Citizen One (17 page)

The attendant wiping the snot from his nose onto his glistening cuff. Staring through the gap at Piao and the Big Man.

“Yes, all sorts of perverts that would do unimaginable things to the dead. Had one once who had even wore his old dead papa’s army uniform just to get in here and fiddle. Fiddle, fiddle, fiddle. Caught him with an old mama who had been dead a week.”

Through the gap returning the documentation.

“Fiddle, fiddle, fiddle. Can’t be too careful, comrades. Thank you for your patience.”

The door opening. The attendant, almost luminescent in his paleness, already walking away.

“Come on then. Come on. Do you not know what time it is? And watch my floors with those wet feet of yours, Investigator. People have been killed by slipping on a wet marble floor. In fact we had one brought in two days ago. An old daddy, eighty-five, if he was a day. Skull wall as thin as a quail’s eggshell. I’ll show you if you wish.”

Piao leaving the limping Deputy behind.

“That will not be necessary, Comrade. Three cadavers in one night is quite sufficient. But thank you for the generous offer.”

The wishbone smiling a crooked smile. Never, not in fifteen years, had a Senior Investigator ever said, thank you, to him.

“Pity. It’s quite a sight. A brain like a pickled walnut.”

Double doors pulled open in an asthmatic wheeze.

“No matter, Senior Investigator. No matter. But while you check those who life no longer possesses, I will make tea.”

A hand down the front of his threadbare trousers, the attendant adjusting his balls.

“Yes,
xunhuacha
. It is never the same seeing the dead without a good strong mug of tea in your hand.”

*

Three mortuary drawers. Three huffs of air. Three girls, Yang, Deming Da, Tsang, now numbers:
35774324, 35774341, 35774352
. Three daughters. ‘Spilt water’.

“Here, Senior Investigator,
xunhuacha
, the likes of which you have never tasted before,” handing him a mug, black with gold emblazoned characters on a thin pitted glaze that would soon wear through …

THE PEOPLE’S OLYMPICS … 2008

Jasmine driving the smell of death from his nostrils and purging the taste of it from his tongue. As he sipped it glancing down at the three open drawers. Three girls razor-carved. Not a three-inch expanse of skin that was not afflicted by the crazy paving of ugly wounds. And through the sanguine chaotic slashes, the careful, methodical scalpel lines of the pathologist’s autopsy. Clumsily thick, workman-like stitches.

Xunhuacha
in a deep gulp. The mortuary assistant’s Adam’s apple, a football swept out to sea.

“An average of fifty-five cuts on each body. The exact figure is in the pathologist’s full reports.”

“Just like the
yeh-ji
in the fucking hospital, Boss.”

The mortuary assistant, his finger tracing one of the young women’s deeper wounds.

“There’s another dead one in the hospital?”

Walking swiftly away, the Big Man, his garbled words.

“Not dead,
dao-mei
. Just left her. Left her in the Number 1 Hospital.”

The sound of coughing in the hallway.

“Do not concern yourself, Comrade. My Deputy, his rural birth has given him a weak stomach. I am afraid that there is a very good chance that he will throw-up.”

“Fat oaf. I only cleaned that floor thirty minutes ago, he’d better not.”

More
xunhuacha
running down his chin in his eagerness to speak.

“Some of the cuts are so deep that they penetrate muscle. Here, here, and here, they even score bone. And these, a bit special. The cuts are up to seven millimetres deep, approximately fifteen millimetres wide. The design was cut and then the flesh between the cuts sliced away.”

Tea stirred with a discoloured spoon. Stirred more times than was necessary. A cracked bell of sound, a spike entering into the Senior Investigator’s concentration.

“Whoever did it took his time. An artist. A perfectionist. The pathologist estimated at least six minutes a girl.”

More coughing from the hallway.

“Actually, perhaps you should concern yourself with my Deputy, Comrade. A glass of water might help.”

“Yes. Yes, I will get one right away. The fat oaf. If he stains the floor or the wall, the PSB will have to meet the cost. I shall see to it personally. Italian marble, no less. Italian. That marble has come a long way. Wherever Italy is.”

Piao kneeling, as if praying, looking into the drawers. The smells that death demands when life has vacated, filling him. His eyes, full and focused on the carved designs. A red bloom of a sanguine fashioned five pointed star between the navel and vagina, drawing the eye as the needle draws the thread. Perhaps the one who murdered wanted exactly that, to draw the focus, taint the scent. Or perhaps he just enjoyed using a razor like a paintbrush.

