After that damned boat was sunk – and the danger to China’s future passed.
Chen pointed toward the small motorboats he had arranged for them. “Shall we go, sir?”
The specialist looked at the boat then at the young officer. He hadn’t noticed before but Chen was one of the squattest, ugliest men he’d ever seen. “It inspires confidence,” the specialist thought. “Odd, but ugliness in a man inspires more than that. It inspires faith.”
Two hours later, Chen sat behind the specialist by the motor of the rocking boat. Before them the partially burnt boat’s skin of ice sparkled in the hazy light. An oddly fascinating beauty.
The ice that seemed to grow up the side of the large flat-bottomed ship had secured its purchase on the shoal.
The irony of a burnt boat encased in ice wasn’t lost on either Chen or the specialist. It seemed to escape the crime site team and the federal troops who hunched down in their open boat and the party man who followed in a covered cabin cruiser. The party man was still talking on his cell phone – as if he were narrating a sporting event or something.
The wind howled.
“I’m too old for this crap,” the specialist thought. But he wrote nothing, just signalled that he wanted to go on board.
The specialist had investigated many crime scenes, but nothing like this. Seventeen corpses. Gunshots. Knife wounds. Violent rippings. Mutilations. And a body swinging.
Only the virulent colours of the whorehouse decor of the boat stopped the victim’s blood from standing out like insults to heaven. As it was, the partially frozen dark blood had seeped into the bright red carpets, making them crunch under the specialist’s feet as he moved from the large bar to the ornate bedroom to the private video room to the peculiar room with the makeshift runway.
The death rooms.
Seventeen men. Two Caucasians. Five Japanese. Three Koreans – no doubt South Koreans – and seven Chinese who, by the labels on their clothing must have been Taiwanese.
The specialist had an awful taste in his mouth. He spat.
The boat groaned and rolled to one side. The specialist looked to Chen. “It’s not solidly held by the shoal, sir. The fires onboard weakened the hull. It could very well sink. Only the ice seems to be keeping it together and afloat.” The specialist nodded but his face showed neither concern nor comprehension. “We have all the victims’ documents at the Ching station, sir. But we were told to leave the bodies for you . . . to see.” The specialist nodded again then scrawled on his pad and turned it to Chen. “How many people have been on board since this happened?”
“Just me and the two officers who helped me collect the documents, on my second trip to the boat.”
A sour look crossed the specialist’s face. Chen was about to speak but the old man walked away from him. He slashed a single character on his pad. Since he didn’t turn the pad to Chen, there was no way of knowing if the man thought him a liar or thought that two officers to help him was too many – or for that matter – too few.
The specialist knew it was a lie. It couldn’t be just Chen and two officers. There were indications everywhere that more men had been on the boat. What he didn’t know was whether Captain Chen knew that or not.
The specialist filed it away under: politics. And he was old enough to know better than to get involved in that.
The slashed word on the pad had nothing to do with politics though. The specialist had written: “Carnage.” It was the first thing that came to him. These men weren’t just killed. They’d been annihilated. As if someone was trying to wipe them off the face of the Earth.
The specialist flipped the page and wrote again. This time he turned the pad to Chen. “I need to go back outside.”
Chen followed the specialist as he walked carefully along the icy deck. He helped the old man down to the motorboat where the crime scene photographer was waiting.
The specialist directed the shooting of the exterior of the boat starting with the 14K Triad markings on the hull. He was extremely specific about what he wanted in each shot. After over three-quarters of an hour in the brutal wind and bounding waves, during which time he’d had shots taken from all the cardinal directions, close-ups of the ice formations at the base of the boat, context shots taken of the portals and many, many different shots of the scorch marks on the starboard side, he ordered the photographer to follow him back onto the boat.
He started in the bar – with the Chinese. Seven bodies. All male. Each more rotund than most mainland Chinese. From the texture of the skin on their arms and their cuticles he guessed that they were all between fifty and seventy-five years old. From their personal effects that Chen had collected, he knew they were Chinese. He couldn’t use their faces to discern their ethnicity because none of the men had faces.
Their features had been carved off with some sort of wide-bladed sharp tool. Wide-bladed because the damage seemed to have been inflicted with one stroke. The specialist couldn’t even venture a guess at the implement’s name or normal use. A face remover. “I’d like two AK-47s, five banana clips and a face remover for good luck.” He didn’t laugh at the thought. It could happen in the New China.
He scanned the room. Where the facial skin and cartilage were now, he had no idea.
Three of the Chinese men had been shot from behind while they stood against the mirrored wall. The splatter lines were consistent with the pattern of a small weapon’s discharge.
The specialist took out a handkerchief and rubbed it across his face. He was freezing cold but the sweat on his face was hot and stank of dark places. “Have them start up the boat’s generator. I want the electricity on in here,” he wrote on the pad. Chen immediately relayed the orders.
The specialist took a deep breath. He began showing the photographer the pictures he wanted of these three faceless men. Straight on close-ups. Full body shots. Profile body shots. Wide-angle shots of each body taken from the cardinal points of the compass. Lastly, he ordered shots showing where the bodies were in relationship to each of the glass portals.
The overhead lights flickered on.
He had the bodies turned over and repeated the process. It took more than an hour to finish photographing these three. The position of the fourth dead figure drew his attention. This man had been stabbed with a knife while he was on his knees. The depressions on the carpet and the collection of blood around the depressions suggested that the man had been killed and then held in that kneeling position while . . . while what had been done to his face?
He instructed the photographer to repeat the process with the kneeling man and the two dead men on the barstools.
As the photographer did his methodical work, the specialist prepared himself then moved to what he believed was the oldest of the faceless figures. A knife had been used on him too but this time just to sever the tendons behind the ankles and knees. The man had been tied like a hog then lifted by a foot to dangle from the chandelier. Thickness in the rug beneath the dead man once again told the tale. The man had bled to death, but not from the knife wounds. There were no slashes or gunshot holes in his torso. Just the attempt to obscure, no, erase the face. He must have screamed through the curtain of blood or maybe he was lucky and fainted. The specialist stopped himself. He’d been away too long. Thoughts like that were senseless – worse – they were useless.
The specialist looked at the photographer who nodded that he had completed his task. The specialist indicated that he wanted to be left alone. Once by himself he slowly memorized the room from east to west. Seven dead faceless Chinese men now frozen in their horror. “Or was it my horror?” the specialist asked himself.
He slipped his hand out of his glove and leaned in close to one of the desecrated faces at the bar. He touched the edges of the wound. No raggedness on the forehead cut but a slight flap of skin where the chin ought to be. The upper edge of the cut was bevelled downward. Putting that together with the flap at the bottom seemed to imply that the cut came from top to bottom.