Citizen One

by Andy Oakes

  “Yes. Never better.”

  Late by the time that they reached the fen-chu. A breakfast of noodles and stingingly hot pickles, then the sheepshank knots of traffic to negotiate. And then the bulky sealed letter of wire taps to be wedged through the letter box of the administrative offices of the Party Central Committee. Late, but Detective Yun waiting for them on the front steps. Pulling at the Senior Investigator’s cuff like a playful puppy.

  “Come, come.”

  All the way to the basement pulling at his cuff. A line of other officers following.

  “Welcome back, Senior Investigator Sun Piao. Welcome back.”

  His fingers to the light switch. An instant wink of illumination.

  “We worked most of the night to clear it up. Ow-Yang got the telephones and computer re-connected.”

  A round of spontaneous applause. Handshakes and pats on backs. The Big Man whistling, low, long. Every surface of the basement office had been cleaned and polished. Files stowed. Messages, mail, sorted and prioritised. On a corner cabinet, a shiny new kettle. Teas. Cups.

  Piao, walked into the space, his fingers trailing the desk top, the files, the telephone.

  “What do you think, Senior Investigator?”

  Moving to the back wall, to a bank of filing cabinets. Bracing himself against them, back to the door and to his colleagues, his head bowed.

  “Senior Investigator?”

  “Senior Investigator Sun Piao wishes to thank you from the bottom of his fucking heart.”

  Yaobang moving to the centre of the space.

  “He is lost for words and is happy. In fact, very fucking happy.”

  Arms outstretched.

  “We both thank you, but would ask that you now allow us to resume our investigative work. Thank you.”

  More applause. Colleagues turning, moving away.

  “And the Senior Investigator thanks you for being such good colleagues. He is proud to call you his comrades. Thank you.”

  Yun the last to leave. A nod, a smile, with teeth too white to be real. Only when the sound of footsteps had died did Yaobang approach the Senior Investigator, his arm moving to his shoulder.

  “Thank you.”

  Words hard to dig out.

  “It’s all right, Boss.”

  Patting the Senior Investigator on the back.

  “As Confucius says, ‘to have fucking friends from afar is a fucking happiness, is it not?’ ”

  Chapter 7

  In a basement where no telephone had rung for ten months, a telephone ringing.

  “Sun Piao. Yun. You have to get down here. Now.”

  In the background of the call, the sound of distant sirens, feet running on wood, voices shouting. Detective Yun, emotional.

  “Something terrible has occurred. We need your assistance.”

  Yun shouting, hand over mouthpiece.

  “I’m talking to him now. You, don’t touch anything. For the ancestors’ sakes, don’t touch anything.”

  Feet running. Loud voices.

  “A warehouse on Pudong side. Riverside, 300 metres south of the Nanpu Bridge. Shanghai Yu Yuan Import Export warehouse. Hurry, please hurry.”

  *

  45 minutes …

  Flash of blue, red, white light across cobble stones, weathered brick and gaunt faces. Incident tape flapping to the keen breeze’s roll. Documents of authority held against the inside of the windscreen. Waved through.

  Yun was waiting by the dented double doors of the empty warehouse. His face a mask of anxiety.

  “Thank you, Sun Piao.”

  “I am not Homicide anymore.”

  The words seeming alien the very instant that they had left Piao’s mouth. Out of mesh with his existence. Detective Yun pushing open the heavy doors. An instant reek of the abattoir, of life passed over and now discarded, of blood spilt with a callous generosity.

  “On this side of the door you may not be Homicide, Sun Piao, but on that side of the door you will be Homicide once more.”

  Yun, a serious man, never looking more serious.

  “The discovery was made just over an hour ago, Sun Piao. A vagrant looking for a safe night’s sleep.”

  His finger pointing at a ragged man in a crowd of olive-pressed uniforms. Out of place, a mushroom in a rose garden. Piao looking for the little things. Single elements in a multitude of possibilities. The things that snag. Studying the vagrant. Enough to know his secret, his important lie.

