by Qiu Xiaolong
Like the previous day, Yu followed him across a couple of blocks and into the station. It was five, the exact time for the first subway train.
It was all Yu could do to get into the same train without being detected. Fortunately, there were already so many passengers, even at that early hour.
Holding on to the railing ring hung from above, Yu was pretty sure about the destination of the subway trip: the New World.
Sure enough, after changing to another train on Line 10, Lou got out at the New World.
Inspector Chen found himself in Bund Park again.
Standing on the bank near the park entrance, he glanced up at the big clock atop the Custom House Building. It was still too early for him to assume the role of an inspector on a secret mission.
Instead, he started strolling about the park in unhurried steps, like years earlier, trying to clear his mind in the fresh morning air.
Except that it was anything but the fresh morning air of the past.
He mounted a flight of steps to the color-stone promenade overlooking the river. A petrel seemed to come out of nowhere, gliding over the murky waves, its wings flashing in the somber gray light.
Perhaps it was soaring out of a half-forgotten dream.
In the early seventies, as a ‘waiting-for-assignment-middle-school-graduate’ caught in the national campaign launched by Mao, of ‘the educated youths going to the countryside for the re-education from the poor and lower-middle class peasants’, Chen was left waiting in the city for recovery from his bronchitis, out of school, out of a job. Along with several neighbors, he came to practice tai chi in Bund Park, but on one mist-enveloped morning, after yet another half-hearted attempt at copying those ancient tai chi poses, he realized it wasn’t for him.
Instead, he decided to bring to the park with him an old English textbook and sit on a bench. Those days, few would have carried such a book – except as a placemat for the dew-drenched bench. It became the first link in a long, long chain of causality for him. In the park, he began his English studies, which opened up a brave new world.
In retrospect, life seemed to be so full of the ironical causalities of misplaced Yin and Yang, like the misplaced book in that park, like the misplaced youth in those years, or like the misplaced chief inspector today. One thing led to another, and to still another …
Then he moved down, looking for a bench. That green-painted bench, once his customary seat in the park, was long gone, though he still remembered a slogan carved on its back: Long Live the Proletarian Dictatorship.
Behind Chen, an elderly man in a white silk martial art costume, loose-sleeved, red-silk buttoned, started practicing tai chi by himself, wearing such a peaceful expression on his face, and an electronic filtered mask over his mouth, which made him look more like a robot in a sci-fi movie, striking out one graceful, time-honored pose after another: grasping a bird’s tail, spreading a white crane’s wings, parting a wild horse’s mane on both sides … Chen watched him pushing out the right hand, and then the left hand, as if fighting against the invisible particles in the contaminated air.
Unable to find a bench in the too-much-changed park, he seated himself instead on the stone step close to the north entrance. He wanted to read the poem one more time.
Once in the New World, Lou started jogging again, circling the area and looking around.
It was another smoggy morning, and it was not easy for Lou to note that he was being followed.
And for the same reason, it was not easy for the target to discover that he or she was being followed.
Lou was catching up with a middle-aged woman walking in front.
What was Detective Yu going to do?
Under the normal circumstances, Yu would have been able to fall back on Chen, and in some cases, on other colleagues because of Chen. However idiosyncratic Chen appeared to others in the bureau, his opinions carried weight, with a number of major cases to his credit.
So Detective Yu could have said to others in the bureau, ‘That’s the opinion of Chief Inspector Chen.’ And they might have chosen to work together with him.
Not this time, though.
Chen had to remain officially off the case. And Yu’s opinion could hardly have mattered.
But this morning, the seventh morning after the appearance of Xiang’s body near the Wenhui building, could be the very day for Lou to act. The crucial seventh day in the weekly cycle. There was little possibility of Lou’s putting it off to another day.
So it was also the day for Detective Yu to act.
For him, the question was how.
Could he choose to wait until the moment Lou took out the weapon – most likely the hammer – to stop the murderer?
Given the distance between Lou and the target, was Detective Yu capable of preventing the crime in time?
With no help or backup whatsoever, he was not sure that he would be able to arrest Lou single-handedly.
And even if Lou was apprehended there, another lost life could have been added to the casualty list of the serial murderer. ‘I can never forgive myself,’ he vividly recalled Inspector Chen saying with a ghastly pale face after failing to save an innocent victim.
Alternatively, Detective Yu could choose to act preemptively, before another victim was claimed under the smoggy morning sky.
The seven-seven scenario could turn out, however, to be a false one.
To have an innocent man arrested in the open at the New World, Yu knew, would prove to be too much of a public embarrassment to the bureau, particularly at this sensitive juncture, especially under the circumstances of his making the move without having discussed it with the bureau, and as a result his days as a cop would be numbered.
Nevertheless, Yu moved closer behind Lou, who seemed to be doing the same to the middle-aged woman.
It was five forty. Not too much time left according to the time pattern for Lou.
It turned out, however, to be a false alarm, as the woman turned into a small alley in the New World and stepped into the first shikumen house with the black-painted door already open. Perhaps she worked there – a Cantonese restaurant inside the shikumen.
