A Case of Two Cities

by Qiu Xiaolong

  The traffic was bad, as usual. Along Yen’an Road, the taxi simply crawled, like a disoriented ant. It had grown dark when the taxi finally arrived at the high-end apartment complex on Wuzhong Road. There were a couple of guards standing at the entrance. Apparently it was a secure, high-class neighborhood.

  The apartment building in question had already been roped off. A man in plainclothes standing near the entrance recognized the chief inspector, nodding vigorously, but Chen failed to place him.

  Kuang was waiting for Chen outside the apartment on the third floor, waving a newspaper like a fan. A short skinny man in his early thirties, Kuang had protruding eyes like a special kind of goldfish Chen had seen in his childhood.

  Chen went up and said, “Well?”

  “Doctor Xia has come and left,” Kuang said. “According to him, she was strangled to death early in the morning. Possibly around two o’clock. Having had sex shortly before. Rape of some sort. The criminal used a condom.”

  “That’s uncommon in the best area of Shanghai. The murderer might not have been a stranger to her.”

  “That’s possible. He could have committed the crime after having consensual sex with her. There is no sign of forced entry, no bruises on her body, no noise heard by the neighbors. The location of the apartment complex makes the scenario of a stranger breaking in hardly possible.”

  It was not unimaginable for a woman like her, with a husband away in Germany for years, to have a lover, in the city of Shanghai, in the nineties. She had had one, at least, Chen knew.

  He walked with Kuang into the bedroom, where her body had not been moved yet. On her back on the carpet, An lay spread-eagled, wrapped in a white terry robe that slipped high up, revealing her bare thighs and belly. Her silk lace panties were removed, not torn, but rumpled into a ball beside her. Her face turned to one side, already bluish under the light. He noticed that her skin was slightly waxy. Her fingernails and toenails, painted scarlet, looked unbroken, unsoiled.

  He had seen her numerous times on TV, always elegantly dressed, reading the news with a halo of political correctness. He had never imagined his last image of her would be like this. It would perhaps haunt him for a long time.

  He knelt down and gazed into her eyes, which stared back, unblinking. The corneas appeared cloudy, which reinforced Dr. Xia’s estimate of the time of death. He studied her face for a minute before touching her eyelids. He muttered almost inaudibly, “I’ll catch the murderer, An.”

  To his astonishment, her eyes closed slowly, as if in response to his words.

  “Wow! It’s like in those old stories,” Kuang exclaimed in a low, shocked voice. “Your touch worked the miracle.”

  In a story Chen had heard long ago, a murdered woman refused to close her eyes until someone swore her revenge. Kuang, too, must have heard it. Chen was also aware of the consternation implied in Kuang’s comment. For in that particular tale, the man who swore her revenge was romantically involved with her. It wasn’t the moment, however, for Chen to be concerned about his colleague’s interpretation.

  He remained standing beside her, staring, trying and failing to imagine what could have crossed her mind in her last moment. The effort was momentous to him, sort of establishing a bond of pledge between the living and the dead.

  Beside him, Kuang started elaborating his theory of a rape murder case in detail.

  Chen listened, nodding, his eyes now fixed on An’s family picture in a crystal frame on the nightstand. An, Han, and their son, all of them smiling and basking in the happy sunlight on the Bund. Possibly taken in the days before Han’s departure to Germany, their marriage probably already on the rocks. The picture still told a story expected by the camera. Smile- click-done. But the fact that the picture remained on the nightstand in her last days saddened Chen.

  The scene behind An’s family might not be far away from Golden Island, for he noticed the neon sign of Kentucky Chicken, which had enjoyed a tremendous success in Shanghai, in a colonial building at the corner between Yen’an and Zhongshan Roads. The building had been named East Wind Restaurant in the seventies, and even earlier, at the beginning of the twentieth century, it was the Shanghai Club, a prestigious establishment that catered to English expatriates and featured the longest bar in the world at the time. Whatever its names, the building had a much longer life.

