Authors: Andy Oakes
“I take it that you have no knowledge of an American by the name of Bobby Hayes?”
“I have no knowledge of the person to whom you refer.”
The official, a medium ranked cadre, was controlled, a mask of a smile levered onto his face.
But the calm of the surface of the ocean belies the sharks fighting in its depths.
“But you do have knowledge of Professor Lazarus Heywood whose laboratory this was?”
The official gave a small strained laugh. He was sweating. Piao could smell its garlic taint oozing from his pores.
“This is not a game. Let me explain clearly what I am doing here. Why I am talking to you. I am the Senior Investigator with the Homicide Squad of the Public Security Bureau. I am investigating two fistfulls of murders … and you, Mr University Official, are getting in my way. Now we can do this here, informally … or we can be more conservative about it at the kung an chu. But be warned, if you force me to take you to the city headquarters you will not be out to celebrate the New Year, which is still some time away. So think of your family and answer my questions. Do you understand the point that I am making?”
The cadre was weighing up threats. Plusses and minuses. Which to grasp, which to shrink away from. Piao knew the look, he met it every day, like a sweaty handshake that you could not wipe off.
“Professor Lazarus Heywood, tell me about him?”
“He, he worked here in the university. Professor Heywood lectured in Chinese history. And in um, archaeology. Yes, also in archaeology.”
“Where is Professor Heywood?”
The silence was long, but full. Nothing more valuable than such silence. Experience had taught Piao to allow the fish more line.
“It is not known where the Professor is. The university alerted the Luxingshe as he is an American national. He failed to attend to his university lecturing commitments. We were … we were concerned. This is a very worrying, a very unusual situation. I understand that the Luxingshe are still investigating the matter.”
The official had dull eyes. You saw such eyes on the fish that were left on the market stall long after a full day’s trade had passed. The fish that would never be bought. The Senior Investigator moved closer, his shadow eclipsing the cadre.
“Life no longer possesses Professor Lazarus Heywood. And in the zealous nature in which you have gone about ‘tidying up’ these rooms which once belonged to him, I would suggest that you were fully aware of this fact?”
The cadre’s laugh was grating, like rusty cogs.
“I repeat what I just said. Professor Heywood is dead. I should know, it was me who fished what was left of his body out of the Huangpu …”
The official took a step backwards, the cold wall now against his back.
“… I need to see Heywood’s personal belongings.”
“I, we, do not have them. A team from the Luxingshe took official control of this area. The room was sealed off to university staff while it was searched and cleaned …”
He stopped to clear his throat, his Adam’s apple bobbing. Lowering his voice in false sincerity. Lowering his eyes in honest fear.
“… it is all a question of Professor Heywood’s political activities and his contact with dissident student groups. It is
nei-bu
, classified information, but the Luxingshe were gracious enough to tell us that much.”
Piao walked to the centre of the room, the light from the bulb directly above him elongating his features. His eyes drained of colour, shadow running down his cheeks.
“I was in contact with the Luxingshe this morning, before coming to your university. The Luxingshe have no record of such an operation ever having taken place. They have no knowledge of any action being taken in regards to Professor Lazarus Heywood. The Luxingshe were not even aware that Professor Heywood was missing.”
“Bu-but I saw the Luxingshe officers myself. I … I examined their documentation. They had full authority. Their paperwork was in order. Th-they had full authority.”
“They might have had full authority, but they were not Luxingshe.”
Spit on the cadre’s lips, reminding Piao of the discoloured foam discharging from the Suzhou at low tide.
“But n-no one impersonates Luxingshe, no one w-would dare to. And who could g-get the documentation that I examined, the au-authority?”
The cadre smelt of cheap aftershave, Hong Kong piss water packaged in gaudy imitation boxes.
“Security? Or the murderers who robbed Professor Heywood of his life?”
Again the whisper into the perfumed ear …
“Perhaps the two are the same. Security and the murderers of Professor Heywood?”
Silence, this time long, empty. Nothing is less valuable than such silence. The official was rallying his defences, Piao would get nothing more. Barbara was already walking toward the door, her eyes too dark to read.
