by Andy Oakes
Barbara poured more tea. Not wanting more, just needing to do something with her hands.
“Bobby isn’t like that.”
McMurta walked to the window.
“All men are like that, take it from me …”
The sky, a jaundiced yellow. River, cars, windows, reflecting back the same polluted hue.
“… anyway, whatever’s going on, you don’t have to worry, ma’am. We’re looking after you.”
Anger in an instant blaze. Thumping the cup down on the table. Tea, across the saucer, her fingers, the train track grain of the chocolate mahogany.
“We’re looking after you’. What the hell does that mean?”
Still looking out of the window, McMurta blanching, his neck tightening with shock, wondering if it was right for a government official to swear. If a woman should swear. The shell of the ‘new man’ wrapped around the same Puritanism as a Pilgrim Father.
“The Agency. We’re looking out for you. Making sure you’re safe.”
“I don’t need ‘looking out for’. I don’t need the Agency making sure that I’m safe. Read my lips … I’ll look out for myself. I’m safe.”
“Well excuse me, ma’am, but you’re an American governmental official and a vulnerable woman in the People’s Republic of China. You’re a long way from DC. You’re involved in important negotiations with the representatives of this country. And now your son has gone missing. Maybe these are linked, maybe not. Personally speaking, I think your son’s screwing around and will re-surface in a few days time. The US dollar goes a long way with a yeh ji. But whatever, the Agency are there to look after you Ma’am, whether you like it or not … that’s what you pay your ‘greenbacks’ in taxes for.”
His eyes followed the Huangpu to the east … a dull metal gash, splitting the old city from the new city. A division that no sutures of black brooding bridges could ever pull together. He placed his hands on the window ledge, drawing in a deep breath.
“I love Shanghai in the morning. Its smell. Its bustle. From ten floors up it’s the greatest city in the world.”
Barbara joined him. Below the city was alive. The heavily strung cord roads of black bead cars. A million dots picking their way along the Nanjing Road; a buzzing hive of pedestrians. Life … seething, bubbling over. Reaching out and up. Grabbing at her by the throat. Choking on its vibrancy; with a chill, feeling that she might never be a part of it again. She turned away.
“Bobby, I know he’s dead. It’s not true what they are saying … he was here. This was his room. I know from his letters what they serve for breakfast in the hotel restaurant on the eighth floor. I knew this room before I ever stepped into it. It’s not true what they are saying. He was here. He’s not with a hooker. He’s dead.”
*
As McMurta left the hotel room, she had noticed that he had a huge and flat arse: like Clinton’s in those unflattering jogging pants. Never trust a man with a flat arse … had been a homespun philosophy that had been bequeathed to her by her ma. Her ma had never been wrong yet. McMurta. Barbara had seen tampons with more … more get up and go. She would get diddly, she knew it. He knew it. The door closed.
“Arsehole,” she said.
*
Ambassador Edward Candy’s voice was instantly recognisable. Its lazy drawl as welcome, as familiar as a bottle of Bud or a slice of pecan pie. The Ambassador talked about the weather, the primaries and the World Series back in the States. The States, it already seeming like a stranded shell of a past life. It was clear that he had no information on Bobby … she knew it. Candy was building up to say a huge zero. Barbara feeling a wave of panic wash over her. She stifled a scream and managed to twist it into …
“Edward, what about Bobby?”
… and then the steel shutters crashing into place.
“I’ve had two other agents on the case besides McMurta, but they’ve drawn a blank. Zilch. Their investigations show no record of Bobby ever having entered China. No visas issued. No internal travel documents authorised. No registration ever made at any Shanghai hotel. According to McMurta’s report, and the contacts that we have in the municipal Party machine and in the Luxingshe, your son has never been to Fudan University. Your son has never been in Shanghai …”
Candy paused, she could hear him sigh.
“… officially Barbara, Bobby has never been in China …”
She wanted to respond, but nothing came out.
