by Qiu Xiaolong
“A week ago. Then this was after Guan’s death, wasn’t it?”
“Yes, I did not even know that she was dead.”
“But this could be an important lead if he was coming out of Guan’s room, Comrade Zuo,” he said, putting down a few words in his notebook.
“Thank you, Comrade Chief Inspector,” she said, flattered by his attention. “I checked into it myself. At that time I did not think about it in connection with Guan’s case. Just that it was suspicious, I thought, since it was after eleven o’clock. So I asked Yuan the next day, and she said that she had had no guests that night.”
“Now what about the public bathroom at the end of the corridor,” he said. “He could have been coming out of there, couldn’t he?”
“That’s not likely,” she said. “His host would have to accompany him there, or he would not be able to find it.”
“Yes, you have a point. What did this man look like?”
“Tall, decent looking. But the light’s so dim I could not see clearly.”
“How old do you think he was?”
“Well, mid-thirties, I should think, perhaps forty. Difficult to tell.”
“Anything else about his appearance?”
“He seemed neatly dressed; I may have mentioned it.”
“So you think he could have been coming out of Guan’s room?”
“Yes,” she said, “but I’m not sure.”
“Thank you, Comrade Zuo. We’ll investigate,” he said. “If you can think of anything else, give me a call.”
“Yes, I’ll do that, Comrade Chief Inspector,” she said. “Let us know when you solve the case.”
“We will, and good-bye.”
Walking down the stairs, Chen shrugged his shoulders slightly. He had been to the public bathroom himself without being accompanied by anybody.
At the bus stop on Zhejiang road, he stood for quite a long time. He was trying to sort out what he had accomplished in the day’s work. There was not much. Nothing he had found so far presented a solid lead. If there was anything he had not expected, it would be Guan’s fancy clothes and intimate pictures. But then-that was not too surprising, either. An attractive young woman, even if she was a national model worker, was entitled to some feminine indulgence-in her private life.
Guan’s unpopularity among her neighbors was even less surprising. That a national model worker would be unpopular in the nineties was a sociological phenomenon, rather than anything else. So, too, in the dorm building. It would have been too difficult to be a model neighbor there, to be popular with her neighbors. Her life was not an ordinary one. So she did not fit into their circle, nor did she care for it.
There was only one thing he had confirmed: on the night of May tenth, Guan Hongying had left the dorm before eleven o’clock. She had a heavy suitcase in her hand; she’d been going somewhere.
Another thing not confirmed, but only a hypothesis: She could not have been romantically involved at the time of her death. There was no privacy possible in such a dorm building, no way of secretly dating someone. If there had been anything going on behind her closed door, her dorm neighbors would have known it, and in less than five minutes, the news would have spread like wildfire.
It would also have taken a lot of courage for a man to come to her room. To the hardboard bed.
The bus was nowhere in sight yet. It could be very slow during this time of the day. He crossed to the small restaurant opposite the lane entrance. Despite its unsightly appearance, a lot of people were there, both inside the restaurant and outside it. A fat man in a brown corduroy jacket was rising from a table outside on the pavement. Chief Inspector Chen took his seat and ordered a portion of fried buns. It was a perfect place from which to keep his eyes out for a bus arriving, and at the same time, he could watch the lane entrance. He had to wait for quite a few minutes. When the buns came, they were delicious, but hot. Putting down the chopsticks, he had to blow on them repeatedly. Then the bus rolled into sight. He rushed across the street and boarded it with the last bun in his hand. It then occurred to him that he should have made inquiries at the restaurant. Guan might have sat there with somebody.
“Keep your oily hand away from me,” a woman standing next to him said indignantly.
“Some people can be so unethical,” another passenger commented, “despite an impressive uniform.”
“Sorry,” he said, aware of his unpopularity in his police uniform. There was no point in picking a quarrel. To hold a pork-stuffed bun in an overcrowded bus was a lousy idea, he admitted to himself.
