Authors: Andy Oakes
“Obviously.”
Haven ordered another Scotch. The barman spoke a little English, awkward, stilted … but Haven ordered his drink in Mandarin, accent perfect.
“A Senior Investigator. You are very young to reach that exalted position, aren’t you?”
Piao felt his defences rising. Turning into himself, checking himself out. It was second nature, developed in the dark alleys or longs of the city and in the interrogation rooms of Gongdelin, but talking to a stranger in the bar of the Jing Jiang Hotel? Something was going on. Every sense whispered it, but he couldn’t put a convenient tag on it.
“I was privileged. A good family. A good education. At university, a supportive structure with inspiring lecturers. Once in the PSB, the support of fellow officers, the Danwei, the encouragement of enthusiastic and brilliant senior officers was very comforting. I was lucky. I should not say it, but it is not always like this in my country. Life is now changing. Did you know that two thirds of our schoolchildren have never heard of Mao? Imagine. But ask them who Andy Lau is, and they will all tell you that he is a pop star from Hong Kong.”
The Senior Investigator was playing it simple, playing the country boy flattered by the attention. Asking no questions. Drawing a splinter from the Englishman’s heel. Scavenging a profile, information, from the questions that the man asked.
“You must tell me about your work. I insist. Who knows when my path will again cross that of a Senior Investigator of Homicide?”
He took a lighter, Dunhill, slim, gold, from his jacket pocket and lit a cigarette, English, Benson and Hedges. The smoke sweet; pictures of distant cities linked by silver jets, gleaming lives, filled Piao’s head. Haven its ambassador. Everything about him was in order. Pristine. His eyebrows, his teeth, his finger nails. Piao had only ever seen people like Haven on the front pages of glossy American magazines. The Senior Investigator took a handful of rice crackers … so perfect. Tossing them into his mouth. Eating them noisily.
“My work, it will sound too boring to you. A Senior Investigator with the Homicide Squad of the Public Security Bureau, it sounds more than it is. If the title of a job could buy you drink, then I would own this bar.”
“Come, Senior Investigator Piao, do not be so modest. I am sure that a city like Shanghai must stretch you to the full. There must be many interesting cases that you come across?”
“Interesting cases? Some, not many. We Shanghainese are hot tempered and we like to drink. You know maotai, Dukang?”
The Englishman nodded slightly through the smoke. His eyes pouring into Piao’s. The Senior Investigator noticing that he never seemed to blink.
“Hot tempers, hot drinks, they are dangerous partners. Most of my investigations are simple. I have the murderer in two days, three days. Too much to drink. Too many yuan wagered on the mah-jongg board. Too much temper. Too close to a kitchen knife. Open and closed. Nine times out of ten it is one of the family. A brother. A cousin. As I said, boring …”
Piao’s eyes burning in the smoke. Haven staring through it, still not blinking.
“… but you, a businessman like you. Now there is a story to tell. Travel, restaurants, business meetings. And then there are the women. I suppose you could write a book or one of those stories for that little magazine …”
The Senior Investigator shook his head …
“… I cannot remember its name … you know. Ah, the Reader’s Digest, that is it. I like the Reader’s Digest.”
Haven shook his head.
“I am not a businessman. Looks can be deceptive. I am in the medical field.”
“A doctor. Ah a doctor. This is a very venerable profession in our country. Very respected. Perhaps our meeting like this is fortuitous. I was unable to attend an appointment at a clinic earlier today. It is my fingers …”
The Senior Investigator placed his hand next to Haven’s, tugging at the discoloured gauze.
“… you would be kind enough to examine them? They are burns. I was in a very unfortunate fire.”
The Englishman removed his hand to the glass of Scotch. A finger trailing its rim.
“I was under the misapprehension that any fire that burns fingers is unfortunate …”
He adjusted his tie, silk. It didn’t need adjusting.
“… you need to see a general practitioner. I specialise in a very narrow field and that field does not include changing the bandages on burnt fingers.”
“A specialist. A very narrow field. It sounds very exciting?”
“No more exciting than what you are doing. You specialise in a very narrow field also. Murder.”
The Senior Investigator smiled broadly.
“You are right, of course. I had never thought of it in that way before. I am a specialist also …”
He threw some more rice crackers into his mouth, lips open, crunching them loudly. Moving closer to Haven. The cheap cotton of his suit jacket brushing against the fine wool of the Englishman’s blazer.
