The Lake Ching Murders - A Mystery of Fire and Ice by David Rotenberg Read Free Book Online

phone on his desk. He’d review the tapes later.
    After that damned boat was sunk — and the danger to China’s future passed.

    Chen pointed toward the small motorboats he had arranged for them. “Shall we go, sir?”
    The specialist looked at the boat then at the young officer. He hadn’t noticed before but Chen was one of the squattest, ugliest men he’d ever seen. “It inspires confidence,” the specialist thought. “Odd, but ugliness in a man inspires more than that. It inspires faith.”
    Two hours later, Chen sat behind the specialist by the motor of the rocking boat. Before them the partially burnt boat’s skin of ice sparkled in the hazy light. An oddly fascinating beauty.
    The ice that seemed to grow up the side of the large flat-bottomed ship had secured its purchase on the shoal.
    The irony of a burnt boat encased in ice wasn’t lost on either Chen or the specialist. It seemed to escape the crime site team and the federal troops who hunched down in their open boat and the party man who followed in a covered cabin cruiser. The party man was still talking on his cell phone — as if he were narrating a sporting event or something.
    The wind howled.
    “I’m too old for this crap,” the specialist thought. But he wrote nothing, just signalled that he wanted to go on board.

    The specialist had investigated many crime scenes, but nothing like this. Seventeen corpses. Gunshots. Knife wounds. Violent rippings. Mutilations. And a body swinging.
    Only the virulent colours of the whorehouse decor of the boat stopped the victim’s blood from standing out like insults to heaven. As it was, the partially frozen dark blood had seeped into the bright red carpets, making them crunch under the specialist’s feet as he moved from the large bar to the ornate bedroom to the private video room to the peculiar room with the makeshift runway.
    The death rooms.
    Seventeen men. Two Caucasians. Five Japanese. Three Koreans — no doubt South Koreans — and seven Chinese who, by the labels on their clothing must have been Taiwanese.
    The specialist had an awful taste in his mouth. He spat.
    The boat groaned and rolled to one side. The specialist looked to Chen. “It’s not solidly held by the shoal, sir. The fires onboard weakened the hull. It could very well sink. Only the ice seems to be keeping it together and afloat.” The specialist nodded but his face showed neither concern nor comprehension. “We have all the victims’ documents at the Ching station, sir. But we were told to leave the bodies for you . . . to see.” The specialist nodded again then scrawled on his pad and turned it to Chen. “How many people have been on board since this happened?”
    “Just me and the two officers who helped me collect the documents, on my second trip to the boat.”
    A sour look crossed the specialist’s face. Chen was about to speak but the old man walked away from him. He slashed a single character on his pad. Since he didn’t turn the pad to Chen, there was no way of knowing if the man thought him a liar or thought that two officers to help him was too many — or for that matter — too few.
    The specialist knew it was a lie. It couldn’t be just Chen and two officers. There were indications everywhere that more men had been on the boat. What he didn’t know was whether Captain Chen knew that or not.
    The specialist filed it away under: politics. And he was old enough to know better than to get involved in that.
    The slashed word on the pad had nothing to do with politics though. The specialist had written: “Carnage.” It was the first thing that came to him. These men weren’t just killed. They’d been annihilated. As if someone was trying to wipe them off the face of the Earth.
    The specialist flipped the page and wrote again. This time he turned the pad to Chen. “I need to go back outside.”
    Chen followed the specialist as he walked carefully along the icy deck. He helped the old man down to the motorboat