The First Excellence: Fa-Ling's Map (8 page)

It was funny, but knowing the worst gave Guy a strange sense of comfort. At least he no longer had to wonder. He climbed into bed and was asleep almost before his head hit the pillow.

**

Paula stared at the numbers on the screen, hoping to discover a miraculous mistake that would make everything all right. She rubbed her eyes. The intense concentration was giving her a headache, which was exacerbated by withdrawal symptoms as the tranquillisers eased their way out of her body.

Through the hotel bathroom wall, she could hear a faint sound coming from the next room, but it didn’t disturb her. It was some kind of Chinese melody, not loud enough for her to recognise.

She minimised the computer screen. A strong cup of coffee would knock the headache out of her before it got any worse. Not wanting to wake Guy, she opened the door a little and slipped through, using the sliver of light that escaped the bathroom to help her find the hot water dispenser and make the coffee.

She carried the cup back into the bathroom and eased the door shut. Setting the mug on the counter beside her laptop, she sat in front of the monitor. She was about to re-open her spreadsheet when a sudden noise from the next room made her jump out of her chair, upsetting the hot coffee onto the counter and her lap.

Paula cursed and grabbed some toilet paper from the roll, quickly mopping up the liquid before it could reach her computer. At first she thought the noise was Guy – maybe he was having a bad dream. She was about to go and check on him when a burst of male voices erupted from the adjacent room. It sounded as though they were speaking in Chinese.
OK,
she thought,
at least it’s not Guy.
She sat back down.

The voices got louder. Paula considered calling the front desk, asking security to come and settle things down. Before she could react, the shouting gave way to a horrified wail accompanied by the unmistakable sound of something crashing through glass.

Then everything went quiet.

While Fa-ling slept in room 606, Tang continued his fevered chanting in the next suite. Neither of them heard the footsteps in the hallway.

The intruder looked down upon Tang, who still sat cross-legged on the floor near the coffee table. Fifteen seconds sailed by without his presence being acknowledged. It would be easy for him to kill Tang. He could simply reach out his hand  it would take so little to rid the country of one more zealot.

However, the old man’s instructions had been clear: catch the next flight to Nanning and bring the dissident back to Shanghai for questioning. Junior Agent Ho Lon-Yi had no desire to anger his uncle. After all, he had been chosen over more experienced colleagues for this tricky business. Obviously, people in high places had noticed his abilities.

Yi opened the can of kerosene. The movement caught Tang’s attention.

“
What are you doing?” Tang shouted.

Yi continued to splash the accelerant onto Tang.

“
Where is your wife?” he demanded.

“
Stop! Please don’t do this.” Tang struggled to his feet and tried vainly to rub the kerosene off his naked body. He started to run, but the intruder blocked him, and he found himself staring down the barrel of a gun.

“
Be calm,” Yi said. “All I want is some answers. Tell me, Wu Tang, what are you doing in such a fine establishment? You must be meeting somebody very special. Are you meeting your wife?”

“
My wife,” Tang stammered, “is in prison. She was taken months ago. I haven’t seen her since.”

“
Don’t play with me!” Yi shouted, slapping Tang with his left hand. “We are looking for Gui-Jing. We know you helped her to escape.”

“
I don’t know what you are talking about.” Tang’s voice rose with fear.

“
Sure you do.” Transferring the gun to his left hand, Yi reached for the yellow candle with his right. He stepped toward Tang, waving the flame dangerously close to his kerosene-soaked arms.

Tang panicked, trying once more to run past Yi and out of the room.

“
Stop! You idiot!” Yi shouted, blocking Tang’s escape. The candle’s wick made contact with Tang’s underwear, and before either man could react, Tang was transformed into a tower of flames.

Shocked, Yi jumped backward. Time stood still as he watched Tang gyrate and wail. The sudden heat caressed his face, and he checked his clothes to be sure they were not burning.

Not knowing what else to do, Yi lifted a chair from under the dressing table and used it to smash the picture window. The rush of night air must have confused Tang, because one poke with the chair convinced him to hurl himself through the broken window to the ground six floors below.

Yi stood for an instant, absorbed in the unreality of what had transpired. This was not supposed to happen. He had obtained no information whatsoever, and in the process he had created an embarrassing mess.

His clothes were clean, but his hands up to the wrists were black from handling the burning man for that brief second. Not wanting to set the blackened chair legs onto the carpet, he carried it into the bathroom with him. Once there, he washed his hands thoroughly before wiping down all surfaces. He used tissue to scrub the black char stains from the chair legs, as well as from its wooden frame. He tossed the tissue into the toilet and flushed it away. Thankfully he had not touched the chair’s upholstery, so it was clean.

He hurried back to the main room and replaced the chair under the dressing table. Then, as he had been trained to do, he re-traced his steps, rapidly wiping any surface he might have touched. He scanned the still-darkened room once more for evidence. He couldn’t remember whether he had touched the book of matches on the coffee table, so he grabbed it and tucked it into his pocket.

On the floor near his feet was the yellow candle. Yi used his sleeve to pick it up. It was too bulky to slip into his pocket with the matches. Not sure about the best course of action, he wiped it clean and placed it on its side on the bedspread before hurrying out of the room.

Yi knew his efforts at cleaning up had been rushed and sloppy. The old man, his uncle, would be really pissed this time. No doubt Director Ho would arrange for an expert to sweep the room. For now, though, Yi would have to get as far as he could from room 607 of the Golden Lion Hotel.

Detective Wang Yong-qi regarded his shoes. One glance at his surroundings made him regret he hadn’t polished them recently.

The ambience of the Golden Lion Hotel had no such command over his partner. Cheng suppressed a snort, seeing as there was no appropriate place to spit. Unable to resist the urge, he hunched his massive shoulders forward, coughed loudly and discharged into his hand.

