by Andy Oakes
Barbara’s fingers moved across her eyes, brushing aside a hook of yellow curl.
“It just keeps going around and around my head. What’s the link, Piao?”
His finger traced the edge of the beer glass as he spoke.
“A steel chain binding eight bodies together in death, that is a link. It says that something else, something with much power was shared by these eight …”
Piao looked away. The honesty in her cerulean eyes too much to bear.
“… they had a secret. Your son was a part of this.”
“Bobby had no secrets.”
Her voice louder, but with a broken edge of uncertainty.
“You forget, I am a policeman. The most cynical of professions. Everybody hides something. Everybody has a secret.”
“Not me, Mr Policeman. Politicians haven’t got the time to hide things. We’re too goddamn busy finding out what everybody else is hiding.”
“It is the opposite in China. Our politicians are so busy hiding their own secrets that they do not have the time to discover the secrets that anybody else hides. Is this more honest?”
“Honest?”
She laughed. Her teeth were white. He had never seen teeth so white.
“What the hell has honesty got to do with it? But tell me, Senior Investigator, as we are talking about honesty. Tell me about Bobby’s secret. About the secret that they all shared. I’m sure that a cynic like you has an opinion?”
“I have an opinion about everything.”
“I bet you do, so put it on the table.”
She would not like what he had to say. He drew a breath, holding it in the well of his throat. Pumping up the words with it.
“Drugs, only drugs create such violence. We have a problem with shipments and gangs crossing the border from the New Territories. There has been much violence. Not like this, but still considerable. We have been highly successful. Many arrests, many severe punishments. In most of the cases government officials had been involved, issuing passports, visas, travel permits. Theirs were the most severe punishments.”
“But you’ve no evidence of any drug involvement with Bobby or the others.”
“We know that two of the Chinese found in the river were drug users. A third was working for Li Zhen, a suspected dealer. We know nothing of Ye Yang, yet. We are awaiting reports. Heywood and your son, they do not seem to have been users, but they were in a position to be able to travel in and out of the country at will, from province to province without internal travel documents being issued. This is very unusual, but in the drug’s trade very necessary. Having people in responsible positions, trusted, respected, who can move freely … that is of unimaginable importance.”
A rage in Barbara’s eyes. Blue fading to grey, the colour of knife blades.
“You don’t miss an opportunity do you? I asked you to put your opinion on the table, not chop it up for firewood. Two junkies and one shit who was associated with a pusher does not turn it into drug murders. Christ, if you locked up everyone who mixed with junkies and pushers, half of the American Senate and Congress would be doing time.”
Piao’s eyes narrowed.
“You joke with me, yes?”
She ignored him.
“And just because Bobby and Heywood were in positions of authority and could travel freely, that means diddly. It certainly doesn’t mean that they were in the drug’s trade. You’re wide of the mark, Senior Investigator. Off target completely.”
He looked puzzled.
“Diddly?”
“Diddly. Diddly. It means that it doesn’t mean anything at all.”
She longed for a conversation with words that she didn’t have to simplify; didn’t have to repeat.
The Senior Investigator looked even more confused.
“Anyway, Barbara, my opinion, I have not finished it.”
“You have very long and wild opinions, Senior Investigator.”
“Yes, many say that, and many more are not brave enough to say that. I thank you for your honesty.”
“We seem to keep coming back to honesty. It’s not a subject that politicians like me know a lot about.”
“But it is a subject that an officer like me can recognise when he sees it. In your son’s death, the death of the others, I recognise the honesty of something going very wrong. The cadres who are the shadows behind this, sensing the rifles of the execution at the back of their necks. They panicked. They feared being caught and so destroyed the evidence. Your son, Heywood, Ye Yang, the others … just evidence. Nothing more than evidence. Not sons or daughters. And still they destroy the evidence, trying to cover the path back to them. Pan, Cheng my cousin, the student …”
His hand was on her shoulder. On material. On skin. Feeling rough, dirty against her softness. Wanting to keep his hand there, but feeling that he should remove it.
