Gelignite Read online

  THE

  MAD BOMBER

  OF

  HONG BAY

  * * * *

  Detective Chief Inspector Feiffer saw the flash. There was a brilliant white glare radiating out from a tiny pinpoint in front of the Post Office and a sudden single note of high static as the air around the pinhole was wrenched violently aside. Then there was a sound like a very loud pistol shot or a huge chain snapping and then the concussion roared down the street and blew people walking along the pavement to their knees.

  Feiffer reached the Post Office. There was paper fluttering down and ink from the letter-writer's table spread out on the pavement and flowing down the walls. Parts of it weren't ink. They were thicker than ink.

  *

  GELIGNITE

  The Yellowthread Street Mysteries

  YELLOWTHREAD STREET*

  THE HATCHET MAN*

  GELIGNITE*

  THIN AIR**

  SKULDUGGERY

  SCI FI

  PERFECT END

  THE FAR AWAY MAN**

  ROADSHOW*

  HEAD FIRST*

  FROGMOUTH*

  WAR MACHINE*

  OUT OF NOWHERE**

  Also by William Marshall

  THE FIRE CIRCLE

  THE AGE OF DEATH

  THE MIDDLE KINGDOM

  SHANGHAI

  MANILA BAY

  WHISPER

  *Published by THE MYSTERIOUS PRESS **forthcoming

  MYSTERIOUS PRESS EDITION

  Copyright © 1976 by William L. Marshall

  All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book or portions thereof in any form.

  This Mysterious Press Edition is published by arrangement with

  Henry Holt & Company, 115 West 18th Street, New York, N.Y. 10011

  Cover design and illustration by George Corsillo

  Mysterious Press books are published in association with

  Warner Books, Inc.

  666 Fifth Avenue

  New York, N.Y. 10103

  A Warner Communications Company

  Printed in the United States of America First Mysterious Press Printing: May, 1988

  10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

  for Ron and Val Fear

  The Hong Bay district of Hong Kong is

  fictitious, as are the people who, for one

  reason or another, inhabit it.

  Death by Water

  Hop Pei Cove, on the western side of the Hong Kong police district of Hong Bay, smelled of fish. Not fresh, live fish, nor even dead fish, but fish long, long dead, not fresh, not yesterday's or the day before yesterday's fish, but extinct fish, obsolete fish, fish long gone to their fishy after-life, fish of a monumental and ancient age, antique fish, phantom fish, the ghosts of fish, fish drawn, quartered, gulleted, filleted, forked, fed into, finished and fishy. Fish of high, bygone and long dead odour. Stinking fish. Detective Inspector Phil Auden said, 'Blecht—fish!'

  It was 5.30 in the morning on Fisherman's Beach at Hop Pei Cove and the driver of one of the police cars parked on the hard packed sand rubbed his hands together and opened a tin of rich smelling body wax to polish the decal on the door of the driver's side of his vehicle. The decal said HONG KONG POLICE on a banner below a picture of a nineteenth century quayside scene surrounded by laurel leaves. He leaned forward into his task and saturated his fish-filled nostrils with the smell of the wax. A fisherman mending his nets and watching four detectives and two uniformed Constables in thighwaders wading thigh-high in the water off the beach shook his head. He looked at the driver again and repaired a break in his net.

  On the water, the wind changed and took the smell of fish back to the beach. Auden said, 'The wind's changed.' He drew a breath of relatively pure air. Something floated past him on the surface of the water and he reached for it with his rubber-gloved hands. It was a twig. He let it pass on the current.

  Detective Senior Inspector Christopher Kwan O'Yee looked at him. O'Yee was a Eurasian, a little more used from his boyhood in San Francisco (another great stop on the International Fish Sniffer's World Route of Fish Sniffy Beaches) to odours of all ilks, but he still did not like sniffing fish. He glanced down at something near his section of the water. It was Auden's twig doing a quick circuit. He flipped it back to Auden, Auden looked at it and flipped it behind him towards the beach. The wind changed again.

  Detective Chief Inspector Harry Feiffer asked, 'What was that?'

  'A twig.'

