Citizen One (16 page)

“Drink, Deputy. Isn’t being shot more preferable to being crucified and kissed by the oxy-acetylene torch’s flame?”

Against the Wizard’s face, words misting one lens of his spectacles.

“Show me more.”

“More. Your Boss wants more, Fat Man. Which, of course, is my pleasure. We’re lucky, the file is so big and contains so much data that they installed it with its own search engine.”

Typing, carefully, precisely.

HARELIP … CLEFT PALATE.

Twenty-two names. Rentang’s finger tapping on the screen.

“All PLA, all male, all with harelips and cleft palates. You wanted the top of the pyramid. I just hope that you don’t have a fear of heights, Senior Investigator?”

Finger tapping the monitor.

“Not him. Studying in England, Sandhurst. Not him, died a month ago. A boating accident. Not him, or him. One in hospital, testicular surgery. One in the New Territories. Not him either. Now a factory manager in Chengdu, producing toilet seats …”

Tap.

“Not him either. Or him. Definitely not him. In Virtue Forest awaiting execution for fraud …”

Six names remaining.

“One of these is your princeling. You recognise some of these family names, Senior Investigator? Yes, I’m sure that you do. It doesn’t take an investigator to recognise some of these names. Bao, a long standing PLA family. One of Mao’s contemporaries, the grandfather, Pi, a Senior Colonel in the PLA, Western Territory, currently in Tibet. Niu, from a very high ranking PLA family, all Senior Colonels. His father has political ambitions and is seeking election to the Politburo.”

Pages turning as more Southern Comfort was poured.

“Qi, son of a Senior Colonel in the PLA, head of the Guard Army of Shanghai Garrison Headquarters. Xiong you will of course recognise. Didn’t you have run-in with his nephew a few years ago?”

“I arrested him for his involvement in the killing of a child, a girl, four years ago. She had been sexually abused and murdered.”

“Throat slit. I remember it, Boss, from ear to ear. Yes, I remember it. Couldn’t sleep for a week.”

Shaking his head. Drinking his drink.

“And what happens? The case gets buried in a deep filing cabinet. Important evidence goes missing. Always the same. Always the same when it comes to
cadre
like this. What’s another dead girl. Just spilt fucking water.”

The Wizard carefully adjusting his spectacles.

“I take it that we will keep this one on our list then? This sort of thing runs in families. I read an article on it in Gongdelin. Something to do with genes, bad genes.”

Piao nodding his head.

“And the last one, Senior Investigator. You’ll know this name as well. Zhui. A PLA who was head of the Beijing Garrison Headquarters until last year. He left in difficult circumstances, but now sits on the Politburo.”

“Not a happy picture, any of them.”

“You can fucking say that again. Any one of them could get this case buried. And us with it, probably in the foundations of the new national stadium.”

Piao’s fingernail moving down the names. Perhaps some kind of understanding, straddling the gaps between characters, of what kind of man could crucify two PSB Comrade Officers and murder prostitutes, ripping them up as if they were just betting slips?

“Print off everything available on each of them. Focus on Xiong and Qi.”

Much in the records, the said, the un-said, the bloodline … parentage.
Cadre
or peasant and how many generations ago? Party history: volunteers to the Party or conscripts? And in the struggle to establish the shining path, the Great Helmsman’s course, what part the blood line that now led to this
cadre’s
existence had played? Such detail, even so many decades on, could determine a
cadre’s
grading. His level of favour, his very character.

“The other names that I gave you, the three dead whores and the girl in the Number 1 Hospital …”

His fingers drying the tears on her jigsaw-razored cheeks. So much of her still left within him, like the taste of jasmine long after you have drunk the tea.

“What have you got?”

“Yang, Deming Da, Tsang, and the girl in the hospital, Lan Li, no records on any of them, officially they were never born. And so, officially, they never lived or died.”

Shaking his head, Piao. The Wizard smiling, his finger moving back and forth across the screen, traversing the area of records that would have held a girl’s life from the cradle to the grave.

“Cleaner than your conscience, yes, Senior Investigator?”

Eyes meeting in mercury light. The Wizard withdrawing from the lock of the gaze first.

