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

by Qiu Xiaolong

  “I’ve checked Lai’s alibi. On the night of the murder, he was in Nanning with a group of engineers at a conference.”

  “Has Lai’s company confirmed that?”

  “Yes. I’ve also talked to a colleague of his who shared the hotel room for the night. According to that colleague, Lai was there all the time. So his alibi is solid.”

  “Did Lai contact Guan in the last half year—via phone calls or whatever?”

  “No, he said not. In fact, Lai’s just got back from America. He’s worked at a university lab there for a whole year.” Yu added, “I don’t think we can get anywhere in that direction.”

  “I think you are right,” he said. “It’s been so many years. If Lai had wanted to do anything, he would not have waited for such a long time.”

  “Yes, Lai nowadays works with American universities once or twice a year, earning a lot of U.S. dollars, enjoying a reputation in his field, living happily with his family. In today’s market society, Guan, rather than Lai, should have been the one who rued what happened ten years ago.”

  “And in our society, Lai can be seen as the one who got the advantage from the affair—a gainer rather than a loser. In retrospect, Lai might not be too unhappy about his long-ago affair.”

  “Exactly. There was something surprising about Guan.”

  “Yes, what a shame!”

  “What do you mean7”

  “Well, it was politics for her then, and politics for us now.”

  “Oh, you’re right, boss.”

  “Call me if you find anything new about Lai.”

  Chen then decided to make a routine report to Commissar Zhang, whom he had not briefed of late.

  Commissar Zhang was reading a movie magazine when Chen entered his office.

  “What wind has brought you in here today, Comrade Chief Inspector Chen?” Zhang put down the magazine.

  “A sick wind, I’m afraid.”

  “What wind?”

  “Detective Yu’s son is sick, so he has to take him to the hospital.”

  “Oh, that. So Yu cannot come to the office today.”

  “Well, Yu has been working hard.”

  “Any new leads?”

  “Guan had a boyfriend nine or ten years ago, but, following the Party’s instruction, she parted with him. Yu has talked to retired Party Secretary Huang of the First Department Store, who was her boss then, and also to Engineer Lai, her ex-boyfriend.”

  “That’s no news. I have also talked to that retired Party Secretary. He told me the story. She did the right thing.”

  “Do you know she—” he cut himself short, not sure what Zhang’s reaction to Lai’s version might be. “She was very upset when she had to part with him.”

  “That’s understandable. She was young, and perhaps a little romantic at the time, but she did the right thing by following the Party’s decision.”

  “But it could have been traumatic to her.”

  “Another of your Western modernist terms?” Zhang said irritably. “Remember, as a Party member, she had to live for the interests of the Party.”

  “No, I was just trying to see its impact on Guan’s personal life.”

  “So Detective Yu is still working on this angle?”

  “No, Detective Yu doesn’t think Mr. Lai is involved with the case. It was such a long time ago.”

  “That’s what I thought.”

  “You’re right, Commissar Zhang,” he said, wondering why Zhang had not shared this information with him earlier. Was Zhang so anxious to maintain the communist puritan image of Guan?

  “I don’t think that’s the right direction. Nor is your theory involving caviar,” Zhang concluded. “It’s a political case, as I have said a number of times.”

  “Everything can be seen in terms of politics,” Chen got up, pausing in the doorway, “but politics is not everything.”

  Such talk was possible now, though hardly regarded as in good taste politically. There had been opposition to Chen’s attaining promotion—something expressed by his political enemies when they praised him as “open,” and by his political friends when they wondered if he was too open.

  * * * *

  Chapter 18

  A

  s soon as Chief Inspector Chen got back in his own office, the phone started ringing.

  It was Overseas Chinese Lu. Once more Lu declared that he had successfully started his own business—Moscow Suburb, a Russian-style restaurant on Huaihai Road, with caviar, potage, and vodka on the menu, and a couple of Russian waitresses walking around in scanty dresses. Lu sounded complacent and confident on the phone. It was beyond Chen to comprehend how Lu could have done so much at such short notice.

  “So business is not bad?”

  “It’s booming, buddy. People come swarming in all day to look at our menu, at our vodka cabinet, and at our tall, buxom Russian girls in their see-through blouses and skirts.”

  “You really have an eye for business.”

  “Well, as Confucius said thousands of years ago, ‘Beauty makes you hungry.’“

  “No. ‘She is so beautiful that you could devour her,’“ Chen said. “That’s what Confucius said. How were you able to dig up these Russian girls?”

  “They just came to me. A friend of mine runs a network of international applicants. Nice girls. They earn four or five times more than at home. Nowadays China is doing much better than Russia.”

  “That is true.” Chen was impressed by the pride in Lu’s voice.

