Citizen One

by Andy Oakes

  Standing over him, Piao.

  “I have just saved your life, Comrade Rentang. Blackmail carries a death sentence. Working for me in this flat, just the risk of a few bed-bug bites.”

  In his tadpole eyes, calculations. Checks and balances.

  “This folder, I will get it back? It will be mine if I do what you ask of me?”

  “Absolutely.”

  “For me to do with as I wish?”

  “Completely.”

  Mathematics. The mathematics of yuan, dollars, euros. In his head, an instant multiplication allowing for exchange rates. The Wizard smiling.

  “Okay. You have a deal, Investigator.”

  “No, Wizard, it is you who has a deal. ‘Is not the colour of a crow’s arse also black?’ ”

  Holding out his hand to shake Piao’s, but the Senior Investigator already turning toward the front door, folder of photographs under his arm.

  Chapter 14

  THE FIRST PEOPLE’S HOSPITAL, WU JIN ROAD, HONGKOU.

  On the brink of the Wu Jin Road, as if too nervous to attempt to cross it, the hospital. A vast hand of discoloured white stone, from some angles seeming to beckon. From other more obtuse angles, warding all away. And even before its gaping outer doors, the odours that all hospitals seem to possess. And with them, reminders of Ankang. Disinfected water in a dented bucket. Fresh shit, old vomit, doctors’ eau de cologne, nurses’ milky breasts, and above all, lives rotting on the vine.

  A room at the end of a once white-walled corridor, now yellow with nicotine.

  China Brand swiftly pulled from lips, tunic buttoned, a nod from a sleepy-eyed PSB Officer as Piao and the Big Man passed. The officer running back to open the door leading to her room. The Senior Investigator noticing that his boots were muddy. A good sign. Officers with pristine, shiny boots, never to be fully trusted.

  Medical light, harsh, and banishing all mid-tones. At the very centre of the room, a metal bedstead. Chrome bright bars along its sides. Wrapped in its protective weave, a bundle of bandages and dressings totally hiding a face and head.

  Piao sitting, gently taking one of the delicate hands into his own. His fingertips over the stitches’ secret Braille. His eyes closed for an instant, sensing the steel that had parted such soft, perfect flesh. She had used her hand as a shield. Turning the hand with the gentleness of a lover. Across her wrists, train-track parcels of catgut sutures. A sudden ache deep in his own wrists. Gently laying her hand back to white aertex, wrist down. Sharply turning away, not wishing to see the images starting to form in his own mind.

  “You all right, Boss?”

  Slowly the pain abating.

  “Yes. Just somebody walking over my grave.”

  Her torn lips muttering. Words louder, her eyes darting frantically. A panic, legs kicking chromed metal. Arms flailing.

  “It is ok …”

  Piao’s hand to her bucking shoulder.

  “We are here to help you.”

  Feet crashing against the bedstead in vibrating concussion. His hand across hers, calming the storm.

  “We are PSB. We are here to help you. Protect you.”

  Her eyes suddenly seeing. Darts of black recognising the Big Man’s uniform. Pupils widening to the gold and red epaulettes, the red star’s crimson bloom. Her body rearing up. A sudden eruption of arms and legs. From beneath the bandages, her mouth opening, lips curling in a piercing scream.

  “Fucking pimps. Pimps, fucking pimps.”

  Wilder her kicking, her flailing arms bruising against the steel cot. A frightening abandonment of self.

  “The bell, get the bell.”

  Yaobang wrenching at a discoloured cord. In a faraway nurses’ station, a light flashing. Chipped mugs of lucha thudding to the table. Tales of boyfriends’ wandering hands and flowing bank accounts cut short. Feet running, doors slamming back on resigned hinges.

  The Big Man, Piao, backs to the cold wall, as the nurse swept into the room. A doctor following, hypodermic already in his palm. The nurse holding her down.

  Piao into the doctors’ ear.

  “Her bandages, when can they can be removed?”

  “Why, Senior Investigator?”

  “I need to see what has been done to her.”

  “A voyeur, Senior Investigator?”

  Piao’s gaze nailed deeply to the doctor’s dull eyes.

