The Hua Shan Hospital Murders (5 page)

“I’m a busy man, sir!”

Fong wiped the smile from his face. He swallowed hard trying to keep anger out of his voice, but failed, “Busy?” It came out as a hiss.

“Yes, Inspector Zhong, busy,” the man said, but his voice was unsure, wavering. “You wouldn’t . . .”

“Too busy to help the police after an operating room in your hospital was blown to shit? That kind of too busy?”

“Well, no . . .”

Fong cut him off, “I want to interrogate the surgeons and their teams – the ones who were in the operating room before the explosion and those scheduled to go in after the blast. And I want to see the cleaners who swept up before and those ready to clean up after. I want an accurate roster count of those in the operating room at the time of the explosion. Also the name and address of all the women and their men folk who were in the waiting room.” Before the man could protest, Fong added, “I need to compare body parts to names.”

The man stiffened.

“And I want it within the hour – are you able to understand that? Good, now do you think you can ‘administer’ your way to getting that done?”

The surgery had cooled enough for the smell of burnt flesh to fill the air. Fong applied a thick stripe of tiger balm beneath his nose and inhaled deeply. His head snapped back from the sharp intake of the powerful eucalyptus odour. Then he pulled on his latex gloves, steeled himself, and entered the blasted-out surgery again.

The new head of the Crime Scene Unit looked up from his grisly task – one of his men was trying to lever a charred leg bone from a portion of the wall just above shoulder height. It was resisting his efforts – as if it had been disturbed enough for one day.

Fong had not worked with the new CSU guy before and wasn’t sure how good he was. Fong had been spoiled in the past working with Wang Jun for years, before he was gunned down in the Pudong just before Fong was arrested and sent to internal exile.

Fong hadn’t cared for the new man’s behaviour in the commissioner’s office, but he was willing to forget and forgive if the man were talented. But that remained to be seen. What was obvious was the man’s caustic approach to his work. And that struck a wrong note in Fong.

The man dropped the bone fragment he was examining and looked at Fong. “You got the list?”

“Yeah.”

The man held out his hand. Fong gave him the list. It contained the names of a doctor, three nurses, two technicians, and the patient, Ms. Wu. Beside each name was a basic physical description and home address and, in the case of the hospital workers, both blood type and DNA markers. China had, for years, been much further advanced in such research than they had ever acknowledged to the West.

The man spat.

Fong began to protest.

“What’s the difference,” the man said. “They’re all dead. Grisly business they were involved in, anyway. Butchers butchered.”

Fong couldn’t believe it.

The man read the list quickly – then he pointed to several piles of bones, charred bits of clothing, seared flesh-covered body parts, teeth, and in one case a small pile of hair. “That’s what’s left of them.”

Fong pointed at the hair but before he could speak the CSU responded, “Yeah, yeah, we can do DNA match from hair if we’re lucky enough to find one with a follicle in place and you insist.”

“I insist.”

The man rose to his full height. He was considerably taller than Fong. Perhaps a Northener; definitely not a fan of Fong’s.

“You’re first on my list, but trust me they all must be here – none of these murderers escaped.”

Fong controlled his anger and glanced at the piles – all that was left of seven lives and all the lives they could have created.

“No other hair was found but this?” asked Fong pointing to the small pile of hair.

“No other hair. Lots of bones and a fair number of teeth–”

“I want to know whose hair that is and fast.” Fong began to leave, then stopped. “Where did you find the hair?”

The man riffled through a set of photographs. “On the floor under the surgical table.”

“Near the fetus in the cage?” asked Fong, grabbing the photo.

“Yeah, beside a pool of blood – so?”

So, Fong didn’t like it. He handed back the photograph and repeated even more sternly, “I want to know whose hair that is.”

Fong noticed the CSU guy’s eyes go past him. He turned. Lily was there in the doorway. Her beautiful eyes were moist with tears again. “What has happened here?” she asked in a small voice.

Fong was suddenly certain that she was going to faint. He moved quickly to her side and turned her away from the carnage.

“What has happened here?” she repeated.

“More to the point now, Lily, is ‘who’ has made this happen here?”

