David Rotenberg - The Hua Shan Hospital Murders

Wu Fan-zi horked up a wad of phlegm into his mouth but didn’t spit it out. After all, this was a crime scene and there’s no telling what stupid conclusion a CSU guy could come to if he found fresh phlegm on the floor. Wu Fan-zi had little patience with CSU guys – but then he’d been allowed into the crime site first this time – so he’d hold his phlegm. “Well?” Fong ventured.

Wu Fan-zi slowly brought his almost black eyes to meet Fong’s gaze. Then he slid them past Fong and stared at a mass of tangled metal imbedded in the far wall.

“Well?” Fong ventured again.

Wu Fan-zi brought a handkerchief to his mouth and spat into it. “He’s a pro – that’s for sure.”

Fong nodded. It wasn’t something he hadn’t figured out himself.

“Perhaps more advanced than we’ve ever seen, Fong.”

That was new – and deeply troubling. “Great. We have enough trouble finding regular, old-fashioned, stupid arsonists.” Arson was a relatively new crime in Shanghai.

“I’ll need assistance and money to work on this properly.”

“You’ll have both,” Fong assured him while he made a mental note that he’d never approached the new commissioner for money and should do some study before he stepped into that territory. “Where will you start?” Fong asked.

“With the mathematics of it,” Wu Fan-zi said flatly. “We can find the weights of the surgical tables and can measure the flight patterns and the depth of penetration into the walls. We should be able to determine the resistance co-efficient of the building material in the wall. Plug all those numbers into the basic formula and at least we’ll have an idea of the force released by the blast.” He waved his ham-sized hand at the walls of the surgery. “From the force coefficient we might be able to determine the type of explosive – might – no promises, Fong.”

Fong nodded. Like in so much police work, a fireman’s conclusions rested on a base of science but were highly influenced by intuition and supposition.

“Maybe we’ll get lucky. If the force co-efficient . . .” he didn’t bother completing the statement. The large man squatted down and put his hands on the concrete floor, palms down. It was hot to the touch. Then he leaned over and plucked a strand of thin metal wire from the floor. “Phosphorus,” he muttered and looked away from Fong, clearly not interested in answering any questions. He approached the shattered window high up on the west wall. “I would have thought that surgeries wouldn’t have windows,” he said holding the strand of phosphorus in his palm.

Fong consulted the notes he’d been given by the hospital. “This is the newest operating theatre. It’s only one of the two with windows.” Fong looked to Wu Fan-zi. The man nodded but said nothing.

Fong waited. Finally, Wu Fan-zi turned to Fong. “Where will you begin?”

Fong pointed at the fetus in the cage, “With that.”

“Why it didn’t explode like the rest of the things in the room?”

“No, I’ll leave that detail to you.”

“How it got here then?”

“That and who put it there.”

“I’m the head of administration for the People’s Twenty-Second Hospital, Detective Zhong.”

Fong immediately thought, “Not for long. Someone has to be blamed for this breach of security.” Fong allowed himself to smile.

“I’m a busy man, sir!”

Fong wiped the smile from his face. He swallowed hard trying to keep anger out of his voice, but failed, “Busy?” It came out as a hiss.

“Yes, Inspector Zhong, busy,” the man said, but his voice was unsure, wavering. “You wouldn’t . . .”

“Too busy to help the police after an operating room in your hospital was blown to shit? That kind of too busy?”

“Well, no . . .”

Fong cut him off, “I want to interrogate the surgeons and their teams – the ones who were in the operating room before the explosion and those scheduled to go in after the blast. And I want to see the cleaners who swept up before and those ready to clean up after. I want an accurate roster count of those in the operating room at the time of the explosion. Also the name and address of all the women and their men folk who were in the waiting room.” Before the man could protest, Fong added, “I need to compare body parts to names.”

The man stiffened.

“And I want it within the hour – are you able to understand that? Good, now do you think you can ‘administer’ your way to getting that done?”

The surgery had cooled enough for the smell of burnt flesh to fill the air. Fong applied a thick stripe of tiger balm beneath his nose and inhaled deeply. His head snapped back from the sharp intake of the powerful eucalyptus odour. Then he pulled on his latex gloves, steeled himself, and entered the blasted-out surgery again.

The new head of the Crime Scene Unit looked up from his grisly task – one of his men was trying to lever a charred leg bone from a portion of the wall just above shoulder height. It was resisting his efforts – as if it had been disturbed enough for one day.

Fong had not worked with the new CSU guy before and wasn’t sure how good he was. Fong had been spoiled in the past working with Wang Jun for years, before he was gunned down in the Pudong just before Fong was arrested and sent to internal exile.

Fong hadn’t cared for the new man’s behaviour in the commissioner’s office, but he was willing to forget and forgive if the man were talented. But that remained to be seen. What was obvious was the man’s caustic approach to his work. And that struck a wrong note in Fong.

The man dropped the bone fragment he was examining and looked at Fong. “You got the list?”

“Yeah.”

The man held out his hand. Fong gave him the list. It contained the names of a doctor, three nurses, two technicians, and the patient, Ms. Wu. Beside each name was a basic physical description and home address and, in the case of the hospital workers, both blood type and DNA markers. China had, for years, been much further advanced in such research than they had ever acknowledged to the West.

The man spat.

Fong began to protest.

“What’s the difference,” the man said. “They’re all dead. Grisly business they were involved in, anyway. Butchers butchered.”

Fong couldn’t believe it.

The man read the list quickly – then he pointed to several piles of bones, charred bits of clothing, seared flesh-covered body parts, teeth, and in one case a small pile of hair. “That’s what’s left of them.”

Fong pointed at the hair but before he could speak the CSU responded, “Yeah, yeah, we can do DNA match from hair if we’re lucky enough to find one with a follicle in place and you insist.”

“I insist.”

The man rose to his full height. He was considerably taller than Fong. Perhaps a Northener; definitely not a fan of Fong’s.

“You’re first on my list, but trust me they all must be here – none of these murderers escaped.”

Fong controlled his anger and glanced at the piles – all that was left of seven lives and all the lives they could have created.

“No other hair was found but this?” asked Fong pointing to the small pile of hair.

“No other hair. Lots of bones and a fair number of teeth-”

“I want to know whose hair that is and fast.” Fong began to leave, then stopped. “Where did you find the hair?”

The man riffled through a set of photographs. “On the floor under the surgical table.”

“Near the fetus in the cage?” asked Fong, grabbing the photo.

“Yeah, beside a pool of blood – so?”

So, Fong didn’t like it. He handed back the photograph and repeated even more sternly, “I want to know whose hair that is.”