“And the number that I gave to you …”

The Wizard holding up his hand, faint across his palm in red ink.

473309169972

“The hard part was finding the site, so I tried close to home.
Ta ma de
. Too close to home.”

A ballet of the Wizard’s fingers. Pixels sprinting. The deep roots of another PLA database. The three of them staring at the monitor.

MINISTRY OF SECURITY

473309169972

This encrypted file contains critically secret State information.

Entrance to this file is on a purely need to know basis.

Permission to enter this file can only be obtained by written request to the Minister of Security in Beijing.

“What the fuck is this?”

“An important number, an important file.
Ta ma de
. I tried to crack it. No luck. A 40 bit encryption. Impossible. If they bothered to put a 40 bit encryption on it, it’s important.”

Moving to the window, Piao, his fingers prising a gap in the blind. The sun rising reluctantly through cracked
longs
. Turning, the blind falling back into place. Yaobang, holding out his glass.

“This isn’t just about killing fucking
yeh-jis
, Boss.”

But Piao’s mind already onto the next problem.

“A number that is a dam. A dam that an ant might well destroy. We find out what the number that binds them means, and we find out what their death means. Wizard, find me someone who understands numbers. Someone who can read their mystery?”

Rentang already turning to the monitor. Fingers already seeking knowledge.

“I’m on a few hacking networks. Every kind of strange fruit is in there. Don’t worry, you’ll get what you want, Piao. Doesn’t the Wizard always deliver?”

*

The Shanghai Communist Party Records Annexe, Warehouse 4, Bansongyuanlu
.

The warehouse lay slumped between river water and new development concrete as if burdened with the secrets of many tens of millions of lives. Even from beyond its thick walls, and with the retch of the river’s stink filling your nostrils, you could smell other subtle things. The odour that a blocked career path has, because of a neighbour’s insinuation. The reek that a life forced into a cul-de-sac has, because of a grandparent’s blood line or a billion citizens have when they are forced to be silent with words welded to tongues and their sentences nailed to their lips.

A closed door guarded by two Party faithful, an old mama whose breasts had long since dried of milk and a middle-aged man with conjuntivitis and a degree in political thought from Beijing University. Investigator Yaobang nodded to them, they nodded to him. The door opened, he stepped through it, the door closed.

The request was typed on official PSB paper. A list of female names and the dates that they had been born in the People’s Republic of China. It took the clerk, one of several in identical jackets re-enforced with leather elbow patches, fully forty minutes to return from the dark bowels of a warehouse that consisted only of long runs of shelves. Upon each, piled high and deep, a generation of Shainghainese lives. In their dust-edged pages a record of every event in a citizen’s life and a measure of its worth to the state, to the Party, from birth to death, and beyond.

“I am sorry, Detective Yaobang, there must be a mistake. The names that you gave me, Yang, Deming Da, Tsang and Lan Li, these people do not exist. They are non-citizens. We have neither Party or
danwei
records on these individuals.”

The Big Man moved forward, his elbows braced on the rough wooden counter and his voice lowered.

“These non-citizens’ records will be in your back room, Comrade.”

A wink of an eye, a nod in the direction of darkness.

“I do not understand what you mean, Detective Yaobang.”

Closer, his face to the clerk’s. The man’s smell, of paper, dust, and a life dealing with others’ shit.

“Your back room, Comrade. The three walk-in safes that are permanently open because the fucking keys to them were lost during the Cultural Revolution.”

A wink. A nod. The clerk backing away a pace. Yaobang’s breath a bushfire of chilli, garlic, stale beer, and words that he did not wish to hear.

“You are mistaken, Detective. The Communist Party Records Annexe has no room such as this.”

“But, Comrade Clerk, it does. It has several rooms such as this. This is not the first time that I have been here. I, as you, am no ordinary comrade. I, as you, know of these rooms.”

“There are no such …”

“Shhh. Shhh, Comrade Clerk. Even in here you do not know who might be listening.”

His eyes furtively looking around, his words whispered in a low tone.

“Now go and get me the records of the names that I have given you. They will be in one of the walk-in safes, along with those many other comrades who do not exist officially.”

