by Andy Oakes
Liping’s face as still as the waters of a lake. His hands at rest, fingers interwoven.
“… the third is a female by the name of Ye Yang. Nationality unknown at present. She was the lover of the American, Bobby Hayes. She was pregnant, three months pregnant.”
The Comrade Chief Officer’s gaze not weakening its hold. The words female, pregnant, not causing a ripple across the waters.
“The identification of the Americans is positive?”
“Yes Comrade Officer. Dental and positive witness identifications.”
The hands parted. One moving to his scalp, across the bony roof of his skull. The bristle of hair bowing to the palm and then flicking back to attention.
“Is that all?”
“The girl, Ye Yang, she was staying at the Peace Hotel. The room and telephones were wired. The hardware was very sophisticated, expensive.”
“Bureau Six?”
“I believe so, Comrade Officer.”
“And you want the tape recordings?”
Piao nodded.
“You are aware of how many hotels in the city the Bureau would have an interest in?”
“Eleven Comrade Officer.”
“Over five thousand hotel rooms. Half of these would be fitted with listening devices. Only ten per cent of these monitored and transcribed. And you still want the tapes, if they even exist?”
“It is vital to the investigation, Comrade Officer. They could provide links to the other victims. Possibly a motive for the murders.”
“I am aware of what such tape recordings could provide, Senior Investigator …”
He was on his feet, thumbs tucked into his pockets. A strength permeating from every aspect of his posture.
“… it will take time, it will take effort also, but I will make sure that you have the tape recordings that you require …”
He said nothing for several minutes. The silence as sharp as razor wire. Piao counting each second.
“… you have a reprieve, Senior Investigator. Make sure that you ‘move forward with certainty’. You may go.”
*
It was only when he was outside that Piao realised that he had not taken a breath since leaving Liping’s office. His lungs a brazier of amber coals. When the breath came it was long and ragged, like that of an old cadre snoring through a Politburo committee meeting.
Liping, the man was deceptive, reminding the Senior Investigator of the old saying: The buffalo of the County of Wu does not suffocate under moonbeams.
In other words, he was not what he seemed. Piao had expected a fight about the tapes. A struggle over every detail of his reports. Perhaps even an official investigation into his own theories of Pan Yaobang’s murder and the killing of the student. The Senior Investigator pulled in a deep and ragged breath, purging the Chief from out of his nostrils.
Liping was not what he seemed. Ye Yang, the tapes from her hotel room … would they be?
*
As he walked, he smoked … half a pack before he even realised it. The tasteless smoke becoming his breakfast, his lunch, his evening meal. And thinking, and replaying every word that Liping had uttered. Only when he found a substantial enough bone to gnaw upon, did the smoking stop … crumpling the packet into a tight ball as he replayed the words. The Chief …
‘… all in your reports Senior Investigator, except for a single description of any of the three occupants of the black Shanghai Sedan.’
How did Liping know what was not known? Not known to Piao and not hidden in the turned and re-turned pages of any of the reports that he had submitted to the Chief? That there were ‘three’ occupants in the black Shanghai Sedan?
The buffalo of the County of Wu does not suffocate under moonbeams.
A second time to know what was not known. A first time … a mistake, a guess? But a second time? The Comrade Chief Officer Liping, he was not what he seemed. He knew things that he should not know.
Chapter 14
Ni nar – “Where are you?”
Chinese telephone conversations will always start with this. A Chinese will be asked this rather than his name when he goes somewhere new; a place in which he is not recognised. It will be the first question at the top of any hotel registration form.
Ni nar – “Where are you?”
“What is your unit, your Danwei.”
