by Andy Oakes
*
Wet kisses. Warm arms. Piao bit his lip … saying good-bye and not daring to promise to meet for the New Year. Ice creams, parades, cuddles, tears … better not to let them down. To make promises to children and then break them, is to mortgage your soul.
*
He was running late. Darkness bruising the rooftops. The lights from the fair ripping at the advancing night. Walking at a pace.
“The reception, you got hold of a guest list?”
The Big Man running beside him.
“There was one in the duty office for security checks, Boss.”
“And?”
They were on the corner of Weihai Lu and Chengdu Lu, Piao looking for his loaned car. Yaobang for the next food stop.
“The name you gave me, it was high up on the list Boss. A very favoured foreigner …”
His attention drawn by the noodle shop, a handful of doors down on Chengdu; the next hour of his evening planned. Already deciding what to order. Baozi dumplings, rice noodles, steamed buns, Sanpijiu draught beer.
“… to be favoured must be comforting, eh Boss?”
“I wouldn’t know. Who invited him?”
Yaobang was already crossing Weihai Lu. The road frantic. Thunder on wheels. Shouting at the top of his voice. Piao hardly able to hear him.
“Liping. Liping invited him. You’d better hurry Boss. You’re fucking late.”
*
Red Flags. Red Banners. A dog pissing up against a wall.
The reception that he hadn’t been invited to was held in the Shanghai Conservatory Arts & Crafts Institute … an austere and unsmiling building just off of Huaihai Lu. Pigeon shit and dressed stone. Its toes paddling in the gutters that flowed from Fumin market, just a block away.
Guests were arriving. Red Flags, pennants unfurled. Flood-lights across gloss black paintwork and flaming chrome. Security, a hand resting inside their jackets. Chauffeurs running around bonnets to open doors. Piao pulled at his collar, the dress uniform that he had hurriedly changed into, a series of snags, tugs, and rubs. Joining the queue of jocular, cement chinned Russians and gnarled Politburo Members. At the front of the line, American voices. Behind them a brace of Italians … the men preening themselves, the women as moody as rain clouds in July. The private jets from Beijing’s Capital Airport were busy tonight. Piao had walked, leaving him with the legacy of a thirst that was big enough to drown in.
The anomaly of being suspended from duty, a murder suspect, yet dressed to the hilt, a back-door invitation to the customary pre-New Year reception … encouraging him to light another cigarette. For no apparent reason, his eyes were drawn to the road. Through the exhaust smoke and its sting, a figure briskly walking toward the Institute from Fuxingxi Lu. Elegant as a pin. Rounding the traffic, cutting the search of headlights, Charles Haven. Already unbuttoning the black cashmere coat, pulling off soft leather gloves. A hand brushing through the steel wire of his hair. Moving past the open doors of the Red Flag limousines. A nod to the plainclothed Security Officers. The line of queuing guests ignored. A smell of expensive cologne and toothpaste as he walked by, almost brushing against Piao’s shoulder. At the main door, Liping, skin weather-tanned, as brown as the mahogany of the heavy double doors, beckoning the Englishman through. Greeting him with a double-handed shake of the hands. Shepherding him inside, arm across his shoulder. A smart throng … languages, perfumes, cleavages, all vying for ascendancy. The doors swinging closed. A sudden stab of pain in Piao’s stomach; he hadn’t eaten since the morning. It took the Senior Investigator another twenty minutes of queuing before he could walk through the same doors.
*
Hazel hen, ‘flying dragon’ … served with mushrooms, hericium erinaceus, from the walnut forests. Duck smoked over tea leaves and camphor wood. Smoked yellow river carp. Frogs legs with grains of Huajiao spice, orange rind and spring onions. Rice flower birds preserved in spiced honey. Ravioli stuffed with crab-spawn, steam cooked and served in quinlong … bamboo boxes. Long tables. Starched white linen. Silver serving dishes. The banquet placed onto white bone china. Sauces of sunflower, damask, saffron … racing into each other. A line of waiters in dress white. Sleepy faced, shoes scuffed … eyeing the food hungrily. Serving with a controlled animosity.
