Death of a Red Heroine [Chief Inspector Chen Cao 01]

by Qiu Xiaolong

  “I’m afraid I don’t have enough change for you.”

  “Just give me all you have.”

  The little girl scooped out the coins to give him, and put the one Yuan bill in her purse, instead of into the tin cup at her feet. A cautious teenage profit-maker in her way. She then resumed her readings in cyberspace, the bow on her ponytail fluttering like a butterfly in a breath of air.

  But his earlier mood was gone.

  What irony. The wistful thoughts about the innocent tip of a cardamom bud, a solitary curl of white smoke, an unlost innocence in a rural background, a poetry collection . . . And a lapse in his professional perspective. Not until he had ridden another two or three miles did he realize that he should have done something about the CD business—as a chief inspector. Perhaps he had been too absent minded, in a “poetic trance,” and then too surprised by the realities of the world. The episode came to him like an echo of his colleagues’ criticism: Chief Inspector Chen was too “poetic” to be a cop.

  It was past two o’clock when he reached the canal.

  There was not a single cloud drifting overhead. The afternoon sun hung lonely in the blue sky, high over a most desolate scene, which was like a forgotten corner of the world. Not a soul was visible. The canal bank was overrun with tall weeds and scrubby growth. Chen stood still at the edge of the stagnant water, amid a scattering of wild bushes. Not too far away, however, he thought he could hear the hubbub of Shanghai.

  Who was the victim? How had she lived? Whom had she met before her death?

  He had not expected much from the scene. The heavy rains of the last few days would have washed away any trace of evidence. Being at the crime scene, he had thought, might help to establish a sort of communion between the living and the dead, but he failed to get any message. Instead, his mind wandered to bureau politics. There was nothing remarkable about the recovery of a body from a canal. Not for Homicide. They had encountered similar cases before, and would encounter them in the future. It did not take a chief inspector to tackle such a case, not at the moment, when he had to prepare himself for the important seminar.

  Nor did it appear to be a case he could solve in a couple of days. There were no witnesses. Nor any traceable physical evidence, since the body had been lying in the water for some time. What had been found so far did not mean much for the investigation. Some old hands would have tried to avoid such a case. In fact, Detective Yu had implied as much, and as a special case squad, they were justified in not taking it on. The possibility of a failure to solve the case was not tempting. It would not help his status in the bureau.

  He sat on a jutting slab of rock, dug out a half-crumpled cigarette, and lit it. Inhaling deeply, he closed his eyes for a second.

  Across the canal, he then saw for the first time a tiny spangling of wildflowers, blue, white, violet in the hazy green weeds. Nothing else.

  White puffs of cloud appeared, scuttling across the sky, when he started the trip back. The girl was no longer selling tea at the turn of the road. It was just as well. Perhaps she was no peddler of pirate CDs. She might just have an extra copy, and a couple of Yuan could mean a lot to a village kid.

  When he got back to his office, the first thing he saw on the desk was a copy of the official admittance letter Party Secretary Li had referred to, but it did not give him the feeling of exaltation he had expected.

  The preliminary autopsy report also came late in the afternoon. It produced little of interest. The time of death was estimated as between 1:00 a.m. and 2 a.m. on May 11. The victim had had sexual intercourse before her death. Acid-phosphate tests were positive for the presence of male ejaculate, but after the period of time the body had been immersed in the water, there was not enough left to isolate other positive or negative factors. It was difficult to tell whether the sexual intercourse had taken place against the victim’s will, but she had been strangled. She was not pregnant. The report ended with the following wording: “Death by strangulation in conjunction with possible sexual assault.”

  The autopsy had been conducted by Doctor Xia Yulong.

  Having read the report a second time, Chief Inspector Chen reached a decision: he would postpone making his decision. He did not have to take the case immediately, nor did he have to relinquish it to another squad. If some evidence appeared, he could declare his special case squad to be in charge. If the trail turned “deadly cold,” as Detective Yu expected, it would not be too late for him to turn it over to others.

  He believed that this was a correct decision. So he informed Yu, who readily agreed. Putting down the phone, however, he found his mood darkening, like the screen at the beginning of a movie, against which fragments of the scene he had just visited were displayed.

  She had been lying there, abandoned, naked, her long dark hair in a coil across her throat, like a snake, in full view of two strangers, only to be carried away on a stretcher by a couple of white uniformed men, and, in time, opened up by an elderly medical man who examined her insides, mechanically, and sewed the body together again before it was finally sent to the mortuary. And all that time Chief Inspector Chen had been celebrating in his new apartment, having a housewarming party, drinking, dancing with a young woman reporter, talking about Tang dynasty poetry, and stepping on her bare toes.

  He felt sorry for the dead woman. There was little he could do for her . . . but then he decided not to pursue this line of thought.

