The First Excellence: Fa-Ling's Map

by Donna Carrick

  It was widely known in the Department that Cheng possessed a photographic memory. Although he didn’t immediately grasp the significance of everything he saw, he could recall images to within a rate of ninety-five percent accuracy. He stood in the doorway, studying the room and memorising details, like the fact that the lights were off and the music from a small battery operated cassette deck continued to play softly.

  Cheng motioned for Henry to turn on the lights. The concierge inserted his master pass into the slot and the room was suddenly illuminated. The three men continued to stand in the entryway for an eternity of less than sixty seconds while Cheng’s eyes made a record of the scene.

  Cheng entered first. For a man of his size, he was surprisingly light on his feet. He moved carefully through the foyer, touching nothing. Not that he anticipated much help from the forensics team, who would arrive in the morning. He knew Yong-qi was carrying his digital camera. Between Cheng’s memory and Wang’s photos, the evidence would tell its story.

  Wang Yong-qi followed Cheng, snapping shots of the bathroom, hot water dispenser and the closed closet door. He opened the closet and took more photos of the victim’s clothes where they hung neatly on the right side of the rack. Cheng pointed at the candle, which lay on the bed. Wang took a picture of it before Cheng used a pair of tongs to pick it up.

  “The wax is still soft,” he said. “Still warm.”

  Wang looked at the little metal plate beside the tape deck. Droplets of yellow wax marked its edges. It must have been used to hold the candle. He took a picture of the plate.

  Wang photographed the curtains. They had been pulled apart, creating an opening of about one metre. The edge of the curtain panel on the right was discoloured. The fire-retardant fabric had melted slightly as the flame brushed past it.

  Wang wrinkled his nose as he neared the kerosene container. If he were to assume this was murder, then the plastic jug might still carry the killer’s prints. There was one small black spot on the carpet near the window where a drop of accelerant had combusted and been extinguished before it could spread. The room held no other visible signs of fire. The residual odour, though, was faint but unmistakable.

  Wang returned to the bathroom. If someone other than the victim had handled the kerosene, he would almost certainly have washed his hands before fleeing the scene. Wang Yong-qi stood in the doorway trying to imagine a perpetrator bent over the water faucet. The stainless steel taps glistened, denying the possibility they might have been used. There were no visible signs, no telltale black streaks of burnt kerosene.

  Cheng joined his partner, peering past him into the bathroom.

  “Look,” he said, pointing at a tissue dispenser that hung from the front of the counter.

  Wang nodded. He photographed the dispenser. In a bathroom that appeared to be immaculate, as if it had not been used since the last time the hotel staff had cleaned it, only the tissue box seemed to have been touched. Someone had carelessly pulled a handful of tissues from the dispenser, leaving several dangling, and one had fallen to the floor. Hotel staff would surely never leave such a mess.

  Water droplets had damaged the tissue on the floor, as if someone had reached for the dispenser with wet hands.

  He used the tissue to dry his hands, Wang thought, so he wouldn’t have to use the towel. That was clever. It eliminated one possible source of evidence – hair and skin cells could attach themselves to a towel.

  Cheng used the toe of his shoe to slide the wastebasket from under the counter.

  “Empty,” he said.

  “Too bad. But look at this,” Detective Wang said, pointing at the toilet.

  “I don’t see anything.”

  “It’s there.” Wang reached his right hand into the sparkling bowl and groped for a moment in the water. “Here,” he said. He held his open hand out to Cheng.

  Cheng took the small metal ornament from Wang.

  “Interesting,” he said.

  “Yes. It adds an uncomfortable possibility to the situation.”

  Cheng grunted. “Those military goons are real bastards.”

  He handed the pin back to Wang, who studied the gold stars set into the brilliant red background before slipping it into a baggie and tucking it away in his pocket. Wang wanted desperately to wash his hands, but did not want to disturb the surfaces. One never knew. The military was certainly arrogant enough to be sloppy. After all, it considered itself to be above the law. One print could well be enough to crack the case.

