Dragon's Eye (3 page)

“… come, Mr Shiqu Chairman, let me show you thoroughness. …”

Roughly, with resistance, guiding, pushing the comrades out of the path of the photographer’s studied dance, to the other side of the bodies. Dead flesh just inches and eternity away from their muddied toes.

“… thoroughness, yes, you’ll appreciate the level of thoroughness that is displayed here. Let me show you what I mean …”

A whine. A click. A blitz. Again, again, the photographer moving in for close-ups. Blue-white flashes squinting, piercing their eyes. Everything with its bright mercury taint. The eight, the bodies, turning to stone with each shot. Removed further and further from a life of flesh, of warmth.

“… we have eight corpses in all, chained together by the legs and by the necks. Note the hands of the victims. A total of sixteen thumbs, sixty-four fingers, the top joints of which are all missing. Snipped off very neatly, wouldn’t you agree? Very thorough …”

Another flash. Another. Illuminating the side of his face. Knowing that he would look as if he was fashioned from stainless steel. Waiting for seconds for an answer that he knew would not come. Thick seconds. Thinking of bolt cutters, cleavers, blunt knives. And wondering if they thought of such things also?

“… the victims faces. Not much left of them, is there? Odontology, dental work, teeth … we can tell a lot from teeth. Age. Diet. Lifestyle. Social category. General health. Even nationality …”

Halting as the photographer knelt in front of him. Viewfinder filled with static heads. The caves of nostrils. Muddied, lank rope hair. Black wells of torn mouths. There can be a listless beauty in death sometimes. Sometimes … but not in these. No, not in these poor unfortunates. The flash of the large format camera. Another. Another. Naked death served as a main course, without the trimmings. Without the garnish.

“… their mouths, their teeth, their jaws, have all been smashed. I would say by a heavy clubbing hammer. Their faces also. Smashed to bits to hamper identification. See, see? Fractured skulls. Cheekbones. Broken noses and jaws …”

Somebody’s babies. Somebody’s children
.

Sweet mouths at the breast. Piao feeling his anger rise, hot and sour. Its wash creeping in to taint the edges of his words.

“… finally, the eyes. But of course, Mr Chairman, you will have already noticed … they are missing. Sixteen eyes, all removed. Gouged out, by the look of it …”

One, two, three, four, five … seconds. Pausing. But no questions. Not a breath. Lips still. The air still, and the river. As if time itself was waiting to be re-wound.

“… what do you think, were they brown eyes? Or perhaps blue or grey. Maybe even green. I like green eyes … don’t you, Mr Comrade Chairman of the Shiqu …?”

Comrade Shi, Neighbourhood Committee notebook in hand, stumbled from the pool of arc-light. A thick trail of vomit marking his passage. Death and vomit, the two inextricably linked in Piao’s mind. Death. Men think that it can be tamed. That they can become accustomed to its face as they can become accustomed to a strange and exotic foreign food. They see it every day in a city that does not kneel to hide it. Hot flowing blood in the long summer days. Cold and stanched brown in the grey winter hours. And then this … a sight that the rest of your life will be hung upon, pivot from. A sight only ever just a flicker of an eyelid away. Piao felt the bud of nausea unfurl its petals at the back of his throat.

“… is this a brand of thoroughness that you recognise, Chairman Zhiyuan. A thoroughness that robs a man of the colour of his eyes?”

Zhiyuan turned his back to the cold bodies, lighting another cheroot. His fast hand covering the pages of his notebook with scrawl and ash as he talked.

“I am not here to play guessing games, Investigator … and even less to be taught by your kind …”

Smoke from his lips in a constant steel band.

“… you have gone too far, Piao. Too dangerously far with your accusations …”

He drew closer. His lined skin resembling a city centre road map. His breath, its accumulated exhaust fumes.

“… you forget who you are talking to. My words will find the ears of important comrades in the Party. And the Party has ways of dealing with …”

“… what, comrade. Ways of dealing with people like me? And people like them also?” Piao interjected.

A single word piercing the coiled cheroot smoke as it left the old man’s torn lips.

“Perhaps.”

A hiss, and so close that Zhiyuan’s breath intermingled with his own. Piao immediately thinking of meat-flies, puke, fatty pork. He suddenly felt very ill.

“Did you hear that, Detective Yaobang. A threat made to a serving Senior Officer in the police force of the People’s Republic of China?”