“… I can tell you, this will get me a few drinks down at my local bar. With us Chinese it is not the job or the position, but it is the name that we call it that matters. From now on I will tell everyone that I am a specialist Senior Investigator in the narrow field of homicide …”
He slapped the Englishman on the back.
“… I must thank you. You have a mind that is … is. Sorry, I cannot think of the words. How would you describe it?”
Haven rolled the Scotch in its glass. Amber light playing across his fingers.
“I have a mind that is very focused. A mind that can go to the very heart of a matter and then act decisively on it.”
“Yes, that is how it is. I could not have put it in better words myself.”
“You didn’t.”
Piao laughed, hoping that it sounded genuine. He moved even closer. His words across the Englishman’s face; sensing Haven holding his breath from the garlic and ginger that was on the tail of each of the sentences that he spoke. The Englishman, he had no smell, except that which came from the glass and embossed gold of an expensive eau de cologne bottle. There was no sense of his body, of the animal inside the expensive suit.
“Actually, I have not been completely honest with you. My job as a Senior Investigator does have its moments …”
Piao picked some rice cracker from his teeth and slurped the dregs of his Scotch.
“… take my latest case. Eight people mutilated, chained together and then thrown into the Huangpu. Very out of the ordinary for Shanghai.”
“That would be very out of the ordinary for New York.”
“My thoughts exactly, Mr Doctor. Exactly. I feel a little guilty about it, but it is exciting. When you are dealing with domestic murders all the time, a case like this can be very exciting to someone like me. Is this wrong?”
The Englishman studied his drink, raising it to his lips.
“Eight bodies, imagine. It is more murders than I deal with in two months …”
His mouth to Haven’s ear. Invading his space. Piao could sense the Englishman’s discomfort.
“… of course, this is confidential you understand. It is even being kept away from our media. It looks like drugs. Who else would take the time and trouble to remove all identifying marks. Their fingertips. Smash their faces up …”
Lowering his voice to a whisper. Secrets, even more secretive when whispered.
“… they had even gouged their eyes out. Imagine what people these are? Monsters.”
“Or professionals?”
“Yes perhaps. Perhaps. Professionals with too much to lose. I had not thought of this. …”
Thoughtfully, dropping more crackers into his mouth.
“… Barbara Hayes. Barbara. Sad. So, so sad. Her child was one of the murdered. An American national. It is causing the politicians bad heads. Migraines is what you call them, yes? Of course, she will not have told you yet. I am sorry, but people like me, police, we are clumsy. We are not used to being delicate.”
Haven’s eyes were mute; the bar lights reflections dancing around the dark stars of his pupils. Taking his lighter from his pocket, it’s spike of flame flaring, the fireflies banished … his eyes, for an instant, the colour of a cat’s caught in a full beam.
“I have known Barbara for only two hours, it will take me at least another two hours to know her complete life history …”
Sweeping a hand across his head, each hair falling exactly into place.
“… but tell me, Senior Investigator, do you always catch your monsters, or do you not talk about your failures?”
Piao finished the last of the rice crackers. Perfection laid to waste.
“I do not have failures, Mr Doctor. And monsters, they are the easy ones to catch because they want to talk. They must talk. They have a hunger to be known …”
The Senior Investigator picked his teeth and then examined his nails.
“… in China we do not have repeat killers, what you westerners would call serial-killers. That is ‘official’, you understand? But we still say of them, ‘that never to be found out is never to be known.’”
Piao smiled, looking deeply into the Englishman’s eyes and held up the empty rice cracker bowl.
“You should have had one, perfection can be very delicious.”
*
“You’ve eaten all of the crackers …”
Barbara sat on the barstool, skirt riding high above her knees. Her index finger circling the inside of the empty bowl and then moving to her tongue. Across her lips … salt, sugar, sesame.
“… but I guess that boys will be boys.”
Haven picked up his lighter from the bar top and raised it to Barbara’s cigarette. A dull click of electricity arcing, earthing. Piao could see its blue-white fork in the throat of the lighter an instant before the flame ignited. All of his life he’d wanted such a lighter. The Englishman slipped it back into his pocket.
“I had not eaten. The crackers, that was my hunger. I am sorry, I will order some more.”
