The Hamlet Murders by David Rotenberg

to Geoff in the theatre.” No, that wasn’t completely right. Fong stopped moving. But before he could figure out exactly what part of the thought was wrong, the image of the two Beijing politicos who had been Geoff’s keepers popped into his head. Fong’s breath caught in his throat.
    Federal officers, Beijing politicos in Shanghai, no doubt with an agenda. They were the only ones powerful enough to block Li Chou from getting into Geoff’s room. They may have already been in the room but were unable to find what they wanted. Fong thought about that then dismissed it. But for sure something that Geoff had been hiding is important to them. And they want him to find it and no doubt hand it over to them so they can figure out exactly what happened to Geoff. Again, he sensed a false assumption in his thinking but couldn’t put his finger on it.
    He turned to Chen. “Yellow-tape this. It’s potentially a crime site.”
    “Aren’t we going in?”
    “Not yet. Somewhere to go first, we’ll be back.”

    On his way out, Fong noticed that the key lady was different than the one he and Chen had seen on the way in. Key ladies, remnants of the old Communist control system, refused to allow visitors to have the room keys. Westerners always complained about this because they’d return to their guesthouses and have to search out the key lady to get into their own rooms – a process that could take up to an hour. Most places that foreigners frequented had scrapped this practice, but because the old campus where Geoff stayed was technically a working commune, the system was still in place. “Where’s the lady who was here when we arrived?” Fong asked.
    The key lady clearly didn’t understand him.
    Before Fong could launch into his favourite tirade about the advancement of incompetent party members, most often from the country, over native Shanghanese, Chen tried the question in a country accent and the woman responded, “We’re covering for each other. We’re always short. Don’t know where they go. People just come and go as they please. I don’t even know most of their names. It’s hard to get good help these days.” That certainly was the truth. Try to get anyone to do a menial job and you’re lucky to keep him or her for even a few weeks. Fong thought of it as nothing more than another one of Shanghai’s growing pains on its road to becoming one of the world’s most powerful cities.
    Outside the guesthouse, Fong consulted his private phonebook and dialled the number of the head of the Communist Party in Shanghai. The great man picked up on the third ring. That surprised Fong but he collected himself and requested access to the two Beijing keepers. The man heard Fong out and then, with barely concealed glee, gave him the phone number for Ti Lan Chou Prison.
    The prison official took ten minutes to set up a meeting – at the prison of course.
    Fong arrived on time at the prison, but naturally they made him wait. Fong knew they would. Despite that, he couldn’t sit still. He was inundated with memories of his confinement here. That time had left deep slash cuts in his mind, deeper than he cared to acknowledge. It had taken a tremendous act of courage to force himself first to contact this place and then to walk through its tall iron doors. But there was nowhere else in Shanghai to contact the federal police force except here in Ti Lan Chou, the largest political prison in the world and a place where Fong had spent just under two of the hardest years of his life.
    A door slammed in a far-off corridor. Fong flinched. He’d forgotten how loud prisons were. How noise bounced off the concrete and steel and bounded and bounded unhindered and undiminished by anything soft to soak it up.
    Another sound, this of a key turning in a heavy lock followed closely by an electronic connection being made and the snapping-to of metal. Then the door opened. It was only then Fong realized that when the warden had left him alone in