by Andy Oakes
Rentang checked the code at the back of each graphic before placing one at the bottom of each report. Vague in their similarity to the faces of mud. Unmistakably a match to the faces framed in the copied passport size mug-shots. His hand brushed against the first report.
“H2 … the first face that you gave me. Wei Yongshe. Age 25. Born Sichuan. A string of previous convictions. They are all in the report. Nothing serious until the last one. He stabbed another liu-mang in a street fight. He was sent to Gongdelin.”
Rentang’s hand moving to the next report, fingers spread across it in a web of pale knuckles and fingernails bitten to the bloodied quick.
“H4 … Hu Feng. Age 43. Born Shanghai. A history of mental health problems and violence. He was also in Gongdelin. He killed his sister with an axe.”
The monochrome eyes passing beneath Rentang’s palm. The next report, the next face, coming alive with a double tap of his index finger.
“H5 … another thug. A long history of petty crime and violence. Liu Qingde. Age 27. Born Shanghai. An-up-and coming little shit. Put away in Gongdelin for threatening behaviour and extortion. And then you have this beauty.”
Piao’s eyes moving from image to image. The passport print … the man that he had been. The face of the body pulled from the Huangpu, slipped in mud … the man that he had become. The computer enhanced image, a face generated by blips of power and pressure on keyboard keys … the man that he now was.
“H6 … Pei Decai. Age 33. Born in the Henan region. Drug trafficker. Caught coming over the border from the New Territories and into Shenzhen with pure heroin. Very tough, but used to money and luxury. He didn’t find them in Gongdelin.”
Rentang’s eyes shifting to the next report.
“H8 … the last of your beauties. Age 27. Born in Shanghai, almost next door to Gongdelin. He didn’t make it very far. Name, Yan Ziyang. Ex-asylum. Totally mad. Cut off the balls of one of his cousins, who died of blood loss. Then he tried to cut his own off. They should have let him. Imprisoned in Gongdelin.”
He rubbed his hands together and then wiped them on the corner of the tablecloth, as if there was shit over his palms rather than sweat.
“You are sure, these are them?”
Rentang looked up. Anger scribbled into the corners of his mouth. The pale yellow yolk of quail’s eggs sitting in the cuts and lines of his teeth.
“I’m sure. This is what you’re threatening me for, isn’t it? Faces made whole. Positive I.D.s.”
Piao poured Barbara and himself tea. Its aroma, of Monday mornings.
“I am making threats because nobody, including you, will do their jobs without them being made.”
“Well, now you’ve got what you want and where the fuck does that leave you? They’re still dead and I’m released from your threats and your friendship.”
The Senior Investigator’s eyes found the window. Beyond the lake, the slow wave of the ginkgoes, the curve of the park’s walls … the city was building to a lunchtime marked by Yellow Dragons, the sulphurous mustard clouds that poured from a hundred thousand factory chimneys. The peace of the garden, the mayhem that stamped just beyond its walls, how could the two opposites ever be reconciled? And something in Rentang’s words, nagging at Piao. Something feeling wrong, out of mesh. Also irreconcilable.
“How did they get to be in the Huangpu? These were serious crimes that they had committed. Four out of the five you have told me about would have been serving lao-gai … life sentences. That is if luck had smiled upon them. Why had they been released from Gongdelin, what were they doing as free men?”
Piao thinking aloud. The words mainly for himself and for a God who never seemed to answer. Rentang stood to leave, pushing the chair back rudely. Fishing deeply into his trouser pocket and throwing some crumpled notes and loose change onto the table.
“I don’t even want you paying for my fucking tea …”
He rounded the corner of the table, his shadow, his head across Piao’s shoulder. A warmth about his smell. A heady mix of streaky pork, expensive tobacco and too much sleep.
“… read the reports, Investigator Piao, who said that they had been released from Gongdelin Prison? Only one was on the outside. Qingde. Your deputy, Yaobang, he should know all about him. He was the one who put him inside in the first place. Perhaps you should be asking those closest to you, why it is that they said nothing when someone they recognised was being pulled from the river?”
Rentang’s voice a needle inserted into the Senior Investigator’s inner ear and beyond.
“The other four, Yongshe, Feng, Decai, Ziyang … they never left Gongdelin prison. ‘Officially’. As you said, their crimes were serious. The State thought so as well. They were executed for these crimes a day before you dragged them out of the Huangpu. Officially, their bodies have not yet been released. Officially, you could never have found them in the river. Officially, you are investigating the murders of men that never could have taken place. Officially, they had already been executed by firing squad …”
He adjusted his spectacles.
“… where does that fucking leave you, my dangerous friend?”
His footsteps made no sound. When the Senior Investigator looked up, Rentang had left. The only sound was in Piao’s head, a thousand questions, each with a busy tongue. And laced through the labyrinth, a single red thread. The name Gongdelin. ‘Virtue Forest.’
Chapter 15
The Nanjing Road stretches for six miles. A razor slash of windscreens running west to east and spurning twenty-six side streets … splitting the city into two chunks. Four huge department stores ride its back, including the No.10 store at 635 Nanjing, where the Chinese themselves buy. The No.1 store at 830 Nanjing, on the fringe of the People’s Park … the largest store in the country. Its floor space packed with every item available to the Chinese worker.