Piao settled for carp, smoked in Suzhou. It had come a long way, the least that he could do was to eat it; his appetite left behind at the back of the queue to get into the reception. And all of the time watching the Englishman, glimpses of him between the stroll of guests. Haven not eating, just drinking still mineral water. Sips, lips hardly wet. Close enough, at times, to hear the odd word of his conversations with high cadre and Politburo members. His Mandarin, perfect … spoken with the distinct accent of the Shanghai-bred, but with an edge of elegance that could never be emulated by the Shanghai-bred. The Senior Investigator placed his empty plate on the buffet table, orange pepper sauce on his fingers. Sucking them clean. Drinking the remainder of his Dynasty white wine, its taste soured. Changing to a glass of the red. It was no different; as tart as limes and bad news. Moving through a glut of French diplomats. Cologne and garlic. The path to the Englishman clear. Haven alone in the desert of the centre of the hall. Piao, hearing the heels of his boots against the solid oak flooring. Hearing himself talk, and hating it …
“To be invited to such a reception, you must have friends in high places?”
There was a gap of a few seconds before Haven turned. Every movement smooth, as if rehearsed.
“Senior Investigator. The detective who burns his fingers. You are in good health, I hope?”
Piao raised his hands.
“Burns heal.”
The Englishman didn’t look at them, his attention focussed over Piao’s shoulder as he looked for the next person to talk to.
“Some burns do not. I thought that you had been suspended, Senior Investigator?”
Piao moved closer, the Englishman, a complex recipe of smells. Foreign cologne, dry-cleaning fluid, peppermint breath. But beneath it all, the odour of the animal ready for its feed. A keynote, faint but high pitched … Civet.
“You seem to know a great deal about me, Mr Haven?”
“A reputation for brilliance and now for self-destruction, and a stubbornness to succeed well at both. Who could resist knowing about you, Senior Investigator?”
Piao wished that he had a drink, not for the alcohol, just for the glass … something to keep his hands busy. A mask for nerves; his fingers already giving him away. He buried them deep into his pockets.
“And I thought that I was investigating you, Mr Haven.”
“Me, Senior Investigator. Why would you want to investigate me?”
Smiling, but darts in his eyes, like a distant arrowhead of crows worrying at the horizon.
“Because you murdered Bobby Hayes. Also Ye Yang, Heywood and Qingde. In our country that is enough reason to want to investigate somebody. Do you not think so? Tell me, Mr Haven, do you have a cigarette that I could kindly have?”
The Englishman reached into his inside pocket. A gold pack, hard and neat cornered. Tobacco as sweet as brown sugar.
“And a light please?”
The lighter was already in his hand, manicured fingers across the gold block. A dull click. The electricity arcing. Gas ignited. The flame spiking blue, building to pale yellow.
“Thank you, English cigarettes are very good. Very sweet, like yellow wine. And your lighter, it is very beautiful. I have always wanted such a lighter as this.”
Taking back the lighter, his eyes meeting Piao’s for the first time. Ice on ice.
“Do you often accuse people of four murders in such a novel fashion?”
“No. I have never investigated a man who has committed four murders before.”
“And, of course, you can prove your accusations, Investigator; witnesses, forensics, evidence. Remember evidence?”
“No. Officially I cannot even prove that you are here in our country, that you have ever been i
n our country. Officially you are not standing here now. We have less on our files about you than I can dredge up on Deng Xiaoping with the push of a single button. I just have a feeling about you.”
The Englishman brought the mineral water to his lips, teeth magnified through the bottom of the glass.
“I didn’t think so. You are a dreamer, Investigator Piao. You should know that ‘feelings’ do not hold up well in courts of law.”
“Of course you are right, Mr Haven, but it will come, evidence is like that, it builds like bamboo scaffolding, very slowly. And murderers, they are like monkeys, the higher they escape up a tree, the more that they show of their arses.”
Haven closed the narrow gap between them; his words warm on Piao’s cheek. But chilling. So calmly said … so well wrapped.
