Chapter Twenty-Nine
It was the investigative journalists from the South Korean TV company who first discovered the link between the killing of Kim Dong-Moon and the death of Garnet G. Wendelson, not surprising perhaps really, since they had the biggest incentive in solving the case: ratings.
Jake Carver was finding that the pure, physical mechanics of being a wealthy man and having to deal day-to-day with large sums of money was taking up almost all of his time: being rich was not something that you could do in isolation, you were constantly at the beck and call of an army of do-gooders, each anxious for you to invest in their particular product - or service, or idea - each with the honourable intention - so they claimed - of further swelling your personal bank balance. It was exhausting. Carver imagined all the piles of his money, bundled up in small denomination notes, so that they formed one vast physical entity, and then this great mass of paper being set loose on the open ocean like a massive raft which constantly needed to be maintained and tended to, in order to stop bits breaking off and floating free, or sinking in pulpy, water-logged clumps to the depths of the sea bed. It was shortly after this visualisation that Carver decided to employ a team of professionals to manage his financial affairs for him. There was no shortage of offers: money begets money. When Carver decided to depart New Korea and return to New York, he appointed Pak Min to be his official representative in Pyongyang, and set the young woman up with a prime office at the summit of the Wendelson Building. His faith in Pak Min was handsomely repaid, not only did she prove herself to be an astute businesswoman - quickly managing to rent the remainder of the vacant space in the Wendelson Building at premium rates to eager overseas investors - but utilising her initial investigative training learned understudying the unscrupulous Kim Kon, she continued to show that she possessed a keen ear for information, a commodity which, at times, could not be bought. It was Pak Min who had first made him aware of the new development in the investigation into Kim Dong-Moon’s death, when she had, unusually, telephoned him at home, late one evening.
“I have a friend working in the Office of Tourism,” she had explained, “Kim Eun-Hae. She is young like me. Very ambitious.”
“Like half of New Korea’s budding capitalists,” had said Carver, bitterly.
“Yes,” had agreed Pak Min, not picking up the note of weary resignation in her employer’s voice, “She has been boasting for weeks now that she has been assigned to look after a TV crew from the south. Big tippers, she said. Staying in all the best hotels. I think secretly she thinks that they will put her in front of the camera. Make her a star, yes?”
“They tell me that half the population of the planet will have appeared on TV by 2020.”
“Yes, isn’t it great. She is mistaken though.” Pak Min had continued with her unbiased evaluation, “From a distance she is very beautiful, but up close... I have seen her teeth. They are not the teeth for TV.”
“They say the camera never lies.”
Pak Min had been curious, “Who is this ‘they’ of which you so often speak?”
Carver had not answered immediately, unsure himself of where most of the opinions which he routinely regurgitated as facts had first been learned from. “I don’t know. The media, I guess. Newspapers, television.”
“TV, yes. I have a film that I think you will find interesting.”
“A film?”
“Eun-Hae... acquired it for me.”
“Stole it?”
“Borrowed it. The TV crew she has been shadowing have been investigating the death of Mr. Wendelson. It is big news in the south. They have had the full support of the local police here. Eun-Hae has been keeping me informed.”
“And what interest is this for me now? Have they discovered anything new?”
“Eun-Hae says yes. She thought originally that it was all speculation, you know, spin. The people in the south do not want to watch a programme about an old man committing suicide, but if his death could be proved to be murder, now that would be a show worth seeing. So at first when she heard the journalists talking about new evidence, something which linked his death to your friend Kim Dong-Moon, she thought it was just a fabrication, but... well, judge for yourself. I’ll send you a copy of the video tape.”
“You can’t send it electronically?”
“No, the film is not finished yet. It is just one of a number of demo tapes intended to be sent out to the big networks to see if any one of them can be hooked. I think you’ll find it interesting.”
“Send it by courier then.”
“Will do, boss man. You should have it the day after tomorrow.”
••••••••••
A further emotional side effect that Jake Carver was experiencing as a result of Garnet Wendelson’s financial legacy was a peculiar feeling of emasculation. At first he put the feeling down to the still confused emotions he was experiencing as a result of his relationship with Kim Dong-Moon: despite all his own - and others - arguments to the contrary he still could not entirely convince himself that an admission of homosexuality was not in some way a weakness, at odds with his inherent machismo. This new sensation was subtly different, though. For all of his life, Jake Carver had had to be a fighter - he had not been born into privilege like Garnet Wendelson - everything that he had achieved he had done so by the sweat of his own brow and the labour of his own hands. He knew what it meant to earn a living, and, by and large, it was a feeling that he enjoyed. It defined who he was.