“Is there anything that you need to tell me, Mr University Official? Do you still not know of an American called Bobby Hayes? Do your students not know of an American called Bobby Hayes?”
“I know n-nothing of a Bobby Hayes and now I know n-nothing of a Professor Lazarus Heywood. Neither will the s-students of this university.”
To recognise the thirst must also be sometimes to recognise that the well is empty.
The Senior Investigator pulled on his jacket and fastened it, the top button still missing.
“Go back to your office, Mr University Official. Let me know when the Luxingshe men call again. Let me know when you remember an American boy called Bobby Hayes.”
*
Fudan is large. It took over two hours for Piao to show Barbara its every corridor of beige, its every lecture hall with black heads bent in study. Barbara had never made a good tourist, her feet were tired within twenty minutes. The flooring hard, unforgiving. Her head light with a constant churning of unanswerable questions, untangleable thoughts. Piao, the Senior Investigator from the Homicide Squad, an enthusiastic guide. It had surprised her, he didn’t seem the type. It was only his insistence that had carried her along, when all that she had really wanted was a beer. And to lay under a duvet, as dark as a cave, and give permission to herself to be eight years old again.
*
The central square of Fudan University was empty. They walked its perimeter. The sky undercoat grey, the air ripped with a bitter cold wind. A siren interrupted their footsteps, and then there were students spilling from every doorway, every corner of the square. The noise of their feet on concrete, swamping the electronic shriek. They were like any other students, perhaps a little neater in appearance. A tide of denim-blue creases. Baseball caps. Hooded sweatshirts. Girls with hair slicked alluringly over one eye. It surprised Barbara. Had she still really expected Mao suits and little red books held at head height?
“Christ, it could be downtown New York …”
She was pointing with one hand, her other hand brought to rest on Piao’s. Its softness, its coldness … at that instant, nothing else in his universe.
“… Coca-Cola tee shirts, Mini Mouse jackets. Look, there’s a Laker’s baseball cap. It’s unbelievable. It really could be the States.”
“Yes, your country has given us the very best that its culture has to offer. We are all enriched by the experience.”
But he was already moving away from her, hands no longer touching. Any PSB Officer would also have sensed it. Incoming danger and the excitement that is its carrier oil. It had a scent, the ashes of roses. It had a feel, gloved finger tips across the nape of the neck. A crowd of students were congregating in the centre of the square, off the pathways. To hold such a gathering was prohibited … counter-revolutionary sabotage. Since June 4
th
‘89 … Tiananmen … such an act had been prohibited. Students had now been forced into being nothing more than a generation in waiting for Deng Xiaoping and his high cadre cronies to pass on.
A period of waiting, is not dying, is not living.
A banner unfurled. Yellow on red.
Build once more the Goddess of Democracy.
A violent red bloom in a foliage of baseball caps, Minnie Mouse jackets and the flailing olive green arms of the PSB. More police rushed towards the banner, but another group of students had assembled in a far corner of the square … and then another group. Hoods across their eyes. Caps pulled down. Banners meeting the breeze in lacerations of scarlet. The Senior Investigator had hold of Barbara’s elbow, moving her firmly down an exit, out of the square towards the car.
“This is bad. We cannot be involved. We must go.”
It was cold, getting colder, but Barbara felt the perspiration shock her forehead. The car doors barely closed, and they were shooting toward the main gate. Students spilling into the road. Piao wrestling with the wheel. And a roar of a thousand voices pitched in protest. A PSB officer was in the distance, arm raised. Behind him the gatehouse barrier lowering. The Shanghai accelerated with a jolt. The Senior Investigator pulling his badge from an inner pocket and slamming it against the inside of the windscreen; head out of the side window, roaring …
“Homicide. Homicide. Homicide.”
The PSB officer straining to make sense of the oncoming vehicle. His eyes, a dark slash across his face. A hand moving to his hip, to the pistol buttoned into its small, neat holster. But a sudden realisation. A recognition. A thump of adrenaline. Waving the barrier up with both hands; barely escaping the charge of the bumper’s peeling chrome. Getting to his feet and brushing down his trousers. The red and white candy stick barrier lowering behind him as Piao joined the flow of traffic into Hongkou’s belly, toward the stadium. The high-rise cityscape falling back around them. Still in the Senior Investigator’s hand, in a tight clasp … his badge. A five pointed star embossed in his palm. He replaced it in his pocket. The red and gold eclipsed in darkness.