Many other shops also vie for the trade that is generated by a million pedestrians a day. At 257 Nanjing, silk. At 428 Nanjing, jewellery. The Xinhua Bookstore at No.345. Porcelain, pottery, at No.550 and 1698 Nanjing. The Yangzhou Restaurant at 308, with its wild duck and tofu. Scrolls, wall hangings, at No.190. The wood panelled dining room of the Cantonese Xinya, at 719 Nanjing. At No.546 the Xin Xin Barber’s Shop. Eighty cutters permanently occupied. Men on the ground floor, women on the first floor. Five yuan buying a traditional massage in the lap of their special vibrating barber’s chair. On the corner of Sichuan Zhonglu, the coffee bar Deda Xicaishe, with its renowned chocolate buns. Or a couple of doors down at No.143, the Donghai Fandian with its minted coffee. Around the corner at 952 Nanjing, the ‘Face Friend’ cosmetics shop. On the counter top, their famous ‘nourishing powder.’ On the back shelf, a central display of their lipsticks. Next to it a large mock-up of a fingertip crafted in shiny plastic. On its long elegant nail, such red, red varnish.
Blood red.
*
The bar was at the wrong end of the Nanjing Road. Away from the most prestigious shops, the most expensive hotels. This was the rump of the horse, the end where the shit poured out. The Nanjing that the tourists stayed away from and which led onto Hongqiao, the road to the airport.
It was easily missed, a door with no sign. It led to a hallway, poorly lit and rich with the stink of piss and the embrace of subtly scented maotai, fifty-three per cent proof. The bar was downstairs. A place to be lost in, in a country that constantly watched each face. It was a place of contagiously fierce drinking. Although still early, the dustbin behind the counter was already full of bottles without labels. Two of the empty bottles were Yaobang’s.
The Big Man bought another bottle from the bar. Piao’s eyes following him. Noticing how shiny his shoes were, as he placed a hand across the top of his glass as Yaobang bowed the bottle in his direction.
“What about you Mrs American, yellow wine, you try some?”
Piao interpreted.
“Is it good?”
The Senior Investigator shrugged.
“Some think s
o. I do not. It is a clouded wine, old. We bury it in earthenware bottles for many years, then we mix it with a young wine. It is like your western drink, sherry. If you like to drink a sweet syrup, you will find it good. But it is nineteen per cent, it will make your beer seem as water.”
Yaobang smiled, ready to pour. Barbara shook her head, her fingers, an ivory cage across the mouth of her glass.
“I think I’ll have some more water.”
Piao poured some more of the Qingdao beer into her glass, its amber flush seeming to warm her fingers.
“This is very pleasant, Boss. Very pleasant. Even if the New Year is still a few weeks away. We should do this more often …”
The Big Man took his drink down in one, eyes closed, tongue like an over boiled hot dog, set between his teeth. He poured himself another yellow wine.
“… I could always arrange for a Liberation Truck to move our office over here, Boss. I could take the table over there.”
It was the table nearest to the bar. The Senior Investigator smiled on cue.
“Talking about work …”
They weren’t, but he had to introduce it.
“… I need some names checked out. Full reports. I want to know everything, nothing left out.”
“You mean what colour turds they shit, eh Boss?”
“That is not exactly how it is put in the bureau’s training manual, but I think that you have the general idea.”
The Big Man smiled, taking the list of five names and browsing down it. Placing the paper in his pocket. Not a hint of recognition at any of the names. And all of the time, the Senior Investigator’s stomach in a bottomless fall.
“Another drink, Mrs American?”
“Sure, why not. I’m amongst friends, aren’t I.”
“Boss?”
Piao shaking his head. Unable to find any words, as if his tongue was screwed to the roof of his mouth. The bottle’s neck lifted in mid-flow, dripping across the table and stranding a spangle of yellow wine stars on the off-white chipped formica of its surface. The Big Man setting the bottle back down as he strained in his pocket for the list. Eyes marching back down the names.
“Liu Qingde. Boss, I know this fucking little shit. A liumang that I put away about a year ago. What’s the story here?”
Piao suddenly feeling that he could breathe again. Find words again.
“Five names. The five who were unidentified from the river.”
“You sure, Qingde was one of them, Boss?”
The Senior Investigator nodded.
“Fuck it. I should have recognised him, shouldn’t I?”
Piao drank his beer, only noticing its sweetness now, not its bitter aftertaste.
“He was mutilated. He had no eyes. Face broken with a clubbing hammer …”
Letting the Big Man off the hook; a sense of exhilaration that there was no cover-up. That Yaobang was still his man.
“… and the mud, and the swelling from the river.”
“But I still should have recognised him, Boss.”
Barbara sensing the tenseness, not understanding it, but wanting to diffuse it.
“A liu-mang, what is it?”
The Senior Investigator looked up from his glass.
“A gangster. A heavy …”
Looking back into his glass avoiding eye contact.
“… yes, you should have recognised him. But you did not. It has cost us time. What the cost of that is, who can know? Just get me the reports and we will take it from there. Now tell me about Liu Qingde.”