The Senior Investigator taking each girl’s hand into his. So small and so pale. Fingernails bitten and un-painted. Unlike the
yeh-ji
, Lan Li’s wriggling crimson fishes of long painted nails. Each girl’s feet, toenails, the same pink, set in death’s blue, no ripe cherries of scarlet. Their teeth amalgam-valleyed, uneven, uncapped, ordinary teeth, not perfect at all, not like the
yeh-ji
, Lan Li’s.

Stepping back and for the first time really looking at them. Past the pallid shroud that death bestows, young women that you would see in any street market, any laundry, or any tea shop. If anything, marked out by their very ordinariness. No
yeh-jis
, not these three. Receptionists, waitresses, perhaps, but not prostitutes.

The pathologist’s reports were long and lovingly written in the secret language insisted upon by those who interpret death’s choreography. Yet the unsaid as important as the said. And even in death’s parlour, an ear for the midnight knock on the door, the Comrade Pathologist.

On the closest body to him, the girl now known as 35774324, Piao’s finger following the ‘Y’ incision from the pubic area to the breasts, that would have exposed the diaphragm and opened up the chest for examination like an overripe peach. Following each step of the pathologist’s examination, now detailed in ink on paper and marked by great rail tracks of sutures leading to nowhere.

Moving onto the close examination of the outside of the body. Each wound, its length, width, depth, measured. It’s position plotted on a black ink-thick outline of the human form on paper. Each wound now just a carefully transcribed red penned mark.

And all of the time, as an itch that you cannot reach to scratch, a constant nagging. Dropping a report to the floor. Scrabbling through the pages of the next report and the next. Each report open at the same page. Kneeling beside them. Refrigerated chill running from knees to legs. No
yeh-jis
, not these three.

Shaking his head, Piao. Bad mistakes, elementary mistakes. Detective Di … other things on his mind? A wife who moaned about having to buy second-hand dresses? Street market shoes that wore and cut her feet with blisters? Di, he had not read the pathologist’s reports, or had at least not read them with an investigator’s eye. That and the files of all four young women coming to him bundled together in thick elastic bands all at once. Lan Li, a prostitute, her file at the very top of the bundle. He had judged them all by her. Lan Li a
yeh-ji
, so all four
yeh-jis
.

Re-reading the pathologist’s reports. Lives, and how they had been lived, laid bare by the scalpel’s silver glide. Not one of the dead girls showing evidence of ever having had a sexually transmitted disease; unusual amongst
yeh-jis
. Not one of the dead girls showing evidence of ever having had an abortion; again, unusual amongst
yeh-jis
.

One of the dead girls had still been intact, a virgin. The other two, there was evidence of fresh semen within their vaginas, but too contaminated by river water for definitive DNA testing. Evidence too that they had also been virgins prior to being raped and their deaths.

Carefully closing the reports, the Senior Investigator. Death lost in anonymity. Three dead girls, now numbers laid to black printed rest.

*

From the corridor honest odours; sweat’s tang, disinfectant’s pine snatch. Smells that never offended Piao. Only the
cadres’
silver-topped eau de Cologne untruths ever causing offence. Only the Comrade Politicians’ mint-mouthed diatribes sickening him.

“You are going, Senior Investigator? Already?”

Piao, reports under arm, already walking from the mortuary.

“It was a help seeing those who life no longer possesses? You have got what you wanted?”

“Yes. Thank you, Comrade. It was a help.”

“How so, Senior Investigator?”

Piao, walking toward the Big Man, a half wink.

“It was a great help, thank you. I now want the bodies of the girls released to their families for burial.”

The mortuary attendant calling after them.

“I’m glad that it was a help, Senior Investigator. Very glad.”

Heavy doors, triple locked, opening onto Zaoyanglu and the sounds of the night. Running to the Sedan, Yaobang, smiling, mouth open. The rain, factory-tainted, tasting of lives never kick-started, washing the last of the sour vomit from his tongue.

“Got what you wanted, Boss? So what now, call the
fen-chu
, talk to Zoul, surveillance, back-up?”

“No, not Zoul. A few trusted officers, no uniforms.”

“You sure, Boss?”

“I am sure.”

