by Qiu Xiaolong
“One more question,” he said. ‘Did you see her on the evening of May tenth?”
“May tenth, let me think,” she said. “I don’t remember seeing her at all that day. I was at my son’s school for a meeting in the evening. Then we went to bed early. As I’ve told you, I have to get up to sell the dumplings early in the morning.”
“Perhaps you’d like to think about it. You can get in touch with me if anything comes to you,” he said. “Again, I’m sorry about the situation in your factory, but let’s hope for the best.”
“Thank you.” She added, as if apologizing in her turn now, “There may be one thing, now that I think about it. For the last couple of months, sometimes she came back quite late, at twelve o’clock or even later. Since I was laid off I have been worried too much to sleep soundly, so once or twice I heard her coming back at such hours. But then, she could have been really busy, such a national model worker.”
“Yes, probably,” he said, “but we will check into that.”
“That’s about all I know,” she said.
Chief Inspector Chen thanked her and left.
He next approached Guan’s neighbor across the corridor, beside the public bathroom. He was raising his hand toward the tiny doorbell when the door was flung open. A young girl dashed out toward the stairs, and a middle-aged woman stood furiously in the doorway, with her hands firmly on her hips. “You, too, have to come and bully me. Little bitch. May Heaven let you die a thousand-stab death.” Then she saw him, and stared at him with angry, pop-eyed intensity.
He immediately adopted the stance of a senior police officer with no time to waste, producing his official identity card and flashing it at her with a gesture often shown on TV.
It caused her to lose some of her animosity.
“I have to ask you some questions,” he said. “Questions about Guan Hongying, your neighbor.”
“She’s dead, I know,” she said. “My name is Su Nanhua. Sorry about the scene you have just witnessed. My daughter’s seeing a young gangster and will not listen to me. It’s really driving me crazy.”
What Chen got after fifteen minutes’ talk was almost the same version as Yuan’s, except Su was even more biased. According to her, Guan had kept very much to herself all those years. That would have been odd in a young woman, though not for such a celebrity.
“You mean that she lived here all these years and you did not get a single chance to get acquainted?”
“Sounds ridiculous, doesn’t it?” she said. “But it’s true.”
“And she never talked to you?”
“Well, she did and she didn’t. ‘It’s fine today.’ ‘Have you had your dinner?’ So on and so forth. Nothing but those meaningless words.”
“Now what about the evening of May tenth, Comrade Su?” he said. “Did you see her or speak to her that evening?”
“Well, that evening, yes, I did notice something. I was reading the latest issue of Family quite late that evening. I would not have noticed her leaving the dorm, but for the sound of something heavy being dropped just outside my door. So I looked out. There she was, going to the stairs, with her back me, and I did not know what she had dropped. All I could see was that she had a heavy suitcase in one hand. So it could have been the suitcase. She was going downstairs. It was late. I was curious and looked out of the window, but I saw no taxi waiting for her at the curb.”
“So you thought she was taking a trip.”
“I guessed so.”
“What time was it?”
“Around ten thirty.”
“How did you know the time?”
“I watched Hope that evening on TV. Every Thursday evening, in fact. It finishes at ten thirty. Then I started reading the magazine. I had not read much before I heard the thump.”
“Had she talked to you about the trip she was going to take?”
“No, not to me.”
“Was there anything else about that night?”
“No, nothing else.”
“Contact me if you think of anything,” he said, standing up. “You have my number on the card.”
Chen then climbed up to the third floor, to a room almost directly above Guan’s. The door was opened by a white-haired man, probably in his mid-sixties, who had an intelligent face with shrewd eyes and deep-cut furrows around his mouth. Looking at the card Chen handed him, he said, “Comrade Chief Inspector, come in. My name is Qian Yizhi.”
The door opened into a narrow strip of corridor, in which there were a gas stove and a cement sink, and then to another inner door. It was an improvement over his neighbors’ apartments. Entering, Chen was surprised to see an impressive array of magazine photos of Hong Kong and of Taiwanese pop singers like Liu Dehua, Li Min, Zhang Xueyou, and Wang Fei on the walls.
“All my stepdaughter’s favorite pictures,” Qian said, removing a stack of newspapers from a decent-looking armchair. “Please sit down.”
“I’m investigating Guan Hongying’s case,” Chen said. “Any information you can give about her will be appreciated.”
“Not much, I’m afraid,” Qian said. “As a neighbor, she hardly talked to me at all.”
“Yes, I’ve spoken to her neighbors downstairs, and they also considered her too much of a big shot to talk to them.”
“Some of her neighbors believed she put on airs, trying to appear head and shoulders above others, but I don’t think that is true.”
“Why?”
“Well, I’m retired now, but I’ve also been a model teacher for over twenty years. Of course, my model status was only at the district level, by no means as high as hers, but I know what it’s like,” Qian said, stroking his well-shaved chin. “Once you’re a role model, you’re model-shaped.”
“That’s a very original point,” Chen said.
“People said, for instance, I was all patience with my students, but I was not—not all the time. But once you’re a model teacher, you have to be.”
“So it is like a magical mask. When you wear the mask, the mask becomes you.”
“Exactly,” Qian said, “except it’s not necessarily a magic one.”
“Still, she was supposed to be a model neighbor in the dorm, wasn’t she?”
“Yes, but it can be so exhausting to live with your mask on all the time. No one can wear a mask all the time. You want to have a break. Back in the dorm, why should she continue to play her role and serve her neighbors the way she served her customers? She was just too tired to mix with her neighbors, I believe. That could have caused her unpopularity.”