Piao moved a hand to summon the waiter, Barbara gently reached out and lowered it. Her fingers brushing his knee and instantly becalming the breath in his chest.
“No, Sun, that’s okay. We’ve reserved a table in the restaurant on the eighth floor, why don’t you join us for dinner?”
He wanted to, just to sit between them, to keep Haven from being alone with her. But the words came out differently.
“Thank you, but I will say no. I have an appointment. There is somebody that I must see.”
“Are you sure?”
“Yes, I am sure. But thank you.”
The Englishman was already standing, his jacket, his trousers, creases falling perfectly into place.
“Perhaps if the Senior Investigator had arrived earlier?”
The smile widened, like the jaws of an adjustable wrench. His voice now just a whisper into the Senior Investigator’s ear as he passed.
“Perhaps you are someone who misses everything by just a few hours.”
Yes, a life constantly missed by a few important hours. Rice falling through the gaps between the fingers … that was him. And then Charles Haven was gone. Piao’s last view of them as they slipped through the doors and into the hard light of the lobby. The Englishman’s arm moving around her shoulder, and with it the memories jerking into place in the Senior Investigator’s head in a series of pin-sharp stills. Of a wife lost in time, in rain … in the back of a Red Flag, an arm slipping around her shoulder.
Piao rubbed the chalk from his fingers. The biggest murder case that the kung an chu had handled in twenty years and he’d been given an incident room the size of a toilet.
A line of thick chalk dividing the blackboard into what was known and what was not known. Into two distinct groups. Bobby, Ye Yang, Heywood, Qingde and Yongshe, Feng, Decai, Ziyang, having only two things in common: the blackboard that their names were written upon and the death that had them all in its sharp fold. Only one word breaching the dividing chalk line … Qingde. A carrier of parcels for the Americans. A guest of Virtue Forest with three other Chinese. Qingde.
Piao sat staring through the window and into the major incident room next door. A month ago it had been his, heading an investigation into the murder of a Friendship Store manager. Thirty telephone lines. Ten computer terminals. Four faxes. Even a stove for tea. Now he was investigating twelve murders with four telephone lines, one computer terminal, a fax that jammed … and no stove for making tea. He felt himself shake his head, warm his hands, even though they weren’t cold. His eyes returned to the board …
And no motive. Where the fuck was the motive in all of this?
The room had a smell of unwashed bodies that had now gone home to flats with unmade beds. Again he felt himself shake his head. If he’d have had a cigarette left in his pocket, he would have lit it.
*
Liping had not needed any nudging. A walnut-eyed courier had delivered the box of tapes … streams of uncurling reel to reel. Questioning him had proven useless; he had returned their stares with eyes that permanently watered. A job as a motorcycle courier in Shanghai’s traffic polluted midday, was not to be envied. The anonymous office in the anonymous Security Bureau that the tapes had come from, would remain anonymous.
*
Ye Yang … her voice had surprised Piao. An all American girl. Cherry Pie and Southern Fried Chicken Wings. Nothing of the Chinese ancestry left in her. The almond eyes. The bisque complexion. The petal kiss of lips. The hair, bobbed, shiny and raven … all that remained. A shell, nothing that the Senior Investigator recognised as Chinese, filling it.
Along with four other officers he had listened to tape after tape. Family conversations. Business conversations. Friendship conversations. The spools in a slow carousel of tape slipping around steel posts. Building up a picture of her with each bronze loop. What she laughed at. What made her angry. How she said ‘hello’. What she meant with the ‘ah-huhhs’ that littered her speech. Odd snippets of information about her, but none that helped him. No word that leapt out, that spoke of reasons, motives. Her voice only at the Shanghai end of the calls. Never Bobby’s. No voice that could have been Heywood’s or Qingde’s. Just simple conversation following on from simple conversation, filled to the brim with tedium; no secrets, no plot, no agenda. And all of the time, Piao aware of the gaps, the days and weeks missing in the flow of the tapes. In the gutter of his stomach, the acid building … a sense of being fed the thick cut red meat. Safe, easy to recognise and digest. But where were the tapes that were the spacers, that were the gristle, the fat, the bits that would be indigestible? Ye Yang was not clean, he could smell it. Involved in something that was worth her murder. But the tapes were clean, nothing in them that even warranted a slap across the wrist. Nothing fitted.