Citizen One (3 page)

“Yes, Madam, thank you. I will speak freely, if I may. Your husband, your, your …”

“Estranged husband, Comrade?”

“Yes, Madam, thank you. Your estranged husband, Senior Investigator Sun Piao. I have inherited his command. I am now his Chief Officer.”

She laughed again. A laugh of perfect length and intonation.

“I do not envy you, Comrade Chief Officer. My estranged husband is a difficult man, a challenging man.”

“Exactly, Madam. Exactly.”

“My husband, my estranged husband, he does not recognise subtlety. He does not recognise the tones that lie between black and white.”

Suddenly, painfully, remembering his blue eyes. Eyes of a half-blood.

“He is not a man who cares for the natural order of our system. For the secrets that must be held in soft hands.”

“Exactly, Madam. My thoughts exactly. His investigation went far beyond what a normal investigation should encompass. As you will be aware, it impacted upon his own fellow officers. His commanding officers. Its ripples reached the Politburo, no less. It led to damaging investigations, judicial proceedings. The
fen-chu
, it was turned upside down. We are still feeling the aftershocks.”

“And it interfered with the PSB’s other activities, yes, Comrade Chief Officer Zoul?”

“Yes, Madam. As I have already said, you are very perceptive. It is good to talk to someone who understands how things, how things …”

“How things work in the PSB and the Security Services, Comrade Chief Officer Zoul? How business is conducted?”

“Indeed, Madam, indeed. Our Senior Investigator Piao, a very dangerous man. A man who would empty the entire swimming pool just because someone might have pissed in it.”

Crude, so crude. How she hated crude men. Waiting for the next words, but many seconds before they were born.

“My call to you, Madam, it is delicate.”

“Please, Comrade, speak freely.”

“Thank you, Madam. I am a Public Security Bureau Chief, not a politician. Words, they are sometimes difficult.”

“I have had a lifetime of politicians’ honeyed words, Comrade. The honest words of a policeman are most welcome.”

Silence. Just his breathing. Tight, expectant.

“I had to contact you, Madam. You have aided me, supported me in regard to a delicate situation. One that could have ended my career.”

“One that could have ended your freedom, Comrade.”

“Indeed. Indeed. I thank you for that, Madam. I am most grateful. But I needed to see if …”

“You contacted me to establish if I would want
guan-xi
in return?”

A polite cough at the other end of the line.

“Perhaps you thought that I would blackmail you, use this information to pressure you into releasing my husband, my estranged husband, from his incarceration in the Shanghai Ankang? Pressure you into accepting him for active duty within the PSB?”

Silence.

“Or perhaps you thought that I would blackmail you into a decisive action that might result in him never leaving
Ankang
? After all, Comrade Chief Officer, the PSB has very long arms, does it not?”

Embarrassed silence.

“I am sorry, Madam. I feel rightfully chastened. The timing of your intervention, it concerned me. Obviously, needlessly so. I see that now. Although you are estranged from Senior Investigator Piao, I thought …”

Her hand against the child’s chest. So faint the heartbeat, that knife edge between life and death.

She had decided, she would wake the child as soon as the call was completed and matters agreed. She would wake him and they would walk down to the beach. They would look at the lights of distant boats. Smell the smoke from wood fires and throw pebbles into the sea. Kiessling, the old German patisserie, would still be open. A cake, perhaps their famous strudel, and a coffee, hot and bitter. A small ice cream for the child. And again they would watch the running lights from boats wink out their existence.

“You are less slow-witted than I imagined, Comrade Chief Officer Zoul.”

Her tone different, like silk to leather and sand to granite.

“Madam? I am sorry, I do not understand?”

“I have a full account of your little indiscretion on file. It includes a statement from the victim. It will be sent to the new Minister of Security by courier if my demands are not met in full. You should know that the Minister’s dear wife is a close, close friend of mine …”

Stuttered the word, like a steel security shutter falling into place.

“Demands?”

The child waking.
Nemma bai nemma pang
. Perhaps he already had dreams of ice cream.

“Do you have a pen, Comrade? This could take some time.”