  The detectives returned to the main room. Cheng paced from the untouched bed to the broken picture window, and from there to the glass dressing table. Tucked under the glass table was a small black wastebasket.

  Cheng used a pair of tongs to tilt the basket. He motioned to Wang, who carefully extracted a tiny wedge of cardboard that might have been torn from a matchbook cover. He placed it into a baggie and pocketed it along with the gold pin from the toilet.

  “Check this out.” Cheng pointed to the back of the chair.

  “What do you see?”

  “Right here.” Wang’s eyes followed Cheng’s finger until he spied the tiny fragment of glass wedged between the upholstered chair bottom and its polished wooden back. He snapped a close-up of the shard.

  “The chair was used to break the window,” Wang said.

  “Strange,” Cheng said.

  Wang tried to imagine how it could have happened. Deep in his religious fervour, had the victim decided to sacrifice himself for his master? Falun Gong zealots were said to martyr themselves in various ways, the most notable being to set themselves on fire.

  So, Wang thought, I am ready to leave my body. What are my steps? If the scene were to be believed, the victim had doused himself with kerosene. A large can still sat on the floor in the middle of the room.

  Before doing so, possibly to summon the necessary courage, he had listened to his meditation music. He sat in the semi-darkness, preferring the light of the candle for his ritual.

  When he was ready, he used the chair to break the window. Afterwards, he carefully placed the chair back in its original position at the dressing table.

  Next the victim doused himself and used the candle to ignite the kerosene, then blew the candle out and laid it neatly on the bed. This would be quite a feat, especially considering his hair was most likely flaming at that point.

  Finally, not wanting to cause injury to other innocent guests of the hotel, the victim had propelled his own burning body through the broken window to the pavement six floors below.

  “An obvious suicide,” Cheng said flatly.

  “Indeed,” Wang Yong-qi said.

  Henry did not offer an opinion.

  THIRTEEN

  “This is a good spot,” Shopei said. She instructed the driver to pull over.

  “Are you sure?” Randy studied the drab maze of mud-coloured dwellings sceptically. Even the usual infusion of garish ads in brilliant Chinese characters that lined the streets of every major city had abandoned this place, leaving it steeped in filth and mediocrity.

  A handful of urban peasants stood in a cluster, about a half dozen men and women wearing woven bamboo hats perched on their heads like pointy lampshades. They studied Randy and Shopei with feigned disinterest, no doubt wondering what business two well-dressed young people could possibly have in their quarter.

  “We’ll walk from here,” Shopei said. “The driver doesn’t need to know where we are going.”

  Shopei did not seem to notice the eyes that swept over her hair, her office clothes and her shiny leather shoes. She led Randy in the opposite direction, into the heart of yet another rabbit’s warren of dwellings that appeared identical to the one they left behind.

  This was the old China — the heart of an ancient society that had not yet been eradicated by either the Cultural Revolution or the on-going renovation of the major cities by money-lords of industry.

  Shopei seemed to understand the logic of the labyrinth of streets. She hurried o
nward with Randy in tow through one neighbourhood after another, until finally they came to a cul-de-sac that was even less modern than the others, but also cleaner. When they reached a tiny house with a door made of cracked and rotting planks that had, oddly enough, been recently painted a modest shade of green, Shopei stopped.

  She knocked loudly on the door. At first there was no answer. Randy could hear a faint tinny melody that wormed its way through the imperfect slats of the door. Shopei knocked again, three times, then twice, then three times, apparently tapping out some sort of a code.

  This time Randy heard a scraping sound and the music was extinguished. Then there was only silence for a full thirty seconds. Randy was surprised when the door suddenly opened. He had not heard anyone approaching from within.

  A pair of eyes peered at them from the withered face of a tiny old man. One of the eyes was rheumy and filmed over by a cataract, but the other was as black and bright as a child’s. The healthy eye rested first on Shopei then on Randy.

