The Shanghai Murders - A Mystery of Love and Ivory Read Online Free PDF

get her. Don’t let one of your men do it. I don’t want her scared. I want her charmed and treated like a lady, so I want you to get her and bring her to me.”
    “You have great faith in street sweepers, Zhong Fong.” Fong had no interest in discussing his family’s long history as night soil collectors. “Just find her and bring her to me.” With that he turned his back on Wang Jun and headed toward his office. As he hopped the pedestrian barrier and crossed Zhong Shan Road, he reran his mental tape of the conversation just finished. For the life of him he couldn’t understand why that conversation couldn’t have taken place in his office.

    Geoffrey Hyland handed his Canadian passport over the immigration counter at Shanghai’s Hong Qiao Airport. He always arrived in Shanghai with a sense of sadness but also a feeling of coming home. Eleven years ago, he had been invited to the Shanghai Theatre Academy to direct an obscure Canadian play called The Ecstasy of Rita Joe . The school’s acting faculty despised his non-Russian-based approaches, but to their shock and the delight of both students and audience, the play was a runaway hit. Six months later he was invited back by Shanghai’s biggest professional theatre, the People’s Repertory Company, to remount the play using the student leads from the first production to play the younger roles and the professional company’s members in the older parts. This too proved successful. It was not, however, successful for Geoffrey Hyland. This time in Shanghai he met and fell hopelessly in love with Zhong Fong’s wife, Fu Tsong.
    That love endured until the day four years ago when, in his turn-of-the-century house in Toronto’s West End, he opened a letter from Shanghai. The words were blunt and seemed to burn, as if etched, on the rice paper. All it said was: Fu Tsong is dead. Many think her husband killed her. They found her body and the body of a fetus in a construction pit in the Pudong.
    So stunned was he by the words that he never thought to question either the identity or the motive of the writer. Had he in fact been able to decipher the scribbled signature he would not have been able to recall the face of the author. All this was as intended by the writer.
    Geoffrey became aware that the immigration officer was standing as he handed back his passport. The young man surprised Geoffrey by extending his hand and saying, “High Lan, yes? Lee Ta Jo, yes?” Geoffrey’s eyes brightened. Those productions were a lifetime ago to him, but the repertory company performed them regularly. To him “Lee Ta Joe” had been a time with Fu Tsong. Now was a time without her—a sad homecoming.
    He shook the immigration officer’s hand and headed toward the airport’s lounge where he knew the driver from the Shanghai Theatre Academy would be waiting. The man looked exactly like the late American actor, Jack Soo. Geoffrey had told him that once, over lunch, and thereafter the driver insisted that Geoffrey call him Soo Jack. He also insisted that when Geoffrey needed a car, he be the driver.
    As Geoffrey left the immigration counter a note was taken, a phone lifted, and an insurance policy put into motion.
    Standing rigidly at attention, the rookie cop waited for Fong to finish reading his report. Fong put down the file and looked at the young man in front of him. He was twenty-two years old, square-shouldered with large usually rounded eyes and short spiky hair. There was some Mongolian in his blood lines somewhere. His name was Ling Che.
    “Did you speak to anyone after you left the coroner’s office?”
    “Yes, as you instructed I contacted the consulates.” The papers could have gotten their information from one of the consulates, Fong knew, but he doubted the leak would happen quickly enough to make the morning press. “You phoned them?”
    “Yes, sir. Wasn’t that how I was supposed to do it?
    Those who had no operators working late, I faxed.
Isn’t that