Authors: Andy Oakes
And still no fire in the old man’s eyes.
“Read the file comrade. Read the file. The eight that you saw on the foreshore that night were missing their corneas, kidneys, their hearts. They had been removed systematically. Removed using surgical procedures. We have another Pingfang. A Pingfang in the centre of our city.”
The Shiqu Chairman turned from the photographs, the past … Mao’s smile still in his eyes.
“It is a thick file, Senior Investigator Piao. It will take me three hours to read it properly. Come back then and not before.”
To walk for three hours on such a night is not difficult. There are stars, the river … the hotel. Piao stood outside the Jing Jiang, head back, counting the floors. Ten. Her room. Lights on, curtains drawn, as orange as Zhiyuan’s urine. Barbara’s room. He’d telephoned the front desk earlier.
‘Barbara Hayes was at present in her room. Did he wish to be connected?’
So near … he could feel her, smell her, hear her.
“No. No I don’t wish to be connected.”
*
Zhiyuan’s door was open, yellow light cracking around its frame. He knocked gently, no answer. It all feeling wrong. Reaching for his pistol … slowly, controlled. The metal seeming to burn in his hand. Slipping the safety. Moving through the gap, into the short hall, the room ahead opening up to view. Zhiyuan, slumped in a chair, papers scattered around him. A crazy paving of type and monochrome prints. The Senior Investigator’s shadow overtaking him. Hand out-stretched, shadow pistol wavering across the Shiqu Chairman’s back.
“Put it away Senior Investigator Piao, it is not yet my time to die …”
Zhiyuan turning, the half glasses perched precariously on the bridge of his nose, a newly stoked fire in his eyes.
“… the privilege of old age, dropping off to sleep. Now Senior Investigator Piao, make me some tea and tell me where I can find your Chief Liping on a Sunday? I have some tape recordings to free for you.”
An Eel on a nail … black, shiny. Pulled taut. Skin stripped from flesh in one complete length. Blood on the pavement, on knuckles, down fingers. Black, white, red.
The lake was black, as if a bottomless shaft had been sunk through the heart of the earth. Clinging to its edge with jewelled fingernails, Liping’s zhau-dai-suo ablaze with security lights. A Red Flag in the drive, its windows dead. Behind it another car, dark, skulking. Its shape lost against the bite of night. The Chief had guests, Piao hoped that he didn’t mind two more. Eighty miles and three hours of travelling. It was tough if he did.
“Are we here?”
The Senior Investigator nodded, as he began to brake, then suddenly swerving from the start of the drive back onto the road, foot clamped on the gas. A punch of adrenaline nailed through his chest. Switching off the lights and engine, as he squinted into the darkness … the car free wheeling downhill for a further three hundred metres to the bend in the road. Pulling from the tarmac ribbon onto shale. Stones rattling against the underside of the car. A canopy of trees against the stars taking them to its breast. Zhiyuan coughed. Cheroot smoke, locked into his lungs and released in a coughing, stuttered fit of silver.
“What’s going on?”
The Senior Investigator got out of the car, closing the door carefully. Noticing his breath against the sky. Noticing the rhythmic thump in his chest, the fingernails digging into his palms.
“There was a Shanghai Sedan in Liping’s drive, a black one.”
Zhiyuan leant against the car roof beside him, the cheroot bitter between his teeth. Its tip drawn from red to orange, almost yellow … the only feature that was visible in the comrade’s face.
“Do you know how many Shanghai Sedans have been built. Black ones?”
“No I don’t, but I’m sure that it is above the ten year quota figures.”
Piao walked across the grass, the shale, onto the road. Keeping to the trees, the rough undergrowth, making his way to the side of the wide drive. The glow of Zhiyuan’s cheroot following close behind. The fuzz of security lights blotting out the stars above Chief Liping’s zhau-dai-suo.
“And tell me, Comrade Zhiyuan, how many Black Shanghai Sedans are there with double dents in their front bumpers from hitting a student. Killing a student?”
Piao’s fingers travelled across the fender. One, two dents. Close together. Deep. Chrome already starting to peel in razor flakes of torn silver. He joined Zhiyuan at the line of trees that skirted the boundary wall. Shadows deep cut along its full length.
