Inspector O 04 - The Man with the Baltic Stare by James Church

Fine, we can deal with that.” Hereached for the phone. “If you’re concerned about your safety . . .” He dialed a number. “I’ll get someone else.”
    This was not a matter of pride. Anyone could see he thought he could shame me into going. It would have to be shame, because there was nothing else pushing me, nothing but a speck of curiosity about what this was about. I wasn’t working for him; I wasn’t working for anyone. Besides, the trees would still be on the mountain when I got back. They weren’t going anywhere. “I didn’t say you should get someone else. I said people disappear in Macau. I take it that’s what I’m supposed to do, find someone who disappeared there.”
    Major Kim put down the phone. The face tiptoed around appearing cagey. “Not exactly.”
    “What, exactly?”
    “On the one hand you might say that a woman disappeared.”
    Faint alarm bells rang. This wasn’t a road I wanted to go down. “Been there, done that. I like women I can see. If they disappear, I can’t see them.”
    “Only, she didn’t actually disappear. It’s more like she disintegrated. Or maybe you could say disarticulated. Since most people can’t do something like that to themselves, by themselves, we’re interested.”
    “Someone hacked her up, and you want me to put the pieces back together again.”
    “Not exactly.” I felt that flutter in my stomach, the one that means my head hasn’t caught up with what the rest of me already realizes is a reason to turn around and go the other way. “The Macau police think they can identify who did it.” Kim said this slowly.
    “Then, you must want them to think otherwise.” I paused. “Is this the ‘little problem’ you mentioned the first night we talked?”
    Kim raised his chin a millimeter.
    “You’re not thinking of setting me up, are you? Having memet at planeside by a team of Macau detectives who will take me to a dark room and beat me for a week until I confess?”
    “This woman showed up in pieces, Inspector, over two weeks ago. You have nothing to confess. The whole time you’ve been either on your mountaintop or under my control. How could you have strangled her, chopped her up in the bathtub of a suite in the Grand Lisboa Hotel, carried a matched set of luggage through the lobby at seven A.M . after eating a breakfast of tea and rice congee, and dumped the larger suitcase, the red four-wheeler, in the harbor where it floated for a full day before being picked up by the police who had been tipped off by a Japanese reporter waiting at the scene with a camera crew?”
    “I never liked congee.”
    “Unassailable proof of innocence. Find something equally airtight for the person whom the Macau police are unjustly accusing.”
    “You want me to make it clear to the police that they are barking up the wrong tree, still assuming you are not setting me up. Still assuming that I’ll actually go.”
    “Go to Macau, Inspector. Put the police on the proper scent. Get them off the wrong tree, as you put it. Above all, stop worrying. What enjoyment is there in life if every angle has to be covered? You might even have fun in Macau.”
    No, I would not. There was nothing about this picture that pointed to fun. “Your friend Pang advised me not to go. He sounded serious. Not to dwell on the point, but he killed the captain with one shot in bad light.”
    “Go; find what needs to be found. Clarify what needs clarification. Wipe clean whatever window seems befogged to you. My only advice: Stay away from willowy Chinese girls, from full-bodied Portuguese tarts, and from whatever else they throw in your path. Then, mission complete, we’ll drive you in style back to your mountain, where you can saw boards until the end of time. What could be simpler?”
    “One thing.”
    “What?”
    “You haven’t told me who didn’t do it.” It was the sort of thing I never wanted to say but did anyway.
    “That’s not your concern.”
    “Maybe not, but I’d