  He made a call to his mother, telling her about the book he had bought during the lunch break. She was very pleased, as it happened to be the one she did not have in her attic collection.

  “But you should have taken the poster as well, son.”

  “Why?”

  “So that the girl could walk down from the poster,” she said good-humoredly, “to keep you company at night.”

  “Oh, that!” he laughed. “The same old story you told me thirty years ago. I’m busy today, but I’ll see you tomorrow. You can tell me the story again.”

  * * * *

  Chapter 5

  S

  everal days had passed since the housewarming party. At nine o’clock in the morning, grasping a Shanghai Evening Post in his hand, Chen had a feeling that he was being read by the news, rather than the other way round. What engaged him was the report of a go game between a Chinese and a Japanese player, with a miniature map of the go board showing all the movements of black and white pieces, each occupying a position full of meaning, and possibly of meanings beyond the surface meaning.

  This was nothing but a last minute self-indulgence before the invariable bureau routine.

  The phone on his desk rang. “Comrade Chief Inspector, you’re such an important high official.” It was Wang’s satirical voice. “As the old Chinese saying goes, an important man has an impoverished memory.”

  “No, don’t say that.”

  “You’re so busy that you forget all your friends.”

  “Yes, I’ve been terribly busy, but how could I put you out of my mind? No. I’m just so busy with all the routine work plus the new case—you know, the one I got the night of the party— remember? I apologize for not having called you earlier.”

  “Never say sorry—” she changed the topic before finishing the sentence. “But I have some good news for you.”

  “Really?”

  “First, your name is on the list of the fourteenth seminar sponsored by the Central Party Institute in Beijing.”

  “How did you learn that?”

  “I’ve got my connections. So we will have to throw another party for your new promotion.”

  “It’s too early for that. But what about having lunch with me next week?”

  “It sounds like I am asking for an invitation to lunch.”

  “Well, I’ll tell you what. Last night it rained, and I happened to be reading Li Shangyin—’When, when can we snuff the candle by the western window again, / And talk about the moment of Mount Ba in the rain?’ And I missed you so much.”

  “Yo
ur poetic exaggeration again.”

  “No. Upon my word as a police officer, it’s the truth.”

  “And a second piece of good news for a poetic chief inspector.” She switched the subject again. “Xu Baoping, senior editor of our literature and art section, has decided to use your poem— ‘Miracle,’ I believe that’s the name of it.”

  “Yes, ‘Miracle.’ That is fantastic.”

  That was indeed a piece of exciting news. A poem in the Wenhui Daily, a nationally influential newspaper, could reach far more readers than one in some little magazine. “Miracle” was a poem about a policewoman’s dedication to her work. The editor might have chosen it out of political considerations, but Chen was still overjoyed. “Well, at the Shanghai Writers’ Association, few know that I’m a detective by profession. There’s no point talking to them about it. They would probably say, ‘What, a man who catches murderers should also try to catch muses?’“

  “I’m not too surprised.”

  “Thanks for telling me the truth,” he said. “What my true profession is, I’ve not decided yet!”

  Chief Inspector Chen had tried not to overestimate his poetic talent, though critics claimed to discover in his work a combination of classical Chinese and modern Western sensibility. Occasionally he would wonder what kind of a poet he might have become had he been able to dedicate all his time to creative writing. However, that was just a tantalizing fantasy. In the last two or three weeks he had so much work to do during the day that evenings had invariably found him too exhausted to write.

  “No, don’t get me wrong. I believe in your poetic touch. That’s why I forwarded your ‘Miracle’ to Xu—’The rain has washed your shoulder length hair green—’ Sorry, that’s about the only line I remember. It just reminds me of a mermaid in a cartoon movie, rather than a Shanghai policewoman.”

  “The poetic touch indeed—but I’ll let you in on a secret. I have turned you into several poems.”

  “What! You are really impossible,” she said. “You never quit, do you?”

  “You mean washing my hands in the river?”

  “Last time,” she said laughingly, “you did not wash your hands, I noticed, before the meal in your new apartment.”

  “That’s just another reason I should treat you to a lunch,” he said. “To prove my innocence.”

  “You’re always too innocently busy.”

  “But I will never be too busy to dine with you.”

  “I’m not so sure. Nothing is more important to you than a case, not even whirling around with me.”

  “Oh—you’re being impossible now.”

  “Well, see you next week.”

  He was pleased with the call from her. There was no denying that he had been in her thoughts, too. Or why should she have cared about the news of the seminar? She seemed to be quite excited about it. As for the poem, it was possible she had put in a word on his behalf.

  Also, it was always pleasant to engage her in an exchange of wit. Casual, but intimate beneath the surface.