At the next stop, he got off. He did not mind walking for a short distance. At least he didn’t have to overhear the other passengers’ negative comments. There was no way to prevent people from making such comments about one.
Guan, a national model worker, was by no means an exception. Not so far as her neighbors’ comments went. Who can control stories, the stories after one’s life? The whole village is jumping at the romantic tale of General Cai.
In this poem by Lu You, the “romantic tale” refers to a totally fictitious romance between General Cai and Zhao Wuniang of the late Han dynasty. The village audience would have been interested in hearing the story, regardless of its historical authenticity.
There is no helping what other people will say, Chief Inspector Chen thought.
Chapter 9
I t was Wednesday, five days after the formation of the special case group, and there had been hardly any progress. Chief Inspector Chen arrived at the bureau, greeted his colleagues, and repeated polite but meaningless words. The case weighed heavily on his mind.
At the insistence of Commissar Zhang, Chen had extended his investigation into Guan’s neighborhood by enlisting assistance from the local police branch office and the neighborhood committee. They came up with tons of information about possible suspects, assuming this was a political case. Chen was red-eyed from poring over all the material, pursuing the leads provided by the committee about some ex-counter revolutionaries with “deep hatred against the socialist society.” All this was routine, and Chen did it diligently, but there was a persistent doubt in his mind about the direction of the investigation.
In fact, the choice of their number-one suspect exemplified Commissar Zhang’s ossified way of thinking. This suspect was a distant relative of Guan’s with a long-standing personal grudge, which had originated from Guan’s refusal to acknowledge him, a black Rightist, during the Cultural Revolution. The rehabilitated Rightist had said that he would never forgive her, but was too busy writing a book about his wasted years to be aware of her death. Chief Inspector Chen ruled him out even before he went to interview him.
It was not a political case. Yet he was expecting another of Commissar Zhang’s morning lectures about “carrying out the investigation by relying on the people.” That morning, however, he had a pleasant surprise.
“This is for you, Comrade Chief Inspector,” Detective Yu said standing at the door, holding a fax he had picked up in the main office.
It was from Wang Feng, with a cover page bearing the Wenhui Daily letterhead. Her neat handwriting said “Congratulations,” on the margin of a photocopied section of the newspaper, in which his poem “Miracle” appeared. The poem was in a conspicuous position, with the editor’s note underneath saying, “The poet is a young chief inspector, Shanghai Police Bureau.”
The comment made sense since the poem was about a young policewoman providing relief to storm-damaged homes in the pouring rain. Still holding the fax in his hand, he received his first call from Party Secretary Li.
“Congratulations, Comrade Chief Inspector. A poem published in the Wenhui Daily. Quite an achievement.”
“Thank you,” he said. “It’s just a poem about our police work.”
“It’s a good one. Politically, I mean,” Li said. “Next time, if there’s something in such an influential newspaper, tell us beforehand.”
“Okay, but why?”
“There are a lot of p
eople reading your work.”
“Don’t worry, Party Secretary Li, I’ll make sure that it is politically correct.”
“Yes, that’s the spirit. You are not an ordinary police officer, you know,” Li said. “Now, anything new in the investigation?”
“We’re going all out. But unfortunately there’s not much progress.”
“Don’t worry. Just try your best,” Li said before putting down the phone, “And don’t forget your seminar in Beijing.”
Then Dr. Xia called. “This one is not that bad, this ‘Miracle’ of yours.”
“Thank you, Dr. Xia,” he said, “your approval always means such a lot to me.”
“I especially like the beginning-’ The rain has soaked the hair / Falling to your shoulders / Light green in your policewoman’s / Uniform, like the spring / White blossom bursting / From your arms reaching / Into the gaping windows- / ‘Here you are!’”
“It’s a true experience. She persisted in sending out relief to the victims, despite the pouring rain. I was there, too, and was touched at the sight.”
