by Qiu Xiaolong
For the second victim, Lou targeted the weather bureau, which had been forecasting the clear, clean air for years as the governmental mouthpiece. It proved to be too difficult to ambush the head of the bureau, who did not appear so early in the morning. So Lou thought that an anchorman would be symbolic enough, but he was unable to take action on the second seventh day, not just because of those surveillance cameras installed all over the People’s Square, but also because no one walked out of the bureau so early that morning. So he attacked on the eighth day instead, as Linghu walked out of the weather bureau wearing a mask. It saved Lou a mask.
As for the third victim, Yan, Lou chose her for a different reason. She was a salesperson for one of the new apartments Lou had looked at in Lujiazui, but when he came up with the amount available for the down payment, she practically drove him out. The price had shot up like crazy in a couple of days. The uncontrollable housing prices were not a problem she had created, but her refusal to be flexible was something he could not forget. He knew about Yan’s jogging in the morning, and Lujiazui made the perfect location for the crime. With eight days passed between the first and second victims, he waited for only six days for Yan. He tried to follow the time pattern of the ritual killing.
As for the fourth victim, Xiang, Lou had no idea about the video in the background. Nor about her husband being Geng. Lou was just so angry with the official media for its silence about the air pollution. He had once worked on a network program for a kindergarten school close to the Wenhui building, so knew there were people working at the newspaper for the night. She fell prey on her way back to the Wenhui office, still having the earthen oven cake in her hand. It happened to be a windy morning. As he planted the mask beside her, he put the half-eaten cake on top, lest it would be blown away.
As for the one in the New World, he had simply run out of symbolic targets. Another murder in a central location would have called for a lot of attention, particularly with the speculation about the serial murders already abuzz online.
He did have a specific one in mind for the seventh-seven, though: the former government spokesperson who had repudiated the air quality report of the American Embassy. For some reason, the spokesperson now worked as an official in the Shanghai Propaganda Ministry.
Lou was not unaware of lives being lost for his plan; to him, they were just the unavoidable casualties for a must-fight battle.
After reading through the statement, Inspector Chen was not in a hurry to leave the eatery. In addition, he had a bowl of steaming hot soybean soup with dried shrimp and purple seaweed after an old waiter had walked to the table a couple of times.
He was sad, placing the cellphone beside the bowl without taking a spoonful of it.
The earthen oven cake was already cold, and the fried dough stick limpid; he had neither the mood nor the appetite to finish the Shanghai snack.
It was also long after the breakfast hour.
Picking up his cellphone, he pulled out the draft of his report saved on the phone and started writing a postscript for Zhao.
P.S. Remember the case I told you about, Comrade Secretary Zhao, when I first got the assignment from you at the Hyatt Hotel? I’ve been concentrating on your assignment, but as you may imagine, Party Secretary Li and other colleagues in the bureau have kept me in the loop about the progress of the investigation.
Just this morning, my partner, Detective Yu, has informed me that the criminal in the ‘yellow mask serial murder’ was caught in the New World, another central location of the city. You don’t have the time for the details of the investigation, I understand. In a nutshell, it is a serial murder committed by a grief-distraught husband surnamed Lou, whose wife Shen recently died of lung cancer, possibly a victim of the air pollution. Lou set out to avenge her by killing persons he saw as related to her death. And he planted the masks beside the bodies as his signature; also as a protest against the air pollution that claimed her life.
It might not necessarily have been true, with so many possible causes for the disease, but she was young and she never smoked. Lou insisted on seeing the cause and effect here, and he struck out in a frenzied plan – one victim on a seven-day cycle, in observance of the seven-seven ritual service to her memory. The serial murder, if not stopped, would have continued and coincided with the session of the National People’s Congress. That could of course have been so disastrous in its political impact.
With the justification resonant in his twisted mind, he prepared a message to be released upon the completion of the seven-seven ceremony. The statement ends like this:
‘Personally, there’s nothing left for me in the world with her departure from it. After the seven-seven, everything will be finished for me. So I want to send a message. It’s a matter of time for many more people, millions and millions of people, to fall prey to the disastrous pollution. So it’s a call to arms. Maybe it’s not too late. If so, I have done something meaningful for her.’
There’s no excusing the killings, but what he says about ‘a matter of time’ worries me. I shudder at the consequences if we don’t do anything about it. This time, it’s just by a stroke of luck that Detective Yu caught him. But luck cannot always be on our side.
There’s no telling whether there could be another case like this, or when. Such crimes have to be stopped, but I could not help putting myself in his shoes. His blaming the uncontrollable air pollution for his wife’s death is not without some justification.
In spite of the tremendous progress China has made in its unprecedented reform, the social stability would be shattered if people were unable to have clean air for long.
So we have to convince our people that our Party government is doing everything possible on their side. For that purpose, the documentary I’ve told you about might really help.
And this time, he clicked the send button.
