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

by Qiu Xiaolong

  “Well, he invited me to a party at his place, and afterward he asked me to stay on for a while. I agreed. I was a bit drunk.”

  “Then he took advantage of you while you were drunk.”

  “No, he did not force me.” She hung her head low, wringing her hands in a helpless gesture. “I was willing, hoping that sooner or later he would change his mind.”

  “Change his mind?”

  “Yes, I hoped he would choose to marry me and divorce his wife.”

  “How long were you together?”

  “A couple of months.”

  “Were you happy . . . with him?”

  “At first, when things went smoothly.”

  “How often were you together?”

  “Two or three times a week.”

  “What kind of man was he?” Yu asked. “Sexually, I mean.”

  The question came as a shock to her. She pulled at the hem of her T-shirt as she said in a whisper, “Normal.”

  “Weren’t you afraid of becoming pregnant?”

  “Yes, but I was always careful.”

  “Then why did you end it?”

  “He chose not to divorce his wife.”

  “Did you discuss the issue with him?”

  “Yes, but to no avail.”

  “You could have sued him, or approached his work unit.”

  “What’s the point?” she said with a tear trickling down her cheek. “With his family background, who would have listened to me? Besides, I was a ‘third party’ to begin with.”

  “So you just let him get away with it?”

  “I argued with him, and he did the most horrible thing. Those pictures—you have seen them, haven’t you? If I continued to harass him, he threatened to show them to other people.”

  “That HCC bastard!” He stood up. looking over her head toward a dismal, gray sky out the window, taking a cigarette out of his pocket, lighting it, before he seated himself again on the hard rattan chair. “But how could you have let him take those photos?”

  “I had posed for him on a professional level,” she said sobbing. “Later on, I allowed him to take more intimate .... He had his own darkroom and equipment, so I was not worried. But those horrible nude photos, those were taken while I was sleeping. And he posed on top of me without my knowledge.”

  “Oh, I see.” So those pictures were not just of Ning herself, but of her and Wu together. Yu needed some time to think about this new information. Apparently Wu had taken and kept the pictures for a purpose: to get rid of somebody when he no longer desired her.

  “So that was the end of your affair?” Yu asked.

  “Yes. He never contacted me again.”

  “Just one more question: Was Wu Xiaoming seeing somebody else when you parted with him?”

  “I was not sure, but there were other girls at those parties.”

  “Did you know someone named Guan Hongying among them?”

  “No. Guan Hongying—isn’t she the national model worker? Heavens.”

  Yu took a picture of Guan out of his pocket. “Do you recognize her?”

  “Yes, I think so. I saw her only once at Wu’s place. I remember her because she clung to him all the evening, but I did not know her name at the time. Wu did not introduce her to anybody.”

  “Wu certainly would not have done that,” he said. “Do you know anything else about her?”

  “No, that’s all.” She fumbled in her bag and found a handkerchief.

  “Contact me if you can think of anything, Comrade Ning.”

  “I will.” She then added, “You won’t tell other people?”

  “I’ll try my best,” he said.

  She accompanied him to the door, her face streaked with tears, her head hung low, no longer the hostile antagonist of an hour ago, her hands nervously pulling again at the lower edge of her oversized T-shirt.

  Detective Yu had succeeded in bluffing her and getting information he had not expected. But he was not elated. Ning, too, was a victim.

  He began the long walk home. The new facts, instead of diminishing the puzzle, seemed to add to its complexity.

  What an HCC monster! So many women in his life. Even in his most intimate moments with a woman, Wu had not forgotten to take those horrible pictures for his ulterior purpose. But what was the point of conquering so many women if there was no future with any of them? What was the point?

  There had been only one woman in Yu’s life—Peiqin. But Yu was a happy man because of it.

  Was there a woman in Chief Inspector Chen’s life? There had been one—according to Jiang—in Beijing, years earlier. Yu had never heard anything about it, but it was said that of late there was a female often seen in Chen’s company. According to the bureau housing committee, however, there was no one. Otherwise Chen would surely have tried to make a point of it when applying for an apartment.

  Even Jiang seemed to have a soft spot for the chief inspector. At least she changed her attitude abruptly because of his note. The fact that Chen had recognized her in the picture also intrigued him. Nothing but her bare back showed in that photograph. Was it the black mole on the nape of her neck that had revealed her identity to him?

  Could there be something between the two? Immediately Yu hoped he was wrong. He had come to think of Chen as a friend. It was time for Chen to settle down, but not with somebody as modern as Jiang.

  * * * *

  Chapter 24

  I

  t was Chief Inspector Chen’s fifth day in Guangzhou. He had awakened to find a note on the nightstand. It was just an address with a short line underneath it.

  Xie Rong. 60 Xinhe Road, #543.

  You will find her there. Have a wonderful day.

