Dragon's Eye (40 page)

“Senior Investigator Piao, it is a surprise to see you. I did not imagine you to be interested in ballroom dancing. Let me introduce you to my wife. Da, this is an ex-colleague …”

He halted for a split-second, his acne, blue cratered in the lighting.

‘… this is a colleague of mine, Senior Investigator Piao.”

The woman was as pretty as a pressed duck. Her head seeming to balance on the platter of a deeply frilled polyester collar. She held out her hand, Piao took it politely and shook it; only at this point that he recognised the man who had performed the introductions. The man in the black suit, white frilly shirt topped off by an extravagant red bow tie. Detective Yun … the pucker face smoothed and ironed by the fades of coloured lighting.

“My sister-in-law does not have a partner Piao. It would be very welcome if you could take her for the next dance.”

A small woman stepped forward, a puffball of baby pink chiffon. A smile cutting her face in two … a melon slice of teeth too white to be real. Panic gripped the Senior Investigator’s chest with sharp talons.

“But I don’t dance.”

“Nonsense, Piao, nonsense. Lili will show you how.”

She wrenched the Senior Investigator onto the dance floor; only just enough time to drop his beer bottle onto a table. The next few minutes, a kaleidoscope of trodden toes, awkward hands, hurried instructions, and the odour of armpits and five Yuan perfume.

“You are doing very well, Senior Investigator. Very, very well indeed.”

Yun at his side, snapping, twisting his wife to the left. Her frilled collar lifting across her face in the breeze. Twirling around the Senior Investigator and his partner in an exhibition of intricate steps. A fugue of sweeps and dips.

“Da and I enter competitions when work allows …”

Another sweep past Piao, orbiting to the other side.

“… we dream of one day winning an international competition.”

Yun smiled, it looking like a black slit in a hessian sack.

“Move to the left, the left,” the puffball muttered, jamming her foot against Piao’s and wrestling him into a new tack. Yun at his shoulder, leaning across to make more importance of what he had to say.

“See, see. You are getting the hang of it. Wait till the next song, a foxtrot, a little faster. It should suit you …”

Closer still, almost whispering.

“… she’s a wonderful dancer, isn’t she? A good cook too. And not a boyfriend on the horizon.”

He winked at the Senior Investigator. Piao feeling his stomach fall to his clumsy feet. Moving his hand to a less sweaty position on the puffball’s nylon strapped waist. Hearing himself say aloud …

“I’m not surprised.”

But the words lost as the band struck up with an up-tempo arrangement of … ‘New York, New York.’

*

The positioning of Yun’s table was unfortunate, directly under a strand of crimson red bulbs. The detectives face looking as if his acne had exploded in unison.

“I need to interview you,” he confided to Piao.

“I had Yaobang in yesterday and the day before. He provided a very sound alibi for you. Very sound. Too sound. I totally believe it, of course, but Chief Liping …”

Yun shook his head and loosened his bow tie, stroking the velvet.

“… beautiful material. Made in England you know. Quality, sheer quality.”

“Chief Liping,” Piao reminded.

“Yes, yes the Chief. Sometimes not the most understanding of men. Sometimes not the most trusting of men, as you know. He believes that Yaobang is covering for you. He has insisted that his cousins be brought in and questioned. Also questions put to you and Yaobang’s Neighbourhood Committees. ‘Someone’s prying eyes will know if you were in or you were out’, he says. ‘Someone’s listening ears will be able to say if you were at Yaobang’s home that night’. No, no he is not a very trusting man at all …”

Yun held the beer bottle high, draining every last drop from it.

“… to be so untrusting must be a terrible thing.”

Piao nodded as he stood.

“I must go, it’s getting late.”

“Already, Senior Investigator? But the band will be performing a selection of songs from South America after the break. It is the highlight of the evening. The cha-cha-cha, the tango. Lili is marvellous when it comes to the tango …”

The puffball giggled and looked shyly away. Yun leaning across the table, hand half covering his mouth.

“… Lili and the tango, it is hotter than chilli sauce in August.”