“… it was simple, like the drug’s trade. Not complex. There was what you call a deal. It went wrong. The cadre took a decision, a business decision. It was about money, percentages. Profit and loss. They wrote off what they could not salvage. The drug’s trade has a dishonesty about it that is almost honest. It was drugs, Barbara. Your son, he was selling drugs …”
His fingers, tight across her shoulder.”
“… the mother of an addict might say that he deserved to be found in the river.”
A flame in her eyes, dangerously fierce.
“Damn you, Senior Investigator.”
Pulling away from his hand with a sharp turn. Moving out from the doorway and into the alley. It was raining outside, plump mercury tears. She would be soaked within seconds, but she didn’t seem to care. He did, but knew that he couldn’t have stopped her even if he had tried.
*
Piao and the Big Man cowered in the doorway of the bar. It was still raining. They had been there for twenty minutes, waiting for it to let up. Yaobang hating rain, fearing it more than a liu-mang with a knife in a dark piss stinking alley. An adult, a detective with a fully paid up pot-belly, afraid of a few drops of rain. It had always amazed Piao.
“Woman trouble?”
Yaobang’s head nodded in the direction of Piao’s car.
“She still has some painful things to hear, painful things to accept.”
The Big man picked his nose, examining the result of the excavation with amusement.
“A bit like a bogey, eh Boss?”
He held up his index finger.
“Things always look clean and neat from the outside, until you poke around too much.”
The Senior Investigator felt a ripple of nausea wash against his forehead.
“Is that an ancient adage passed down from your family’s ancestors?”
Yaobang was indignant.
“No Boss, I thought of it myself.”
It was true, the black gapped smile said it all.
“Talking of painful things to hear, Boss, Liping’s old crow, the secretary with the tits like burst paper bags, she was looking for you. She looked like she’d been trying to suck a snake from its skin. Ugly old sow.”
Chief Liping. Painful things to hear, painful things that would wait until tomorrow. The rain seemed to ease, they weren’t sure, but they made a break for the cars anyway. The windscreen blasted in silver dribbling shot; almost impossible to see Barbara’s face through it. He opened the door, got in and drove. She said nothing until they reached the Jing Jiang, and then only as she stood on the hotel’s steps. The rain beading her hair. Across her face in a scatter of pearls.
“You don’t know Bobby. He’d never be involved in anything to do with drugs. His father died of drugs. His own father.”
She was walking up the steps, a curtain of rain between them, dividing them. Turning once more and almost shouting.
“You don’t know Bobby, you don’t even know me.”
A heavy drum roll of fierce drops against the car roof. Her outline lost in grey, as if she were slowly being washed away. And all along the Nanjing Road, the sp
attered beat of the windscreen wipers labouring against the torrent, seeming to echo the rhythm of the question that was repeating in his head.
So, who are you? … So, who are you? … So, who are you? … So, who are you?
*
“Serious charges, Senior Investigator Piao. Extremely serious …”
The letter was still in Piao’s hand, unopened. As soon as it had been handed to him it had burnt. He had recognised the type, the envelope, even its smell. He knew the sort of coated tongue that had sealed its contents in place. He had never held a letter that had felt so threatening. … that had stung with such malevolence.
“… to have made an enemy of such an important tong zhi, stupid. Stupid. Comrade Zhiyuan is powerful. He is of the old guard, the accusations that you made that night on the foreshore would not be forgotten or passed over by such a man as this …”
Liping’s face marble. Eyes unblinking. He stood, striking a formal pose.
“… Comrade Zhiyuan has raised the following formal charges with the Danwei of the Public Security Ministry. That you made counter-revolutionary statements about the Party and Government of the People’s Republic of China. That you made serious accusations against the security apparatus and services of the Party and Government of the People’s Republic of China. That you engaged in language and behaviour that besmirches the pride of the Chinese people and which strikes at the heart of our great sense of nationalism. That you threatened a Chairman of a Shiqu, a favoured citizen of the People’s Republic of China and an honoured member of the Party …”
Liping let the letter float from his fingers to the desk. Piao’s eyes following its fall.