  “Even in such violence a signature will be present. I do not wish to cause her pain, but I need to see her.”

  “Dao-mei, Senior Investigator, for you and for her.”

  The doctor, too young to shave, but old enough to amputate a leg, walked toward the door.

  “But to satisfy your need, Senior Investigator, we will un-bandage her tomorrow.”

  The door opening. Shaking his head.

  “What worth is a yeh-ji that has been on a butcher’s slab anyway? Who will pay good yuan to screw her now.”

  Moving through the door and into the corridor.

  “They should have left her to die.”

  The door closing.

  *

  The next day …

  “The Clinical Psychiatrist saw her late yesterday afternoon. He was impressed.”

  Impressed. Never hard to impress a Clinical Psychiatrist, Piao knew. Sanity, insanity, both making an equal impression in the head of such a professional whose stock in trade was the weaving of words.

  “He felt, however, that to remove her bandages, as you requested, Senior Investigator, could traumatise her further.”

  Crab fingers adjusting the neat row of pens in his top pocket.

  “She is calm, much calmer. She is now on powerful sedatives.”

  Yes, the Senior Investigator remembered calmer. Dribbling, shuffling, staring into the empty hours that formed one day after another. Yes, he remembered calmer. It came in a plastic bottle, in the shape of pretty little pink pills.

  Leaning forward, smiling, and adding unnecessarily.

  “In fact what the Clinical Psychiatrist actually said was that he was reluctant to allow this cheap show to progress any further.”

  Piao moving around the anteroom, counting the steps to diffuse his anger.

  “She is a witness to a brutal crime that many other yeh-jis have suffered and not survived.”

  “But the trauma to her psyche, Senior Investigator. The Clinical Psychiatrist will not allow …”

  “The Clinical Psychiatrist …”

  Piao reaching into his inner breast pocket for his documents of authority. Tossing the heavy wallet onto the table. Weathered-hide flipping open; dog-eared papers and the Star of the People’s Republic.

  “Clinical Psychiatrists can be persuaded to say anything, doctor. I know personally.”

  Leaving the wallet on the table. The burn of the People’s Republic’s star so persuasive.

  “The girl also has rights in this situation. One of them being to see what the wielding of a razor has done to her. Have you or the Clinical Psychiatrist asked what her wishes are?”

  “Her wishes, Senior Investigator?”

  “Yes doctor, the patient’s wishes. Ask her if she is ready for the bandages on her face and body to be removed. If she says yes, you and the Clinical Psychiatrist will walk away and not look back. If she says no, I will pick up my badge and walk away.”

  “Such a practice is highly irregular, Senior Investigator.”

  “Immerse yourself in some ‘irregularity’, doctor. Ask her, I insist.”

  The doctor was away, consulting, for precisely five complete orbited pacings of the room, Piao counting each pace. When the doctor re-entered the anteroom, he was not smiling. His gaze locked fully onto Piao’s documents of authority, as if it were an angry gash that required his full and immediate attention. His words brief.

  “The yeh-ji wants to see her face, or what is left of it,” was all that he said.

  *

  Spots, to islands, to continents …

  Last dressings. The closer to her face and skin the bandages
, the stronger, the darker the hues in vicious coloration. Stained curtain of gauze, stickiness, yielding. A nurse gently bathing her face. Cerise rivulets as tears, falling down her cheek and chin.

  “Senior Investigator …”

  Carefully rising between Piao and the Big Man, the nurse with a stainless steel bowl in her hands. Water with the colour that mature violence has. The doctor’s words in CocaCola breath against Piao’s stubble.

  “She is all yours. Be gentle with her. I will return in a minute.”

  Moving to the door, the nurse following; it closing in a reassuring huff of air.

  The patient, her head unmoving. Slowly the Senior Investigator moving around the side of her. His eyes never leaving what had been a once beautiful face, now just pallid sections of flesh, criss-crossed by railtracks of stitches. But something about her. A brightness of eye. Even in a soporific halfway house, a posture of defiance.

  For a reason that he did not fully understand, his heart was held in a vice of pain. About to speak, but the girl, Lan Li, speaking first. Words as unpractised as a baby’s first steps. And calm, with the resignation of an evil lived through, conquered.

