by Qiu Xiaolong
Ever since the 95 Supreme Majesty scandal had broken, she’d been living in unceasing trepidation. Though he might not have confided in her about all his dirty business deals, she knew enough to realize that he was finished. As for herself, while she might not end up like him, it was only a matter of time before she was fired. Dang wouldn’t let her keep that crucial position in the department. What’s more, Jiang and his team were putting a lot of pressure on her to speak out against Zhou. She didn’t know what to do, so she called in sick and fled. She needed a break and a place she could quietly think about her options.
“I didn’t think anyone knew about this place,” she concluded.
Her account focused on her own experience, Chen noticed, and it didn’t have much to do with Zhou, though she didn’t try to conceal their relationship.
What could Jiang have wanted from her, considering how anxious he was to have Zhou’s death declared a suicide?
And why had she really fled here, all of a sudden? Presumably there was much pressure put on her, as she claimed, but she should have known that running away only made matters worse.
“What do you intend to do now, Fang?”
“Perhaps I can go back to England. That is, if I’m able to sell the property here.”
“Do you think you could get out of the country? As far as I know, your name and passport picture have been sent to the customs authorities throughout the country.”
She didn’t respond.
“Let’s talk a bit more about Zhou,” Chen said.
“What more can I tell you? Jiang believes I know ‘secrets’ about Zhou, but Zhou always told me that it wouldn’t do me any good to know about his business. I really believe he was trying to keep my interests in mind,” she said, with a catch in her voice. “He told me one day that everything he did for me was because I had been so nice to him in the old neighborhood. Allegedly, as a little girl, I’d flashed a sweet smile at him one day when he was utterly down and out. That was when he was working at a neighborhood production group for seventy cents a day and not seeing any light at the end of the dark tunnel.”
“It’s just like Jia Yucun at the beginning of Dream of the Red Chamber,” Chen commented without elaborating on it. It was possible that the archetype of an appreciation for beauty overwhelmed Zhou.
“I just did what I was supposed to do as the department secretary, never inquisitively or intrusively.”
“Did he have any other secretaries?”
“You mean little secretaries? Not in the office. Some people said that he kept me simply as a cover for other ones. I suppose that’s possible, but I don’t think he had the time for that.”
“But as his secretary, you surely know some of the confidential details about his work.”
“He worked hard and was under a lot of pressure,” she said, discernibly hesitant. “It was not an easy job for him. Nominally, he was the one in charge of land and housing development for the city, but there were so many other officials anxious to have a finger in the pie. He had to walk a tightrope all the time. For instance, there was the scandal of the West Eight Blocks. The head of the Jing’an District practically gave the land away, selling it at an incredibly low price to the developer. The developer got a loan on it for five times the amount he’d paid. Zhou knew about that, but the district head had already gotten approval for the deal from Zhou’s superior. What could Zhou do with those higher-ups who were far more powerful? He didn’t really talk to me about those things, but they weren’t really secrets, not in today’s China.”
“Yes, I have heard of the West Eight Blocks. The head of Jing’an District was shuangguied because of it, but the scandal didn’t touch Zhou. Not at the time.”
“Whatever sort of official Zhou might have been, he was good to me,” she said, her head hanging low. “It’s not fair that Zhou alone was to be punished when it’s really like a chain of crabs bound together on a straw rope—all connected.”
She then went on, repeating what she’d already said, adding nothing new or substantial.
But Chen didn’t believe she was telling him everything. He had to break down her resistance.
“I don’t know how I can help you if you don’t tell me everything,” Chen said, interrupting. He brought out the envelope from Melong and handed it to her. “Take a look.”
Her hand was trembling as she took out the pictures.
“So it was you, Chief Inspector Chen?”
“What do you mean?”
“I was sent copies of these pictures a couple of days ago.”
“Really! I didn’t send those. Do you know who else might have sent them?”
“No, I don’t. It looks like everybody is trying to blackmail or threaten me.”
“Everybody? Tell me about it.”
“The day I got these pictures, Jiang and his people came to talk to me, saying that the consequences would be too much for me if I didn’t cooperate. And then, that evening, Dang also called, telling me I would have to give up.”
“Give what up?”
“I don’t know what he meant. Tell Jiang’s people everything? Give them something that they believed Zhou had given to me? But the message I got was that if I didn’t do what they told me to do, then the pictures would come to light. That’s why I ran away.”
“Can you guess where I found the pictures?” Chen asked deliberately. “On Dang’s computer.”
“What?!”
“He’s after something, but what it is, I don’t know.”
“Zhou had already had his name dragged through the mud. I didn’t want that to happen again, not because of me. He told me he’d kept this property a secret, so I came here.”
“But you can’t hide out for long. What then?”
“I don’t know. I’ll be able to eke out an existence, I think, for two or three months on my savings. The storm may have blown over by then, and I’ll be able to turn a page somewhere else.”
