Citizen One by Andy Oakes

me. Footsteps; something being dragged, wheeled, and then screams.”
    Rubbing the clarity back into his eyes with his frayed cuff.
    “They had put them onto the floor. Two men. Your two men. They drove nails into each hand. Each foot. The screams. Wangba dan , the screams. As pigs make when they are castrated. Enough to wake the night. But it did not, it only woke me. I saw them through a small hole in the corner of the floor. As the last nails were driven in, I saw them. Men dressed in dark clothes. One, their boss, asking questions …”
    “Questions?”
    “Questions, mainly to the older one.”
    “What questions were being asked?”
    “Over and over again, about an investigation. Who else had been there. Names. Reports, had they filed any reports. Evidence. Evidence. He kept asking about evidence. Where was it? Who had it? Who had they spoken to?”
    Faster the words, but more garbled.
    “He said little, the man. Just one name, Zoul, I think it was. And things that did not make sense. About a videotape, or something. Then they lit the torch. Wangba dan , the torch. As bright as the sun, that torch …”
    Shaking his head.
    “Their screams. And through it the sound of their flesh burning. And the smell like sweet pork past its best. They screamed and screamed. Wangba dan . How their screams were not heard across the river …”
    Wiping his mouth and beard with the sodden end of the blanket.
    “The boss, the one with the scarred face, he was getting impatient. He ordered that they burn them more and more. And more deeply. Even I knew that these men had nothing more to say. What this boss wanted was not in their heads or their hearts.”
    Face downcast, just the top of his head in the torchlight, his long, thick, wavy hair, a curtain hiding his face.
    “The boss gave an order, and suddenly it stopped. Your officers would have felt little. The hammers were very heavy and the spikes were very sharp.”
    Piao kneeling, a hand on the tong zhi’s trembling shoulder.
    “This man, this boss with the scarred face …”
    “A ganbu . A ganbu. Wangba dan …”
    “How do you know that he was a cadre , Comrade?”
    “His look. His walk. His smell.”
    Pulling his face up level with the Senior Investigator’s, each word seared by anger.
    “You think that I would not know a ganbu ? Maggots in the rice bowl. Wangba dan .”
    “What can you tell me about this ‘maggot’, tong zhi ? What else did your fine eyes see?”
    Faraway thoughts. Distant memories of other ganbu that he had been asked to describe in his life. Tried by his testimony, sentenced by his words. The walls that they were placed against, so cold. The volley of rifle rounds, so hot. What is one more to a soul already holed?
    “The ganbu , he was young. Younger than me. Younger than you. Perhaps thirty years. A Shanghainese by birth, by his words. But his accent was afflicted. He had been educated abroad.”
    “You’re sure about this, old daddy?”
    A look fired at the Big Man. This tong zhi , now old and worn down by life’s heel, but in his younger days, not a man whose shadow you would want to have had passing over yours.
    “I am not your daddy, Mr Policeman. Do not doubt me, a comrade who helped liberate this city and whose fellow comrades’ blood washed this city’s gutters clean in the process. A fact that you would do well to remember.”
    Unsettling, the light at the back of the old papa’s eyes. Not the first time that Piao had witnessed its coal ember glow in the eyes of old Red Guards.
    “This cadre , you would recognise him again?”
    The tong zhi , a hand grasping Piao’s collar and pulling him forward. Close. Breaths mixing. Each word from the old papa’s mouth, as fruit rotting on the branch, acidic and sweet.
    “Yes, I would know this ganbu . There is not a ganbu who has crossed the path of my life that I cannot remember.”
    Yaobang laughing. Kneeling beside the Senior Investigator.
    “It was dark, old man. A cadre looks like