Gelignite (2 page)

Feiffer said, 'What is it?'

Auden looked at him.

'Is it the head?'

Auden nodded.

Auden said, 'I can't guide it into the plastic bag—'

'Has it got any hair?'

Auden nodded. The head had strands of black hair floating out around it like seaweed.

Feiffer said, 'Pick it up by the hair.' He saw something next to his own leg and looked down to make out what it was. It was a section of shoulder. He took out a bag to get it.

The crowd on the wall went 'Oooo . . .' Feiffer glanced across. Auden had the head by the hair and was trying to get it into the mouth of the bag. His hand slipped from the wet hair and the head fell back into the water with a splash. The crowd made a heavy moaning sound.

The section of shoulder floated neatly into the open plastic bag. Feiffer sealed the bag and held it below the water. He heard Auden say, 'Got it—!' and then the sound of him sloshing quickly in towards shore. Feiffer heard a heavy sigh from the crowd. He waited until O'Yee and Lee were back on station in the water and went in with the shoulder as Auden came sloshing back towards Spencer.

Spencer asked Auden, 'The head?'

Auden nodded.

Spencer asked, 'Young man or old?'

'Young.'

Spencer nodded. He said self-encouragingly, "There isn't much more now.' He saw Feiffer reach the ambulance and hand his bag in to Macarthur through the open rear doors. Spencer looked at the crowd. They seemed very still. One of them seemed to ask the driver something, but the driver waved his hands to say he couldn't answer. The crowd seemed to make a heavy droning sound.

O'Yee said softly to someone, 'They're worried.'

He spoke very quietly and no one heard him.

O'Yee said, 'They're worried that we mightn't find all of him. Before we found the head it was just a pile of legs and arms and bits, but now we've found the head it's someone who's died in water.' He said, "The Chinese have two great fears: drowning at sea and of being put into their graves with bits missing from them.' He said to Spencer, 'In the old days, the families of condemned men used to pay the axeman to sew the head back on the people he executed.' He said, 'It's a Chinese belief that the soul won't rest if the body's been lost at sea or dismembered.' He said to Spencer, 'I don't believe that.' He said in an odd voice, 'The European part of me says that it's a load of crap.' He looked down into the water and blinked at something.

Feiffer came back through the slight swell and took up his position. He asked Auden, 'Any more?'

'No. How much more to go?'

Feiffer looked back at the ambulance and the unseeable thing that was being assembled inside it on a steel tray. 'Not much.' He said hopefully, 'We'll be finished soon. It's a young man in his twenties, slightly undernourished, been in the water for six hours or so.' He said, 'Macarthur says that the lungs suggest he was dead when he went in.' He said quickly, 'So let's get it over with.' He shook his head to clear the picture of the inside of the ambulance.

A long way out in the cove a water-police launch went by at top speed in the direction of Stanley Bay, its twin props slicing a foaming white cleavage of water away from its bow. There were two figures on the flying bridge and another in the stern. The launch changed course briefly for something, and then went around the point out of sight. Its trailing wake went from white to green and came to the shore as rolling eddies and waves. Spencer felt one of the little wavelets push against him and then travel past. He said to Feiffer, 'They'll never find anything—!'

'They're not looking. The current's bringing all the stuff in here. They're searching for wreckage.' He said defensively, They've been out since the first report this morning.' He looked at the wake coming towards him in progressively smaller undulations, 'Maybe they've found something already.'

O'Yee looked back at the crowd. They were still and silent. He thought, "I'm not Chinese, I'm Eurasian, and the European side of me tells me it doesn't matter whether you drown, get shot, die of old age, or simply rust to pieces." He thought, "And it makes no difference whether you're found in one bit or thousands, you're just as dead." He thought, "The Chinese don't know what they're talking about." He thought, "Western science has just discovered after thousands of years that the Chinese knew what they were talking about with acupuncture." He thought, "And I read somewhere that the traditional Chinese cure-all, ginseng has just been found to really work." He thought, "The Chinese knew that all along." He thought, "But drowning, and souls, and being in bits, is just a load of crap." The crowd on the seawall were totally silent. He thought, "The European part of me knows it's a load of crap." He thought, "On balance, I prefer the Western side of my background." Something floated past him, but it was only another twig. He thought, "That's right." He thought about the crowd. He said to himself, 'It's all nonsense.' He went to reach for the twig again and remembered it was the second time it had floated past. He flipped it firmly away with his hand and said to anyone or to no one, 'Twig.'

