by Qiu Xiaolong
‘With you in custody, Internal Security will do everything imaginable to make sure not a single word of that message of yours ever comes out. On that much you can trust me, Lou.’
‘You cannot lock me up for more than two or three days with neither evidence nor witness, can you?’
‘For cops like Detective Yu and me, we cannot. But what about Internal Security? They’re above the law, and they don’t play by any rules. In fact, they are going to charge another man for the serial murder, in a scenario far less politically damaging to the government. In the meantime, they can keep you locked up as long as they like. In the name of the Party’s interests, they can easily lock you up in secret.’
‘With her gone, what do I have to care about in this world – except for her memory?’
‘But I have to say something for the victims—’
‘You don’t have to give me a lecture about law and justice, Chief Inspector Chen. What about victims like Shen, so many more of them, now and in the future? You think you want to save lives? More will be lost if the environmental crisis goes on like this.’
It was the first time that Lou did not make a downright denial. On the contrary, he seemed to be arguing into the scenario suggested by the inspector.
‘Whatever justification you may have in mind, as a cop I cannot let it go on, taking more innocent victims down the road,’ Chen said firmly. ‘On the other hand, however, I think I can give you a promise – or two.’
‘Come on, a promise or two from you? How many times has the Beijing government given out promises about the clean air?’
‘I cannot agree more with you, Lou. I’m not promising anything about what the government may or may not do, but about what I will do. Not just as a cop, but as a writer, too. Your late wife might have read some of my works. In fact, I have written a poem about the polluted Tai Lake, called “Don’t Cry, Tai Lake” in Shanghai Literature.’
‘Don’t be surprised about anything done by Chief Inspector Chen.’ Yu could not help joining in once again, though it seemed so bookish of Chen to start talking about poetry at this moment. ‘Yes, my wife Peiqin has also read that poem.’
‘To prove it, I’m sending you an electronic link to the poem published in the magazine. You can read it on the phone. Ironically, that’s the reason why I’ve been given the job from the Party Central Discipline Committee – as one familiar with the environmental issues.’
‘But what’s that to do with your promise, Poet-Inspector Chen?’
‘I’m going to write a story about you and your wife set in the background of the environmental disaster. Not with your real names, but your message won’t get lost.’
‘How could a Party-member chief inspector choose to do that?’
‘Can you guess where I’m making the phone call to you? Bund Park. Detective Yu has joked with me about it being a feng shui place for me.’
‘I’ve just said so to him earlier this morning,’ Yu said in a hurry, though confounded.
‘Years ago, still in the middle of the Cultural Revolution, I studied English there, an experience that eventually led to my career as a cop, a career I had never dreamed about in the park at the time. All these years, whenever I had to make a difficult decision, I would go back to the park. Life is like a long chain of misplaced yin/yang causalities. So what do I have to really worry about if I am not a Party-member chief inspector but a nobody just like in the days of English study here?’
‘What are you driving at?’ Lou looked up in surprise.
‘I’m here at the park this morning because the decision about the environmental project may cost me the Party membership as well as the chief inspectorship. But it’s the right decision for me to make, I believe. And the same with the decision to write the story I have just promised.’
‘You really mean it, Inspector Chen?’
‘It may take time to have a story written, and to get it published. With the censorship in China, there’s no guarantee of a publishing date I can give you, I have to be honest about it. But I’ll have it done, I promise.’
It was something totally unexpected. The story would not appear to be politically correct, but Chen would have it written as promised, Yu knew for sure.
‘Yes, it will make a world of difference to her memory,’ Yu said in a hurry. ‘If she could have known in the nether world, it would have been a huge comfort for her to know that the message is out there.’
Lou looked confounded for a second or two, shaking his head in confusion before something changed in his expression.
‘Then what’s the second promise from you?’
‘I’ll make a seven-seven service in memory of her, and do that in a Buddhist temple. I will send pictures of the service to you afterward.’
‘A Buddhist service. You really will do that?’
‘My mother is a devoted Buddhist believer. She did that for my late father many years ago, so I know how important it is. I’m not sure if I can book it under your name, but it will be a service dedicated to her name. As a cop, I have no choice, but that’s the least—’
‘I’ve heard about you, Chief Inspector Chen. You honestly mean it?’
‘Yes, I have to consult my mother about the details, and I swear on her name I will do that.’
‘Chief Inspector Chen will do what he believes as the right thing for him to do,’ Yu chipped in, though stunned just like Lou about the unbelievable offer from the inspector, ‘in spite of all the trouble he may get into.’
‘Confucius says, “Knowing it’s impossible for you to do the thing, you still have to try as long as it’s the right thing for you to do.” But it may not be too much trouble to write a story or arrange a Buddhist service. You don’t have to exaggerate for me, Detective Yu.’
Lou did not say anything immediately, his head hung low, his face bleached of color.
Inspector Chen waited on the other end of the line, and Yu waited too.
