Author's note: This is a short, three part standalone story set in the world of "Fight and Be Right". If you've read the TL, great! If not, you don't really need to in order to understand what's going on; just treat it as an unspecified alternative timeline. Part two will follow in a few days.
One
Soochow Road
Shanghai, February 1934
The Inspector winced as he listened to the rain drumming on the car’s windscreen. “Goddamn rain,” he remarked to nobody in particular, turning up the collar of his trenchcoat and fumbling for the door handle. “You stay here, Shorty”. His driver, a Chinese youth, shrugged and settled back into the seat, pulling his baseball cap over his eyes.
As the Inspector opened the car door, the scent of Shanghai hit him as it always did; damp, cooking meat, decay, spices, excrement. It smelled of trouble, and he smiled. The International Settlement was not like anywhere else in the world; it attracted only the boldest, the most adventurous, the most entrepreneurial- and the most criminal. It was a place where Irish Syndicalists rubbed shoulders with Russian Counts and Cantonese gangsters; where a man could arrive a penniless stowaway and emerge an internationally-renowned plutocrat. The best and worst of humanity could be found there- and often it was found in the same person.
The International Settlement was a strange place even at the best of times; but these were definitely not the best of times. For a decade, Shanghai’s European community had been in turns entranced, exhilarated, and terrified by the rapid growth of the Chinese state next door; it had been easy to maintain the fiction that the International Settlement was the last outpost of civilisation before a barbarous interior when the far side of the Whangpo had been paddy fields and mud huts, but now a man strolling down the Bund was faced by prosperous factories and freight yards the equal of anything in Europe.
Then the War came, and Shanghai became a strange island of peace in a world that had descended into bloodshed on an industrial scale. China had gleefully repudiated its other unequal treaties, but the neutrality of the Shanghai International Settlement was still being respected- at least for now. Yet how neutral was neutral? Of the nine members of the Municipal Council, five were British and two Japanese; both nations at war with China. The streets were flooded with spies from all sides and none. There were gangs, revolutionaries, religious fanatics, pimps. It was a nightmare to police. The Inspector would not have exchanged it for anything in the world.
Soochow Road seemed as if it was on the edge of the earth. On one side, the night was banished by streetlights, gaudy advertisements and the upward-questing searchlights of the Bund; yet on the other, the land on the far side of the muddy Soochow creek was shrouded in complete darkness. The refusal of the Municipal Council to observe the blackout imposed on the rest of China left the International Settlement an island of illumination in the night, and a vital navigation tool for Japanese bombers on their way to bomb Nanking and Wuhan. In these times of global warfare, even a neutral city could serve as a weapon.
The weather was filthy. Even the three steps from the car to the door of the shabby apartment building left the Inspector soaked, and when the two miserable-looking Sikhs guarding the door raised their Jimmy Guns in salute as he passed, he took the cigarette from his mouth and gestured them inside. “No point getting wet, boys,” he rasped, “wait inside.”
Casting his eyes briefly around the shabby lobby and ignoring the small knot of curious residents gathered in the stairwell, he began to climb to the fourth floor where the landlord had found the body. He was wheezing by the time he reached the landing, and took a deep drag of the cigarette to clear his lungs; he was sighing in relief when Sergeant Williams wandered out of the doorway to his right, wiping his hands on a blood-stained towel.
“Bori da, Shut-up. What have you got for me tonight?”
The Sergeant bared his teeth in a humourless grin as he led the Inspector into the cramped flat. It had clearly originally been a tidy place, the home of an orderly person determined to make the best of his unprepossessing accommodation. The walls were decorated with framed photographs showing a bland, smiling youth in various locations; Russia, Chicago, Arabia, India. The Inspector paused as he recognised a familiar face staring out from one of them, his mind wheeling back to distant days spent in the Congo River Patrol. “De Wiert, you goddamn madman…” he breathed.
The scrupulously neat, almost antiseptic nature of the flat had not outlived its inhabitant; the place had been ransacked. Somebody had emptied the contents of the large filing cabinet in the corner all over the floor, and a modest office safe lay forlorn and empty on its side, its door hanging from its hinges. By the window, almost buried in loose paper that was gradually turning crimson with blood, a body was collapsed, its arm outstretched, hand in a clenched fist. A flashbulb popped as the photographer astride the corpse took evidence. Williams flinched at the light, then shooed the man away.
“Murder, sir,” he said. “Professional job, too. Somebody kicked the door in, shot the lad twice in the neck, and then ransacked the room looking for something. The pistol was probably muffled as none of the neighbours heard a thing. Landlord came round, saw the door was ajar and found the body; he’d been dead a few hours.”
The Inspector knelt by the body, cigarette dangling from his mouth. “Who’s the stiff?”
Williams twisted his moustache. “We found his wallet; cash still in it, so not a robbery. Belgian laddie, name of Remi. Some sort of journalist, been in Shanghai for two months.” He gestured at the corpse’s plus-fours. “Thought he might be a keen golfer, but the landlord says he always dresses like that. Doesn’t drink, doesn’t smoke, no friends, no women, polite, well spoken… Big Mac would have loved him, he’s a regular Cadet.”
“What a goddamn mess.”
There was silence for a while, as the Inspector digested the scene. “This ain’t right, is it?” he finally remarked, standing, “What sort of journalist dresses like that, is so wholesome, no friends or contacts, no bad habits, no… personality? He doesn’t even look like he’s filed any copy.”
He gestured at the photographs on the wall. “That don’t look like a life, Shut-up. That’s a back story. It’s like a dolls house in here. He’s Belgian, you say? A Frenchie from Deuxième Bureau, I’ll bet.”
He sighed. “A dead neutral intelligence agent. That’s all we need.”
The Welshman grunted in amusement. “City’s full of spies, sir. Don’t think anyone much is going to miss another one.”
The Inspector took another drag. “No point in a Municipal Police Force if we don’t solve murders, is there? City’s meant to be a haven of peace in a world at war; least that’s what the news rags say. Doesn't sound like they spend much time out on the street with us.”
He knelt again to examine the corpse, checking pockets and grimacing at the wound that disfigured its neck. Finally, he glanced at the outstretched hand, narrowed his eyes and leant forward to scrutinise it more closely.
“There’s something in his hand. Paper, I think. Damn rigor mortis.”
The sergeant nodded, briskly. “One of you ‘orrible lot give me tweezers!” he bellowed, striding from the room; a short while later he returned with the instrument, and a pair of pliers. “In case we need to be less subtle,” he explained, apologetically.
Taking the tweezers, the Inspector gingerly pulled at the exposed piece of paper, grunting in relief when it came free. He looked at it for a second, and stood.
“E-N-E-Y-E, ‘ue-Lotus’, ‘438’, and ‘11PM’. Looks like the killer ripped this from his hand but our Belgian was holding on too tight for him to get it all. The first word could be anything, but the number’s probably phone digits. Get a man to go through the book.” He paused, thinking. “The Blue Lotus Club is across the road from Sinza Market. Maybe our kid was meeting a contact.”
Williams indicated the clock on the wall. “11PM? It’s quarter to now. You’d better get a move on, sir.”
The Inspector finished his cigarette and stubbed it out on the paper-strewn desk. “Anything else I need to know here?”
Williams grimaced. “Yes, one more thing.” He nodded over at the pathetic heap of white fur in the room’s single, threadbare armchair.
“Bastards killed his little dog too.”
Looking forwards to part 2
