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

by Qiu Xiaolong

  As for any political factors being involved in this case, that was far-fetched.

  Chinese people were complaining about a lot of things these days—corruption, unemployment, inflation, housing shortages, traffic congestion, and so on, but nothing related directly or indirectly to Guan. True, Guan was a national model worker and political celebrity, yet her death would leave no dent in China’s socialist system. If so-called counterrevolutionaries had intended to sabotage the existing system, another far more symbolic target should have been chosen.

  Yu was fed up with the Party Secretary’s talk.

  Still, he had to play his part. It could be crucial to his career goal, which was a simple one: to do better than his father, Yu Shenglin, usually known by his nickname, “Old Hunter.” The old man, though an experienced and capable officer, was still a sergeant at retirement, with a meager pension, hardly enough to indulge himself with a pot of Dragon Well tea.

  When Yu came back, panting and wiping his brow, Peiqin had already set a full breakfast on the table, a bowl of steaming beef noodle soup with a handful of green scallions.

  “For you,” she said. “It’s still hot. I’ve had mine with Qinqin.”

  Wearing a fluffy robe, she sat hunched with her elbows on the table, supporting her chin with her hands, and looked at him over the soup. She was a few months older than he. As an ancient Chinese saying went, “An older wife knows how to take care of a husband.” But with her long hair hanging down her back in ripples, she looked younger.

  The noodles were good, the room clean, Qinqin already dressed for school, carrying a chicken sandwich with an apple in a sealed plastic bag. How could she have managed to do so many things in such a short while, he wondered.

  And things were not easy for her, not just at home. She worked as an accountant in a small, plain restaurant called Four Seas, tucked far away in the Yangpu District. She had been assigned the job after coming back to Shanghai with him. In those days, the Office of Educated Youth assigned jobs, and decisions were made regardless of an applicant’s education, intentions, or location. There was no use complaining since the office had a hard time dealing with the millions of ex-educated youths who’d returned to Shanghai. Any job opening was a blessing. But she had to make a fifty-five-minute bike ride from home to the restaurant. A tortuous journey, riding three or four bikes abreast in the rush-hour traffic. Last November she had fallen after a night’s snow. She had needed seven or eight stitches, though the bike was hardly damaged, apart from a dent in the mudguard. And she was still riding the same old bike, rain or shine. She could have asked for a transfer to a closer restaurant. She didn’t. Four Seas had been doing quite well, providing many perks and benefits. Some other state-run restaurants were so poorly managed that the profits were hardly enough even to maintain the employees’ clinic.

  “You ought to eat more,” she said.

  “I can’t eat much in the morning, you know.”

  “Your job is tough. No time for lunch today again, I am afraid. Not like mine in the restaurant.”

  That was one disadvantage of being a cop, and an advantage of working at her restaurant job. She did not have to worry about her meals. Sometimes she even managed to bring home restaurant food—free, delicious, specially cooked by the chef.

  He had not finished the noodles when the telephone started ringing. She looked at him, and he let it ring for a while before picking it up.

  “Hi, this is Chen. Sorry about calling so early.”

  “That’s all right,” he said. “Anything new—any change?”

  “No,” Chen said. “Nothing new. No change in our schedule either, except that Commissar Zhang wants to meet you sometime this afternoon. Say before four o’clock. Give him a call first.”

  “Why?”

  “Commissar Zhang insists on doing something himself, he wants to conduct an interview. And then he would like to compare notes with you.”

  “It’s no problem for me. I can set out earlier. But do we have to do this every day?”

  “Perhaps I’ll have to. Since it’s the first day, you just do whatever the commissar wants you to.”

  Putting down the phone, Yu turned to Peiqin with a sigh.

  “You’ve got to take Qinqin to school today, I’m afraid.”

  “No problem,” she said, “but you are doing too much for too little.”

  “You think I don’t know? A police officer makes four hundred and twenty Yuan a month, and a tea-leaf-egg vendor makes twice as much on the street.”

  “And that chief inspector of yours, what’s his name—still single, but he’s got an apartment.”

  “Perhaps I was born a mistake,” Yu was trying to sound humorous. “A snake can never become a dragon. Not like the chief inspector.”

  “No, don’t say that, Guangming,” Peiqin said, starting to clear the table. “You’re my dragon. Don’t ever forget that.”

  But Yu felt increasingly disturbed as he stuffed the newspaper into his pants pocket, walking toward the bus stop on Jungkong Road. He had been born in the last month of the dragon year, according to the Chinese lunar calendar, supposedly a lucky year in the twelve animal cycle zodiac. According to the Gregorian calendar, however, the date was early in January of 1953, therefore the beginning of the snake year. A mistake. A snake’s not a dragon, and it could never be as lucky. Not as lucky as Chief Inspector Chen. When the bus came, however, he was just lucky enough to get a seat by the window.