Nylon, rudely pink chiffon and the tango … it was not a combination that had ever fired his fantasies of unbridled passion. Piao said his good-byes. As he passed her chair the puffball pressed her address, scribbled onto a scrap of paper, into his hand. It took the Senior Investigator until halfway home to find a rubbish bin. Dropping litter on the street could get you a very hefty fine.

*

Another day. Another beer. Another tape.

“Left before you were awake. The traffic was jammed right up to Fudan’s gates. I’ve been running late all morning. There’s ten minutes before my meeting with Lazarus and the Principal. Thought I’d phone quickly just to tell you that I love you.”

Ye Yang, stretching, yawning. Piao could imagine her as the tape unwound, sable hair against her cheek. Dark nipples riding over the horizon of the silky peach bedding. Lips against the telephone receiver in a sleepy kiss.

“Love you too,” she whispered.

Piao retreated to the bathroom. The water in the hand basin, as cold as ice. ‘Love you too.’ Her words creating within him a pain as hot as molten steel. Drying his face. The fever tempered, tamed. He opened a beer. Little else on the tape, except for background noise … a shower. And Shanghai Radio playing … a phone-in, ‘Citizens & Society.’Calls of complaint to Cheng Xi Yuan, Executive Vice-President of the Shanghai Post & Telegraph Administration.

Piao fast-forwarded, listening into the faint race of highly accelerated sound. An instinct developed of when to pause the onrush. Finding himself eavesdropping in on a one-sided conversation, braced with gaps and scaffoldings of deep silence. Ye Yang on the telephone … the voice hers. The silences the caller’s … no indication of who it was. He fast reversed the tape, picking up the start of the call; a discreet electronic double click, as it switched from UHF room bugs to the UXT wire-tap. The call was pre-arranged, it would have had to have been. Ye Yang picking up the telephone and instantly knowing who it was who was calling. But no names said. Her voice veined with nerves. Nothing from the caller. Silence. The girl launching into a diatribe. The curtains of her anger flung back. Words, so rehearsed … giving an instant sense that she had talked this call through a thousand times. In the shower. In the elevator. In her sleep, and still had not perfected it. Overstretching for each word. And nothing but coldness coming from the other end of the line. An emotion spreading from Ye Yang that Piao had been unable to label, until now. That of the small fish for the very first time, seeing just how wide the big fish can open its jaws. Terrified. Ye Yang was out of her depth, and terrified.

“I know that we had a deal, but we took special risks to get these gifts for you. Do you know what would happen if we got caught?”

SILENCE.

“But why should you care.”

SILENCE.

“The price has gone up. It’s no good threatening us. We have them, you want them. Triple the price and they are yours. That’s business. We have taken the risks.”

SILENCE.

“They are perfect. I went out to the workshop myself last week to see them; better than any other example that has reached the market up to now. I guarantee that you could treble the price that we are asking.”

SILENCE.

“Screw you. Say something. Have we got a deal?”

SILENCE.

“Have we?”

SILENCE.

The telephone receiver being put down by the caller, then Ye Yang. Switch back from wire-tap to room bugs. A sound of breaking glass, smashed pottery. The diminutive Ye Yang’s voice a roar through the mayhem of a tantrum.

“Fucking arsehole. Fucking, fucking arsehole.”

Her last words. The remainder of the spool empty. Just a consistent spill of white noise as faint as a constant intake of breath. But Piao not hearing it, his senses already on rewind; moving back, focussing on the clear sound that had spiked the silence just before the death of the telephone call. Just before the silent caller had hung up. A dull click. Electricity arcing, earthing. Instantly knowing the sound. Fast reversing the tape … a dozen and a half clicks. Listening over and over again, volume turned deafeningly high. But not really needing to, just confirming. Positive that he had labelled the sound correctly from the very first time that he had heard it.

All of his adult life he’d wanted a cigarette lighter such as that. Electronic. Slim. Gold. Dunhill. A dull click … and the blue-white fork of electricity in the throat of the lighter the instant before the flame ignited.

A dull click.

“Fucking got you,” Piao said, as he switched the tape off.