  “The mirror. My face. I wish to see my face.”

  From the back of the room, Yaobang bringing the scratched mirror.

  “I wish to see what they did to me.”

  A look in Piao’s direction. A nod. A quizzical look at first in her eyes, as if seeing a reflection that was not hers, but where her own reflection should be. And then a realisation. Silent tears, in two silver tracks gliding from her eyes. Crying as she talked. Silent tears, the ones that hurt the most.

  “They chased me. I remember losing a shoe. They caught me by the Wusong river. I could not escape.”

  Her fingers exploring the reality of her new face, as if she could not trust her eyes solely.

  “Three of them and a fourth with a cut-throat razor. The fourth was laughing. Even as he cut me. Laughing. I remember. I remember, but I wish that I did not. They held me down. Over and over again they cut me. I remember looking up. His face against the sky, and the iron bridge over the river with people walking by. But nobody came. Nobody helped. I remember looking up, the blue sky turning red. My hands were held down. He pulled the cut-throat razor across each wrist. I remember the coldness of the blade.”

  Her hand moving to her opposite wrist. Only as she spoke again, the Senior Investigator realising that he had done the same. The ache inside him almost drowning out her words.

  “He pushed another forward as if it was a dare, a game. Holding him on top of me. And all the time the rivers of blood from my wrists.”

  Piao wiping her eyes. Dabbing her cheeks. Calming now, a steely horizon in her eyes.

  “And then I was running. I do not know how. Running down the river pathway. The noise of traffic above me. The sound of their feet on the gravel running after me. And laughter. And then I was in the water. The Wusongjiang, its current sweeping me away from them towards Suzhou creek.”

  Piao taking some cotton wool and gently drying her face of tears. So many tears. Only now able to see her beauty and to look past the rudely stitched scars. Her face one of the most perfect that he had ever seen. A rare beauty, stealing the breath away.

  “I remember the water so cold but comforting.”

  Pushing through the door, the doctor. Then standing, held in the Senior Investigator’s gaze.

  “The men that did this to you, Lan Li, would you recognise them?”

  “I would recognise him …”

  “Him?”

  “The one who held the razor, I would recognize his laugh. I would recognise his holed face.”

  “Holed face?”

  “Acne scars. His face, it looked like the moon.”

  Piao’s eyes seeking the Big Man’s. A glance, brief, but within it, a conversation shared. A whisper, less … as Piao passed his Deputy Investigator.

  “Doors leading to corridors.”

  The Senior Investigator’s eyes returning to the girl’s.

  “Is there anything else that you would recognise him by?”

  “His lip. His top lip stitched together. A scar, the skin shiny …”

  A sudden barbed strike of resonance pulling her back; thinking of her own skin, her own scars. The Senior Investigator stroking her head. So gently stroking.

  “And he had the smell of a PLA princeling.”

  “A PLA princeling, how can you tell?”

  Across her eyes a misting. The eyes of the whore staring at the ceiling, and beyond, to another place, another life, as the punter pumps his load in frantic hunt for hot sex in a cold life.

  “His suit was silk from the Peiluomen Garment Store. His shirt from the Paramount in Beijing. His eau de cologne was Gucci, not an imitation. Italian leather shoes. His nails had been manicured and he wore three heavy gold rings.”

  A brief pause, as with pain, she remembered.

  “He had eaten pheasant and quails eggs. These smells were on his breath.”

  “A princeling, perhaps. But how can you be certain he was PLA?”

  For the first time, her eyes meeting his.

  “I am a whore. I know men in a way that only a yeh-ji can. He was PLA.”

  Delicate fingers, long crimson nails, now broken, unbuttoning her nightdress. Tears streaming, but no sound of weeping.

  “And there is more that I will remember him by …”

  Her full breasts once cushions for the soul, now a racetrack of slits, gouges, gashes. Below her navel a large padded dressing.

  “Nurse.”

  From the door the nurse silently advancing.

  “Are you sure?”

  A nod. Slowly, carefully, the nurse’s fingers loosening the adhesive tape around the dressings. The last dressing gently bathed away. Cerise rivulets down her inner thighs. On her stomach, precisely fashioned by the cut-throat’s geometric carve, the crimson bleed of a five-pointed star. The star of the People’s Republic.

