Authors: Andy Oakes
“I can get one hundred thousand pounds to you within forty-eight hours, Senior Investigator. It will come through Liping. Of course, I will expect to be on my flight to New York. No delays. I will also expect you to hand all material relating to your investigation of me to Liping. He will know what to do with it.”
“As he did with the bodies of Bobby Hayes, Ye Yang, Heywood and Qingde.”
Haven turned slightly, light from the window tracing his cheek in crimson.
“For someone who is self-destructive, you have done well, Senior Investigator. You can end this a wealthy man …”
He pushed the polished wooden box across the worktop, against Piao’s fingers.
“… and you get to own the cigarette lighter that you always wanted.”
Piao pushed the box aside, the Englishman’s eyebrows rising to form question marks.
“You don’t want the lighter, do you … or the money?”
“No.”
“Liping told me that you would be like this, that you would not be bought off. I didn’t believe him.”
The Senior Investigator eased the door open once more.
“You should have believed him …” he whispered as he stared through the crack. The two men, CID or Bureau, still leaning against the wall. Another joke on their lips. Piao had heard it before. It was funny, but only when riding on the crest of six bottles of Tsingtao wave.
“I am curious to check if I am correct. The Americans and Qingde, they were smuggling cultural relics for you. Men of Mud. Ye Yang was pushing the price up. A tough woman. A stupid woman …”
Haven adjusted his collar. His tie.
“… with the aid of Liping’s security men, you went to the workshop in the snowfields, seized them and took them back to Shanghai. Back to a hospital operating theatre. You waste nothing. To just kill them in the snowfields would have meant wasting their organs. Hundreds of thousands of dollars on the transplant black market …”
Seconds. Seconds. Watching the Englishman. Fastening his cufflinks.
“… raping them of their organs. On your operating table, letting them die …”
Watching him. Buttoning his jacket. Smoothing down the lapels.
“… they would have been alive when you operated on them. Living organs would fetch more dollars …”
Haven lowering his mouth to the drinking fountain. The water on his lips, hardly wetting them.
“… and then they were mutilated. Thorough. Carrying it out yourself …”
Haven smiled.
“… it would have been very freeing. None of the rigours of the precise surgical techniques that you are normally bound to. Freeing …”
Watching him. Lacing his shoes. Precisely. An operation of fingers surely too delicate to fashion violence. A sense of the Englishman’s anger, but of it immediately being cut short by him re-adjusting his tie.
“… a mistake. The only part of the murders that you did not perform yourself was the disposing of the bodies. That you left to Liping’s security officers. They chained them to four others and disposed of them in the Huangpu. The incinerator was on the other side of the city. The river nearer …”
No reply. But watching the Englishman’s eyes. Waiting for a fray in the fabric. But nothing … just a clock ticking out its life. A confidence about the man. A sense that he was strapped firmly, safely, into a harness of insurance. Knowing something that the Senior Investigator did not. Piao reached into his jacket. Fingertips finding the polished steel sleeping in its shoulder holster. Cold. Re-assuring.
“… and the four prisoners that they were chained to, legally executed in Virtue Forest. Their organs were infected, but still taken by you for the blackmarket. No tell-tale links between the two groups. Just coincidence. No deep meaning in this to Liping’s men, chaining these two separate groups together and disposing of them in the river, rather than incinerating them. For men like these there is more meaning in the bottom of a bottle of Tsingtao. But for you, Mr Haven, a mistake. The first, the only, mistake …”
Watching him. But nothing to see of Haven, except the preened exterior. But inside Piao, the anger rising. A wave of hot tears and the compulsion to act them out.
Just shoot him. Here. Now …
“… the Minister Kang Zhu, Comrade Officer Chief Liping, they were understanding of your mistake. Smiling Chinese faces pouring more drinks. But what is there for a westerner to read in the smile of a Chinese?”
Nothing in the Englishman’s eyes. Baptisms of truth, and yet nothing.
Just shoot the fucker.
“… and all of the time they were thinking the unthinkable. What if the threads were tracked back by one stupid, misguided person …”
The Englishman turned to the window, moving toward the briefcase that sat close to the door. Friends in high places will only put up with so many mistakes. Was he still a favoured foreigner, or had he become a loose end to be tied off? The Investigator, just his being there … said no. Someone was aiming Piao in his direction. A clockwork toy, just doing what it does. He would have to watch his own back now. But always a step ahead, that was how Haven worked. Not waiting for revelations. Never surprised by surprises. A step ahead.
Piao spread his arms, his contact with the pistol in his jacket, with steel … lost. Naked. Naked and vulnerable.