Every Chinese belongs to a Danwei; through the place of work, the office, the commune, the factory, the school. The Danwei are the building blocks of Chinese society. A second citizenship braced firmly in tandem with the first. The Danwei can be so well equipped as to provide a cradle to the grave service. It can furnish every need. Where you live, where your children are educated, the clinic for when you are sick, the authority to purchase food, ‘industrial goods’ … bicycles, radios, tvs. But the Danwei is not just a provider. It has a hunger too. It has needs that must be met. When you want to marry, you are requested to apply to the Party Secretary of the Danwei for their permission. They will run a security check. Depending upon its result, you will be given permission, or denied it. If you wish to transfer to another job … the Danwei have to give their consent. As a Chinese, if you wish to meet with a foreigner, you are supposed to seek permission and then report back to the Danwei about what was discussed. Before taking a journey or leave of more than a day’s duration from your place of abode, approval from the Party Secretary of the Danwei must be sought and given. When you die, it is the Danwei who will bury or cremate you. It is a womb that you can never be born from. A level of control by the authorities over the Chinese people that could never be understood by the yang-gui-zi … ‘the foreign devil’.
Each personnel department of each Danwei holds a sealed envelope on every employee; biographical information, work records, educational records. But the sealed envelope will hold much beyond this. The stains of any political accusations made by neighbours, however unfounded. The Party’s evaluation of the individual as an activist, or as a possible or suspected counter-revolutionary. The Party’s ‘Bloodline Theory’ committed to type … a dissection, a family tree of the Danwei member going back three generations. Were the fathers, grandfathers, great grandfathers … landlords, capitalists, or peasant workers? Only the high cadre can know the contents of the dossier on the individual. Your eyes will never read it. Theirs will.
Only the high cadre, through the Danwei, can map out your life before it even arrives. Can escort you through that life, their traffic lights showing red at every major intersection of that life … if they so deem it. Your funeral planned from the day that you were born.
The cradle to the grave. Their shadow across yours.
“Ni nar” – “Where are you?”
You know where I am … you are always with me.
*
“You look like shit.”
Yaobang pulled on his cigarette butt.
“Thanks Boss, nice to see you too.”
“When did you come in?”
“Six. Since Pan got shot it’s fucked up my sleep.”
Piao sipped his tea. It was already cold.
“Doctors have pills for everything.”
“I tried them. They gave me wind and the constant shits. I’d rather have no sleep.”
“I’d rather you had no sleep as well. I appreciate your social conscience.”
The Big Man smiled. Teeth as grim as the inside of a tea pot.
“They didn’t fix your teeth while you were in then?”
“I asked. Fucking doctors …”
He opened his mouth, a black coal chute. Prodding the decayed back teeth with a finger.
“… not economical. How can a citizen’s health be ‘not economical’. Fucking doctors.”
Piao poured the remains of the tea into a sorry looking pot plant. It seemed to wilt even further.
“You shouldn’t be in. You should be anywhere but here.”
“There isn’t anywhere but here.”
The Senior Investigator recognised the words, t
he feelings, the sense of belonging nowhere. He didn’t pursue the subject.
“Luxingshe, Bureau Six. Have they reported back to us yet?”
“Yes, for what it’s worth. The reports are on your desk. Only standard stuff on that Heywood. Visa documentation. Entrances, exits, internal travel permits. Shit all on the others.”
“What about Mai Lin Hua at Gongdelin and the Chief Warden at the Municipal Prison?”
“On your desk with the others.”
“Anything positive?”
The Big Man rifled through the stack of files, smiling. His tongue caught between his teeth, like a mouse trying to squirm from the trap.
“Here it is …”
He held the paper aloft in triumph.
“… a handwritten note from Hua inviting you to tea at Gongdelin. Besides that, fuck all.”
He let the note drift from his fingers and into the bin.
“… I’ve got the old dog Xin and three others that were drafted in by the Chief going through the files of prisoners that have been released over the past month. It’s endless, but you never know … something might even come up on some of those tattoos that the victims had …”
“The three that Liping drafted in, do you know them?”
“No, but they’ve all got dirty shoes. It’s normally a good sign.”
Piao slid open a desk drawer, placing his cup into its depths. Four other cups were already in there.
“Let them do the spade work …”
He closed the drawer and pushed over the pile of reports. They spilt across the desk in buff landslip.
