David Rotenberg - The Shanghai Murders

“Is this ivory?” asked Amanda.

“Without a doubt,” replied Fong and without missing a beat asked, “Have you seen much ivory in your life, Ms. Pitman?”

“The odd trinket that Richard picked up for me at airports, but nothing like this.” She allowed her fingers to trace the pipe’s length.

A slender hand parted the curtains and the tiny thing called Wu Yeh slipped into the cubicle. The old man introduced her and then retired. Amanda looked at the delicate girl/woman in front of her-exquisite tapered fingers, skin without a blemish and deep liquid pools for eyes.

Wang Jun looked at her differently. He saw a practised prostitute who knew her craft and the wiles needed to succeed in that craft. Fong saw a masterful liar. He also saw cleverly hidden age and addiction. Unlike Amanda, he was not impressed with Wu Yeh’s beauty. Beauty is relative. In Fong’s case it was relative to Fu Tsong.

“Do you know that I am a police officer?”

“I have been told.”

“I’m not with the vice squad. I’m investigating the murder of Ngalto Chomi, the black man who owned this pipe. You knew him?”

For a moment Fong thought she was going to cry. Then she said weakly, “Yes, I knew him. He came often. Near the end, almost every day.”

“Did you always serve him?”

“It was my pleasure to serve him.” Fong thought he must be losing his mind. He could have sworn that what the little whore said actually sounded honest. He looked to Wang Jun who signalled that he was at a loss too. Amanda asked to be caught up and Fong did. Then Amanda looked at the girl/woman more closely. “She loved him, Inspector Zhong. We may be in China, a long way from my stomping grounds, but I have seen that look before on others. She loved him.”

And so it proved to be.

Wu Yeh tearfully recounted her last time with her African lover.

Slowly the picture of Ngalto Chomi as a much loved man was coming into focus. Here was a man, who not only because of his colour and his height left a lasting impression on others-stone sellers, cooks, and a whore in an opium den who had been with more men in a week than most women have been with in their lives.

Mr. Chomi is proving to be an exceptional human being, Fong thought, as his eyes strayed to the ivory pipe. A human being whose heart could resist the knife.

They walked out the back door, as Ngalto Chomi had, and instantly knew where the killer must have hidden. The bend in the alley allowed a place from which the killer could have watched without being seen by the waiting driver. Wu Yeh said that she had walked him to the door and that as he lingered with her kiss, he had slid a hand inside her robe and caressed her breast. She had looked up at him and told him that the room was still his if he desired her more. But he had declined-and probably was murdered directly after he closed the door on the whore who loved him.

Wang Jun strung the area with police tape and informed the old man that the door wasn’t to be used until further notice. Then the three of them walked to the site itself. It was cleverly chosen but still partially exposed. The attacker had to be fast. Evidently he was. And then no doubt he made his escape away from the place where the driver was parked.

“Which means he left his bicycle back at the foot of Fu Yu,” said Fong.

“I agree. It’s two days ago, though,” replied Wang Jun. “We might get lucky, swamp the area with cops. I want to find that bike or whoever stole it. I want every bike on that sidewalk claimed and taken away. The one that’s left is our man’s.”

Fong drove Amanda back to her hotel in silence. When he finally stopped the car Amanda turned to him and asked,“Could the bicycle really be valuable in finding this guy?”

“Maybe. A bicycle here is not like in other places. People, you have no doubt noticed, use them all the time. And the roads are rough. No one rides a bicycle without having to get it fixed over and over again.”

“That’s what all those men with tool kits and pumps are doing on every street corner?”

“Precisely. And I have found that those men with tool kits and pumps, as you put it, have very good memories when it comes to bicycles and faces. There’s a man around the corner from the academy that we call the master. He can fix anything. And he never forgets either a bike or a face.”

“I see.”

He turned to her. Again he noticed the oddness of blue eyes in a white face. Then he said, “I was terribly out of line at the restaurant. I’m sorry for the question about your husband.”

“You know, I almost said who, when you said my husband. We were not close, hadn’t been for some time, Inspector.”

“Do you know what your husband was doing in Shanghai when he was murdered?”

“He was here on business, I thought.”

“He was a government employee, wasn’t he? What kind of business was he on?”

“He travelled all the time, Inspector. Europe, Asia, Africa-you name it and Richard had been there.”

Fong quickly said, “You lied to me about the ivory back in the opium den.”

“In a way yes. I never saw anything but trinkets, but I know a lot about ivory. Through Richard-a lot. For some time I’d known that we couldn’t be living the way we were on the meagre salary of a government official and the profit from the business I ran.”

“Is it possible that he was involved in smuggling ivory out of Africa under the protection of his government credentials?”

“It’s possible.”

Fong looked at her closely.

“More than possible,” she whispered.

“Thank you.”

She looked straight into his eyes for an instant. “Now that you know, you don’t need me anymore, do you?” He didn’t respond. “Do you?” she pressed.

“No.”

“I see. May I ask a favour?” He nodded. “Tell me what you know about my husband’s death.”

Slowly, with precision but without sentiment, he told her all he knew of the passing of Richard Fallon.

“And that’s what the U.S. consulate didn’t want me to know?” Fong chose not to answer that question. Amanda took his silence as assent. “So that’s everything.” It was a statement not a question.

A silence began to fill the space between them. She looked down at her hands in her lap. “So now you can go home,” he said.

She thought about that, about “going home.” When she raised her eyes his were there to meet hers. “I’m not sure I’m ready to go home yet, Inspector Zhong.”

Fong allowed a moment to pass then asked, “Do you like shopping, Ms. Pitman?”

“What are you-?”

“Perhaps you’d accompany me tomorrow. I know very little about ivory and I have a strange feeling that store keepers would be more open to your inquiries than to mine. All right?”

“Fine.”

“Tomorrow morning then.”

“Fine.”

“Dress up.”

“You too, Inspector.”

That night Fong sat in the back of the old theatre and watched Geoffrey Hyland stage the drunk scene in Twelfth Night. It was like watching a master etcher daubing his acid on human material. But this product wasn’t set in time and space. It was art in dynamic motion. Art that was molten and tactile. Art that was never the same moment to moment but never random. Never not art.

Hyland began with a simple question: Why is Toby Belch drinking? Answers were posed and tested. No acting was attempted until Hao Yong suggested that Toby needed to escape. Escape what? “A memory,” ventured the actor playing Toby, a frighteningly thin tall man in his early forties.

“Good,” replied Geoffrey. “Memories do haunt, don’t they?” For the slightest moment he tilted his head in Fong’s direction and then returned his attention to the actors. “Well?” Finally the actor playing Toby came up with the answer to which Geoffrey had led them. The answer was simple and in line with everything else in this play that parades itself as a comedy but by its conclusion is hardly humorous. The answer of course was that Toby Belch drinks to try to escape his terrifying love of Olivia. To escape even the memory of that unrequited love. Andrew drinks for the same reason. So does Maria, whose love for Toby will never truly be returned. And then there’s Feste-the clown who drinks to forget that he ever loved, that he ever had a reason to carry on with his life.