“… I have given you the invitation to talk. To be known. To be found out. You have not found the words, but neither have you found the outrage. A serial killer who wants to be known, but not found out. But the ocean does not advance and recede in the same instant …”
Piao pulled the pistol from its holster. Grotesquely dark. Rude. Black. An instant smell of light machine oil, polished metals … and death. Slipping the safety. Finger firm down on the Type 67’s spitcurl trigger. Haven’s eyebrows arching in surprise. Moving back against the wall, hands falling into each other. A cradle of fingers not as relaxed as the pose suggested.
“… I am going to walk you out of here. My pistol will be in your back. One fucking move from your men and I will put enough pressure on this very sensitive trigger to put a hole in you the size of a mooncake …”
Moving forward, the tip of the 67’s silencer, grazing against the fine material of Haven’s jacket.
“… your men will follow, I know that, but it will not be so difficult to lose your CID in the longs of Hongkou …”
Pushing the pistol firmer against the Englishman’s ribs.
“… and then we will drive, and drive. North. Two, three days from now we will turn up at a small village and report to the local office of the PSB. At first they will not believe what it is that I have to say. Murders. The smuggling of cultural relics. In a village where the theft of a pig or a shovel is a major crime, this will cause much excitement. Everybody will want to be a chairman. Many telephone calls will be made. Officials will be drawn in from the next town, from the nearest city …”
Piao prodded the Englishman with the pistol.
“… when wolves in their sleep smell the closeness of the deer, they awake with a great hunger. It will be their obligation to examine the case. It is cold in the north, the weather breeds people who are patient. Truths will come slowly, but they will come.”
The Englishman’s checked his watch, hand moving to the door knob.
“I have a flight to catch and Barbara to meet in forty-five minutes. It is against my principles to let a lady down.”
“Walk into that corridor and I will shoot you.”
Piao poked the pistol violently into the Englishman’s side. Steel grating rib. Doubling up … pulling his hand from the door and to his flank. Face black with anger. But nailing it in place. Reasoning the venom from it, but storing it away.
“Shoot me … shoot me and you would be dead within ten seconds.”
His eyes darting left, indicating the corridor beyond the wall, the two men standing in it. Smoke and stale jokes. Pistols holstered.
“It might be worth it.”
“Suicide, for what, to provide a truth for Chinese justice? Don’t be so naive. You are the only one left, Senior Investigator, everybody else knows how rotten the system is from the top of the pyramid down. Everyone. Everything is for sale. Rock bottom prices. The People’s Republic of China … a whore for a packet of Benson and Hedges. A state secret for a bottle of Teacher’s. So what is worth dying for, Senior Investigator? Do you really think that killing me or bringing me to trial will end the transplant industry in your country. That it will stop the prisoners being executed and their organs from being harvested?”
The curve of steel against Piao’s finger. Its tension. Squeezing it … the 7.62mm round, his anger. At that moment wanting to kill Haven; the Englishman with that rare ability to convince that everything that you touched or believed in, was covered in shit.
No words left anymore. Just kill the fucker!
Haven feeling the barrel of the pistol against his ribs expand, as if it was about to discharge. Holding Piao’s stare in check with his own. Pointing to his top pocket. Moving his hand slowly towards it, the Senior Investigator almost mesmerised. Pulling a tie from it. Draping it over Piao’s pistol … over the Senior Investigator’s hand. A PSB tie. Food stain upon food stain across it. Yaobang’s tie. Without doubt, Yaobang’s tie.
“Yes, Senior Investigator, you are definitely someone who misses everything by just a few hours.”
“Where is he?”
Haven pushed the pistol away from his ribs. The Big Man’s tie slipping to the floor.
“He is safe, but if my associates do not get a telephone call from me thirty minutes before my flight leaves Hongqiao Airport for New York …”
“Where is he?”
Leisurely Haven walked across the room, picking up his briefcase.
“The string of barges opposite the north river entrance to the Jiangnan Shipyard in Luwan. He is on the furthest of the barges into the river.”
A shiver.
The Huangpu
. Piao holstered the pistol.
“Then we have a deal, Senior Investigator Piao. I get my flight to New York, you get your fat deputy back …”
He stooped, picking up Yaobang’s tie.
“… and he even gets this back. It will be as if nothing ever happened.”
Haven hung the tie over the Senior Investigator’s shoulder. Piao pulling open the door and walking into the corridor; the two heavies stiffening. Jokes, smiles, falling from their lips. Their hands reaching into the insides of their jackets. The Englishman raised a hand and they relaxed, like pit bulls who had been thrown a bone. Still ugly, but well behaved ugly.
