Authors: Andy Oakes
“I will be outside the Jing Jiang in twenty minutes.”
And not waiting for a reply before he put the phone down.
*
170 Nanjingxilu. The hotel straddling the corner. Art deco and pigeon shit. Its lobby, gaudy yellow, like a mouthful of high cadre gold capped teeth.
Piao had never stepped through the hotel’s doors before. The building was a part of him, of every Shanghainese, like speaking the distinctive accent that made Shanghainese Mandarin almost unintelligible to outsiders. Like the food with its abundance of rapeseed oil, the culinary quirk that Shanghai cuisine turned upon. And the utter conviction that every Shanghainese held, that beyond the city limits only darkness was to be found.
The reception area was bright, garish. Wincing, the Senior Investigator straightened his tie. It was 3.45am. The huge space empty, just a night porter. Fingernails bitten to the quick. A hip-flask in his pocket, just used. Maotai, the fermented must of corn and sorghum … its subtle scent still on his lips. Barbara was two paces behind … reaching for Piao’s arm, grabbing him back.
“What are we doing here?”
The words almost whispered, but Piao continued to the desk. A pad of hotel notepaper sat next to the registration book. The Senior Investigator twisted it around toward her. The flowing letters in gold, pallid in yellow light.
HEPING … THE HOTEL OF PEACE.
“Would you really have got him pushed out of his job for drinking, if he hadn’t given us what you wanted?”
“I would have reported him to his Danwei. They would have done the rest. Would you have expected less from a good citizen?”
Piao pushed the elevator button, top floor. The doors groaning closed. A hiccup of movement before it started its slow, steady haul.
“Would you have expected less from a good Homicide Investigator?”
Barbara checked herself in the wide mirror, Piao’s reflection across her shoulder.
“You were lucky, his drinking. How else would you have got the information out of him?”
“All night porters drink, as certain as room boys will look through your underwear drawer. If that did not work, I would have broken his arms, then his legs …”
She stopped in mid-motion, fingers frozen in the stream of her hair.
“… if that did not work, his flask of maotai would have been next.”
The elevator slowed, came to a halt, the doors opening. Barbara turning to face him. The dregs of a smile still in the corners of his mouth.
“It could be a coincidence, the boy saying ‘peace’ … and this hotel? The girl on the top floor, the night porter wasn’t sure that she was pregnant.”
The elevator doors started to close. The Senior Investigator’s arm forced them open.
“It will not be a coincidence. Coincidences do not live in a room that faces due east, with a view of the embarkation point in Huangpu Park. A view that your son wrote about so many times in his cards to you.”
She squeezed through the gap between his arm and the door. A glimpse of his face as the elevator slammed shut and fell. He was right. She knew that coincidences did not live in a room with a view overlooking Huangpu Park.
*
Can you not see the waters of the Yellow River descending from the
heavens, hurrying irrevocably down to the sea?
The emergency lighting pinned fuzzed shadows to the run of corridor. The heavy carpet shrouded in milky plastic sheeting. A gantry of painting platforms supported by step ladders. Wallpaper half stripped, hanging in frayed tassels. And the smell of paint, turpentine, varnish … and
Jiaozi
, the doughy triangles of meat and vegetables eaten during hurried meal breaks. Almost palpable, the fine burn of indigestion.
The corridor was long, the occasional door of dark wood furnished with polished brass, breaking it into equal dashes. Ornate icing sugar art deco plasterwork being re-touched. Frozen climbs of ivy. Bursts of trumpeting lilies. Statuesque females clasping fiery torches. Everything in a state of flux and re-decoration.
“This is some place; I’ve never seen anything quite like it. Well, except for the Plaza in New York or the Deauville in Miami.”
She turned to look at Piao, the light sparse, his eyes lost in penumbra. Fingers trailing the wall, a door, the wall.
“The money from the ugly trade, drugs, can buy many beautiful things.”
“This was built with dirty money?”
“Opium trading. It was built by the Sassoons in the early years of the century. They were a great trading house, like Jardine’s …”
He stopped next to a door, Suite 315. The key in one hand, his other in an arcing flourish.