“… but don’t let them know too much of what they’re digging for.”
“Sure boss. Give them the fucking spades, but not the seeds …”
Yaobang pulled a creased slip of paper from his pocket.
“… and Boss, you got a call. No name and from a public call box. He said to meet him at the Huxingting Tea House, Yu Gardens.”
“What time?”
“Half an hour ago, Boss.”
Piao hurriedly took the paper and pushed it into his pocket.
“Yaobang, do a bit of spade work at Fudan, eh? I want the names and details of any students who were friends with Bobby Hayes. Anyone who was close to him. Hung out with him. Anyone who shared a tea with him.”
The Big Man rubbed his hands together and tested his breath. As sour as a bull’s bladder.
“Just my sort of fucking job, Boss. Student girls are my favourite …”
He tightened the greasy knot of his tie.
“… what do you want them for, onto something?”
Piao moved from the desk, buttoning his jacket. It was cold outside, unseasonably cold.
But whatever season, he always felt cold.
“No, not really. You just never know …”
He tapped the side of his nose.
“… I just have a feeling that they might be of use at some point …”
He was halfway through the door when he stopped and looked back.
“… your brother, Pan …”
“There’s no need Boss, we’ve already said it all.”
Piao nodded, stepped out into the corridor and closed the door gently. It was only when he was halfway to Yu Gardens that he knew that it could never all be said.
Every day should be so sharp. Every piece of bone china so white. Every death so dark.
It had been five years since Piao had last visited Yu Gardens; suddenly finding himself dipping into the memories as if they were a box of chocolates. The soft centres … her small hand, cold, fitting neatly into his. Her lips as she drank Xunhuacha … rose petals set in alabaster, and on the flight of her breath, jasmine. The hard centres … the ones that you never choose. The argument. The spilt tea, its stain spreading across the desert of the tablecloth. The words, the name-calling … indelible and still indigestible, even after all this time.
*
Yu Gardens was unnaturally quiet. Too early for locals. Too out of season for tourists whose buses usually crammed Henanlu. The Huxingting Teahouse was close to the Bridge of Nine Turnings, he remembered. The Heart of the Lake Pavilion, set in waters filled with emerald algae and lotus leaves. The Longjing Tea would be expensive here. Cheaper at the Wuxingling … only fifteen fen a pot with as many refills of hot water as you wanted. At the Huxingting you also paid for the view, the bone china cups and the white linen. When you’re in love you don’t mind, it is a part of the foreplay. When you’re not in love, when you’re just chasing the job … such things have no importance. The view, the bone china, the white linen … they aren’t worth the extra fen because they don’t matter a fuck.
Rentang sat in the far corner of the Huxingting, drinking tea and eating quail’s eggs. His face dominated by the large black rimmed spectacles, as if each eye were centre stage on two individual television sets. As he drank, one lens frosted grey with steam. He didn’t look up.
“Who’s the woman?”
“You do not need to know.”
Piao pulled out a chair for Barbara and then seated himself.Rentang peeled a quail’s egg, the fine shell forming another layer of skin to his fingertips. Still not looking up.
“I don’t need to know! I wish I knew nothing about this case of yours. This fucking mess …”
He drank his tea almost to the bottom of his cup; charcoal shredded leaf slicking the snow of the bone china.
“… Dao-mei, Piao. Dao-mei …”
His eyes lifted. Black, nervous, trapped behind glass and the reflections of strips of decapitated dark trees from the window opposite.
“… that’s what they’re calling you at headquarters. ‘Bad luck’. Everyone’s dying around you. It’s that Huangpu case, the one you’ve stuck me with. No one knows about it, but they’re all talking. You can’t get any details, just rumours and names. Names of all those getting fucked around you …”
He leaned forward. Unborn quails on his breath.
“… you’ve got me by the ball’s Sun, but don’t get me involved. You can still leave me out of it. I don’t want to talk to you about this, nobody does.”