  Chen did not say anything to Kuang. An’s death must be related to the Xing investigation, but he saw no point discussing it with the young cop.

  Kuang might have been baffled by the inscrutable chief inspector, who made little response to his analysis. For Kuang, there were also earlier questions left unanswered. Chen’s call to her, for one.

  When the morgue people came to carry away the body, Chen said to Kuang that he would like to stay there for a while, alone. Kuang nodded and left in respectful confusion.

  Chen stepped out onto a tiny balcony overlooking the area. It was a high-end subdivision. Down there were parking spaces outlined for the residents. He didn’t know which car was hers. He then noticed a broken guitar, apparently long untouched, dust-covered, in a corner of the balcony. Once again, a poem came to him out of the unlikely moment, this one by Li Bai, a Tang dynasty poet from hundreds of years earlier.

  The moon touching the autumn’s first-born frost,

  she still wears her silk dress

  too flimsy for the night,

  playing the silver lute,

  long and hard,

  in the courtyard,

  unable to bring herself back

  to the empty room.

  Chief Inspector Chen was not intent on searching the room one more time. Had there been something important, it must have been taken away. Still, he wanted to hang on there.

  He pulled out the small drawer of the nightstand. Among some scrap papers was an address book. Its cover bore the faded emblem of the TV station with the year 1982 printed. He opened it and found it belonged to Han. Most of the addresses and phone numbers must be outdated. On a page he saw a quote from the beginning of A Tale of Two Cities. It was perhaps in their reading-group days. The address book might have been there only for sentimental reasons. Still, he put it in his pocket.

  Now, in the room where she had spent her last days, he chose to see her life in a new light. He did not want to see An simply as someone in a corruption case. Her involvement was admittedly a mistake on her part, but could she have done all that because of her loneliness? People had to keep themselves busy with one thing or another, like himself. A public relations company might not have been a bad idea in itself, and it was natural for someone in PR to work with businesspeople like Ming. As for her personal life, Chen thought he was no judge-he knew he wouldn’t like to be judged by others.

  What would her life have been like if things had remained as they were in their reading-group days? Both An and Han might have been here, like so many others. A contented wife, opening a colorful career album over the weekend…

  He pulled himself back from these useless thoughts. Some people had complained in the bureau that Chen wasn’t meant to be a cop-and perhaps he was indeed still too romantic for such a career.

  But it was a battle of life and death now. An was not innocent, but she could have lived with her problems. It was his investigation that had led to her death. And the least he could, and should, do was to bring the criminal to justice for her.

  Someone had forestalled him. In spite of his precautions, the path had been anticipated and blocked as soon as he had turned mistakenly pleased with his Chen trail-in targeting someone not conspicuous, and in a roundabout way. All his efforts had fallen through and he did not know which link had gone wrong. That was the terrifying part. It appeared he remained in the light, while the enemy remained in the dark, ready to pounce on him.

  There were a lot of things he did not know, but he was almost sure-no use pretending to himself-that she had alarmed some people in her effort to find the whereabouts of Ming. She must have made phone calls.

/>   So that would be the direction for him: her telephone records for the last few days. But the case was not assigned to the special case squad. His pushing Sergeant Kuang would be like attempting to cook in somebody else’s kitchen.

  What was worse, if he himself was under watch, as he suspected, any steps taken by him could have consequences, not only for him. He thought of what Dong had ominously suggested.

  ***

  That night, he failed to fall asleep for a long while. A cricket chirped intermittently, not too far away, rubbing its wings in a corner of the room. He stared up at the ceiling like one possessed. In his police experience, he had occasionally speculated on the possibility of investigating a victim close to him. An was not exactly close-never had been. Still, she had been nice to him in the reading-group days. More than anything else, he cherished the memories of their literary passion then.

  One evening, he recollected, after their reading activity, four of them walked into a shabby ramshackle eatery near the Bund. Han, An, Ding, and he, sitting around a rough wood table. They were poor, ordering plain noodles, sharing a tiny dish of roast Beijing duck, and spending two hours over a poem, to the great annoyance of a white-haired waiter.