For a couple of times in the next several minutes, Lou closed in on other people – apparently at a striking distance.
Detective Yu became increasingly doubtful about his being able to move up in time to stop Lou – Lou could flash out his hammer in a split second.
Yu sweated profusely. He noticed for the first time that Lou’s trouser pocket was slightly bulging. He quickened his steps, moving to a closer distance behind Lou, almost bumping against him.
It was a call for Detective Yu to make. No more than five minutes to six. Lou was now closing fast on a white-haired man close to La Maison, suddenly plunging his hand into his pocket …
As Inspector Chen opened the magazine in the park, a cool breeze was carrying a melody over from the big clock atop the Shanghai Customs Building. Six o’clock. It had been one of the ‘reddest tunes’, The East Is Red, in praise of Mao as a great savior of China during the Cultural Revolution. After the ending of the Cultural Revolution in 1976, a light-hearted tune took its place, but now once again it was The East Is Red being played over the Bund.
As if on cue, loud music was coming out of a small square in the park. It was something new in the city, commonly called ‘square dancing’ or ‘old aunties’ dancing’. A huge hit among old people, who threw themselves into a sort of dance/exercise wherever they could find any open space as a temporary stage, with CD players blaring the music around.
Chen saw nothing wrong with it, but it happened to be another ‘red song’ popular during the Cultural Revolution. Perhaps the old people were just being reminiscent of their youthful days.
There was no stepping back twice into the same park.
He found it hard to concentrate on the poem, but he did not really have to. Those lines were inerasable images in his mind. Still, he needed the feeling of sitting there in the park, thinking, and
holding the magazine in his hand.
The visit to the park would help, hopefully, to regroup his mind, just like in the mornings so many years earlier, or like Antaeus’s effort to regain his strength by coming into contact with the earth.
During those long-ago mornings here, he had made for himself a number of future plans, none of which came close to what was happening to him on this gray, smoggy morning.
Looking over his shoulder, he could hardly discern the silhouette of the Hyatt Hotel across the river.
As he was about to leave the park, his cellphone started ringing.
So early in the morning. He thought he could guess who was calling, and he hurried into a recess behind a small bamboo groove in the park and picked up the phone.
‘I’ve got him, Chief.’
‘You’ve got Lou, Detective Yu?’
‘Yes.’
‘Where?’
‘The New World.’
‘The New World!’
‘Not far from the café where we met just the day before, under the poster of those French bong bong dancers.’
‘Near La Maison. I’ll be damned. Another central location indeed.’
‘And it’s pretty much like you have suspected.’
Detective Yu moved on with a hurried account of what had happened there earlier that morning, though some of the details seemed vague, particularly about how he had managed to forestall Lou’s move.
‘Did Lou put up a fight?’
‘Not really, but he insists he was just jogging here in the morning – jogging in the New World after taking two subway trains indeed.’
‘Where are you now, Yu?’
‘In a backroom of the Zhapu Neighborhood Police Station.’
‘That’s not far from the park on the Bund, right?’
‘That’s right. I happened to know a young cop named Teng at the station. He’s letting me keep Lou there temporarily, but Lou is refusing to say anything. So what shall we do now?’
‘You stopped him before he lashed out in the New World?’
‘Yes, it was too much of a risk. He moved so dangerously close to a white-haired man walking in front of him, plunging his hand into his pocket. Sure enough, he had a hammer hidden there.’
‘He must have cleaned the hammer thoroughly?’
‘I think so too. No blood or anything on it. But we can send it to the lab.’
‘You had to stop him before his delivering the blow. I too would have done so; best to stop a would-be-attempted crime, even with no witnesses or evidence.’ Chen went on without waiting for a response, ‘What did he say about the hammer?’
‘He said that after jogging, he was going to his old home for some odd jobs. It does not make any sense for him to jog along carrying a heavy hammer in his pocket.’
‘No, no sense at all.’
‘But he refused to say anything else with such a vacant look in his bloodshot eyes. Oh, when I first got hold of him, he murmured, “Just three more”.’
‘With three more victims, he would be able to complete the seven-seven rituals. That’s what he meant.’
‘Yes, I think so too. But I cannot take him back to the bureau right now. Imagine how Qin would react to the dramatic turn.’
‘You mean you have not told Detective Qin or Party Secretary Li about your work on Lou?’
‘No, not anything. I tried to talk to Qin, you know, about your point regarding the inexplicable presence of the masks in the crime scenes, but he hardly listened to a sentence before brushing it off as irrelevant. Our squad’s supposed to serve merely as consultant, and he’s unwilling to take us seriously, especially when he believes he himself is on the right track.’
‘So pushing the murderer in front of him, out of the blue, you’re literally pulling the carpet from under his feet. It’s difficult to tell how he would react to the surprising turn.’
‘Exactly. Detective Qin would take me as withholding the information from him. So would Party Secretary Li. But I cannot keep Lou here for too long, a couple of hours, maybe, but no more than that. Soon the bureau people will come to know about it one way or another.’
