Citizen One

by Andy Oakes

  “The hard part was finding the site, so I tried close to home. Ta ma de. Too close to home.”

  A ballet of the Wizard’s fingers. Pixels sprinting. The deep roots of another PLA database. The three of them staring at the monitor.

  MINISTRY OF SECURITY

  473309169972

  This encrypted file contains critically secret State information.

  Entrance to this file is on a purely need to know basis.

  Permission to enter this file can only be obtained by written request to the Minister of Security in Beijing.

  “What the fuck is this?”

  “An important number, an important file. Ta ma de. I tried to crack it. No luck. A 40 bit encryption. Impossible. If they bothered to put a 40 bit encryption on it, it’s important.”

  Moving to the window, Piao, his fingers prising a gap in the blind. The sun rising reluctantly through cracked longs. Turning, the blind falling back into place. Yaobang, holding out his glass.

  “This isn’t just about killing fucking yeh-jis, Boss.”

  But Piao’s mind already onto the next problem.

  “A number that is a dam. A dam that an ant might well destroy. We find out what the number that binds them means, and we find out what their death means. Wizard, find me someone who understands numbers. Someone who can read their mystery?”

  Rentang already turning to the monitor. Fingers already seeking knowledge.

  “I’m on a few hacking networks. Every kind of strange fruit is in there. Don’t worry, you’ll get what you want, Piao. Doesn’t the Wizard always deliver?”

  *

  The Shanghai Communist Party Records Annexe, Warehouse 4, Bansongyuanlu.

  The warehouse lay slumped between river water and new development concrete as if burdened with the secrets of many tens of millions of lives. Even from beyond its thick walls, and with the retch of the river’s stink filling your nostrils, you could smell other subtle things. The odour that a blocked career path has, because of a neighbour’s insinuation. The reek that a life forced into a cul-de-sac has, because of a grandparent’s blood line or a billion citizens have when they are forced to be silent with words welded to tongues and their sentences nailed to their lips.

  A closed door guarded by two Party faithful, an old mama whose breasts had long since dried of milk and a middle-aged man with conjuntivitis and a degree in political thought from Beijing University. Investigator Yaobang nodded to them, they nodded to him. The door opened, he stepped through it, the door closed.

  The request was typed on official PSB paper. A list of female names and the dates that they had been born in the People’s Republic of China. It took the clerk, one of several in identical jackets re-enforced with leather elbow patches, fully forty minutes to return from the dark bowels of a warehouse that consisted only of long runs of shelves. Upon each, piled high and deep, a generation of Shainghainese lives. In their dust-edged pages a record of every event in a citizen’s life and a measure of its worth to the state, to the Party, from birth to death, and beyond.

  “I am sorry, Detective Yaobang, there must be a mistake. The names that you gave me, Yang, Deming Da, Tsang and Lan Li, these people do not exist. They are non-citizens. We have neither Party or danwei records on these individuals.”

  The Big Man moved forward, his elbows braced on the rough wooden counter and his voice lowered.

  “These non-citizens’ records will be in your back room, Comrade.”

  A wink of an eye, a nod in the direction of darkness.

  “I do not understand what you mean, Detective Yaobang.”

  Closer, his face to the clerk’s. The man’s smell, of paper, dust, and a life dealing with others’ shit.

  “Your back room, Comrade. The three walk-in safes that are permanently open because the fucking keys to them were lost during the Cultural Revolution.”

  A wink. A nod. The clerk backing away a pace. Yaobang’s breath a bushfire of chilli, garlic, stale beer, and words that he did not wish to hear.

  “You are mistaken, Detective. The Communist Party Records Annexe has no room such as this.”

  “But, Comrade Clerk, it does. It has several rooms such as this. This is not the first time that I have been here. I, as you, am no ordinary comrade. I, as you, know of these rooms.”

  “There are no such …”

  “Shhh. Shhh, Comrade Clerk. Even in here you do not know who might be listening.”

  His eyes furtively looking around, his words whispered in a low tone.

  “Now go and get me the records of the names that I have given you. They will be in one of the walk-in safes, along with those many other comrades who do not exist officially.”

