by Andy Oakes
*
“There, put them on the centre bench.”
Xin moaning as he eased his back into the work. Wenbiao lifting the bodies. Averted eyes. Trying to hold his breath, clamp his nostrils tight. Across sheets of polythene, smeared blood. Small pools of piss coloured river water. And then the smell as they were unwrapped. A smell that had been lost in the thick mud of the foreshore, the coldness of the river, but which now lived … sweet, bitter, earthy. A smell that sat at each end of a life, like book ends. A smell of birth. A smell of death.
Laying the polythene over the stainless steel bench. The bodies over the polythene. Toe to head. Toe to head. Toe to head. Eight times. Eight caricatures of the human form. Forty-four feet of humanity holed, laid to waste.
Somebody’s babies. Somebody’s children.
Piao spat into the gutter, taking a breath, deep, long. It had a taste, a reek, a signature of every death that he had ever stood over. There was no escape; the laid out bodies assaulted every single sense. Holding everyone in the warehouse in an almost hypnotic grip. No escape.
A throb of anger purred in the furthest backdrop of his hearing. He couldn’t understand it. Did he really care about these broken bodies or was it just time to lift his head out of the sea of shit that he had been drowning in for all of these years? Time to make a stand? He wasn’t sure. Not knowing, it made it even worse.
At least you should know why you are committing suicide. At least you should know why?
Tea … sweet, strong. Its bouquet brushing death from his nostrils. He reached out for the mug. Mao’s face, scratched, fading, but still beaming, staring back at him from beneath the pin-holed glaze. Piao turned the mug around, his eyes focussing through the veil of steam on the student bracing himself against a worn, bare brick, blood-spattered wall.
“It’s all yours …”
He nudged Mao’s face towards the eight. Tea running down his fingers.
“Now?”
The Senior Investigator could see fear’s brand in the dryness of the student Pan’s lips. The dart of his eyes. The warm, pungent keynotes that now highlighted his smell.
“… within the next week would be convenient. They’re not going anywhere, but we do need to know about them …”
Drinking from the Mao mug, long and deep. The tea was too sweet, far too sweet. This was not a time for tea that was too sweet.
“… and there are murderers to be caught and dealt with.”
Another lick of his lips. Another glance, furtive, rabbit-like, over Piao’s shoulder towards the bodies.
Shit … they’re his first. He’s never seen a stiff before.
“I thought that there was only one. My brother told me one.”
“No, no, there are definitely eight. But just think of it as being one. One, but eight times. So don’t look down the line, just concentrate on the one you’re dealing with at that time. It’s a lesson that I learnt a long time ago …”
“They don’t teach us police psychology and training methods at the University.”
“… they don’t teach us police psychology and training methods in the police. I learnt it when I was a cashier in my uncle’s restaurant near Yichuan Park. Friday nights were fist fights and plates of fried noodles being thrown everywhere. My uncle would drum it into the top of my head with his best bone chopsticks … ‘look at the cash register and the customer’s money. The cash register and the money. Nothing else.’”
The student attempted a smile. It didn’t work.
“But I have no experience. I have never examined someone who is dead before. I’m training to be a gynaecologist.”
“Yes, your brother did mention it in passing. Okay, they’re dead, but it can’t be that different from examining the living. And look on the bright side, at least you won’t get any complaints about your cold hands, will you?”
Piao, one arm around his shoulder, shepherded him toward the run of benches. Rivulets of brown-red water running from flesh to plastic to steel gutter.
“Detective Yaobang, get your brother a tea. It’s the very least that we can do for our new police forensic scientist.”