“… this was the place to stay in before the war came. The Cathay Hotel. It had a private plumbing system that was fed by a spring on the outskirts of the city. It had marble baths, silver taps, vitreous china lavatories that were imported from Great Britain. The finest and most elegant art deco in China …”
He inserted the key.
“… Noel Coward would stay here. He completed ‘Private Lives’ in this hotel. Do you know it?”
“Is that the one with the ex-wife who’s a ghost?”
He pushed the door open.
“I think the English have much style. Noel Coward. Vitreous china lavatories …”
“… and Cadbury’s chocolate …”
Even in the near dark Barbara could see him smile.
“… such confidence, such style. These cannot be easily found in China today. The Sassoons who built this place had these qualities. They were Jews. ‘There is only one race greater than the Jews, and that is the Derby.
’
”
“Who said that, Noel Coward?”
“The Sassoons.”
“They were wrong.”
“Why, are not the Jews a great race?”
“Sure they’re a great race. But the greatest race isn’t the Jews or the Derby … it’s the Kentucky.”
The spotlights of the suite sparked into life … puddles of warmth. A tide of pink veined marble and of a thickly bevelled mirror riding on its back. The Senior Investigator followed Barbara into the suite, watching the light trickle across her shoulders, her cheek. Kentucky, he knew, wasn’t in China. It could be in America or Britain. Wherever it was, he wondered if they had vitreous china lavatories.
*
The suite was in organised disarray. Dunes of dust sheets covering furniture. Plastic sheeting. Step ladders, planks, paint tins, brushes … stowed neatly in a far corner by double picture windows. Below, the city, with only the arterial lights of the roads spiking across Pudong towards Beilai, breaking its raven blackness. The girl who had been staying in Suite 315 must have had money. To live in such luxury could cost over two hundred yuan a night. It was only within the range of diplomats, company executives, politicians … the rich. Such people would be worth listening in on. The Senior Investigator knew where to look. As the dog finds the bone, Piao found what he was looking for. Behind the electrical points in two rooms, crystal controlled UHF transmitters. Mains driven and operating continuously. Immune to ‘bug sweeping’ devices. Transmitting on very narrow bands to dedicated receivers. Behind the telephone junction boxes, UXT ‘wire taps.’ Energised from the line. Maintenance free. Electronically invisible. Transmitting both sides of a telephone conversation as soon as the handset was lifted. State of the art. Neat, reliable … unfussy. Only Bureau Six could have commissioned such equipment. The rest of the Ministries thirteen Bureaus depended on human intelligence gathering. It cost little … a scrap here, a threat there. No, this was Bureau Six. Piao refitted the last junction box and tightened the screws into place. Technology such as this was a good sign. At the end of every transmitter, perhaps kilometres away, would be receivers. Beside the receivers, sleepy, bored operatives. Thinking of food, beer, bed. But beside each operative, immune to such diversions … a reel to reel would be slowly unwinding. Its full attention given. Each word caught on tape. Each conversation etched onto Chromium Dioxide. The girl, perhaps even Bobby, both would live on tapes. Numbered, catalogued, scrawled with black marker pens. Sitting amongst a bank, a wall of other tapes.
Barbara was looking out from the window. The horizon strung with lights, meshing with her hair in haloes of cold white.
“What did the night porter say that her name was?”
“Ye Yang.”
She repeated the name to herself, levering aside the images of mud, eyes gouged out, red painted nails … that now seemed welded to it. Thinking only of the pregnancy, the baby. The words that Bobby had never spoken of. Had never written of. Her eyes followed the line of the Bund far below. Its dark incision into the flank of Huangpu Park. Where verdigris turned to slate grey.
“This is the view that Bobby wrote about in some of his postcards, isn’t it?”
Piao at her shoulder, breath into her perfumed hair.
“This is the view. This was also his home. Here was his girlfriend who was having his child. You know that this is true. If you wish I could take the bath apart, show you his hair in the pipe. Perhaps we would also find more nails that are painted red?”
“There is no need for that, Piao, thank you.”
“Please do not thank me for this message that I bring you. Its pen and its paper are pain. To know that Ye Yang was Bobby’s girlfriend, is also to know that she was the girl in the Huangpu with the others.”
