Dragon's Eye (35 page)

He walked to the incident room door, his own office calling him … the blackboard also calling him, but ignoring it. Only as he went to pull the door to did he bow to its insistence. Wishing that he hadn’t. For all of the fine writing upon it, seeing only a question mark. Just a question mark.

*

A loud voice in his office. Not angry, just clumsy, chaotic. The sort of voice that instantly reminded Piao of a very tall man trying to scrabble through a very small hole. Detective Yun … he recognised the precise placing of the words. The almost rehearsed sentences.

“Senior Investigator Piao, is he available?”

Yaobang was slumped in his chair, contemplating promotion and the cushion that would come with it. With an effort he rose, moving across to Piao’s desk, his dumpling bloated bulk purposely eclipsing the Senior Investigator’s jacket that clung to a corner of the wooden chair. The wooden chair with a cushion. Yun didn’t wait for an answer, he never did, he worked only to his own agenda.

“It is just that I have been trying to meet with him for a while now. I get the impression that I am being avoided.”

You are … we all fucking are.

From between the frame of the door and the beige wall, the narrowest of cracks, Piao could see Yun. The detective could not see him. It almost feeling like a childhood game.

“… he is to brief me on his current cases. Chief Liping wishes me to be in a position to take them over. I was assured that Senior Investigator Piao was in the building.”

The Big Man spread his arms in surrender.

“No. No, he’s not here.”

“But surely, that is his jacket?”

Yaobang turned his head, in the corner of his vision the chair, the cushion, the draped olive green jacket.

“Yes it is, yes. The Boss was here, but he’s not now. He had to leave in, in rather a hurry …”

He moved around Piao’s desk, lowering himself into the chair.

“… the Boss doesn’t mind me using his chair when he’s out, it’s got a cushion …”

He bounced up and down on the chair as if road testing the cushion’s plumpness; briefly glancing toward the incident room, a smile worming its way into the corners of his mouth. He couldn’t see the Boss, but knew that the Boss could see him. He lowered his voice to a whisper.

“… Senior Inspector Piao has the shits, the poor bastard. Through the eye of a fucking needle. The old mama’s dumplings from around the corner …”

Behind the desk, Yaobang slowly reaching down into the bin.

“… I warned him. Rat food. He wouldn’t listen …”

The Big Man placed the retrieved brown paperbag on the desktop, with its islands of grease reaching out arms to encompass each other.

“… now these, the best
Guo-tieh
in the area. Come, Yun, try one … try one. A man with fine tastes like you will recognise the subtle taste and texture that makes these dumplings superior …”

He held out the bag, nodding knowingly.

“… they say that Jiang Zemin himself only eats these very dumplings when he visits Shanghai. There are rumours also, a very reliable source indeed …” he winked.

“… that our beloved Prime Minister Li Peng, has some flown every weekend to Beijing by military helicopter.”

Yun looked suitably impressed.

“Yes, they do look good and I did miss my lunch today. Paperwork. I like to keep it up to date.”

“Here, Detective Yun, take the bag, please. I insist. Such devotion to work and to the People’s Republic, deserves a reward. I was going outside for a break anyway. Even I can have too much of a good thing …”

Yaobang slapped a hand onto his own stomach and with the other pressed the greasy bag into Yun’s palms.

“… come. Eat. Eat. Think of our esteemed Comrade Prime Minister …”

Yun obliged. Grease glistening on his fingernails, on his lips, across his tongue.

“… good, eh comrade? Have another. As you can taste, Deng knows a dumpling when he chews on one, that’s for sure. My mother always said that you can tell a true leader by the dumplings that he eats. Mao use to eat crap, all dough and grease … and look what fucking happened to him!”

He ushered Yun out of the door, the acne faced detective unable to reply, his pitted cheeks swollen like overripe apples.

“No need to say anymore, Detective Yun …”

The Big Man shouted.

“… I’ll tell the Boss that you called. Enjoy your lunch.”

He didn’t look back.

