David Rotenberg - The Hamlet Murders

He insisted on being called, like many Chinese from Hong Kong, by his British name. Fong could put up with that because Kenneth Lo was a talented forensic accountant and his computer skills were second only to Chen’s in the office. Fong pointed to the chair across the desk from him. Kenneth sat and opened a large folder.

“So, Kenneth, what did the International Exchange Institute do to make cash?” Fong asked in English.

“It’s hard to tell.”

That surprised Fong. “Any ideas?”

“Some, but nothing sound. It seems to have something to do with Anhui Province.”

“What could they want from that backwater?”

“I can’t tell you ’til I get further into the computer’s hard drive. But there’s a problem.”

“What a surprise – a problem with technology, who would have guessed?”

“Do you want to hear the problem, Detective Zhong, or are you content with making nasty remarks about the twentieth century’s most important technological advance?”

Fong took a breath and bridged his delicate fingers in front of his face, “Tell me the problem.”

“The man’s hard drive has a series of complex locking mechanisms on it. I’m worried that if I go at the locks too quickly, I could trigger booby traps that would erase the material we need on it.”

Fong thought about that but didn’t speak.

Kenneth shifted positions in his chair. “Can we attack this another way?”

“How?” Fong asked.

“Just how important is the man’s business activities to his death? What I mean to say is, do the events of Mr. Clayton’s work necessarily intersect with the fact of his demise? I mean, aren’t there compartments, yes, that’s what I mean, aren’t there compartments – I like that phrase – compartments in which we keep the separate sections of our lives? So it is possible, isn’t it, that in one compartment Mr. Clayton had his work? And in another he had the part of his life that induced his death? Isn’t that a possibility? In fact, why does what the company did have anything to do with Mr. Clayton’s demise?”

Fong wanted to say because it probably does but thought of the girl in the bar and said, “You may be right.”

“Then why not let me go at the guy’s hard drive the safe way. Slow is safe in this case.”

Fong thought about that then said, “Okay.”

Kenneth gathered together his papers and stood. At the door he stopped and said, “It could take a while.”

Fong wasn’t pleased. “When you’re done, will I have full access to that material on Mr. Clayton’s computer?”

Kenneth nodded. As he left the office, he passed by the commissioner, who was cutting a path in the carpet to Fong’s office. Fong sensed this approach before he actually saw him and grabbed his phone, hit a number on his speed dial before his doorway filled with the angry backlit figure of the commissioner – the man who had personally appointed Li Chou as the new head of CSU.

To Fong’s surprise, Lily’s voice came on the phone. “Dui!” Fong had hit her number on the speed dial by mistake. “Who fucked this?” Lily said in her own peculiar variant of the English language. “Who fucked this?” she repeated.

For a heartbeat, Fong wanted to correct his exwife’s English slang. Fortunately he decided against it, hung up and turned to another point of wrath in his life, the commissioner of police for the Shanghai district.

Late that night, a little less well for the pasting he’d taken from the commissioner, Fong returned to the bar. The police officer was still at the door. The secretary was still at the bar. She was very drunk. Under his breath, Fong said to the man, “You have any change for me?”

“In this place? Are you kidding, sir? Luckily, she has a credit card.”

Fong nodded and approached the lady who was swaying to the music that came from the speakers over the bar.

He sat beside her. The alcohol made her sweat and induced her perfume to release its scent. Fong turned to her but before he could open his mouth she spoke to his image in the mirror behind the bar, “You ever been in love, Detective?”

Fong was so surprised by the question that he almost answered, “I loved my first wife more than the air that sustains my being,” but caught himself and said simply, “Yes.”

She looked more closely at his image in the mirror. “You have, haven’t you?”

He nodded.

“He was a lot older than me.”

“Bob?”

She nodded. “He was going to marry me.” She wagged an elegant finger at her drunken self in the mirror and corrected herself. “He told me he was going to marry me.” Without warning, her control abandoned her and she yelled, “He promised me!” and threw her highball glass at her image in the mirror. The sound of the crashing shards of glass was drowned out by her screaming. Then there was an unnatural silence. As if the world held its breath. Then quiet words tumbled from her lips and her tears fell on the bar and Fong almost reached over to comfort her.

But he didn’t. Instead he arrested her for the murder of her boss, whom she loved, who had promised to marry her.

He didn’t get back to his rooms on the grounds of the Shanghai Theatre Academy until almost three in the morning. Usually he entered from the west gate and went directly home. But that night, the tears of the woman he’d arrested for killing the man she loved seemed to have opened a wide hole inside him. The image of her crying at the bar wouldn’t go quietly into his mind’s storage vault. Instead it grabbed the sides and fought. Screamed and shrieked and refused to go into the darkness. So he walked the long way around and entered the far gate. The heat of the day had finally abated a few hours back and the scent of the sea tinged the gentle easterly wind.

Fong’s city was quiet. Shanghai was never fully asleep but it got quiet from 2:30 to 5:30 in the morning when the 18 million souls finally allowed today to become yesterday. Fu Tsong had loved this time – after today, before tomorrow.

A moment of vertigo passed through him. He leaned against the cool mud wall of the nearest building to stop the world from spinning – if only for a moment – and felt as alone as he’d ever been since he cast his wife’s body into the quick-drying cement of the huge construction pit deep in the Pudong, almost seven years ago. He shook that thought from his head and stood up straight. He was getting too old for late nights – and young love. Looking over his shoulder, he realized he was leaning against one of the old theatre’s side doors. Naturally it would be the theatre. The poster to his right announced that the place was playing Geoff Hyland’s production of Hamlet. Fong noticed that the poster art was better than usual. Then he noted that the fabulous Hao Yong was playing Gertrude – “Was she already old enough to play Hamlet’s mother?” he wondered. Fong still remembered her incredible performance as the young Indian girl in Geoff’s first production in Shanghai, The Ecstasy of Rita Joe. And now she was playing the melancholy prince’s mom. Fong nodded and said to the air, “I guess she is.”

Fong remembered the rehearsal he had sat in on two weeks earlier and Geoff’s hand on his shoulder. And the business card with the plea. Nonsense. Just more Western paranoia about working in the Middle Kingdom.

Fong reached into his pocket and felt the key to the theatre on his key ring. He remembered the night Fu Tsong had given it to him. Images raced through his mind. Fu Tsong’s face became Hao Yong’s and that became the face of the woman-who-killed-theman- she-loved.

When he finally found sleep that night, he dreamt of women’s tears falling and him trying to catch them before they disappeared into the dense richness of the Chinese earth.