David Rotenberg - The Hamlet Murders

Fong weathered the verbal storm then counted to three before he asked, “Mr. Hyland said you weren’t who?” Fong’s voice was low. He dreaded but needed to hear the answer to his question.

“Her. Fu Tsong. Your wife, remember her?”

And there she was. A murderess. As if she had emerged from somewhere deep within the girl. A murderess with motive, means and opportunity – and more importantly – with the rage needed to kill a man she loved.

The formalities of arresting the two actors were handled by Captain Chen who quickly moved them out of the theatre to the waiting patrol car on Nanjing Lu.

Fong and Joan were alone. Fong went to the back of the auditorium and sat in the exact same seat in which he’d last seen Geoff. Then sadly he said, “Fuck me with a stick.”

“Is this a quaint Shanghanese phrase?” Joan asked as she moved up the aisle toward him. “Does it have an idiomatic meaning or is it to be taken literally?”

“In this case I probably deserve it literally.”

“Being a bit hard on yourself, aren’t you?”

“I don’t think so.”

Joan put a hand on her hip, sat on the arm of the theatre seat across the aisle from him and said, “Explanation, please.”

He handed her the Shanghai detective’s report of the dead woman found in the Su Zu Creek.

Joan read it quickly then looked at him. “And the key he found on the body fits . . . ?”

“It’s the master key for the guesthouse that Mr. Hyland stayed in.”

Joan thought about that for a moment. “How long was she dead before . . . ?”

“Impossible to say,” Fong interrupted her. “The eels in the Su Zu Creek are ravenous.”

“But she wasn’t at the desk when you went to check Mr. Hyland’s room the day after the murder?”

“No. The woman there was already complaining about how hard it was to keep new workers.”

“So this poor woman was removed to be sure that no one could identify Ophelia as being with Mr. Hyland the night of the murder?”

“That would be my guess,” Fong answered without much enthusiasm. “But when did they kill her? Before they killed Geoff or after, when . . . ?”

“. . . when you could have . . . ”

“. . . done something about it if I had seen what was right in front of me. I allowed myself to be distracted by the little things and ignored the obvious.”

“If that’s true, it’s very bad,” she said flatly.

He looked at her. “Very bad,” she repeated.

Fong nodded.

Joan reached up and tugged at a short blunt stand of hair. “So what exactly did you miss?”

“I missed the biggest clue that Geoff put in front of me.”

“Which was?”

Fong almost laughed but didn’t. Failure wasn’t funny. Murder was certainly not a joke. He took a deep breath then let it out in a line – boy, he wanted a smoke. “The first thing Geoff made sure I saw was Laertes fight Hamlet who just happens to look like a young Geoff. Laertes clearly loves Ophelia. Ophelia loves Hamlet, Geoff. Geoff betrays Ophelia. Laertes and Ophelia kill Geoff. In the West they would say the table was all set for me. Here we’d say the fish’s head faced me.” He looked to Joan. “Do you think . . . ?”

“. . . that the key lady would have lived if you’d understood what Mr. Hyland was trying to tell you?” She let out a long sigh. “No. I don’t. The moment those two murdered Mr. Hyland that poor woman’s fate was sealed. I assume it happened the same night. Once you kill a first time, the second is easier – especially if the second is a poor old woman.”

Fong realized that he’d been holding his breath. He let it out in one long line of relief.

“That still leaves two things about the murder that are unaccounted for,” said Fong.

“What two things?”

“The forget-me-nots in Geoff’s pockets and the vest he wore on the hot night.”

Joan smiled. “Neither strikes me as very mysterious.”

“How do you mean?”

“Mr. Hyland was a middle-aged man having an affair with a young actress.” She looked at Fong who gave no indication that he understood what she was getting at. “Come on, Fong! Okay, I’ll lay it out for you. In middle age, we all thicken Fong, don’t we?” Fong nodded. “The vest helped Mr. Hyland cover that thickening, what Westerners call love handles.” Joan raised her shoulders in the pan-Chinese gesture of “you-get-me?” then added, “How long can anyone hold their stomach in, anyway?”

Fong smiled. So the vest was nothing more than his old enemy, vanity, at work. “And the flowers?”

“Even easier, Fong.”

“They are?”

“Yes, what are the flowers called, Fong?”

“Forget-me-nots.”

“So there it is.”

“There what is?”

Then she said the flower’s name slowly – one word at a time – Forget – Me – Not. “Surely Ophelia put them in Mr. Hyland’s pockets as a final memento, a final love token. A warning not to forget her.”

Fong shook his head but smiled.

Joan got to her feet and her face turned dark. “There is however another mystery that strikes me as potentially far more sinister than anything to do with Mr. Hyland’s death.”

Fong nodded. He knew what she was going to say.

“Who told the two Beijing men that you’d planted a bug on Xi Luan Tu? It wasn’t the snitch in the central stores. He worked for Li Chou.”

This time Fong didn’t even nod.

“Was it Captain Chen?” Joan asked.

Fong looked away.

It was almost midnight when Fong heard the knock on his office door. He’d been sitting in the dark lit only by the ambient light from the neon across the river in the Pudong. “It’s open, Captain Chen.”

The lights played chase-the-colour across the uncomely features of the young man as he entered the office and stood cap in hand. “Sir?”

Fong said nothing.

“You found out, sir?”

“Yes, Captain Chen, I found out. You betrayed me to the men from Beijing.”

After a slight pause, Chen said, “I knew you would figure it out, sir.”

“Then why did you do it?” Fong was on his feet. His voice was loud enough to rattle the glass in the window.

But Chen didn’t flinch. “Because of Lily and Xiao Ming,” he said simply. “This office is a political place. You told me that. I have to protect myself so that I can be there for Lily and Xiao Ming.”

Fong looked at the young man. The colours seemed to float across the man’s unfortunate features.

Then Fong nodded and turned to the window.

“Sir?”

“We all do what we need to do, Captain Chen.” He reached up and touched the cool glass pane of the window. “All of us do what we need to do.”

“Yes, sir.”

A long silence followed. Captain Chen stood very still. Fong stared out at the Pudong. Then Fong turned to Chen. “I’ll see you tomorrow morning, Captain Chen.”

“Sir?”

“We understand each other now. I will see you tomorrow. We have work to do here, Captain Chen. Much work.”

Fong opened the door to the safe house without knocking. The table in the centre of the room was covered with official-looking documents. A few of the mocked-up photographs were there of Geoff in handcuffs. The room’s windows were all closed and curtained so the place was oppressively hot and stuffy despite the late hour. Fong threw open the draperies and pried open a window. It made little difference. Fong leaned out the window. Far-off he heard the gentle lap of the Huangpo River. Looking up, he thought he saw the moon about to set.

Fong checked the other rooms in the house. The elderly Beijing man wasn’t there. Then he heard the front door open.