by Andy Oakes
“I have a flight to catch and Barbara to meet in forty-five minutes. It is against my principles to let a lady down.”
“Walk into that corridor and I will shoot you.”
Piao poked the pistol violently into the Englishman’s side. Steel grating rib. Doubling up … pulling his hand from the door and to his flank. Face black with anger. But nailing it in place. Reasoning the venom from it, but storing it away.
“Shoot me … shoot me and you would be dead within ten seconds.”
His eyes darting left, indicating the corridor beyond the wall, the two men standing in it. Smoke and stale jokes. Pistols holstered.
“It might be worth it.”
“Suicide, for what, to provide a truth for Chinese justice? Don’t be so naive. You are the only one left, Senior Investigator, everybody else knows how rotten the system is from the top of the pyramid down. Everyone. Everything is for sale. Rock bottom prices. The People’s Republic of China … a whore for a packet of Benson and Hedges. A state secret for a bottle of Teacher’s. So what is worth dying for, Senior Investigator? Do you really think that killing me or bringing me to trial will end the transplant industry in your country. That it will stop the prisoners being executed and their organs from being harvested?”
The curve of steel against Piao’s finger. Its tension. Squeezing it … the 7.62mm round, his anger. At that moment wanting to kill Haven; the Englishman with that rare ability to convince that everything that you touched or believed in, was covered in shit.
No words left anymore. Just kill the fucker!
Haven feeling the barrel of the pistol against his ribs expand, as if it was about to discharge. Holding Piao’s stare in check with his own. Pointing to his top pocket. Moving his hand slowly towards it, the Senior Investigator almost mesmerised. Pulling a tie from it. Draping it over Piao’s pistol … over the Senior Investigator’s hand. A PSB tie. Food stain upon food stain across it. Yaobang’s tie. Without doubt, Yaobang’s tie.
“Yes, Senior Investigator, you are definitely someone who misses everything by just a few hours.”
“Where is he?”
Haven pushed the pistol away from his ribs. The Big Man’s tie slipping to the floor.
“He is safe, but if my associates do not get a telephone call from me thirty minutes before my flight leaves Hongqiao Airport for New York …”
“Where is he?”
Leisurely Haven walked across the room, picking up his briefcase.
“The string of barges opposite the north river entrance to the Jiangnan Shipyard in Luwan. He is on the furthest of the barges into the river.”
A shiver. The Huangpu. Piao holstered the pistol.
“Then we have a deal, Senior Investigator Piao. I get my flight to New York, you get your fat deputy back …”
He stooped, picking up Yaobang’s tie.
“… and he even gets this back. It will be as if nothing ever happened.”
Haven hung the tie over the Senior Investigator’s shoulder. Piao pulling open the door and walking into the corridor; the two heavies stiffening. Jokes, smiles, falling from their lips. Their hands reaching into the insides of their jackets. The Englishman raised a hand and they relaxed, like pit bulls who had been thrown a bone. Still ugly, but well behaved ugly.
“I shall pass your best wishes on to Barbara Hayes, Senior Investigator …”
And then, almost in a whisper.
“… I shall miss China.”
Piao started his walk toward the elevator.
“Go and get your flight to New York, Mr Haven. Go before I change my mind.”
Chapter 36
An anonymous rhythm drumming on the roof of the car. Rain incessant, insistent. Crowds in shop doorways, snaking, tight to the shopfronts, pressed hard against plate glass windows. Piao parked in Wanpinglu and proceeded on foot, half running. The downpour stinging, drenching him. Down his face in rivulets, off of his nose, his chin, across his eyes. And all of the time, a hole in his shoe … his foot, as wet, as cold as misery.