  Moving through the doorway, into the darkness and through the massive warehouse space, feeling its cathedral presence. The only light, a small defined pool of white arc at the very end of the ocean of sable.

  “Only the vagrant, two officers and myself have witnessed this.”

  Footsteps over wood. At their feet two bodies that life no longer possessed. Splayed, spread-eagled, pinned by steel spikes to the wooden floor.

  “I have kept the scene clean, waiting for your arrival. I knew that you would want to be involved.”

  “Want to be involved”. Strange words to choose for such as this.

  As this … naked forms, pivoting on driven steel fulcrums, as if their lives had always turned upon those brightly lit points.

  The Big Man running back to the darkness. Back to the sanctuary of cold broken wall. Bile, in a golden rivulet, choking his words. Bracing himself against the whitewash and brick powder.

  Piao moved forward.

  “He was a close friend. I have laughed with his wife and bounced his children on my knee.”

  Nausea in butterfly flutters deep in his throat. Fighting against its winged crawling will. Fighting, banishing feelings, emotions. His shadow across the crucified remains of Detective Di and his Deputy. Counting five spikes. Five. One to each hand and foot. One to centre of the forehead. Five spikes, the same as there are points to the star of the People’s Republic.

  From his pocket the Senior Investigator pulling on his gloves. A smell of latex and talcum powder. For an instant death’s odours elbowed aside.

  “Take some notes for me.”

  Yun’s hands shaking. An eye cast over his shoulder and into darkness, to the sound of repeated vomiting.

  “Do not worry about the Big Man. He is always like that. He was not born in the city, he is a country boy used only to things that are green and things which sprout from the earth.”

  The Senior Investigator guiding the Detective’s wavering pencil to the pad.

  “He is not yet used to that which will be committed back to the earth, and from which green things will sprout. Now write. Please write.”

  Pencil poised.

  “They were meant to be found here.”

  “How can you say this, Sun Piao? The warehouse has been empty for over two years now.”

  Piao’s latex fingers testing each spike in turn.

  “There is a sign at the side of the building. Fresh paint. The warehouse has been let. They were bound to be discovered. They were meant to be found. Look at what we have here, it is both practical and theatrical. Their death is a warning. But it only acts as a warning if they are found. The warning has now been served.”

  Fingers following the spike down to its bloody root.

  “The spikes to the foreheads were the final abuse.”

  “How … how can you tell, Sun Piao?”

  “The flow of blood. See how the spikes pierce already dried blood from other wounds. The spikes to the foreheads were designed to kill them. These other wounds …”

  His hand in soft gesture down each tortured body.

  “These occurred some time before. These other wounds were to extract information. Look at the placing of them. The sensitive areas of a man. The areas that would elicit pain and words.”

  “These scorches, Boss, what caused them?”

  Taking the torch from Yun’s top pocket. Away from the arc light’s onslaught, backtracking, halfway to the door spilling yellow light and inquisitive faces. The warehouse little used. Dust of weeks, months, years, bu
t through it, two sets of stuttered trails.

  “Di, his Deputy, they were unconscious. Dragged to where they are now. Dead weights.”

  Indicating the trail with the torch’s steady beam. Footprints. Quite clear.

  “There were four of them. One either side of each victim.”

  Already the label ‘victim’. Fellow comrades in arms. Officers that I have shared drinks with, investigations with. Officers whose arses warmed toilet seats at the fen-chu, just minutes before it was my turn to sit and read the graffiti.

  Another, a fifth track slightly to the right … following. Shoes, not boots as the others. Shoes, soft-leathered, expensive. The Big Man observing.

  “Cadre, Boss. Giving the orders.”

  Kneeling, Piao, as if in prayer, the torch held at an obtuse angle.

  “Wheels. They were wheeling something.”

  Walking back to the blind of arc light avoiding the fragile trail of evidence. His eyes upon the wounds.

  “A branding iron, Boss?”

  “No. They used an oxy-acetylene torch. They wheeled the cylinders and torch in on a trolley between them. Everything planned like a military operation.”