“But you must have stolen the image from Li He’s ‘Watching a Beauty Comb Her Hair.’ The image about the green comb in her long hair.”
“No, I didn’t, but I’ll let you in on a secret. It’s from another two classical lines- With the green skirt of yours in my mind, everywhere, / Everywhere I step over the grass ever so lightly.” Our policewoman’s uniform is green, and so, too, the spring, and the package. Looking out in the rain, I had the impression of her long hair being washed green, too.”
“No wonder you’ve made such an improvement,” Dr. Xia said. “I’m glad you are acknowledging your debt to classical poetry.”
“Of course I do. But so much for the poetics,” Chen said. “Actually, I was thinking of calling you, too. About the black plastic bag in the Guan case.”
“There’s nothing to recover from the plastic bag. I made some inquiries about it. I was told that it is normally used for fallen leaves in people’s backyards.”
“Indeed! Imagine a taxi driver worrying about the fallen leaves in his backyard!”
“What did you say?”
“Oh, nothing,” he said. “But thank you so much, Dr. Xia.”
“Don’t mention it, Comrade Chief Inspector Chen, also Chinese imagist poet.”
Out of the black plastic bag, her white bare feet, and her red polished toenails like fallen petals in the night. It could be a modernist image.
Chen then dialed Detective Yu.
Entering his office, Yu, too, offered his congratulations, “What a surprise, Comrade Chief Inspector Chen. A terrific breakthrough.”
“Well, if only we could say that about our case.”
Indeed they needed a “miracle” in their investigation.
Detective Yu had come up empty-handed. Following his theory, Lu had made inquiry at the taxi bureau. To his dismay, he found that obtaining anything close to reliable information for the night was impossible. There was no point in checking the taxi drivers’ receipts. Most drivers-whether the taxi company was state-run or private-kept a considerable portion of their money by not giving receipts to customers, he was told, so it was possible for a driver to claim to have driven around for the night without being able to pick up one single passenger-thus avoiding taxation.
In addition, Yu had checked all the customer lists of Shanghai travel agencies during May. Guan’s name had not been on any of them.
And Yu’s research with respect to the last phone call Guan had made from the department store was not successful either. Many people had used the phone that evening. And Mrs. Weng’s recollection of the time was not accurate. After spending hours to rule out other calls made roughly around the same time, the one most likely made by Guan was to weather information. It made sense, for Guan had been planning her trip, but that only confirmed something they had known.
So like Chen, Yu had not gotten anything, not even a tip worthy of a follow-up.
And the more time that elapsed, the colder the trail became.
They were under pressure, not just from the bureau and the city government. The case was being buzzed about among people in general, in spite of the low-profile treatment it had been given by the local media. And the longer the case remained unsolved, the more negative impact it would have on the bureau.
“It is becoming political,” Chen said.
“Our Party Secretary Li is always right.”
“Let’s put something in the newspaper. A reward for information.”
“That’s worth trying. The Wenhui Daily can run the request for help. But what shall it say? This is so sensitive, as Party Secretary Li has told us.”
“Well, we don’t have to mention the case directly. Just ask for information about anything suspicious around the Baili Canal area on the night of May tenth.”
“Yes, we can do that,” Chen said. “And we’ll use some of our special case group funds for the reward. We have left no stone unturned, haven’t we?”
Detective Yu shrugged his shoulders before leaving the cubicle.
Except one, Chief Inspector Chen thought. Guan Hongying’s mother. He had refrained from discussing this with Yu, who did not get along well with the commissar.
The old lady had been visited by Commissar Zhang, who had gotten nothing from her. A late-stage Alzheimer’s patient, she was totally deranged, unable to provide any information. It was not the commissar’s fault. But an Alzheimer’s patient might not be deranged all the time. There were days when the light could miraculously break through the clouds of her mind.
Chen decided to try his luck.