Two weeks later
…

Detective Di warming his hands with his cheroot sweet breath. Eyes to a crane spiked sky, diced, sliced, and with a sun the hue of flat beer. A nod to a Deputy who was younger than his son. More spotty than his son, but less insolent. An engine cutting the silence, inch by inch, behind discoloured screening panels, straining cables hauling a rectangular shadow.

Shouts. Brakes. A line of identically olive-garbed officers hauling ropes, swinging the concrete block onto steel chocks. Moving in a single file across the mud to a spattered Liberation truck. China Brands lit and burning tangerine in cracked lips.

“Come.”

He beckoned to the Deputy and smiled as he watched him negotiate the mud field. Shit up to his ankles, shit over the bottom of his trousers. He would have some explaining to do to his mama.

Wincing as they breached the screening, the Detective shielding his eyes from the cutting arc light. The Deputy’s hands moving urgently to his lips, guarding his mouth with lattice fingers, but through gaps, bile pulling thick, as he ran from the screening, his legs folding. Kneeling in the mud, over and over again a mantra of penitence for seeing what none should ever see.

“Dao-mei … dao-mei … dao-mei … dao-mei.”

Di, lighting another cheroot. Rhythmic drags and exhalations as he circled the roughly hewn concrete obelisk.

“Ta ma de.”

From his pocket, a camera the size of a packet of Panda Brand. Each click, a swear word. Each click, each profanity, a vision of the sort of hell that one comrade of the People’s Republic can perpetrate on another comrade of the People’s Republic. Nothing here that would be found in Mao’s ‘Little Red Book’.

Moving closer, the frame filled slate grey. Entombed in concrete, the toes of a foot, cherry nail varnish, once pristinely applied. The stone topography of chin, cheek, a gagged open mouth, a blind upturned eye. Entombed in concrete, a girl, naked and torn.

Closer. Reluctantly touching a hand, within whose broken-fingered clasp was an object’s dull gleaming. Taking a photograph before wrenching each finger aside; concrete flakings falling as grey snow. Another photograph.

“Ta ma de.”

Nausea filling him. From his pocket, a blunt penknife. Using the blade to lever the embedded object from its concrete vice and carefully scraping the greyness off. At arm’s length, holding the object in his palm. Taking several digital images and cursing his bad luck. Such bad luck that he should have been on duty when the call had come.

Retrieving an evidence bag from a pocket and dropping the object within its creased polythene. Sealing, labelling it. A last look before he buried it in a deep inside pocket. A shake of his head. His body racked in a prolonged shiver. Somebody was walking over his grave. Someone with heavy boots.

The Deputy breached the screens. Di’s eyes not leaving the face of the dead girl. His words framed with a harshness that pressed the Deputy into immediate action.

“No one else is to see this. No one. Post guards outside. Make sure, then see how the other excavation is doing.”

“Yes, Comrade Detective.”

A final drag of his last cheroot. Ten a day. He had promised his wife, ten, no more. Flicking the butt of his tenth deep into the foundation’s gaping hole. Reaching back into his jacket side pocket for the rough cardboard packet and his eleventh cheroot which he lit as he strode from the screens.

Across the mudflat an engine choking into action. The second crane, at the northwest corner of the site, heaving shadow. A shout to the laced canvas interior of the Liberation truck.

“Out. Out …”

Men jumping from the tailgate. Cigarettes thrown in the mud. Oaths to corners of lips.

“A full sweep. Anything and everything. Got it? And you …”

Pointing at a young, boss-eyed officer.

“Take six other officers. Check this site and the neighbouring sites. Witnesses, evidence, anything suspicious. You don’t leave the shift until you’ve covered the whole area, do you understand?”

Nods and whispered profanities. But all of the time the Detective’s eyes on the spike of the crane. Another shadow rising grey behind screening panels. Knowing, already knowing. Watching a section of screening flap apart. The Deputy through it, bracing himself against the forest of bamboo scaffolding poles. His voice lost to the language that machines speak, but Di reading his lips. Knowing the words and already running in the young Deputy’s direction.

‘There’s more. There’s fucking more.’

Telephone calls in the middle of the night, always with an edge, always feeling more dangerous.

