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

by Qiu Xiaolong

  “Strange, isn’t it,” he said, “to think Chief Inspector Chen should come to envy me.”

  “What?” she murmured.

  “He told me what a lucky husband I am.”

  “He told you that!”

  He kissed the nape of her neck, feeling grateful for the evening.

  “Go to bed now,” she said smiling. “I’ll join you soon.”

  He did, but he did not want to fall asleep before she came to bed. He lay there for a while without turning off the light. Out in the lane, all sorts of vehicles could be heard moving along Jingling Road, but once in a while came a rare minute when all the traffic faded into the night. A blackbird twittered nostalgically in the maple tree. His neighbor’s door slammed closed across the kitchen area. Somebody gargled at the concrete common sink, and he heard another indistinct sound like swatting a mosquito on the window screen.

  Then he heard Peiqin snapping off the kitchen lights, and stepping lightly into the room. She changed into an old robe of shot silk that rustled. Her earrings clinked into a dish on the dresser. She pulled a plastic spittoon from under the bed and put it in the corner partially sheltered by the cabinet. There was a gurgling sound. Finally she came over to the bed and slid under the towel blanket.

  He was not surprised when she pressed herself against him. He felt her moving the pillow to a more comfortable position. Her robe fell open. Tentatively, he touched the smooth skin on her belly, feeling the warmth of her body, and pulling her knees against his thighs. She looked up at him.

  Her eyes mirrored the response he had expected.

  They did not want to wake up Qinqin.

  Holding his breath, he tried to move with as little noise as possible; she cooperated.

  Afterward, they held each other for a long time.

  Normally he would feel sleepy afterward, but that night he found his mind working with intense clarity.

  They were ordinary Chinese people, he and Peiqin, hardworking and easily contented. A crab dinner like tonight’s could make them happy, excited. In fact, little things went a long way for them: a movie on the weekend, a visit to the Grand View Garden, a song on a new cassette, or a Mickey Mouse sweater for Qinqin. Sometimes he complained like other folks, but he counted himself as a lucky guy. A marvelous wife. A wonderful son. What else mattered that much on this earth?

  “Heaven or hell is in one’s mind, not in the material things one has in the world,” Old Hunter had once told him.

  There were a few things, however, Detective Yu would like to have. A two bedroom apartment with a bathroom, for instance. Qinqin was already a big boy who needed a room of his own. He and Peiqin would not have to hold their breath making love. A propane gas tank for cooking instead of coal briquettes. And a computer for Qinqin. His own school years were wasted, but Qinqin should have a different future . . .

  The list was quite long, but it would be nice to have just a few of the items at the top.

  All of these, it had said in People’s Daily, would come in the near future. “Bread we will have, and milk, too.” So said a loyal Bolshevik in a movie about the Russian Revolution, predicting to his wife the marvelous future of the young Soviet Union. It was a movie seen many times in his high-school years—the only foreign movie available at the time. Now the Soviet Union was practically gone, but Detective Yu still believed in China’s economic reform. In a few years, maybe, a lot would improve for the ordinary Chinese people.

  He dug out the ashtray from under a heap of magazines.

  But those HCC! That was one of the things making life so hard for the ordinary Chinese. With their family connections, HCC could do what other people could not dream of doing, and rocketed up in their political careers.

  A typical HCC, Wu must have thought the world was like a watermelon, which he could cut to pieces as he pleased, spitting other people’s lives away like seeds.

  Life’s not fair to everybody, a fact Detective Yu had long accepted. Family background, for one thing, made a huge difference everywhere, though nowhere so much as in China in the nineties.

  But now Wu Xiaoming had committed a murder. Of that, Yu was convinced

  Staring up at the ceiling, Yu thought he could see exactly what had happened on the night of May tenth: Wu made the phone call, Guan came to his house, they had caviar and sex, then Wu strangled her, put her body in a plastic garbage bag, took it to the canal, and dumped it there . . .

  “Your chief inspector has a lot on his mind,” Peiqin said, cuddling against him.

  “Oh, you’re still awake?” he said, startled. “Yes, he does. The case is tough, involving some important people.”

  “Perhaps something else.”

  “How do you know?”

  “I’m a woman,” she said, her lips curving into a suggestion of smile. “You men do not notice things written on each other’s faces. A handsome chief inspector, and a well-published poet, too—he must be a highly eligible bachelor, but he looks lonely.”

  “You, too, have a soft spot for him?”

  “No. I already have such a wonderful husband.’

  He hugged her again.

  Before he fell asleep, he heard a faint sound near the door. He lay listening for a moment, and he remembered that several live crabs remained unsteamed in the pail there. They were no longer crawling on the sesame-covered bottom of the wooden pail. What he heard was the bubbles of crab froth, bubbles with which they moistened each other in the dark.