“I heard it …” Yaobang replied. A tinge of reluctance plaited into his words. Spit, thick and white on his lips, Zhiyuan exploded.

“My Committee and the Central Committee will hear of your obstructive behaviour, Investigator, and of your vile insinuations that these murders were carried out in the name of the Party and of the State …”

The dark butt falling from his fingers. A hiss as it met mud. Its orange tip dying to grey.

“… expect a knock on your door, Piao.”

“Detective Yaobang, please escort Comrade Zhiyuan and Comrade Shi to their cars, they’re leaving. They have a great deal of report writing to complete.”

Watching their shadows shrink as they walked away. The darkness eating them. Piao chewing on the bit of his anger. Mouth tasting of polished metal. Of danger. He spat, but could not loosen its hold. Squatting, eyes closed for a few seconds … or was it minutes? Longing for sleep, but knowing that it offered no rest. Behind the dark curtains of his eyelids he could still see the policemen relieving their full bladders. The crescent moon now in flight above the river. And the paper white faces, with their smudged, eyeless sockets. They say that the eyes of the murdered retain within them a last burning image of who it was that killed them. Was it the Party that was robbing the bodies of this last old wives’ tale?

The decision made, and made against the grain and every survival instinct that the fifteen thousand days of his life in Shanghai had taught him, Piao stood, shouting to a group of policemen who were smoking, gossiping, pissing onto the mud.

“Let’s get to it, it’s our case …”

A low moan of discontent. China Brand cigarette butts being flicked into the river. Flies being zipped.

“… load them into the wagon and don’t fucking drop them down the embankment, they’ve been through enough.”

The dark figures peeled off from each other, crossing into the island of arc-light. A brief flurry of activity. The sound of bolt cutters meeting steel chain. Polythene sheeting being fashioned around bodies, now separated. Fibreglass caskets flexing, accepting their loads. Grunts as they were lifted. Eight caskets. Eight grunts. Eight bodies. A slow weaving line across soft shadowed broken foreshore. Staggering, stuttering up the steps to the Bund. The wagon doors being opened. Caskets slid in. The wagon doors being closed.

Piao meandered through the lines of waterproof suited policemen on their knees, sifting through the mud. A thankless task. He knew, already knew … these murderers would leave no calling cards. These murderers would leave nothing but their ravaged quarry. He looked up, across the stacked grey graduations of Huangpu Park. Clouds now rolling in against the moon, overtaking it and swallowing it whole. It was going to be a brushed steel grey of a day. He would be waiting for the leach of red rust to seep into it.

Softly, the wind blows from the south,
Caresses the stems of the brambles.
Holy mother, good mother,
I was not your son.

WASHINGTON D.C., THE UNITED STATES OF
AMERICA.

She had known that he was dead at that very moment, in that very instant; beyond her, beyond everything. The scream that filled her head waking her from a deep sleep. Her own voice crying out the name of her only child …

“Bobby.”

As clear, as pure as a crystal sphere splintering onto a marble floor.

“Jesus … Jesus … Jesus …”

Shaking. Hearing her own words and pleadings, that seemed to pierce the night as the steel pin impales the butterfly. And all of the time his name burning inside her. An indigestion of loss, pain, and disjointed flooding memories. And knowing that it was too late. Already … too late.

*

Calm now. Reaching for the telephone. Counting …

ONE … TWO … THREE …

Brandy in one hand. A letter, his writing, the telephone number … in the other hand. And all of the time, reality and intuition in a fierce grapple for her attention.

“Bobby … Bobby.”

Counting. Slowly …

FOUR … FIVE …

It can’t be true … he can’t be dead.

The telephone number, endless. Halfway through it, she realised that she had misread a digit. A five for a four. His writing had always been so poor, so chaotic; as if his mind was in a constant head-on collision of ideas, schemes. His brain working faster than his hand. A five for a four. The pain pressed harder. She re-dialled, counting …

SIX … SEVEN … EIGHT …

“Come on, come on.”

The connection clicked into life. A ringing tone, replaying.

Be there, for God’s sake be there. Let me be wrong, please. Please God.

A ringing tone, repeating itself.

Stupid. Stupid. He’ll be there. The phone will be answered, the call put through to his room. He’ll be there. ‘Hi Mom, how are you?’ Just like a few days ago … a week ago … a month ago. He’ll be there. He’ll be there, won’t he, God?

