The First Excellence: Fa-Ling's Map (16 page)

By the time he arrived at the ninth floor, the warmth of his contentment had disappeared. He heard the familiar music the moment the elevator doors opened. He had warned Ma-ma about playing the music too loudly, but the old woman was nearly deaf and had no idea of the decibel level she was projecting.

He found her on the floor in the living room, the curtains drawn to block the morning sunlight and a candle dripping white wax on his polished mahogany coffee table. Her legs were crossed lotus style, each foot resting on its opposing thigh in a painfully awkward manner. Her eyes were open but were glazed over in deep meditation. She was no longer chanting. No doubt she had been like this all night, foregoing both food and sleep, and had worn herself out as usual.

“
Ma-ma,” he said, touching one bony shoulder. Her body swayed under the gentle pressure of his hand. He held her so she wouldn’t topple over and called out to her again.

Finally she smiled weakly at him.

“
Minsheng,” she said, “how was your night at work?”

She took his arm and let him help her onto her feet. Sitting for hours in one position had cut off her circulation and cramped her muscles.

“
You have to stop this,” he said. “The music is too loud. Half the neighbours will hear it.”

“
I’m sorry, Minsheng. I don’t want to get you into trouble. It seemed so quiet to me.”

“
It isn’t me who will get into trouble, Mother. You’ve been meditating in public again, haven’t you?”

“
The police chased us out of the park at sunset. We weren’t bothering anyone. No one else was around, except for the criminals. They let the criminals come and go at will, but they round up innocent people sitting together in the evening and drag them to jail. We are just old people, Minsheng, with aching bones, striving to reach Cessation to ease our suffering for awhile. I told them my son was an important detective. That had them worried, I can tell you.”

“
I know, Mother. I got the call.” He helped his mother to sit at the kitchen table and put the water on for tea. He brought her some biscuits to chew on.

“
What kind of biscuits are these?” she asked. “From the store, I guess. When you were little, Minsheng, I used to bake you fresh biscuits every day. Do you remember?”

“
Yes, Ma-ma, I remember.”

“
And we used to walk up the hill, you and me, when Ba-ba was working, and we would burn the incense sticks for Buddha.”

“
What would Buddha think,” Minsheng said, “about what you are doing now? What would Ba-ba think? You are taking too many risks. You should burn your incense in private and not make trouble. Why do you meditate all night when your body needs sleep? You will start a fire with that candle. And you are becoming so thin. Have some more biscuits.”

“
I don’t want to make trouble for you, Minsheng,” she said. “I am proud of you. You catch murderers and thieves. You don’t round up little old ladies who are trying to share a quiet Shamatha with their friends. Trouble is for old men and women who have nothing left to lose. It is for people who are already half-way to nirvana.”

Ba-ba, Minsheng’s father, had died a year earlier of a heart attack. He was a simple man who drank too much beer occasionally and worked hard on his assigned crops. He was not a large man — Minsheng inherited his size from the men of his mother’s family. Ba-ba had been a good man. His greatest source of pride was his ‘precious gift’, his son. He was not spiritual, but he never interfered with his wife’s practices.

“
The water is ready, Ma-ma,” Cheng said. “I’ll make tea.”

Yong-qi could hardly wait to get to the Golden Lion Hotel. It was a struggle to keep his mind on the road. When he finally parked the car, he sat behind the wheel, reminding himself Li Fa-ling was a witness, nothing more, and she had no reason to see him other than to give him a further statement regarding the ‘suicide’.

Still, he wondered what new information she could possibly have. He had believed her earlier that morning when she told him she had slept through the entire event. His judgement might be clouded by his attraction for the girl, but what about Cheng? His partner had also believed her. Besides, she did not seem to be the frivolous type who would call him just because she wanted to see him.

Despite his rationalisations, Yong-qi found himself hoping Fa-ling’s promise of information was an exaggeration to justify speaking with him again. As he walked into the lobby of the hotel he had to repress a spring in his step and force his involuntary smile into submission.

He heard the music as he approached her room, the irrepressible joy of Edvard Grieg’s
Morning
played on the clarinet. That was a good omen: Fa-ling liked music. It would give Yong-qi something to talk to her about, should the opportunity for conversation arise. He listened for a moment, wondering when the rest of the orchestra would join in, and was surprised when the music stopped suddenly in mid-bar.

He knocked on the door.

“
One moment,” she said. He could see the shadow where her eye covered the peephole.

“
It’s me, Detective Wang,” he said.

She opened the door. He was childishly disappointed to see she was dressed in street clothes, tan-coloured hiking shorts and a black t-shirt, and her hair was clean and twisted neatly into a knot at the back of her neck. Anyway, what had he expected? She wouldn’t live in her night-clothes all day long. He almost laughed out loud at his own foolishness. He had been drawn in by the sense of intimacy created by her messy hair and the sloppy man’s shirt she had worn to bed.

“
Come in.” She led the way to the room. He saw sheet music spread on the dressing table and a clarinet lying on a towel on the bureau. That solved one mystery at least.

She sat on the chair and motioned for him to sit on the edge of the bed. He continued to stand.

“
You indicated you have more information about what happened next door,” he said.

“
Yes. To be honest, I’m quite nervous about it. My parents were worried about me making this trip without them. I don’t want to get involved in anything that might hold me up in Nanning.”

“
Tell me what your information is and we’ll take it from there.”

“
I will tell you, but first I need your assurance I won’t be detained in China.”

He shook his head. He couldn’t make promises without hearing what she had to say. If she had witnessed a murder first hand, she would be asked to stay long enough to give evidence.

