by Xiaolong Qiu
‘I think that’s him. Did he come this week?’
‘Yes, he came yesterday. Like always, he bit into the ball the moment he got it from my hand. “Have to have it warm,” that’s what he always says. And it is still warm today too, thanks to the cotton-padded army coat. It keeps the rice warm.’
So saying, the chef scooped up the remaining rice from the container, put in half a fried dough stick, rolled it into a ball, and handed it to Chen.
Like Huang, Chen bit into it at once; it tasted warm, soft, satisfying.
Taking another small, slow bite, he felt grateful for one thing that had happened to Huang just before he met his untimely end. At least the old gourmet had enjoyed his favorite rice ball on the last morning of his life.
Huang’s last epicurean bliss aside, it made sense for such a street snack stall to survive in the area, Chen reflected, chewing at the inexpensive yet delicious rice ball, which was probably what most of the people in the neighborhood could afford.
But it was unbelievable for a wealthy old man like Huang to come all the way to the street corner stall – not without the knowledge of his formative years at the neighborhood production group in the poverty-stricken area.
Nor did it make sense for the violent mugging to happen there so early in the morning.
Chen went on taking extra small bites, like Huang, relishing the rice ball to the last bite. The ex-inspector did not think he would ever come back to the street corner stall.
He then took a walk around the crime scene, which was no more than five minutes’ walk from the rice ball stall.
Equally poverty-ridden, desolate, with some of the old houses demolished, and some stubbornly still hanging on, and some broken walls sticking out of the debris, the lane-like road made possible a short cut for the local residents to Pingliang Road, but at that early hour, hardly a single soul was visible.
So, what could have been the possible connection between the Min case and the Huang case?
Nothing, except that Huang had been a regular guest at Min’s dinner parties, and they shared some not-that-illegal business connections in secret.
If anything, the early morning venture served to confirm only one thing for Chen. For the killing at that unlikely hour, and in that unlikely place, it could not have been a reckless mugging that went wrong.
Heading back toward home, he felt so drained in spite of the rice ball. He had got up too early. The subway train began to feel insufferably overcrowded, and he became increasingly bugged by the various scenarios of Huang’s murder, none of which appeared to be that convincing to him.
But an unexpected phone call came in from Jin as he got off the train. He looked at the time on the phone. It was not eight o’clock yet.
‘Sorry to call you so early. Last night, Director Ma called me. It was quite late, so I did not report to you then as you might have gone to bed.’
‘What was Director Ma’s phone call about?’
‘Regarding the conclusion of the Judge Jiao scandal, the Liberation Daily made a point in its editorial about the nationwide system called “Heavenly Eyes” – the surveillance cameras installed everywhere – making it impossible for the culprits to go undetected and unpunished in today’s China. Some netizens have responded in a surprising way, condemning it as much worse than in 1984 in terms of the authoritarian governmental control. So Director Ma wanted me to ask you whether our office would issue another statement about it.’
‘An endorsement of the practice of “Heavenly Eyes” in the name of our office? No, I know so little about the so-called surveillance system. Nor have I read George Orwell’s 1984. So I don’t know what to say about the situation. Besides, I don’t think I’m up to the research about it any time soon – you know my health problems.’
Things in China really were getting worse than in 1984. He knew, but he did not have to say it. People also knew.
‘I see your point. But where are you, Director Chen? A lot of traffic noise in the background.’
‘I’m just taking a walk out in the morning. The fresh air may do me some good.’
‘Yes, you’re still on convalescent leave. By the way, have you checked the air quality forecast this morning? The polluted air won’t be helpful to your recovery. Hopefully you’re not jogging. In an article I’ve just read, jogging in the polluted air can have disastrous consequences. I’ll talk to Director Ma about your health issues. Don’t worry about it, Director Chen.’
When he got back to his apartment, he sat at his desk by the window, his mind a blank.