“… Comrade Zhiyuan and the Party Secretary of our Ministry’s Danwei were together during the ‘twenty tortuous years’. They were comrades in the Red Guard …”
He walked around the desk, his shoes, hand stitched, foreign.
“… the charges will be answered behind closed doors in two weeks from now, in front of the Central Committee of the Danwei. It is unavoidable, Investigator. You will be found guilty on all charges. However, your past record will be taken into account. It will lessen the final punishment. Expect as the minimum, a severe reprimand. A demotion from Senior Investigator. It is likely that the Danwei will also insist upon your transfer for ‘re-education’ …”
The street below in full flood, Liping’s eyes constantly shifting and dissecting the flow.
“… enjoy the traffic Senior Investigator, I do. It is commerce, business. The future …”
He turned.
“… you have pissed your career away, Piao. In Xinjiang the only traffic that you will see will be donkeys and camels heading across the Mountains of Heaven …”
The Chief was silent for half a minute, its intensity underlined by a background of white sound from the traffic jammed streets below.
“… you will run down all your cases pending the investigation. Detective Yun will familiarise himself with them. Your full co-operation will be needed and given. Is that understood?”
Yun, a career based on pai-ma-pi … ‘patting the horse’s arse’.
Piao nodded.
“Good. Good. Let us make this as painless as possible. Expect a call from Detective Yun …”
Liping’s eyes not leaving him for a second.
“… before you go, I should tell you some good news. There is always room for good news, is that not so, Investigator?”
Piao nodded.
“Your wife, she is pregnant. She and the Minister Kang Zhu are most happy. It is best that you should know this, and do not learn of it in a more insensitive fashion …”
There was a faint smile. Liping not bothering to hide its trail.
“… as it is said, it seems as if your bad luck comes with a lover in tow, Senior Investigator. You may leave.”
*
Wood. Marble. Their coldness through the polycotton weave of his shirt. The sweat on his back drying instantly, and with it, feeling as if his strength, his life force, had evaporated. Making it into the office. Jamming the door closed with his body. In a slow slide against the lacquered mahogany, slipping to the floor. Every detail, in razor sharp relief. Lighting the cigarette, on automatic pilot, but not feeling its welcome slash and burn. Not even tasting it. And through the tears and the tremble of his lips … Piao saying, over and over again the same words.
“My baby, it should be my baby. My baby, it should be my baby. My baby …”
The rain had stopped. Sunshine pissing through the shredded clouds and onto the dented car bonnets. Yaobang was waiting in Xingyelu; a blanket of steam rising over Fuxing Park. Everything damp. Everything bled of strength and on its knees.
“How many men?”
“Six including us, Boss.”
He started the engine. The air, hot and breathless with diesel fumes, pouring from the air vent.
“What’s the letter?”
Piao had been unaware that it was still in his fingers, unopened, corners so sharp. So sharp. He pressed it into the Big Man’s hand.
“It’s just toilet paper, that’s all.”
“It’s a bit hard and rough Boss. It will spread the shit around rather than wipe it off …”
He stuffed it into his pocket.
“… you know what they’re calling toilet paper now, Boss? Hou-men-piao … ‘back-door tickets.’ Fucking back door tickets! What a country. You need a ticket for taking a holiday, a ticket for shopping, a ticket to have a baby, now a fucking ticket to wipe your arse.”
The Senior Investigator slumped into the passenger seat. Back-door tickets. He could be given a thousand, it still wouldn’t clean up the pile of shit that covered this case from top to bottom and back again.
*
The Sick Duck Restaurant had three exits; four if you counted the side door into the filth choked alley. Piao didn’t count it. A liu-mang like Zhen was not the sort to try a runner, and even less the sort to screw up a four hundred yuan suit. So … three exits, six men. They could cover it comfortably.