  “Remember the days when we used to call the Russians our Big Brothers? The wheel of fortune has turned. Now I call them my Little Sisters. In a way they really are. They depend on me for everything. For one thing, they’ve got nowhere to stay, and the hotels are way too expensive. I’ve bought several folding beds, so they can sleep in back of the restaurant and save a lot of money. For their convenience, I’ve also put in a hot water shower.”

  “So you are taking good care of them.”

  “Exactly. And I’ll let you into a secret, buddy. They have hairs on their legs, these Russian girls. Don’t fall for their smooth and shining appearance. A week without razor and soap, those terrific legs could be really hairy.”

  “You are being Elliptic, Overseas Chinese Lu.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Oh, nothing, it just reminds me of something by T. S. Eliot.”

  Something about bare, white, braceleted legs which suddenly appear in the light to be downy.

  Or was it by John Donne?

  “Eliot or not, that’s none of my business. But it’s true. I saw it with my own eyes—a bathtub full of golden and brown hair.”

  “You’re kidding.”

  “Come and see for yourself. Not just the legs, the business, of course. This weekend, okay? I’ll assign you one of the blondes. The sexiest. Special service. So special that you want to devour her, too. Confucius’ satisfaction guaranteed.”

  “That will be too much for my wallet, I’m afraid.”

  “What do you mean? You’re my greatest friend, and part of my success, too. All on me, of course.”

  “I will come,” Chen said, “if I can spare one evening next week.”

  Chief Inspector Chen wondered if he would go there even ifhe could spare the time. He had read a report about the so-called special service in some notorious restaurants.

  He looked at his watch. Three thirty. There would probably be nothing left in the bureau canteen. The conversation with Overseas Chinese Lu had made him feel hungry.

  Then he thought of something he had almost forgotten. Dinner with Wang Feng. In his apartment.

  Suddenly everything else could wait until tomorrow. The thought of having her over for a candlelit dinner was making his pulse race. He left the bureau in a hurry, heading for a food market on Ninghai Road, which was about fifteen minutes’ walk from his apartment.

  As always, the market presented a scene of crowds milling about with bamboo baskets on their arms, plastic bags in their han
ds. He had consumed his ration of pork and eggs for the month. He hoped he could get some fish and vegetables. Wang liked seafood. A long line stretched back from a fish stall. Aside from the people standing there, there was also a collection of baskets, broken cardboard boxes, stools, and even bricks—all of them placed before or after the people in line. At every slow forward step, the people would move these objects a step farther. Placing an object in line was symbolic, he realized, of the owner’s presence. When a basket drew near to the stall, the owner would assume his or her position. Consequently, a line of fifteen people might really mean fifty people were ahead of him. At the speed the line was moving, he judged, it would probably take him more than an hour to be waited on.

  So he decided to try his luck at the free market, which was just one block beyond the state-run Ninghai food market. The free market remained nameless in the early nineties, but its existence was known to everybody. The service there was better; so was the quality. The only difference was the price, usually two or three times more than the Ninghai.

  A peaceful coexistence: the state-run and the private-run markets. Socialism and capitalism, side by side. Some veteran Party cadres were worried about the inevitable clashing of the two systems, but the people in the market were not, Chen observed, as he came to a stop at the colorful display of green onions and ginger under a Hangzhou umbrella. He picked up a handful of fresh green onions. The peddler added a small piece of ginger without charging for it.

  Chen spent some time choosing what else he thought necessary for the dinner. Thanks to the advance from the Lijiang publishing house, he could well afford to buy two pounds of lamb, a pile of oysters, and a small bag of spinach. Then, on an impulse, he left the market for the new jewelry store at Longmen Road.

  The shop assistant came up to him with a surprised expression. He was an unlikely customer, Chen realized, a cop in his uniform, with a plastic bag of food in his hand. But he turned out to be a good customer. He did not spend much time choosing among the dazzling items on display. He was immediately attracted by a choker of pearls placed on silver satin in a purple velvet box. The jewelry cost him more than eight hundred Yuan, but it would suit Wang well, he thought. Ruth Rendell would probably be pleased, too, with the way he spent the money earned by his translation of her work. Besides, he had to give himself some additional motivation to complete his next translation, Speaker of Mandarin.

  Back in his apartment, he realized for the first time—to his astonishment—how unpresentable a bachelor’s room could be. Bowls and dishes in the sink, a pair of jeans on the floor beside the sofa, books everywhere, gray streaks on the windowsills. Even the brick-and-board bookcase flanking the desk struck him as unsightly. He threw himself into the task of cleaning up.

  It was the first time she had accepted his invitation to dine with him—alone, at his place. Since the night of the house-warming party, there had been some real progress in their relationship. In the course of the investigation, he seemed to have been finding more and more things about her, too. She was not only attractive and vivacious, but intelligent—intuitively perceptive, even more so than Chen himself.