He took out a piece of paper, on which he had drawn a number of dots around the Min case in the last few days. They refused to be connected, however, with a straight line. He dropped some words in the margin of the paper, with two more lines drawn in parallel, but all his efforts led to nothing.
Looking out of the window, he saw a white-haired woman picking up a bundle of old newspapers dumped near the neighborhood trash can, wiping a hand across her mouth and grinning from ear to ear. A bright red convertible sped through the grayness of the morning, a young girl beside the driver throwing some scraps out into the wind, laughing like silver bells.
Then he tried to piece together the fragments of what he had thought of when still lying in bed in the morning, before making the trip to Yangpu District. But some of the ideas, so vividly poignant to him at the time, turned out to be neither clear nor logical as he re-examined now.
In frustration, he laid himself down on the sofa, stretching out and pulling over a throw, ready for a nap. He had never felt so tired before.
A convalescent leave might be what he needed after all, he concluded, staring up at the water-stained ceiling with a touch of self-satire as he began dozing off.
He did not know how long he had slept on the sofa before he became aware of being stranded in another horrible dream, which faded fast in confusion as he was startled awake by a phone call from Old Hunter.
‘Horror!’
‘What, Old Hunter?’ It seemed as if the old man had intruded into his dream.
‘Come to the Old Teahouse right now, Chief.’
‘Which one?’
‘The one not far from the Writers’ Association on Shanxi Road, you know.’
He knew.
Old Hunter met him at the teahouse close to the overpass at the intersection of Yan’an and Shanxi Roads. It was an old-fashioned teahouse they had visited several times together. Old Hunter simply referred to it as the ‘Old Teahouse’.
From their mahogany table, Chen thought he could catch a glimpse of the steeple of the Moller Villa Hotel at a distance across the street. He could not help but begin to wonder at Old Hunter’s choice of teahouse.
‘Another shocking development this morning,’ Old Hunter said straightforwardly, not at all like a Suzhou opera singer, though with a purple-sand pot of tea, and a white folding fan placed in front of him on the table, he still looked like one.
‘What happened?’ Chen said, without so much as taking a sip of the tea.
‘Someone broke into Min’s hotel room last night.’
‘Something happened to her?’
‘No, she was not hurt.’
‘But she has been kept in an undisclosed location guarded by Internal Security, hasn’t she?’
‘If Sima was able to find out she was being kept in the Moller Villa Hotel, so could others. That’s where I wanted to take you out for coffee, you know.’
‘Yes, I knew. I’ve been there before, for the investigation of another shuanggui case. I was afraid people might have recognized me there.’
‘According to Sima, Min was initially kept in an undisclosed detention place, but with the case becoming so high-profile on the Internet, journalists were anxious to get hold of her for spicy and salacious material. Consequently, she was secretly moved into the hotel for better security. She stayed in a luxurious suite, where she lacked nothing, almost like an all-paid vacation. The Shanghai Police Bureau was then told to send some
one to the suite, so no one would be able to approach her there. Wanxia was chosen for the twenty-four-hour job.’
‘Wanxia of the homicide squad?’
‘Yes. It’s no longer a case for the homicide squad, but Party Secretary Li insisted that a policewoman be sent to the hotel, as Internal Security had a hard time finding someone appropriate at short notice. To be fair to Li, it was not considered a dangerous job. She would simply stay in the guest room, and sleep there too. Naturally Min was not pleased with such a “human surveillance camera”, but she had no choice. Last night, Min went to bed earlier than usual, complaining of a headache. Wanxia remained alone in the living room, working on her laptop. Around nine thirty, a hotel attendant in uniform knocked on the door, and pushed in a cart with a special night meal.
‘As recorded in the surveillance camera in the room, the attendant said to Wanxia with a bow, “Compliments from the hotel, the fresh egg noodles made by a special noodle machine in the hotel.”
‘Wanxia must have taken it as something common in a fancy hotel. Without waking up Min, she finished the noodles with the four small dishes—’
‘Across-bridge noodles, I think. Tiny dishes served separately as the toppings.’
