by Andy Oakes
The Senior Investigator wrenched open the buckled driver’s door. Bracing his neck with both hands. Stretching his back against the strength of a girder. The tanker … a wall of red, sedately slipping by. The only noise, a deep throated cough from the tugs; the wake of disturbed water splashing against the stone of the dock embankment. He kicked at a punctured tyre, two, three times, as the realisation started to set in.
You have to go home. Go home Barbara Hayes. The blood is getting closer. Closer. Flowing in your direction.
Raising his eyes. Across the water the black Shanghai sat on the apron of concrete backed by warehouses, its engine switched off. Piao’s body started to shake uncontrollably. He lit a cigarette, hardly able to hold it … hardly able to taste it. The Shanghai’s engine started up. Behind the tinted glass would be smiling faces. Slaps on the back. The promise of Qingdaos all round. And jokes … of course, the jokes. And the professional pride of a job well done. To kill a boy in the middle of Shanxilu as the afternoon turned sour; there was much pride in that for men like these.
The Shanghai had found room to turn, moving in forward gears now, it crept down the dockside’s edge. The Senior Investigator examined the Sedan. A write-off. He spun around, eyes taking up the anger and burning with tears that he wanted to deny. His hand around his cigarette lighter, and with all of his remaining strength, throwing it in the direction of the black Shanghai. He saw the lighter plop into the deep waters. Its ripples spreading out. Weakening, calming, until they were as one with the greater body of water that filled the dock. When Piao looked up, the black Shanghai Sedan was no longer there.
*
A dress discarded on the bathroom floor. A stain spread across its front … old blood, leather brown. A smear across the floor tiles … old blood, but still red. Traffic light red.
The water was hot, steaming hot; cascading, plunging onto Barbara’s face. Rivulets down her breasts, the flat plane of her stomach. The bloodstain being cleansed. A stream of discoloured water the same tincture as spilt Coca-Cola, running down her legs. An indolent spiral in the shower tray to the plughole. But bloodstains still on the soap, on the thermostat, on the inner and outer door handles. And all of the time, as constant as the flow of water … an almost unbearable drive to run back to D.C. Grab the next plane seat. But not before pinning the Senior Investigator to the nearest wall. She’d seen a boy murdered today, dead in her arms. And for what? The dead cat turned. A little knowledge. A Raider’s cap … nothing else. To find a murderer, more murdered. How could she ever balance that? How could she ever balance so many things, now? And yet, a balance would be needed. A balance would have to be achieved. Power. Politics. Somehow, in the coming days … the perceived needs of America would have to be balanced with a child split like a vanilla pod. Her child. Bobby. That was politics. The art of balance, no matter what rocked the equilibrium of the cradle.
She fell onto the bed, the duvet drawn around her as if to ward off ghosts. Her stomach aching with a pregnancy over twenty years distant. The brandy, Japanese and undefined, had done its job. She was asleep within five minutes.
*
“Go home.”
Barbara’s hair was almost dry; she ran her fingers through it.
“Yanks go home. It’s not an original line. Not for you Senior Investigator.”
“Yanks?”
“Americans. Americans go home. It’s been used from Vietnam to El Salvador. Grenada to Somalia.”
“You make fun of me Mrs American government official. You do not understand. I care for your well-being. That is why I say go home. This is not about you being an American.”
Barbara shook her hair back. A fluency in the movement, not unlike the twist of raindrops down a windscreen.
“You don’t like Americans do you?”
Piao turned to the window. The sun as violently red as the streak of blood on the cream of her dress that he had seen heaped on the bathroom floor.
“I do not wish to talk of Americans, just you. The blood is getting close. Leave China. There is something in all of this that is about you. It is water through the gaps between fingers. I cannot tell you what it is, but I feel it. You, the American government official, part of you is a part of the puzzle. Perhaps you know this already?”
She said nothing. Always, the American politician part of her, saying nothing.
“Leave China.”
“No. No …”
Standing between him and the sun. Angry. The words coming too slow for the feelings.