  Detective Yu, who had entered the police force several years earlier than Chen and solved several cases, did not even dream of becoming a chief inspector. A position within his reasonable reach would be that of a squad leader. But that, too, had been taken away from him. In the special case squad, he was only the assistant to Chief Inspector Chen.

  It was nothing but politics that Chen had been promoted because of his educational background. In the sixties, the more education one had, the more political unreliability one represented—in Chairman Mao’s logic—as a result of being more exposed to Western ideas and ideologies. In the mid-eighties, under Comrade Deng’s leadership, the Party’s cadres-selecting policies had changed. That made sense, but not necessarily in the police bureau, not in Chief Inspector Chen’s case. However, Chen got the position, and then the apartment.

  Still, Yu was ready to admit that Chen, though not that experienced, was an honest and conscientious police officer, intelligent, well-connected, and dedicated to his job. That was a lot to say about someone in the bureau. He had been impressed by Chen’s criticism of model myths the previous day.

  He decided not to have a confrontation with Chen. A futile investigation would probably take two or three weeks. And if the case could be solved through their efforts, so much the better, of course.

  The air grew more and more stuffy in the bus. Looking out the window, he realized that he was sitting there like a sentimental fool, feeling sorry for himself. When the bus arrived at Xizhuang Road, Detective Yu was the first one out the door. He took a shortcut through the People’s Park. One of its gates opened out to Nanjing Road, Shanghai’s main thoroughfare, almost an extended shopping center in itself, stretching from the Bund to the Jian’an Temple area. The people were all in high spirits. Shoppers. Tourists. Peddlers. Messengers. A singing group was performing in front of the Helen Hotel, a young girl playing an ancient zither in the middle. A billboard in big Chinese characters exhorted Shanghai residents to promote good hygiene and preserve the environment by refraining from littering and spitting. Retired workers were waving red flags at corners, directing traffic and admonishing offenders. The sun was out, gleaming on the grated spittoons built into the sidewalks.

  Detective Yu thought that he was merging with all of them. And he was their protector, too. But that, he admitted, was wishful thinking.

  The First Department Store stood in the middle of Nanjing Road, facing the People’s Park across Xizhuang Road. As always, the store was crowded, not only with local people, but also with people f
rom other cities. Yu had to squeeze through the throng at the entrance. The cosmetics section was on the first floor. He stood close to it, with his back against a column, watching for a while. A lot of people flocked around the counters. Large pictures of beautiful models greeted the young shoppers, their varied body language all the more alluring under the bright lights. The youthful saleswomen were demonstrating the use of the cosmetics. They, too, looked quite attractive in green-and-white-striped uniforms, the ceaseless play of the neon lights shimmering around them.

  He took the elevator up to General Manager Xiao Chi’s office on the third floor.

  General Manager Xiao greeted him in a spacious office, where the walls displayed an impressive assortment of awards and gold-framed pictures. One of them, Yu noticed, was Guan shaking hands with Comrade Deng Xiaoping at the Tenth Conference of the Party Central Committee.

  “Comrade Guan was an important cadre of our department store. A loyal Party member,” Xiao said. “A big loss to the Party, her tragic death. We will do whatever possible to assist your investigation.”

  “Thank you, Comrade General Manager,” Yu said. “You may start by telling me what you know about her work in the store.”

  “She was a manager of the cosmetics section. She had worked at the store for twelve years. She did her job conscientiously, attended every Party group meeting, and helped other people in whatever way she could. A role model in every aspect of her life. Last year, for instance, she donated three hundred Yuan to Jiangshu flood victims. In response to the government’s call, she also bought a large sum of government bonds every year.”

  “What about people’s opinion of her work?”

  “She was very efficient. A competent, methodical, and highly conscientious manager. People always had a high opinion of her work.”

  “A model worker indeed,” Yu said, knowing that most of General Manager Xiao’s information could have been obtained from her official file. “Well, I’ve got to ask you questions about something else.”

  “Yes, any question you want to ask.”

  “Was she popular—with the other staff?”

  “I think so, but you’ll have to ask them. I can’t think of any reason why she should not be.”

  “And as far as you are aware, Guan had no enemies in the store?”

  “Enemies? Now Comrade Detective Yu, that’s a strong word. She might have had some people who didn’t like her so much. So has everybody. You, too, perhaps. But you don’t go in fear of being murdered, right? No, I wouldn’t say she had enemies.”

  “What about the people in her private life?”

  “That I don’t know,” the general manager said, slowly tracing the line of his left eyebrow with his middle finger. “She was a young woman, she never talked to me about her personal life. What we talked about was work, work, and work. She was very conscious of her position as manager, and as a national model worker. Sorry, I cannot help you.”