She looked into his eyes and he knew that she wanted him to comfort her but he walked her briskly away from the crime site. This was not a place for solace or sentiment. It was a place for cold calculation and thought.

Fong steered her back to the relative calm of the main reception area. “Are you all right, Lily?”

She nodded. But he was looking past her. One of his cops was standing beside a man dressed in some sort of black cassock.

Fong signalled the cop over to him. “Who’s the ghoul?” Fong asked, a slow smile coming to his face.

“He’s the bishop of Shanghai,” said the cop as naturally as if he were saying that there is seldom very much chicken in an order of General Tzo’s chicken.

“You’re kidding. There’s a bishop of Shanghai?”

“If there’s a cathedral, there’s a bishop.”

“Well, there’s a cathedral, that’s true.”

“Yes, sir, it’s Xu Jia Hui Tian Zhu Jiao Tang on Caw Xi Lu. Have you ever been, sir, it’s very nice?”

Fong caught something in the cop’s voice. Something hurt, offended. He coughed into his fist to allow him a moment to remove the smile from his lips then said, “No, I’ve never been to the cathedral.”

“It’s very nice, sir. It really is.”

“I’m sure it is, but why is the bishop of Shanghai here?”

“I thought you wanted to see him.”

“About what?”

“The cross you found in the old skeleton’s throat?” He held out the cross in its evidence bag. Fong took it.

“Your timing’s not so . . . No, yes, I mean you did fine. Thank you. Find me a private room and bring him.”

Five minutes later, Fong entered a small office at the back of a forensics lab. The elderly, blackcassocked man stood in front of the desk. The cop stood to one side. Fong sat behind the desk and pointed to a chair. The man slowly sat, his back very erect. “Thanks for coming in, sir.”

“Father,” the man corrected Fong.

“What?”

“You may call me Father.”

Before Fong could stop himself he snapped back, “I had a father.”

“So did I,” the man said, matching Fong’s intensity.

“My father died a long time ago.”

“During the fight for Liberation?”

“Yes, but how did . . .?”

“My father died in the same struggle,” the man paused. “I’m not as old as I look.”

There was a beat of silence after which Fong said, “If your father died in the Liberation he was a Communist like mine, so how did you . . .?” He didn’t know the correct word so he waved his hand in the elderly man’s direction.

The man’s features softened. He didn’t smile. “Some of us are chosen to make the leap to faith, my son.”

“I’m not your son,” Fong said.

“Fine. Some of us are chosen to make the leap to faith, Inspector Zhong.”

Fong nodded then reached into his pocket and extracted the transparent evidence bag with the equalsided crucifix. He held it out for the cleric to take, but the old man kept his hands in his lap. Fong offered it again, and again the man didn’t take the cross.

“I’d prefer not to touch that, if you don’t mind.”

Fong thought, “I couldn’t care less if you touch it.”

Then the man spat out, “That’s like a merchant hanging a sheep’s head to sell dog meat.”

“You’ll blow a gasket like that,” Fong thought but what he said was, “Fine, can you identify this piece of religious frippery?”

“There’s no need to blaspheme!”

The man was initially pleased with the silence that his comment engendered, then he saw the cop behind him move so that he blocked any access to the door. He was at a complete loss. “What?” he asked.

Fong spoke very slowly, “I’ve never heard anyone use the word
blaspheme
before. It’s a very unique word.”

“It’s a very important word, Inspector Zhong.”

“Worth dying for?”

The cleric was on his feet quickly.

“Sit down, sir,” Fong said. The man quickly sat back in the chair. Fong held out the equal-sided cross. “Now, what is this?”

“An abomination.”

Fong took a breath to control his temper then said, “An abomination of what?”

“Of our Lord’s pain. His suffering. His resurrection. And of Mother Church.”

“This little piece of metal is all those things? Quite a piece of metal, don’t you think?”

“It’s Manichaean, Inspector Zhong.”

“And Manichaean would be what exactly?”

“A heresy.”

Fong turned away from the man. Abomination, blasphemy, heresy – these folks have a way with the language. Fong drummed his fingers and without turning back said, “This was found deep in a man’s throat. His neck bones were crushed around it.” Fong turned back to the cleric. The man’s face betrayed nothing.

