Free The Shanghai Murders - A Mystery of Love and Ivory by David Rotenberg Page A

and the old coroner. Fong’s assistant tried to stay behind but Fong sent him out and locked the door behind him.
    “That may not be so smart,” Wang Jun said.
    “I never claimed to be smart, Wang Jun.”
    “I know that, but try not to be stupid. He’s probably on his way to the commissioner’s office now.”
    “That’ll give us ten minutes.”
    After a moment of silence, Lily said, “For what?”
    Fong moved toward the time line. As he passed the picture, a copy of the one he had in his desk, he noted that no one had yet mentioned the blob of heart between Richard Fallon’s legs or the fingers of Richard Fallon’s right hand that were pointing—pointing to what? At the time line he stopped and looked at them. Then he took out a copy of the Shanghai Daily News from that first morning with the headline DIM SUM KILLER STRIKES IN JULU LU ALLEY. “We’ve got a problem.” Pointing at the time chart, “The body was found at 10:43 by rookie cop Ling Che. The CSU arrived at 10:52. Right?”
    “To the point, Fong, time’s a-wastin’ here,” chimed in Wang Jun.
    “Were there any reporters at the scene? Do you remember when the first reporters showed up?”
    Lily and Wang Jun were now interested. “Yeah, I remember, because I was surprised how long it took them to smell this one out. I don’t think there was one there before the body was already photographed. So not before midnight, at the earliest.”
    “Right,” said Fong. Then turning to the coroner, “And what time did I get to the Hua Shan Hospital morgue?”
    The coroner flipped through his pad but Fong interrupted him. “It was 12:49, trust me. And I didn’t come up with the Dim Sum crack until at least one o’clock.”
    The coroner was lost. “So?”
    But it was Lily who was on top of it. “Throw me that paper.”
    Fong did. Lily looked carefully at the masthead. “This is the early edition,” said Lily.
    Fong nodded. “Right.”
    The coroner still didn’t get it. “So?”
    Wang Jun let out a lungful of smoke that seemed to jet across the room. “So? So, the early edition goes to press before midnight. The reporters didn’t arrive until after midnight. Even with cellular phones they couldn’t possibly have filed the story in time to make this paper.”
    Then Fong played his trump card. “It’s not just a matter of being in time to file their story. They have to clear stories, especially stories about foreigners, with the authorities. I needn’t remind you that China does not exactly have a free press.”
    With a look of shock, Lily said, “Are you trying to say that the paper had this story before Richard Fallon was killed?”
    “The story and the clearance for the story,” nodded Fong.
    After a moment, while this was sinking in, the coroner added, “I guess they just got lucky with the dim sum stuff.”
    At that there was a knocking on the door that quickly became a pounding. Fong opened the door to a very angry Commissioner Hu and a smiling Shrug and Knock.

    Fong sat in the back of the campus’s rickety old theatre that night. His chair squeaked. Every chair in the ancient place squeaked, every floorboard moaned, and the archaic electrical fixtures, which would have closed down most other public establishments, hummed loudly. The large black overhead fans rotated at different speeds (two did not rotate at all) and the sound of the air exhaust system alternated between deafening and concussive. The place smelled of people. Fong liked it. It had been Fu Tsong’s favourite theatre and she had played in theatres all over China as well as in Southeast Asia and Japan. In fact she had fought the new thousand-seat theatre on campus, first against the building and then against the design. But it was always hard to convince Chinese people to trust their own theatrical instincts when there were Russian consultants around. Russians used the name Stanislavski like a weapon.
    “The proscenium’s too wide.” “Stanislavski loved a wide