Fong had no idea if that was what graduate students were for but asked, “Anything else I should know about Mr. Hyland’s Hamlet production?”
“Well there’s the standard Laertes-Ophelia attachment.”
“Attachment?”
“Well, Laertes does seem to be a little more than just expressing a brotherly concern for his sister.”
“Thus his anger at Hamlet?”
“Absolutely. Well, there is also the fact that Hamlet killed his father and Ophelia committed suicide when Hamlet dumped her.”
“Don’t you think those two little things just might be enough to lead to a bit of animosity from Laertes toward Hamlet?”
“I guess it could, do that, that is,” said Donny in all seriousness.
He guesses! Fong shook his head; he’d never understand academics. The watermelon of a man smiled. Fong didn’t. “Thanks.” He ushered Donny toward the door. The man was still talking. Then he stopped and looked at Fong for a long moment. “Hey, I’ve met you before.”
“No, I’m sure you’re . . . ”
“No, I have a really good memory for faces. Yes. Fuck the Dean then do the Bishop!”
“Excuse me?”
“At that stupid play. Right. I saw you at that stupid play.” Donny rubbed his hands in satisfaction then looked hard at Fong. “Hey, you were with a really pretty lady, right?”
“Right.”
“An actress, right?”
“Right.”
“Hey, how’s she doin’?”
“She’s dead. A long time ago.”
“Sorry to hear that. Beautiful girl. Really beautiful.”
Fong finally manoeuvred Donny out the door and shut it. He took a deep breath. That was hard. Too hard. Fu Tsong was still so completely present. So entirely there – her ghostly weight almost too heavy to bear – and Fong knew it.
Only the hulls of the junks that, before the war, used to ply the Su Zu Creek were still extant. In these rotting containers lived the poorest of the poor in Shanghai. The Su Zu Creek is not what is meant when real estate agents advertise “with river view.” The stink of the creek announces its presence well before one sees the turgid, shallow waterway. But water is water and summer is summer so kids are in the creek – and so is the body of a woman who used to hand out keys at Geoffrey Hyland’s guesthouse.
Two children throw a colourful button they pulled off one of their grandmother’s blouses into the water then dive after it. It’s a challenging game because the Su Zu Creek is thick with silt that is constantly churned up by wakes coming up the creek and produced by passing barges on the Huangpo River. It made every dive for the button an adventure. None more so than the dive when the young boy reached into the silt and touched something rubbery and yucky – something that had been a lady who gave out keys in Geoffrey Hyland’s guesthouse.
A pug-nosed Shanghai detective watched the flesh thing that used to be a body emerge from the creek’s dark water. He’d been an investigating officer for almost thirty years and although he had only a few years left on the force, he wasn’t looking forward to his retirement. With almost no money saved and very little pension, he knew his future was uncertain. After surviving all the regime changes in the Shanghai police force to be left maybe literally out in the cold struck him as particularly unfair but somehow infinitely Chinese. He smiled and indicated that the divers should put what was left of the body on the far shore. He didn’t believe they’d find out much about the death of this old woman – or at least she seemed to be an old woman. The eels in the creek had already eaten away most of the extremities of the body, the gelatinous facial parts and the liver. He lit a cigarette and allowed himself a fulsome cough. Then he saw the button the boys had been diving for. It had snagged on a string extending from the pocket of her quilted Mao coat. He pulled on the string and out came a key. A key to what? There had been a tag attached to the key but the acidity of the creek had removed the writing. He bagged the key, checked for ID and, finding none, instructed the officers to remove the body. Old people died all the time. Some fell into the creek. Some were dropped there. He allowed the key to roll around in his palm and wondered how he’d find out into what lock this key fit.
The rest of Fong’s afternoon was filled with disappointments – to be expected – but disappointments nonetheless. Like clockwork, cops appeared at his office door with confirmations of alibis from the theatre people. The only one of any real interest was the confirmation of Rosencrantz and Guildenstern’s alibi. Several gay men, after a little bullying, verified Rosencrantz and Guildenstern’s presence at the party. Not surprisingly, both party members who had been named by the actors had denied any knowledge of either the gathering or Rosencrantz and Guildenstern. Both had demanded Fong’s phone number and made the usual threats. That was fine with Fong. He filed away the two men’s names and phone numbers. They could prove to be very useful at some time in the future. Then he sat back in his office chair and stared at the Pudong out his window. The dozens of new buildings stood proud against the fading August sunlight. He thought about how the Pudong only ten years ago had been nothing but a swamp across the Huangpo River. Now it was the Pudong Industrial District, the very centrepiece of the new China. Fong thought about how power had brought those buildings into being. He thought about how power worked. Then he thought about how good it was to have diverse attitudes like those of the two gay party members within the halls of power of the Middle Kingdom and he allowed himself a smile.
It was the third locksmith that the Shanghai detective went to that informed him that the key was newly minted and probably was from a guesthouse because it had markings that indicated there could be a master key to override it.
A guesthouse? This could be trouble. Guesthouses were used by foreigners. He was a basic Shanghai street cop. He didn’t deal with crimes that had to do with foreigners. That was done by those damn snobs down on the Bund. Well, so be it. He picked up the phone and gave Special Investigations a call.
The call was received at general dispatch at Special Investigations just before sunset. Because the general dispatcher was a party hack’s son he didn’t mark it as urgent. Since there was no way of knowing if it was a murder and no way of knowing if it was committed by a foreigner, he filed the gist of the report in the boxes for Fong, Li Chou and the commissioner and didn’t give it a second thought. All three glanced at it before day’s end. All three had more important things on their desks than the remains of an old lady who probably had too much to drink, hit her head on the side of the junk and fell into the creek.
In accordance with the department’s new policy of limiting expenditures, an autopsy was put on hold. It wasn’t until days later that Fong asked for the full report of the old lady’s death that had the reference to a key to a guesthouse buried in the bottom.
CHAPTER TWELVE
It was just past eight in the evening but the aggressive heat of the day still held a grip on the vast city. The morgue workers were packing up and heading home. Fong looked from Lily to the morgue slab where Geoff’s body lay.
“I need you to sign off on the autopsy report as the head investigator, Fong,” Lily said in her lilting Shanghanese.
Fong nodded but didn’t take the pen Lily was holding out to him.
“So just do it. There’s nothing more this corpse can tell us and our refrigeration allowance was halved in the last city budget. It won’t be long before he begins to stink.”
Fong couldn’t take his eyes from the corpse. Over and over he punished himself with the thought: “Fu Tsong loved this man.” He was shocked when Lily stood behind him and put her hands on his back – but he was glad for the contact. Lily moved in closer and whispered softly, “It’s time this was returned to the earth.”