EPILOGUE
The next day, Party Secretary Li had a busy day in the Shanghai Police Bureau.
In a press conference arranged at a moment’s notice, Li took over the job of talking to the media, declaring that the ‘yellow mask serial murder case’ had been solved, though he didn’t bring up any details.
‘Let me say this first, it’s because of the excellent work done by Chief Inspector Chen together with his long-time partner Detective Yu that the case has been successfully solved.’
It looked just like another shrewd move on the part of Li, Detective Yu observed, without making a comment there.
Li had to give credit where it was due, particularly with Chen seen as being in Zhao’s favor. It might also have been a lesson Li had just learned. For crucial cases like this, at a crucial moment, he still needed Chen, so he had to openly sing the praises of the chief inspector. And last but not least, Li did not have to answer any questions too difficult for him.
‘For the serial murder case, the perpetrator was pushed over the edge at the death of his wife, killing at random. As for the detailed information, you’ll have to talk to Chief Inspector Chen. We have discussed it numerous times, but he really excels in criminology. In the meantime, he has been engaged with another important job from Beijing, therefore is too busy to come to the press conference today. He’ll go over the case with you as soon as possible, and as much as possible too. In short, under the leadership of our great Party, the Shanghai Police Bureau is confident of keeping the city secure and safe for the people.’
Li was indeed a seasoned talker, always politically correct. Yu produced a cigarette, shaking his head.
Inspector Chen had been engaged with another investigation, though not the one Party Secretary Li had mentioned in the press conference, from Comrade Secretary Zhao.
Chen had just learned from Melong some clues to the identity of the secret video holder: Miao Dehua, the son of a former rival ruthlessly crushed by Geng in the Party system. Miao had purchased the video for a staggering amount of money, for revenge, waiting for the most damaging moment to release it online. With the unexpected de
ath of Xiang, holding it any longer could be less damaging for Geng, so Miao lost no time posting it on the Internet.
With the serial murder case solved, and with so many exposures of corruption in the Party system, people no longer paid attention to the video scandal like before. It was hinted in the official media that one of the anti-government netizens had posted the video online, and that it was a matter of time before such a law-breaking netizen would be punished, but for the moment, that was about it.
It was not a case under his investigation anyway, Chief Inspector Chen concluded.
Two days later, Chen got a short text message from Zhao.
‘Congratulations! Another marvelous job you have done, Comrade Chief Inspector Chen. I know I can count on you.’
It was vague, and Chen knew better than to push for clarification, but he could sense a touch of sincerity, he thought, on the part of the senior Party leader.
It did not mean that Zhao agreed with the points made in his report, particularly those about the air pollution and the documentary. It would be too much of a responsibility for anyone to be specific, but it was a responsibility Inspector Chen was more than willing to take.
Two days later, the documentary ‘Hold Your Breath, China’ was released online, ahead of its original schedule.
With its simultaneous appearance on the major websites all over the country, it was said to have been viewed about thirty million times in China within the first two days of its release.
The discussions about China’s air pollution as explored and researched in the documentary immediately overwhelmed other news, including the ‘yellowish mask serial murder case’ in Shanghai, much to the relief of Party Secretary Li and his people.
For some unknown reason, the Beijing government did not hasten, for once, to make a visible effort to block the documentary, in spite of the frenzied discussion among the netizens.
Even more unbelievably, there came some positive mentions of the documentary in the official media. The Guangming Daily carried a short review commemorating the movie, and quoting a comment by the head of the Public Health Ministry that the documentary did something the people in the ministry had been unable to do for years. It concluded, not too surprisingly, that the CCP stands firmly by the side of the Chinese people in the arduous battle against the environmental crisis.
The review soon found its way into the cyber world, echoing and rippling. A considerable number of netizens took it as a possible sign for some significant change in China’s environmental policy.
Three days after the release of the documentary, Beijing witnessed the grand opening of the Thirteenth Session of China’s National People’s Congress.
During the opening session, one of its agendas was the removal of Kang from his position as a corrupt official responsible for the environmental disaster. In an editorial of the People’s Daily, Kang’s GDP-oriented argument in the interview with Yuan Jing was quoted and repudiated.
The disgraceful fall of Kang was seen as a signal pointing to Yong, the once powerful patron for the gang at the top of the Party system. Yong’s absence at the conference was commonly interpreted in connection to it.
However, the heated discussion over the documentary still went on, almost to the extent of drowning out all the political propaganda about the conference in Beijing.
On the third day of the conference, the Party authorities ordered that the documentary be removed from all the websites, and all the comments posted about it deleted or blocked as well.
For once, the official media kept mum about the governmental decision, without so much as trying to hail the abrupt turn as the correct decision by the Party government, or to interpret the meaning of it, as if nothing had happened at all.
But something had already happened in the way of people’s thinking.
That same day, Chief Inspector Chen got a notice for him to leave the Shanghai Police Bureau for a Party school seminar in Suzhou.