  The Senior Investigator pacing the circle of arc light, his eyes focused on the dead eyes.

  This is where they had stood as they lit the oxy-acetylene torch. As the questions were framed and asked. As fierce blue flame bit yellow and black.

  Moving out of arc light, just. Stooping with the torch beam picking out a detail. Between the wooden boards, a small object. Carefully with his back turned, so that Yun would not see him, Piao pulling a set of tweezers from an inside pocket. From another pocket a clear, sealable plastic bag. Between fine steel blades, held to eyes and nose, a cigarette butt. Different. Perfumed, rich tobacco. Expensive and foreign. A cigarette from a cadre’s mouth. Dropping it into the bag and sealing it.

  “Who hated Detective Di this much, to go to this trouble?”

  Yun shaking his head.

  “Did he have any known enemies?”

  “No, not like you, Senior Investigator.”

  A smile. No, not like me.

  “What was he working on?”

  Shaking his head again, Yun.

  “I wouldn’t know, Piao. Homicides. You know, normal homicides.”

  “Lately. Anything unusual? Anything at all?”

  “No, no. Nothing at …”

  “Speak, Detective. Speak, even of shadows.”

  “Days ago Di got a call to a suspected homicide and left immediately with his Deputy. Something sensitive over at the site for the new stadium. Something that only he and his Deputy saw with all others kept away. Could have been anything.”

  Loosening his tie.

  “I didn’t see them until the next morning. Wouldn’t even talk about it. Wouldn’t talk about anything, and you know what he was like, an opinion about everything and a comrade that always had a joke to tell. This time nothing.”

  “But that is not unusual, Detective. Perhaps he had an argument with his wife, or a stomachache from a late-night bowl of jiaozi. Or maybe one too many homicides to witness …”

  “No. No, Piao. You know Di, a man of routines …”

  Yes, routines. A fully completed docket to pick his nose. An action plan to scratch his arse. That was Di.

  “When I saw him at 10 a.m., he’d be doing his paperwork from the call out, regular as clockwork. But this time he and his Deputy were drinking tea and whispering. I made a joke, but they walked away. Something was wrong.”

  “Did Di file any report?”

  “I don’t think so.”

  “Did he file any samples for forensics?”

  Shaking his head.

  “He couldn’t have. I was in the laboratories at midday filing my own samples. A domestic homicide, as usual. They went straight to the front of the queue, which they would not have done if Di had filed anything.”

  It all making sense. Piao kneeling once more.

  “With such an inducement as an oxy-acetylene flame, they will have got the information they required. Who could keep it from them. Or perhaps this was all just to serve as a warning?”

  For an instance closing his eyes. In orange veined silver half-light, he would have sworn that he could still hear the screams, unanswered in the dark vastness of the warehouse’s interior. Like radio-activity, permeating the warehouse’s very brick, wood and concrete.

  Voices. Movement at the other end of the warehouse floor. A line of officers moving through the far doors, across the floor.

  “Stop. This is a closed area. A serious crime has been committed. No additional personnel are to enter this building.”

  A voice weakened by the distance.

  “We have more arc lights, Senior Investigator. Also the City Scientific Officer is here and the PSB scene of crime’s photographer.”

  “This is a closed area. No admittance. No admittance to anybody.”

  “But the City Scientific Officer is insistent, Comrade Senior Investigator. He demands entrance to the scene of the crime.”

  “I am Senior Investigator Sun Piao. I have authority over this investigation.”

  “But Comrade Officer, the Chief Scientific …”

  “Do you have a pistol officer?”

  Seconds before the answer floated back in the darkness.

  “Yes, Comrade Officer. Yes, I have a standard issue pistol.”

  “Well, Officer, what I suggest is that you stick the front end of it in the Chief Scientific Officer’s ear and escort him out of the premises.”

  “And tell him to fuck off.”

  The Big Man’s leer visible even in the meagre light. Many seconds before the last words from the officer echoed around the warehouse floor.