‘I’ll take a look first at the poem you are sending over,’ Lou finally said, his voice hoarse all of a sudden. ‘And then I will say what I want to say to your partner, Detective Yu. Except for her memories, what else should I care about in this world?’
‘Let me say this again, Lou. The case aside, the story about your wife and you is soul-touching, and I too will do whatever possible for her memories.’ Chen continued after a short pause, raising his voice, ‘Send Lou’s statement to me afterward, Detective Yu.’
At seven forty-five, Inspector Chen arrived at Bian’s factory, which was operating with three shifts to cope with the ever-increasing demand for air products. He saw a group of female night-shift workers walking out the factory gate, their faces wan, haggard against the opaqueness of the morning.
But he felt pretty much energized for the moment. Perhaps the park was really a feng shui place for him, though he was not so sure about the result of what had happened there.
Bian was taken aback at his unannounced visit to his office so early in the morning.
‘Oh, it’s you, Chief Inspector Chen. What wind has brought you over to my office today? Yes, you saw Yuan Jing – oh, Shanshan – at the meeting in the club the other day, didn’t you?’
‘Yes. I did. Do you have a few minutes for me, Bian?’
‘Sure,’ Bian said, closing the office door. ‘What did she say to you?’
‘She did not see me.’
‘What do you mean, Chief Inspector Chen?’
‘I was just the one sitting in the audience, making notes but putting in no comments, like an unobtrusive representative of yours, exactly the way I promised you. I don’t think she recognized me.’
‘So …’
But it was not a moment for Chen to explain so many things converging altogether. In fact, he could hardly explain them to himself.
‘The documentary has to be released as soon as possible. Way ahead of the original schedule. Don’t wait any more, Bian. It’s so urgent. For all of you involved in the making of the documentary, and
particularly for Shanshan.’
‘But she may not yet be done with it.’
‘It’s a good documentary as it is. A finishing touch could be nice, but it won’t make too much difference. It has to be put online at the earliest date possible. Definitely it has to be earlier—’
‘Earlier than what, Chief Inspector Chen?’
‘I cannot afford to go into details here, Bian. Suffice it to say, if the documentary is not released in time, all the efforts you have put in could go to waste.’
‘I don’t know much about its scheduled release date, but I’ve heard people talking about their preference for a date after the conclusion of the National People’s Congress in Beijing. In two or three weeks, I think.’
Chen understood their preference for its release after the ending of the session. Though it was nothing but a routine practice of rubber stamping in the name of the people’s power, the government did not want anything to interfere with the grand political show. The Party authorities could be so upset with a documentary about smog-smothered China, an immediate ban would be implemented.
‘Under the normal circumstances, I would say it’s a workable idea, your original plan about the release date.’
There was no direct response from Bian, who then said, looking straight into Chen’s eyes, ‘I don’t really understand what you’re talking about, Chief Inspector Chen. But if the situation is that serious, you may have to talk to Shanshan in person. She’s the one in charge.’
‘There’s a point in your argument.’ Only he was in no position to go to Shanshan in person, for personal as well as political reasons. But how could he tell this to Bian?
On the spur of the moment, he pulled out of the large envelope the copy of Shanghai Literature.
Opening the magazine to the page with the poem on it, he wrote on the upper right corner, ‘To my muse at the dorm room and the Cadre Recreation Center by Tai Lake.’ Then he signed his name underneath.
‘When you give her the message about the urgency of posting the documentary online, show her the magazine. Tell her the message is from a man who was inspired by her for the writing of the poem. She will understand, and make the decision accordingly.’
He put the magazine back into the envelope, which bore the letterhead of the Shanghai Police Bureau, he noted. It did not matter, though. She must have long guessed his true identity. It was perhaps the very reason that she had tried not to contact him, even after she set up the office in the city of Shanghai.
Around nine, Inspector Chen walked into an eatery advertising ‘four authentic Shanghai morning snacks’ – the earthen oven cake, fried dough stick, fried rice cake and bean soup. These used to be cheap yet popular street snacks in the days of his English studies at Bund Park, but in a collective nostalgia of the city, they were staging a comeback.
The eatery was quite a shabby one, where he took the hot earthen oven cake and fried dough stick from the chef standing by the stove. But instead of digging into the snacks while walking away like most customers, he seated himself at a wobbly, greasy table inside.
In fact, it was the one and only table there, with him as the only customer. With the noise of other customers as well as the fumes and heat from the stove and woks, it was not comfortable to sit inside, he knew.
But all of a sudden, he was just inexplicably tired, having done all he could have done.
And he thought of a young woman biting into the earthen oven cake, licking the sesame from her lips on her way back to the office in the early morning, just a few days ago.
Then his cellphone buzzed.
It was an email with attachment from Detective Yu.
Lou confessed readily after the phone conference in the backroom of the neighborhood committee office.
In fact, Lou had prepared a detailed statement in his cellphone to be released online upon the completion of the seven-seven ritual, with the seventh victim claimed, or at the moment of his being surrounded by the police. It was because the preemptive strike caught him off guard, so he did not have the time to do anything about it.