Cheng was exactly what he appeared to be: a rough rural peasant with a brain. A bear of a man, he was the muscle of the pair, but possessed a quick mind that often surprised others with its intuitive scope. He and Wang made a formidable team, each compensating for the other’s deficiencies. When Wang got himself all tied up in trying to over-think a simple problem, Cheng would cut through the crap.

Wang’s expertise covered the mental gymnastics of psychology. He reigned supreme in the dark corridors of the criminal mind. If a mystery involved intrigue and called on a deeper, more subtle understanding of human motivation, Wang was the man for the job.

In The People’s Republic of Communist China, Detectives Wang and Cheng considered themselves to be a unit apart from their kind. They understood each other – both thrived on the art of ‘solution’. Together they maintained the top case-closure record in all of Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region, an achievement that had remained unsurpassed for three years.

It would not surprise Wang to learn they held the highest record in all of Southern China, but there were no reliable statistics to support that belief.

The concierge hurried toward the men carrying a box of tissue, which he waved in front of Cheng. Cheng took one and wiped the phlegm from his hand before shoving the tissue into his pocket. He scanned the lobby unselfconsciously, committing the scene to memory through bloodshot eyes. Two weeks on the night shift had done nothing to enhance Cheng’s normally seedy appearance.

Wang groaned inwardly, embarrassed, but nonetheless taking a perverse pleasure in the concierge’s obvious distaste for his partner.

“
Which room?” he asked.

“
Come with me.” The dapper little hotel man shook a set of magnetic cards and led the way to the elevator. Mercifully the hotel’s bar had closed some time ago so only staff occupied the communal areas. A man and his wife had been wandering around the lobby when the ambulance arrived. The manager had herded them back to their rooms, offering a lame story about an elderly guest having suffered a heart attack.

The elevator stopped on the sixth floor. The concierge, who, according to his tag, bore the unlikely name of ‘Henry’, bustled down the hall with Wang and Cheng in tow. Henry stopped in front of room 607 and slid a master pass through the slot. He opened the door and was about to enter when Detective Cheng touched him gently on the shoulder. He understood and stepped back into the hallway.

It was widely known in the Department that Cheng possessed a photographic memory. Although he didn’t immediately grasp the significance of everything he saw, he could recall images to within a rate of ninety-five percent accuracy. He stood in the doorway, studying the room and memorising details, like the fact that the lights were off and the music from a small battery operated cassette deck continued to play softly.

Cheng motioned for Henry to turn on the lights. The concierge inserted his master pass into the slot and the room was suddenly illuminated. The three men continued to stand in the entryway for an eternity of less than sixty seconds while Cheng’s eyes made a record of the scene.

Cheng entered first. For a man of his size, he was surprisingly light on his feet. He moved carefully through the foyer, touching nothing. Not that he anticipated much help from the forensics team, who would arrive in the morning. He knew Yong-qi was carrying his digital camera. Between Cheng’s memory and Wang’s photos, the evidence would tell its story.

Wang Yong-qi followed Cheng, snapping shots of the bathroom, hot water dispenser and the closed closet door. He opened the closet and took more photos of the victim’s clothes where they hung neatly on the right side of the rack. Cheng pointed at the candle, which lay on the bed. Wang took a picture of it before Cheng used a pair of tongs to pick it up.

“
The wax is still soft,” he said. “Still warm.”

Wang looked at the little metal plate beside the tape deck. Droplets of yellow wax marked its edges. It must have been used to hold the candle. He took a picture of the plate.

Wang photographed the curtains. They had been pulled apart, creating an opening of about one metre. The edge of the curtain panel on the right was discoloured. The fire-retardant fabric had melted slightly as the flame brushed past it.

Wang wrinkled his nose as he neared the kerosene container. If he were to assume this was murder, then the plastic jug might still carry the killer’s prints. There was one small black spot on the carpet near the window where a drop of accelerant had combusted and been extinguished before it could spread. The room held no other visible signs of fire. The residual odour, though, was faint but unmistakable.

Wang returned to the bathroom. If someone other than the victim had handled the kerosene, he would almost certainly have washed his hands before fleeing the scene. Wang Yong-qi stood in the doorway trying to imagine a perpetrator bent over the water faucet. The stainless steel taps glistened, denying the possibility they might have been used. There were no visible signs, no telltale black streaks of burnt kerosene.

Cheng joined his partner, peering past him into the bathroom.

“
Look,” he said, pointing at a tissue dispenser that hung from the front of the counter.

Wang nodded. He photographed the dispenser. In a bathroom that appeared to be immaculate, as if it had not been used since the last time the hotel staff had cleaned it, only the tissue box seemed to have been touched. Someone had carelessly pulled a handful of tissues from the dispenser, leaving several dangling, and one had fallen to the floor. Hotel staff would surely never leave such a mess.

Water droplets had damaged the tissue on the floor, as if someone had reached for the dispenser with wet hands.

He used the tissue to dry his hands,
Wang thought,
so he wouldn’t have to use the towel.
That was clever. It eliminated one possible source of evidence – hair and skin cells could attach themselves to a towel.

Cheng used the toe of his shoe to slide the wastebasket from under the counter.

“
Empty,” he said.

“
Too bad. But look at this,” Detective Wang said, pointing at the toilet.

“
I don’t see anything.”

“
It’s there.” Wang reached his right hand into the sparkling bowl and groped for a moment in the water. “Here,” he said. He held his open hand out to Cheng.

Cheng took the small metal ornament from Wang.

“
Interesting,” he said.

“
Yes. It adds an uncomfortable possibility to the situation.”