  Piao holding a fresh dressing to her stomach as the nurse applied adhesive tape. Struggling to control his rage. Acid burning in the pit of his stomach.

  “At the moment we are as, ‘frogs in a well-shaft seeing only the sky’. But that will change.”

  The Senior Investigator’s eyes reflected in hers. With the back of his hand, tears wiped away.

  “It will change.”

  Piao, moving to the window, through the gaps in the blinds looking out onto the street at the homeward bound traffic. So many cars. So many homes.

  “Do you have family that you can go to?”

  “I have no family. I was brought up in a state orphanage. I had foster parents, but I do not wish them to know of this. I do not wish them to know what I do.”

  “No one that you can go to? Your safety must be our main consideration.”

  “It is too late to think of my safety.”

  The Senior Investigator turning, from concern to investigation. Investigation, the base on which he had built his life. Remembering what an old colleague had advised him, when he had first been placed as a Deputy within the Homicide Squad. Words, smells also, hand-rolled tobacco, moth balls, three-day-old shirt.

  ‘Investigate your own life, yes, young Piao? Take some time from your investigations to look inside yourself.’

  Remembering the warmth of the old Investigator’s hand on his bony shoulder.

  ‘To know yourself is also to know each victim. And each murderer.’

  It was advice that he had never taken. He wished that he had. Hindsight, indigestion to life’s rich meal. Sour in the belly, worse in the toilet pan.

  “Where did you work? Perhaps this PLA princeling knew you from there?”

  Lan Li, her face being cleaned, re-dressed. Medicated padding, festoons of clean bandaging.

  “The Ming Ren.”

  “The Famous People Club on the Beijing Road, Boss. Smart place. Expensive. Exclusive. Just high cadre and tai zi.”

  Piao moving to the bed. Watching
her face transformed.

  “You have an arrangement with the club, the owner?”

  So dark her eyes, but no acknowledgement of his words.

  “Lan Li I need to know these things. I know that it must be painful for you, but such details could help us in our investigation. Who was your pimp, Lan Li? We will not prosecute him. I just wish to talk with him. Perhaps he has knowledge of this PLA princeling.”

  The reply reluctant, whispered.

  “You are, Senior Investigator. You are my pimp.”

  “I do not understand, Lan Li. What is it that you mean?”

  “You do not know how vice works, do you, Senior Investigator?”

  “We are new to the department, very new.”

  Words, darker. Redder.

  “Then learn, Senior Investigator. Learn fast. The Ming Ren, it is owned by the Public Security Bureau. I am owned by the Public Security Bureau. So you are my pimp, Senior Investigator.”

  Chapter 15

  KU-HAI YU-SHENG … ‘ALIVE IN THE BITTER SEA’.

  You hoe the field until your hands bleed. Blister upon blister, as numerous as the Western Mountains. You work in the heat of the foundry, each crucible’s pour as hot as the sun. Your skin cracking, as the arid river bed. Eyes as dehydrated as apricots, split and left to August middays. You plant the rice seedlings until your back is as set as concrete. Lying in your bed bent, like a human question mark, unable to straighten yourself.

  And then the next day comes, and the next day, and the next … Ku-hai yu-sheng … ‘Alive in the bitter sea’.

  And what of the high cadre, and the tai zis, their ‘princeling’ sons, how bitter is their sea?

  The shops that are guarded by middle-aged women attendants in horn-rimmed glasses and short hair trimmed in pudding bowl shapes, you will not be allowed to enter. They will ask for your ‘special purchase card’. And you will say, ‘what is this place?’ And they will answer, ‘not a place for you.’ It is not a place for you because it is a place for the high cadre. They will show their card. They will purchase what you cannot.

  At number 53, Dong Hua Men Street, foreign foodstuffs, fine chocolate, wines, scotch whisky, hams from Italy, cheeses from France. Also the home grown foodstuffs that the ordinary citizens of the People’s Republic hold in high regard, but rarely see. Giant prawns from the Sea of Bohai, yellow croaker fish, whole sides of pork. The best and finest leafed teas, not the dust and the warehouse swept debris.