by Andy Oakes
Piao, walking toward the Big Man, a half wink.
“It was a great help, thank you. I now want the bodies of the girls released to their families for burial.”
The mortuary attendant calling after them.
“I’m glad that it was a help, Senior Investigator. Very glad.”
Heavy doors, triple locked, opening onto Zaoyanglu and the sounds of the night. Running to the Sedan, Yaobang, smiling, mouth open. The rain, factory-tainted, tasting of lives never kick-started, washing the last of the sour vomit from his tongue.
“Got what you wanted, Boss? So what now, call the fen-chu, talk to Zoul, surveillance, back-up?”
“No, not Zoul. A few trusted officers, no uniforms.”
“You sure, Boss?”
“I am sure.”
“Mortuaries, more fucking leaks than drunks at a urinal. You think that the message will get through?”
“It will get through.”
“ ‘Cao-mu jie-bing’, eh Boss?”
“Yes, ‘the dead cat turned’.”
*
The number, long, complicated. No ordinary number this. Only on the third attempt, getting it right. The number connecting. Even at this hour the telephone being answered within two rings. The voice of a PLA receptionist. A voice, each syllable separate and cut from ice. From the crumpled slip of paper, saying the rank, the name. Instantly the call being switched, re-switched, to a limbo of electronic white noise. A million callers, voices synthesised down to a tinnitus of surfing breeze. A ringing tone, the sort that he had never heard before. Ringing. Ringing. Just about to put down the receiver when the call was answered. A voice. A rasp.
“Ni nar.”
“Comrade Officer, Sir, you asked me to call you, to let you know if anyone requested to view the slashed whores.”
Silence. But in the background western music, voices, giggling females.
“Me, the mortuary assistant, Comrade Officer, Sir. You recall, you asked me to …”
“Yes, I know what I asked.”
“Of course, Comrade Officer, Sir. I did not wish to suggest that you had a poor memory.”
Silence. Except for a girl’s whisper. A cigarette being lit. Glasses, clinking.
“A PSB Investigator was just here. A Senior Investigator. Homicide.”
“Name?”
“Yes, I got his name, Comrade Officer, Sir. His name was Piao. Senior Investigator Sun Piao.”
Silence.
“He saw each victim. Examined them very carefully. Said that his seeing them had been ‘a help’. Yes, ‘a great help’. His Deputy, a fat oaf, said that they had just come from the Number 1 Hospital. There was another victim there. Another victim. A yeh-ji. But this one is alive, Comrade Officer, Sir. Yes, he definitely said alive.”
Silence. Whispered words. Perfumed breaths against perfumed cheek.
“Thank you for listening, Comrade Officer, Sir. I do not wish to appear greedy, Comrade Officer, Sir. But when we met, you said that I would receive a reward. For information, a large reward Comrade Officer, Sir.”
Some seconds before the mortuary assistant realised that the telephone call had been ended. Many more seconds of listening to the void’s heartbeat before he accepted the silence. Even more seconds before he had the courage to say, angrily, down the telephone receiver.
“Arsehole, fucking PLA arsehole. Your mother was a whore for whores.”
But with each word, making sure that his hand was tight across the telephone mouthpiece.
*
Silent footfall. Moving through the long passageway, the PLA, to the large private room at the back of the building in Dainty Delicacies Street. So many doors, so many ways of transacting the business of love.
As he neared the room, hearing the whore’s dollar purchased moans. Hearing laughter and the flick, flick, flick, of the Super 8’s laced film against the spool. Hearing a language badly recorded, that he could not understand.
Smells of over-indulged perfume, alcohol, bodies in heat. Stutters of light, cigarette-smoke loaded. Moving through them, to the centre of their attention, across him pornography’s dance. Thai girl on Thai girl, long open-legged, open-mouthed.
His back against the wall, watching, slumped in the soft settee’s caress, three shadow comrades and three yeh-jis. Watching. From his pocket notes in a tight bundle, fresh green dollars by the thousands. The irony not lost on him, money from whores for whores. An instant of primary flash colour as they fell through the projector’s spew. Falling over the naked backs of whores, whose faces were as cold as a magistrate’s smile.