The clerk looking over his shoulder.

“I, I do not have the authority to furnish you with these records.”

“This letter gives you the fucking authority, Comrade Clerk. This letter insists, Comrade Clerk.”

“But I cannot furnish these records to you. These are non-comrades. They do not exist.”

Yaobang’s fingers travelling over the top of a dusty desk tidy. His eyes meeting the clerk’s.

“If they are non-comrades, then their files will not be missed, will they, Comrade Clerk?”

Shaking his head.

“I cannot do it, Detective Yaobang. Such a request could lead to me losing my position, or worse.”

“Is this an indelible marker, Comrade Clerk?”

The Big Man pulling a black-capped marker pen from the desk tidy.

“Yes. Yes it is, why do you ask? Please, that is the only marker pen that we have. Could you replace it in …”

In a lightning fast grab, snaring the clerk’s wrist. Holding it in a vice-like grip, before slamming his hand onto the counter. In two defined black slashes, marking the top of his hand with a thick ‘x’.

“What are you doing? What is this?”

Yaobang allowing him to pull away. Replacing the top on the marker pen and placing it neatly in the desk tidy as he spoke.

“It is to mark you apart from your colleagues, Comrade Clerk. So that when I return with more PSB officers and the official papers for your arrest on a charge of attempting to subvert a Public Security Bureau investigation carried out on behalf of the People’s Republic of China, I can tell who you fucking are.”

The little colour that remained in the clerk’s face, draining away. Yaobang turning toward the door, and in a whisper that he knew that the clerk would just be able to hear.

“A serious charge, Comrade Clerk. Very serious. Perhaps your own files will rest in one of the rooms with no key.”

A hand on the Big Man’s shoulder. A whisper deep into his ear.

“I will see, I will see what I can do, Comrade Yaobang.”

And in a whisper of a whisper.

“There is a back door in the
long
, at the far end of the warehouse. I will be there in thirty minutes. Will you be able to find it, Investigator?”

The door opening.

“It is a door that I know well, Comrade Clerk. Too fucking well.”

The door closing.

*

It was closer to forty minutes than thirty, but none of it wasted time. Forty spans of sixty seconds, chewing on the smoke of a China Brand and watching the tugs muscle a freighter down the Huangpu.

A series of bolts shunted on the other side of weathered, re-enforced timber. Slowly the door opening. The clerk, his arms piled high and spilling with thick folders. His words hurried and whispered. Only just audible above the water’s ebb and flow.

“Sorry, Comrade Yaobang, it took time to find three sets of the files. The women named, life no longer possesses them. They are in the city morgue on Zaoyanglu and have been assigned numbers. 35774324, 35774341, 35774352. We put the files of dead non-comrades in a different place to living non-comrades.”

Inwardly cursing, the Big Man. Death’s undesirable taste suddenly filling his mouth. Taking the files from the clerk’s arms. The door already starting to close.

“Comrade Yaobang, you will say nothing of this, of me, yes?”

“And you will say nothing of this, or me, yes, Comrade Clerk?”

A nod greeting a nod. The door closed. The bolts slipping back into place.

The first time that Piao had watched the dissection of a human brain, the pathologist holding it as a trophy in his hands, he had wondered what might get trapped beneath the clinician’s fingernails. Perhaps a memory, ripped and isolated? Or perhaps the bit that makes the rules? Keeps the rules … breaks the rules?

*

“Do you know what the time is?”

The door, steel and reclaimed wood; Yaobang’s hand between it and the doorframe. Knuckle white clench around documents of authority. Red star burning in his palm.

“My feet are killing me. I’ve got a gut ache and need a shit. And I’ve got a hole in my fucking shoe and a wet sock, because it’s pissing down with rain out here.”

“Do you know what the time is?”

Pushing at the door, but the mortuary attendant, a picked wishbone of a man, wobbling, but still resolute.

“I know what the fucking time is, it’s time I went home. Now open this door or I’ll …”

“Just checking your document of authority, Investigator, and your letter of authority to examine the bodies. I need to check you know? We get all sorts of perverts wanting to enter a place like this.”