by Andy Oakes
“… cynicism is good for the health. I wish that I could have given them that advice.”
Seconds of silence, punctuated only by the breath of traffic starting along Shanxilu.
“Dump the fucking case, eh Boss?”
Piao laughed. A throwaway laugh. The kind that seemed to have punctuated his life, his career, at depressingly regular intervals.
“Why not? What’s eight bodies to a city of thirteen million. Besides, there isn’t room in my icebox for eight stiffs.”
“Nor mine …”
Both laughing. Yaobang the loudest. A laughter as free as a junk that had slipped its mooring. The Senior Investigator envied a man who could let loose such a laugh.
“Make it look as if we’ve bothered … get some of the preliminaries fastened down and then get shot of the job. Pass it on to Security. Another one for the back of the filing cabinet …”
The Big Man nodding almost too enthusiastically.
“… get the photographer in to do his stuff and keep them sifting the mud for anything that’s been missed. Also, get on to the hospitals. Try the Number 1 first. The Huangdong on Suzhou Beilu. See if they can take the bodies for the time being. If not, try Jiaotong and also Fudan University. Also the Academy of Science in Xehui. Just find me anywhere that will take the bodies without burying us in fucking questions, got it?”
“Sure, Boss. Anywhere that will take the bodies without burying us in fucking questions.”
Making his way more confidently across the foreshore towards the car. On the Big Man’s lips a constant tremble of half whispered words, repeated, repeated again, like a parrot with a compulsive disorder.
“… take the bodies, no fucking questions … anywhere that will take them, no fucking questions …”
At the bottom of the stairs, stopping, looking back over his shoulder to the Senior Investigator. A figure stranded in a no-man’s-land of mud, debris.
“Don’t worry, Boss, you’re doing the right fucking thing walking away. You don’t want to be investigating this.”
The Senior Investigator made no reply. He had not heard the words that had been stolen by the breeze and dragged off into the night. He had not heard the words, this time, or the many times that similar words had been used in the past. A freighter lumbered by. Came. Went. Noise. Lights. And then silence and darkness, as if it had never passed him. As if it had never cleaved the calm of the river in front of him. Piao walked to the Huangpu’s very edge. The river lapping against the toes of his shoes.
“Shit.”
Kicking at the river. Turning. Making his way back toward the noon of arc-lights; hurrying his pace as he spotted two ununiformed figures, one standing, one kneeling, beside the bodies. The bodies … now fully unearthed from the cloying mud. Partially cleaned up. A string of clay limbs, torsos. Joined, steel link by steel link to each other in a paralysed dance across milky sheets of thick polythene.
Somebody’s babies. Somebody’s children.
“Hey, hey! This is a restricted area, can’t you see? There’s a police investigation going on here.”
The men half turned, ignoring the shout from the Bureau’s photographer who had also seen them; their slight frames casting the shadows of giants. The Big Man cut across Piao’s path, intercepting him, a hand braced against his Boss’s chest; moving into the area of foreshore where shadow became flesh and had a smell all of its own.
“Let me introduce you, Boss,” he said with a wink and out of the corner of his mouth, before turning, striking up a more formal pose and tone of voice.
“Senior Investigator Piao of the Public Security Bureau Homicide Squad, may I introduce Comrade Zhiyuan, Chairman of the Shiqu, the urban borough that administers this area. May I also introduce Comrade Shi of the Party’s Neighbourhood Committee.”
“We’ve met before,” Piao replied coldly.
The men smiled at him. Notebooks in hand. Fingers caked in river mud, which was also oozing over the tops of the sandals that they were wearing.
‘Perhaps wet feet would persuade the bastards to piss off quicker?’
Piao moved forward, aware that his hands had already formed into fists. That balls and chains would drag behind every word that he would want to use. The taller man, Zhiyuan, a tong zhi, a comrade of the old guard, as gaunt, as stretched as an ancient knotted scar, stood as Piao’s shadow cast across the first of the bodies.
“You are in my way, Senior Investigator. I was just studying these poor unfortunates.”