Things were different now. He no longer had to work in order to earn enough money to survive each passing day; the necessity for embarking upon a whole cycle of everyday activity, ancient as man himself, had been negated overnight. The hunter-gatherer had been transformed into an indolent finger-snapper. And, associated with this lifestyle transmogrification, one of the greatest factors that had been removed from his new existence was the element of risk. Previously, almost every new business venture had had an element of risk attached: he would have been putting either his money, or his reputation, or, in some cases, even his life, at risk, depending on the complexity of the project that he was being asked to undertake. This was no longer the case: he no longer had to work to earn money, and, if he now chose to work, it didn’t matter if he lost money in the endeavour. So where was the risk in that? Little did he know it, but it was a situation not unique to Carver: most Western city dwellers have a skewed perspective when it comes to personal risk. Urban living is so far removed from any of the perils that would have daily faced our ancient forebears, that modern man has been forced to create totally artificial risks in order to reproduce near forgotten emotions - funfair rides and parachute free falls; base jumping and bungee leaps - creating a Disneyland detachment from reality and an inability to accurately assess the level of danger that he is exposing himself to. For Jake Carver, ironically, his outlet and opportunity for reintroducing risk into his otherwise safe and sanitised existence came in the accomplishment of the very activity in which he had originally vowed that he would never be coerced to take part; that of fulfilling the instructions laid out in Garnet Wendelson’s will: knocking down big buildings. In truth, the job of carrying out Garnet’s final will had, so far, been more a matter of cunning diplomacy and financial negotiations, than that of actual, physical demolition work: Carver quickly discovered that the pen and the cheque book could halt construction of a building far more readily than any amount of high explosive, nevertheless, it was an enterprise that called for a considerable deal of acumen, and no little element of risk, when failure would be judged by a sniper’s bullet. Fired from the same gun that had done for Kim Dong-Moon, no doubt. It was with thoughts of Pak Min’s recent telephone call fresh in his mind that Carver found himself reviewing the little he already knew about the death of his former lover.
Kim Dong-Moon’s body had been discovered in a shallow depression in waste ground on the edge of a big refuse site in the sou
thern outskirts of Pyongyang. The body had not been alone. Alongside the corpse was that of a second Korean man, later identified as Pak Jin-Siek. Both men had been killed by a single shot fired from a semi-automatic rifle, later identified as a Tokarev SVT-40. In the case of Pak Jin-Siek the point of entry of the bullet had clearly suggested that of a sniper’s shot to the centre of the forehead; as for Kim Dong-Moon he had been shot in the back, the bullet piercing his heart, apparently as he turned to flee from his assailant. A short distance away from the two bodies, on the summit of a slightly raised incline, the Pyongyang police discovered evidence indicating the position the sniper had chosen from which to spring the ambush: a disturbance in the surface of the dusty ground revealed precisely where the sniper had lay lining up the first shot, as did two small holes in the ground approximately twelve inches apart, evidently caused by a support for the front of the rifle’s barrel. The only other clue discovered at the scene was a large globule of solidified white lard, found on the ground close to where the sniper must have lain: it was later identified as melted pig fat. So much it had been possible to ascertain from simply reading the local newspapers: when Carver instigated Pak Min to find out what facts lay behind the headlines, she had quickly uncovered for him the link between the two dead men, and had revealed that Kim’s gambling debts were far more serious than ever he had let on to Carver, and that it was to Pak Jin-Siek that the young Korean engineer was obligated. She had also unearthed a number of particulars of Pak Jin-Siek’s recent history since he had been made redundant from the army, none of which made for uplifting reading: numerous misdemeanours; criminal convictions for GBH and extortion; and an unproved case of murder. Jake Carver had begun to have serious doubts as to the wisdom of the company that his former lover had been keeping. The question of a twenty-five million dollar blackmail demand had also remained unanswered. In part Carver had hoped that with the two bodies now lying in a land fill site on the edge of town, the mystery of the blackmail note would die with them, but also, and still not wanting to believe ill of a man with whom he had previously been in love, and despite all his instincts telling him the contrary, Carver had hoped that he would be able to prove to his own satisfaction that Kim Dong-Moon had not been involved in a conspiracy to defraud him.
Which still left one question: what possible motive could Medea have had for racking up her body bag statistics by a further two victims?
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