  The clerk looking over his shoulder.

  “I, I do not have the authority to furnish you with these records.”

  “This letter gives you the fucking authority, Comrade Clerk. This letter insists, Comrade Clerk.”

  “But I cannot furnish these records to you. These are non-comrades. They do not exist.”

  Yaobang’s fingers travelling over the top of a dusty desk tidy. His eyes meeting the clerk’s.

  “If they are non-comrades, then their files will not be missed, will they, Comrade Clerk?”

  Shaking his head.

  “I cannot do it, Detective Yaobang. Such a request could lead to me losing my position, or worse.”

  “Is this an indelible marker, Comrade Clerk?”

  The Big Man pulling a black-capped marker pen from the desk tidy.

  “Yes. Yes it is, why do you ask? Please, that is the only marker pen that we have. Could you replace it in …”

  In a lightning fast grab, snaring the clerk’s wrist. Holding it in a vice-like grip, before slamming his hand onto the counter. In two defined black slashes, marking the top of his hand with a thick ‘x’.

  “What are you doing? What is this?”

  Yaobang allowing him to pull away. Replacing the top on the marker pen and placing it neatly in the desk tidy as he spoke.

  “It is to mark you apart from your colleagues, Comrade Clerk. So that when I return with more PSB officers and the official papers for your arrest on a charge of attempting to subvert a Public Security Bureau investigation carried out on behalf of the People’s Republic of China, I can tell who you fucking are.”

  The little colour that remained in the clerk’s face, draining away. Yaobang turning toward the door, and in a whisper that he knew that the clerk would just be able to hear.

  “A serious charge, Comrade Clerk. Very serious. Perhaps your own files will rest in one of the rooms with no key.”

  A hand on the Big Man’s shoulder. A whisper deep into his ear.

  “I will see, I will see what I can do, Comrade Yaobang.”

  And in a whisper of a whisper.

  “There is a back door in the long, at the far end of the warehouse. I will be there in thirty minutes. Will you be able to find it, Investigator?”

  The door opening.

  “It is a door that I know well, Comrade Clerk. Too fucking well.”

  The door closing.

  *

  It was closer to forty minutes than thirty, but none of it wasted time. Forty spans of sixty seconds, chewing on the smoke of a China Brand and watching the tugs muscle a freighter down the Huangpu.

  A series of bolts shunted on the other side of weathered, re-enforced timber. Slowly the door opening. The clerk, his arms piled high and spilling with thick folders. His words hurried and whispered. Only just audible above the water’s ebb and flow.

  “Sorry, Comrade Yaobang, it took time to find three sets of the files. The women named, life no longer possesses them. They are in the city morgue on Zaoyanglu and have been assigned numbers. 35774324, 35774341, 35774352. We put the files of dead non-comrades in a different place to living non-comrades.”

  Inwardly cursing, the Big Man. Death’s undesirable taste suddenly filling his mouth. Taking the files from the clerk’s arms. The door already starting
to close.

  “Comrade Yaobang, you will say nothing of this, of me, yes?”

  “And you will say nothing of this, or me, yes, Comrade Clerk?”

  A nod greeting a nod. The door closed. The bolts slipping back into place.

  Chapter 19

  THE CITY MORGUE, ZAOYANGLU.

  The first time that Piao had watched the dissection of a human brain, the pathologist holding it as a trophy in his hands, he had wondered what might get trapped beneath the clinician’s fingernails. Perhaps a memory, ripped and isolated? Or perhaps the bit that makes the rules? Keeps the rules … breaks the rules?

  *

  “Do you know what the time is?”

  The door, steel and reclaimed wood; Yaobang’s hand between it and the doorframe. Knuckle white clench around documents of authority. Red star burning in his palm.

  “My feet are killing me. I’ve got a gut ache and need a shit. And I’ve got a hole in my fucking shoe and a wet sock, because it’s pissing down with rain out here.”

  “Do you know what the time is?”

  Pushing at the door, but the mortuary attendant, a picked wishbone of a man, wobbling, but still resolute.