‘That may be true, but you may go ahead and tell them that it has been my idea for you to investigate in secret. You have discussed it with me every step of the way, and this morning it was also my direct order for you to take the preemptive move. As the head of our squad, I’m the one responsible for it.’
‘No, I cannot do so, Chief Inspector Chen.’
‘Don’t worry about it. Tell them I have been moving in accordance with Comrade Secretary Zhao’s specific instructions.’
That was far-fetched, Chen knew, but he did not think Party Secretary Li would go so far as to double-check with Comrade Secretary Zhao, especially when Lou proved to be the murderer.
And Chen also felt justified in saying so. As Zhao had put it, things have to be seen in a larger picture. With the environmental crisis seen as one threatening the legitimacy of one-Party rule, the speedy arrest of the serial murderer was more than justified.
That did not sound so convincing, even to the inspector himself. And he knew Yu would not let him take responsibility.
‘And out of spite, Qin may actually choose to let Lou go if he continues to deny it.’
‘And then Lou will stop at nothing to complete the killings – until the end of the seventh week.’
‘Where are you, Chief?’
‘Bund Park.’
‘Your feng shui place again.’
People had joked about it, but in a way, it was a feng shui place for Chen. He had started his studies here, and what happened afterward could be traced to the park.
Twenty years gone,
it’s a surprise I’m still here.
The lines from the Song dynasty poem forced their way back to him again. It was more than twenty years. A blue jay flashed through the opaque morning air. Inspector Chen made up his mind.
It was perhaps no coincidence: he was making another crucial decision in the park.
‘Return to the backroom, Yu. Make sure that there’s just Lou and you in there.’
‘You want …’ Yu did not go on with the rest of the sentence. ‘Yes, then what?’
‘Put your cellphone speaker on. I’ll call in and say something to Lou. A conference call, so to speak.’
Two minutes later, Yu dialed Chen again.
‘OK, it’s on speaker now,’ Yu said. Then turning to Lou, ‘On the speaker now is Chief Inspector Chen, the head of the Special Case squad of the Shanghai Police Bureau.’
‘Hi Lou, my name is Chen Cao. Let me be clear about one thing first: I’m not in charge of the investigation of your case. It’s because I’ve been doing another investigation about an environmental activist for the Party Central Discipline Committee, alongside which I’m not supposed to be doing any other cases. So whatever we are talking about on the phone is off the record. You don’t have to worry about it.’
‘Yes?’
‘You do not know me, but I know your story, which my partner Detective Yu has told me in great detail. It’s a heartbreaking story, I have to say. My deepest condolences—’
‘I’ve heard of you, Chief Inspector Chen. You may not be a bad cop. And according to my late wife, who read your poems, you may not be a bad writer, either. Still, you don’t have to waste your time with me. I’m innocent, as I’ve told Detective Yu. I won’t say anything else. It’s far more important for you to concentrate on the investigation against the environmental activist.’
‘Coincidentally, the activist named Shanshan is making a documentary about the disastrous air pollution in China. It is truly an important, meaningful project – whatever investigation my boss in Beijing may want me to do – and I pledge myself to keep any harm from happening to her. On the contrary, I will ensure the eventual release of her documentary.’
It was the first time Yu had learned anything about Chen’s investigation under Zhao. The way Chen spoke about it reminded Yu of something P
eiqin had told him, the romantic experience of the poet inspector in Wuxi, but it was not a moment for his thoughts to wander away from the present case, Detective Yu hastened to tell himself.
‘You really mean that, Chief Inspector Chen?’ Lou said, looking up with a sudden light in his eyes, as if Chen had been sitting opposite him across the desk.
‘Yes, I give you my word, Lou.’
‘Chief Inspector Chen keeps his word,’ Yu cut in. ‘I’ve been his partner for years, I know.’
‘Now Detective Yu wants me to make this conference call about the yellow mask serial murder—’
‘Yellow mask serial murder?’
‘The yellow masks come from the Shanghai Number One People’s Hospital, in which your wife passed away, I know, and I’m sincerely sorry about it. So many people get terribly sick because of the contaminated air, and the hospital provides the specially treated masks to the in-house patients against cross-infection, and to their visiting family members and the hospital staff members, too.’
There was no immediate response from Lou. Yu thought he detected a nervous twitching at the corner of the man’s mouth.
‘It’s not too far-fetched to see the connection between the illness and the air pollution, I understand. Much more should have been done about the environmental crisis, like the documentary I’ve mentioned, to call people’s attention to the disaster. Of course, there are ways of striving for that purpose. In your case, you planted the yellow masks at the crime scenes – in a symbolic protest against the catastrophic pollution. In memory of her, but also much more than that. As a wake-up call to reach as many people as possible, what could have worked out more effectively than a sensational serial murder?’
Lou still made no response, but he breathed more heavily. Yu pushed a cup of water across the table to him.
‘In that way, you’re trying to immortalize her memory in a unique way—’
‘Don’t say any more!’
‘But I don’t think the government will ever let the message of the yellow mask serial murder be known.’
‘I don’t know what you’re talking about, Chief Inspector Chen, but in the age of Weixin and Weibo, things may spread around really quickly.’