The Hamlet Murders by David Rotenberg Page A

seven months. His birthday, which she had celebrated with Fong and the Canadian lawyer Robert Cowens, was the last time she’d been in Shanghai.
    She curled in on herself. She thought for a moment about pulling out her phonebook – what she used to think of as her book of dates. Comfort, the oblivion of sex, being the object of desire seemed momentarily the only way out.
    Shanghai. Fuck. She looked at her recently refurnished condo on the forty-third floor of her building on Hong Kong’s Braemar Hill Road. This was real. Shanghai was . . . she didn’t know the right word for what Shanghai was, but she really wasn’t sure that she was ready to go back there yet. Wu Fan-zi’s face would be everywhere she looked.
    And this time, Fong would be the enemy.
    She checked her coded e-mail message a second then a third time. They definitely wanted her in Shanghai and no doubt they knew how to get her there. There was a long list of instructions, but the gist of them was that she was to deliver money and papers that would aid in the escape of Dalong Fada’s foremost organizer – Xi Luan Tu, Richard Lee’s brother. And, by the by, China’s most wanted man.

CHAPTER SEVEN
MEMORIES AND MEETINGS

    A fter unceremoniously kicking Shrug and Knock out of the sweltering meeting room, Fong sat at one end of the large oval table waiting for the others to arrive. At least there hadn’t been any evidence on the table for Shrug and Knock to snoop at. “Count the small blessings,” he reminded himself as he allowed his mind to drift. First to other meetings in this room then to a place in his memory he hadn’t visited for a very long time. He was sitting across his office desk from a middle-aged Englishman. Alternating waves of guilt and relief crossed the man’s handsome angular face. “You can go now, Mr. Paulin,” Fong repeated. “We know you didn’t have anything to do with the death of your wife. You were lucky.” The man stood slowly and headed toward the door. Fong rose from his chair.
When he did, Mr. Paulin stopped in mid-stride as if suddenly he had become the icon for “Walk.”
    Fong said, “We know you didn’t kill your wife, Mr. Paulin, but we know you wanted her dead. To be exact, we know that you were getting ready to plan her death, but an out-of-control taxi on Wolumquoi Lu solved your problem, didn’t it?”
    Mr. Paulin didn’t move – couldn’t move – as if a brittle wire from Fong’s heart to his connected the two men. Then the wire snapped. Mr. Paulin reassumed his stature and looked down on Fong – not just from a height but from a long-held sense of racial superiority. “Can I go, Officer, or is there something else you want to say to me?”
    “You can go, Mr. Paulin.”
    “Good.”
    “But don’t think of coming back to Shanghai, Mr. Paulin.”
    The man whirled on Fong, clearly about to defend his right as a British citizen to come and go as he wished, to do business where he damned well pleased – but all he said was, “Anything else?”
    “Yes.” Fong made him wait for it. Then on the off breath he said, “Murder eats away the heart. It was only chance that saved you from killing your wife. Don’t forget that. And remember that chance does us a favour once but charges us twice. You owe fortune twice now, Mr. Paulin.”
    Fong held out the man’s passport. “You’ll need this to leave China. You have six hours to be gone from the Middle Kingdom. Starting from this very moment.”
    Mr. Paulin slammed the door as he left Fong’s office. Fong counted to twenty then released his breath and turned to the window. On the other side of the glass was the world famous Bund and across the Huangpo River the Pudong, which was in short order becoming the very centre of the miracle of economic revival that was Shanghai. He looked at the shiny new buildings but was unimpressed. “Maybe just because I’m getting older,” he said aloud to the empty room and leaned his head against the cool