Above Thai whispers, Thai moans … his rasp.
“Suck them off.”
Falling through the yeh-jis’ perfumed hands, enough dollars to feed their children for a year. Or enough dollars to pay off their pimps, their dealers.
“Suck them off. Whichever whore brings one of them off first gets a bonus.”
His watch removed.
“Five minutes. You have five minutes.”
From an inside jacket pocket an ivory handled cut-throat razor, unfolding its quicksilver blade.
“We have business to conduct, important and pressing business. Every minute that you go over five minutes, I will cut you.”
Dollars in their hands, the whores, confusion in their eyes. His gaze drifting to the watch’s face.
“Thirty seconds have elapsed. Pain advances on you.”
Watching as they frantically dropped to their knees. Dollars, as rain, from their fingers. Yanking the shadow officers’ pants to their ankles. Taking their hardness. Watching as lipsticked mouths caressed, kissed, sucked.
“65 seconds.”
A fascination in his eyes, as he studied, as if totally disengaged from it, the increasingly frantic motions.
“Three minutes remain.”
The whores’ heads bobbing. An eye to dollars and to the cut-throat.
“Two minutes …”
Thai whispers and moans. Chinese whispers and moans. Faster, more frantic the whores’ actions.
“One minute …”
Film’s stuttered progress over the cut-throats advancing blade.
“Thirty seconds.”
Watching and wondering if long after a whore’s lips left you, if you still felt them upon you. A part of you still. A glance at his watch. seconds, unwinding. Unwound.
“Time.”
The blade in glinting arc.
Chapter 20
“Cao-mu jie-bing … ‘the dead cat turned’.”
Four men, stepping from a glossy-sided Hong-qi. Silver people moving through greyness. Their posture confident; everything about them seeming to relegate all to just a backdrop.
Gates flung back. Through rubber doors. More rubber doors. A nurse making the bed; arse, as big as a full moon over the Huangpu Park. A nurse experienced enough to know danger’s signature. Her smile, blossom honey sweet.
“Ni nar.”
His voice quiet, brutal.
“I will ask you once, and only once. There was a girl here, in this room, where is she now?”
“She has gone, discharged from the hospital, but I don’t know where. The doctor who was treating her will be able to tell you.”
“His name?”
“Foong, Doctor Foong.”
She checked her watch. The strap, too tight, biting into her milk-fat wrist.
“He will be in the ICT ward. Second floor.”
For many seconds still, looking deeply into her eyes, hunting something at their very horizon. But no other words. Turning on his heel. Moving from the room. Black phalanx closing around him. Only when they were out of sight, she moving to the bakelite telephone. Slippery in her sweaty palm. Two digits dialled. Noticing that her legs were shaking and her inner thighs damp with urine. Her call answered within two rings. Silence at its other end.
“Doctor Foong. Doctor Foong. Tell him there is a problem. Tell him to get out of the hospital immediately.”
*
They caught Foong between floors. Eyes wide with anxiety, sheen of oily sweat – all giving him away. That and the name badge, white deeply engraved into black, above the row of pens in his top pocket. No words, strong hands only, pulling him down the stairs. Through the large plate-glass windows, city streets, longs, life; thinking that it might be the very last images that his eyes would hold. Life bursting, staggering with its vibrancy. That and their faces.
An empty examination room, on the floor torn sterile wrappers. On one of the work surfaces, a bowl of used cotton balls, a half-full cup of tea. Pulling him across the black and chrome couch. Palms’ sweaty squeal across its plastic sheathing. Tethered in sinew strong hands. A joke, its words lost to him. A laugh, and then a man stepping forward. His appearance, one that would not be forgotten. And only now noticing between manicured fingers, a hypodermic. Still no words, just its glass cold touch to the side of the doctor’s face. Perfumed fingers rolling the syringe gently across Foong’s cheek, crossing, re-crossing his eye line. Only when the man with the holed-face spoke, realising that lips existed in this face. From cracked granite sentences as dull-edged as a stream over pebbles, but the tone cultured, educated.
“Where is the girl, Lan Li?”