So the pressure Dang and Jiang were putting on her wasn’t to get her to speak out against Zhou but for her to give them something they thought Zhou had entrusted to her.
Her story was so unlikely that Chen believed it was actually true, whether or not she was innocent. But what could Dang be after? For that matter, what could Jiang and his team want so desperately? This opened up totally new possibilities.
“Hidden treasure?” he murmured, almost to himself.
Zhou was said to have amassed a huge fortune, and what had been exposed on the Internet was merely the tip of the iceberg. Dang must believe that Fang knew about it.
Was that what Jiang was after, too? It wasn’t likely. It could be a huge amount but not so much that it would be worth such an effort on the part of the city government. If any more details about such corruption were to leak out, it wouldn’t do the city government any good.
“Those people are capable of anything,” she muttered, though not in response to Chen.
Jiang’s continuous presence at Moller Villa could possibly backfire on him now, with the Beijing team stationed at the same hotel. Even though Fang might not have told him everything, hemming and hawing as she had about details, her fear was genuine. If Zhou had been murdered for something—whatever that might be, Chen had no clue and too little knowledge to speculate—that something was still out there, and Fang wasn’t an unlikely next target on the list. That was the real reason she’d run away.
She hadn’t said that in so many words, but she didn’t have to.
Zhou might have hidden the something away—this crucially important “something”—but could it possibly be in her possession? From what Chen could see, while it might have been a matter of life and death to Zhou, it wasn’t to Fang. There was no point in her holding on to it, particularly at the expense of becoming a fugitive.
At the same time, it had to be something that was a fatal threat to Jiang and his people, and something Zhou believed would provide him protection. Nothing like that had come to the surface yet—not as far as
Chen could see.
Then how could he help Fang? With others watching and plotting for reasons unknown—to him, and perhaps to one another—it’d be better not to reveal her whereabouts to any of them. Otherwise, before he was capable of making a move, she’d be snatched out of his hands.
He dipped a piece of stinking tofu in the hot sauce. It was slightly cold yet still crispy, but the hot sauce wasn’t spicy enough, just as Lu Xun had deplored in a story. It was probably titled “In the Tavern.”
Fang’s staying here wouldn’t harm anybody, he decided. Nor would it obstruct the investigation of Zhou’s death. Turning to Fang, he said, “Things are complicated. Because of Zhou’s position and because of his connections, you might as well stay here for a while, for your own safety. You’ll have to avoid contacting others. Do your parents have any idea where you are?”
“No, they don’t. They’re old-fashioned people. They would be upset that I have a villa given to me by Zhou, so I’ve never told them anything about it.”
“That’s good. Don’t contact them, either—not until I tell you it’s okay. It won’t be too long. Soon there may be a drastic change in the situation,” he said, not saying more than was necessary. “In the meantime, if you can think of anything that might have caused Zhou’s death, or about things he might have left behind—anything at all—let me know immediately. You have my cell number. But make sure that you call from a public pay phone, one that’s not near here. You’re right about one thing. Those people are capable of anything.”
TWENTY
IT NEVER RAINS BUT it pours.
Lianping thought this as she sat in a Shaoxing taxi, toying with the cell phone in her hand.
While on the way to Lanting Park, where she was going to meet Chief Inspector Chen, she’d received an unexpected call from Xiang.
Xiang offered no explanation about why he had left Shanghai so abruptly and had neglected to call her for almost two weeks, except to say that he’d been extremely busy. Not just during the day but also late into the night. It was no secret that a lot of business deals were done at the dinner table, by the karaoke machine, or in the massage room at the baths. These were all characteristic of China’s socialism, and she knew better than to probe or protest. For a young man of the so-called “wealthy second generation,” his devotion to business was commonly seen as a plus.
The reason he finally called her was that, according to him, he’d just signed a major deal crucial to the future of his company and he wanted to celebrate with her. He also said that he would have a huge surprise for her when he returned early next week.
She was reminded of a Tang dynasty poem from the collection translated by Chen.
How many times / I have been let down / by the busy merchant of Qutang / since I married him! / The tide always keeps its word / to come, alas. / Had I known that, / I would have married the tide rider.
She hadn’t expected the call from Chen, either. For that matter, Chen was just as busy, if not more. She’d invited him to the Shaoxing festival in an impulsive moment. He promised he’d think about it, but that usually meant no, especially considering how overwhelmed he was by the investigation.
Still, she was amazed at how many times he’d seen her the past week. That could be because of his work, she told herself. His visit to the Wenhui office might have been mainly because of the cop killed on a nearby street, and his last-minute request that she join him at the temple because Detective Yu was a close friend and coworker. But to her surprise, Chen had come to Shaoxing, even though he’d missed the major event of the festival—the meeting at Lu Xun’s residence.
Could that have been deliberate? She had to be at that meeting for her article, but there would be no point in his wasting his time with those empty political talks. Unlike her, he didn’t have to worry about the expense involved in coming to Shaoxing. So it was possible he’d come there because of her.