  “I know what the fucking time is, it’s time I went home. Now open this door or I’ll …”

  “Just checking your document of authority, Investigator, and your letter of authority to examine the bodies. I need to check you know? We get all sorts of perverts wanting to enter a place like this.”

  The attendant wiping the snot from his nose onto his glistening cuff. Staring through the gap at Piao and the Big Man.

  “Yes, all sorts of perverts that would do unimaginable things to the dead. Had one once who had even wore his old dead papa’s army uniform just to get in here and fiddle. Fiddle, fiddle, fiddle. Caught him with an old mama who had been dead a week.”

  Through the gap returning the documentation.

  “Fiddle, fiddle, fiddle. Can’t be too careful, comrades. Thank you for your patience.”

  The door opening. The attendant, almost luminescent in his paleness, already walking away.

  “Come on then. Come on. Do you not know what time it is? And watch my floors with those wet feet of yours, Investigator. People have been killed by slipping on a wet marble floor. In fact we had one brought in two days ago. An old daddy, eighty-five, if he was a day. Skull wall as thin as a quail’s eggshell. I’ll show you if you wish.”

  Piao leaving the limping Deputy behind.

  “That will not be necessary, Comrade. Three cadavers in one night is quite sufficient. But thank you for the generous offer.”

  The wishbone smiling a crooked smile. Never, not in fifteen years, had a Senior Investigator ever said, thank you, to him.

  “Pity. It’s quite a sight. A brain like a pickled walnut.”

  Double doors pulled open in an asthmatic wheeze.

  “No matter, Senior Investigator. No matter. But while you check those who life no longer possesses, I will make tea.”

  A hand down the front of his threadbare trousers, the attendant adjusting his balls.

  “Yes, xunhuacha. It is never the same seeing the dead without a good strong mug of tea in your hand.”

  *

  Three mortuary drawers. Three huffs of air. Three girls, Yang, Deming Da, Tsang, now numbers: 35774324, 35774341, 35774352. Three daughters. ‘Spilt water’.

  “Here, Senior Investigator, xunhuacha, the likes of which you have never tasted before,” handing him a mug, black with gold emblazoned characters on a thin pitted glaze that would soon wear through …

  THE PEOPLE’S OLYMPICS … 2008

  Jasmine driving the smell of death from his nostrils and purging the taste of it from his tongue. As he sipped it glancing down at the three open drawers. Three girls razor-carved. Not a three-inch expanse of skin that was not afflicted by the crazy paving of ugly wounds. And through the sanguine chaotic slashes, the careful, methodical scalpel lines of the pathologist’s autopsy. Clumsily thick, workman-like stitches.

  Xunhuacha in a deep gulp. The mortuary assistant’s Adam’s apple, a football swept out to sea.

  “An average of fifty-five cuts on each body. The exact figure is in the pathologist’s full reports.”

  “Just like the yeh-ji in the fucking hospital, Boss.”

  The mortuary assistant, his finger tracing one of the young women’s deeper wounds.

  “There’s another dead one in the hospital?”

  Walking swiftly away, the Big Man, his garbled words.

  “Not dead, dao-mei. Just left her. Left her in the Number 1 Hospital.”

  The sound of coughing in the hallway.

  “Do not concern yourself, Comrade. My Deputy, his rural birth has given him a weak stomach. I am afraid that there is a very good chance that he will throw-up.”

  “Fat oaf. I only cleaned that floor thirty minutes ago, he’d better not.”

  More xunhuacha running down his chin in his eagerness to speak.

  “Some of the cuts are so deep that they penetrate muscle. Here, here, and here, they even score bone. And these, a bit special. The cuts are up to seven millimetres deep, approximately fifteen millimetres wide. The design was cut and then the flesh between the cuts sliced away.”

  Tea stirred with a discoloured spoon. Stirred more times than was necessary. A cracked bell of sound, a spike entering into the Senior Investigator’s concentration.

  “Whoever did it took his time. An artist. A perfectionist. The pathologist estimated at least six minutes a girl.”

  More coughing from the hallway.

  “Actually, perhaps you should concern yourself with my Deputy, Comrade. A glass of water might help.”

