When Red is Black - [Chief Inspector Chen Cao 03]

by Qiu Xiaolong

  Was it possible that those parts Yin had plagiarized came from an unpublished manuscript, and the original author was in no position to complain?

  He had not really considered this possibility because he was aware that Yin had been a nobody until the publication of Death of a Chinese Professor. No one would have given her a manuscript to read—except Yang. But the missing English manuscript that Zhuang had mentioned might have been Yang’s version of a Chinese Doctor Zhivago.

  Of course, Yin would never have told anyone if Yang had left the manuscript to her, for it would have brought her no end of trouble. If the Party authorities had gotten wind of it, they would have demanded the manuscript. They would never have left anything potentially damaging to the glorious image of socialist China in such hands. Especially a manuscript written in English, meant for the market abroad. It might also have exposed her to unpleasantness if word got out about the money she might receive in the event of its publication. That, he could understand from personal experience. So far he had hardly talked to anybody about his current translation project—except to Yu. But even to Yu he had not mentioned the exact amount he was being paid. What would others have thought?

  Yang could not have sued—or murdered—Yin, of course.

  But who else could have known about the existence of such a manuscript? Yin had long since cut off all ties with her relatives. As for her friends and colleagues, Yin must have been too much of a dissident to ever trust anyone with something like that.

  What about someone on Yang’s side? He had started the book prior to the Cultural Revolution. In the early sixties, perhaps. Though he would not have talked to people about it, it was possible that one of his relatives might have visited him and stumbled upon his writing, the way Zhuang had discovered it in the dorm.

  The other possibility, of course, was Internal Security. They might have somehow learned of the existence of the manuscript, and decided to take matters into their own hands. It was possible—especially if Yin had started contacting people abroad. That would fit with their decision to withhold information about her passport renewal application. That was also why they would have searched her room before Yu’s arrival: Yu was not supposed to look in that direction. Even Party Secretary Li’s emphasis that it was not a political case fit this hypothesis.

  He suddenly realized that he had almost finished the roast beef and steamed buns without having tasted them. The beef, warmed in the microwave, still juicy and tender, put between the two sides of a bun, like a Chinese sandwich, was really not bad.

  White Cloud was good—not just because of this culinary invention that combined oriental and occidental cuisine.

  Before he discussed these ideas with Yu, however, Chen decided to take some action on his own.

  First he got in touch with Comrade Ding, an officer in charge of tapping the phones of people designated for “inside control.” Chen could have done so earlier, but with Party Secretary Li and Internal Security prowling in the background, he did not want to cause any alarm. Also, Ding was one of his connections it would be better not to use too frequently.

  Ding turned out to be more cooperative than he had expected. In about forty-five minutes, Ding called back. Yin’s telephone line in the college had been tapped for some time. According to the records, there had been nothing unusual in her conversations over the last few months, but that did not prove anything. Yin would not have made any important phone calls from the office she shared with her colleagues. As for the public phone booth in Treasure Garden Lane, she almost never used it. She could have been either so lonely, or so cautious, that she made no phone calls or else made them away from the lane. Chen was more inclined toward the latter idea. There was no controlling pay phones.

  Ding promised that he would check all the records with respect to Yin for the last several years. It would take time. Chen understood.

  Then he made another call to the Shanghai Archives Bureau, asking for a detailed list of Yang’s relatives.

  * * * *

  Chapter 20

  T

  here was not a lot that Detective Yu could possibly do. Party Secretary Li had agreed that Yu might continue his investigation a little longer, but Li also emphasized that the investigation could not drag on forever.

  However unreliable his confession might be, Wan had come forward of his own free will. There was always a possibility that Wan had committed the murder on the spur of the moment. Whether or not he had a specific deadline, Yu would have no more than a few more days. He doubted this additional time would make any real difference. If nothing happened soon, the case would conclude with Wan being charged with murder.

  Yu did not know which way to turn now.

  He discussed the investigation with Peiqin over breakfast. It was a much simpler one, with rice reboiled in water plus fermented tofu and a thousand-year egg. Peiqin, too, was disappointed; after having put in hours reading and doing research, all her efforts seemed to have come to nothing.

  “According to the proverb, Miraculous discoveries are often made without effort,” she said, slicing a tender thousand-year egg immersed in soy sauce. “But it takes time and luck.”

  “That’s true with police work,” he said. “An investigation can take weeks or months. It does not conclude when a Party boss sets a deadline.”

  “Isn’t there anything new at all?”

  “Well, I had a free meal with Lei. He insisted on it—because of Yin. Really, this is something new for me, being treated by a businessman, just like Chief Inspector Chen,” he said. “Yin did not get along with most of her neighbors, but she could be helpful to some.”