  * * * *

  Chapter 20

  E

  arly the following morning, Detective Yu and Chief Inspector Chen arrived at the Shanghai office of Red Star. The magazine was housed in a Victorian building at the intersection between Wulumuqi and Huaihai Roads, one of the best locations in Shanghai. No wonder, Yu thought, considering its political influence. Red Star was the voice of the Central Committee of the Chinese Communist Party. Every staff member working there seemed highly conscious of the prestige of his position.

  Sitting at a marble reception desk was a young girl in a neat polka-dot dress. Intent on her laptop, she did not stop vigorously punching at the keys on their arrival. The two police officers’ introductions made little impression on her. She told them that Wu was not in the office, without asking why they wanted to see him.

  “You must know where the Zhou Mansion is—the Wu Mansion nowadays, needless to say,” she said. “Wu is working at home today.”

  “Working at home?” Yu said.

  “At our magazine, it is not unusual.”

  “Everything at Red Star is unusual.”

  “Better call him first,” she said. “If you want, you can use our phone here.”

  “No, thanks,” Yu said. “We have our car phone.”

  Outside, there was no car waiting for them, let alone a car phone.

  “I could not stand it,” Yu grumbled. “She gave herself such airs.”

  “You’re right,” Chen said, “Better not to call Wu beforehand, so we can take him by surprise.”

  “Well, a surprised snake will bite back,” Yu said. “The Wu mansion on Henshan Road is not too far away. We can walk there.”

  They soon came to the midsection of Henshan Road, where the Wu Mansion stood looming behind high walls. Originally it had been owned by a tycoon surnamed Zhou. When the Communists look over in 1949, the Zhou family fled to Taiwan, and Wu Bing’s family moved in.

  The mansion and the area of Henshan Road around it was in a part of Shanghai Yu had never come to know, even though he had lived in the city for so long. Yu had been born and brought up in the lower end of Huangpu District, an area mainly inhabited by mid- and low-income families. When Old Hunter moved there in the early fifties, an era of communist egalitarianism, it was a district considered as good as any other in Shanghai. Like the other kids there, running in and out of those small lanes, playing games on the narrow cobblestone paths, Yu believed that he had everything possible in his neighborhood, though he knew that there were other better ones in Shang
hai, where the streets were broader and the houses larger.

  In his high-school years, often after a day’s class of Chairman Mao’s Quotations, Yu would join a group of his schoolmates in their campaigns—roaming the various areas of the city. Sometimes they would also venture into stores, though they did not shop for anything. Occasionally they would end their excursion by treating themselves at some cheap snack bar. Most of the time, however, they just wandered through one street after another, walking aimlessly, talking energetically, and basking in their friendships. So they had become familiar with various parts of the city.

  Except one area. That was the one around Henshan Road, which they had seen only in the movies before 1949—movies about the fabulous rich capitalists, imported cars, and uniformed chauffeurs, young maids in black dresses with white aprons and starched caps. Once they actually ventured into the area, but they felt out of their element immediately. Visible behind high walls, the mansions appeared the same as in the old movies, so impressive, but so impersonal. In front of them, Henshan Road stretched out silent, solemn, and almost soulless—except for some armed PLA soldiers standing still at the iron gates. It was a residential area for high cadres, they knew, a level of existence way above theirs. Still it came as a shock to them that in such a large mansion, there lived only one family, while in their own neighborhood, a much smaller house could be partitioned out to accommodate a dozen families. The environment struck them as the setting of an unfriendly fairy tale. Perhaps they lingered, wondering a bit too long. An armed soldier came over, asking them to leave; it was not an area they belonged in. The realization dampened their interest in going there again.

  Now on an early June morning, Detective Yu found himself there again. He was no longer a school kid, but the atmosphere of the area was still oppressive. A PLA soldier raised his hand in salute as they passed through. Not the same soldiers as so many years ago, of course. But these people now living behind the high walls were not entirely different.

  The white wall enclosing the Wu mansion appeared unchanged too, except here and there it was ivy-mantled. Out on the street, people barely glimpsed the red-tiled roof shining among treetops. The lot on which the house stood was immense. Now there was no soldier standing at the wrought-iron gate embellished with spiraling pinnacles, but it seemed to correspond all the more closely to the impressions of Shanghai seen in old movies.

  Detective Yu placed his hand on the bell at the side of the gate and rang.

  Presently a woman opened the gate a couple of inches. She was probably in her mid-thirties, dressed in a black-and-white top with a brief matching skirt. Her eyelids were adorned with false eyelashes and powder-blue eyeshadow, and she stared at them questioningly. “Who are you?”

  “We are from the Shanghai Police Bureau,” Yu said, flashing his I.D. “We need to talk to Wu Xiaoming.”

  “Does he expect your visit?”