He hit the embankment and the climax of the New Year celebrations began, as if his reaching the Huangpu had triggered a switch. Down river, the Bund, a stream of rockets spurting skyward. Raking gold traces. The river as yellow as mustard seed. Another thunder, the river now as red as capsicums. Piao moved into the crease of shadow, down the embankment. From the steps, jumping onto the first barge; arm thick ropes threading through the bobbing, weaving caravan of rising iron pontoons. Fastened to heavy steel ring shackles fixed into the stone wall of the embankment in a weep of rust and algae. Beads of rain across his face, mimicking the primary colours of the rocket bursts. On his hands and knees; the roll of the river transferred through the cast iron hull of the barge, centring on his forehead. Numbing it. A swell of nausea flooding over him. They would be waiting for him on the last barge, knowing that he would be coming alone. Yaobang was here, he knew it … it was a trap, not a lie. He threw up. Fear or seasickness, he wasn’t sure, and did it actually matter now that the options had all run out? More rockets, the sky thumping too violet, the clouds purple. He moved to the rolled lip of the barge, face to the sky, mouth open … the rain on his tongue in a taste of gunpowder, rusted iron, and every word that he had ever wanted to say, but hadn’t. Thinking of a limousine on the road to Hongqiao Airport. A jet being turned around, re-fuelled. The dull click of Haven’s Dunhill cigarette lighter. Barbara’s legs in a long lazy cross. And tonight … he could die tonight. He could die any night, so what the fucking difference? The difference being a red-hot rivet of shock, in the sudden realisation that he no longer wanted to die.
Standing uneasily. Looking out to the centre of the river along the uneven string of barges. An iron chain with each link providing its own white knuckle ride. Jumping across the crushing gap. The metal deck rising up, meeting his feet. Another gap, another. The river sandwiched in between rolling buffers of scarred iron … its waters in quick changes of hue as rockets streaked skywards, arced and fell. This time tangerine. This time blazing white. The night torn. Thick smoke linking cityscape to cloud base.
Piao slowed as he came to within five barge widths of the last pontoon, taking some breaths, calming the feverish thoughts in his head. His sweat mixed with the driving rain. The tide, now on the turn, each wave as plump as a pregnant woman approaching full term. Leaping to the next barge as it fell between waves; burdened by its bundled, tarpaulin and roped load. Losing his footing, falling. Grabbing the rough weave of heavy cords. A fierce rope burn across his palms, the colour of a crimson lipsticked mouth. Hauling himself to his feet, his thoughts already moving ahead. If they were as good as they should be, they would be well prepared and waiting for him. If they were half as good as they should be, they would already have seen him … and would be watching him now. Traversing the humps of cargo. The barge falling, its sister rising, jaw against jaw in metallic whelps. The river squeezed between them into fluorescent azure needles as the arc of the rockets reached their zenith, falling back upon themselves in a shower of sapphires. Barge to barge … Piao moving across, half jumping, half scampering. The light plunging to black. Cityscape, river, barges, melting into each other in degrees of grey. When the sky lit again in a flood of cherry-red, he could see the last barge moored tightly against the buoy. And a man, Yaobang, blood on his forehead, matting his hair … tied against the cargo hold. Checking the shadows, double checking; just the Big Man, no one else. Pulling his pistol and keeping low, the Senior Investigator jumped the gap to the neighbouring barge. The roughness of his cuff across his eyes, wiping away the shutter of rain. Checking the magazine, the spare nine shot detachable box in his pocket. Slipping the safety. Rockets falling in sparks … and everything exploding to grass green. The river. The rain. The deepest mounded folds of the tarpaulin. Rounding the puddled hillocks, eyes straining. A constant salvo firing in his chest; expecting to see a shadow peel from a shadow. Metal in its hand. A breath of flame, as a round was let loose from a snub-nosed pist
ol … but nothing.