“Perhaps because he was a heretic,” the cleric said simply. Then he astonished Fong by quoting Mao’s
Red Book
to back up his assertion, “If poisonous weeds are not removed, scented flowers cannot grow.”

Fong ignored the quotation and pressed on. “So this may have been a religious murder? I mean it’s possible he was killed because of this?”

“He may well have been killed because of what that thing stands for.”

“Which is something that offends your church?”

“In matters of faith, my son, offend is much too mild a word to use.”

CHAPTER SEVEN

The commissioner stood in the window of his office watching the moon set as Fong waited for the man to acknowledge his presence. When he finally turned he seemed oddly distracted.

There were two newspapers on his desk. One was the
New York Times
, the other the
Manchester Guardian
. Both had screaming headlines about the bombing in the People’s Twenty-Second Hospital. Both quoted the arsonist’s note in the cutline beneath a picture of the fetus in the cage.

The commissioner gestured toward the papers. “The last time the West paid so much attention to us, Mao was claiming to have swum across the Yangtze.” His voice was light. Surprisingly breathy, as if he were about to faint.

Fong was tempted to quip back, “The good old days.” But he thought better of it. He didn’t know this man well enough to chance a jest. And the man’s voice was frighteningly uncentred. So Fong said nothing. It’d been a long day and he was almost asleep on his feet.

“Tired, Inspector Zhong?” The voice was suddenly very high, almost falsetto.

Fong nodded, still unwilling to speak.

The commissioner pointed at the newspapers, “I really don’t care how long you’ve been awake or how many more days you need to go without sleep.” Stabbing his finger at the cutline he barked out, “This outrage must stop!”

It took Fong a moment to realize that the man wasn’t mocking the newspaper headline but giving an order. Fong checked a second time but there wasn’t a trace of irony or sophistication in the liquid depths of the man’s eyes. Just fear. A lot of fear.

“The year 2008 is not far away and the West is now watching us closely.”

For a moment Fong couldn’t figure out what 2008 had to do with an explosion in an abortion surgery. Then he remembered – the Olympics were going to be staged in Beijing in 2008. He smiled inwardly. Beijing must be up the man’s ass so far that he could hardly breathe.

Fong hesitated. Desperate men were often difficult to approach but he didn’t care. “My arson inspector needs more money to complete his investigation and we could use assistance from Hong Kong. They’ve had more experience with arson than we have.”

For an instant he thought the man was going to scream at him but that passed.

“Fill out the forms and I’ll sign them.”

Fong nodded. That was easier than he had anticipated. Now let’s go for broke he thought. “There’s a young captain in Xian who helped me with the investigation into the murders on Lake Ching. I could use his assistance on this case . . . sir.”

It seemed like the commissioner had either not heard or not understood. But just as Fong was about to repeat his request, the man said, “What’s his name?”

The man’s voice was suddenly sad.

Tough. We make our choices in this world and yours have led you to this dark place. Fong held no sympathy for those who rode the wave of politics when they were tossed broken and bleeding on the rocks.

“Chen. The man’s name is Captain Chen.”

Four hours later, at first light, a very young officer approached Fong at the entrance to Special Investigations. “The guy who found the note is here, sir. We let him spend the night at home.”

“Fine. Where is he?”

“Interrogation Room 3.”

Fong entered the room and stood to one side examining the young man. His eyes were a little too close together and there was a definite nastiness that was nearer the surface than he probably knew. He ought to learn to cover it better and damn soon, Fong thought.

Before Fong could speak, the man said, “I didn’t see anyone. It’s busy in the hospital, you know.”

Fong said nothing, allowing the young man to simply sit in the silence. “Can I go now?”

That Fong answered: “No.”

“Great, is this the silent treatment or something? You old guys are all the same. Where’s your fucking Mao jacket – at the cleaners?”

Fong almost laughed out loud. This boy was playing the role he traditionally played. But Fong understood, although grudgingly, that he was now part of the old guard. Part of what was perceived by the young as holding the country back. It felt uncomfortable. Fong looked at the young man and decided on a tack. “So what did you want to be?”

“When I grew up?” he asked nastily.

“Sure,” said Fong, “when you grew up.”

“Not a fucking clerk in an abortion clinic, that’s for sure.”

