Free Citizen One by Andy Oakes

bottles of Southern Comfort won’t sort out.”
    “On which subject, how far have you got with Nie? Has he got anything for us?”
    “He’s got stuff, Boss. Told me. And I’ve already arranged a meeting in two day’s time.”
    “He is safe?”
    Outside the flat, mourners cleaning their shoes. Washing their hands in bowls of water. Remnants of the cemetery washed adrift. But not the tracks of tears down their cheeks and not their memories.
    “Sure, but he didn’t like it, Boss. Didn’t want to leave work. Didn’t want to leave his house and go to a safe address. Didn’t want to do anything …”
    “Until?”
    “Until I told him what they had done to Detective Di. Soon changed his mind. Packed in two minutes flat. What about this file that Zoul was talking about, Boss? Any good?”
    “A door. There were four reports in the file. Four investigations. Di had worked briefly on all of them. Four young women. The reports state that they were all prostitutes. All were attacked, cut up, mutilated. Three were found dead in the waters of the Wusongjiang. No leads. Not one. There were no witnesses. Or no one willing to say that they were a witness.”
    “And this is a ‘door’, Boss? Sounds more like a fucking wall.”
    “The last attack was a week ago. The yeh-ji is still in the First People’s Hospital on the Wu Jin Road, Hongkou. We are seeing her tomorrow.”
    “So we do have a witness, Boss?”
    “If she survives and is willing to talk. Someone played a game with her, with a razor. She was then dumped in the river at Suzhou Creek. She only just survived.”
    Moving up the communal staircase with its smells of cooking, babies and sadness. A queue of tears. Mourners in a slow moving staggered line. Whispered words to a widow and to fatherless children.
    “What do I say, Boss, to Di’s widow? What do I fucking talk about?”
    A hand on the Big Man’s shoulder. Words in solemn whisper.
    “What you do not talk about is a crucifixion, an oxyacetylene torch, or steel spikes.”
    Images stacked in Piao’s head, never far from being summoned up. Layer over layer.
    “You speak of other truths. What a fine comrade he was. What a good man, fine husband and loving father.”
    Closer, the front of the queue to the widow. So close. Able to smell her tears of sweet honey and the most bitter of lemons.
    “You speak of other truths.”
    *

    In aspic, that instance of time that stands on tiptoes still. Day turning off, lights switching on.
    Moving through Xietulu where it intersects Jihueilu. Piao, shielding his eyes; a black shadow stripe over a face slowly being gilded.
    “If you were going to crucify somebody, how many spikes would you use?”
    “Fuck me, Boss, what a question. Di’s widow’s tears are still warm on my face and you ask me something like that.”
    “How many?”
    A blast on the horn. A shoal of quicksilver Forever Bicycles parting, like a carp’s belly to a sharp knife.
    “Two, Boss. I wouldn’t want to waste any time, so I’d double over the hands and use one spike through the two of them. I’d do the same to the feet.”
    “The one through the forehead?”
    Turning sharply into Fuzingdonglu. Red lights in a smear across the windscreen.
    “Unnecessary. Too much stuffing to the dumpling, Boss. If the spike to the forehead was to kill them, it could have been done a lot simpler. What about you, Boss, how many spikes would you use?”
    “Two.”
    Laughing, the Big Man.
    “Practical bastards, the two of us, eh Boss? Children of the hardships following the Cultural Revolution.”
    Green flooding the Sedan’s interior.
    “So why did they use five, Boss?”
    “I do not know. To guess is cheap. To guess wrong is expensive.”
    The windscreen wipers stuttering to life. An end in view, an end of sorts. The apartment, home, clenched in shadow, squeezed in premature nightfall. A place where life was lived with the vitality of a coat hanging on a coat hook. Stepping out of the Sedan, fending off the