It was an arrangement of dubious nature. Quite possibly a preliminary step to remove him from his bureau position. Some people in the Forbidden City were not pleased with his recent work, which he understood. But he did not find himself too worried about it.
For the first time in his career, Chen was seriously debating with himself whether he should go on serving as a Party-member chief inspector.
But he would have to do one more thing he’d promised as a chief inspector.
Chief Inspector Chen found himself to be the first one to step into a small Buddhist service hall, possibly the smallest in Longhua Temple.
Even for such a hall, its fee was more than ten thousand yuan, not including that for the script-chant service performed by the monks, the amount of which would have to be calculated by the length of the job. It was quite an expense for Chen, but he thought he could eke it out by quitting smoking and eating out for a month or two.
In spite of his mother’s devotion, Chen was not that into Buddhism. As it seemed to him, such services could function at the most as a sort of cold comfort – psychologically, if at all – for the survivors.
But for once, he thought he had no choice.
The head of the monks hurried over, a young man named Yuanjue, who wore a pair of gold-rimmed glasses and handed him a business card with his name and temple position printed in gold: The Number One Abbot Assistant.
‘The business is so hot here. But for you, the service would have required booking at least two or three months beforehand. Our abbot has taken your request into special consideration.’
‘I appreciate it very much.’
‘For you, Chief Inspector Chen, we will also chant for an extra half an hour for free.’
What could that mean? Chen failed to make an instant response.
‘Just give people here some red envelopes, Chief Inspector Chen. Don’t worry about it.’
But Chen became worried. He did not think he had enough left in his wallet for the red envelopes after paying for the scripture-chanting service.
Then Detective Yu and Peiqin arrived, carrying a variety of conventional offerings for such a Buddhist service.
‘Since we are doing it, we have to do it properly,’ Peiqin said, arranging on the service table the specially red-sealed cakes, buns, nuts and candies, all of which were supposedly for the benefit of the deceased in the other world.
‘She went to Shendacheng Restaurant for these special offerings early in the morning. There’s a growing demand for them,’ Yu said, raising the camera for pictures.
‘Yes, take some pictures,’ Chen said, with a touch of sentimentality in spite of himself. ‘I’ll have them delivered to Lou.’
‘Yes, we all understand,’ Peiqin said in an abated voice. ‘It’s a very special seven-seven ceremony. We all have to come.’
‘Alas, that’s about all we can do.’
Behind the offerings on the table, there was a red-paper-covered tablet that showed a picture of Shen with a radiant smile playing on her lips. None of them in the hall had met her in life. Yu had obtained the picture from the police file. It had been taken in Wangkai, a well-known studio on Nanjing Road, as part of the honeymoon package for the happy newlyweds.
Peiqin perched herself on a stool by the service table and started folding a bunch of fake money into the shape of ancient silver ingots, for use in the nether world.
To Chen’s surprise, Bian and Gu also walked into the service hall in large strides.
How much the two uninvited visitors could have known about the deceased with her name inscribed on the service hall tablet, Chen had no idea.
Bian had called for a celebration banquet for the successful release of the documentary, but Chen could not have made it because of the service at the temple.
‘It’s for Shen – one of the victims of the air pollution.’
‘You mean … very well. It’s something worth doing, Chief Inspector Chen,’ Bian had said, with a surprising resolution in his voice. ‘I’ll see what I can do.’
> Bian must then have told Gu about it, and they came together.
But Chen was glad to see two more people at the service hall. It should not turn out to be a lonely service for her.
The two newcomers stood side by side, holding bunches of tall incense in their hands after bowing respectfully to the tablet.
‘You should have told me earlier, Chief Inspector Chen,’ Mr Gu said with a complaining note in his voice.
Like always, Gu lost no time entering into the role of a magnanimous businessman. He immediately started distributing a bunch of red envelopes to the monks filed up there, as though having prepared them long beforehand.
‘Haven’t you heard the old proverb? It won’t be so good for “old monks to chant the scripture without putting their hearts and souls into it”. Red envelopes are always much appreciated and needed, which makes a world of difference. You cannot help it in today’s materialistic society.’
Bian must have learned something else about the deceased. He carried in his hand a large cardboard box. To the surprise of the people there, he took out a fresh air machine made of cardboard, vividly painted and decorated, probably the same size as the real one.
‘It’s symbolic, I have to say, just pathetically symbolic,’ Bian said, shaking his head.
‘Oh, I almost forgot,’ Gu said. ‘Lianping also wants to come here today, but she suffers morning sickness with her pregnancy. So she asks me to take some pictures for her. They may be used for an article.’
In the silence that ensued, the monks started chanting with a flourish of their odd-shaped instruments. People seemed relieved at the realization that they did not have to talk for the moment.
Chen cast another look at the picture on the tablet. It might be as well for her not to know anything – though the inspector did not think she knew – about what had happened since she left the mundane world.
Oh, this feeling, to be collected later