Feiffer rolled his rubber glove forward onto his knuckles to see his watch. It read 6 am Water had seeped in through the glove and the watch and bather watchband were both wet. He wondered if it was waterproof. His wife had given it to him as a present He thought, "It must be. It says
Waterproof
on the back where she had my name engraved on it and she certainly wouldn't buy something that wasn't all it was supposed to be." He thought, "I wish I was at home." He thought, "I hope she hasn't heard about this on the radio." He thought, "Not now while she's pregnant." He thought, "I'd feel a bit funny about it if she knew I'd been touching dead things all morning." He looked at the murky water, remembered the workload at the Station, and for no reason apparent to any of the others said, '
Shit
—!'

Spencer looked across at the beach. Doctor Macarthur had emerged from the ambulance and was motioning to them. He was shouting something, but Spencer couldn't make out the words. He looked quickly down at the water to check it was clear and then moved in closer to shore to hear what Macarthur was saying. A little way in towards the beach he saw something half submerged and went over to see what it was. It was a hand.

'Do you hear me?' Macarthur called out.                         

Spencer took out another plastic bag and moved it over the 1 hand.

'The shoulders—' Macarthur called out, and then
something —something—something
—understand? It means—' and then, '
something—something—something
—'

Spencer closed the top of the plastic bag. He thought, "A hand?" He thought, "But we've—"

Macarthur called out,'—don't match—do you understand?'

'Oh my God!' Spencer said. They had already found two hands. He said, 'There are two of them!'

There was a hum from the crowd. Then talking and then someone—the crowd had grown and was a dark, solid mass along the stone wall of the beach front—shouted to someone close by, 'Gay-daw gaw yan?'

Feiffer nodded back to Macarthur and waved his hand. Macarthur acknowledged him and went hurriedly back inside the ambulance.

The voice in the crowd asked the driver on the beach insistently, 'Gay-daw?'

The driver shook his head.

Someone else in the crowd demanded, 'Leong gaw?' He was asking if it was true that there were two of them.

The driver nodded. He watched the six policemen in the water. There was a deep humming sound from the crowd, and then it fell silent.

O'Yee glanced at the crowd. They were like a dark cloth spread along the seawall with, here and there, specks and flashes of colour from shirts and dresses, coats and bags. O'Yee thought, "They're waiting to see if we find the other man." He thought, "The rest of the other man." He thought, "They're waiting to see if we understand about things and we're prepared to pay the executioner to sew the head back on." He thought, "They look like the drawings in old picture books of Chinamen standing on the rim of China looking out at the rest of the world." He said to Feiffer, 'We are going to wait until we get it all, Harry, aren't we?'

'Yes.' Feiffer said, 'It's a murder job now. We have to get it all for identification.'

'Identification. Yes.'

O'Yee looked back to the crowd. He thought, "My mother was Irish. She believed in all sorts of things." He thought, "My Chinese father doesn't believe in much at all." He thought, "He'd believe in this." He glanced back at the crowd and felt their presence on him. He thought, "They look like the drawings in old books." He fixed his eyes onto the surface of the sea and looked for artifacts from antiquity.

Spencer straightened up. Then he leaned over and did something in the water.

Auden said, 'Well?'

'Nothing.'

Auden said, 'Don't get the idea you can go in the water if you want a piss. It pollutes the evidence.'

Spencer looked shocked. 'I was adjusting my waders!'

Feiffer said, 'Shut up and get on with it.' He felt in his shirt pocket with his wet gloves for his cigarettes, remembered he had left them in the car with his coat, and extracted his wet glove from his now equally wet pocket with distaste. Farther out, Constable Sun said, 'Sir—!' and bent down into the water to retrieve something. Feiffer went over. The water was colder and deeper and came up to his already saturated pocket and thoroughly flooded it. Sun had hold of something a little below the surface. He pulled it up and over like a waterlogged surfboard and pushed it in Feiffer's direction for his inspection. It was a complete body. 

