Read Online The First Excellence: Fa-Ling's Map by Donna Carrick - Free Book Online Page A

was a small black wastebasket.
    Cheng used a pair of tongs to tilt the basket. He motioned to Wang, who carefully extracted a tiny wedge of cardboard that might have been torn from a matchbook cover. He placed it into a baggie and pocketed it along with the gold pin from the toilet.
    “ Check this out.” Cheng pointed to the back of the chair.
    “ What do you see?”
    “ Right here.” Wang’s eyes followed Cheng’s finger until he spied the tiny fragment of glass wedged between the upholstered chair bottom and its polished wooden back. He snapped a close-up of the shard.
    “ The chair was used to break the window,” Wang said.
    “ Strange,” Cheng said.
    Wang tried to imagine how it could have happened. Deep in his religious fervour, had the victim decided to sacrifice himself for his master? Falun Gong zealots were said to martyr themselves in various ways, the most notable being to set themselves on fire.
    So, Wang thought, I am ready to leave my body. What are my steps? If the scene were to be believed, the victim had doused himself with kerosene. A large can still sat on the floor in the middle of the room.
    Before doing so, possibly to summon the necessary courage, he had listened to his meditation music. He sat in the semi-darkness, preferring the light of the candle for his ritual.
    When he was ready, he used the chair to break the window. Afterwards, he carefully placed the chair back in its original position at the dressing table.
    Next the victim doused himself and used the candle to ignite the kerosene, then blew the candle out and laid it neatly on the bed. This would be quite a feat, especially considering his hair was most likely flaming at that point.
    Finally, not wanting to cause injury to other innocent guests of the hotel, the victim had propelled his own burning body through the broken window to the pavement six floors below.
    “ An obvious suicide,” Cheng said flatly.
    “ Indeed,” Wang Yong-qi said.
    Henry did not offer an opinion.

THIRTEEN
     
    “ This is a good spot,” Shopei said. She instructed the driver to pull over.
    “ Are you sure?” Randy studied the drab maze of mud-coloured dwellings sceptically. Even the usual infusion of garish ads in brilliant Chinese characters that lined the streets of every major city had abandoned this place, leaving it steeped in filth and mediocrity.
    A handful of urban peasants stood in a cluster, about a half dozen men and women wearing woven bamboo hats perched on their heads like pointy lampshades. They studied Randy and Shopei with feigned disinterest, no doubt wondering what business two well-dressed young people could possibly have in their quarter.
    “ We’ll walk from here,” Shopei said. “The driver doesn’t need to know where we are going.”
    Shopei did not seem to notice the eyes that swept over her hair, her office clothes and her shiny leather shoes. She led Randy in the opposite direction, into the heart of yet another rabbit’s warren of dwellings that appeared identical to the one they left behind.
    This was the old China — the heart of an ancient society that had not yet been eradicated by either the Cultural Revolution or the on-going renovation of the major cities by money-lords of industry.
    Shopei seemed to understand the logic of the labyrinth of streets. She hurried onward with Randy in tow through one neighbourhood after another, until finally they came to a cul-de-sac that was even less modern than the others, but also cleaner. When they reached a tiny house with a door made of cracked and rotting planks that had, oddly enough, been recently painted a modest shade of green, Shopei stopped.
    She knocked loudly on the door. At first there was no answer. Randy could hear a faint tinny melody that wormed its way through the imperfect slats of the door. Shopei knocked again, three times, then twice, then three times, apparently tapping out some sort of a code.
    This time Randy heard a scraping sound and the music was