Walking the length of the bodies; moon crater knuckles whitening to bone as the student carried his kit-bags. The Senior Investigator taking Pan’s hands into his own. Straightening the fingers, releasing the bags onto the bench as they stopped. So gently, the toes of the last body brushing against the imitation leather. The bright gold zip. Piao undid both bags, unpacking their contents. Towels, handwash, a pack of surgical gloves, a rolled-up wallet of surgical steel tools: scalpels, probes, clamps … a small torch, microscope slides, a large magnifying glass, a wad of self-sealing plastic bags, thermometers, sterilising fluid, swabs. But mostly books filling the kit-bags. Thick, well leafed tomes. Volumes on human anatomy. Forensic science. Thinner, less well leafed books on the study of changes after death. The calculation of the time of death … cooling, putrefaction, rigor mortis, cutis anserina, cadaveric spasm, lividity. Death, and its slalom through a universe of post-mortem events. All served up in black print on white sheet … so clinical. Not a body, not a run of skin anywhere within the books. Not a smell. Not a drip of stinking blood-tinged water.
“Impressive for a first timer. Wu used to get by on a thermometer, a pair of tweezers, a plastic bag, and a spare pair of socks …”
The student attempting another smile; it came into the world as a grimace. Piao walked over to the small office.
“… just do your best. Try to give us some idea of the causes of death. Times of death. Some idea of their ages. Perhaps nationalities. Maybe even the sorts of lifestyles that they might have led …”
The Senior Investigator walked over to the small office … hard wooden chairs and discoloured walls. Looking for a refill of tea. Changing mugs. Placing Mao, beaming face to the grey wall, and swapping it for a mug with a view of Hong Kong imprisoned behind bars of streaky tannin stains.
“… seeing death rots your soul. None of us ever get used to it, no matter what we might say …”
Taking a deep mouthful of tea.
“… it’s only that there are murderers to be caught that makes it bearable. That stops you from constantly wanting to throw up. So think of the murderers, that always helps …”
Another deep gulp of tea. Wondering why the second mug always tastes better than the first?
“… just think of the fucking murderers.”
*
River mud falling away. The clay dolls awakening. Yaobang’s large hand diverting the jet of water, calming it. The cascade making clear the obscured, almost like a full moon slipping from between thick cloud cover.
Features perfect, features imperfect. A jaw that had been square, demanding. Proud, once beautifully defined cheekbones. Eyebrows tapering to delicate brushstrokes. Hair, midnight black, set free and feathering an unlined forehead. A shadow of stubble. A pimple. A beauty spot. The pale ghosting stripe of an old scar.
And the mutilations.
Piao following the student, the student following the Big Man from body to body … to body. Yaobang muttering again and again, and again.
“Mother. Mother. Mother,” as the waterfall from his hand unveiled the horrors. The horrors.
The student moving to the first body, slowly. The first body. Slowly.
No one ever runs to their first body.
His hands clammy. The first pair of surgical gloves splitting. Fastidiously smoothing a second pair on. Then cleaning his glasses. Anything that would dine upon the seconds, the minutes.
Not wanting to start … never wanting to start.
Another chorus from the Big Man. A tremble to his lips … as the water cleanses, unmasks, baptises the deep valley of wounds.
“Mother. Mother. Mother.”
The Senior Investigator pulled out his notebook.
Ignore them. Ignore them. Look past it all. Concentrate on the small things. The things that seem to blend in, that seem normal, but which jar … nag. The
little things that murderers have no time for. Seemingly less significant than fingerprints, faces, eyes, teeth, but just as telling. Don’t forget … a murder for a murderer is just a means to an end, a signpost on the way to a final destination. His eyes already focussed on that distant horizon even as he went about the killing. Wielding the knife. The club hammer. The cutters. So, do not look for the big things. Look for the small things … they will be there.
A fresh page in Piao’s notebook. The first heading …
HUANGPU 1 … H1.
H1 … FEMALE. ORIENTAL. AGE APPROX: 25. HEIGHT 5’ 6”.
Hair to just above shoulder, expensively cut. Attractive, good figure. Well-groomed. Eyebrows plucked. Ears pierced. Toe-nails painted (red), pedicured. No body hair. Tattoo on rear left shoulder (butterfly) … new, unfaded. Hands, knees … soft. No signs of manual labour. I think she’s foreign. Database checks … Luxingshe. Also, CTS & OCTS. Visa, internal travel permit checks with foreign department. She could be a FIT. Check CITS. Known to Bureau Six?