“That is very insightful,” Chen said. “I was puzzled why her neighbors downstairs seemed so biased against her.”
“They do not really have anything against her. They are just not in a good mood. And there’s another important factor. Guan had a room for herself, while theirs was for the whole family.”
“Yes, you’re right again,” he said. “But you have a room for yourself too.”
“No, not really,” Qian said. “My stepdaughter lives with her parents, but she has an eye on this room. That’s why she put up all the Hong Kong star pictures.”
“I see.”
“People living in a dorm are a different lot. In theory, we are staying here just for a short transitional period. So we are not really concerned about relationships with our neighbors. We do not call this home.”
“Yes, it must be so different, living in a dorm.”
“Take the public bathroom for example. Each floor shares one. But if people believe they are going to move away tomorrow, who’s going to take care of it?”
“You’re really putting things into perspective for me, Comrade Qian.”
“It has not been easy for Guan,” Qian said. “A single young woman. Meetings and conferences all day, and back home alone at night—and not to someplace she could really call home.”
“Can you be a bit more specific here?” Chen said. “Is there something particular you have noticed?”
“Well, it was
several months ago. I was unable to fall asleep that night, so I got up and practiced my calligraphy for a couple of hours. But I remained wide awake afterward. Lying on my bed, I heard a strange sound coming from downstairs. The old dorm is hardly soundproof, and you can hear a lot. I listened more closely. It was Guan sobbing—heart-breakingly—at three a.m.. She was weeping inconsolably, alone.”
“Alone?”
“I thought so,” Qian said, “I did not hear another voice. She wept for more than half an hour.”
“Did you observe anything else?”
“Not that I can think of—except that she was probably like me, and didn’t sleep too well. Often I could see light coming up through the cracks in the floor.”
“One of her neighbors mentioned that she came back quite late many nights,” Chen said, “Could that be the reason?”
“I’m not sure. Sometimes I heard her footsteps late at night, but I had hardly any contact with her,” Qian said, taking a sip at his cold tea. “I suggest you talk to Zuo Qing. She’s a retired cadre, but keeps herself busy taking care of the utility fees for the building. She’s also a member of the Neighborhood Security or something. She may be able to tell you more. And she also lives on Guan’s floor, just on the other side of the corridor, close to the stairs.”
Chief Inspector Chen went downstairs again.
An elderly woman wearing gold-rimmed glasses opened the door wide and said, “What do you want?”
“I’m sorry to bother you, Comrade Zuo, but I’ve come about Guan Hongying.”
“She’d dead, I’ve heard,” she said. “You’d better come in. I’ve got something on the stove.”
“Thank you,” he said, staring at the coal stove outside the door. There was nothing being cooked on it. As he stepped into the room, she closed the door behind him. His question was almost immediately answered. Inside the door was a gas tank with a flat pan on it, smelling very pleasant.
Zuo was wearing a black skirt and a silvery gray silk blouse with the top button open. Her high-heeled shoes were gray too. Gesturing to him to sit on a scarlet plush-covered sofa by the window, she continued her cooking.
“It’s not easy to get a gas tank,” she said, “and dangerous to put it in the corridor along with other people’s coal stoves.”
“I see,” he said. “Comrade Zuo, I was told that you have done a lot for the dorm building.”
“Well, I do volunteer work for the neighborhood. Someone has to do it.”
“So you must have had a lot of contact with Guan Hongying.”
“No, not a lot. She’s a popular celebrity in her store, but here she was not.”
“Why?”
“Too busy, I would say. The only time there was any conversation between us would be the occasion,” she said, flipping the egg over in the pan, “when she paid her share of the utility bill on the first day of every month. She would hand over the cash in a white envelope, and say some polite phrase while her receipt was prepared.”
“You never talked about anything else?”
“Well, she once mentioned that since she did not cook much in the dorm building, her equal share of the utility bill was not fair. But she did not really argue about it. Never mentioned it again. Whatever was on her mind, she kept to herself.”
“She seemed to be quite secretive.”
“Look, I don’t mean to speak ill of her.”
“I understand, Comrade Zuo,” he said. “Now on the evening of May tenth, the night she was murdered, Guan left the building around ten thirty—according to one of her neighbors. Did you notice anything around the time?”
“As for that night,” she said, “I don’t think I saw or heard her go out. I usually go to bed at ten.”
“Now, you’re also a member of the Neighborhood Security Committee, Comrade Zuo. Did you notice anything suspicious in the dorm or in the lane, during the last few days in Guan’s life?”
She took off her glasses, looked at them, rubbed them on her apron, put them on again, and then shook her head. “I don’t think so, but there’s one thing,” she said. “I’m not sure whether you’d call it suspicious.”
“What’s that?” He took out his notebook.
“About a week ago, I was watching Office Stories. Everybody is watching it, it’s hilarious. But my TV broke down, so I was thinking of going to Xiangxiang’s place. And opening the door, I saw a stranger coming out of a room at the end of the corridor.”
“Out of Guan’s room?”
“I was not sure. There are only three rooms at the end of the corridor, including Guan’s. The Sus happened to be out of town that night, I know. Of course, the stranger could have been Yuan’s guest, but with only one dim light at the landing, and all the stuff stacked in disorder along the corridor, it’s not that easy for a stranger to find his way. It’s a matter of course for the host to accompany the guest to the stairs.”
“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 behi
nd 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.