“The story of my wretched life, Mr Zhiyuan, getting in people’s way. But it can have advantages in my field of work …”
Pausing. Piao mentally cutting adrift the shackles that seemed to tie down every word whenever faced by a tong zhi of Zhiyuan’s breed. It was still unfamiliar territory … dangerous territory.
“… you don’t mind if I call you Mister, do you? Comrade is so very rarely used nowadays. I even read that most of our schoolchildren have never heard of Mao. Imagine. I suppose that times change, don’t they, Mister Zhiyuan?”
“Call me Comrade Zhiyuan …” the Shiqu Chairman corrected. A leer. Deep. Engraved. Teeth like broken headstones, etched in nicotine.
“… some of us are still proud of such a title. We fought for such a title. And you would do well to remember, Investigator, that getting in people’s way can sometimes be bad for your health. I hope that you look both ways before crossing the street?”
Eye contact riveted in place. Piao standing firm, his shadow still eclipsing the corpses. Not sure that he’d heard the comrade correctly. A sudden chill to the air. An edge, glass sharp. What was it that the Shiqu Chairman was saying? Zhiyuan lit a cheroot. The smoke hiding his mouth. A pungent scent of secrets fanning against every question that Piao wanted to ask.
“What do you mean?”
“I mean, Investigator, that you are in my way. You are purposely interrupting my investigation … the Party’s investigation into this matter.”
“Oh, the Party’s investigation, I see. I was under the misapprehension that I was the Investigator in this case. I must make a point of checking my wage slip next month. I wouldn’t want the Party to be paying me for work that I wasn’t carrying out!”
“You’ve got a ‘fat job’ and have been paid for doing nothing for years, Investigator Piao. This sort of thing is proof enough of that …”
The comrade turned toward the shadowed bodies.
“… it is up to us, the people, the Party and the Security Services to move upon your role. You police have become lazy and have lost your way. You have not brought the values of the Party into your work and into your dealings with the capitalist driven crime wave that is threatening our people and our glorious way of life.”
The Investigator caged the anger that fled to his temples.
“Nice speech, Chairman. Best to write it down and keep it safe for when your re-election comes up.”
Zhiyuan laughed. A slap of a laugh that left Piao nursing its fine sting.
“You are a little man in a big world, Investigator. Just a little man with gold braid on his shoulders. You buck the system, the Party. You abuse your privileged position, but not for much longer. The people, the committees, they have many eyes, many ears. We are the Party, root and branch. We feed it night and day with all that we see and hear. The Party is thorough, Investigator, and getting more thorough as the days go by. Soon, Investigator, you will feel the Party’s thoroughness.”
“Like they did?”
Piao spat past the comrade and onto the island of polythene where the bodies lay.
Somebody’s babies. Somebody’s children.
Words free now. Restraints severed. Wondering what price he might pay for using them?
“Are you suggesting that the Party is involved in this, Investigator Piao?” Zhiyuan seized, the rabid old mongrel.
“No, not really. It’s just that when you mentioned thoroughness, it got my mind ticking over. Homicide Squad Investigators are like that. A nas
ty little trait that I must have picked up from having this gold braid on my shoulder …”
He brushed a hand across an epaulette.
“… you see, it’s the word thoroughness that comes to mind when I look at these poor bastards. Thoroughness, and patience of course. Haven’t you noticed, Mr Chairman? After all, you are studying these ‘poor unfortunates’ as you call them. I wouldn’t want you to miss any of the more subtle details …”
Moving aside as the photographer got to work. Leaning back, filling the frame of the old black and silver Rolleiflex. An explosion of flash. Harsh. Cold. Mid-tones, subtle hues banished. From the mud, the plastic, the bodies seeming to rise and fall. Clay, patches of skin … alabaster. Wounds as black as the inside of a hound’s mouth.
“… come, Mr Shiqu Chairman, let me show you thoroughness. …”
Roughly, with resistance, guiding, pushing the comrades out of the path of the photographer’s studied dance, to the other side of the bodies. Dead flesh just inches and eternity away from their muddied toes.