H2 … MALE. ORIENTAL. AGE APPROX: 23. HEIGHT 5’ 8”.
Hair, close-cropped. Newly cut, untidily cut … scissor or razor nicks to back of neck and top of left ear. Ex-user. Old track marks, collapsed veins in left and right forearms. One inch diameter birthmark on front of right shoulder. Three inch scar running above pubic area. Hernia operation? Army/Ex-offender. PSB database checks. Also, check with Mai Lin Hua, municipal prison releases.
On the periphery of Piao’s vision, the student tiptoeing around the bench. Around the female, H1. A thermometer in his fingers. At last, pushing it deeply into the victim’s rectum …
H3 … MALE. EUROPOID. AGE APPROX: 27. HEIGHT 6’ 0”.
Hair, blond. Wavy, shoulder-length. Athletic build. Muscular. The remains of a brace in his mouth. Must be American. Only an American would be confident enough to wear a brace on his teeth at 27! No scars … but several deep scratches over both forearms. Tanned face/tanned arms up to four inches above the elbows. Tanned legs to just above both knees. Elbows, knees … skin worn, callused. Rough skin and calluses also to both palms and what is left of the fingers. Must have been working outside all summer to get a tan like that. Construction? Too young to be an architect on a major project … Surveyor? Stone mason?
Check Luxingshe/CTS. Visa & internal travel permits … check on foreigners working on building projects. So blond … he’d stand out in a crowd, won’t be hard to trace. Also check with Bureau Six.
… the thermometer eased from the rectum and cleaned with an antiseptic wipe. Held up against the light, the silver-black rise of the mercury level being sought for a reading, a ‘peak of probability’; an estimate of the hour of death. With each span of sixty minutes, the bodies temperatures dropping by one point five degrees Celsius. Remember the water of the Huangpu, so cold … and so double the rate of cooling. Remember their nakedness, so cold … cooling when naked is half as fast again as when clothed. To the touch, they would have felt cold within five to six hours. By eight to ten hours their body temperatures would have fallen to the same as the environment in which they had been found. As icy-cold, as one with the muddy waters of the Huangpu.
H4 … MALE. ORIENTAL. AGE APPROX: 40–45. HEIGHT 5’ 3”.
Balding … remainder of hair shaved short. Dragon tattoo on left forearm. Scars encircling both wrists/ankles. Prison/Asylum. Political? Check as H2.
H5 … MALE. ORIENTAL. AGE APPROX: 29. HEIGHT 5’ 9”.
Shoulder-length hair/tinted brown highlights. Small scar splitting right eyebrow. Tattoos on both upper and lower arms. Right arm, top to bottom … a knife piercing a snake, an anchor and rope, a name (Zheng), four Xiangqi pieces, Ma and Pao. Left arm, top to bottom … Golden Dragon, a dagger through a Heart, four Xiangqi pieces, ju and jiang … a name (Yeman?). Not a user. Check PSB Foreign Department. Also CTS / OCTS. Seaman … merchant, fishing? Check arrivals from Hong Kong.
Latex fingers brushing torn lips. A nervous probe hovering over broken ranges of teeth, occasionally picking at the debris. Counting. Assessing. Measuring for wear. Probing in the hope of finding some exotic dental technique that will mark these teeth apart. Some odontological calling card that will wink and point the direction in which to travel. Transferring, with a weak, shaky hand, the mayhem of a clubbing hammer to the ordered progression of a dental chart …
H6 … MALE. ORIENTAL. AGE APPROX: 30–35. HEIGHT 5’ 6”.
Prison haircut, short-cropped, two inch scar to back of cranium, centrally positioned. Face severely damaged. Another scar running down the bridge of the nose. Past user … old tracks and collapsed veins on left forearm. Right earlobe missing. Check as H2/H4.
H7 … MALE. EUROPOID. AGE APPROX: 45. HEIGHT 5’ 10”.