“I do not know.”
Silver signature of the hypodermic’s needle across his eye line.
“She was taken in the night. I do not know where to.”
“Where is she?”
“I do not know. I am telling the truth, I do not know.”
The man with the holed-face moving to the worktop, to the cup of old tea. Needle up to its thigh in black leafed lucha. A deep thirst, drinking until the syringe was dark with its hue. Measured footsteps back to Foong. An order whispered.
“Hold him.”
Vice hands, clasping his face, head. Needle tip, like a bright star piercing, just millimetres from Foong’s eye. Again the tone of the words belying their content.
“One last time. The whore, Lan Li, where is she?”
“I do not know. Please believe me. Please. The Senior Investigator, Piao, he took her. The Homicide Senior Investigator …”
The needle running through the few millimetres toward his pupil. Thumbnail already whitening to the pressure upon the syringe’s plunger.
A sudden cacophony crammed into a split second. A door flung back on its hinges. Bodies piling through. Feet over a rubber floor. Pistols, snub-nosed and darkly obscene, wedged bloodily into the bony cleft between back of ear and skull.
“Take the hypodermic away from his eye.”
Moving closer.
“Take the hypodermic away from his eye, or I will shoot you where you stand. It will save our comrade judges their valuable time. Do it now. I will not ask again, Comrade Princeling.”
Pressure to the trigger. So close, both hearing the strain of tensed steel. Both sensing the bullet’s slumber in the chamber about to end. Eye meeting eye. Slowly the silver needle moving across the doctor’s face. The syringe grabbed from his hand. Arms bent behind backs. Handcuffs biting into wrists. Personal belongings, mobile telephones, confiscated from the tai zi. Prodded down stairs. Pushed through corridors and into the street. The only sound, an ambulance siren screaming from a head-on collision at the junction of Xietulu and Tianyajiaolu, and the Big Man’s words.
“Cao-mu jie-bing, Boss. We’ve got the fuckers.”
*
Four men, four cars. Piao sitting beside the PLA with the holed-face. Avenues, longs, sprinting past. Watching the light shred across his face. Only when they had travelled for fully ten minutes, a movement. Side window being wound down. Cologne, its monied-stench falling on an investigator’s empty stomach, too much to bear. Only when they had travelled for fully fifteen minutes, words.
“Your name, Comrade PLA?”
His voice as a breeze dulled by travel through thick bough branches.
“Soon you will know it, Senior Investigator.”
Piao, sharply pulling the PLA’s face around.
“Your name, PLA?”
Fingers tighter.
“Your name?”
His eyes across the PLA’s.
“Bao? Your grandfather, a comrade who stood in Mao’s shadow. No, perhaps not. What about Pi? A high cadre father who is a Senior Colonel, doing our will in Tibet. Or perhaps you are Comrade Niu, whose father wishes to take a seat in our Politburo. Or is it Qi? Princeling son of the Senior Colonel whose Guard Army protects our city …”
In the blackness of his pupil, a flexing. A flicker of surprise, lightning on a distant horizon.
“Yes, it is Comrade Qi, isn’t it?”
Pulling his face away, the PLA, shutters of control falling back into place.
“I am Senior Investigator Sun Piao of the Public Security Bureau Homicide Squad.”
In one hand his pistol, in the other hand his documents of authority held to the face of the tai zi.
“I arrest you on suspicion of involvement in the murder of Comrade Yang, Comrade Deming Da, and Comrade Tsang. Also of a fourth as yet unknown female at the site of the New National Stadium. In addition, on suspicion of involvement in the murder of Comrade Detective Di and Deputy Detective Tan at the Shanghai Yu Yuan Import Export warehouse.”
Qi impassive. The silence spiked only by a sharp alarm calling from his wristwatch.
“You cannot hold me. By tonight I will be released.”
With difficulty from the handcuffs’ constricting grip, pushing a button, the alarm silenced. But the bells of a hundred Wind Catchers staving off Piao’s reply. Bright spokes. Bright handlebars. Bright bells. Quicksilver twists of a fabricated steel shoal around them and into Beijingxilu, where it collided with Xizanglu. Traffic lights and routines, side roads and destinations reached.