“… thoroughness, yes, you’ll appreciate the level of thoroughness that is displayed here. Let me show you what I mean …”
A whine. A click. A blitz. Again, again, the photographer moving in for close-ups. Blue-white flashes squinting, piercing their eyes. Everything with its bright mercury taint. The eight, the bodies, turning to stone with each shot. Removed further and further from a life of flesh, of warmth.
“… we have eight corpses in all, chained together by the legs and by the necks. Note the hands of the victims. A total of sixteen thumbs, sixty-four fingers, the top joints of which are all missing. Snipped off very neatly, wouldn’t you agree? Very thorough …”
Another flash. Another. Illuminating the side of his face. Knowing that he would look as if he was fashioned from stainless steel. Waiting for seconds for an answer that he knew would not come. Thick seconds. Thinking of bolt cutters, cleavers, blunt knives. And wondering if they thought of such things also?
“… the victims faces. Not much left of them, is there? Odontology, dental work, teeth … we can tell a lot from teeth. Age. Diet. Lifestyle. Social category. General health. Even nationality …”
Halting as the photographer knelt in front of him. Viewfinder filled with static heads. The caves of nostrils. Muddied, lank rope hair. Black wells of torn mouths. There can be a listless beauty in death sometimes. Sometimes … but not in these. No, not in these poor unfortunates. The flash of the large format camera. Another. Another. Naked death served as a main course, without the trimmings. Without the garnish.
“… their mouths, their teeth, their jaws, have all been smashed. I would say by a heavy clubbing hammer. Their faces also. Smashed to bits to hamper identification. See, see? Fractured skulls. Cheekbones. Broken noses and jaws …”
Somebody’s babies. Somebody’s children.
Sweet mouths at the breast. Piao feeling his anger rise, hot and sour. Its wash creeping in to taint the edges of his words.
“… finally, the eyes. But of course, Mr Chairman, you will have already noticed … they are missing. Sixteen eyes, all removed. Gouged out, by the look of it …”
One, two, three, four, five … seconds. Pausing. But no questions. Not a breath. Lips still. The air still, and the river. As if time itself was waiting to be re-wound.
“… what do you think, were they brown eyes? Or perhaps blue or grey. Maybe even green. I like green eyes … don’t you, Mr Comrade Chairman of the Shiqu …?”
Comrade Shi, Neighbourhood Committee notebook in hand, stumbled from the pool of arc-light. A thick trail of vomit marking his passage. Death and vomit, the two inextricably linked in Piao’s mind. Death. Men think that it can be tamed. That they can become accustomed to its face as they can become accustomed to a strange and exotic foreign food. They see it every day in a city that does not kneel to hide it. Hot flowing blood in the long summer days. Cold and stanched brown in the grey winter hours. And then this … a sight that the rest of your life will be hung upon, pivot from. A sight only ever just a flicker of an eyelid away. Piao felt the bud of nausea unfurl its petals at the back of his throat.
“… is this a brand of thoroughness that you recognise, Chairman Zhiyuan. A thoroughness that robs a man of the colour of his eyes?”
Zhiyuan turned his back to the cold bodies, lighting another cheroot. His fast hand covering the pages of his notebook with scrawl and ash as he talked.
“I am not here to play guessing games, Investigator … and even less to be taught by your kind …”
Smoke from his lips in a constant steel band.
“… you have gone too far, Piao. Too dangerously far with your accusations …”
He drew closer. His lined skin resembling a city centre road map. His breath, its accumulated exhaust fumes.
“… you forget who you are talking to. My words will find the ears of important comrades in the Party. And the Party has ways of dealing with …”
“… what, comrade. Ways of dealing with people like me? And people like them also?” Piao interjected.
A single word piercing the coiled cheroot smoke as it left the old man’s torn lips.
“Perhaps.”
A hiss, and so close that Zhiyuan’s breath intermingled with his own. Piao immediately thinking of meat-flies, puke, fatty pork. He suddenly felt very ill.
“Did you hear that, Detective Yaobang. A threat made to a serving Senior Officer in the police force of the People’s Republic of China?”