*
People’s Square swirled with colour. Peasants bussed in from outlying villages, dressed in traditional regional folk outfits. Long Magyar dresses. Embroidered silk kimonos. Ladakhis robes of silk on broadcloth, quilted with fur. Boots of thick felt. Turkestan full-length dresses of orange bleeding to yellow and into white. Long jackets of vertical and horizontal stripes; candy stripes. … black, red, blue, yellow. The New Year would be full of dance, beckoned in by the music of the provinces. The New Year would be a parade of earthen and fired hues; of slashing sky bound fireworks. But above all … the New Year would be organised.
“Slow down, slow down. I want to see this.”
Barbara put a hand on Piao’s shoulder; the Senior Investigator put a foot gently on the brake. She wound the window down. Drums and high pitched pipes on the breeze. Her hair in flight.
“So much colour and look at the different costumes. When I see this I realise just how bland Fifth Avenue is. How dull the States can be.”
Piao turned to look out of the side window as the vista slowly passed. The lines of costumed peasants being shepherded into order; choreographed into their precise place by serious-faced and stern-voiced comrades …
Smile, smile. You’re not on the pig farm now!
He’d seen it all before, every year. The Senior Investigator pushed his foot down firmly on the accelerator.
“So. America is bland. Dull. Even with Coca-Cola, tee shirts and Minnie Mouse jackets?”
Barbara wound the window up, the music truncated. The silence suddenly felt threatening, Piao wishing that he had not spoken.
“I did say it, didn’t I? An America official putting down God’s own country. Back in the States that’s treason, I guess you’d call it counter revolutionary sabotage. I could get twenty-five to thirty years solitary in Disneyland for saying such things.”
The Senior Investigator looked at her, startled.
“Really? Such severe sentences exist also in America?”
“No, no, I was just joking, making fun.”
Barbara threw back her head and laughed. It reminding Piao of the sound that water makes lapping over pebbles.
“It is the very first time that I have heard you laugh.”
“It’s the first time that I’ve laughed in a long time. I use to laugh a lot. I guess lately that I’ve not had much to laugh about.”
The words, Piao knew … such feelings, he also knew.
“Laughing can be more difficult than crying. To laugh is to realise a little of what God had in mind when he created the world.”
Barbara’s hand was on his shoulder once more. He never wanted it to leave.
“That’s lovely. So beautiful. Where did you hear it? Is it from Confucius?”
“No, it is not from Confucius. I read it in an old American book. I think that it was called the Reader’s Digest.”
She laughed again. Piao ploughed the car into the Jinling Road, drinking from her laughter, but with no idea as to why her laughter had occurred. It was true. Americans could be very complex people.
*
The Shanghai Jing Jiang Hotel was busy. Coaches end to end on Maominanlu. Piao double parked, a coach driver suggesting that he fuck off, until spotting the gold and red of the Senior Investigator’s epaulettes. The driver returned to his three day old copy of the ‘People’s Daily’, his eyes hidden from view by an editorial diatribe on the latest production figures for Liberation Trucks.
“If you would not find it offensive or a great inconvenience, I would appreciate it if you could perform an important function for me?”
Barbara leaned, bracing herself against the frame of the open car window, eyes narrowing on Piao inside. The last person to ask her to ‘perform an important function for him’, an obese Congressman from Iowa, in the cramped confines of the Washington Hilton elevator, was still nursing a bruising knee to his nuts.
“My cousin Cheng who was killed, his children have a love of chocolate. I would like to give them some, but it is difficult. I do not have a card for the ‘Friendship Store’, and the hotels will not accept money unless it is from a tourist. Would you feel able to get me some chocolate?”
A sense of relief washed over her. A man for all seasons this Investigator. Pumping a car underneath the blunt nose of a pistol and a fast descending barrier, an hour later, wanting to buy chocolate for his cousin’s tearful children.