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

by Qiu Xiaolong

  Being politically successful could make one’s personal life difficult in a variety of ways. He knew that from his own experience: He was constantly watched—a bachelor chief inspector in his mid-thirties. He had to live up to his official role. That might have been one of the reasons that he had remained single. The same might have applied to Guan.

  But it was not a night to be sentimental. Once more he tried to view matters from Li’s perspective. There was something to Li’s argument, Chen admitted. After all the years wasted in political movements, China was finally making great strides in economic reform. With the GNP growing annually in double digits, people were starting to have a better life. And a measure of democracy was also being introduced. At such a historical juncture, “political stability”—a popular term after the tragic summer of 1989—might be a precondition for further progress. At this moment, the unquestioned authority of the Party was more important than ever.

  So rather than damage the Party’s political authority, and political stability, the investigation had to be stopped.

  But what about the victim?

  Well, Guan Hongying had lived in the Party’s interests. It appeared only logical that she should have died in the Party’s interests as well. And a cover-up would be in her own interests, too—it would perpetuate her unsullied image as a role model.

  It would not be the first time, nor the last, for a police officer to stop halfway in an investigation. Few would guess the real reason. So what was the big deal?

  At the worst, a matter of losing face. And, possibly a matter of saving his neck.

  Party Secretary Li was not alone in wondering at Chief inspector’s Chen’s persistence.

  Chen asked himself sleepily, why?

  * * * *

  Chapter 29

  H

  e was awakened by the telephone ringing.

  “Hello.”

  “It’s me, Wang Feng. It’s late, I know, but I have to see you.”

  Wang’s anxious voice seemed so close, as if she were next door, but at the same time, it sounded far away, too.

  “Is something wrong? Don’t worry, Wang,” he said. “Where are you?”

  He looked at his watch. Twelve thirty. This was not a call he had expected. Not from her. Not at this hour.

  “I’m at the public telephone booth just across the street.”

  “Where?”

  “You can see it from your window.”

  “Then why not come up?”

  There was a telephone booth standing on the street corner, a fashionable new installation, where people could insert coins or cards to make calls.

  “No, you come down.”

  “Okay, I’ll be down in one minute.”

  He had not seen her since that night. It was understandable that she hesitated to come up. She must be in serious trouble.

  He slid into his uniform, grabbed his briefcase, and ran down the stairs. Better business-like, alone at such a late hour, he thought, buttoning up as he rushed into the phone booth. However, there was no one there, no one on the street either.

  He was confused, but decided to wait. Suddenly the public phone started ringing. For the first few seconds, he stared at it before he realized that it might be ringing for him.

  “Hello,” he said.

  “Thank Heaven! It’s me, Wang Feng,” Wang said, “I was afraid you might not pick up.”

  “Is something wrong?”

  “Yes, but not with me. This afternoon, your passport people turned down my passport application. I’m so worried about you.”

  “About me?”

  He thought she was incoherent. She had been denied a passport, but that was not a reason for her to be worried about him. Could it have been such a blow that she was no longer her usual composed self?

  “I mentioned your name, but the officers simply stared at me. One of them said that you’ve been suspended, calling you a busybody unable to take care of your own business.”

  “Who said that?”

  “Sergeant Liao Kaiju.”

  “That S.O.B.—never mind him. A small fly. He just cannot stand my being a chief inspector.”

  “Is it because of the Guan investigation?”

  “No, we’ve not seen the end of it yet.”

  “I was so worried, Chen. I’ve got some connections of my own, so I made a few calls tonight. The Guan case may be more complicated than you know. Some people high up seem to be taking it as a deliberate attack on the revolutionaries of the older generation, with you as a representative of the liberal reformists.”

  “That’s not true, you know. I’m not interested in politics. It is a homicide case, that’s all.”

  “I know, but not everybody thinks so. Wu is busy in Beijing, I’ve heard. And he knows a lot of people there.”

  “I’m not surprised.”

  “Some people have even complained about your poems, collecting them, saying that they are politically incorrect, and that they are further proof of your unreliability as a Party member.”

  “That’s outrageous. I cannot see how my poetry has anything to do with the matter!”

  “A piece of advice—if you will accept it from me,” she said, without waiting for his reply. “Stop beating your head against a brick wall.”

  “I appreciate your advice, Wang. But I will take care of my problems,” he added “and yours, too.”

  There was a short pause. He could hear her agitated breathing from the other end of the line. And then her voice sounded different, filled with emotion.

  “Chen?”

  “Yes?”

  “You sound so worn out. I can come over—that is, if you think it’s all right.”

  “Oh, I’m just a bit tired,” Chen said, almost automatically, “I can do with a good night’s sleep. That is all I need, I think.”

