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

right?”
    “Yes, it’s right, Ling Che, it’s right.”
    There was a long pause, there was something here that was escaping Fong.
    “May I go now, sir?”
    Fong sat perfectly still for several seconds. Ling Che didn’t know what to do. Then Fong stirred. “Did you use a cellular phone to make your calls to the embassies?”
    “Yes, sir.”
    “Cellular phones aren’t secure! Anyone could intercept your call. You’re supposed to use the precinct phones!” Fong shouted.
    The young man, completely cowed, bowed his head and mumbled, “I was at my girlfriend’s place, her parents were in the country for one night. It was the first time in three years that we—”
    Fong held up his hand for him to stop. Privacy, in a city where housing was a major problem even for the well connected and the wealthy, was nonexistent on a young policeman’s salary. If you wanted to scratch your ass in Shanghai, you had better be prepared for someone to be watching while you did it. And if the watcher is Shanghanese he will probably offer advice on a better way to go about your task.
    He dismissed Ling Che with a nod. He hoped to hell that the young cop wasn’t lying to him. He made a note to check.
    The light on his phone came up. “Who?”
    “The coroner.”
    After a moment the coroner’s smoke-tired voice came on the line. “You’d better come over. I’ve got some frozen viscera here that you ought to see.”
    The parcel that arrived at the Jiang Jing Hotel had been left with the concierge. It had not been brought by a courier. In fact the concierge had been away from the desk when it arrived. The parcel had a room number and a guest’s name on it. The concierge called up to the room and informed the guest that there was a parcel for him. The guest asked that a bellboy bring it up, knock on the door, and leave it outside.
    The bellboy took the small parcel up to room 2430 and knocked politely on the door. Then he placed the parcel, as instructed, on the floor and returned to the lobby.
    A full five minutes after the bellboy’s knock, the door to the room opened and the parcel was taken inside. Forty-five seconds after that, obscenities in various languages and the clear sound of someone throwing up his lunch on the expensive broadloom came from room 2430 of the Jiang Jing Hotel.

    “It’s a part of a heart,” said Fong.
    The coroner nodded at the object in his plastic-gloved hand. “Part of Richard Fallon’s heart.”
    “Where’s the rest?”
    “There’s a good question.” The coroner pointed toward a large table on which the pieces of Richard Fallon had been laid out. If there was an order to the pieces, it escaped Fong. The coroner explained: “The body is divided into those things male and those things female, yin and yang if you will. Those that cause heat and those that cause cold. Those that are of fire, those of air, those of water.” As he spoke he pointed to different sections of viscera and organs. Then he picked up the heart again. “Only the heart, of all the body’s parts, belongs to both yin and yang, both heat and cold, and all of fire, air, and water. That is, when it is whole.” He looked at the cleft heart that he held.
    “The crime scene unit didn’t find the other part?”
    “If they did, they didn’t bring it to the morgue.”
    “And nothing else is missing?”
    “A cleaver or a knife or whatever was used would have nicked off small bits, which were probably left in the alley, but everything else is here. This one knows how the body is put together, and he attacked it at its weakest places.” “But how did the heart get cut in half?”
    After a moment the coroner sighed. “It didn’t get cut in half, if you mean by that that somehow in the process of eviscerating Richard Fallon something happened to cut his heart in two. That didn’t happen. That couldn’t happen. Once Richard Fallon was cut open his heart was cut out of him. Then the heart was cut in two. One half I hold in my