Free Lord of Death: A Shan Tao Yun Investigation by Eliot Pattison

prison is you transferred my son? I assumed you did it to get rid of me, knowing I would follow.”
    A battle raged behind Tan’s black pupils. The animal the knobs had reduced him to fought with something else, the brooding, conscious thing that had been pushed deep inside. His eyes glazed then brightened, then glazed again before a hard, familiar gleam returned to them. “I sign papers for the transfer of dozens of recalcitrant prisoners. I can’t be expected to remember every parasite who transits through my county.”
    It was a lie, they both knew, for Shan and Ko had presented persistent headaches to Tan in Lhadrung. “You use the present tense. I admire your optimism.” Shan rose and filled the cup again. As he extended it Tan knocked the cup away with a violent sweep of his arm.
    “If they knew who you were, Shan, you’d be in the next cell. Get out or I’ll tell them.”
    Shan silently retrieved the cup, filled it again and set it on the stool just beyond Tan’s reach.
    “I was there, Colonel, minutes after the murderer left. They found me soaked with one of the victims’ blood. For a few days I was their favorite solution. Then I told them how to find the gun.”
    Tan’s eyes flared. For a moment it seemed he was summoning the strength to leap at Shan. He was ten years older but he was all sinew and bone.
    “They have only just begun on you,” Shan explained. “You know how it works. They are rewriting the script so they will know exactly what song they need you to sing. Tomorrow or the next day you’ll start seeing new faces, new devices, probably a doctor or two from the prison clinic. It’s what we used to call a half-moon case.”
    Tan spat out blood, then with a finger probed the teeth of his upper jaw. “Half moon?”
    “A case of vital political implications. It is too inconvenient to have it linger. Worse, it is politically embarrassing. Beijing will insist it be closed in two weeks. And one is already gone.”
    “I don’t want your damned help. Go find one of your Tibetan beggars to coddle.”
    “I predict a closed trial. Then they will take you to somewhere private, maybe just the cellar of this building, though I rather expect it will be somewhere remote up in the mountains. You will face a small group of senior Party members, probably a general or two. An officer young enough to be your grandson will sneer at you a moment, then slowly draw his pistol and put a bullet between your eyes.
    “By the end of the month there will be a new colonel in your office in Lhadrung. All those photos of you on maneuvers, commanding brigades of tanks and missile batteries, presiding over National Day celebrations at town hall— they will take them and burn them. I recall you kept personal journals of your illustrious career. Toilet paper is in short supply. They will probably take your journals to the prisoners’ latrines. The last evidence of your existence on earth will be wiped on the backside of a starving Tibetan monk.”
    “Get out!” Tan spat. A thin rivulet of blood spilled down his chin.
    Shan looked up at the window high on the back wall, noticing for the first time the crimson splotches on the reinforced glass, then glanced at Tan’s bloody fingertips. The colonel, incredibly, had been climbing up, trying to break the window. “When they stop the torture,” Shan continued in a matter-of-fact tone, “that’s when you know it’s over. They will give you two days to heal, to be cleaned up. When the barber comes, you’re a dead man for certain. They want you to be able to stand up straight, clean and trimmed, ready for final inspection, before they eliminate you and everything you ever touched.”
    The light faded from Tan’s eyes. His gaze shifted past Shan and settled on Constable Jin at the end of the corridor. “So you bribed a guard so you could gloat?” Tan muttered. “Maybe take a picture to share with your Tibetan friends in Lhadrung?”
    “I came because you are