  “Yes, Comrade Officer. Thank you, Comrade Officer.”

  Double doors closing. Just the darkness and the spike of arc light. Yun kneeling close to Piao.

  “We should have let them in, Sun Piao. There must be an investigation. There will be repercussions. You just cannot tell a senior cadre to ‘fuck off’. I am not like you, I like order in my life. I need order in my life.”

  The Senior Investigator seizing Yun’s hand; the Detective resisting, but Piao forcing it closer to Di’s head. Running the Detective’s palm across Di’s forehead and through his hair.

  “What in the ancestor’s name was that for? What’s is wrong with you?”

  Allowing Yun to pull his hand away. The Detective cradling its redness in his other hand.

  “He is dead. Life no longer possesses him. Is that enough order in a life?”

  The Senior Investigator standing, pacing, a coldness shifting into him. Every body slumped at his feet, humanity discarded … a little more of his own humanity, frostbitten. For the first time, avoiding their open but dead eyes.

  “We shall carry out the crime scene investigation ourselves. We shall take the scene of crime photographs ourselves.”

  Walking into darkness, finding comfort in losing shape and form. Only Yun’s voice reminding him of who he was and what he was.

  “Why? Why, Senior Investigator?”

  Piao was at the door before he answered.

  “Because I do not wish to stand above any more comrades crucified to a warehouse floor and see what an oxy-acetylene torch can do to another comrade whom I once regarded as a good friend.”

  *

  Revolving patrol car lights. PSB Officers against walls, on stairs, propped against patrol cars. Loud jokes about disembodied tits and pussies. Loud laughter, quiet jokes about politicians and the Party. Nervous eyes, nervous smiles.

  All around him activity, Piao now slumped in a void of terrible, all pervading loss. Then, without warning and fangs bared, as if he were there, back in Ankang. Remembering, or thinking that he remembered what the old man in the corner crib of the ward had said.

  ‘If you really want to do yourself in, push the blade in here and slice upwards. That really fucks the doctors up.’

  An
d remembering the series of faint scars, and not so faint scars, across the old comrade’s wrist. Rail tracks to nowhere. Five or six on each wrist. And noticing that none of his scars were sliced upwards. None of them.

  “You really think that they’d kill us as well, Boss?”

  Breath against the side of his face as he was shunted back to the here and now.

  Silence saying more.

  “Shit.”

  Scars and death still clinging to the interior of Piao’s eyes. Turning in blue light. Enough, just the look. Yaobang consumed by its chill. Moving closer.

  “What Boss, there’s fucking more?”

  “If Di wanted forensic samples examined, but not through our fen-chu, not through our science laboratories, where would he go?”

  The Big Man, eyes watering diamond bright.

  “Nie. An old boy at the forensic science labs, Boss. He has a love of whisky and ‘wild pheasants’. He’ll do the occasional guan-xi job.”

  “Is he good?”

  “Sure, Boss, the best. Di used him a few times. Remember that triple murder in Yu Gardens a year ago, the cadre with high Party connections? Di used him then, he told me.”

  “Find out if this Nie was given anything. If he was, I want it.”

  Across Piao’s face, light as red as a capsicum.

  “And give him this, I want it analysed.”

  From his pocket, the pastic bag, the cigarette butt, pressed into the Big Man’s palm.

  “Let us see what kind of magic he can perform. Also, help him collect what equipment he needs and get him to a safe place.”

  “Sure, Boss, then we can just give it all to Zoul. Let him handle it. He’s the Chief, Di and his Deputy, they were his men. We can walk away. Get on with our lives.”

  Eyes meeting.

  “Shit. You’re not going to walk away, are you, Boss? But we’re not in Homicide anymore. We’re in fucking Vice.”

  The Senior Investigator lighting two China Brands. One for the Big Man, as he watched a Hong-qi glide along the riverfront.

  “Too late. We are in, whether we like it or not. You do not witness what we have seen without there being complications. It is too late to walk away. You know this.”