  “It’s hard to judge people. She might have lived too much in the past—together with Yang—to get along with her neighbors,” she said, “or to move out of the shadow of the Cultural Revolution.”

  “What a life! I, too, have read a few pages of her novel. She said her life started with Yang in the cadre school, but how long were they really together? As lovers, less than a year. Now she may have died because of him.”

  “Still, she got fame and money because of him,” Peiqin said. “And the book, too, of course.”

  Perhaps this was meant to comfort him, but Yu did not see how. “You may be a bit too hard on her,” he said. “After all, it was her book; she earned her royalties.”

  “I have nothing against her. But it’s a fact that the novel sold so well because of him, because of her relationship with him.” She added, “What about his poetry collection, the one she edited, then?”

  “Poetry earns no money, as Chief Inspector Chen always says.”

  “But Yang’s collection sold out.” She added, “It was a large printing. In those years, a lot of people read poetry. I bought a copy too.”

  * * * *

  Afterward, at the neighborhood committee office, Yu mentioned Peiqin’s point in a phone conversation with Chief Inspector Chen.

  “Things have changed a lot,” Chen said. “Several years ago, the publisher would have paid just a one-time fee of about fifteen Yuan per thousand characters, or ten lines of poetry. So all in all, she would not have received much money.”

  “That’s what I guessed.”

  “But if her contract provided that she would earn royalties based on sales, it might be another story. Have you talked to the editor about it?”

  “No. Why?”

  “Well, he may tell you the amount she received,” Chen said thoughtfully. “I don’t know. Maybe you should give him a call.”

  A large sum could have been a motive for murder, but it seemed to Yu that since Chen was a passionate writer and Peiqin a passionate reader, they might be overemphasizing the literary aspects of the investigation. Still, Yu made a phone call to Wei, the editor of Death of a Chinese Professor at Shanghai Literature Publishing House.

  “About Yin again?” Wei was not very patient on the phone.

  “Sorry, we have to ask you some more questions,” Yu said.

  He could underst
and Wei’s impatience. Wei had gotten into trouble because of Death of a Chinese Professor. If anything politically incorrect was published, not only the author, but the editor too, was held responsible. Should the author be well-known, he would sometimes get away with little punishment, while the editor became the one to shoulder the “black pot.” Wei had been criticized for having not foreseen the political repercussions of Death of a Chinese Professor.

  “I have told you everything I know about Yin, Comrade Detective Yu. What a trouble-maker—even after her death.”

  “Well, last time, we talked about Yin’s novel, Death of a Chinese Professor. But Yang also had a book published by your house. A poetry collection.”

  “That’s right, but I am not the poetry editor. Jia Zijian edited the poetry collection. It came out sometime before the novel.”

  “Has Jia talked to you about it?”

  “We did not discuss it. A poetry book, you know, does not find too many readers, or make much money. Yin was involved with the book, of course. She was some character: she would not have let a single drop of fertilizer fall into anyone else’s field.”

  “Can I talk to Jia?”

  “He’s not in the office this morning. Call back in the afternoon.”

  This did not appear to lead anywhere. Wei, too, was sure that the poetry collection had not earned much money. For a while after their conversation, however, Yu could not shake off an uneasy feeling, as if he had missed something.

  Old Liang did not appear in the office in the morning. It was a silent protest, perhaps. For him, the case was finished when Wan confessed and any further investigational effort was an attack on Liang’s judgment.

  Because Yu had been turning the conversation with Wei over in his mind, he called Peiqin.

  “Wei only guesses,” Peiqin said, not ready to acknowledge that the sum involved would be so small. “You need to talk to the poetry editor.”

  “I don’t know why Wei reacted so negatively against a dead woman,” he said.

  “It beats me too. Why would he have a grudge against her?” Peiqin added abruptly, “He said she would not spare even a drop of fertilizer for anyone else. Who could he have meant?”

  “Somebody else who wanted to edit the collection?”

  “But no one could have competed with her. She alone had possession of many of Yang’s original poems.”

  The proverb Wei had quoted was commonly used to describe a greedy person, or a person in a given business transaction who was overreaching. “I’ll call you later.” It was Detective Yu’s turn to be abrupt. He put down the phone and then immediately picked it up again to dial the editor.

  “Comrade Wei, excuse me for one more question,” he said. “In our earlier talk, you used a proverb—not letting a single drop of fertilizer fall on another’s field. What did you mean?”

  “That’s something Jia said—in connection with a relative of Yang’s, I remember.” Wei hardly tried to conceal the impatience in his voice. “So what?”

  “Thank you so much, Comrade Wei. This may be very important for our work. I really appreciate your help.”