The taxi was pulling up along a quaint street. Looking out, she saw Chen standing near the park entrance and waving to her, tickets in hand. However she might interpret the motives for his trip to Shaoxing, he was here, waiting for her, and that was what really mattered.
He came over and opened the taxi door for her.
“I wanted to surprise you, Lianping.”
“You certainly did that. I thought you’d abandoned me. But you must have already had plans for the day.” She waited, her brows tilting when he failed to respond immediately.
“We have the afternoon to ourselves,” he said. “Later, we could rent a black-awning boat, like in Lu Xun’s stories, and sail into the eventide.”
At the moment, she couldn’t recall any stories about a black-awning boat sailing into the dusk, but it was enough to be walking in the park with him.
“Sorry I missed the morning event,” he said.
“No big loss for you. You know how boring conference speeches can be,” she said.
The elderly gateman of the park didn’t even look up from the local newspaper he was reading with intense absorption. He just waved them in after Chen dropped the tickets into the green plastic box. They were just another tourist couple wandering around looking for something interesting to do on a rainy afternoon.
The park matched the description in the brochure Lianping had glanced through. There were pavilions with tilted eaves, white stone bridges arching over green water, and verdant bamboo groves scattered here and there, with memories of the area’s history whispering through it all.
Wang Xizi, a celebrated calligrapher, spent most of his life in Shaoxing during the Jin dynasty in the fourth century. He was commonly called the sage of calligraphy, unrivaled in caoshu, the semicursive script. His most renowned work was the “Preface to the Poems Composed at the Lanting Orchid Pavilion,” an introduction to the poems composed by a group of writers during a gathering at Lanting. The original calligraphy was long lost, but some finely traced copies and rubbings remained.
“Look at these statuettes of white geese in the green meadow. There are so many stories about them in classical Chinese literature,” Chen said in high spirits. Perhaps his mood was due to the change of scenery, Lianping thought. She didn’t think he was trying to impress her. There was no need for him to do so. “According to one legend, Wang learned how to turn the brush from watching the geese parading around here.”
She wasn’t that intrigued by these stories, which were from so long ago and far away. Chen was walking close to her, though, and that made all the difference. But Xiang was coming back, something she decided not to think about at the moment.
Despite the many legends about the park, they were the only tourists there. They sauntered over to a stream embosomed in trees and bamboos, where a fitful breeze brought down a flutter of glistening raindrops from the green boughs above.
“It’s here. This is Lanting,” he exclaimed. “Wang and the other poets gathered at this stream, engaged in a wine-poem game.”
“A wine-poem game?”
“They let wine cups flow down from the head of the stream. If a cup came to a stop in front of someone, he had to write a poem. If he failed to do so, he had to drink three cups as punishment. The poems were then collected, and Wang composed a preface to the collection. He must have been very drunk, flourishing his brush pen inspired by the exquisite scene. That preface marks the very peak of his calligraphy.”
“That’s incredible.”
“Many years later, in the Tang dynasty, Du Mu wrote a poem about the scene. ‘Regretfully we cannot stop time from flowing away. / Why not, then, enjoy ourselves in a wine game by the stream? / A blaze of blossom appears, indifferent, year after year. / Lament not at its withering, but at its burgeoning.’”
“I’ve never read it, Poet Chen. That’s a marvelous poem, but the last line is a little beyond me.”
“When I first read the poem, probably at your age, I didn’t understand the ending, either. Now I think I do. When it first blooms, it’s still full of dreams and hope, but there’s noth
ing you can do to slow the journey from blooming to withering. That’s something to lament.”
She was intrigued by his interpretation. She tried to conjure up the ancient scene of the poets reading and writing here, but she failed.
“The times have changed,” he said, as if reading her thoughts.
It was engaging to have him talking like an experienced guide, she thought as they strolled in sight of a yellow silk banner streaming in the breeze over an antique-looking hall. The banner read, “Calligraphy and Painting—Free to People Who Really Appreciate Chinese Art.”
“Free?” she said. “Perhaps people here at Lanting still practice art for art’s sake, like in ancient days. We might find a scroll of the poem you just recited to me.”
They entered the hall. The front part of it had been turned into an exhibition room, with scrolls hanging from the walls. To their puzzlement, each of the scrolls was marked with a price, not exorbitant but not cheap, either. Behind a glass counter near the entrance, a man wearing an umber-colored Chinese gown stood up, grinning. He read the question in their eyes and said, “They’re free. We just charge for the cost of making them into scrolls.”
“Exactly. Writers and artists cannot live on the northwest wind,” Chen commented. “If you add up all the paintings and calligraphies in this hall, you couldn’t buy one square meter in the subdivision of Binjiang Garden.”
“Ah yes, the Binjiang Garden in Pudong. The paper mansion that the Yus burned at the temple was in that subdivision,” Lianping said.