*

Three reports arrived from central despatch as the afternoon died into evening. Three reports, each from different bureaus. Each sealed and addressed to Yaobang. Luxingshe. FITS. Bureau Six. One page making up each report. Black on white. All three reports identical and saying the same …

Standard questions that would have been fully answered on any other requested report … all withheld. Piao’s fingers drumming an anonymous rhythm on the desktop. Never had he seen a report such as this. In a country where information was oxygen, suffocation. Each report ending with the same statement.

ALL INFORMATION REGARDING THE ABOVE NAMED SUBJECT IS WITHHELD AND CLASSIFIED. ANY FURTHER REQUESTS FOR DISCLOSURE MUST BE MADE IN WRITING TO THE MINISTRY OF SECURITY. ACCOMPANIED BY A FULL EXPLANATION OF WHY THIS CLASSIFIED MATERIAL HAS BEEN REQUESTED.

“Shit, Boss, who is this bastard?”

The Senior Investigator avoided Yaobang’s stare, slipping his shoulder holster on.

“A bastard with very good friends in very high places.”

He’d flipped the badge, stared the stare. The information had come. It usually did. The receptionist spilling it like rice onto a plate. When they had left. Where to. A car registration number. An address. Even directions. Three hours later he was in Hangzhou, West Lake. A house in the Geling Hills.

Piao parked the car and walked. The woods thick. Their floor a rough carpet of bronze needles. And the smell so clean, like laundry … like a new life. The guesthouse was low, modern. Glass and mellow brick. A little bit of Scandinavia transplanted into the People’s Republic. Beyond … the lake, the city, the hills, the Tiesha River. Stacked one behind the other like shiny plates in a drying rack. The Senior Investigator waited for two and a half hours. When they arrived, the foreign car’s headlights cutting between the comb of straight tree trunks … the lake was already fading to grey. Falling into a fold of darkness. The
Duan Qiao
, Broken Bridge … a vein of matt silver losing its form and strength, flowing into the lake. Steel into water.

Haven, dark suit, rounded the front of the car. Two winked flashes as he crossed the headlights, bleached white … his shirt, face, hair. A solid bust of white marble. His shadow, vast, thrown up against the canopy of trees. He opened the passenger door and Barbara stepped out, the Englishman’s hand taking hers and then moving to the curve of her waist. Walking her to the front door. Reaching for the light; their figures thrown into black profile. Laughing. Kissing. Piao looked away. The pain upon him … sharp, suffocating in its pressure. Barbara entered the house as Haven went back to the car. As the headlights caught him, he stood motionless. His senses alive, reaching out … resembling an immaculate lizard, tasting the air. Looking straight in Piao’s direction, eyes quizzing. The half smile that seemed to be tattooed to the corners of his lips. Something on the wind, a realisation that all was not as it should have been, but not knowing what it was. The Senior Investigator not breathing, clearing his head of every thought in case it should taint the air. Haven moved out of the beam and reached into the car; the headlights dying in a lazy fade to black.

Piao waited for another hour. There was no reason to and he didn’t know why he did. But perhaps that was the crucifix that an obsession was hung upon. Waiting. Waiting until the bedroom light went out and West Lake spilt into night … its shape only discernible from the curve of the Hubin Road skirting its eastern shores.

Let me steal this moment from you now  …

Her secrets would be Haven’s too. Her breath torn against his ear, his chest, his stomach. The Senior Investigator walked to his car. Pine rain on the breeze … and pain like a chasm filling him. Soaked by the time he started the engine; the headlights procreating an army of slanting shadows. Raindrops running down his face … a taste of pine in their drift to the corners of his mouth. He drove slowly. It took over four hours to reach the centre of Shanghai. Seeing her face with every beat of the wipers. And behind it all, the rain claiming everything. … the rain, and Haven.

The cleanly swept alley was fifty yards long, six feet wide. The entrance that he was looking for leading into a communal kitchen and up a winding staircase … dark. A railing of chipped green paint, layered in grease. A smell of old cooking oil, kerosene, piss and babies’ bottoms.

Zhiyuan, the Tong Zhi and Chairman of the Shiqu, his face resembling a partially deflated balloon … opened the door. Somehow he seemed smaller, less significant than when they had met on the foreshore of the Huangpu that night.