  'You're sure?'

  Detective Inspector Spencer said, 'It was a twig.'

  Doctor Macarthur's voice called out from somewhere near the resuscitation equipment in the ambulance near the waxed police car on the beach, 'What was that?' Resuscitation equipment meant nice deep whiffs of unfishy oxygen anytime you liked.

  Macarthur called again, 'What was that?'

  Feiffer called back, 'A twig!'

  'A what?'

  (Ambulances meant you didn't have to wade about waist high in dirty South China Sea effluvia and smell the smell of fish.)

  'A bloody twig!'

  '—Thank you!'

  A little farther out in the effluvia Constable Sun called out, Here!' He touched at something an inch below the surface with his rubber glove. He called out again, 'Here!' and took a long plastic bag from a packet inside his shirt. He called out, 'It's a leg—' and opened the bag underwater to scoop it up.

  Doctor Macarthur's head went zipp!—phew! out of the ambulance doors as he stuck his oxygen-filled Roman nose into the world to see what had happened. He called out, 'What's been found?'

  'A leg!'

  'Good! Good!'

  Sun sealed the bag with a length of wire attached to it and went sloshing in towards shore dragging the leg and water-filled plastic bag a little behind him.

  Spencer watched him go. Something else floated by and he leaned towards the surface of the water to see what it was. It was a fish. The fish swam off. 'What's the tally?'

  O'Yee said. 'Part of a shoulder, two legs and a hand.'

  Auden said, 'And part of a hip and pelvis.'

  'Yeah.' O'Yee looked at the surface of the water for any further bits of the anatomical jigsaw. O'Yee said, 'The hip and pelvis were me bits found by the swimmer.'

  Auden said, 'Anyone who swims in this muck at half past four in the morning deserves to find a hip and pelvis.' He asked O'Yee, 'Did you take the call?'

  'Constable Lee took it.'

  Auden turned to Lee, a hundred feet away in the ragged line of waders, 'What was he doing at half past four in the morning?'

  'Who?'

  'The person who reported finding the first part.'

  Constable Lee said, 'He was swimming.' He looked across to where Constable Sun was dragging the plastic bag across the sand towards the ambulance and Doctor Macarthur was waiting like an anxious birthday-boy to receive it, 'He was out for a swim.'

  'At half past four in the morning?'

  Lee watched as Sun handed the object to Macarthur and caught a heavy whiff of fish. Lee said, 'I don't think he'll be doing it again for a while.'

  Feiffer ordered, 'Stop that talking. Keep spread out.' He was thinking of the work piling up at the Station and the faces of the North Point detectives who had agreed, grudgingly, to cover it. He said to Auden, 'I don't want anything missed.' He glanced at the beach and saw Sun wading back through the light swell as Macarthur carried his trophy into the ambulance, 'We need the complete body.' The wind changed again and he wished he had been born without his olfactory lobes. He said irritably to Spencer who was concentrating very hard on his particular part of the job, 'Just try and concentrate on your particular part of the job, will you?' and turned down windward.

  A crowd had gathered along the beach seawall and stood like Roma
n spectators in an amphitheatre watching the disposal men dispose of the Christians after the lions had disposed of the Christians. Their muttering made a heavy humming sound and the wax-in-the-nose policedriver thought briefly that he might go up and move them on, noted that the way to the wall was mined with the lethality of anti-personnel fishstinks, and decided against it. He glanced towards the open doors of the ambulance where the Government Medical Examiner was happily assembling parts of a body on a steel tray and took another blob of wax for the decal. He looked at the decal before blobbing it. The decal shone.

  O'Yee shivered. Later, when the sun got higher, it would be a warm Spring day, but now, up to bis waist in night cold water, it was cold. He looked at the humming crowd and then back to the water. Something white was floating there, a few inches below the surface. He watched it come. It moved with the current and then turned in a little eddy below the surface. It was another hand. O'Yee closed his eyes and took out a plastic bag.

  Spencer said, 'I've got something!' He said, 'Oh—Jesus—' He looked away.

  O'Yee directed the mouth of the plastic bag over the hand and sealed the top.

