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

by Qiu Xiaolong

  “When recognition came to me, she had already walked past me. It wouldn’t do for me to chase someone there.”

  “So you’re not positive.”

  “No. But it was my impression.”

  Next on the list was Gu Chaoxi. Gu, though older than Guan by more than fifteen years, had been trained by Guan at the department store.

  “Do you remember anything unusual about Guan before her death?” Detective Yu went directly to the point.

  “Unusual—what do you mean?”

  “Coming in late for work, for instance. Or leaving too early for home. Or any particular change you noticed about her.”

  “No, not that I’m aware of,” Gu said, “but everything has been changing so fast. Our cosmetics section used to have only two counters. Now we have eight, with so many different products, and a lot of them made in the U.S.A. Of course, people are changing, too. Guan’s no exception.”

  “Can you give me an example?”

  “The first day I came to work here—that’s seven years ago—she gave all of us a lecture I still remember, on the importance of adhering to the Party’s hard-working and plain-living tradition. In fact, she had made a point of using no perfume and wearing no jewelry. But a few months ago, I saw her wearing a diamond necklace.”

  “Really,” he said. “Do you think it was genuine?”

  “I’m not sure,” she said. “I’m not saying there was anything wrong with her wearing a necklace. It’s just in the nineties people are changing. Another example, she went on a vacation half a year ago, last October, I think. And then in less than six months, she took a second one.”

  “Yes, that’s something,” he said. “Do you know where she went last October?”

  “The Yellow Mountains. She showed me pictures from there.”

  “Did she travel alone?”

  “I think she was alone. Nobody else was in the pictures.”

  “And this time?”

  “I knew she was going on vacation, but she did not tell me where, or with whom,” she said, looking at the door. “That’s all I know, I’m afraid, Comrade Detective.”

  Despite the central air conditioning in the room, Detective Yu sweated profusely, watching Gu walk out. He recognized the familiar malaise that preceded a headache, but he had to proceed. There were five more names on the list. The next two hours, however, yielded even less information. He put all the notes together.

  On May tenth, Guan had come to work as usual, around 8 a.m She was amiable as always, a true national model worker, toward her customers as well as her colleagues. She dined at the canteen at twelve o’clock, and she had a routine meeting with other Party members at the store late in the afternoon. She did not mention to her colleagues where she was going, though she said something about a vacation. At five, she could have left for home, but as usual, she stayed late. Around six thirty, she made a phone call, a short one, but no one knew to whom. After the phone call, she left the store, apparently for home. The last time she was seen by anyone there was around seven ten.

  It was not much, and Detective Yu had a feeling that the people had been rather guarded talking about Guan, with Mrs. Weng the only exception. But then her information was not something he could count on.

  It was long past lunchtime, but on his list there was still one person, who happened to have the day off. He left the department store at two forty. At a street corner minimarket, he bought a couple of pork-stuffed pancakes. Peiqin was right in her concern about his missing lunch, but there was no time for him to think about being nutritionally correct. The last person’s name was Zhang Yaqing, and she lived on Yunnan Road. She was an assistant manager working in the cosmetics section, who had called in sick for the day. According to some employees, Zhang had been once regarded as a potential rival for Guan, but Zhang had then married and settled into a more prosaic life.

  Detective Yu was familiar with that section of Yunnan Road. It was only fifteen minutes’ walk from the store. North of Jinglin Road, Yunnan Road had turned into a prosperous “Delicacy Street” with a number of snack bars and restaurants, but to the south, the street remained largely unchanged, consisting of old, ramshackle houses built in the forties, with baskets, stoves, and common sinks still lined up on the sidewalk outside.

  He arrived at a gray brick house, went up the stairs, and knocked on a door on the second floor. A woman opened the door immediately. She was in her early thirties, with ordinary but fine features, her short hair deep black. She wore blue jeans and a white blouse with the sleeves rolled up high. She was barefoot. She looked rather slender, and she was brandishing a huge cloth strip mop in her hand.

  “Comrade Zhang Yaqing?”

  “Yes?”

  “I am Detective Yu Guangming, of the Shanghai Police Bureau.”

  “Hello, Detective Yu. Come on in. The general manager has called, telling me about your investigation.”

  They shook hands.

  Her palm was cool, callused, like Peiqin’s.

  “Sorry, I was just cleaning up the room.”

  It was a cubicle of eight square meters, containing two beds and a white dresser. A folding table and chairs stood against the wall. There was an enlarged picture of her with a smiling big man and a smiling little boy. The Happy Family photo. She pulled out a chair, unfolded it, and gestured to him to sit down.

  “Would you like a drink?”

  “No, thanks.”

  “What do you want from me?”

  “Just answer a few questions about Guan.”

  “Yes, of course,” she said, settling into another chair.

  She drew back her legs under it, as if intent on hiding her bare feet.