“… we’ve taken it about as far as we can at this unofficial level, Barbara. Remember, we’re in China and very limited as to where we can tread. My suggestion is that we involve the PSB. I have spoken to the Minister … he has arranged through Chief Liping, the head of police in the city, for you to see one of his best investigators … his name is Detective Yun. You will find him at the Hongkou Divisional Headquarters … that’s near the corner of Sichuanlu and Haininglu. Lu means street. Take a taxi and be there for ten. I’ve already released some details of Bobby’s file to Chief Liping, so they should be thoroughly briefed …”
The pen slipped from her fingers, the details of the meeting scrawled across the hotel notepaper. The Ambassador’s voice trailed off, waiting for a response that she felt unable to give.
“… but I’m sure that it’s all explainable, Barbara. Just a series of bureaucratic mistakes, each one compounding the last. You know how it is?”
No response.
“Bobby will turn up, and when he does, you put a flea in his ear and then join me in Beijing for a celebratory drink. I’ll put a bottle or two on ice … just like old times, eh?”
The call was ending and still she was unable to utter a word, only think them. And at the same time, picturing Candy straightening his tie, checking his breath as he spoke … an eye admiring a woman seated in the inner lobby of the penthouse suite, just out of reach. Checking her make-up in the reflection from the VDU. Pausing in mid-pout to give the Ambassador a half wave of pale perfumed fingers. Their tips, wriggling cerise fishes. Returning the wave … her signal to stand up, shimmy her tight skirt straight. She would be a Washington wife on the loose. A perfect bob-permed pink mannequin wrapped in Ralph Lauren. Smart, beautiful … with all of the weapons to win the war.
A host of questions suddenly crowding into Barbara’s mind. In panic selecting one almost at random.
“What about Lazarus Heywood at Fudan, at the university? For Christ sake, he brought Bobby to China. He’s worked with Bobby in the same department. Heywood can prove that he was in Shanghai, and that some sort of conspiracy is going on.”
“Barbara, there is no conspiracy; your son is an archaeologist. Conspiracies do not stretch to include estate agents, tax inspectors, or archaeologists. Except, of course, in Hollywood.”
“But Professor Heywood, has McMurta seen him, talked to him?”
The silence was long. A shiny bright barb of silence. Edward Candy, a fish hooked onto it. She could feel him wriggling. The mercury flash of the scales.
“Edward?”
Silence.
“Edward?”
The strike. Taught catgut, a whistle as it bit water. And then the words …
“Heywood’s not been seen for two weeks. He’s missing Barbara … he’s also missing.”
Chapter 9
The fen-chu, PSB Divisional Headquarters of Hongkou, sat on Sichuanlu … a frantic junction of whirring bicycle spokes, pissing dogs and belching traffic. The building was indented into a fussy parade of 1930s edifices. A mute, shadowed dimple of chipped marble and blind windows that shyly stood a step back … its posture stranded between defence and offence.
*
Polish … piss … testosterone.
The smell of the place reminded Barbara of home, of every police precinct that she had ever entered. Male territory. The kind of complex odour that lingered in the memory of every retired cop long after the faces of the framed, threatened and fearful, had long since faded.
“Detective Officer Yun is expecting me …”
<
br /> The young policeman winced with discomfort.
“… I have an appointment for ten o’clock.”
Confusion knotted his eyebrows. He simply shook his head as if attempting to untangle them.
“Jesus Christ! What do I have to do to make myself understood in this country, hire a loudhailer?”
Her voice was growing. Rows of faces appeared staring from behind glass office partitions.
“Now get me Detective Yun before I really have to shout. I’m not nice when I shout.”
“Yun, Yun … not nice?”
Barbara smiled.
“Get me Yun.”
Still smiling, and almost as a whisper.
“Jesus, this is going to be hard.”
The policeman also smiled. It was a living advertisement for the need for regular dental hygiene.
*
A book by its cover …
The man who followed the young policeman to Barbara’s side was also young. Too young. A smile on his acne ravaged face.
“Detective Officer Yun?”