“You know who this is?”

The voice, a rasp. Instantly recognisable, and with it, an image of light falling over ravaged skin. Sleep banished and instantly alert. Comrade Chief Officer Zoul sitting up in his bed, his book falling to the floor.

“Yes. Yes, I know who you are.”

“Then you will know to listen carefully, Chief Zoul. You will be receiving a call from one of your Detectives. An investigator in your Homicide Division by the name of Di. He has stumbled upon something that he should not have stumbled upon.”

The man with the pockmarked face leaving room for a question that he knew would never come. Even a Comrade Chief Officer had the sense not to ask a question that would never be answered.

“It is People’s Liberation Army business. A delicate matter that will require your complete support and which I will direct personally.”

Another space. The man with the pockmarked face taking the time to light a French cigarette, its smoke as perfumed as a whore’s breast.

“Your Detective and his Deputy find themselves in a delicate situation. They have seen things that they should not have seen. They are men who will not, will not…”

Silence, counted in seconds, as he sought the right words, the correct phrasing. Currency of birthright, of knowing that whatever he had ever wanted he eventually received.

“They are comrades who will not be able to see the bigger picture. Unlike you, Comrade Chief Officer.”

Chilly in the bedroom, the weeks now turning toward winter; but Zoul wiping the sweat from his forehead with a bed sheet.

“I understand, Comrade Sir.”

“It is good that you understand, Zoul. This is what this situation requires from all parties, understanding.”

Sweat into the corners of his mouth, warning of words not to be spoken.

“My officers, Comrade Sir, they are good comrades. Detective Di and his Deputy, they are officers that can be trusted. I am sure of this. They will be diplomatic. They will keep confidences.”

“Di will telephone you. He will need heavy transport, he will need men. I have already made provision for this. The material involved will be taken to a place that does not concern you. I will assume personal charge of this operation. Is that understood?”

“Yes, Comrade Sir.”

“You will insist that Di gives to you any samples for forensic examination that he might have collected during his brief investigation. Is this understood?”

“Yes. Yes, it is understood.”

“All reports, all notes will be surrendered to me. Understood?”

“Yes, I understand, Comrade Sir.”

“I wish this situation, this investigation by your officers, to cease, to vanish, as if it had never been. You would not wish to anger me. You would not wish to anger my esteemed father.”

His voice, low. Barely audible.

“What we need is obedience. Obedience and discretion. We are involved in a struggle, Zoul. A struggle for hearts and minds. To retain the glorious values of our beloved leaders. In this process a few eggs may be broken. But what are a few eggs in such a struggle?”

“Yes, Comrade Sir.”

Cigarette stubbed deeply into crystal ashtray.

“We must be prepared to make sacrifices by proxy, Zoul. For the security and advancement of our Republic, indeed, for its ultimate survival. We must all be prepared to make sacrifices, even the ultimate sacrifice should it prove necessary.”

*

A breakfast of peanuts, noodles, fruits and pickled vegetables as bitter as the news that he was expecting. The telephone call arriving as he ate apples past their best, and bruised and split lychees.

“Comrade Chief Officer. It’s Detective Di. Sir, we have a problem …”

Cold now; the only warmth, Di’s cheroot. His sixteenth cheroot.

“Our investigation at the construction site of the new National Stadium at Olympic Green, it has complexities that we had not envisaged …”

Di’s eyes moving across the face of the second obelisk. A concrete elbow and foot, a clenched hand and a concrete mask of a face.

“It’s hard to estimate, but there could be many poor unfortunates that life no longer possesses. They have been entombed in the concrete foundations, Comrade Chief Officer. They all appear to be young women. They could be linked to other cases that I’m working on, Comrade Chief Officer. We will only fully know once we have transported the concrete to a suitable location and have broken it apart.”

His hand, concrete powder-stained, across the top of the mouthpiece shielding his words, his lips.

“However, Comrade Chief Officer, Sir, there is an additional complexity concerning the situation that we have discovered here.”

His eyes moving from the human Braille that indented the second obelisk of the concrete foundation to his hand and the object that he had levered from a dead girl’s fingers … the star of the People’s Republic.