“What then?”

“A doctor, if you must know.”

“You’re young enough still . . .”

“. . . to do whatever I want. I know. You old guys always say shit like that.”

“Do we?”

“Yes, you do.” He looked to his left as if there were something or someone there who could help him. “What do you want from me, anyway?”

“I want to know how that note got on your desk?”

“I’ve told them already.”

“I’m sure you did. Now tell me.”

The receptionist let out a breath then sort of threw his hands up in the air in the universal gesture of when-will-this-nonsense-end. “Fine. I saw nothing. I saw no one in particular. The desk was a mad house. As usual. When I had a moment to myself I looked down and there was that piece of paper with the English writing on it.”

“How did you know it was English?”

“I’m educated. I took primary English like everyone who wants to be anyone. So I recognized the letters – not their names – but that they were English.”

Fong thought about that for a moment then asked, “How did you know they weren’t German or French of Spanish?”

“Oh, very good, Inspector. You’ve caught me. I didn’t know that. Can I go now?”

“Were there any Caucasians at the desk?”

The young man looked at him but didn’t speak.

“Come on. You work at a Chinese hospital.
Foreigners don’t go there. Or if they did even a moron like you would remember it.”

“Moron?”

“They never used to fight,” Fong thought. But what he said was, “Yes, moron, now did you see any Caucasians or not that day?”

“No, I didn’t.”

“Very good.”

“Thanks, asshole.”

Fong looked at the man. “Do you really think I can’t hurt you?”

“I don’t care what you do to me.”

That was new. Fong looked at the man and what he saw clearly on his face were the unmistakable signs of surrender. At his age he’d already given up. So young to have already lost hope. So young to be so angry. Fong gave him a card. “Call me if you remember anything more. There had to have been a Long Nose at your desk – as you said, the note’s in English.”

As a forensic scientist, Lily had dealt with many dead things – many mutilated things – many corroded, rotted, penetrated, scraped, cut, burned, strangled, scalded, blinded, poisoned things – but none of these had prepared her for interviewing the Hua Shan Hospital’s abortion clinic’s head nurse. She’d seen the heavy-set woman many times as she’d passed by the clinic and gone up the stairs to her lab. But before today they’d never exchanged any more than cursory greetings.

The woman shrugged toward a chair in her small office. Lily sat. The nurse stood. “My supervisor says you have questions for me, officer.”

Lily did her best to smile, then said, “I do.”

“About the bombing?”

“Not directly. I need to understand more about abortion ORs.”

“Fine,” the nurse said curtly, “the clinic is filling up, so please be quick.”

Lily didn’t like the woman’s tone but that made things equal. Clearly, the woman didn’t like Lily’s very presence in her office.

The woman quickly went over the basic scheduling of an abortion surgery – the time involved on the table, prep times, clean-up regimes, etc. When she finished, she looked at Lily, “Anything else?”

“In the bombing, a human fetus was found . . .”

“. . . in a cage. Yes, I heard.”

“It had to have come from somewhere.”

“Clearly.”

“Could it have come from your surgery?”

That seemed to put the nurse back on her stubby heels. When she found her voice it was not nearly so assured as before, “How would I know?”

Lily’s head quickly filled with a terrible image. She forced it aside and asked, “Is an inventory kept?”

“Of what?”

“Of . . . the product.”

The head nurse looked as if she’d been asked if she’d visited Mars lately. Finally, she said, “No. No inventory is kept.”

“So what do you do with . . .?” Lily couldn’t find the word she wanted – or was willing to use.

The nurse nodded and said simply, “The detritus? What do we do with the detritus?”

“Yes,” Lily answered, aware that the nurse had helped her. “Thank you,” Lily said.

The nurse nodded and then said, “Nothing very sophisticated, officer. If the ‘product’ is big enough – if it can’t be flushed – we double-bag it and it goes out with the hospital’s trash. It’s the same at all the hospitals, I expect.”

Lily thought about the constant comings and goings of trash collectors. She had no idea where garbage eventually went – incinerated she guessed. But she suspected that whoever took this detritus didn’t wait til the final drop point. She knew it wouldn’t be difficult to don a garbage collector’s overalls and pick up the refuse from one of the many abortion clinics around town as long as you were Chinese, but things here pointed toward an American.