  “How long have you worked with Guan?”

  “About five years.”

  “What do you think of her?

  “She was a celebrated model worker, of course, and a loyal Party member, too.”

  “Could you be a bit more specific?”

  “Well, politically, she was active—and correct—in every movement launched by the Party authorities. Earnest, loyal, passionate. As our department head, she was conscientious and thoroughgoing in her job: The first to arrive, and often the last to leave. I am not going to say that Comrade Guan was too easy to get along with, but how else could she have been, since she was such a political celebrity?”

  “You have mentioned her political activities. Is it possible that through those activities she made some enemies? Did anyone hate her?”

  “No, I don’t think so. She was not responsible for the political movements. No one would blame her for the Cultural Revolution. And to be fair to her, she never pushed things too far. As for someone who might have hated her in her personal life, I’m afraid I don’t know anything about it.”

  “Well—let me put it this way,” Yu said. “What do you think of her as a woman?”

  “It’s difficult for me to say. She was very private. To a fault, I would say.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “She never talked about her own life. Believe it or not, she did not have a boyfriend. Nor did she seem to have any close friends, for that matter. That’s something beyond me. She was a national model worker, but that did not mean that she had to live her whole life for politics. Not for a woman. Only in one of those modern Beijing operas, maybe. You remember, like Madam A Qin?”

  Yu nodded, smiling.

  Madam A Qin was a well-known character in Shajiabang, a modern Beijing opera performed during the Cultural Revolution, when any romantic passion—even that between husband and wife—had been considered to detract from people’s political commitment. Madam A Qin thus had the convenience of not living with her husband in the opera.

  “She might have been too busy,” he said.

  “Well, I’m not saying that she did not have a personal life. Rather, she made a point of covering it up. We’re women. We fall in love, get married, and have kids. There’s nothing wrong with it.”

  “So you’re not sure that
she had never had an affair?”

  “I’m telling you everything I know, but I don’t like to gossip about the dead.”

  “Yes, I understand. Thank you so much for your information.”

  As he stood up, he took one more glance around the room, noticing a variety of perfumes, lipsticks, and nail polish on the dresser, some of the brands he had seen on glamorous movie stars in TV commercials. They were obviously beyond her means.

  “There’re all samples,” she said, following his gaze, “from the First Department Store.”

  “Of course,” Yu said, wondering whether Comrade Guan Hongying would have chosen to keep all her cosmetics more discreetly hidden in a drawer. “And good-bye.”

  Detective Yu was not happy about his day’s work. There was not much to talk about with Commissar Zhang, but he had never had much to talk about with the commissar. He called from a public phone booth, but Commissar Zhang was not in the office. Yu did not have to listen to a political lecture delivered by the old commissar, so he went home.

  No one was there. He saw a note on table, saying, “I’m with Qinqin at his school for a meeting. Warm the meal for yourself.”

  Holding a bowl of rice with strips of roast duck, he stepped into the courtyard, where he had a talk with his father, Old Hunter.

  “A cold-blooded rape and murder case,” Old Hunter said, frowning.

  Yu remembered the frustration his father had suffered in the early sixties, dealing with a similar sex murder case, which had taken place in the Baoshan rice paddy. The girl’s body had been found almost immediately. The police arrived on the scene in less than half an hour. One witness had glimpsed the suspect and gave a fairly recognizable description. There were some fresh footprints and a cigarette butt. Old Hunter worked late into the night, month after month, but all the work led to nothing. Several years later, the culprit was caught in the act of selling pictures of Madame Mao as a bewitching second-class actress in the early thirties—a wanton goddess in a low-cut gown. Such a crime at the time was more than enough cause to put him to death. During his examination, he admitted the murder years earlier in Baoshan. The case, as well as the unexpected solution—too late to be of any comfort—had left an indelible impact on Old Hunter.

  Such a case was like a tunnel where one could move on and on and on without hope of seeing the light.

  “Well, there could be a political angle, according to our Party secretary.”

  “Look, son,” Old Hunter said, “you don’t have to give me the crap about political significance. An old horse knows the way, as the saying goes. If such a homicide case isn’t solved in the first two or three weeks, the solution probability drops off to zero. Politics or no.”

  “But we have to do something, you know, as a special case group.”

  “A special case group, indeed. If a serial killer were involved, the existence of your group would be more justified.”

  “That’s what I figured, but the people high up won’t give us a break, especially Commissar Zhang.”

  “Don’t talk to me about your commissar either. A pain in the ass for thirty years. I’ve never gotten along with him. As for your chief inspector, I understand why he wants to go on with the investigation. Politics.”

  “He’s so good at politics.”

  “Well, don’t get me wrong,” the old man said. “I’m not against your boss. On the contrary, I believe he is a conscientious young officer in his way. Heaven is above his head, the earth is under his feet—at least he knows that. I’ve spent all these years in the force, and I can judge a man.”