  Tonight, the same night cloud, the same siren over the river, the same petrel flying, perhaps, as if out of a calendar, in spite of all the changes…

  Lying on his bed, he also thought of Han, who by now must have learned about his wife’s death, and of Ding, who seemed to have disappeared in the south. Chen, alone, was the one still hanging on there. He should be grateful, he contemplated, for being able to do something for those not as lucky.

  And he fell asleep with a new plan for his action.

  8

  CHIEF INSPECTOR CHEN ADOPTED a different approach with Jiang Xiaodong, the Director of the City Land Development Office.

  It was an attempt with dual purpose. He had to investigate Jiang’s involvement in both the An case and the Xing case.

  According to the information initially given to Chen, Jiang had never met Xing in privacy. Nor was there any record of his meeting with Ming. But for those pictures with An, no one could have suspected there was anything untoward about the approval of the land development.

  But Chen was not going to use the pictures too early. The scandal would spell the downfall of the corrupt director, but it would not necessarily prove Jiang a murderer nor lead to a breakthrough in the Xing investigation.

  So Chen started by focusing on something small, the company car service for Jiang. In China, a Party cadre, once promoted to a certain rank, would be provided with a company car. Theoretically, the car was meant for business use only, but a dinner or karaoke party could be claimed as necessary for business. No one would raise any question about those requests. At the rank of a chief inspector, Chen had the use of the bureau car, though not exclusively, and not with a designated driver. At Jiang’s rank, a car and driver were at his service, but they were not available twenty-four hours a day or parked at his residence. Jiang still had to call beforehand. So the chief inspector would check through the Chen trail first.

  Early in the morning, Chen went to Jiang’s office, which, like Dong’s, was located in the City Government Building. Instead of entering the building, he headed straight for the parking lot, where he saw a small office with a couple of people dispatching various cars. It took him no time to find out that Jiang’s driver was Lai Shan. Lai had already left to get the car maintenanced that morning, so Chen had to wait there patiently.

  Around ten-thirty, someone in the office said to Chen, “Lai has come back. He’s probably going to have lunch in his car. A couple of steamed buns-you know.”

  Chen stepped out to find Lai, but quickly changed his mind. He walked out to the square and hailed a taxi to Xinya Restaurant on Nanjing Road. It took him only five minutes to get to the restaurant, where he had the taxi wait for him. He chose a roast Guangdong duck, had the chef slice it, meat and skin together, and put it into a plastic box. He had the duck bones put into a larger plastic box and, in addition, he got steamed buns and a six-pack of Budweiser. He then rushed back.

  Lai was a man in his early fifties, short, swarthy. He was reading a newspaper in the car, yawning, staring out at the approaching cop. Chen handed in his business card with a plastic lunch box in his hand.

  “I’m Chen Cao, of the Shanghai Police Bureau. I have a couple of questions for you. Nothing wrong with you, Comrade Lai. Don’t be alarmed. I happen to know you have not had lunch yet, neither have I. So how about us talking over our lunch together?”

  “Fine. I only have cold buns,” Lai said, eyeing him up and down. “If my boss needs me, I have to move immediately.”

  Chen moved in and put the plastic box between them. A popular way to eat a roast duck was to have the duck slices wrapped in pancakes, but it was not too bad wrapped in the soft, warm buns from Xinya. When Chen popped open the beer, it was like opening the chatterbox between them.

  “ Guangdong roast duck is different from Beijing roast duck, not so fatty. So I had the chef slice the meat and skin together.”

  “Yes, I had Beijing roast duck last night. Nothing but crisp duck skin in pancakes, with green onion and Beijing sauce. Really tasty, but I like duck meat too. Guangdong roast duck is better for me.”

  “It’s a pity that we can’t have the duck bone soup here,” Chen said, finishing the second bun. “It has to be hot, with a lot of pepper.”