  It was true that he had been terribly busy. Party Secretary Li had given him several topics for possible presentation at the seminar sponsored by the Central Party Institute. He had to finish all of them in two or three days, for the Party Secretary wanted to have someone in Beijing preview them. According to Li, the top Party leaders, including the ex-General Secretary of the Central Party Committee, had been invited to attend. A successful presentation there would get attention at the highest level. As result, Chief Inspector Chen had to leave most of the squad work to Detective Yu.

  Wang’s call, however, once more brought the image of the dead woman to his mind. Little had yet been done about the case. All their efforts to learn the identity of the young woman had yielded no clues. He decided to have another talk with Yu.

  “Yes, it’s been four days,” Yu said. “We haven’t made any progress. No evidence. No suspects. No theory.”

  “Still no one reported missing?”

  “No one matching her description.”

  “Last time you ruled out the possibility of her being someone from the neighborhood. What about her being one of those provincial girls who come to Shanghai?” Chen said, “Since they have no family here, it would take a long time before a missing persons report came in.”

  With new construction going on everywhere, new companies being founded every day, the so-called “provincials” formed a cheap mobile labor force. Many were young girls who came to find jobs in the new restaurants and hotels.

  “I thought about that, too,” Yu said. “But have you noticed her fingernails? So professionally manicured, polished. And her toenails, too.”

  “But she might have worked in one of those fancy hotels.”

  “Let me tell you something, Comrade Chief Inspector. Last month, I saw a painting by Cheng Shifa,” Yu said, shaking his head. “It shows a Dai girl walking along the rough Yuannan mountain path, her bare feet flashing white under her long green skirt. Well, one of my colleagues in Yuannan married a Dai girl. Afterward, he told me he was shocked to see how calloused and cracked her feet were in real life.”

  “You may have a point, Comrade Detective Yu,” Chen said, not too pleased with the way Yu delivered his lecture, “but if she had stayed long enough in one of those foreign hotels, been totally transformed, so to speak, that would still be possible, right?”

  “If so, we should have had a report already. Those foreign general managers have a way of running their business, and their people, too. And they keep in close contact with the police.”

  “True,” he said, nodding, “but we have to do something.”

  “Yes, but what?”

  The conversation left him disturbed. Was it true that they could not do anything but wait? Once more he took out the picture of the dead girl. The enlarged one. Though the image was not clear, he could see that she must have been an attractive woman. How could such a woman not be missed after almost a week? She should have had some people who cared for her. Friends, colleagues, parents, sisters and brothers, maybe lovers, who were anxious about her. No human being, particularly a young attractive woman, could be so alone that no one missed her when she disappeared for a week. He could not understand it.

  But maybe she had said that she was going away on vacation or business. If so, it could take a long time before someone started wondering where she was.

  He had a vague feeling that there was something about the case, something complicated, waiting for him. Something like a parallel to his writing experience . . .

  A glimpse of a veiled face at the entrance of Beijing subway, a waft of the jasmine blossom fragrance from a blue teacup, or a particular rhythm in an attic with a train rumbling into the distant night, and he would have the feeling that he was on the verge of producing a wonderful poem. All this could turn out, however, to be a false lead, and he would end up crossing out fragments of unsatisfactory lines.

  With this case, he did not even have such an evasive lead, nothing but an ineffable feeling. He pushed open the window. The early chorus of the cicadas assaulted him in hot waves.

  “Zhiliao, Zhiliao, Zhiliao . . . .”

  It was a homophone for “understanding” in Chinese.

  Before he left for a meeting, he made a call to Dr. Xia, who had examined the victim’s body.

  “Dr. Xia, I have to ask a favor of you,” Chen said.

  “Anything I can do, Comrade Chief Inspector Chen.”

  “Remember the young woman found in the canal in a plastic bag—case number 736? The body has not yet been disposed of, I believe. Maybe the plastic bag is still there, too. Check it for me, and more importantly, write a description of the victim for me. Not a report but a detailed description. Not of a corpse but of a human being. Vivid. Concrete. Specific. What would she have looked like alive. I know you’re busy, Dr. Xia. Please do it as a personal favor for me.”

  Doctor Xia, who loved classical Chinese poetry and was aware that Chen wrote poems in the so-called mo
dernist style, said, “I know what you want, but I cannot promise my description will be as vivid as a modernist work, including every possible detail, ugly or not.”

  “Don’t be too hard on me, Dr. Xia. I’ve been incorporating a streak of Li Shangyin’s lyricism into my lines. I’ll show some to you over our next lunch together. It will be my treat, of course.”

  Afterward, during the routine political meeting whose agenda was “Studies of Comrade Deng Xiaoping’s Selected Works,” Chen found his thoughts wandering, unable to concentrate on the book in his hands.

  Dr. Xia’s response however, came faster than he had expected. At two o’clock, there appeared a two-page fax in Dr. Xia’s neat handwriting: