“Something big. Who knows what?”
Fong nodded. Shanghai was full of empty pits that quickly became big who-knows-whats.
“So I was right Detective Zhong to call you in?”
“Yes. I guess you were, officer.”
“Good. Then the case is yours. I’ll send you a copy of the initial findings.”
“Fine.”
The cop began moving up the steep side of the construction pit.
“Where are you going, officer?”
“Home. It’s going to rain.”
Fong looked up at the sky then down at his hand. The equal-sided cross sat flat on his palm. A fat raindrop spatted right at the crossing of the crucifix’s arms. Fong looked up. It wasn’t going to rain. No. It was going to pour.
After calling in his forensic team, Fong made his way through the muck of the construction site to the supervisor’s hut.
The large man who greeted him there was a classic of his type. A foreman whose only concern was completing the project on schedule, safety be damned – fuck the poor men from the country who lifted and hoisted and toiled in the mud for next to nothing. This kind of man had been put in his place after the liberation but had emerged from his hole to make money in the “New China.”
Fong was no card-carrying Communist, but human beings are not animals. They are not meant to be worked from before dawn til after dusk, seven days a week, at labour that might actually kill some of them.
“How long, Mr. Police Man?” barked the foreman.
“As long as it takes,” Fong answered – happy to ruin the man’s day.
“That’s not all that convenient – sir.”
“No kidding.” Fong enjoyed the shimmer of confusion that crossed the man’s face. “Want to make a phone call?”
“To whom?”
“To whoever is the money behind this pit. He’ll want to know what’s going on here.”
“Will he really?”
“They usually do.”
“She won’t.”
“She?”
“As in woman – yes. Madame Faisan’s explicit instructions were to finish the work as quickly as possible and avoid the rash of unforeseen difficulties that seem to plague so many large projects in the People’s Republic of China.”
“And this Madame Faisan lives-”
“Hong Kong now. Kabul before. Apparently the Taliban weren’t keen on her.”
Fong nodded, only peripherally aware of the Taliban and its doings. A slash of lightning lit the world outside the hut. Then the rain began to pelt down on the corrugated iron roof. The din momentarily deafened both men.
“Well, you can tell Madame Faisan that like the rain, the delay that our investigation will cause is just one of those unforeseen difficulties that do tend to plague business in the People’s Republic of China.”
“She’ll call her political friends and raise hell.”
“Raise hell is an interesting phrase,” Fong said slowly.
“Why’s that?”
Fong didn’t bother answering the man. But as he left the hut he mulled over the words: Raise hell. He thought of the skeleton poking up from the ground. Was that raised hell? He permitted himself the indulgence of free association for a moment longer then got back to work.
Fong’s forensic team was yellow-taping the area when he returned to the pit. The ground in which the bones had been found was already covered in a thick plastic sheet to keep the rain from further deteriorating the crime site.
The workers were kept back and away as the cops proceeded methodically despite the downpour.
As Fong approached he heard a muffled cry to his left. He turned to see Lily, his wife, mother of their three-month-old baby and head of his forensic team. She was kneeling in the mud, her long black hair pasted by the rain to her lean angular features.
When she saw him, tears welled from her beautiful eyes and mixed with the rain coming down her face. Fong had never seen Lily cry like this before. Then he followed her outstretched hand. There, peaking through the thick mud was the severely weathered skull of a child – no, of a baby.
Despite Lily’s pleading look he stepped away from her and forced himself to take in the whole scene.
An adult skeleton on its back, head turned toward the child. The child on its stomach turned away. They were close together.
Close enough to reach out and hold hands.
CHAPTER TWO
The rain thrummed against his large umbrella as Robert Cowens stood on the Bund Promenade. A decaffeinated coffee, hard to find in Shanghai, sat cold and unsipped near at hand on the rail. To a casual observer it would seem that Robert was lost in some deep complex thought. But in fact he was trying to recall the lyric to a song.
A gust swept beneath Robert’s umbrella and blew his thinning blond hair across his forehead. Robert tasted the salty tang of Yangtze River air and turned to face the Bund building from which the infamous Silas Darfun had controlled an empire.
Robert’s usually dancing eyes hardened.
The Chinese men standing in the rain at his side chattered on, seeing none of this. They knew little of the man they referred to as Devil Robert. They did know that Devil Robert was a thing called a Jew, which like everything else in the world as far as they were concerned, had originated in the Middle Kingdom – the remnants of which still existed to this day in Kai Feng. They also understood that, although they didn’t like Devil Robert, they needed him to sell the goods they claimed to have plundered from far-off desert airees on the fabled Silk Road.
Robert listened to the Chinese men yatter on, pleased that they were unaware he had learned quite enough Mandarin since his first trip to China four years ago to get the gist of their conversation.
It was prudent to know some Mandarin when a very special part of one’s income was made from the illegal buying and selling of Chinese antiquities. True, Robert made the bulk of his money as a lawyer working through an international law firm out of Toronto – but he had never really been satisfied with making large sums of money by making even larger sums of money for people who already had very, very, very large sums of money.
There were more important things in the world than making money – revenge, for example, was more important. But revenge in the People’s Republic of China cost money – much more money than it was legal to bring into or move out of the Middle Kingdom.
He looked back at Silas Darfun’s building on the Bund, then focused his eyes on a far distant point. His breath settled and a shiver moved through him – he’d remembered the lyric to the song.
He cracked open the tiny memory drawer in his mind and a Joni Mitchell tune slipped out: I’m travelling in some vehicle; I’m sitting in some cafe. And suddenly he was back. Back on the first plane that had brought him to China. The plane was darkened and quiet. People all around him were deep in sleep.
Robert let out a warm breath that misted the window. With his baby finger he printed the words: Silas Darfun rots in hell. As the mist began to fade, taking the writing with it, another message on another frosted window came back to him. His mother’s angry scratch in the cold frost of his bedroom window when he was nine years old. It was just one word – and misspelled at that: BECAUS! It was the last thing his crazy mother did before she doused herself in gasoline and set herself alight in front of Robert and his two brothers – No, Mommy! No Mommy no!
It was the final mad act of her mad life. It scared Robert in many ways. Not the least was an intense, debilitating fear of fire – of any sort.
Robert looked back at the airplane windowpane. Only one word remained, fading quickly in the mist: Hell.
“Hell – Becaus – what’s the difference,” he thought.
He put the new CD he’d bought at the airport into his player and punched play.