“… no. The blood is coming closer, I know. I don’t need you to tell me. Jesus, the boy died in my arms.”
She pushed the wet towel into Piao’s hands and walked into the bathroom.
“ I’m not leaving. Us Bible belt gals don’t frighten easily. My great-granddaddy shot and skinned buffalo for the railway.”
The Senior Investigator raising the towel to his face. American women. Chinese women. They all smelt the same … scent and steel and babies never born.
“You should know every part of the picture before you decide to stay in China. As you come from a long line of ancestors who do not fear anything, I am sure that a little more knowledge will not alter your decision to stay. What is the knowledge of another death in comparison to the skinning of a buffalo?”
“Another death!”
Folding the satin gown around her she stormed from the bathroom. In her fingers, the delicate ties forming a bow. Just a glimpse … such long legs. The delicate curves, arcs of a swan’s neck. Feeling so empty. Knowing that at that moment, he would have given anything just to run his hands up their smoothness.
“Another death?”
The Senior Investigator moved to the far side of the bed, placing a barrier between them.
“A student, about the same age as the boy today. He was to be a gynaecologist … very promising. We could get no one to examine your son and the other bodies found in the river. I volunteered him …”
Piao pulled out a battered blue pack of cigarettes, a soulful Panda staring from its sides; offering Barbara one with a tilt of the carton. She declined. He held down the smoke until it burnt, releasing it slowly.
“… we needed information, any that it was possible to obtain. The student did well …”
Another deep drag.
“… I met him after the funeral. He was taken to my cousin’s house and hidden in the loft. We were very careful.”
“So that was where you disappeared to. You were seeing this student, getting a report from him?”
The Senior Investigator nodded.
“Your cousin’s wife. Chen? I was looking for you. I asked where you were. She gave me a recipe for Aubergine and Chicken.”
Piao smiled.
“Cheng is known for her aubergine and chicken …”
“And her diplomacy.”
“That also … and I thought that we had been so careful. So thorough. But they are thorough also. The student was taken from my cousin’s house long after we had left. It was dark. Near Tunxi a Shanghai Sedan passed. It was the Shanghai Sedan that killed the boy today …”
The Senior Investigator stubbed out his cigarette. A single plume of silver lost against the cityscape.
“… they shot and killed the student. It was very quick, thorough.”
“You seem to admire their professionalism?”
“No, I admire no such act as this. Catching killers, that is to be admired …”
Piao felt a chill, his hand going to his collar to fasten it. To the button that was missing.
“… yes, catching such killers as these, that is to be greatly admired …”
And adding, as a painful afterthought.
“… the student, he was Yaobang’s brother. His baby brother.”
*
The bar on the ground floor of the Jing Jiang was awakening. An elderly trio of musicians in the far corner playing ‘Mexicali Rose.’ Each note, just a hint off-key. The booth was dark, but Piao still felt conspicuo
us; slipping off his jacket, turning it inside out, hiding the epaulettes. Feeling exhausted … shoulders, back, arms … it was an effort to move, to sit, to talk. He would have, should have slept, but knew that its minutes would be spiked with subliminal cuts of black Shanghai Sedans, tinted windows, numberless plates. And behind it all, the thudding volley of a skull making fierce contact with a road, over and over again. He drank from his glass of Dukang, its scorch turning the tide.
“So. You will leave China now?”
Barbara embraced her drink. Her lips with the smelted gold of the Scotch.
“No, I won’t be leaving China now. Would you?”
They both knew the answer, the Senior Investigator stepping over the question.
“Then I will have to look after you even more closely Barbara Hayes. It means that I will not let you beyond my sight.”
“Suits me fine,” she said.
Her eyes, playfully blue over the rim of her glass. Piao drained his drink. Dukang and exhaustion, friends that should never share beds, the alcohol had going straight to his head. Everything more intense. The lights, the music. Her fingers, her neck, the snow lace edging of her camisole.