Constable Sun said quietly, 'Now there are three of them.' 

Feiffer turned the body over. The face was pale and blotched, but at one time it had been a young male Chinese. There was a long ragged gash that ran from the left shoulder diagonally across the chest to the hip, and specks of white bone under the shirt showed where the flesh had been opened up to the ribs. It was a dull chopping wound made by a single sweep, but not deep enough to cause death unless by loss of blood. Feiffer said, 'You know what did it, don't you?' and Sun nodded. Feiffer said, 'I'll take the scruff of the neck and you guide the feet.'

They took the body in to the beach. 

Spencer called, 'I've got another one! It's complete!' He called Auden over to help him take it in.

"Four." O'Yee thought, "There are four of them. We've got two complete ones and one Macarthur can put together, but we've only found a piece of the other one." He heard someone in the crowd ask something and then someone else—probably the driver—shout an answer back and then there were the sounds of Feiffer and Sun and Auden and Spencer sloshing back into the sea from the beach.

Auden called out, 'Something else!' and O'Yee wondered how long it would be before the current changed and whatever else was out there in the sea floating into shore would be taken away forever. He looked at the crowd, but it was silent and immobile. 

Auden called out, 'An arm and part of a torso!' He called out to someone, 'It's the same! It's a ship's propeller wound! It isn't murder at all!' but O'Yee thought, "That doesn't make any difference." He looked at the crowd. They were beginning to edge forwards onto the beach and he thought, "They
know
. They're keeping count and they
know
." Macarthur's voice called, 'What was that?' and Spencer's voice called back, 'An arm! I've got an arm!'

O'Yee closed his eyes. He thought, "My father was very particular about how and where his body was to be buried." He thought, "He showed me. He made it very clear to me what elder sons were supposed to do with their father's remains." He looked at the crowd. The humming was there again. They were on the beach and the police driver was trying to get them to move back to the seawall. He thought, "They won't move." Something floated up against him and he looked down. It was a hand and an arm. He took out a plastic bag and guided them into the bag very carefully.

Feiffer looked over at him, but O'Yee took the bag and its contents to shore without speaking. He passed the bag into Macarthur's charnel house in the back of the ambulance and went back into the sea.

The crowd watched him. The other three detectives were Europeans. There were two Chinese Constables (three, if you counted the driver), but the four detectives were Inspectors and they were in charge. The crowd looked at him. They saw he was half-Chinese. He heard the humming.

The driver on the beach went quickly to the police car to answer the buzzing of the radio telephone. He motioned to O'Yee to wait, but O'Yee ignored him. The driver saw Feiffer watching him.

The driver nodded at something someone said on the radio —at a distance nodding into a telephone struck Feiffer as ludicrous (he wondered if he did it himself)—and then the driver came to the edge of the sand.

O'Yee said, 'It was an arm,' and Feiffer nodded.

Auden said, 'A leg and chest!' He bent down with his bag.

Feiffer asked O'Yee quietly, 'Are you all right, Christopher?' 'Yes.'

'They're propeller wounds. It looks like the four of them were caught up in a ship's propeller somewhere out at sea.' He said, 'Macarthur says they were already dead, so they must have drowned.' He looked down at the water, but there was nothing there.

Sun called, 'More!' He called to Feiffer, 'An arm!' He reached inside his shirt for his packet of plastic bags.

'Sir—!' the driver's voice called out.

Feiffer shouted back, 'Yes?'

'The Water Police report they've stopped a junk full of illegal immigrants!' He called out again, 'Illegal immigrants! The Captain says four of them died and he threw the bodies overboard!'

At the water's edge Spencer said, 'Good old Water Police.'

Feiffer shouted back, 'How did they die?'

'What?'

'How did they
die
?'

'They suffocated! The Captain says it was an accident! The Water Police say you can leave it—they'll pick up what-ever's left later! They say it isn't that important now!'

'OK!'

'They say leave it now—!'