  But it was more than that. In the course of this investigation, he had raised more questions about his own life. It was time for him to make up his mind—as Guan should have made up her mind, years earlier.

  Wang arrived a few minutes before six o’clock. She was wearing a white silk blazer over a simple black dress with two narrow shoulder straps that looked more like a slip. He helped her take off the blazer; her shoulders were dazzlingly white under the fluorescent light.

  She brought a bottle of white wine with her. A perfect gift for the occasion. He had a set of glasses in the cabinet.

  “What a spick-and-span room for a busy chief inspector!”

  “I had the right motive. It’s rewarding to keep the place neat,” he said, “when a friend is coming over.”

  The table was set with a white tablecloth, folded pink napkins, mahogany chopsticks, and long-handled silver spoons. The dinner was simple. A small pot of water boiling over a portable gas burner. Around it, paper thin sliced lamb, a bowl of green spinach, and a dozen oysters were laid out on a platter decked with lemon wedges. There were also vinegar-marinated cucumber and pickled garlic in little side dishes. Each of them had a small dish of sauce.

  They dipped the slices of lamb into the boiling water, took them out after just a second or two, and dipped them into the sauce, a special recipe he had learned from Overseas Chinese Lu, a mixture of soy sauce, sesame butter, fermented bean curd, and ground pepper strewn with a pinch of parsley. The lamb, still pinkish, was tender and delicious.

  He opened her bottle of wine. They touched glasses before sipping the sparkling white wine under the soft light.

  “To you,” he said.

  “To us.”

  “For what?” he asked, turning the lamb over in the sauce.

  “For tonight.”

  She was peeling an oyster with a small knife. Her fingers, small, delicate, maneuvered the knife and cut loose the hinge muscle. She lifted the oyster to her mouth. A wisp of green seaweed still clung to its shell. He saw the glistening inside of the shell, its matchless whiteness against her lips.

  “That’s good,” she sighed with satisfaction, putting down the shell.

  He gazed at her over the rim of his cup, thinking of the way her lips touched the oyster, and then the cup. She sipped at her wine, dabbed at her mouth with the paper napkin, and picked up another oyster. To his surprise, she dipped it in the sauce, leaned across and offered to him. The gesture was terribly intimate.. Almost that of a newly married wife. He let her insert the chopsticks into his mouth. The oyster immediately melted on his tongue. A strange, satisfying sensation.

  That was a new experience to him, being alone with a woman he liked, in a room he called his own. They spoke, but he didn’t feel that he had to make conversation. Nor did she. They could afford to gaze at each other without speaking.

  It had started drizzling, but the city at night also seemed more intimate, peaceful, its veil of lights glistening into the infinite.

  After dinner, she murmured that she wanted to help him clean up.

  “I really enjoy washing dishes after a good meal.”

  “No, you don’t have to do anything.”

  But she had already stood up, kicked off her sandals, and taken over his apron that hung on the doorknob. It was pleasant to see her breezing around effortlessly, as if she had been living here for years. She appeared intensely domestic with the white apron tied tight around her slender waist.

  “You are my guest today,” he insisted.

  “I can’t just watch you doing everything in the kitchen.”

  It was not really a kitchen, but a narrow strip of space with the gas burner and the sink squeezed together, barely large enough for the two to move around in. They stood close to each other, their shoulders touching. He pushed open the small window above the sink. His feeling of well-being—in addition to the effects of the good food and wine—came from a sense of being, not just in a scantily furnished apartment, but at home.

  “Oh, let’s just leave everything here,” he said, untying the apron. “That’s good enough.”

  “Soon you will have roaches crawling all about in your new apartment,” she warned him with a smile.

  “I already have.” He led her back into the living room. “Let’s have another drink—a nightcap.”

  “Whatever you say.”

  When he came back with glasses, she was rocking back and forth in the rattan chair near the couch. As she sank deep into the chair, her short dress revealed a glimpse of her thighs.

  He leaned against the cabinet, his hand touching the top drawer, which contained the choker of pearls.

  She seemed to be absorbed in the changing color of the wine in her hand.

  “Would you mind sitting by me for one minute?”

  “Easier to look at you this way,” he said, smelling t
he intoxicating scent from her hair.

  He remained standing with his glass of wine. A “nightcap.” To translate it into Chinese was difficult. He had learned its romantic connotation in an American movie, in which a couple sipped the last cup of wine before going to bed. He was intoxicated with the atmosphere of intimacy that had sprung up between them.

  “Oh, you’ve forgotten candlelight,” she said, sipping at the wine.

  “Yes, I could use it now,” he said, “and Bolero on a CD player, too, would be great.”