“I heard it …” Yaobang replied. A tinge of reluctance plaited into his words. Spit, thick and white on his lips, Zhiyuan exploded.
“My Committee and the Central Committee will hear of your obstructive behaviour, Investigator, and of your vile insinuations that these murders were carried out in the name of the Party and of the State …”
The dark butt falling from his fingers. A hiss as it met mud. Its orange tip dying to grey.
“… expect a knock on your door, Piao.”
“Detective Yaobang, please escort Comrade Zhiyuan and Comrade Shi to their cars, they’re leaving. They have a great deal of report writing to complete.”
Watching their shadows shrink as they walked away. The darkness eating them. Piao chewing on the bit of his anger. Mouth tasting of polished metal. Of danger. He spat, but could not loosen its hold. Squatting, eyes closed for a few seconds … or was it minutes? Longing for sleep, but knowing that it offered no rest. Behind the dark curtains of his eyelids he could still see the policemen relieving their full bladders. The crescent moon now in flight above the river. And the paper white faces, with their smudged, eyeless sockets. They say that the eyes of the murdered retain within them a last burning image of who it was that killed them. Was it the Party that was robbing the bodies of this last old wives’ tale?
The decision made, and made against the grain and every survival instinct that the fifteen thousand days of his life in Shanghai had taught him, Piao stood, shouting to a group of policemen who were smoking, gossiping, pissing onto the mud.
“Let’s get to it, it’s our case …”
A low moan of discontent. China Brand cigarette butts being flicked into the river. Flies being zipped.
“… load them into the wagon and don’t fucking drop them down the embankment, they’ve been through enough.”
The dark figures peeled off from each other, crossing into the island of arc-light. A brief flurry of activity. The sound of bolt cutters meeting steel chain. Polythene sheeting being fashioned around bodies, now separated. Fibreglass caskets flexing, accepting their loads. Grunts as they were lifted. Eight caskets. Eight grunts. Eight bodies. A slow weaving line across soft shadowed broken foreshore. Staggering, stuttering up the steps to the Bund. The wagon doors being opened. Caskets slid in. The wagon doors being closed.
Piao meandered through the lines of waterproof suited policemen on their knees, sifting through the mud. A thankless task. He knew, already knew … these murderers would
leave no calling cards. These murderers would leave nothing but their ravaged quarry. He looked up, across the stacked grey graduations of Huangpu Park. Clouds now rolling in against the moon, overtaking it and swallowing it whole. It was going to be a brushed steel grey of a day. He would be waiting for the leach of red rust to seep into it.
Chapter 2
Softly, the wind blows from the south,
Caresses the stems of the brambles.
Holy mother, good mother,
I was not your son.
WASHINGTON D.C., THE UNITED STATES OF
AMERICA.
She had known that he was dead at that very moment, in that very instant; beyond her, beyond everything. The scream that filled her head waking her from a deep sleep. Her own voice crying out the name of her only child …
“Bobby.”
As clear, as pure as a crystal sphere splintering onto a marble floor.
“Jesus … Jesus … Jesus …”
Shaking. Hearing her own words and pleadings, that seemed to pierce the night as the steel pin impales the butterfly. And all of the time his name burning inside her. An indigestion of loss, pain, and disjointed flooding memories. And knowing that it was too late. Already … too late.
*
Calm now. Reaching for the telephone. Counting …
ONE … TWO … THREE …
Brandy in one hand. A letter, his writing, the telephone number … in the other hand. And all of the time, reality and intuition in a fierce grapple for her attention.
“Bobby … Bobby.”
Counting. Slowly …
FOUR … FIVE …
It can’t be true … he can’t be dead.
The telephone number, endless. Halfway through it, she realised that she had misread a digit. A five for a four. His writing had always been so poor, so chaotic; as if his mind was in a constant head-on collision of ideas, schemes. His brain working faster than his hand. A five for a four. The pain pressed harder. She re-dialled, counting …
SIX … SEVEN … EIGHT …
“Come on, come on.”
The connection clicked into life. A ringing tone, replaying.