Her eyes were already misting. Lights forming stars. The river, the Bund, an inseparable smear. Fighting against the tears, she took one last look at the view. Bobby’s view. Being his eyes, his senses. Wanting to own the view also … forever. Turning, she walked to the door, the Senior Investigator following.
*
Nothing was said between them until the hotel was left behind; its windows lost amongst a multitude of others. The early morning was cold. A cancerous cold eating into the bone. Weakening resolve. Bleeding the soul. The sky lightening and fixed in bands of cloud that resembled a rack of thick-bladed butchers knives.
“You’re a Homicide Investigator, tell me how anyone could kill a pregnant young woman?”
The Senior Investigator started the engine, its racked bronchial cough sounding like he felt.
“Professional killers do not have likes or dislikes. They do not ask questions. You are a professional politician, do you ask all of the questions that you should before signing the order or negotiating the deal?”
“But that’s not the same. This was a pregnant girl, for Christ sake. It’s not the same.”
Piao pulled into the Bund, trailing the finger of Huangpu Park as it stretched tight against the river, seemingly one and the same. Lights moving through the trees. A freighter approaching, slipping past, disappearing into darkness. The Senior Investigator wound down the side window, moving into Fuzhoulu, away from the park. Away from the river. Were there worse sins than others? He put his foot down sharply on the accelerator, a draft of bitter wind across his face watering his eyes, everything falling into grey.
“Politicians think that it is never the same,” he said.
Piao didn’t sleep. The light in the flat, too harsh to allow asleep. Albino. Severe. It carried movement from the
long
below. And sound. Cars, bicycles, snatches of Mandarin. They all said that sleep had been left behind and that day awaited. He wrote reports. Each word shaped by Chief Liping’s imposing shadow. At eight he washed. The water cold, unsweet. The mirror prominent and demanding; making him think that he was looking older. Tired. Gutters of lines around his eyes. A permanence about them now that made it impossible to call them laughter lines.
Could she ever find me attractive?
He dressed and went to the bottom drawer of the tall cabinet. The bundle at the back in amongst bed-linen, was wrapped carefully. Soft cloth. A sparse fall of lint. An acidic waft of light machine oil. Piao undoing the parcel with care, as if it contained a crystal vase or some delicate relic that might crumble on exposure to the air. The pistol felt lighter than he remembered, but more clumsy. A Type 59. A crude copy of a Soviet Makarov PM. Blowback design. Double action derived from the Walther PP. Piao slowly, carefully, placed the cold black barrel in his mouth. Metal against teeth … metal against flesh. Removing the slide-mounted safety-catch that locked the firing pin. A sharp click as he squeezed home the trigger. Reverberating through his head. Reverberating down the years. He withdrew the barrel and pushed the magazine into place. Eight shot, detachable box. Nine millimetres. It fitted with a reassuring snugness into the leather shoulder holster. A second magazine he placed in an inside jacket pocket. He massaged his neck and shoulders before heading for the door. Tense and frozen, they had the feel of an anchor chain, taut and straining on the turn of the tide.
Piao saw the photograph on the wall as he pulled the door open. Her hair touching his cheek. A wisp across his lips. A sable finger crossing his mouth, warning of lies. He closed the door, locking it all away. Walking down the stairs and into the street.
We are all bitterness here … it’s our only device.
*
The meeting lasted ten minutes. Ten minutes seeming like ten hours.
“In!”
Piao marched up to the white line on the floor, exactly one and a half metres from the front of Chief Liping’s desk, and saluted. He didn’t expect and was not offered a seat. His lack of expectations were fully justified. Several seconds of silence, the Chief’s eyes downturned, towards a sheet of typed paper.
“Two hundred and seventy five thousand yuan, Senior Investigator. A substantial amount of money. Damage that you have caused. You are a careless driver.”
More silence, overflowing the brim. Liping’s eyes rising. Their full attention on him … like headlights through a fogbank.
“What the fuck were you doing?”
Hot words served cold. Piao had never heard a swearword said with so little emotion. Its impact all the more searing.
“It is in my reports, Comrade Officer Liping.”
Pointing to the neat pile of papers on the leather topped desk and standing back. Black shoes behind the pristine white line.
“I have read them. I asked for daily reports, Senior Investigator. A report a day, not a collection of daily reports up to a week and a half late. This is not good enough …”