He opened his last beer and lit his last Panda Brand, not finishing either. Exhaustion, on a tide of alcohol, nicotine and exhilaration … laying him to waste. A sudden sense of numbness. He slept the sleep of a baby, the first time in weeks. Dreaming of pink chiffon, Dunhill cigarette lighters … and the Englishman, Charles Haven.

Renmin Square … People’s Square. Floats of flowers. Tableau of the Great Helmsman. Red Stars. The Long March. Tsingtao Beer. And flower petals of every colour to walk upon.

A small funfair had been erected in the centre of the confusion. Roundabouts, slides … the relentless hammer of a generator chewing lumps from the music playing tinnily from the loudspeakers. On the breeze, a heady cocktail; the smell of kerosene, burnt dust and overcooked food. And also on the breeze, flights of red, red petals … resembling cherry lips.

Piao watched as Chen and the children passed him once more on the carousel. With each revolution, their waving lessening. So many promises to take them out, so many cancellations. Each fixed revolution of the painted, chipped, horses and pandas, now easing his guilt.

He sipped the warm beer, watching as Yaobang stumbled over an electric cable, pressing his way through the crowd. Food in both hands. Snatching bites as the crowd thinned and thinking of bites as the crowd flooded around him.

“Good stuff, Boss, some American students have set up a food stall next to the float celebrating the Great Leap Forward …”

He raised a handful of sausage, bread, onions and grease stained paper to his mouth. The bite squeezing a thick slug of mustard from the mass and onto his fist. A plump amber tear. Its slow fall onto his tie almost defying gravity with its grace.

“… they call them ‘hot dogs’. Shit name, but they taste good. You should try one, Boss. It beats a lunch of beer and cigarettes.”

Determined not to feel guilty, the Senior Investigator immediately lit up another China Brand.

“What have you got for me?”

Yaobang rubbed a hand across his chin. Ketchup on stubble.

“What have I got?”

A laugh, reigned and weary.

“What have I got? Nothing but fucking shit and more shit. Daily shakedowns by every cross-eyed officer in the Bureau. Twice yesterday. The day before, three fucking times. Tipping out every drawer, every cupboard. They even went through the rubbish bins. They won’t fucking do that again in a hurry …”

Piao feeling the weld of anxiety settle onto the centre of his forehead. They had only to nudge occasionally and show that they were there. Remind you that you were in a goldfish bowl within a goldfish bowl … within a goldfish bowl. No need to get too heavy when there is nowhere to run. When there is nowhere to hide. Telephones tapped. Street Committees noting every coming, every going. Travel permits required for movement beyond the boundaries of the city.

Where is there to run. Where is there to hide.

Another laugh. Ketchup, mustard, across his teeth and lips.

“… and Yun, the bastard, over me like a fucking rash. More questions than the spots on his face …”

Yaobang pulling closer, his eyes alert to everything. A whisper on onion breath.

“… he doesn’t believe me. Nobody believes me, or you.”

The carousel slowed, stopped. Children slipping down the sides of painted horses, into parent’s arms. New passengers climbing aboard. The carousel labouring into a lazy revolution. Horses … rising, falling. Music … tinny, distortingly loud. Building up to speed in a wavering, undulating tempo. The Big Man clenched his fist. As large, as white as a dinner plate.

“They’re squeezing, Boss, so fucking hard that there’s only pips left.”

“What have you got for me?”

The fist unclenched.

“Shit, don’t you ever give up, Boss?”

The Big Man pulled a paper from his inside pocket and handed it across the bird shit stained table.

“Forensics, by the back-door. They came through this morning, Boss. They got a telephone number from the indentations on Zhiyuan’s telephone log book.”

Piao’s eyes chasing down the print. The number prefixed with a ‘39’. A Politburo number. A Beijing code following. A thump in the Senior Investigator’s chest as the adrenalin punched in.

“Turns out to be a fucking heavy tong zhi, Boss, an old friend of Zhiyuan’s. Zhang Chunqiao.”

The Big Man leered. Bread, mustard, flesh-hued sausage, hard packed into the gaps between his teeth.

“I used another back-door to get a check on Zhang Chunqiao’s line. I’ve an old friend who’s an operator. It cost me three packs of China Brand. You’re buying, Boss.”