“Mortuaries, more fucking leaks than drunks at a urinal. You think that the message will get through?”

“It will get through.”

“ ‘
Cao-mu jie-bing
’, eh Boss?”

“Yes, ‘the dead cat turned’.”

*

The number, long, complicated. No ordinary number this. Only on the third attempt, getting it right. The number connecting. Even at this hour the telephone being answered within two rings. The voice of a PLA receptionist. A voice, each syllable separate and cut from ice. From the crumpled slip of paper, saying the rank, the name. Instantly the call being switched, re-switched, to a limbo of electronic white noise. A million callers, voices synthesised down to a tinnitus of surfing breeze. A ringing tone, the sort that he had never heard before. Ringing. Ringing. Just about to put down the receiver when the call was answered. A voice. A rasp.

“
Ni nar
.”

“Comrade Officer, Sir, you asked me to call you, to let you know if anyone requested to view the slashed whores.”

Silence. But in the background western music, voices, giggling females.

“Me, the mortuary assistant, Comrade Officer, Sir. You recall, you asked me to …”

“Yes, I know what I asked.”

“Of course, Comrade Officer, Sir. I did not wish to suggest that you had a poor memory.”

Silence. Except for a girl’s whisper. A cigarette being lit. Glasses, clinking.

“A PSB Investigator was just here. A Senior Investigator. Homicide.”

“Name?”

“Yes, I got his name, Comrade Officer, Sir. His name was Piao. Senior Investigator Sun Piao.”

Silence.

“He saw each victim. Examined them very carefully. Said that his seeing them had been ‘a help’. Yes, ‘a great help’. His Deputy, a fat oaf, said that they had just come from the Number 1 Hospital. There was another victim there. Another victim. A
yeh-ji
. But this one is alive, Comrade Officer, Sir. Yes, he definitely said alive.”

Silence. Whispered words. Perfumed breaths against perfumed cheek.

“Thank you for listening, Comrade Officer, Sir. I do not wish to appear greedy, Comrade Officer, Sir. But when we met, you said that I would receive a reward. For information, a large reward Comrade Officer, Sir.”

Some seconds before the mortuary assistant realised that the telephone call had been ended. Many more seconds of listening to the void’s heartbeat before he accepted the silence. Even more seconds before he had the courage to say, angrily, down the telephone receiver.

“Arsehole, fucking PLA arsehole. Your mother was a whore for whores.”

But with each word, making sure that his hand was tight across the telephone mouthpiece.

*

Silent footfall. Moving through the long passageway, the PLA, to the large private room at the back of the building in Dainty Delicacies Street. So many doors, so many ways of transacting the business of love.

As he neared the room, hearing the whore’s dollar purchased moans. Hearing laughter and the flick, flick, flick, of the Super 8’s laced film against the spool. Hearing a language badly recorded, that he could not understand.

Smells of over-indulged perfume, alcohol, bodies in heat. Stutters of light, cigarette-smoke loaded. Moving through them, to the centre of their attention, across him pornography’s dance. Thai girl on Thai girl, long open-legged, open-mouthed.

His back against the wall, watching, slumped in the soft settee’s caress, three shadow comrades and three
yeh-jis
. Watching. From his pocket notes in a tight bundle, fresh green dollars by the thousands. The irony not lost on him, money from whores for whores. An instant of primary flash colour as they fell through the projector’s spew. Falling over the naked backs of whores, whose faces were as cold as a magistrate’s smile.

Above Thai whispers, Thai moans … his rasp.

“Suck them off.”

Falling through the
yeh-jis’
perfumed hands, enough dollars to feed their children for a year. Or enough dollars to pay off their pimps, their dealers.

“Suck them off. Whichever whore brings one of them off first gets a bonus.”

His watch removed.

“Five minutes. You have five minutes.”

From an inside jacket pocket an ivory handled cut-throat razor, unfolding its quicksilver blade.

“We have business to conduct, important and pressing business. Every minute that you go over five minutes, I will cut you.”

Dollars in their hands, the whores, confusion in their eyes. His gaze drifting to the watch’s face.

“Thirty seconds have elapsed. Pain advances on you.”

Watching as they frantically dropped to their knees. Dollars, as rain, from their fingers. Yanking the shadow officers’ pants to their ankles. Taking their hardness. Watching as lipsticked mouths caressed, kissed, sucked.