The Detective Officer nodded with a vigour that Barbara had come to realise meant that his name would be one of the few words whose meaning they would be able to share.
“You don’t speak English, do you?”
The detective nodded.
“Yun, Yun.” He tapped his chest.
“Yes, I know, I get the picture. You’re Yun. Do you also know the word interpreter. Interpreter?”
“Yun.”
Barbara felt the last vestiges of humour drain from her. All the tools that she possessed to lever, slide, oil information out of people, move situations along … seemed blunt.
Her voice rose. …
“What about the words sit on it, do you understand those?”
The veneer of control split. Words spilling from her lips, and all the time, the loose threaded stitches of Yun’s smile, snagged and pulling from the seersucker complexion of his face.
*
Gauzed fingers lifting a chipped cup to cracked lips.
Piao sat in the canteen of the Divisional Headquarters. He had entered with a hunger, but his appetite now lay with its back broken, from the reek of old fat and earthy Panda Brand cigarettes. He scanned the report. Twenty-one pages to say fuck all. Twenty-one pages to point a finger at no one. Twenty-one pages to say that there had been a fire and that two had died. He already knew that two had died. The funerals would claim his Tuesday morning and his Friday afternoon.
“Shit. Shit …”
He folded the report neatly and stuffed it into an inside pocket. He would give it to Yaobang; it would make very acceptable toilet paper.
“Boss, what do you think, am I getting a little overweight?”
Piao looked up from his teacup, ignoring the ample stomach of Yaobang and the plastic belt that had run out of eyeholes.
“I’ve seen more fat on a butcher’s apron.”
He let loose the words and returned to his tea, stirring it vigorously and feeling no guilt. It was that kind of a relationship. The Big Man unwrapping a heavy doughy dumpling from its brown paper shroud, the grease oozing to its surface in flat black oceans.
“You got Pan out of the city?”
Yaobang pushed the paper into his pocket, grease spots blossoming on his shirt front, his eyes focussed on the dumpling which he held at chest height.
“Uh-huhh …”
“To your uncle’s house?”
“Mmm …”
He was slowly, steadily, raising the dumpling to his lips, his eyes fondling the great white pearl.
“He’ll be safe there?”
“Yeah, yeah …”
“You’re sure?”
He could smell it, almost taste it, almost feel its bland texture across his tongue. He lowered the dumpling from his lips, still in one piece.
“Boss, I’m sure. It’s a small village. Any sign of strangers and the alarm goes up. If it’s not fat geese, it’s skinny old women or the chairman’s old Red Guard. They’re the best early warning system in the country. Between them they might not have a fucking tooth in their heads, but, believe me, they could scare the shit out of anyone with those gums.”
The mention of teeth, gums … he thought of his own and drew the dumpling toward his open mouth.
“And you gave your brother the photographs of the bodies?”
“Yes, I gave him all the prints.”
“And you reminded him of when and where we are meeting?”
“Boss!”
Yaobang drew the dumpling away from his lips one last time.
“You already know the answers to these bloody questions. Now can I get on with my meal. I haven’t eaten all day.”
Piao raised his eyes from the cup.
“You haven’t eaten for an hour and a half.”
“Okay, okay. A day, an hour and a half, does it matter? I was a big baby. I need regular feeding.”
He launched into the dumpling, lips glistening grease, a dreamy look washing across his wide face. When he spoke, each word was muffled and punctuated by a peppering of sodden dumpling shreds.
“As fucking good as a fucking orgasm.”
“How would you know?” Piao countered.
The Big Man coughed, spluttered and then swallowed hard. He reached into a trouser pocket retrieving a fistful of crumpled notes.
“The collection money for Wenbiao’s mother, three hundred Yuan so far … not bad, eh? The boys thought that we should get the old woman one of those new barbecue sets; every time she uses it she could think of him.”
Steel on steel … black snow. Piao closed his eyes for an instant and could still feel the knifepoint heat behind his eyelids.