  “She had a lot of friends?”

  “Well, she hadn’t too many close friends in the store. No time, perhaps. All the Party activities and meetings.”

  “She had not discussed her vacation plans with you?”

  “Not with me. It wouldn’t have been a long vacation, so she did not have to. I have asked several of her colleagues; she had not talked with them either.”

  Detective Yu decided that it was time to interview the other employees.

  A list of people had been prepared for him.

  “They will tell you whatever they know. If there’s anything else I can do, please contact me,” Xiao said earnestly.

  The interviews were to be held in a formal conference room, spacious enough to seat hundreds of people. The interviewees were waiting in an adjacent room, accessible through a glass door. Detective Yu was supposed to call them in one by one. Pan Xiaoxai, a close friend of Guan’s, was the first. With two small children at home, one of them disabled, she had to hurry back home during the lunch break. She had been sobbing in the waiting room. He could tell that from her swollen eyes.

  “It’s awful—” she said bleakly, taking off her glasses and dabbing her eyes with a silk handkerchief. “I can’t believe that Guan’s dead ... I mean—what a wonderful Party member. And to think, the last day Guan was in the store, I happened to have the day off.”

  “I understand your feelings, Comrade Pan,” he said. “You were one of her closest friends, I’ve heard.”

  “Yes, we’ve worked together for years—six years.” She wiped her eyes and sniffed loudly, as if anxious to prove the genuineness of their friendship. “I’ve been working here for ten years, but in the toy section first.”

  In reply to Yu’s question about Guan’s personal life, Pan admitted reluctantly, however, that the deceased had not been that close to her. In all those years, she had been to Guan’s dorm only once. In fact, what they had been doing together was mostly window shopping during lunch break, comparing prices, or having curried beef noodles in Sheng’s Restaurant across the street. That was about it.

  “Did you ask her anything about her personal life?”

  “No, I never did.”

  “How could that be? You were close friends, weren’t you?”

  “Um—she had a certain way about her. Difficult to define, but like a line was drawn. After all, she was a national celebrity.”

  At the end of the interview, Pan looked up through her tear-stained glasses, “You will find out who did it, won’t you?”

  “Of course we will.”

  Zhong Ailin, who worked with Guan on the morning of May tenth, was next. She started to offer her information immediately. “Comrade Detective Yu, I’m afraid I won’t be helpful. On the morning of May tenth, we talked very little, two or three words at the most. To me, she seemed all right. She didn’t tell me that she was leaving for a real vacation. As far as I can remember, she mentioned that she was going to take only a few days off. That’s quite normal. As the department head, she sometimes worked extra hours. So she had earned a lot of days off.”

  “Did she say anything else to you during that day or that week?”

  “She was a national model worker, always busy, working and serving people wholeheartedly, as Chairman Mao said long ago. So most of the talking she did was to her customers, not to us.”

  “Any idea who might have killed her?”

  “No, none at all.”

  “Could it be somebody who worked with her?”

  “I don’t think so. She was not a difficult person to get along with, and she did her job well.”

  According to Zhong Ailin, some of her colleagues might have been envious of Guan, but it was undeniable that she knew the ropes at the store and was a decent and reliable woman—politics aside.

  “As for her life outside of the store,” Zhong concluded, “I don’t know anything—except that she was not dating anyone—had probably never dated anyone.”

  Zhong was followed by Mrs. Weng, who had worked the afternoon shift on May tenth. Mrs. Weng started by declaring that the investigation was none of her business, and that she had not noticed anything unusual about Guan that last day.

  “There was nothing different about her,” she said. “She might have put a light touch of eye shadow on her eyelids. But it was nothing. We have a lot of free samples.”

  “What else?”

  “She made a phone call.”

  “When?”

  “It would be about six thirty, I think.”

  “Did she have to wait long before she started talking?”

  “No. She started talking immediately.”

  “Anything you happened to overhear?”

  “No. It was short,” she said. “It was her business, not mine.”

  Mrs. Weng talked more than the first two, however, offering opinions even without being asked. And she went on speculating about some information which she believed might be of interest. Several weeks earlier, Mrs. Weng had gone with a Hong Kong friend to the Dynasty KTV Club. In the sem
i-dark corridor, she saw a woman emerging from a private room with a tall man, practically leaning on his shoulder—the woman’s clothes in disarray, several buttons undone, her face flushed, and her steps reeling. A shameless karaoke girl, Mrs. Weng thought. A private karaoke room was an open secret, almost a synonym for indecent practices. But then it occurred to Mrs. Wen that the karaoke girl looked like someone she knew. As the image of the drunken slut was at such odds with the one flashing through her mind, recognition did not come until a few seconds later—Guan Hongying! Mrs. Weng could scarcely believe it, but she thought it was her.

  “Did you take a closer look at her?”