A woman’s voice answered. Draped in a Chinese accent, but her English starched rigid and oh so correct.

“Good evening, this is the Shanghai Jing Jiang Hotel. How may I help you?”

“Can you connect me to Mr Hayes in room 201. Thank you.”

Seconds of silence punctuated by her own heartbeat.

“We have no Mr Hayes in room 201.”

Putting down the brandy. Her ear pulsing, sweating against the plastic of the receiver. Again, counting …

ONE … TWO … THREE …

“Are you sure? Room 201 was his room, I’m positive. Maybe he checked out, or perhaps he’s moved rooms. Can you please look again? It is urgent.”

“Sorry, Madam, but we have no Mr Hayes in the hotel.”

“Look, double-check. The name is Hayes.

H—A—Y—E—S. BOBBY HAYES.”

A longer silence. Distant snippets of conversation in Chinese playing peekaboo behind it. With each second, it feeling as if an endless corridor of doors between her and Bobby were being slammed shut. Finishing the brandy. Relishing its burn. Counting …

FOUR … FIVE …

“Madam, we have checked our records thoroughly and we can find no mention of a Mr Bobby Hayes. You must be mistaken. He must have resided at a different hotel.”

“But I telephone him at this hotel at least three times a week for Christ sake. I spoke to him just two days ago. I know the phone number by heart, 53—42—42. I have letters from him written on your hotel notepaper. Does that sound like someone who is residing at another hotel?”

The voice at the other end of the line, the other side of the world, was more insistent this time; almost brutal, slicing in its ice-cold certainty.

“No one by the name of Mr Bobby Hayes has ever stayed at the Shanghai Jing Jiang Hotel, Madam.”

“Jesus, but I know that he’s stayed there. Listen for God’s sake, will you? His room number is 201. Check again. It’s HAYES. BOBBY HAYES. He’s tall, over six feet. And blond, very blond. You can’t miss him. You just can’t miss him …”

It was some time before she realised that she was shouting into a telephone that had been hung up on her. Only a tinnitus of electronic hum and buzz breaking up the featureless silence. Counting …

SIX … SEVEN … EIGHT …

She sat listening to it for a while, cradled in the heavy swell of duvet and sheet. The questions, the doubts, the informed perceptions, already nagging at her. Wondering. Wondering. Sitting, listening to the ocean of sound. The weave of babble, seeming to take on a voice, a faint voice of its own which seemed to be saying …

‘BOBBY’S DEAD – BOBBY’S DEAD – BOBBY’S DEAD.’

Counting …

NINE … TEN.

They moved south, then east, crossing the Nanpu Bridge … the river, a black and thick cord below. City lights on either side in a firm vice grip. On the Huangpu itself, nothing. No life. No movement. A vast ebony axe blow cleaving Shanghai in two.

Piao drove carefully, slowly, eyes constantly seeking the rear-view mirror for assurance. The Big Man never knowing the Boss to drive himself anywhere, not in four years. He asked no questions, there was no point. There would be no answers. Hitting Padong Avenue. A high spiking steel forest of cranes flanking it. A thousand cranes. A thousand foreign corporations staking their claims in the new market economy zone. Fuelling, being fuelled by the bright economic renaissance. Five billion dollars of investment swilling around in the manic rawness of a frontier town. The Great Leap Forward … the trade and banking centre of the world by 2010. A fairytale town of a thousand promises; dreams rising into the night sky in the form of precast concrete towers, studded and pierced with cold lights. The Senior Investigator shook his head …

The making of money, did it have to look so ugly?

Piao stepped out of the wagon, shoe sinking into a pile of dog shit.

“Fuck it!”

Scraping most of it off against a wire fence that bordered the edge of a construction site that seemed to have no end. A jungle of bamboo scaffolding interlaced with strings of dirty lights. Brown earth gouged to the surface in vast open wounds. A deep flow of fetid mud water, yellow-edged and slicked with rainbow oil spills. So tired, but if he’d closed his eyes he would have still seen their neatly snipped fingers. Their cracked faces. The dark, empty wells that were once their eyes. He didn’t close his eyes.

He pushed his hand inside the top of Yaobang’s passenger window. The fruit of the photographer’s dance placed in his palm. Four rolls of one hundred and twenty film, reassuringly large, solid. He pocketed them, a question on his face. The Big Man shook his head. Seven calls and not a hospital, a university, that would take the poor bastards that they had dug from the mud of the Huangpu.