“Has your clinic received any threats?”

“No.”

“Have there been any Caucasians around the clinic?”

“Not that I’ve ever seen.”

“This is my card . . .”

“I know where to find you if I need you, Lily.” The woman turned and headed out to the crowded, angry waiting room.

Lily watched the woman go and wondered how she managed to deal with so much sorrow on a daily basis.

Fong looked around the conference room. They already appeared as tired as he felt. A folder was open in front of Wu Fan-zi; the new head of CSU was to his left. Six detectives were seated around the room completing their interview notes. Lily sat to one side, sipping from a steaming jar of cha. Her exhaustion carved deep patterns on her face making her look severe, stern. Fong knew she’d rushed home yesterday to settle Xiao Ming in for a night with her mother and then returned to the lab to get ready for the meeting. He didn’t know about her early morning meeting with the head nurse of the Hua Shan Hospital’s abortion clinic.

All eyes slowly turned to Fong, and what little chatter there had been in the room died.

The silence that followed was rife with possibilities. Everyone at the large oval table knew that this was Fong’s first big case since his return from west of the Wall and his still shadowy success at Lake Ching. In the corridors of Special Investigations these events were collectively referred to as The Resurrection. Everyone also knew that there were many in the department anxious to see Fong fall on his delicately boned face.

The meeting room smelled of pungent cigarette smoke. Fong instinctively reached for his pack of Kents. But they weren’t there. He hadn’t smoked since he’d killed the assassin Loa Wei Fen in the construction pit in the Pudong. Fong cleared his throat and tossed two newspapers onto the large oval table. Instantly he was flooded with a memory of another time. Another newspaper he’d tossed on this very table. That newspaper’s headline had screamed: Dim Sum Killer at Large. Of course that had been over five years ago. Back when he still smoked Kents.

Lily’s voice cracked his reverie with her slightly lisped English, “Talk time, short stuff.”

That reminded Fong of yet another time – another table – another investigation. He smiled at his wife, then asked in English, “How’s our little girl?”

“Mother mine with. Miss you, though,” Lily replied in English.

Fong wanted to reply, “No. She misses you, Lily,” but didn’t when he saw a darkness cross the new CSU guy’s face. This was a multiple murder investigation, not a family gathering. Fong straightened his jacket, reminded himself that he had to lead all of them, not just Lily. As if he could ever really lead Lily! He turned to Wu Fan-zi, his fireman, and said in Mandarin, “You’re up.”

The block-like man looked haggard as he shuffled his papers. He opened his mouth then decided something or other and closed it. He smiled for no discernible reason, then said, “I’ve had to ask for help on this one. With Fong’s permission I sent my preliminary results to Hong Kong and they’ve responded with an initial critique. But they don’t want to work at a distance from the investigation.”

“What does that mean?” asked Lily drily.

Fong sighed, then said, “They want one of their people on the investigation team.”

“Well, they can’t have it,” snapped Lily.

Despite the People’s Republic of China’s takeover of Hong Kong, most of the officers around the table had been raised on a steady diet of hatred for the old English Protectorate.

“They can’t insist on being a part of this investigation, can they, Fong?” Lily asked.

“They can and I’ve already arranged for them to send over their man.”

Turning away from Lily’s angry face, he returned to Wu Fan-zi, “What’ve you got so far?”

Wu Fan-zi went through the complex mathematics of the blast. They all listened carefully. Finally Wu Fan-zi stopped reciting numbers and said simply, “It was a very strong, very controlled bomb – unlike anything we’ve seen here. It’s sophisticated in both its components and its execution. Only its detonation was simple. Then,” he said, “there’s this.” He took out a plastic evidence bag and emptied out three short metal threads on the table. “Phosphorus threads,” he said. “They were around the table – in a circle. Obviously those that ignited we don’t have, although we were able to spot several that had only partially burned. The pattern is clear. A circle around the operating table.” He pushed his chair away from the table and looked at Fong. “Phosphorus makes no sense. It couldn’t be part of the bomb but it must have been scattered by the bomber. The threads are small enough that I doubt anyone working in the operating room would have noticed them.”