“ Piao …”

He looked startled. In the black beads of his irises, the secret fear that every Chinese has when a uniform knocks on the door.

“… what do you want? You should not be here. The investigation against you is next week. I am the principle witness for the prosecution.”

“I know who you are …”

Piao moved foward from the darkness of the landing and into the light spilling from the room. Shadows rolling from his face.

‘… and I know when the investigation is. I need to see you.”

“You need me?”

He smiled.

“Me? You are desperate, Senior Investigator, and too late. The investigation against you will take place and you will be suspended from the Public Security Bureau pending a further investigation into much more serious state charges.”

“It’s not the investigation that I want to see you about, it’s this.”

The Senior Investigator pulled the file, white for murder cases, from beneath his jacket, holding it out. Zhiyuan held-up a palm, a roadmap of deep lines all leading into cul-de-sacs.

“I do not want to see you until the hearing, Senior Investigator. There is nothing that you say that I want to hear.”

Piao moved closer to the old man. It was cold, their breath tumbling into each others.

“But there is, Comrade Zhiyuan, and you have no choice but to listen to me. You are the Chairman of the Shiqu that includes my home. You are my democratic representative. My local voice to the ear of the Party, a voice that I need …”

The Senior Investigator brushed past Zhiyuan and entered the small room.

“… obligations, comrade, they go both ways …”

There was little space for movement in Zhiyuan’s quarters. The one room held four chairs, a bed, some stools, two dressers, a television, a table. Clothes on hangers hooked to the cords of window blinds. On the mantelpiece above the tiny fireplace stood a forest of photographs. Some framed, some not. All dusty. All faded. Comrade Zhiyuan with Mao, Zhou Enlai, Deng Xiaoping, Brezhnev, Castro, Jiang Qing, Nixon.

‘Veteran revolutionaries only end up as monsters or ghosts.’
 … or faded photographs.

On the wall above the mantelpiece, framed certificates, red ribboned merits, gold embossed statements of honour and esteem from various Party organs. The Provincial Committees of the Triple Alliance of Peasants, Workers and Soldiers. The Central Advisory Commission. A letter of commendation from the Chairman of the Supreme Military Commission himself, Deng Xiaoping. But in place of honour, the only photograph that had both been dusted and its frame polished, a portrait of the Great Helmsman with a note written in his own hand …

‘At first a fragrant flower can sometimes be mistaken as a harmful weed.’

Feted by the Party. A favoured citizen, Zhiyuan. And in the corner of his room, half hidden by the edge of the bed, a chamberpot … stained, chipped. Last night’s urine, as orange as the juice squeezed from a tangerine.

“If you come to the laundry you must have stains that you wish to wash away Senior Investigator.”

Piao’s finger traced the smile on Mao’s face, remembering the words, etched into every child of his generation’s memory, over and over again.

From the Red East rises the sun … there appears Mao Zedong.

He turned from the fire.

“No, I have no stains to wash away, comrade. Read this.”

The Senior Investigator dropped the file onto the table. Zhiyuan’s eyes steady, not a flicker downwards.

“I have too much to read already. One more report from an officer who is working to his own agenda and trying to save his own fat job … why should I miss my sleep because of such a thing?”

“Because you believe that the State is pure and that the Party rides above such things as corruption. Because you believe that Mao still rises with the sun. Read this and tell me that all of these things still exist and that they are all true. I want to believe it also …”

Piao pulled open the folder, monochrome prints spilling across the table and onto the floor.

“… twelve murders now. Twelve. The most important homicide case in the city’s modern history, and Liping cannot get a few boxes of surveillance tapes released to me. Someone, somewhere, is stalling. I need the tapes, they might be nothing, they might be everything, but I need them. A comrade in your position could help me to just do my job, nothing more …”

Brandy in the Shiqu Chairman’s heavy glass. He swallowed it, but no fire in his eyes … their emptiness panicking Piao.

“… Liping knows things that he should not know, but I need his help. I need you to push him into giving it to me. You are my Shiqu chairman, it is my right.”

“But there is more, Senior Investigator Piao. It is in your eyes.”