“I shall pass your best wishes on to Barbara Hayes, Senior Investigator …”
And then, almost in a whisper.
“… I shall miss China.”
Piao started his walk toward the elevator.
“Go and get your flight to New York, Mr Haven. Go before I change my mind.”
An anonymous rhythm drumming on the roof of the car. Rain incessant, insistent. Crowds in shop doorways, snaking, tight to the shopfronts, pressed hard against plate glass windows. Piao parked in Wanpinglu and proceeded on foot, half running. The downpour stinging, drenching him. Down his face in rivulets, off of his nose, his chin, across his eyes. And all of the time, a hole in his shoe … his foot, as wet, as cold as misery.
He hit the embankment and the climax of the New Year celebrations began, as if his reaching the Huangpu had triggered a switch. Down river, the Bund, a stream of rockets spurting skyward. Raking gold traces. The river as yellow as mustard seed. Another thunder, the river now as red as capsicums. Piao moved into the crease of shadow, down the embankment. From the steps, jumping onto the first barge; arm thick ropes threading through the bobbing, weaving caravan of rising iron pontoons. Fastened to heavy steel ring shackles fixed into the stone wall of the embankment in a weep of rust and algae. Beads of rain across his face, mimicking the primary colours of the rocket bursts. On his hands and knees; the roll of the river transferred through the cast iron hull of the barge, centring on his forehead. Numbing it. A swell of nausea flooding over him. They would be waiting for him on the last barge, knowing that he would be coming alone. Yaobang was here, he knew it … it was a trap, not a lie. He threw up. Fear or seasickness, he wasn’t sure, and did it actually matter now that the options had all run out? More rockets, the sky thumping too violet, the clouds purple. He moved to the rolled lip of the barge, face to the sky, mouth open … the rain on his tongue in a taste of gunpowder, rusted iron, and every word that he had ever wanted to say, but hadn’t. Thinking of a limousine on the road to Hongqiao Airport. A jet being turned around, re-fuelled. The dull click of Haven’s Dunhill cigarette lighter. Barbara’s legs in a long lazy cross. And tonight … he could die tonight. He could die any night, so what the fucking difference? The difference being a red-hot rivet of shock, in the sudden realisation that he no longer wanted to die.
Standing uneasily. Looking out to the centre of the river along the uneven string of barges. An iron chain with each link providing its own white knuckle ride. Jumping across the crushing gap. The metal deck rising up, meeting his feet. Another gap, another. The river sandwiched in between rolling buffers of scarred iron … its waters in quick changes of hue as rockets streaked skywards, arced and fell. This time tangerine. This time blazing white. The night torn. Thick smoke linking cityscape to cloud base.
Piao slowed as he came to within five barge widths of the last pontoon, taking some breaths, calming the feverish thoughts in his head. His sweat mixed with the driving rain. The tide, now on the turn, each wave as plump as a pregnant woman approaching full term. Leaping to the next barge as it fell between waves; burdened by its bundled, tarpaulin and roped load. Losing his footing, falling. Grabbing the rough weave of heavy cords. A fierce rope burn across his palms, the colour of a crimson lipsticked mouth. Hauling himself to his feet, his thoughts already moving ahead. If they were as good as they should be, they would be well prepared and waiting for him. If they were half as good as they should be, they would already have seen him … and would be watching him now. Traversing the humps of cargo. The barge falling, its sister rising, jaw against jaw in metallic whelps. The river squeezed between them into fluorescent azure needles as the arc of the rockets reached their zenith, falling back upon themselves in a shower of sapphires. Barge to barge … Piao moving across, half jumping, half scampering. The light plunging to black. Cityscape, river, barges, melting into each other in degrees of grey. When the sky lit again in a flood of cherry-red, he could see the last barge moored tightly against the buoy. And a man, Yaobang, blood on his forehead, matting his hair … tied against the cargo hold. Checking the shadows, double checking; just the Big Man, no one else. Pulling his pistol and keeping low, the Senior Investigator jumped the gap to the neighbouring barge. The roughness of his cuff across his eyes, wiping away the shutter of rain. Checking the magazine, the spare nine shot detachable box in his pocket. Slipping the safety. Rockets falling in sparks … and everything exploding to grass green. The river. The rain. The deepest mounded folds of the tarpaulin. Rounding the puddled hillocks, eyes straining. A constant salvo firing in his chest; expecting to see a shadow peel from a shadow. Metal in its hand. A breath of flame, as a round was let loose from a snub-nosed pistol … but nothing.