  Spencer said, 'It's a stomach—' His own turned. He took out a plastic bag with an effort of will and snared it.

  Constable Lee said, 'I've got something!' It was a section of chest, still wearing a shirt. The shirt was waterlogged and torn. It seemed to be brown in colour. He took out his bag.

  Auden looked at O'Yee'and Spencer going towards the shore with their bags. Something touched him on the leg. He looked down expecting to see a fish. It was a head.

  Feiffer said, 'What is it?'

  Auden looked at him.

  'Is it the head?'

  Auden nodded.

  Auden said, 'I can't guide it into the plastic bag—'

  'Has it got any hair?'

  Auden nodded. The head had strands of black hair floating out around it like seaweed.

  Feiffer said, 'Pick it up by the hair.' He saw something next to his own leg and looked down to make out what it was. It was a section of shoulder. He took out a bag to get it.

  The crowd on the wall went 'Oooo . . .' Feiffer glanced across. Auden had the head by the hair and was trying to get it into the mouth of the bag. His hand slipped from the wet hair and the head fell back into the water with a splash. The crowd made a heavy moaning sound.

  The section of shoulder floated neatly into the open plastic bag. Feiffer sealed the bag and held it below the water. He heard Auden say, 'Got it—!' and then the sound of him sloshing quickly in towards shore. Feiffer heard a heavy sigh from the crowd. He waited until O'Yee and Lee were back on station in the water and went in with the shoulder as Auden came sloshing back towards Spencer.

  Spencer asked Auden, 'The head?'

  Auden nodded.

  Spencer asked, 'Young man or old?'

  'Young.'

  Spencer nodded. He said self-encouragingly, "There isn't much more now.' He saw Feiffer reach the ambulance and hand his bag in to Macarthur through the open rear doors. Spencer looked at the crowd. They seemed very still. One of them seemed to ask the driver something, but the driver waved his hands to say he couldn't answer. The crowd seemed to make a heavy droning sound.

  O'Yee said softly to someone, 'They're worried.'

  He spoke very quietly and no one heard him.

  O'Yee said, 'They're worried that we mightn't find all of him. Before we found the head it was just a pile of legs and arms and bits, but now we've found the head it's someone who's died in water.' He said, "The Chinese have two great fears: drowning at sea and of being put into their graves with bits missing from them.' He said to Spencer, 'In the old days, the families of condemned men used to pay the axeman to sew the head back on the people he executed.' He said, 'It's a Chinese belief that the soul won't rest if the body's been lost at sea or dismembered.' He said to Spencer, 'I don't believe that.' He said in an odd voice, 'The European part of me says that it's a load of crap.' He looked down into the water and blinked at something.

  Feiffer came back through the slight swell and took up his position. He asked Auden, 'Any more?'

  'No. How much more to go?'

  Feiffer looked back at the ambulance and the unseeable thing that was being assembled inside it on a steel tray. 'Not much.' He said hopefully, 'We'll be finished soon. It's a young man in his twenties, slightly undernourished, been in the water for six hours or so.' He said, 'Macarthur says that the lungs suggest he was dead when he went in.' He said quickly, 'So let's get it over with.' He shook his head to clear the picture of the inside of the ambulance.

  A long way out in the cove a water-police launch went by at top speed in the direction of Stanley Bay, its twin props slicing a foaming white cleavage of water away from its bow. There were two figures on the flying bridge and another in the stern. The launch changed course briefly for something, and then went around the point out of sight. Its trailing wake went from white to green and came to the shore as rolling eddies and waves. Spencer felt one of the little wavelets push against him and then travel past. He said to Feiffer, 'They'll never find anything—!'

  'They're not looking. The current's bringing all the stuff in here. They're searching for wreckage.' He said defensively, They've been out since the first report this morning.' He looked at the wake coming towards him in progressively smaller undulations, 'Maybe they've found something already.'