‘Less than ten minutes later,’ Old Hunter went on without responding to Chen’s comment on the noodles, ‘she was doubled over, holding on to her stomach in unbearable pain. She dialed the front desk for help. The hotel people lost no time putting her in a car and rushing her out to a hospital nearby.
‘She was hurting really bad, but she still had the presence of mind to tell the people in the car about what had happened earlier in the hotel room.’
‘You mean she was poisoned by the egg noodles?’
‘The hotel management later confirmed her suspicion. There was no order for room service from Min’s suite. Neither any night meal sent as the compliment of the hotel, nor any in-house special noodle machine. As a rule, the hotel orders noodles from a workshop on Changle Street every morning.’
‘What then—’
‘She lost consciousness in the car. No life sign of hers was visible when they reached the hospital. Wanxia did not make it—’
But Old Hunter was unable to go on as a phone call came in to Chen from Detective Yu, interrupting their talk.
‘I’ve just told Detective Xiong, Chief, that you’re talking with someone at the teahouse, which is close to the hotel. He has no objection to your coming over there for a look.’
So Director Chen would be said not to be doing any investigating, but just taking a look at the scene in the hotel since he happened to be in the neighborhood that morning. A convenient pretext with a tacit understanding between them. Detective Xiong must have been so stressed out.
‘You have so many things on at the agency, Old Hunter,’ Chen said, rising. ‘You don’t have to go to the hotel with me, but we’ll have our tea again soon.’
Old Hunter nodded, draining the tea.
Detective Xiong met Chen at the hotel entrance guarded by a pair of crouching oriental stone lions.
Xiong was a tall, wiry man in his early forties with a severe receding hairline, which became more pronounced with his hard-knitted frown that morning.
‘Detective Yu must have told you about what happened at the hotel last night, Chief Inspector Chen. So let’s go to her room suite.’
Detective Xiong seemed to think that it was Detective Yu who had briefed Chen, but at that moment it hardly mattered who had done the briefing for the ex-inspector.
‘Detective Yu feels so bad about it,’ Chen said vaguely. ‘It was through his introduction that Wanxia came to work in our police bureau, I still remember.’
The suite Min had stayed in turned out to be a spacious one in a northern European style with Asian elements blended in, especially with the crouching-tiger-shaped attic windows and exposed ceiling beams.
Min must have been moved somewhere else in an extreme hurry by Internal Security, with her bed still unmade and several pieces of her clothing left behind in disarray in her bedroom. Even Detective Xiong did not know her whereabouts for the moment.
The living room was in a worse shape, with the food cart still left there, but plates and bowl gone, and a glass cup shattered on the floor, possibly knocked over when Wanxia fell to the floor.
A lone white leather sandal – probably Wanxia’s – lay in a corner, as if anchoring the silence of the room.
‘We’ve just got the hospital report. Poisoned,’ Xiong said grimly. ‘The doctor was positive about it. It’s murder.’
Chen had met Wanxia a couple of times in the bureau. A young police academy graduate, intelligent, hard-working and informed, with a real passion for the job. Detective Yu had thought about getting her into the special case squad, and Chen had approved. She’d told him that she had intended to work with him, having heard so much about the ‘legendary chief inspector’, he remembered, but she ended up being assigned to the homicide squad under Detective Xiong.
For the first time, Chen knew he had to step up to the investigation of the Min case as a cop, even though nominally he was no longer one.
‘It’s changed. Utterly changed,’ Chen said abruptly, without elaborating the point. ‘So the man who sent in the egg noodles was not an attendant working at the hotel?’
‘No. The hotel people checked further. It was discovered that another room ordered the special across-bridge noodles that evening – along with the four special dishes – slices of chicken, jinhua ham, bamboo shoots and shrimp, plus a bowl of green bean sprouts – exactly what was sent to Min’s room.’