“You were testing me, weren’t you Boss,? Fucking testing me!”
Piao pushed the glass towards the Big Man’s fist.
“This case is testing all of us. Drink with me and test this new bottle.”
He nudged the glass into Yaobang’s palm, shaping the Big Man’s fingers around its coldness. The warmth of his flesh. How could he ever have thought that of Yaobang? Fuck it. A case like this will shake anything loose that is not bolted down.
The Big Man thrust his glass against Piao’s, a rain of beer and wine falling to the table.
“Shit. You and me against the fucking world, Boss. Here’s to Pan and to your cousin.”
“And Wenbiao.”
“The young puppy. Yes, Wenbiao.”
“And Bobby.”
Barbara’s glass clinked against the other two. A second’s silence, marking a boundary, almost as if it signposted a rite of passage. Piao’s arm fell around her shoulder.
“Your understanding of Mandarin is improving. We must be more careful about what we say …”
He smiled, Barbara’s smile following in its footsteps.
“… here’s to Bobby …”
The Senior Investigator refilled the glasses.
“… now let us test more of the bottle while you tell me about the tough little shit, Liu Qingde, that you put away.”
Yaobang drank deeply, swallowing hard.
“He was small time, Boss, but with big time dreams. I remember he smelt like a yeh-ji. Sweet perfume around his neck, puke on his tongue.”
“A yeh-ji, a wild pheasant, a hooker.”
Barbara seeking Piao’s nod of affirmation at her interpreting skills. He nodded. The Big Man threw back the rest of the drink. A drip of yellow wine running from his lips, onto his chin, onto the table.
“You know Li Zhen, he owns restaurants and a few clubs? Also pimps and runs the protection rackets in the French quarter … most likely the drugs distribution as well, although we’ve never proved fuck all. Qingde was working for him and at the same time trying to carve out a little of his own territory. Protection mostly. All we could get him on was extortion and threatening behaviour. We thought we’d be able to squeeze the little bastard, get to Li Zhen. I have to hand it to him, tough little fucker, never said a single word …”
The barman wiped the table. The cloth more dirty than the gutter outside. Yaobang remained silent until he was gone.
“… Zhen and Qingde, they’re distant cousins. It’s a family firm. Everyone’s a fucking cousin or a cousin of a cousin. It’s as tight as a camel’s arse in a sandstorm.”
Piao drank his beer.
“A small fish in a big pond, Zhen. A legend only in his own toilet.”
“They’ve been trying to get him for fucking years, Boss. They say that he moved from pimping and protection to drugs. Now they say he’s always been in drugs. The other things were a front.”
Piao finished his beer and placed the glass on the table, streams of foam racing to the bottom of the glass.
“Zhen, they cannot get hold of him because its not the other activities that are a front, its him, he’s a front.”
“Always the way, Boss. And where does the fucking trail lead back to? Where it always does, some fat, rich shit high up in the Party. Probably the loudest speaker when it comes to complaining about corruption in the government.”
“Slugs. Their trail of slime always leads home.”
“Or to other slugs,” Barbara added.
The Big Man smiled as he tried to wring the last few drops from the bottle. No sense of embarrassment in the lengthy wait for their fall into his glass. He shook his head.
“A voice of experience from our Mrs American, yes?”
She nodded, raising her glass.
“Yeah, Boss, tough little shit that Qingde. Always gave me the feeling that he was overstretching. That he would either end up as the top liu-mang or on a slab in the city morgue …”
Yaobang held the rim of the glass above his tongue, the yellow rain drizzling down onto it.
“… poor little bastard. Missed out twice.”
“Zhen, is he around?”
“Sure Boss, saw him the other day on the Fuzhou Road. He was in a Hong-Qi, can you believe it, a shit like him in a Red Flag?”
“Most of the shit in Shanghai is not in gutters, it is sitting in Red Flags. What is new?”
The Big Man laughed, head tipped back. Nostrils black, round, rem
inding Piao of the entrance to the vehicular tunnels that passed under the Huangpu near the Longhua Pagoda.
“Where can he be found?”
“Most of the time he’s at his restaurant on the Wenan Road. The street market end. It’s got a stupid name, the Duck something. What the fuck is it? The Roast Duck. The Big Duck. The Sick Duck, that’s it, the Sick Duck …”
Yaobang shook his head in genuine concern.
“… how can someone own a Red Flag and then call their restaurant the Sick Duck? Such persons should be under constant surveillance. They are a threat to decent citizens …”
The Senior Investigator nodded in polite agreement. His own uncle’s restaurant next to Yichuan Park was called the Crying Dumpling. He considered, for an instant, telling Yaobang this, but thought better of it. His uncle was not a man who would appreciate constant surveillance.
“… perhaps we should pay him a little visit Boss, what do you think?”
Piao watched the spilt stars of yellow wine run into each other and dribble off the end of the table.
“It is the very least that we can do for the decent citizens of our city,” he replied.
*
Hours and bottles. Bottles and hours.
“What the hell did Bobby have in common with five Chinese thugs in a prison in Shanghai?”