CHAPTER SEVEN
Squat Captain Chen drove up in an army issue Jeep. The thug and the Chaika were nowhere to be seen. The politico hopped in beside him. Fong climbed in the back. “At least I’m not handcuffed,” he thought. Then he looked down at his ankle and knew that wasn’t really true.
They drove into downtown Ching – downtown nowhere as far as Fong could tell. Not because it was a small city on the edge of a large lake but because little of what, at one time, must have made this place distinct from any other place remained. Like so much of the country, it had been made over in the Sovietdominated period. The place reeked of a false practicality. Straight lines that people didn’t want to walk, square buildings that housed people but not souls – and worst of all, no old town. What little withstood the Sovietization of the place had probably been demolished by the Red Guards.
The air tasted of some sort of industrial pollutant. Fong couldn’t tell which one. The streets were grimecoated. This was no resort town. Xian was far away. Ching didn’t have to be kept nice for tourists.
They whizzed by the docks. Little activity to do with the lake was in evidence. It was as if the water didn’t really exist, or that it was seen as nothing more than a momentary impediment to the growth of this non-place. In fact it was eerie quiet.
The politico pointed to a street corner and a coyly marked party hotel. Captain Chen pulled the vehicle over and the politico hopped out. He pulled open the back door and Fong stepped out onto the cracked pavement. Then, like a hotel doorman, the politico opened the front passenger door.
Fong looked at him.
The man smiled. His sharp pointy teeth looked rusty and his breath smelt heavy on the snap of the spring air. “Do your duty for China, Traitor Zhong,” he hissed.
“I have always done my duty for China, comrade.” Fong’s voice cracked. The politico’s smile widened. “Am I to be supplied with the equipment needed to launch a major investigation?”
“You will be supplied with the necessities, Traitor Zhong. These are hard times. We all must do our duty with as little as possible . . . and as quickly as possible. In this new age, time is money.”
The man turned and walked into the hotel. Fong caught a glimpse of the interior as the door swung open. The opulence reminded him of the photos of the rugs and draperies on the burnt, sunken boat – the one with seventeen dead foreigners.
He got back into the front seat of the car. “Where to, Captain Chen?”
The politico’s phone call travelled on totally secure lines. It was answered on the second ring. “Yes.” The voice was distorted by the speaker phone.
The politico took a breath. “He’s in place, sir.”
“Good.” The speaker phone crackled for a moment, then the line went dead.
The politico lit a cigarette and let out a rope of smoke. But it didn’t relieve his tension. He’d never get used to speaking to one of the three most powerful men in the Middle Kingdom.
Twenty minutes later, Fong stood on the filthy floor of a single-storey abandoned factory. The west side of the high ceiling had a bank of grimy slanted windows that at one time could have been louvered open. But that was clearly long ago. Rows of the kind of struts used to mount machine lathes stuck out of the floor. The lathes were long gone. Rusting metal barrels were stacked all the way to the ceiling in three of four corners. The place was dark and dank. “As they intended it to be,” Fong reminded himself.
Against the south wall was a square, raised concrete slab that had at one time been tiled. A few chipped tiles still remained. Fong assumed there had once been walls to demarcate an office. On the slab were two desks, two chairs, two phones and a typewriter. A large topographic map was spread out on the floor. The crime scene photos were tacked to the wall.
Fong looked closely at the wall. There would be listening devices. He didn’t look for them. What would he do if he found them? Better to accept them as part of the working conditions of the job.
After a few minutes of questioning, it became clear to Fong that Chen was the only officer assigned to assist him. “Great. We each solve eight and a half murders and we’re done,” he thought.
Fong turned to the map and with a sigh asked, “How big’s the lake, Chen?” Fong consciously left the Captain part out of the ugly fellow’s name.
Chen noted the impoliteness, then responded. “Over ten kilometres at its longest. Just over two at its widest . . . Fong.”
Fong looked at the younger man. “Toady,” he thought. “What do I care what a toady calls me?” Fong smiled. “Is Ching the only town on the lake?” This time Fong left his name off altogether.
Again Chen noted the rudeness but answered, “There’s a smaller town to the north and a village on the western shore.”
“And this?” Fong pointed at the only large island in the lake.
“The Island of the Half-wits, the locals call it. If it has a real name I’ve never heard it. The people in the city have little to do with the residents there. It’s a farming community. No one remembers when those families got there. Very likely centuries ago. The locals won’t intermarry with them because the families on the island have intermarried with each other for . . . for however long they’ve been there.”
“Hence the Island of the Half-wits?”
“That would be my guess.”
“And the three brothers that were arrested . . .”
“Were from the island, sir.”
Fong hadn’t heard anyone call him “sir” in a very long time. He tried not to be influenced by it. But he was.
“The specialist needed to make an arrest. That’s what he said. He left it up to the local officers. They brought in thirty or so suspects. I think it was only local prejudice that those sorry men you saw were included.”
“Any indication why the specialist chose those three?”
“None, sir. He interrogated them in private. It took a long time before he made up his mind and charged those three with the murders.”
“If he just needed to make an arrest, he could have charged the first ones that he saw.”
“I don’t deny that.”
“I want to see the transcripts of the interrogations.”
“That’s not possible.” Before Fong could question him further he added, “None were made.”
“What?”
“It wasn’t in our hands. The whole thing was run by the specialist. He had his own political adviser and a small army of soldiers and technicians. It was his show, sir, not ours.”
“Were local Triad members interviewed?’
“They were contacted.”
“Who exactly?”
“Pak Tsz Sin.”
“The White Paper Fan?”
“Yes, sir.”
The White Paper Fan was the ritual name for a Triad’s financial officer. Like all Triad members, he was also identified by a code number drawn from Buddhist and Taoist numerology traditions. Fong was amazed that he could recall that 415 was the Pak Tsz Sin’s numerical assignation.
“Who else was put on warning?”
“Cho Hai . . .” The Grass Slipper was a Triad’s liaison officer. Sort of a gangster PR guy. His number was 432 . . . “and Hung Kwan . . .” also called Red Pole. He was the Triad’s field commander. He was often well versed in martial arts but was considered expendable by the upper echelons. His number was 426.
“No one big was contacted? No Shan Chu or Fu Shan Chu?” These were the boss and the sub-boss. “Not even the Heung Chu or the Sing Fung?” The former was in charge of rituals and was traditionally third in command. The latter was fourth in command and looked after franchising the Triad.
“No, sir. The specialist didn’t think it necessary.”
Fong thought back to the Triad mark on the exterior of the boat and the slashed markings and message on the mirror. Then he thought of the four close-up photos of the broken chainlink on the Triad medallion.