‘Anything unusual about the man who ordered the noodles in that room?’
‘For starters, he wore a pair of amber-colored glasses – even in the evening. Oh, he also wanted to have the soup delivered separately in an insulated cup. When he was ready to eat, he said, he would be able to put the noodles into the steaming hot soup along with the toppings himself.’
‘A real pro who knows how to appreciate the across-bridge noodles. The steaming hot soup and the noodles have to come in separate bowls. That way, no worry about the noodles getting sodden for having stayed too long in the soup. It’s a request not unexpected from a gourmet customer.’
Detective Xiong glared at Chen for the untimely gastronomic lecture.
‘Anyway, he asked the hotel attendant – the real one – to leave the cart in the room. He would have the noodles when he liked.’
‘So his ID info left at the front desk was—’
‘Fake,’ Xiong said. ‘He was careful enough to remove all his fingerprints from his own room, and to wear gloves when he pushed the cart into Min’s. On a surveillance camera installed outside the room, an attendant appeared in the corridor leading to Min’s room around nine thirty, knocked on the door, and pushed the cart into the room. Two or three minutes later, the attendant re-emerged, without the cart.’
‘That’s so obvious. But one question, Detective Xiong. Did he still wear the amber-colored glasses while pushing the cart into Min’s suite?’
‘No. He wore a face mask like a chef or one working in the hotel kitchen.’
‘Coming out of Min’s room, where did he go?’
‘Surveillance cameras covered only part of the corridor. There’s no knowing where exactly he turned, going out of sight. The night manager at the front desk remembers seeing a man in a gray T-shirt walking out of the hotel shortly after ten. No luggage. The manager believed that he would either take a short walk in the garden, or out on Shanxi Road at the center of the city. Some of the customers from overseas may walk out later because of the jet lag. Nothing suspicious about it. The surveillance camera at the hotel gate confirmed that the man in the T-shirt left the hotel shortly after Wanxia was rushed out to the hospital, and the camera there did not record his coming back for the night. And the next morning he was gone without a trace – without having checked out of the hotel.’
‘Thanks for all the info, Detective Xiong. But who could
have committed such a well-planned crime?’
‘No clue whatsoever yet. It’s really a well-planned one, no question about it.’
‘Have the people at the front desk recalled anything about the circumstances of his checking in?’
‘When he checked in, he was wearing a gray suit, as the front desk manager recalled. Then they also found out that he had given the suit to the hotel for dry-cleaning, without taking it back.’
‘So people did not recognize him when he walked out …’ He did not finish the sentence, as something elusive flashed across his mind, but it was lost in a confusion of thoughts.
‘I don’t think so. Internal Security immediately raised the alarm at the hotel after Wanxia’s phone call, and the murderer wanted to wait until he saw the commotion break out in Min’s suite. Then he left. It’s planned down to every detail. The fake ID, the amber-colored glasses, the face mask, and the room service ordered to his room. Of course, the hotel uniform too, but that’s not too difficult a job for a pro like that.’
‘And his choice of the across-bridge noodles too – with the soup in a separate insulated cup – was a calculated move indeed. No one would have suspected anything about a gourmet practice like that.’
‘You surely know a lot about gourmet food, Chief Inspector Chen.’
‘But do you think the attempt was not meant against Wanxia?’
‘That’s a good question.’ Xiong then added hesitantly, ‘Against Min?’
‘The murderer had no idea that Min had gone to bed earlier because of her headache, and that there was someone else sitting in the suite that night.’
‘It’s a possible theory, I think. But Min was kept in the hotel because Internal Security wanted her to talk – in an arrangement unknown to others. So who would have tried to murder her there?’
‘Some other people who didn’t want her to talk.’
‘What do you mean, Chief Inspector Chen?’
‘It’s just a thought, Detective Xiong.’
Chen chose not to elaborate. Some people could have tried desperately to silence Min once and for all, he contemplated, because she might break under the pressure. But what secrets could she spill?