“
Then I’m sorry I’ve wasted your time,” she said. “I can’t do anything that would worry my parents. I shouldn’t have asked you to come.”

She got up and waited, no doubt expecting him to leave. Did she think he was a lapdog, to come and go at her command? He was a detective, one of the best in the entire South.

He’d been a fool to race here at her call. He should have told her to go into the station and give her information to the clerk at the desk.

“
Miss Fa-ling,” he said, “I’m sorry, but that’s not the way things work. You can’t decide what evidence you will give and what you will withhold.” She was tall, meeting him almost at eye level. He stood up straighter.

“
You said you have new evidence,” he continued. “I will need to hear what it is. Then we can discuss whether or not a statement will do, or whether it will be necessary for you to repeat your evidence to the authorities at a later date.”

She remained silent, stubbornly waiting for him to leave.

“
If you won’t give me your statement here,” he said, “then we’ll have to go to the station, now.”

It was a bluff — he had no intention of dragging a tourist into the police station and incurring the wrath of Fat in the process — but it worked. She sighed and sat back down, her hand unconsciously resting on the sheet music for comfort.

“
It was about 4:00 this morning,” she began. “I couldn’t sleep after you left. Jet lag – the time is all screwed up. I went to the bathroom, and when I came back I heard the sound of a vacuum cleaner running next door. I thought it must be maintenance staff cleaning up the room. That seemed strange to me. Back home, the scene of a sudden death would be off-limits to everyone until the police were finished with it. Anyway, I needed to get a pipe fixed in my bathroom, so I went next door to speak to the chambermaid.”

Wang kept his surprise to himself. He and Cheng had specifically told Henry no one was to enter room 607 until the police gave permission. Had the concierge sent up a maid despite those orders?

“
Did you speak to the chambermaid?” he asked.

“
It wasn’t a maid. The door was partially opened. I knocked, but got no answer, so I opened it further and saw a man. He was holding some kind of lightweight, high-powered vacuum cleaner and using it to clean the carpet.”

“
Was he wearing the hotel’s uniform?” Staff members of the Golden Lion were easy to identify thanks to their burgundy vests.

“
No. To tell you the truth he was dressed like a spy in the movies, in a black suit jacket and pants. He wore a white dress shirt and a black tie.”

“
Was he a foreigner?”

“
No, he was Chinese. I didn’t see him for long. I had the idea maybe he was from the North.” Fa-ling tried to remember the man’s features. She pictured them as sculpted, the brow arched and the cheekbones prominent, rather than flat and smooth like her own or Wang’s.

“
Did he see you?”

“
I don’t think so,” Fa-ling said. “The machine was loud. He didn’t look up. I put the door back the way it was and ran to my room.”

“
Show me the pipe.”

“
Excuse me?”

“
The broken pipe in your bathroom. I’d like to see it.” He needed to verify her reason for going to room 607 at four in the morning.

“
Yes, of course. It’s under the sink.”

She followed him to the bathroom. He opened the cupboard and bent to look. The elbow section of the pipe was indeed dangling loose from the take away portion. He angled the pipes together and twisted the joint to secure the sections.

“
There,” he said, “it should be fine now.”

“
Thank you.”

He rose to find her standing too close behind him. She had been trying to watch what he was doing. She stepped back quickly, but not before he smelled the residual soap on her skin.

He turned away so she wouldn’t see his face, which had become a fiery shade of red. She caught his embarrassment in the mirror and left the bathroom, giving him a moment to recover.

So much for maintaining professional dignity,
he thought.

He took a deep breath and followed her to the suite. There was no doubt in his mind she was aware of his attraction for her. He felt like a schoolboy caught out with a crush. The only thing to do now was to finish questioning her and make his exit as gracefully as possible.

“
Can you give me a description of the man?” he said, pulling out his notebook.

“
He was Asian.” She hoped her joke would put him at ease, but it must have lost something in the translation, because he only looked at her, confused. “You know,” she said, “he looked like he was Chinese.”

He laughed, seeing from her face she was being funny but not entirely sure he got the joke.

“
I see,” he said, finally understanding. “You mean because we Chinese all look alike.”

“
Yes. Seriously, though, he was tall and straight, about your height. He looked to be about forty. He was handsome, but his hair was thinning and he wore it over, like so.” She used her hand to indicate a comb-over. “I only saw his profile and his head was down, looking at the carpet. He had a moustache and a tiny beard, like a goatee.”

Wang asked some specific questions and began to pencil the face based on her answers. He was not a talented artist, but he had drawn some adequate sketches in the course of his job. When he was finished, Fa-ling reached for the notebook, her hand careful not to brush his as she took it.

He gave her his pencil. She used the eraser to remove some of his lines, adding others until the face looked as close to the man she’d seen as she could render it. Then she passed the book back to Yong-qi.

“
Thank you,” he said.

“
I really,
really
do not want to get involved,” she said. “I’ll be in Nanning for the rest of the week, and I’ll help in any way I can while I’m here. After that, I have to leave for Beijing with my group.”

“
I understand. I may have some more questions for you after I speak with my partner, but it should not be necessary for you to repeat your statement before the authorities.”

“
I appreciate that, Detective Wang.” She turned toward the dressing table, seeming to struggle with something that was on her mind. He watched her unguarded face in the mirror, knowing it would inhabit his dreams for many nights to come.

“
Can I ask you something?” she finally said.

“
Of course.”

“
Your partner said, I mean, last night ― was it really a case of suicide?”

Yong-qi closed his notebook and tucked it into the pocket of his carefully chosen tan jacket, keeping his eyes on the exit.

“
Apparently,” was all he said.