  “No, we don’t think so. We are investigating a murder.”

  “Come with me. I’m his younger sister.”

  She led them through the gate.

  So Detective Yu saw the mansion in its entirety for the first time. A magnificent three-story building, it looked like a modernized castle, with the pinnacles and towers of its original design, and the porches and glass verandahs added in recent renovations. The lawn was immense and well-kept, sporting several flowerbeds. In the middle, a shell-shaped swimming pool of clear blue water shimmered against light blue tiles.

  Following her up a flight of steps, they crossed a large hall and came to a colossal living room with a staircase curving up to the left. Opposite a green marble fireplace, there was a black leather sectional sofa, and a coffee table with a thick plate-glass top.

  “Please sit down,” she said. “Would you like anything to drink?”

  “No, thanks.”

  Yu was vaguely aware of the flower arrangement on the mantelpiece, of the carpet gleaming against polished wood, of the subdued ticking of a mahogany grandfather clock, as he looked around, sinking deep into the sofa.

  “I’ll tell Xiaoming that you are here,” she said, disappearing through another door.

  Wu Xiaoming came out immediately. A man in his early forties, Wu was tall, broad-chested, but surprisingly ordinary-looking. His eyes were keen and wary under heavy lids, just like his sister’s, with deep creases around the corners. He had none of the artistic airs of professional photographers portrayed on TV. It was difficult for Detective Yu to associate the man before him with the HCC who had taken pictures of nude models, slept with Guan, and perhaps a lot of other women, too. But then Yu sensed something else in Wu’s presence—not so much in his appearance, but something emanating from him. Wu looked so successful, confident in his talk and gestures; he emitted a physical glow characteristic of those enjoying and exercising power at a higher level.

  Could it be the glow that had drawn so many moths?

  “Let’s talk in the study,” Wu said when they had finished their introductions to one another.

  Wu led the way across the hall into a spacious room, austerely furnished except for a single gold-framed picture on the wall suggestive of the owner’s taste. Behind a mahogany desk, the French window displayed a view of a lawn and blossoming trees.

  “This is my father’s study,” Wu said. “He’s in the hospital, you know.”

  Yu had seen the old man’s picture in the newspapers, a lined face, sensitive, with a high-bridged nose.

  Tapping his fingers lightly on the desk, Wu sat comfortably in the leather swivel chair that had belonged to his father. “What can I do for you, comrades?”

  “We’re here to ask you a few questions,” Yu said, taking out a mini-recorder. “Our conversation will be recorded.”

  “We’ve just been to your office,” Chen added. “The secretary told us that you’re working at home. We’re engaged in a serious investigation. That’s why we came here directly.”

  “Guan Hongying’s case, right?” Wu asked.

  “Yes,” Chen said. “You appear to be aware of it.”

  “This officer, Comrade Detective Yu, has made several phone calls to me about it.”

  “Yes, I did,” Yu said. “Last time you told me that your relationship with Guan was one hundred percent professional. You took some pictures of her for the newspaper. That’s about it, right?”

  “Yes, for the People’s Daily. If you want to see those pictures, I’ve kept some in the office. And for another magazine, too, a whole sequence, but I’m not sure I can find them here.”

  “You met her just a couple of times for the photo sessions?”

  “Well, in my profession, you sometimes need to take hundreds of pictures before getting a good one. I’m not so sure about I he exact time we worked together.”

  “No other contact?”

  “Come on, Comrade Detective Yu. You could not shoot, shoot, shoot, and do nothing else all the time, could you? As a photographer, you have to know your model well, tune her up, so to speak, before you can capture the soul.”

  “Yes, the body and soul,” Chen said, “for your exploration.”

  “Last October,” Yu said, “you made a trip to the Yellow Mountains.”

  “Yes. I did.”

  “You went there by yourself?”

  “No. It was in a tourist group sponsored by a travel agency. So I went there with a number of people.”

  “According to the record at East Wind Travel Agency, you bought tickets for two. Who’s the other one you booked the ticket for?”

  “Er—now you mention it,” Wu said. “Yes, I did buy a ticket for another person.”

  “Who was it?”

  “Guan Hongying. I happened to mention the trip. She, too, was interested in it. So she asked me to buy a ticket for her.”

  “But why was the ticket not booked in her own name?”

  “Well, she was such a celebrity. And she did not want to be treated as such in a tourist group. Privacy was the very thing she craved. Also, she wa
s afraid that the travel agency might put her picture up in its windows.”

  “What about you?” Yu asked. “You did not use your own name either.”

  “I did it for the same reason, my family background and all that,” Wu said with a smile, “though I am not such a celebrity.”

  “According to the rules, you must show your I.D. to register with a travel agency.”

  “Well, people travel under different names. It is not something uncommon even if they show their true I.D.s. The travel agency is not too strict about it.”