickly, in Mandarin, she gave the code words from the e-mail, “When does the Club Sierra open?”

“Just before moonrise,” came the coded answer.

“Is the movie star dancing tonight?”

“Dui.”

The phone went dead. If someone tried to trace the call they would be out of luck. The person who answered Joan’s call only used cell phones once then threw them into the sea.

Joan took a breath. The silly old British phrase the game’s afoot popped into her head – a remnant from her British education that had featured second-, third-, and fourth-rate British writers above all others. She sat and dialled the young tech’s number. She felt a little bad about using him – but only a little bad. “It’s Joan Shui,” she said. The pause that followed was probably the result of him dropping his cell phone. “Hey, how’re you doin’, hey?” he said in his best impression of a man in complete control.

It was not a terribly impressive impression.

“I’ve managed to clear the next few days. Are you busy?”

Splutter, pause, clunk, then, “Great. Good. No, great.”

“How about three nights at the Calden Inn?”

The silence that followed was the longest yet. The poor lad was balancing his good fortune with the incredible expense of three nights at the Calden Inn. The Calden Inn was an exclusive private retreat just across from Macaw. Before Joan Shui had gone to Shanghai to investigate an arson in an abortion clinic and fallen hopelessly in love with Shanghai’s head fireman Wu Fan-zi, she had thought that a weekend at the Calden Inn was the height of chic. Wealthy men sometimes suggested the Calden Inn as a great place for a little R and R and she sometimes took them up on it. Before Wu Fan-zi, she thought of sex much the same way as she thought of calisthenics – sometimes the exertion was very pleasing and sometimes it was less pleasing. The only consistent reality of her many visits to the Calden Inn was the pleasure she had given the men she was with and the luxury that they had provided for her.

“I’ve already made reservations in your name. I gave them your Visa number; we have it on file here for times that you have to go out of pocket for us. I got us a suite. I have to complete something here but I’ll meet you out there first thing tomorrow morning. Okay?”

She didn’t have to wait for an answer. She knew what it was going to be.

“Great. See you out there. Don’t be late.” She hung up then dialled the Calden Inn. She asked for the manager, who she’d befriended a few years back when she helped him solve a little arson-related unpleasantness in his kitchen.

“Ms. Shui, how nice to hear from you,” the manager said with evident feeling.

“I have a favour to ask.”

“Ask, please.”

“My new boss . . .” – since the handover, Hong Kongers used the term to refer to totally incompetent but politically connected mainland overseers appointed by Beijing – “. . . has a son who just won’t take no for an answer. He’s booked a suite at your resort for three nights. When he arrives, I need you to claim that I came and found that he wasn’t there on time so you assigned me my own private room in the other end of the building and that I have sworn you to secrecy so that under no circumstance will you tell him which room I am in.”

“It is a large resort,” he chuckled.

“And so very private.”

“Indeed.” He cleared his throat. “And were you particularly angry at the young man’s tardiness?”

“Furious.”

“As well you should be. I myself am almost beyond speaking I am so profoundly upset by the actions of this young hellion.”

“Thanks.”

“My pleasure, Ms. Shui.”

She hung up and made one more call. This to one of her snitches. Firebugs liked to brag – snitches were invaluable to arson inspectors.

“Now what?” came the snivelling voice over the cell phone. “You going to bust my balls over exactly what this time?”

Joan took a breath and asked sweetly, “Your balls grew back then?”

“Ha, ha! Lady cops! Ye sheng!!! Spare me from lady cops.”

“You know where the main forensics lab is?”