“But I am not a monkey, Senior Investigator. Monkeys do not swap New Year gifts with Senior Politburo members. Perhaps you should be scared.”
An invitation … but everything in Piao’s stare rejecting it.
“ I will wait, Mr Haven. I am very good at waiting. Wait and let the evidence show itself. Play the games that we PSB are good at. You will wish to leave our country, but you will find delays that cannot be explained. Ticket reservations will be cancelled from computer screens. Your credit cards will be rejected for no apparent reason. Stolen articles or illegal substances will be found in your hotel room, in your suitcase.”
The Englishman turned to walk away, but before he did, whispering words through clenched teeth. Words precisely hewn from ice.
“You have no idea what you are getting into, Senior Investigator, a simple policeman like you. Get out before this swallows you whole.”
Haven twisted leisurely through the perfumed throng of guests. The silky swerve of the lizard. Within seconds he was lost to Piao’s view in a press of Armani and overzealous braid.
One last glance as Piao made his way from the reception hall, their eyes meeting in a brief snap, as bitter as frostbite. Haven turning, continuing his conversation with a Mao suited clutch of Politburo members. Laughing. Glasses clinking.
Piao walked home, watching every shadow. The Englishman’s words, a constantly repeating hiccup in his mind.
Get out before this swallows you whole.
*
Five calls, cut off in tears. Angry words. Slammed receivers. The anxiety of each conversation spilt across Piao’s table in an ashtray full of cigarette butts and a sentry of empty Tsingtao bottles. He called the number again, knowing it by heart. Asking for the room number. The line connecting, ringing, picked up. Her voice … already knowing who was calling.
“I don’t need this, not again, Sun. Not again. I don’t want to argue anymore. I don’t want to cry.”
Piao closed his eyes, sucking in a breath and pushing the urgency, the panic down. Reaching for each word, polishing them. Listening to Barbara’s breath as he spoke and trying to gauge her emotions by the rhythm of her exhalations against the mouthpiece. Seconds of silence … and in it, the echo of his last word. And faint, ever so faint in the background of the call … a glass being filled, a cigarette withdrawn from a pack and being lit. The dull click of a lighter.
Clawed fingers racked the wall of Piao’s stomach, his legs feeling as if they were set in concrete. A sudden realisation that Haven was in the same room as Barbara. Through all of his calls, in the room with her.
“You’re wrong, Sun, he’s not like that. Charles could never hurt anyone. He’s going out on a limb to help me find Bobby’s killer …”
Silence again, snapped by her voice breaking. Eyes filling. Tears … warm, salty. They would taste of good-byes and of the Englishman’s cologne.
“… we’re leaving on Saturday. Please don’t call me again. I don’t think that I could stand it.”
Seconds of silence, and then,
“Sun, I won’t forget you.”
And she was gone, only the electronic pulse in the telephone’s earpiece remaining.
*
It was late. Out of cigarettes. Out of beer.
Piao slept, deep, bottomless. Dreams of broken bodies bleeding mud and airport lounges smelling of disinfectant.
He integrated the sounds into his sleep. A key slipping into a lock. A door opened. A door closed. Footsteps in the hall. A precise and careful footfall. And then the adrenaline thumping in. Hard across his chest. Shifting up the back of his skull. Finding himself instantly awake and slipping out of the bed. Naked. Pulling the shoulder holster out from underneath the bed. Its leather, cold against his thigh … diamond etched pistol butt, colder in his hand. Slipping the safety. Moving to the wall. The footsteps closer. A shadow, cutting its shape across the carpet. In one movement, stepping from behind the door, taking the intruder’s neck with his forearm. Maxim-pattern silencer of the type 67 hard against the bone at the back of the intruder’s ear. Everything in his posture expecting a counter move. Nothing came. A scream only – muffled, cut short. Piao pulling his arm away and up. A figure, dark, slight … toppling, spinning from his grip toward the bed. Perfume in his nostrils. And in his eyes, the familiar curve of lips that he had once kissed. Her hair falling in a curtain against the side of her face, like ink spilt across paper.
“Lingling.”
His wife. One of only a few times that he had been able to say her name since she had left.