Dao-mei. Piao felt the sting of the words. Dao-mei, the colloquial term for menstruation. And in turn, for ‘bad luck.’ He’d used it a thousand times himself to put a woman in her place. He’d used it to her in this very place. With regret, remembering the single tear in travel down her cheek, behind a fan of jet hair.
“You want details, I will give you them. You want to know why I am pushing so hard, I will tell you.”
“I don’t want to know. I don’t fucking want to know. I shouldn’t be here. If you’ve been followed it’ll be me who ends up.”
He was moving from his chair, a palm raised, warding off the Senior Investigator’s words.
“Sit.”
Piao’s hand firmly on Rentang’s forearm, pulling him back into his chair. Quail’s eggs rolling across the table.
“Is everything okay?”
Barbara concerned, shielding her tea with one hand, chasing the eggs with the other. Piao ignoring her. His face so close to Rentang’s forehead that it touched the frame of his spectacles.
“Details. I am investigating eight bodies found in the river. I know the identities of three. The other five is why you are here. In the process of my investigations another four people have been murdered. One was Wenbiao, a young PSB officer. You heard about that?”
Rentang nodded.
“And Yaobang’s brother?”
Again a nod.
“The other two. One of them was my cousin …”
The Senior Investigator pulled Rentang’s face around with both hands, holding it firmly in front of his. The lenses of the glasses misting with each word.
“… no one has followed us, I was very careful. I should have been as careful before. You are safe from them, they cannot harm you. But I can …”
He tried to pull away, Piao increased his grip; Rentang’s cheeks transforming into ripe apples embraced by
too hot a sun.
“… you are right, I have you by the balls and I am about to start squeezing. One letter from me to the Party Secretary of our Danwei and you will be investigated. Using your position, influence, Security Bureau time and hardware, plus highly confidential information for the benefit of a commercial enterprise. These would be regarded as very serious charges …”
The Senior Investigator released his grip. Rentang was safe, tamed. The blanch of his cheeks whispered it. The dullness of his eyes shouted it.
“… there was a similar case in Nanking a year ago. It was a showcase, they made an example of him. He was executed.”
“What the fuck’s happened to you, Sun. You’d really do that to me, over this?”
“What the fuck has happened to me is pulling eight bodies from the river with their eyes gouged out. Their stomachs slit like Wawayu. Have you ever heard the noise that the fish make when they are pulled from the waters of their favourite river banks? They cry like human babies …”
The Senior Investigator picked up a quail’s egg, rolling it gently in his palm. Pitching it violently between thumb and forefinger. Letting the debris fall onto the white linen tablecloth.
“… I do not want to, but yes, I would do this to you for the twelve whose deaths are now up to me to put right. They deserve at least that.”
Rentang reached into the deep inside pocket of his coat to retrieve a large folded manila envelope.
“Fuck you too,” he said, as he placed it on the table and slit it open.
*
Monochrome prints spilling onto lace white. Five prints. Full portraits … ten by eight inch. Faces marbled in river mud. Rentang pushing the teapot, the cups, aside. Placing the photographs across the table in some unexplained order. Reaching deep into the envelope. Five photocopied reports. Black trenches of type headed by report numbers. And in bold print at the top of each page.
PUBLIC SECURITY BUREAU … SHANGHAI HUNG AN CHU.
In the bottom right-hand corner of each report was a copy of a photograph, passport size. Faces staring out in harsh black and white. Expressionless. Eyes stolen of light. Vulnerability frozen into prints just a handful of centimetres square. Rentang placing the reports in turn, carefully across the faces of mud. Death given names. The mud washed away. Pulling from the envelope five more prints. Five more faces. Shiny, new, unblemished. Each laced together with faint guidelines, drawstrings … latitudinal, longitudinal, snap-to rulers and guides. Across the top of the page, icons forming a computer programme menu and toolbar. Reconstructed faces. The same faces pulled from the Huangpu, but made new. An exterior complexion of a million computer generated pixels, glowing a healthy steel grey. And in the eye sockets, ball-bearing orbs of matt silver, holding no reflection and no fire of dreams burning in them.