A clear view of Yaobang now. The bind of ropes around his wrists, around his ankles. Shaking his head as unconsciousness loosened its grip. For an instant, light fading into grey, then the darkness plunged aside … everything, a blinding gold, as sharp as citrus juice. Dropping onto the fierce roll of the last barge. The rain in sheets of gilt. Moving toward the Big Man … words on his wet lips, but nothing coming out. His eyes widening, wild, staring past Piao, across his shoulder. Behind the Senior Investigator, a figure rising up, arms straightening. Piao instinctively diving to the left, the bundles of tarpaulin breaking his fall. Twisting. Both hands already wrapped around the Type 67’s rectangular butt. Letting off two shots, chest height. A squat figure, blood-red in the vermilion light, folding, then falling hard against the iron of the deck. Head in a sickening concussion. Pistol skidding through the shallow puddles. Rain streaming onto his face, eyes open … but dead. A damp blot, almost black, spreading across the front of his jacket and double-holed shirt. A thud … and the sky was white, blazing. Transforming iron into ice. River into glacier. The shadows around the bow uncovered and with it, a grey smudge left stranded, shape shifting. Two, three flashes, as the man knelt, stood, ran … discharging his pistol. Piao picking up his sprint against the scuds of ferry lights, pin-line of the 67’s sight chasing the running man’s torso. Opening up with two bursts. One short, clipping off a mooring point. Its sparks, freezing white. The other shot holing the flapping tail of his coat. Letting loose another two shots … the rimless rounds finding their targets, hip and stomach. Punching him violently into the gap between the barges. The Senior Investigator running to the curled iron lip, about to look over into the slice of river when the hand reached up, as tight as a shackle around his ankle. Falling, losing balance, the iron of the deck racing up in a crunching blow. Piao’s fingers bleeding, scrabbling for a handhold as the weight of the man pulled his legs, almost up to his groin, over the side of the barge. Looking down, the man’s face silver with sweat and rain. The river below, black. Aware of the shrieks of fireworks all around, but seemingly far way. The only noises inside him, heart thumping, and the clatter of memories being assembled like train carriages to parade before him. A smell of gunpowder, raw sewage, and the cheap cologne of the man whom he was about to die with in the Huangpu. But in an instant it happened … seeing the sister barge rear up on the belly of a fat wave, the gap narrow. Rust iron jaws closing around the man’s shoulders in a sickening squeal of metal against metal. His immediate loss of grip on Piao’s ankle and on the welded angle iron that his other hand had been fastened to. The Senior Investigator hauled his legs up and over the barge’s snarling lip. All of the time watching the man’s face, the glaze of surprise in his eyes. Always surprise. Even as the barge’s jaws closed around his skull in an embrace of bleeding rust, flaking paint, and memories, thoughts, life, spilling in a slow plume of scarlet … watching the man’s face.
Piao turned toward Yaobang, nothing in the Big Man’s eyes this time, but raising his bound hands … raising them, three fingers shaking and extended. Just three fingers. Three. There was one more left alive and he would be behind Piao. He had to be behind.
The Senior Investigator spun, keeping low. It was already too late. The noise, the pain, laced with fire. Two shots thudding into his lower back, punching him across the deck; colliding with Yaobang. Watching his pistol jolt from his hand. Watching his own blood, as warm as a summer night, curve and swirl into the rusted puddle around him. Everything … sounds, shapes, the rain against his face, edged in a new reality. Both close and distant, both serrated steel and plush velvet. Piao looked up, a man in front of him, chrome bright, pistol in his hand. Rain and light playing across his skull … Comrade Officer Chief Liping.
The sky crashed to indigo and Liping advanced with purpose, his footsteps making no noise. His words far away, as if being whispered down a long tunnel.
“Stupid Piao. You were my best Investigator. Always so clever. Too clever. To be too clever can be a disadvantage …”
Kneeling in front of Piao. The Chief’s eyes, the warmth of blood flowing from his own back and yet tasting it on his tongue; the total that was the Senior Investigator’s universe. And yet only thinking about Liping’s knee resting in the puddle. It would be wet. It would be as cold as ice.
A man could catch a nasty cold …
“… I saw myself in you. I tried to guide you. Encourage you. Warn you. Like a father with a precocious child …”
Liping placing his pistol on the deck; matt black on a river of reflection. The colours dying from cornflower blue to slate. Reaching into his pocket, pulling the blade of the knife from its body with over-precise care. Its honed edge catching the light.
“… it hurts doesn’t it Senior Investigator, to know a truth, to die for it? To know that it will die with you. Dying, that is what you are doing Piao. Will you do that cleverly as well, Senior Investigator?”