  “Exactly, that’s one of the three celebrated ways to eat a duck,” Lai said, smacking his lips. “Thank you so much for the lunch. I have heard your name before, Chief Inspector Chen. No free lunch in the way of the world, I know. You are a busy man with a lot of questions. So go ahead.”

  “Did Director Jiang use your car last night?”

  “No, Jiang didn’t request the car service last night. I was at a wedding. My friend’s daughter got married at Yanyun Pavilion.” Lai took a picture out of his wallet. “Look at the picture. What a grand wedding. Twenty-five tables altogether. And an impressive array of luxury cars. The bride had an uncle coming in a Mercedes, and they insisted on my driving the Lexus there too.”

  Chen took a glance at the picture. The date was imprinted on the right corner of it. No mistake about the date. The part about luxury cars also sounded true. It was an age when being rich meant being glorious. For a wedding, people would show off their wealth in whatever way possible.

  “Let me ask you a different question. Does Director Jiang use your car all the time?”

  “Theoretically, my job is from eight to five, but as you know, there’re a lot of dinner parties in the evening. To be fair to Jiang, he makes a point of discussing his schedule with me. So like today, I took my wife to hospital in the morning. And he gives me twenty extra hours every month. That helps.”

  “So he uses your car all the time-late into the night?”

  “For really personal business,” Lai said slowly, “Director Jiang does not always request my service. Taxis are available outside that famous subdivision of his-Riverside Villas. It takes too much time for me to get there.”

  “I see. Does he ever drive himself?”

  “No, he doesn’t. So he doesn’t have the car parked in his subdivision. It saves me one and half hours of taking bus home, the tunnel is usually terrible with traffic congestion.”

  But that didn’t necessarily mean Jiang stayed at home last night. In fact, Chen himself didn’t request car service all the time either. For his visit to the bathhouse, for instance, or his date at Golden Island. As a fast-rising Party cadre, he had to be careful about his image. He thought he detected a slightly sarcastic note in Lai’s emphasis on “really personal business.”

  “One more question-what is his schedule for the day?”

  “He’s going to Qingpu in the afternoon. Then there will be a dinner party there. I don’t think I will make it back until after ten. Is there something you want to talk to him about today?”

  “No, I’ve finishe
d all my questions. The last one was really for the duck bones. You’d better keep them in a refrigerator if you’re going back home so late.”

  “I see. Yes, there’s a refrigerator in the office.”

  “That’ll be great. To make the duck bone soup, you have to cook them over a small fire for two hours at least, I think, until the soup turns milky white. You can add some cucumber slices into the soup with a handful of black peppers,” Chen said, pushing open the door. “It’s been a wonderful lunch, Lai. I don’t think you need to mention it to anybody. Bye.”

  “Bye. Chief-” Lai reached out of the car, a piece of duck in his hand and puzzlement in his eyes. It could have appeared like a free lunch to him, an inexplicable one. Chen did not think Lai would talk to Jiang about it.

  Chen then hailed a taxi, telling the driver to go to Riverside Villas in Pudong.

  “Go through the tunnel?” the driver said.

  “Yes,” Chen said. “It’s quicker.”

  “Perhaps, if there’s no traffic.”

  Pudong had once been a largely rural area east of the Huangpu River, with a few old factories interspersed here and there. In his days of English studies at Bund Park, the view across the river was mostly an expanse of somber-colored farmland. There was a popular saying at the time, he remembered: A bed west of the river is better than a room east of the river. At the end of the eighties, however, the city government began a tremendous effort to turn Pudong into the Wall Street of Asia, declaring it a special zone and offering attractive government policies for foreign investment. The landscape soon underwent a fundamental change; new buildings shot up, and housing prices soared to the skies.

  Chen had heard of the Riverside Villas. It was one of the most expensive new residential areas in Shanghai, bordering on the eastern bank of the Huangpu and boasting a superb view of the river and of the Bund across it. People described the area as another Bund, even more modern and magnificent. Such a change no one would have dreamed of half a decade earlier. Jiang must have purchased the apartment here through his insider knowledge.