He gave her the pack and was about to give her the matches then remembered that it was forbidden. He struck a match and held it out. She leaned forward and cupped his hands.
Then held them.
Over the flame, amidst the veil of her cigarette smoke, he saw her more clearly. Her eyes were the eyes of a ghost.
He made sure his voice was calm before he spoke, “So you slept with Mr. Clayton?”
“No, Detective Zhong, I didn’t sleep with him. Whores aren’t paid to sleep with clients.”
Fong nodded.
Then a single line of tears emerged from the corner of her right eye and fell straight to the floor. “He bought me breakfast.”
The phrase was so simple but it carried so much weight. Somehow she knew that if he hadn’t bought her breakfast they would never have started what ended with him dead and her in this awful place.
For a moment he wanted to ask if the breakfast was good. But he knew the answer to the question. The food had tasted as exquisite as food could taste. The sun had been as brilliant as the sun can shine – and the world seemed gracious, open and full of hope. Fong knew that.
Sensing the momentum slip, Joan asked, “When did you see him next?”
“He drove me home and gave me money to rent a hotel room. It was the first time I ever had a room to myself. I almost didn’t know what to do with all that space.”
“Did he come by that night?” asked Joan.
“No. Not for a week.”
“Why?”
“He told me that he wanted to be sure.”
“Sure of what?” asked Fong.
“Oh, fucking hell, sure that the breakfast was good, sure that I was a woman, sure that Korea is a peninsula of idiots, what do you think he wanted to be sure of?”
Fong took a breath. “Sure that he cared for you.”
“Whites don’t come back again if they only care about a Chinese girl.”
“No, they don’t.” Fong considered lighting up but forced that thought out of his head. “So he loved you?”
She looked away. “That word sounds silly coming out of your mouth.”
“I’m sorry.”
“Have you been so hurt by love that love is now a joke to you, Detective Zhong?”
“No . . . ”
“Then what?”
“Doesn’t it take longer to fall in love than . . . ”
“Then one fuck fest? Is that what you’re asking?”
He was, but he knew the answer to that. He had fallen hopelessly in love with Fu Tsong within the first fifteen minutes of her saying hello to him. They hadn’t even touched. They’d hardly exchanged words. It sounded foolish – but he knew it was true.
“So what happened to your love?”
She began to answer but she was crying. Big sobs came from a place very deep in her. Tears fell on her cigarette. The thing hissed.
“Like a dragon,” Fong thought. But he said nothing. He sat and watched waves of anguish take the woman who murdered the man she loved down down down into places of despair that had yet to be named. A place where only ghosts lived.
And as he watched he knew both the question he needed to ask and the answer to his question. He had known it before he came to this small prison room. Question: Can love kill? Answer: No, but things that begin with love can end in murder.
He looked to Joan who looked away, clearly trying to stop herself from crying.
“Are you all right?” Fong asked as he got into his car beside Joan.
“Yes. I’m fine. In fact, I’m better for having seen that.”
“Really?”
“Yes. Where to?”
Fong took a moment and then replied, “To those who loved Geoff.”
She nodded slowly and sat back. While Fong made his way through the densely tangled traffic, Joan soaked in the great city. As they drove, a small smile came to her face. Shanghai flaunted itself – like a young woman in her first sexy dress – as if it were a thing newly made and proud – and finally open for public viewing.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
Once again the day’s heat had decided to spend the night inside the old theatre. While the rest of Shanghai had a momentary respite, the air inside the theatre was sultry, almost hazy in its dampness.
“You wanted to see us?” The voice came from the darkness at the back of the theatre.
“Another voice from the darkness,” Fong thought but he said nothing.
“I said, you wanted to see us?” The voice was demanding, angry. It belonged to Ho Tu Pei, the actor who played Laertes.
Fong stood on the slanted stage platform from which the naked Hamlet began his nightly voyage. His back was to the house. Fong assumed the “us” in Laertes’ repeated question meant that he had brought along the actress Yue Feng, who played Ophelia, as Fong had requested. Good.
Fong continued to face upstage and raised his hand. Slowly a hangman’s noose descended from the flies. Fong reached up and took the noose in his hands. Then he turned to the darkened auditorium where he knew Laertes and Ophelia were watching him. “So once I figured out that this all had to do with love – not nefarious plots,” Fong said, “the only thing that confused me was how to get the noose over Geoff’s head then tighten it around his neck – and, of course, keep it there.” Fong took a few steps stage left then turned, “Do you mind if I call you by your character names? I’m sorry but that’s the way I think of you both. Is that okay with you two?” He didn’t wait for an answer. “So my problem wasn’t how to yank Geoff off the ground – counterweights answered that. But, as I said, that wasn’t my problem. My problem was: how did you manage to get the rope around Geoff’s neck. Mr. Hyland is a white man – well it’s not his colour that’s the issue here but the height that often accompanies a white man’s skin. Geoff was just over six foot two inches tall – so you see my problem? I mean how does a five-foot-six-inch Chinese man – or a five-foot-two-inch Chinese woman – manage to get a noose around a six-foot-two-inch white man’s neck – who was not drugged or drunk. You follow me so far?”
Again Fong didn’t wait for an answer.
“Then I thought about that chair by the pinrail. At first I thought it was there for actors to rest on or for the flyman to loaf on between cues. But the flyman was a proud professional, as he told me many times, and would not put up with actors in his territory or in any way slack off while on duty – therefore he had no need for a chair.
“So what was the chair doing there? Ms. Shui, would you bring out the offending chair, please.”
Joan emerged from the stage-left wings carrying the chair.
“Put it there, would you, thanks. Now would you hold the noose for me? Thanks.”
Fong indicated the chair, “Ophelia, this is for you.”
“For what?” Her voice was husky with anger.
“Ah.” Fong paused. “Just do me the favour of sitting in the chair, would you?”
Slowly Ophelia climbed the stairs to the stage. As she did, Joan retreated to the darkness upstage. Fong pointed to the chair. Ophelia sat in it. She was slender and young – Fong could see how some could see her as attractive – a poor substitute for Fu Tsong, but a substitute in the eyes of some – Geoff’s, for example.
“Could you loosen your hair, please?” Fong said.
She looked at him then unknotted her hair. It fell like a black silken curtain almost to the floor – very much like Fu Tsong’s had.
Fong closed his eyes for a moment. When he opened them, he saw that Ophelia dangled the clip that had kept her hair in place from the index finger of her left hand. He nodded slowly.
“So you two, you and Mr. Hyland, had just been together, had it off, brought on the clouds and rain – you pick. We can trace your contraceptive to stains on Mr. Hyland’s clothing.”
Fong sensed Captain Chen staring at him from the pinrail and realized that he had been shouting at the girl. He lowered his voice, “You had managed it, I assume, in his room, and your boyfriend didn’t even know – or so Geoff thought. He never really understood us, did he? He never understood our patience, our willingness to wait for revenge.