Hair brown, greying to sides. Cut to collar length. Overweight … out of condition. Tanned (see also H3). Hands, knees, elbows … callused. White witness marks of three rings having been removed from right hand. Pressure marks to bridge of nose and behind both ears/spectacle user. Old scar, three inches, running down left shin bone. Faint scar running behind both ears … cosmetic surgery? Visa/Travel permit checks with Luxingshe. Also CTS & OCTS. Similar to H3 … working here? Could be a FIT. Double check with CITS.
… the breakdown of ATP after death. The quantity of adenosine phosphate increasing. Both lactates and phosphates accumulating in increasing amounts. Physical changes developing in the muscles as the fibres shorten, stiffen. The muscles becoming prominent, rigid … fixing the limbs. Rigor mortis … muscles now set in place by the flood of lactates; ten times more than is found resting in the muscles in life. Remember the water of the Huangpu. So cold. Remember their nakedness … so cold. The onset of rigor would have been retarded, slowed … the bodies of the eight retaining their flexibility for longer. But as the night comes … so would rigor have come. Firstly starting in the face at around ten hours. During, the next five hours, spreading to the shoulders, the arms. Finally to slip into the bulky leg muscles. At twenty hours, rigor fully established … not passing from the victim for up to four days.
The girl’s face. Set. Her neck, shoulders and arms also fixed by rigor mortis. Down her trunk to her long legs, still flexible and unfixed. Fifteen to twenty hours; she’d been dead fifteen to twenty hours.
H8 … MALE. ORIENTAL. AGE APPROX: 25. HEIGHT 5’ 6”.
Hair, cropped. Multiple scars to both wrists … looks like several suicide attempts over a lengthy period … Tattoo on top of right hand … two swords crossed through a name (Shen?) Multiple razor cuts to backs of legs & buttocks. Self-harming? Full Luxingshe check. Also prisons/asylums/camps.
Piao passed on the coffee, preferring another sweet tea. Coffee, so American, so easy, so artless.
Stirring the tea. Watching the swirl of the liquid slow. Drinking. Some cases need you to be in touch with your most intangible thoughts. Tuned in, zipped to your feelings. Able to stop, put them in a hard place and prick them … see if they bleed. And how they bleed. This was such a case.
Nothing was left in the tea mug except for a slick of black leaf powder. Piao placed the cup on the steel bench, aware that perceptions were starting to form. Seeing the eight in a new way. Not as eight at all, but as two quite distinctive groups of four. H2, H4, H6 & H8 … inmates, still stinking of the prison, asylum, and of the corrective camps. Stinking of slopped out shit and the lightning flash of the razor down your buttocks in the shower. Its icy cut beading into a stream of blood running down your legs. Stinking of underpants that a hundred men before you had worn and soiled.
H1, H3, H5, H7 … something that the Senior Investigator could not put his finger on, yet.
A girl who seemed Chinese only in the way a fake piece of Ming Dynasty Baoshihong ‘bulls blood’ porcelain is Chinese. The two westerners, most probably Americans. Their lives, secrets, and their deaths … written in the Braille of calluses on the palms of their hands. And a Chinese. A Shanghainese most probably. The type that Piao could have seen on any of the crossroads along the Nan
jing Road. A face that would always have been half in, half out of the shadows. The dragon of the illicit dollar breathing in his belly. A fake branded cologne over-lavishly applied to a neck stuffed into too small a collar. A wide boy. A conman … ‘a stomach with two hands attached.’
Piao paced the office, slowly, deliberately … the leash short, for those who think too much. Stopping at the open door. A view, uninterrupted, to the warehouse floor. The benches. The bodies. Something binding these unlikely four together. Some glue that was strong enough, powerful enough, to hold these individuals in check for a single purpose. Holding them in life, causing their death … and still holding their secret in safe hands. And the quartet with their prison cropped hair, what was the common denominator that stood at the base of their equation?
Pacing again, the leash pulled tight. Chokingly tight. And these two groupings, what, besides death and chains, bound them together? That welded four with a prison pallor to four with a mocha tan. That welded four bearing the trademarks of abuse, to four with the hallmarks of the pampered. Piao knowing of only one such powerful flux, which came in the form of crisp green notes. Lots of crisp green notes.