  Shopei pressed her hands together in prayer formation and bowed slightly, keeping her head lowered in an offering of respect. Randy followed suit.

  Shopei spoke a greeting to the man in Cantonese. He opened the door further and motioned for them to enter.

  He appeared to be more than ninety years old. He was dressed in dark grey cotton pants that billowed around twig-like legs. His white shirtsleeves were tailored to fall just short of a pair of bony wrists. A dark grey vest covered the front of his shirt.

  “This is Master Long,” Shopei said to Randy. “He is a friend of my father’s.”

  There was one wooden chair at a metal-legged table. The old man spoke and motioned toward it.

  “He wants you to sit down,” Shopei said.

  “Please tell him to sit,” Randy said, not wanting to take the only chair.

  “You should sit down,” she repeated. “You are tall.”

  Randy pulled the chair out and nodded his thanks. The old man opened an ice chest and set a jar of strange looking liquid on the table. He lifted two mugs from the shelf and poured some of the filmy liquid for Randy and then for Shopei. Randy looked dubiously at his mug before lifting it to his mouth.

  “It’s mango juice,” Shopei told him. She thanked her host in Cantonese.

  “Why are you here?” Long said.

  “This is my cousin, Randy Chan,” Shopei said. “He does not understand our language. He is from America. We asked him to come.”

  “Very well,” the old man said. “What news of your father? I have not seen Lim for two weeks.”

  “The news is not good, grandfather.” Long was not related to Shopei, but was a close family friend. It was polite for Shopei to address him this way.

  She waited while Long found another chair from behind a red silk curtain and settled himself at the table. Then she set her drink down and stood near Randy, her eyes not meeting the old man’s.

  “They are all dead,” she said. “Father, Mother and Dahui. It happened this morning.”

  Long continued to sit upright in his chair, his back rigid as she spoke. His eyes, though, both the good one and the blind one, filled with tears. Seeing the old man’s sorrow brought Shopei’s own emotions to the surface and she had to struggle to go on with her story.

  She told him about the previous assault on her father. After it had happened, the family asked their cousin Randy Chan to write a story about what was going on. It would be a dangerous endeavour, but somehow news had to make its way to the West. They hoped Randy would be able to make that happen.

  Randy could not understand what Shopei was saying to their host, but he could sense the gravity of the conversation.

  “Are we still safe here?” Long asked.

  “I believe so,” Shopei said. “Father never confessed to anything. Besides, if they knew where you were they would have come for you before now.”

  “I am sure of it.” Long stood. “Well, since your cousin has come this far, we should not waste time. Let’s show him what he came to see.”

  Shopei motioned for Randy to follow. Long led the way to the red silk curtain that served as a screen, separating the tiny area into rooms. He pulled the curtain open and held it for Shopei and Randy.

  “Oh, my God!” Randy exclaimed.

  “Yes,” Shopei nodded. “This is why Father wanted you to come. Now you can see for yourself we have not been exaggerating.”

  Regaining composure, Randy reached into his bag. He removed a palm-sized tape recorder and set it on a small table beside the bed, flicking the switch to turn it on. Then he rummaged for his digital camera.

  He strode toward a tiny window, hoping to improve the light by pulling back the curtain.

  Long spoke to Shopei. She reached for Randy’s hand.

  “Leave it closed,” she said.

  “Very well.” It wouldn’t have helped anyway. The darkness was growing outside, and with no streetlights to help, they would have to make do with what light they had. Long pumped a small gaslight and struck a match to ignite it.

  Randy felt himself ageing as he gazed at the bed, no longer the optimistic American youth that had arrived in Shanghai earlier that day. He suddenly felt old, small, and poorly equipped.

  “Can she speak?” Shopei asked Long.

  “She can. However, please do not exhaust her.”

  Randy pulled back the thin blanket and photographed the woman. She appeared to be no more than a girl, thin and weak, much smaller than Shopei. Using his flash, he shot the bruises on her face and extremities. Then Shopei helped him to turn her carefully onto her stomach and lifted her nightshirt, peeling back the clean gauze bandages so he could see the damage on her lower back.