  After their talk, Yu stayed in the courtyard alone, smoking, tapping the ash into the empty rice bowl with roast duck bones forming a cross at the bottom.

  He affixed a second cigarette to the butt of the first when it had been smoked down, and then added another, until it almost looked like an antenna, trembling in its effort to receive some imperceptible information from the evening sky.

  * * * *

  Chapter 8

  C

  hief Inspector Chen, too, had had a busy morning. At seven o’clock he’d met with Commissar Zhang in the bureau.

  “It’s a difficult case,” Commissar Zhang said, nodding after Chen had briefed him. “But we mustn’t be afraid of hardship or death.”

  Don’t be afraid of hardship or death —one of Chairman Mao’s quotations during the Cultural Revolution. Now it reminded Chen of a faded poster torn from the wall of a deserted building. Being a commissar for so many years had turned Zhang into something like an echoing machine. An old politician, out of touch with the times. The Commissar was, however, anything but a blockhead; it was said that he had been one of the most brilliant students at Southwest United University in the forties.

  “Yes, you’re right,” Chen said. “I’m going to Guan’s dorm this morning.”

  “That’s important. There might be some evidence left in her room,” Commissar Zhang said. “Keep me informed of anything you find there.”

  “I will.”

  “Have Detective Yu contact me, too.”

  “I will tell him.”

  “Now what about me?” Zhang said. “I also need to do something, not just be an advice-giving bystander.”

  “But we have every aspect of the initial investigation covered at present. Detective Yu’s interviewing Guan’s colleagues, and I’m going to check her room, talk to her neighbors, and afterward, if I have the time, I will visit her mother in the nursing home.”

  “Then I’ll go to the nursing home. She’s old, too. We may have things to talk about between us.”

  “But you really don’t have to do anything. It is not suitable for a veteran cadre like you to undertake the routine investigations.”

  “Don’t tell me that, Comrade Chief Inspector,” Zhang said, getting up with a frown. “Just go to Guan’s dorm now.”

  The dormitory, located on Hubei Road, was a building shared by several work units, including that of the First Department Store, which had a few rooms there for its employees. Considering Guan’s political status, she could have gotten something better—a regular apartment like his, Chen thought. Maybe that was what made Guan a model worker.

  Hubei was a small street tucked between Zhejiang Road and Fujian Road, not too far away from Fuzhou Road to the north, a main cultural street boasting several well-known bookstores. The location was convenient. The Number 71 bus was only ten minutes’ walk away, on Yan’an Road, and it went directly to the First Department Store.

  Chen got off the bus at Zhejiang Road. He decided to walk around the neighborhood, which could speak volumes about the people living there—as in Balzac’s novels. In Shanghai, however, it was not up to the people to decide where they would get a room, but to their work units, Chen realized. Still, he strolled around the area, thinking.

  The street was one of the few still covered with cobblestones. There were quite a number of small, squalid lanes and alleys on both sides. Children raced about like scraps of paperblowing in the wind, running out of one lane into another.

  Chen took out his notebook. Guan Hongying’s address read: Number 18, Lane 235, Hubei Road. But he was unable to find the lane.

  He asked several people, showing them the address. No one seemed to have heard of the lane. Hubei was not a long street. In less than fifteen minutes, he had walked to the end and back. Still no success. So he stepped into a small grocery store on the corner, but the old grocer also shook his head. There were five or six hoodlums lounging by the grocery, young and shabby, with sparse whiskers and shining earrings, who looked at him challengingly.

  The day was hot, without a breath of air. He wondered whether he had made a mistake, but a call to Commissar Zhang confirmed that the address was right. Then he dialed Comrade Xu Kexin, a senior librarian of the bureau—better known by his nickname of Mr. Walking Encyclopedia—who had worked in the bureau for over thirty years, and had a phenomenal knowledge of the city’s history.

  “I need to ask a fa
vor of you,” he said. “Right now I’m at Hubei Street, between Zhejiang and Fujian Road, looking for Lane 235. The address is correct, but I cannot find that lane.”

  “Hubei Street, hmm,” Xu said. “It was known, before 1949, as a notorious quarter.”

  “What?” Chen asked, hearing Xu leafing through pages, “‘Quarter’—what do you mean?”

  “Ah yes, a brothel quarter.”

  “What’s that got to do with the lane I cannot find?”

  “A lot,” Xu said. “These lanes used to have different names. Notorious names, in fact. After liberation in 1949, the government put an end to prostitution, and changed the names of the lanes, but the people there may still use the old names for convenience sake, I believe. Yes, Lane 235, I’ve got it here. This lane was called Qinghe Lane, one of the most infamous in the twenties and thirties, or even earlier. It was where the second-class prostitutes gathered.”