  Ouyang

  Xinhe Road was not one of the main streets. Walking past a run-down Turkish bathhouse with a pasty-faced girl in the doorway and a pretentious coffee shop with several computers on the glass-topped tables beside a sign saying “Electronic Mails,” Chief Inspector Chen reached a tall building at the address given him.

  Old and dilapidated, the building was neither an office building, nor was it residential. Yet, there was a doorman sitting there, sorting mail at the entrance desk. He stared up at Chen over his reading glasses. When Chen showed him the address, the doorman pointed at the elevator.

  Chen waited for about ten minutes without seeing any sign of the elevator coming down. He was about to climb the stairs when the elevator arrived with a thud. It appeared even more ancient than the building itself, but it carried him to the fifth floor and bobbed to a stop.

  As he stepped through the squeaking door, he had a weird feeling of stepping into an old movie from the thirties. Song Girl—he recalled its name. There was a narrow corridor, smelling of dead cigars, lined with a number of suspiciously closed doors, as if General Yan of the movie, still wrapped in scarlet silk pajamas, would pop out of a door in the next minute to take a bouquet of roses from a flower girl. The flower girl had been played by Zhou Xuan, so breathtaking in those days.

  Chief Inspector Chen knocked at the door marked 543.

  “Who is it?” a young girl’s voice called out.

  “Chen Cao, Mr. Ouyang’s friend.”

  “Come on in. The door is not locked.”

  Pushing the door open, he found himself in a room with a half drawn velvet curtain. The room contained little in the way of furniture: a double bed, a large mirror on the wall just above the headboard, a towel-covered sofa, a nightstand, and a couple of chairs.

  Propped up on cushions, a young girl was reclining on the sofa, reading a paperback. She wore a blue-striped bathrobe that showed most of her thighs; her bare feet dangled over the sofa arm. On the coffee table was a crystal ashtray with lipstick-marked cigarette butts.

  “So you are Chen Cao.”

  “Yes, has Ouyang told you about me?”

  “Sure, you’re special, he’s told me, but it’s a bit early for me, I am afraid,” she said, moving to a sitting position. “My name is Xie Rong.” She
got to her feet, not embarrassed as she straightened her robe.

  “I should have called first, but—”

  “That’s okay,” she said. “A distinguished customer is always welcome.”

  “I don’t know what Ouyang has told you, but let’s have a talk.”

  “Take a seat.” She gestured toward the chair beside the bed. He hesitated before sitting. The room smelled of strong spirits, cigarette smoke, cheap cosmetics, and something faintly suggestive of body odor.

  Walking barefoot across the carpet, she poured some coffee from an electronic coffee pot, and handed him a cup on a Fuzhou lacquered tray.

  “Thanks,” he said. Chief Inspector Chen was in for something he had not expected, or not even imagined, he realized. Maybe that was why Ouyang had left the address with no explanation. A poet searching for a young girl in a large city could have appeared suspiciously “romantic”—enough for Ouyang to bring him and the girl together in a flight of best-seller fantasy. There was no use blaming Ouyang, who had meant well.

  “So let’s get on with it.” She climbed onto the bed, sitting there, her arms folded across her knees, studying him intensely, in a posture rather suggestive of a Burmese cat. It was not a repulsive association. In a way, she reminded him of someone.

  “A first-timer, eh?” she said, misreading his silence.”Don’t be nervous.”

  “No, I’ve come here to—”

  “What about something to relax you first? A Japanese massage—a foot massage—to start with?”

  “A foot massage—” he echoed. A foot massage. He had read about it in a Japanese novel. One of Mishima’s, perhaps. Something of an existentialist experience, though he had never liked Mishima. But it was a temptation. He would probably never come here again. Whether he was stepping over the line he had drawn for himself, he did not know. It was too late, however, for him to back out—unless he flashed his I.D. and started questioning her as a chief inspector.

  But would that work? To Xie Rong, as well as to other ordinary Chinese people, HCC like Wu Xiaoming led an existence far above them, and above the law, too. So it was quite likely she would not dare to say anything against Wu. If she refused to answer his questions, Chief Inspector Chen could not do much in Guangzhou. One thing he had learned in the past few days was the unreliability of his local colleagues.

  “Why not?” he said, flashing a few bills.

  “What a generous tip! Put it on the nightstand. Let’s go to the bathroom.”

  “No.” He was still trying to draw a line somewhere. “I’ll take the shower by myself.”

  “As you please,” she said casually. “You’re so different.”

  She scrambled down, knelt at his feet, and began to unlace his shoes.

  “No,” he protested again in embarrassment.

  “You have to take your shoes off—that’s only civil.”

  Before he could say or do anything, she reached out to unbutton his shirt. Feeling the heat of her breath on his shoulder, he took a step back. She then took a bathrobe from behind the door and threw it to him. He hurried into the bathroom, still wearing his clothes, the robe draped over his shoulder, thinking to himself that he must resemble some character in a movie.