The radio communicators were broken; they always were. A series of hand signals from an officer in the building opposite told the Senior Investigator what he needed to know. That Zhen was in his office on the first floor. He was alone except for a secretary. Great legs, no tits. And a desk littered with banknotes. Zhen had seemed more interested in the piles of notes. The surveillance officer, in the secretary’s legs.
The restaurant was full. A fifty seater jammed with diners. Renao, ‘hot and spicy’. Waiters throwing dishes onto tables. Bowls held high to hot pepper stained chins … chopsticks clicking. Frantic, snapping conversations. Extra orders shouted from rice filled mouths. Noodles anchored to lips.
Piao and Yaobang, in plainclothes, moved through the restaurant, around the tables. Not too fast, not with purpose, but never too slow, never seeming too linger. Pace was everything. It could give you away or hide you. A bead curtain covered a damp stain on the wall and the entrance to the stairs … they swept it aside, moving through it without a glance back. It fell behind them. A brief rattle of ceramic bead against ceramic bead. The stairs were bare, stained with food. The smell of fried rice and old banknotes following them. Zhen’s office was a flight up. Accommodation on the next floor. Beyond that, the roof and Heaven.
On reaching the landing, they moved swiftly. The door pushed open. The Senior Investigator moving to Zhen. Yaobang to the secretary.
“Who the fuck are you?”
A protective arm thrown around the piles of banknotes on the desk. Zhen’s other hand stealing inside his jacket, but Piao was ahead of him. An arm around the liu-mang’s throat. His hand wrenched from his jacket. A brief glimpse of leather and the black diamond cut of a pistol butt. The Senior Investigator pulled the weapon from the holster. A Type 67. Its body neat … its permanently attached Maxim-pattern silencer seeming to throw it off-balance. And in the sweaty air, an immediate acidic tang of steel, oil, aftershave strong with sandalwood. Droppi
ng the pistol to the floor. Piao spinning Zhen around on his chair, his breath hard against the liu-mang’s face.
“Naughty. Firearms can be very dangerous for your health and for the health of others.”
“Fuck off.”
The Big Man laughing, hand across the secretary’s face, almost covering it. His knuckles white. Her eyes rolling wide above the stub of his fat thumb.
“Not much of a vocabulary for a big city crime shit, eh Boss?”
“He must be upset. It happens at times of stress. Are you feeling stressed?”
Zhen strained in his chair, bucking against Piao’s arms.
“What are you bastards, some kind of double act come for an audition?”
“This is no audition Mr Restaurant Owner. Mr Drugs Pusher …”
The Senior Investigators lips almost touching Zhen’s perfumed cheek. But through its musk, the stench of fear cornered and looking for a way out.
“… the show has already opened, and you are centre stage. Can’t you feel the heat of the spotlight on you?”
Yaobang reached across, locking the door.
“Who the fuck are you?”
“I think he said that before, Boss. Must be that stress that you were talking about. Personally I’d just call it the fucking shits.”
Slowly he removed his hand from the secretary’s mouth. Lipstick, as red as tomatoes, smeared across his palm. Smeared across her pale face.
“Not a word … nothing.”
His eyes locked to hers, an understanding struck. Yaobang swapping with Piao, the grip tightened. The liu-mang now swamped in the Big Man’s sweaty embrace. No chances being taken. Zhen was strong, a neck as thick as a rice pot and a PSB record studded with a clutch of violent acts never quite proved … never quite disproved. The Senior Investigator moved to face him across the desk. The piles of banknotes forming a half built wall between them.
“We are PSB Investigators, but just regard us as an enthusiastic audience looking forward to your performance.”
“I’ve nothing to say to shits like you. If you’re PSB, take me in. I’ll guarantee you that I’ll be out within two hours, and that this will put your safe little careers back ten years.”