  “You’re sure?”

  “Yes, thank you so much.”

  “Then—take care of yourself.”

  “You, too.”

  He put down the phone, but he remained standing in the booth.

  The truth was that he had no idea how to take care of his problem. Let alone hers.

  Two or three minutes passed. The phone did not ring again. Somehow he had been expecting it to. The silence was disappointing.

  She was concerned about him. As a reporter, she was naturally sensitive to the change in people’s attitudes. Officer Liao had promised to help, a promise made at the time when Chen had been considered a rising star. Chen’s trouble had brought about the change. In Liao’s eyes, the chief inspector’s career was practically finished.

  He moved out of the booth. It was no longer unbearably hot on the street; the moonlight streamed softly through the leaves. He was not in the mood to go back to his apartment. There was a lot on his mind. He found himself walking aimlessly along the deserted street, and then before he thought about it, he realized he was walking in the direction of the Bund.

  At the intersection of Sichuan Road, he passed a two-story red brick building, which had once been Yaojing High School, his high-school during the Cultural Revolution. It was no longer a school now, but a restaurant called Red Mansion—subtly suggesting the luxury in The Dream of the Red Chamber. Perhaps its location had been too commercially valuable for a school. He resisted the temptation to go in for a cup of coffee. It was not a night for nostalgia. Silhouetted against the restaurant’s neon lights, several people were exchanging currency with foreign tourists. A young girl was chasing after an elderly American couple with a bunch of Yuan in her hand. In his school days, he and other Little Red Guards had acted as traffic assistants there, chasing bikes without license plates or with illegally installed baby seats. Zealous volunteers they had been in those days.

  The river came in view.

  Along the Bund, a breeze blew over the parapet, bearing the tang of the river and of the docks, a characteristic Shanghai mixture familiar to him. Even at this late hour, the Bund was still dotted with young lovers sauntering along, hand
in hand, or sitting still like statues in the night.

  Before 1949, Shanghai had been described as a “nightless city,” and the Bund “like the folds of a bright girdle furled.”

  He came to a stop at Waibai Bridge. The water smelled of diesel and industrial waste, though it was somewhat less black, dappled with shimmering reflections of the neon. He leaned against the railing, looking down into the silent water. There was a tugboat coming toward the arch of the bridge.

  He made an attempt to sort out the thoughts crowding into his mind.

  He was crushed, though he had not admitted the fact to Wang. Crushed not by the case, but by the politics behind it. An inner-Party power struggle was involved.

  Deng Xiaoping, in his effort to push forward his reform, had promoted some young Party officials, so-called “reformists” through the cadre retirement policy. This did not pose a serious threat to those at the top level, but was a serious problem to most of the lower old cadres. So some had allied themselves against the reform. After the eventful summer of 1989, Deng had to appease these old cadres, retired or being retired, by restoring their influence to some extent. A subtle balance had been maintained. In the Party’s newspaper, a new slogan, “political stability,” became highly important.

  But such a balance was unstable. The old cadres were sensitive to any move by the reformists. And the investigation directed against Wu was being interpreted as an attack on the old cadres. Wu had been propagating this interpretation to people in Beijing. With his family connections, it would not be too difficult for him to elicit the response he wanted. And the response had come. From the office of the Discipline Committee. From Party Secretary Li. From Internal Security.

  An old high cadre such as Wu Bing, lying unconscious under an oxygen mask in the hospital, must remain untouched, including his mansion, his car, and, needless to say, his children.

  If Chen persisted in conducting it his way, it was going to be his last case.

  Maybe he could still quit.

  Maybe it was already too late.

  Once on a blacklist, there was no escaping the inevitable.

  How far would Party Secretary Li go to protect him?

  Not far, probably, since his downfall would affect Li, too. He was sure that Li, a seasoned politician, would not choose to side with a loser.

  A case had already been built up against him. A case to cover up Wu Xiaoming’s case. What awaited him?

  Years at a reform-through-labor camp in Qinghai Province in a dark prison cell, or even a bullet in the back of his head. Perhaps it was too dramatic to evoke these scenarios at the moment, but he was sure he would be thrown out of the bureau.

  The situation was desperate. Wang had tried to warn him.

  The night air was serene, sweet, along the Bund.

  Behind him, across Zhongshan Road, stood the Peace Hotel with its black-and-red pinnacled roof. He had fantasized about spending an evening there in the jazz bar, in Wang’s company, with the musicians doing a great job with their piano, horns, and drums, and the waiters, starched napkins over their arms, serving Bloody Marys, Manhattans, Black Russians. . . .

  Now they would never have the chance.