“Tell me what the student said to you. Everything.”
The glass woven into her hands. The Scotch slowly swirling.
“He told me about Bobby staying here at the Jing Jiang, in room 201. That they were friends at Fudan. When Bobby disappeared the students were warned not to talk of … what was the name that he used now?”
Her eyes closed as she hunted the words down.
“ ‘The American boy’. That was it. They were warned not to talk about Bobby, the American boy. ‘He was not at Fudan … he was never at Fudan.’ He didn’t know who they were, but they scared the shit out of him.”
“But we know that they drive a black Shanghai Sedan. What else did he talk about?”
“He was shocked, he cried a lot when I told him about Bobby’s murder. He wanted to meet me but didn’t want any PSB involvement. He didn’t want you there.”
The Senior Investigator studied his fingers. The gauze was sticking to them in honeyed stains. The dressing needed changing.
“Of course you told him what a trustworthy and good man I was?”
“Of course. He still didn’t want you there.”
“Us PSB, we are very misunderstood. Not even an American politician can make us more popular.”
She smiled.
“Do they hurt?”
She took Piao’s fingers in her hand, rubbing a thumb lightly across the discoloured gauze. He wanted to say that they didn’t hurt anymore.
“What other words were there between you and the student?”
Not letting go of his fingers. An anchor to something real. An anchor to somebody else’s pain.
“He said that I could bring Bobby’s girlfriend to the meeting if I wanted to. That he wished to offer her his condolences.”
“The girlfriend, did the student give you a name, an address, any details?”
“You want to know if she was the girl with the red toenails that you hauled from the river along with Bobby.”
“And Professor Heywood.”
“How do you know Heywood was one of the other bodies?”
“Pan Yaobang, he did well for a student gynaecologist. Dental work. It was conclusive. Heywood was the other western male found in the Huangpu.”
Barbara’s hand was away from his fingers, playing with her glass. The pain in his wrist remained.
“ The girl in the river. That wasn’t Bobby’s girlfriend, she couldn’t have been. The student told me that Bobby’s girlfriend was pregnant. She was having his baby. Bobby was going to be a father …”
Piao’s hand reached for hers. Gauze on skin. Pain on pain.
“… lots of young girls paint their toenails red. You know that, don’t you? A Senior Investigator like you must know that.”
She turned her head, the tears already upon her in a wave of salt and warmth. The lights of the bar melting. Already knowing the words that he was about to say.
“Barbara, I am sorry. The girl in the river was also pregnant. Five months pregnant. The girl in the river was Bobby’s girlfriend.”
*
“Peace?”
Piao rubbed the back of a hand across his eyes before focusing on his watch. 3.05am.
“Barbara Hayes, do you know what time it is?”
“Barbara.”
“I do not understand.”
“Barbara. You keep calling me by my full name. You’ve earnt the right to call me Barbara.”
Cars, lights, bridges, tinted glass, a puppet of a body falling through the air. Piao could still see them. The residue of dreams nailed in place, clinging on.
“You have telephoned me at this early time to tell me your name, is this an American custom?”
“ ‘Peace’. The student said it to me when he was hit by the car. He said it three times.”
“Peace. That is all?”
“That’s all. It doesn’t sound like it, but I know that it’s important.”
“Anything that a man struggles to say in the few seconds before he dies is important. And to say it three times …”
Piao sat on the edge of the bed sipping water. Its taste of chlorine and dust.
“… to understand what he said, we need to look at and decide what it would be that he would feel such a need to say to you …”
He pulled a blanket around himself.
“… what would you have asked the boy first when you met with him?”
“About Bobby I guess. The last time he had seen him. How he was. What he said. How he looked …”
A pause.
“… no, no that’s not true. I’d have asked him about Bobby’s girlfriend. Her name. What she looked like. Where she lived.”
“The boy is laying in your arms. You are telling him that it will be alright. But death is close, he knows it …”
The Senior Investigator was on his feet, pacing. The blanket draped around his shoulders.