  “Well, I don’t know much about it. You’d better talk to Jia. He will be back soon.” Wei added, “Oh, one more thing. About a year ago, somebody called to inquire about the publication date of the poetry collection’s second edition. The call was transferred to me, and I did not have any information for him. He might have been a reader interested in the poetry, but I somehow got the feeling that he called for some other reason.”

  Yu decided to visit the publishing house.

  The Shanghai Literature Publishing House was located on Shaoxing Road. It had been a large private residence in the thirties. There was a new bookstore cafe on the first floor. Detective Yu called Jia and waited for him there.

  Jia, a man in his late forties, walked into the cafe in big strides. As Yu broached his topic, Jia eyed him in surprise.

  “The second edition has not come out, has it?”

  “What do you mean?” Yu said, reminded of the conversation with Wei.

  “Then why do you ask, Comrade Detective Yu?”

  Yu’s puzzlement was mirrored on Jia’s face. He apparently knew nothing about the murder investigation.

  “I don’t know anything about the first edition or the second edition, Comrade Jia. Can you tell me what you know, from the beginning?”

  “Well, it was several years ago,” Jia said slowly. “Yin asked me to arrange a meeting here at the publishing house to explain her contract for Yang’s poetry collection to Yang’s grandnephew.”

  “Yang’s grandnephew?”

  “Yes, a boy named Bao, from Jiangxi Province.”

  “Hold on here—a boy, from Jiangxi Province—” Yu interrupted Jia. It fit the description given by the shrimp woman. The time was right, too. It made sense for Yin to have referred to him as her nephew. In view of the difference in their ages, it would have been too much to call him her grandnephew. “Yes, please go on, Comrade Jia.”

  “His mother is an ex-educated youth, who married a local farmer and settled in Jiangxi. Bao must have come here to claim the money as the legitimate heir to Yang. After all, Yin had not been married to Yang.”

  “That’s true. How did the meeting go?”

  “It was not a pleasant one. He did not understand why she got such a large share of the money—too large a portion, to his way of thinking.”

  “I do not really understand. Can you tell me a little more?”

  “When we publish the work of a dead author, we sometimes engage a special editor. Such an editor would collect the author’s various publications, compare different versions, annotate some of the text, and write an introduction if necessary. As special editor for Yang’s poetry, Yin did a lot of work, searching out poems from old magazines, and retrieving quite a few from his notebooks or scrap paper. It was no exaggeration to say that the collection would not have been published without her hard work. For such a job, we normally pay about fifty percent of the going rate.”

  “Fifty percent of what you normally pay an author?”

  “Yes. That is, of course, when the author is no longer around and no one else makes claim to the royalties. At that time, it was fifteen Yuan for ten lines, I remember, regardless of the print run. If there’s anything not conventional in our agreement with Yin, it was the additional twenty percent she claimed as a copying fee. We agreed, since it was still less than what we would have paid Yang. The sudden appearance of the grandnephew rattled us. There’s no precedent for a relative like him claiming anything, especially so long after publication. Yin maintained that what she earned was rightfully hers. In a way, she was right. So she refused to pay Bao.

  “I talked to my boss. Not that much money was involved. We did not want to cause a scandal. So we paid Bao an amount equivalent to the remaining thirty percent.”

  “In other words, you ended up paying the normal rate— 100%—for the book.”

  “That’s correct.”

  “Did Bao accept the arrangement?”

  “He did, but in a grudging way.”

  “So he protested?”

  “He did not know anything about the publishing business, but he didn’t trust her. Obviously, he didn’t think it was fair. That’s why she wanted us to explain, I think. She was a very shrewd woman. There was nothing he could do. In those years, people did not sue each other over things like that.”

  “Do you think he hated her?”

  “That’s difficult for me to say. Nobody was happy. She even asked us to draft an agreement that he had to sign, specifying that he would never bother her again, before he received the money.”

  “So she ended up not paying a single penny to him?”

  “Not a single penny came from her pocket.”

  “Did he come back to you?”

  “No. He’s not in Shanghai. There will be no more money, he understands, until the book runs into a second edition. If it ever does.”

  “Wil
l it?”

  “Well, we did a large printing for the first edition, which sold out. We thought about doing a second. Then her novel was published. Her name appeared on the government inside control list. We decided not to print a second edition.”

  “I’m confused, Comrade Jia. The poetry volume is not her book, is it?”

  “But her name’s also on the cover—as a special editor. Whether we remove her name or not, when people read the poems, they may think of the novel. My boss said it was not worth it.”

  “Do you have any other information about him—I mean the youth, Bao?”

  “No, nothing,” Jia said as he stood up. “Oh, he stayed with her for a few days, I remember. He had no relatives left in the city. She told me about it. But after the meeting, he must have gone back to Jiangxi immediately.”