“I know, I know, Boss. Bad joke, bad taste. It was Yantan. You know what animals these Kazakhs are.”
The Senior Investigator stirred his tea once more. It was already cold. He had never had any intention of drinking it; stirring it, watching it … that was enough.
“Yantan’s an imbecile. His mouth writes cheques that his brain can’t cash.”
Yaobang bit into the dumpling once more.
“Whatever you say, Boss. Whatever you say. Shit I nearly forgot! Boss you’re needed at the front desk, Yun is having his balls chewed off by some American woman. Last I saw he was screaming for an interpreter, so was she. I volunteered you.”
Piao pushed his cup across the tabletop.
“Thanks.”
“Had to Boss, Yun had that look on his face, like the time his patrol car was stolen on Yishanlu.”
Piao remembered the look: dog shit all over my new shoes, kind of a look. The Senior Investigator was already leaving his seat.
“What’s the story?”
“Spilt rice, Boss. The word is that she’s a big-wheel politician. They say Liping’s promised her the earth and she doesn’t look the type to be fed on just promises and plain fucking noodles. Not this one. Besides, it’s more than just a lost handbag …”
The Big Man rolled the last of the dumpling into a tight ball and tossed it into his mouth, his palms glistening with grease.
“… they say her son’s gone missing.”
Perfection, the number seven. Perfection, the form and white fragrant flesh of the lychee. And her.
And her.
He hated her the moment that he saw her. She reminded him of how sour his life was, sucked through the tear bitter pith of a lemon. She reminded him of the dirt that sat underneath his fingernails. Also, other things he knew as soon as he saw her … with a certainty. That her son was dead.
Remembering the cascade of crystal water meeting mud and washing it aside. The desperately white skin revealed. The fine feathering of corn dolly hair. The broken lips kissing at a secret agony. Yes, he knew the secret. Her son was dead. There was no turning back now; the rail track home had been ripped up.
“Are you Chinese, the interpreter?”
Piao moved closer. A perfume of expensive flowers laced by steel wire about her.
“Are you American, the client?”
Barbara’s eyes narrowed, reminding the Senior Investigator of ships running lights on the Suzhou Creek in winter.
“Your English is very good for a Chinese.”
“Your English is passable for an American.”
She snapped her head back, her hair flicking as a sharp breeze does when it rolls across a field of heavy corn. Every move she made speaking a thousand words in English and ten thousand signs in Chinese.
“Can you tell the detective that I am Barbara Hayes. Chief Liping has spoken very highly of him and has assured me of his full assistance in attempting to find my son. Can he tell me where his investigation is at present?”
Piao interpreted. Each word adding to the acned fire that blistered across Yun’s face.
The Senior Investigator knew this look also … The bastard hasn’t even glanced at the report. He’ll stall … in an investigation that hasn’t even started yet. Shit. An investigation that will never start.
Yun’s reply was very well rehearsed. Words that were not his own; practised in the reflection of a mirror as he poked and preened the pucker that was his face. Who was the Lord of Yun’s heaven? Piao knew for sure that he would be a merchant who would not give, if he was not paid.
“I, as representative of the Public Security Bureau, welcome you as our esteemed guest. We are humbled to have an American government official of such magnitude visit us. However, it will be our pleasure to demonstrate to you our efficiency in dealing with your difficulty and bringing it to a satisfactory conclusion. The police force of the People’s Republic of China is known throughout the world for its unwavering thoroughness and ability. You will be in a position to witness this at close quarters and to take this experience back to your own country … our esteemed trading partner, the United States of America.”
It was only after Piao had fully interpreted Yun’s speech that the assembled detectives, with Barbara at their epicentre, had applauded. Applauded politely. Applauded gently. It sounding like the waters of the Huangpu lapping onto its foreshore. As it had done on that night.
*
It was only when Barbara had left the fen-chu and was on the street, that she realised that she still had nothing. Just words. Words, as sticky to the plate as caramelised sweet potato fritters and as filling as candy-floss.