*
On the corner of Beijingdonglu and Sichuanlu, an ambulance parked. Windows blacked out, blind eyes to a world in reflection. From inside, through bandages’ slit, alert eyes watching, seeing. The PSB patrol car pulling up beside the ambulance, traffic lights’ procession of reds, ambers, greens, ignored. Piao moving through the traffic’s swell from the patrol car to the ambulance, as pre-arranged.
Thickly chromium plated cot bars grasped by sutured fingers. The Senior Investigator stroking the hand behind those fingers. Each stroke, a word. Pointing to the face pressed by the Big Man’s firm hand, hard against the glass of the PSB patrol car’s side window.
“Is that him?”
Without hesitation.
“Yes.”
“You are sure? Positive?”
“I am positive.”
Silent tears. Piao’s hand on hers, caressing her fingers.
“His name, I wish to know his name.”
Several seconds before the Senior Investigator answered.
“You were right, he is a PLA. He is a tai zi. Colonel Zhong Qi. But you will be safe now. This I promise with my own life. He will never hurt you again.”
A full minute before Piao jumped out of the ambulance and nodded to the driver. A nod also to the PSB patrol car. The Sedan moving off at speed, piercing a red light and turning to the north away from the Huangpu and toward the fen-chu.
*
An hour and a half, letting the PLA rabbits stew in their own juices. Yaobang, even in a PSB patrol car, taking that long to get back to the flat, collecting the report. And from the flat, back to the fen-chu.
Over lucha, the Senior Investigator reading the report. Across his shoulders, the tea’s sour steam, and the face of the Big Man.
Zhong Qi, born 21st April 1971. A ‘Celestial Dragon’. Place of birth, Nanchang … birthplace of the People’s Liberation Army. Built on the uprising, on the massacre of the supporters of the Communist Party. Now a city of factories, chemicals, a cannery, tractors, diesel engines. Moved to Shanghai on the death of his mother, when just two years old. His father, Gu Qi, then just a colonel, taking up a new commission with the Shanghai Garrison Army.
Education record: Top marks from the PLA Cadet College in
Shanghai. Sword of Honour. First in his class. A People’s Liberation Army scholarship to England, Oxford University. Followed by officer training at Sandhurst. Top of his class. A further posting to London. Two years at the People’s Republic’s Embassy. Returning to China, to Beijing University. A first class degree in Political Studies. A posting to the USSR sponsored by the Shanghai Communist Party. Another degree from Kiev University in Philosophy and Military History. Returning to Shanghai, a commission with the Shanghai Kan Shou Jingbei Si Ling Bu, with the rank of colonel. A high flyer if there ever was one. The highest of flyers.
Danwei: Purchase slips. A house in Beijing. A dacha near Hangzhou Bay. Six months ago promoted to a grade eleven cadre. Shooting up through the cadre levels. Copies of permission and purchase slips for a Red Flag, a washing machine, a television. Granted a privilege card for the Friendship Store. Travel permits, internal and external. England, USSR, Pakistan.
Blood line: grandchild of a comrade who had known the Great Helmsman himself. His grandfather and Mao student friends together in Changsha, the birthplace of the Chairman. Where he had been a boy, a student, and a teenage revolutionary. Hunan province with its rice fields, tea gardens, orchards and lotus pools. Its gentle, polite, roll of countryside; how could it have forged such words, such thoughts, such intolerance? Grandmother, an esteemed comrade who had played her part in the Long March. Impeccable the blood line, from peasantry to high ranking cadre.
Communist Party record: the path of a Communist Party faithful. Attending meetings, rallies, with his father from the age of four. A prominent member of the local Youth Party. Chairman by the age of fifteen. Rising through the ranks like a bright-tailed comet.
Medical record: inoculations, whooping cough at eight years old, appendectomy at fifteen, but, highly un-usual on the subject of his harelip, just four words. No supportive material. No mention of the corrective surgery that he had obviously received.
Draining the cup, Yaobang.
“Shit, Boss. Why do some have it all? Brains, privilege. A perfect fucking record.”