After lunch, he dialed Wang Feng. She was not in the office, so he left a message expressing his thanks to her. Then he left. On his way to the bus stop he bought several copies of the Wenhui Daily at the post office on Sichuan Road. Somehow he liked the editor’s note even more than the poem itself. He had not told many of his friends about his promotion to chief inspectorship, so the newspaper would do the job for him. Among those friends he wanted to mail the newspaper to, there was one in Beijing. He felt that he had to say something about his being in this position, an explanation to a dear friend who had not envisioned such a career for him. He thought for a moment, but he ended up scribbling only a sentence underneath the poem. Somewhat ironically self-defensive, and ambiguous, too. It could be about the poem as well as about his work: If you work hard enough at something, it begins to make itself part of you, even though you do not really like it and know that part isn’t real.
He cut out the section of the newspaper, put it into an envelope, addressed it, and dropped it into a mailbox.
Then he took a bus to Ankang, the nursing home on Huashan Road.
The nursing home arrangement was not common. It was not culturally correct to keep one’s aged parent in such an institution. Not even in the nineties. Besides, with only two or three nursing homes in Shanghai, few could have managed to move in there, especially in the case of an Alzheimer’s patient. Undoubtedly her mother’s admission had been due to Guan’s social and Party status.
He introduced himself at the front desk of the nursing home, A young nurse told him to wait in the reception room. To be a bad news bearer was anything but pleasant, he reflected, as he waited. The only cold comfort he could find was that Guan’s mother, suffering from Alzheimer’s, might be spared the shock of her daughter’s violent death. The old woman’s life had been a tough one, as he had learned from the file. An arranged marriage in her childhood, and then for years her husband had worked as a high-school teacher in Chengdu, while she was a worker in Shanghai Number 6 Textile Mill. The distance between the two required more than two days’ travel by train. Once a year was all he could have afforded to visit her. In the fifties, job relocation was out of the question for either of them. Jobs, like everything else, were assigned once and for all by the local authorities. So all those years she had been a “single mother,” taking care of Guan Hongying in the dorm of Numbe
r 6 Textile Mill. Her husband passed away before his retirement. When her daughter got her job and her Party membership, the old woman broke down. Shortly afterward she had been admitted to the nursing home.
At last, the old woman appeared, shuffling, with a striking array of pins in her gray hair. She was thin, sullen-faced, perhaps in her early sixties. Her felt slippers made a strange sound on the floor.
“What do you want?”
Chen exchanged glances with the nurse standing beside the old woman.
“She is not clear here,” the nurse said, pointing at her own head.
“Your daughter wants me to say hi to you,” Chen said.
“I have no daughter. No room for a daughter. My husband lives in the dorm in Chengdu.”
“You have one, aunt. She works in Shanghai First Department Store.”
“First Department Store. Oh yes, I bought a couple of pins there early this morning. Aren’t they beautiful?”
Clearly the old woman was living in another world. She had nothing in her hand, but she was making a gesture of showing something to him.
Whatever might happen, she did not have to accept the disasters of this world. Or was she merely such a scared woman, anticipating such dreadful news, that she had shut herself up?
“Yes, they are beautiful,” he said.
She might have been attractive in her day. Now everything about her was shrunken. Motionless, she sat there, staring vacantly ahead, waiting for him to go. The look of apathy was not unmixed, he reflected, with a touch of apprehension. There was no point trying to gather any information from the old woman.
A worm safe and secure inside its cocoon.
He insisted on helping her back to her room. The room, holding a dozen iron beds, appeared congested. The aisle between them was so narrow that one could only stand sideways. There was a rattan rocker at the foot of her bed, a radio on the nightstand. No air conditioning, though a single ceiling fan for the whole room was working. The last thing he noticed was a dried bun, partly chewed, shriveled, on the windowsill above her bed. A period to a life story. One of the ordinary Chinese people, working hard, getting little, not complaining, and suffering a lot.