Liping reached forward with both hands, slowly, deliberately, as if to embrace the precocious child. Taking hold of Piao’s right ear, at first gently … the grip increasing to the pinch of a vice. His other hand, the knife moving across the Senior Investigator’s face. Coming to rest with its cold cutting edge hard against the pinch of flesh that joins earlobe to jaw. And with it, blood in a thick tear down the side of Piao’s neck. The blade just at rest for a second or two … before striking violently upward in a sawing action. The knife pulled away across the Senior Investigator’s line of sight. A wash of intense pain and sickening warmth flowing down Piao’s collar to his shoulder. Liping holding the trophy between two smudged, bloody fingers. The ear, smaller, neater than Piao would ever have imagined. And yet knowing that he should be screaming with the horror, clutching with both hands to the side of his burning face. To staunch the pain, to dam the river of blood. But everything was dulled and there was no strength … the Senior Investigator could feel it slipping away from his back, burning hot onto cold iron. And all of the time, the rain drumming against his skull; marking the flight of each second.
Chief Liping spoke, each word remote and separately packaged. Washing the blade of the knife in the puddle. Replacing it in his jacket and standing as he did so.
“You have been a grub in the rice bowl, Senior Investigator Piao. So nearly ruining the banquet …”
Raising his hand, the pistol fisted in it. A single accusing finger of anodised steel.
“… but now it is over.”
The finger tightening, about to spit its venom.
A shot … its crack almost eaten by the anger in the skies overhead. Liping toppling sideways, as if he had been fashioned from an overextended pile of children’s bricks. The pistol and Piao’s ear, falling from his hands. The jaundiced white orbs of his eyes rolling up … dead before he hit the iron deck. Only when he was lying on his face at Yaobang’s feet could you see what had felled him; the wound, the hole as large as a dumpling at the base of his skull. Blacker than his eyes. And the red ribbon flowing from it, across his neck … into the puddle, until the puddle was made up only of blood. Piao watched the flow of blood for some time, it reminding him of a kite’s gentle tail riding the breeze, until the shadow of the man standing in front of him eclipsed it.
Haven knelt, his eyes so dark that they couldn’t be seen. Two smudges holing his face … just like the eight, just like Bobby’s. And all of the time, the rain, falling in the deep crease of shadow between them.
“You do not seem surprised to see me, Senior Investigator?”
The words, like a distant bell, weaving into the punch and slap of waves against the iron hull of the barge. Piao didn’t answer, his attention like flotsam and jetsam … adrift and moving out of reach.
“But you wouldn’t be surprised would you?”
Haven’s fingers trailed through the puddle, the consistency of paint. Picking up the ear and holding it in front of the Senior Investigator’s eyes. Placing the ear on his lap. Blood across his fingers. In the amber
light, as brown as shit. Wiping them down the front of Piao’s shirt.
“Failure is a new experience for you, it will take time to sink in. But of course, there will not be time for any new experiences to sink in. You are bleeding to death. In an hour, perhaps less, you will die …”
Just words, so many sounds following each other in a meaningless dribble. Piao adjusted his head slightly, all of his will power taken up and spent. Trying to look past the Englishman’s shoulder to the river. To the pretty pink-coloured waves.
“… you want to know why I killed Liping?”
Haven had taken his hand, carefully unfolding the fingers of his clenched fist.
“I was the loose end that he was supposed to deal with. A pity. He never realised that he was a loose end also. A loose end that I wanted to tie off …”
He smiled.
“… I would say that he’s pretty well tied off now, wouldn’t you, Investigator?”
Haven wiped clean the butt of the rifle, the stock, the scope, with his handkerchief. Taking Piao’s hand. Carefully, so carefully, modelling it around the pampered timber. As soft as the caress on a fat girl’s thigh. Collecting the spent cartridge case and dropping it a few metres from the Senior Investigator’s feet.
“Another loose end, the Minister, my business partner. You want to know why Kang Zhu has turned against me?”
Piao looking down at the rifle before staring into the Englishman’s eyes; feeling their fire melt into his. Speaking the words, but his own voice so unfamiliar to him.
“Not paid.”
Haven laughed, the inside of his mouth as red as over ripe cherries. He patted Piao’s hand closed.
“Oh, he was paid, Senior Investigator …”
Standing, the light clotting ruddy around his head and shoulders.
“… and now he is collecting the interest …”
He lit a cigarette. Smoke lost in smoke … as the stream is swallowed by the river, the river by the sea.