“It’s the car …”
And in a sharp whisper,
“… fuck them, fuck Liping.”
Pulling the Shiqu Chairman by his cuff, a rocky path separating tree line from wall.
“Then perhaps you have enough evidence, Senior Investigator, if this is the car? We should go. I have contacts. I can make telephone calls. Insist on an immediate investigation. The truth will come out. I guarantee this to you. It is not proof of corruption, of murder, but it is enough to get a foot in the door and from such a position.”
“Fuck a foot in the door. I want the whole mansion, not just a foot in the door.”
On the other side of the wall, voices. Three, four, maybe five. And a fire. A roar of hunger in its throat. A marmalade fan of flames reflected against the uppermost canopy of the trees. Zhiyuan fell behind, feeling his way in a blind shuffle. A hiss of a whisper almost hidden by the voice of the fire.
“We should go Piao. There will be nothing for us here. I have trusted comrades who we can involve. You should know when to let go.”
No words. The Senior Investigator retracing his footsteps with certainty. No words. Guiding, half pulling the old man forward by his lapel. Stumbling onto Lake Taihu’s foreshore. Bricks and steel growing out of silt and weathered stones. Dark, the only available light reflected across the wall from inside the garden.
“Shit!”
Piao tripping on a stone, foot in the water. Ice and electricity … shooting straight to his heart, his temples. He was cold, but sweating. Exhilarated, but terrified. A nest of tar barrels shadowed against the bottom of the wall. Stacking them up, and thinking of young women and their giggles, their smiled taunts.
Come give us blue-eyed babies Comrade Policeman.
Climbing up, hauling Zhiyuan after him. Looking through the gaps in the thick windbreak of pines. Liping, standing with another man half way down the garden. Laughing. Drinking. Looking on as three others fed the large fire pit with seasoned logs. White smoke. Flames, burnished to platinum in the security arc-light … fanning against their faces. All of them, looking as if they were cast from bronze. Climbing, the smoke. Crossing the wall, out across the water. White to black. And in the air, heady, nailing you in place, the smell of pine, petrol, and burnt grass. Zhiyuan hissed in his ear …
“There’s nothing here. Look at them, they’re drinking, laughing. Nothing worth a page in your next report Investigator. We are wasting time, we should go.”
Piao stepping down with one leg, but a hand across the Shiqu Chairman’s chest as Liping barked an order, interspersed with sips of Dukang, shiny on his lips. Men moving from the fire pit toward the house. Their shadows shortening as the Chief was left alone, ramrod straight and looking into the belly of the fire. The men returning in twos, carrying heavy bundles swathed in white sheets, polythene and rope. One at each end of each bundle. Four trips. Eight bundles. Eight thuds as each hit the earth. Thick cord being untied. Tape being pulled from plastic. Polythene unwrapped. Zhiyuan’s lips against the Senior Investigator’s ear, fire hot.
“What is this? What is going on?”
“Sometimes the ancestors smile on us. Sometimes they smile without a reason. Look, Comrade Shiqu Chairman, can’t you see them?”
As he released the words, Piao feeling his stomach move up to his throat. His throat move up to his eyes. Burning. Too far away to make out details … faces, identities, names. Just the blank shapes of bodies. Skin. The shock of nakedness. Black pubic hair. Gashes … wildly huge, dark, gaping.
“They are people, comrade. People. Can you not see them?”
A count, half laughing … one, two, three. The first body thrown, tumbling into the pit. Into the fire. Its softness hitting the embers. A flight of sparks rising to the sky. Voices, words, lost in the song of the fire. Mocking. Joking. Taunting. Another body hauled up, swung, let go. Arms, legs, limp through space. Joining with the fire. The flames devouring it. Another body … Chief Liping re-filling his glass. The smoke from the fire changing colour, white to brown. Blood-brown. Its stench of dry tears, burnt meat.
“Recognise them?”
Zhiyuan saying nothing. Nothing. The vomit that forced, that spilt from between the tremble of his lips, down his shirt front, speaking for him. He took the old man to the water’s edge, washing his face, his shirt, with cupped hands … gently, like a septuagenarian baby. The old man, trying to talk. Tongue numb, not working. Piao saying the words for him.
“ See, it washes off, comrade, no stains. But what we have seen, that is forever. A stain on our souls. A stain on our lives. You understand?”