  “Yes. Yes, I will get one right away. The fat oaf. If he stains the floor or the wall, the PSB will have to meet the cost. I shall see to it personally. Italian marble, no less. Italian. That marble has come a long way. Wherever Italy is.”

  Piao kneeling, as if praying, looking into the drawers. The smells that death demands when life has vacated, filling him. His eyes, full and focused on the carved designs. A red bloom of a sanguine fashioned five pointed star between the navel and vagina, drawing the eye as the needle draws the thread. Perhaps the one who murdered wanted exactly that, to draw the focus, taint the scent. Or perhaps he just enjoyed using a razor like a paintbrush.

  The Senior Investigator taking each girl’s hand into his. So small and so pale. Fingernails bitten and un-painted. Unlike the yeh-ji, Lan Li’s wriggling crimson fishes of long painted nails. Each girl’s feet, toenails, the same pink, set in death’s blue, no ripe cherries of scarlet. Their teeth amalgam-valleyed, uneven, uncapped, ordinary teeth, not perfect at all, not like the yeh-ji, Lan Li’s.

  Stepping back and for the first time really looking at them. Past the pallid shroud that death bestows, young women that you would see in any street market, any laundry, or any tea shop. If anything, marked out by their very ordinariness. No yeh-jis, not these three. Receptionists, waitresses, perhaps, but not prostitutes.

  The pathologist’s reports were long and lovingly written in the secret language insisted upon by those who interpret death’s choreography. Yet the unsaid as important as the said. And even in death’s parlour, an ear for the midnight knock on the door, the Comrade Pathologist.

  On the closest body to him, the girl now known as 35774324, Piao’s finger following the ‘Y’ incision from the pubic area to the breasts, that would have exposed the diaphragm and opened up the chest for examination like an overripe peach. Following each step of the pathologist’s examination, now detailed in ink on paper and marked by great rail tracks of sutures leading to nowhere.

  Moving onto the close examination of the outside of the body. Each wound, its length, width, depth, measured. It’s position plotted on a black ink-thick outline of the human form on paper. Each wound now just a carefully transcribed red penned mark.

  And all of the time, as an itch that you cannot reach to scratch, a constant nagging.
Dropping a report to the floor. Scrabbling through the pages of the next report and the next. Each report open at the same page. Kneeling beside them. Refrigerated chill running from knees to legs. No yeh-jis, not these three.

  Shaking his head, Piao. Bad mistakes, elementary mistakes. Detective Di … other things on his mind? A wife who moaned about having to buy second-hand dresses? Street market shoes that wore and cut her feet with blisters? Di, he had not read the pathologist’s reports, or had at least not read them with an investigator’s eye. That and the files of all four young women coming to him bundled together in thick elastic bands all at once. Lan Li, a prostitute, her file at the very top of the bundle. He had judged them all by her. Lan Li a yeh-ji, so all four yeh-jis.

  Re-reading the pathologist’s reports. Lives, and how they had been lived, laid bare by the scalpel’s silver glide. Not one of the dead girls showing evidence of ever having had a sexually transmitted disease; unusual amongst yeh-jis. Not one of the dead girls showing evidence of ever having had an abortion; again, unusual amongst yeh-jis.

  One of the dead girls had still been intact, a virgin. The other two, there was evidence of fresh semen within their vaginas, but too contaminated by river water for definitive DNA testing. Evidence too that they had also been virgins prior to being raped and their deaths.

  Carefully closing the reports, the Senior Investigator. Death lost in anonymity. Three dead girls, now numbers laid to black printed rest.

  *

  From the corridor honest odours; sweat’s tang, disinfectant’s pine snatch. Smells that never offended Piao. Only the cadres’ silver-topped eau de Cologne untruths ever causing offence. Only the Comrade Politicians’ mint-mouthed diatribes sickening him.

  “You are going, Senior Investigator? Already?”

  Piao, reports under arm, already walking from the mortuary.

  “It was a help seeing those who life no longer possesses? You have got what you wanted?”

  “Yes. Thank you, Comrade. It was a help.”

  “How so, Senior Investigator?”