  Somehow he was not too worried about her. Attractive, young, smart, Wang had connections of her own. Eventually she would be able to get her passport and visa, and board a Japanese plane. Her decision to leave might prove to be the right one. There was no foretelling China’s future.

  In Tokyo, in a floating silk kimono, kneeling on a mat, and warming a cup of saki for her husband, she would make a wonderful wife. A blaze of cherry blossoms silhouetted against the snow-mantled Mount Fuji.

  At night, as an occasional siren sounded in the sleepless skies, would she still think of him, across the seas, and across the mountains?

  He remembered several lines by Liu Yong, written during the Song dynasty:

  Where shall I find myself

  Tonight, waking from the hangover —

  The riverbank lined with weeping willows,

  The moon sinking, the dawn rising on a breeze.

  Year after year, I will be far,

  Far away from you.

  All the beautiful scenes are unfolding,

  But to no avail:

  Oh, to whom can I speak

  Of this ever enchanting landscape?

  A reversal of positions. In Liu’s poem, Liu was the one leaving his love behind, but now Wang was leaving him.

  As a poet, Liu was a respected name in classical Chinese literature. As a man, Liu had been down and out, drinking, dreaming, and dissipating his best years in brothels. It was even said that his romantic poems were his undoing, for he was despised by his contemporaries, who denounced him with outrage born of orthodox Confucian dignity. Liu died in dire poverty, attended only by a poor prostitute who took a fancy to his poetry, though such a deathbed companion might also have been fabricated. A sugar cube of consolation in a cup full of bitterness.

  In future years, would Wang come back, a happy, prosperous woman? What would have befallen him by that time? No longer a chief inspector. As down and out as Liu. In an increasingly materialistic society, who would take notice of a bookworm capable of nothing except penning a few sentimental lines?

  He shuddered when the big clock atop the Custom Mansions started chiming a new melody. He did not know it, but he liked it.

  It had played a different tune in his high-school days, a melody dedicated to Chairman Mao—”The East Is Red.”

  Times changed.

  Thousands of years earlier, Confucius said, Time flows away like the water in the river.

  He took a deep breath of the summer night air, as if struggling out of the surging current. Then he left the Bund and walked toward the Shanghai Central Post Office.

  Located at the corner of Sichuan Road and Chapu Road, the post office was open twenty-four hours a day. A doorman sat dutifully at the entrance—even at that late hour. Chen nodded at him. In the spacious hall were several oak desks where people could write, but only a couple of people were sitting there, waiting before a row of booths for long distance calls.

  He chose to sit at one of these long desks, and he started writing on a piece of paper with the bureau letterhead. That was what he needed. He did not want it to appear personal. This was serious business, he thought. In the interests of the Party.

  As soon as he started writing, to his surprise, the words seemed to flow from his pen. He stopped only once, to look up at a poster on the wall. The poster reminded him of one he had seen years earlier—a black bird hovering above the horizon, carrying an orange sun on its back. There were two short lines under the picture. “What will come / Will come.”

  Time is a bird, / It perches, and it flies.

  When he had finished, he took a registered-mail envelope, and asked a yawning clerk behind the counter, “How much is a registered letter to Beijing?”

  “Eight Yuan.”

  “Fine,” Chen said. It was worth it. The letter in his hand might be his last card. He was no gambler, but he had to play it. Although, after all these years, its value might only be in his imagination. More likely, a straw, grasped at by a drowning man, he thought.

  The clock was striking two as he left the post office. He nodded again to the doorman still sitting motionless at the gate. The man did not even look up.

  Around the corner, a peddler with a huge pot of tea-leaf-eggs steaming over a coal stove greeted Chen loudly. The smell did not appeal to him; he continued to walk.

  At the intersection of Tianton Road and Sichuan Road, he noticed a glass-and-chrome tower rising silhouetted against a dark backdrop of alleys and siheyuan houses. Floodlights illuminated the construction site as the procession of trucks, heavy equipment, and handcarts carried in material for the building. Like so many other roads, Tianton had been blocked by Shanghai’s effort to regain its status as the nation’s commercial and industrial center. He tried to take a shortcut by turning into Ninhai Market. The market w
as deserted, except for a long line of baskets—plastic, bamboo, rattan—of different shapes and sizes. The line led up to a concrete counter under a wooden sign on which was chalked the words YELLOW CROAKER. The most delicious fish in Shanghai’s housewives’ eyes. The baskets stood for the virtuous wives who would come in an hour or two to pick them up and take their places in line, rubbing their sleepy eyes.

  There was only one night-shift worker standing at the end of the market, his cotton padded collar upturned as high as his ears as he hammered at a gigantic bar of frozen fish in front of the refrigeration house.