  He used the zoom function to capture the swelling and redness. The wound was badly infected. A sickly sweet smell rose, wafting to his nostrils through the humid air.

  Long reached for a mortar and pestle and some dried leaves in a jar that stood on a shelf. He chose three of the leaves and ground them into a powder, then mixed them into a salve. Using his fingers, he spread a small amount of the salve onto the wound, gently replacing the bandages. The woman moaned.

  “Can you translate?” Randy asked.

  “Yes,” Shopei said, nodding toward the woman. “She speaks Cantonese.”

  “What is your name?” Randy asked.

  “Wu Gui-Jing,” the woman answered in a pained whisper.

  Randy moved the recorder closer to the bed.

  FOURTEEN

  Detective Wang Yong-qi held his recorder as near to his mouth as he could without swallowing it. As always, he felt self-conscious taping his own voice in front of Cheng. Cheng left the room and waited in the hallway to give him some space. Henry the concierge followed Cheng.

  “Apparent suicide,” Wang said, reciting the details of the evidence into the machine. He was prudent in his choice of words, taking care not to commit his opinions to record. His thoughts were his thoughts — the facts were the facts. One never knew where the facts might lead. It was best to weave one’s way carefully through the net of evidence, so as not to become trapped in a solution that was unacceptable, especially in a case like this one.

  Wang had dealt with several similar deaths in the recent past. Falun Gong ‘suicides’ seemed to be occurring with greater frequency. He and Cheng never spoke openly about the situations, knowing even irrefutable proof would not necessarily lead to justice. They had closed the file on three such ‘suicides’. The uncharacteristic blankness of Cheng’s expression as he moved about the hotel room spoke volumes to Wang.

  Detective Cheng wanted badly to solve this one. He and Wang were of like mind on that subject. However, both men were painfully aware of the political dangers of defending so-called ‘enemies of the state’.

  The Communist government controlled the press. There were no official reports within China, no hints or rumours of foul play. Wang couldn’t be sure about elsewhere in the country, but in Guangxi Zhuang, the suicides were entered in
to the record without question. The fact that there was no pressure from his superiors to dig deeper into the cases indicated to Wang Yong-qi things were not what they seemed to be.

  Of course, that was common in the People’s Republic.

  Wang closed his eyes, plunging into a dangerous decision. He would speak to Cheng now, before he lost his courage. He would suggest they work together off the record, to discover what had really happened at the Golden Lion Hotel.

  Cheng’s eyes would light up at the prospect. Whether or not the solution resulted in justice, it was still worth the effort. As Buddha taught, “the truth is as clear as a bell, and possesses a merit of its own”.

  Wang turned off his recorder and stepped into the hallway. He waited while Henry removed the passkey from the slot and closed the door. Cheng’s face was a mask of disinterest. As far as he was concerned, a case without a solution was like a plate without food. What was the point?

  Wang knew better than to speak openly in front of the concierge. When they finished questioning guests at the Golden Lion Hotel he would buy Cheng a drink.

  Then they would see where their quest for ‘truth’ would lead them.

  **

  Paula and Guy Kader faced each other across the span of floor that separated the twin beds. In the hour that had passed since she’d reported sounds of violence in the next room, she had packed up her laptop, woken Guy and changed into her pyjamas. It might appear odd to police if they found her fully dressed at two in the morning.

  Then she and her husband proceeded to wait nervously for the knock on the door. They knew it would come, but still jumped at the sound.

  “Hotel Manager,” Henry said softly.

  Guy opened the door. Wang Yong-qi and Cheng followed Henry into the room.

  Although Wang spoke English passably well, he preferred to feign ignorance. Wang and Cheng would rely on Henry to translate their questions.

  “What is your name?” Wang asked. As he spoke, Cheng walked quietly through the room, opening the closet door and staring at the luggage.