  O'Yee looked back at the crowd. They were still and silent. He thought, "I'm not Chinese, I'm Eurasian, and the European side of me tells me it doesn't matter whether you drown, get shot, die of old age, or simply rust to pieces." He thought, "And it makes no difference whether you're found in one bit or thousands, you're just as dead." He thought, "The Chinese don't know what they're talking about." He thought, "Western science has just discovered after thousands of years that the Chinese knew what they were talking about with acupuncture." He thought, "And I read somewhere that the traditional Chinese cure-all, ginseng has just been found to really work." He thought, "The Chinese knew that all along." He thought, "But drowning, and souls, and being in bits, is just a load of crap." The crowd on the seawall were totally silent. He thought, "The European part of me knows it's a load of crap." He thought, "On balance, I prefer the Western side of my background." Something floated past him, but it was only another twig. He thought, "That's right." He thought about the crowd. He said to himself, 'It's all nonsense.' He went to reach for the twig again and remembered it was the second time it had floated past. He flipped it firmly away with his hand and said to anyone or to no one, 'Twig.'

  Feiffer rolled his rubber glove forward onto his knuckles to see his watch. It read 6 am Water had seeped in through the glove and the watch and bather watchband were both wet. He wondered if it was waterproof. His wife had given it to him as a present He thought, "It must be. It says Waterproof on the back where she had my name engraved on it and she certainly wouldn't buy something that wasn't all it was supposed to be." He thought, "I wish I was at home." He thought, "I hope she hasn't heard about this on the radio." He thought, "Not now while she's pregnant." He thought, "I'd feel a bit funny about it if she knew I'd been touching dead things all morning." He looked at the murky water, remembered the workload at the Station, and for no reason apparent to any of the others said, 'Shit—!'

  Spencer looked across at the beach. Doctor Macarthur had emerged from the ambulance and was motioning to them. He was shouting something, but Spencer couldn't make out the words. He looked quickly down at the water to check it was clear and then moved in closer to shore to hear what Macarthur was saying. A little way in towards the beach he saw something half submerged and went over to see what it was. It was a hand.

  'Do you hear me?' Macarthur called out.

  Spencer took out another plastic bag and moved it over the 1 hand.

  'The shoulders—' Macarthur called out, and then something —something—something—understand? It means—' and then, 'something—something—something—'
>
  Spencer closed the top of the plastic bag. He thought, "A hand?" He thought, "But we've—"

  Macarthur called out,'—don't match—do you understand?'

  'Oh my God!' Spencer said. They had already found two hands. He said, 'There are two of them!'

  There was a hum from the crowd. Then talking and then someone—the crowd had grown and was a dark, solid mass along the stone wall of the beach front—shouted to someone close by, 'Gay-daw gaw yan?'

  Feiffer nodded back to Macarthur and waved his hand. Macarthur acknowledged him and went hurriedly back inside the ambulance.

  The voice in the crowd asked the driver on the beach insistently, 'Gay-daw?'

  The driver shook his head.

  Someone else in the crowd demanded, 'Leong gaw?' He was asking if it was true that there were two of them.

  The driver nodded. He watched the six policemen in the water. There was a deep humming sound from the crowd, and then it fell silent.

  O'Yee glanced at the crowd. They were like a dark cloth spread along the seawall with, here and there, specks and flashes of colour from shirts and dresses, coats and bags. O'Yee thought, "They're waiting to see if we find the other man." He thought, "The rest of the other man." He thought, "They're waiting to see if we understand about things and we're prepared to pay the executioner to sew the head back on." He thought, "They look like the drawings in old picture books of Chinamen standing on the rim of China looking out at the rest of the world." He said to Feiffer, 'We are going to wait until we get it all, Harry, aren't we?'

  'Yes.' Feiffer said, 'It's a murder job now. We have to get it all for identification.'

  'Identification. Yes.'

  O'Yee looked back to the crowd. He thought, "My mother was Irish. She believed in all sorts of things." He thought, "My Chinese father doesn't believe in much at all." He thought, "He'd believe in this." He glanced back at the crowd and felt their presence on him. He thought, "They look like the drawings in old books." He fixed his eyes onto the surface of the sea and looked for artifacts from antiquity.

  Spencer straightened up. Then he leaned over and did something in the water.