Cupping the water onto the old man’s face. Across his eyes. His lips.
“You will act on it, tell of what you have seen, yes?”
At last finding his voice, the old man. Hoarse. Each word burnt in bile.
“ Yes, for the sake of that Party in which I believe.”
And all of the time from behind the high wall, laughter. Laughter, and flights of sparks filling the sky with stars where before there had been none.
*
Piao was already letting go. With every chevron that fled into their headlights and out again, aware that he was disengaging. It was the Shiqu Chairman’s case now. Zhiyuan, his interface with the Party, his thorny presence into the various committee rooms … all would speed the control of it into his back pocket. Party business, that was what it had now become, what it always should have been. They would now become just a part of a process. Investigations. Hearings. Pleas. Trials. All leading to Liping’s execution. Minnows swimming to the surface to fight for the job vacated by the old carp. Zhiyuan, for his trouble, would receive another letter of commendation to frame and gather dust. And the Senior Investigator of the Homicide Squad of the PSB? The Danwei’s investigation into the official charges against him would be halted. He would retain his position, his rank and the perks that went with it. The cushion on the wooden chair. The meagre petrol allowance. Food vouchers. The new uniform every two years. Yes, he would keep his job, and with it, the nights spent in cars on surveillance; the Big Man picking his nose and adjusting his balls. The politics. The patting of the horse’s arse. The four hundred yuan a month. Two years to save for a Forever Bicycle. Two years to save for a tv. And Barbara? She would go home. Tears and airport queues. There would be no confession at the trial. Nothing to cauterise the pain. No knowledge. No comfort. Just waste, waste for everyone, except Comrade Zhiyuan with his framed letter of commendation.
*
The drive back to Shanghai took over three hours. No conversation. Two stops … one to piss, one for the Shiqu Chairman to throw up again. Piao walked Zhiyuan to his room. The smoke still in his nostrils, wood and black burnt flesh.
“The door, bolt it …”
The Senior Investigator tapped his knuckles on the thick brass lock.
“… and sleep, you need it. You’ve had a shock, it might not feel like it yet, but it will do. Don’t smoke, and drink a lot. Water …”
The Senior Investigator turned to the stairs, exhaustion, like a ball of clay, in his head. Wanting to close his eyes, but knowing what would happen when he did … smoke, flames, bodies, waiting for him like a bear-trap in the unlabelled hours of night.
“… 9.00am tomorrow, I will come back then. We will make statements about what we have witnessed together. Who we saw. You will know who it is best to present these to?”
Zhiyuan nodded.
“Yes I will know …”
The door already closing.
“… you have done well, Senior Investigator, I misread you. Thank you for your work. This will get you promotion and another one hundred yuan a month.”
Piao turned back to face the Shiqu Chairman …
“And a velvet covered upholstered chair, comrade?”
But the door had already closed; brass lock snapping noisily into place.
When the finger points to the moon … the imbecile studies the finger.
Only officials have telephones of their own … public telephones are in shops, offices, in the apartments of neighbours who are members of the Public Security Committee, the apartments of members of the PSB. In places where calls can be listened to by others. Reported about by others. The telephone. The most basic mechanism of government control.
A telephone is a privilege. There is a one year waiting list. An installation fee of four thousand yuan, a year’s wages. Politburo members have their own special telephone exchange; their phone numbers beginning with the prefix ‘39’. Also a separate exchange for the military, the army. Their telephone numbers are strictly confidential.
Private numbers are not listed. Whole ministries are not listed. Telephone directories are sparse and in some cases are
‘bu-dui-wai’
… ‘not open to foreigners.’ A one hundred and ninety page bright orange covered telephone book is issued by special subscription through the post office. There are no listings for individuals amongst its pages … just offices. The government, as part of its efforts to appear more open, for the first time issued a public phone book. Thirty pages give the numbers of public telephone kiosks. There are no listings for individuals in its pages. Central committee departments. Politburo members. Ministers. Their numbers only exist in the special exchanges, the private operators, the state of the art switching equipment; and in the little pocket-sized personal phone number booklets that the high cadre carry with them at all times. Constantly nervous that they might lose them.
Information is not a matter of money, but of connections. Information, like consumer goods … rationed out by title.