On a snowy day in the year 889, Emperor Wu of the Han Dynasty had an epiphany: he was not immortal. His jade carver created the most beautiful jade burial suit in history, finishing just three weeks before the Han Emperor died. When the priceless two-thousand-year-old jade burial suit suddenly goes missing in modern Hong Kong, a brutal competition to find it ensues between rival Chinese, Burmese, and Japanese factions. As they battle for the priceless artifact, a psychotic killer with a Maori tattoo on his face surfaces leaving a trail of dismembered corpses strung together like traditional Burmese puppets. Detectives Ian Hamilton and Angela Cheung follow a trail of hacked bodies and terror through contemporary Hong Kong in their search for the killer.
David Harris Lang, a current resident of Hong Kong, has lived and worked in Asia much of his life. Besides being a prolific author of Asian-based thrillers, he is an international architect who brings an indelible sense of place’ to his writing as well as a deep understanding of Asian cultures, locales, and customs. His vivid fight scenes come from a life-long practice of the martial arts. A Devil in Hong Kong is David Lang’s third book.
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The
police boat pulled up to the dock at Snake Bay. Coroner Cindy Leung
was waiting for them, slat-thin arms, her torso the circumference of
a chopstick, thick glasses too large for her face. She kind of looks
like a praying mantis from this angle, Ian thought, looking down on
Cindy from the deck of the boat. Cindy waved to him.
“Hey,
Cindy,” Ian said when he, Angela, and Nigel were on solid ground.
Cindy,
instead of returning the salutation, immediately started up the path.
“Follow me, Detectives. Hurry! I left him hanging for you, but I
can’t wait to get him to my lab. This is the strangest one I have
ever seen.”
“Ok,
Cindy, we’re coming. Commissioner Gu said that the victim had been
chopped up and wired back together,” Ian said as he tried to keep
pace with Cindy.
“So
strange! We would not cut him down until your team had a go at him,
of course, so I got up on a ladder to inspect him. First thing that I
noticed was that there was a separation of about a centimeter between
his neck and body. I found a screw where the cervical spine had been
sawed and another one in the neck vertebrae. A wire ran between the
two screws, holding the parts together.”
“Aiyahh!”
Angela explained as they came to the first gorilla. “This is
bizarre!”
“Yeah,
I can’t imagine why someone thought that these life-sized animals
would be a good idea for a resort,” Cindy said, and then continued,
“I also noticed that the rest of the body was hanging very
strangely too, not like you would expect. I could not undress him
until you are done with your inspection, so I felt around. He had
been cut and wired back together in seventeen places. Each part also
had another wire attached to it connected to the wood beam that he
was hanging from. It was like he was a puppet! A human puppet!”
“How
long had he been dead?” Nigel asked.
“Based
on body decomposition I would say about four days. I will be able to
give you a more accurate answer once I get him to the lab.”
They
walked past the abandoned resort building and came upon the hanging
corpse. Scientific Evidence Officers were examining the ground below
the body. Ian walked up to the officer who seemed to be in charge.
“I
am Ian Hamilton from CID. Do you have anything yet?”
“Calvin
Chan, Senior SEO. Walk over here, I want to show you something.”
Ian followed Calvin about twenty paces to a circular clearing
surrounded by low bushes. The clearing, originally envisioned as a
courtyard for the resort’s customers to sit, rest, and appreciate
nature, had been paved with tan and grey pavers. A giraffe peered
over the bushes from the surrounding jungle, its dead, glass eyes
wide with curiosity as it gazed into the plaza at the human visitors.
Nature had started to reclaim the space, weeds pushing up between the
pavers. Benches, which had once been painted white but were now
mostly rusted, had been placed around the perimeter. “This
courtyard is where he was dissected,” Calvin said, pointing to the
center of the circular plaza, stained with blood.
“I
wish that giraffe could talk. He was probably the only witness,”
Ian said.
“No,
I don’t think so. This wasn’t the work of one guy. My guess is
that there were three of them. Two different brands of cigarette
butts, only a few days old, were on the ground by that bench. I
picture one guy doing the carving while the other two watched.”
“It
also would be hard for one guy to string him up, so that makes sense,
Calvin,” Ian said.
“We’ll
send our report to your department within three days,” Calvin said.
When
they arrived back at the corpse Nigel was almost finished with his
evidence collecting. When he was done he gave Cindy a nod and her
team took the body down and placed it into a body bag on a gurney.
“See you, Ian,” Cindy called out to him as her assistants pushed
the gurney towards the dock.
Ian
walked over to Angela, who was photographing the scene. “Make sure
that the technicians take the piece of wood that he was hanging from
too. There are some characters carved into it.”
Angela
said, “Why would the guy be displayed in such a strange way, all
chopped up and then wired together, out here in the middle of
nowhere? Typically, a killing this gruesome would be to send a
message to someone, Mess with me and this will happen to you. How
often do people come out here, though, once or twice a year? No one
is here to see it. Who was the audience?”
“I
am afraid that the audience was the killer himself, Angela. We are
dealing with one very sick individual, a guy who took pleasure in
what he did, and we need to find him before he decides to entertain
himself again,” Ian said.
Nigel
said, “Did you see how meticulously the wires were wrapped around
the screws? How clean the cuts were? He took his time. He took pride
in his work.”
“Just
like us,” Angela said.
“Like
us?” Nigel asked.
“Our
logo, We serve with pride and care.”
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