  The bathroom was no larger than the one at the Writers’ Home; it contained an oval tiled tub with a rotatable shower head and a large towel on a stainless-steel rack. A mirror hung over a cracked blue porcelain sink. A worn rug was spread out in front of it. There was no lack of hot water, though.

  He had agreed to her proposal because he needed time to think, but he knew he could not stay in the bathroom too long. With a few ideas, half-formed in the vapor of shower, he emerged wearing her scruffy flannel bathrobe, the frayed belt brushing against his bare legs.

  She was waiting, sitting cross-legged on the bed, painting her toenails a bright vermilion. The window filtered the light onto the plain white coverlet. Then she thrust her legs out in front of her, flexed her toes luxuriantly, lifted one foot above the other, waggled the toes at him, and giggled.

  “Ah,” she said, “much better.”

  There was a small bikini-girl poster above the sofa, and underneath it was a line in bold characters: Time is money! a new political slogan he had seen in Guangzhou.

  “Take off your robe,” she said, putting a finishing touch on her toenails with a steady hand. She then capped the polish bottle tightly, and put it aside on the nightstand. To his surprise, she lay down on her back, and waved her feet in the air as if doing synchronized swimming. Her red toenails arced in the air.

  “Must I?”

  “Must I help you?”

  He was flabbergasted as she jumped up and helped him off with the bathrobe. Luckily, he had put his shorts back on. She guided him to the bed where he lay down, and then she turned him over. Lying on his stomach, he was very nervous as he became aware that she, too, had gotten onto the bed.

  She put both her hands on a stainless-steel bar suspended from the ceiling. With the bar bearing the weight of her body like a gymnast, she started massaging his back with her toes.

  It was a bizarre experience. The first two or three minutes, he was perspiring with trepidation. Any second, she could stamp down violently on his bare back, a complex of vertebrae, discs, ligaments, and nerves. But soon he started to have mixed feelings. Her bare toes and heels pressing upon him elicited sensations of ice and fire all over him. His pleasure was actually heightened by his trepidation.

  She must have had some professional training. Her toes concentrated on his trouble spots, working kinks out of his back, and reducing the tension in his body. He didn’t feel so bad anymore. Not about the case, nor the budget, nor the politics involved.

  “You make my feet warm,” She was finally finished, her face flushed with exertion, her brow beaded with sweat.

  “Marvelous,” he said.

  “It’s good exercise for me, too.”

  “It’s the first time for me.”

  “I know,” she said, her hand lightly touching the knot of her robe. “What about the full service now?”

  That was something he could not do. A line he must not cross. This was the time to flash his I.D. Chief Inspector Chen should now take her to the police bureau and charge her with prostitution. But what about Professor Xie? He had given her his promise. News of what had become of Xie Rong would be too terrible a blow to the old intellectual who had already suffered a lot. The arrest would also incriminate his new friend Ouyang. Also, once she was taken into custody here, he was not sure if his local colleagues would help with his investigation. He was not sure that he could work out a deal for Xie in exchange for her information about Wu Xiaoming.

  “You are sweating all over.” He sounded more like a client so that she would not grow suspicious. “Take a good shower yourself. I’ll stay here and close my eyes for five minutes.”

  “Yes, there is nothing like taking a short nap,” she said. “I’ll be back in fifteen minutes.”

  The moment she disappeared, he took a mini-recorder out of his briefcase and put it under the pillow. He put his shirt back on and buttoned several buttons before he closed his eyes for just a minute. In spite of himself, he dozed off. When he was awakened by the slamming of the bathroom door, it took him a few seconds to realize where he was.

  She stepped out of the bathroom, naked except for a large bath towel draped around her shoulders. Fine-limbed and thin, she looked more like a high-school girl waiting for a regular checkup—except for a broad patch of black hair spreading over the lower part of her abdomen. She examined herself in the mirror, the water beading on her skin under the fluorescent light, which turned her face opalescent. Then she caught him gazing at her in the mirror. Startled, she pulled the towel down to cover her hips, but then she shook her wet hair, and gave him a long, steady look.

  She started slowly toward the bed. He smelled the soap on her skin, still wet from the shower. Clean, fresh. Her body glowed.

  “You are special,” she said.<
br />
  He was so acutely aware of her, it took all his willpower to stop her from touching him.

  “Let’s talk,” he said.

  “No,” she touched a finger to his mouth, “you don’t have to say anything.”

  “We don’t know each other yet.”

  “Haven’t we talked enough?” she said. “Unless you want to talk about money.”

  “Well—”

  “Mr. Ouyang has paid for a whole day’s service, and you’ve given me a handsome tip,” she said. “So you can have the whole day, and the night, too. You don’t have to worry about it. If you want to buy me a dinner afterward—”