“It’s good to see you, Sun.”
A sudden flush of embarrassment, he reached for a towel to cover himself, pulling it around his waist. Hiding himself from her, as if they had never been intimate.
“It’s good to see you. You’re looking well.”
She smiled, reminding him of frost across a window. Taking him and every detail of the room in within a single glance. She would see that he hadn’t shaved. See that he’d been drinking and eating crap. And her, every detail of her … immaculate. He felt miserable in his shabbiness.
“Have you come back?”
She didn’t answer. And suddenly wishing that he could snatch the words back as soon as they had left his mouth. Stupid. So stupid. Replacing the pistol in its holster and pushing it under the bed. Glancing out of the window as he stood. It was raining. Hard, relentless rain. Below, in the street, a Red Flag parked. The rain across the jet of its paintwork. Engine still running. Looking back at Lingling … rain in her hair, just like that night. Of course she hadn’t come back.
“Sorry about being so dramatic. I was going to write and send these by courier …”
Her eyes lowered, for the first time Piao noticing the thick file in her hands. Porcelain white fingers spanning the thick black characters banded down its front.
OFFICE OF THE MINISTRY OF SECURITY.
“… but it was important that I made sure that these were put directly into your hands …”
She halted for a second, raising her head slowly. Her tongue across her lips. Eyes on his. He knew the look so well. So odd to be re-experiencing its icy blast.
“… I wanted to see you and so I used the key. I was surprised that you hadn’t changed the lock.”
He felt like laughing, crying. Both emotions suddenly, confusingly, feeling a hair’s-breadth apart.
“Why change the lock? I have nothing left to steal.”
She passed him the file, her hand brushing his. His wife. So obvious now that she hadn’t come to see him … she had just come to lever him into position. Nothing changes, except for the names of the days. The Senior Investigator broke the file’s seal, pulling back the flap. Inside, two spools of tape. Glancing at the labels; they plugged the gaps in the run of tapes from Ye Yang’s hotel room. Also in the file, a series of papers. Computer printouts, reports. On the top page a passport sized photograph. Photocopied. Grainy. Charles Haven. A smile on his lip, like dog shit on a doorstep.
“These are from the Minister? It was Kang Zhu who sent the other tapes by courier a few days ago?”
She straightened her dress. Raw silk, foreign. A year of his wages could not have purchased for her
such a dress.
“I gave you the other tapes. I give you these. The Minister knows nothing of this. The Minister is to know nothing of this. The whole point is that he be kept out of your investigation. Do you understand?”
“I understand, but I can’t guarantee that anyone can be kept out of my investigation. When it comes to murders …”
She moved across to him, taking the file from the tabletop. Pulling it to her breasts … both arms wrapped around it.
“Then I take this back. And the next murder you will not be able to investigate because it will be your own …”
She turned to the window, eyes blocked in the jigsawed light spilling through the fine blinds. Mocha. Black. Mocha. She had always turned when there was a truth. As if her eyes could not stand its glare.
“… I am trying to save two lives here. Kang Zhu’s and your own, Sun.”
“The Minister has an involvement in the case that I am investigating?”
She didn’t answer. Her lips like a child’s, pursed, closed.
“He must realise that any involvement in these murders would mean the death sentence to one in such a position of authority as Kang Zhu.”
She whispered it to the bamboo blind, the window that it shaded catching her breath in slips, dots and dashes of matt grey … fading as quickly as they had formed.
“He is already serving a death sentence.”
She walked to the door, the file still clenched over her breasts. Piao moving to bar her way, an arm across the narrow hallway, his other hand holding the towel around his waist. His wife, yet she smelt of a rich high cadre.
“Give me the file. I will not implicate the Minister in my investigations. This is not to save Kang Zhu’s arse, this is to appease the victims and their families.”
A ghost of a smile haunting the corners of her bud lips.
“And this is not to save your own life, Sun?”
“I don’t know, perhaps it is. Perhaps seeing you has shown me how much I have already died. It is not something that I like.”
She released her grip and he took the file. Walking to the door, she opened it. Her hand falling into his, metal at its heart.