I’m attaching his pre-prepared statement here, and I shall follow up with more information.
Chen downloaded the statement and began reading.
The statement was quite a long one, which began with an account of the love-at-first-sight romance between Lou, an IT technician in his mid-twenties, and Shen, a sales manager at a computer store, two years younger. Falling for each other, the two soon became inseparable. There was only one hurdle to their much-dreamed-about future. In the city of Shanghai, it was of absolute necessity for a young man to have an apartment under his own name. It was a convention developed out of an increasingly materialistic society, but it was also seen as a realistic insistence on the part of her parents. Under Mao, it had been quite common for a family of two or even three generations to stay squeezed in one room, but with the changes of the economic reform launched by Deng, it was now considered the norm for a young couple to live out of their own space. Shen’s parents vetoed the idea of Lou’s parents measuring out a partitioned cubicle for the young couple, as well as their plan of renting an apartment first. It was not easy for young people to save up enough money with the housing prices continuously soaring up. The price for one square meter at seventy thousand yuan actually equaled a whole year’s income for Lou. So the two young people had to put off their wedding plans, one year after another, working overtime or at several jobs to save enough for the down payment. After five or six years, her parents finally relented, letting them settle on an old one-bedroom apartment in Zabei instead of a new two-bedroom property in Xuhui. It took all their savings, but they moved in and got married.
Still on the honeymoon, she started to have a persistent cough. Possibly because of the new paint in the old apartment, or because of her working too hard for the last several years. He bought her some herbs as well as antibiotics. But with her cough not going away, he took her to see a doctor who diagnosed her as suffering from lung cancer – at the fourth stage. How was it possible? She did not smoke. Nor did he. The doctor showed them a chart showing a large number of people suffering from lung cancer because of the polluted air. In the hospital she fought a hard battle, holding his hand, trying all the treatments available, but to no avail. In less than four months, she passed away one early smoggy morning.
He was devastated. For days after her death, he continued going to the hospital like one possessed, clinging to the momentary illusion, as if she were still there, waiting for him.
His family became so worried. With the end of the first week after her death drawing near, they suggested that he observe the seven-seven ritual with a special meal dedicated to her. Preparing her favorite dishes would keep him too busy, they hoped, to dwell on her memories. He went to the market, shopping like crazy, but on the seventh morning, he went out to the hospital like before.
To him, the walk to the hospital in the morning was a ritual far more meaningful. But that morning, he happened to see the night caregiver surnamed Peng leaving the hospital. She was wearing a yellowish mask, but he recognized her.
About two weeks before Shen’s death, he had had an argument with Peng, who had stopped taking care of Shen properly because of his failure to pay the fee in time. With the soaring medical expenses, he was running out of money. Peng was not to blame. She had to take care of five or six patients at night. It made sense for her to be more attentive to those paying her promptly. But it was so painful to see Shen writhing in pain, unattended, he recalled.
At that moment, all of a sudden, the scene of Peng leaving the hospital pushed him over the edge. He started following her in the direction of the Bund. Initially, it was no more than an impulsive reaction, but with Peng moving closer to the bridge, he was seized with an unbreathable panic about her disappearing into the crowds. He hastened to pick up a heavy brick from a construction site, rushed up, and knocked at her head from behind. One single blow and she fell without any struggle. Bending over t
o pull the yellowish mask off her face, he found her already unconscious.
It was at that moment that he was galvanized with a sense of doing something really meaningful in Shen’s memory. Much more than a special meal in observation of the seven-seven ritual.
At that moment, he also knew in a flash what he was going to do for the following six weeks. Something like a list of things and people responsible for Shen’s early death came up in a ghastly smog in his mind. The catastrophic air pollution at the top, because of the governmental GDP-oriented policy; the skyrocketing housing prices, for which she had worked so hard for years; the Party propaganda about the clean air and the blue sky; the terrible attitude from the caregiver at the hospital …
All of a sudden, he felt he could breathe freely for the first time since Shen’s death, gazing at the yellowish mask on the ground.
It was quite a providence that he too had several yellowish masks gathered at home. He calculated in his mind – enough for his purpose.
And it would serve as an unmistakable sign, symbolizing the cause and effect of their tragedy, and calling for people’s attention to the national disaster.
As for what would happen to him, he hardly cared. Everything was finished for him with her death, and he was nothing but a ‘walking corpse’ – except for the delivery of his ultimate statement at the ending of the seven-seven. That was the only good thing he believed he could do for her. And in a frenzied figment of his imagination, for the whole society, too. Things could not go on like this. It would be the ultimate wake-up call about the disastrous consequences, to which everyone had to pay serious attention: ‘With air quality like this, many more people, and even those much younger, would turn into victims.’
The statement also gave a quite detailed account of the serial murder from the very beginning – from the chance encounter with the first victim Peng, to the premeditated killing of the subsequent victims.
The location of the first victim near the Bund Bridge and the Bund prompted him to look for other central locations for a large audience.
As for the attack time, Lou did not have to think too much about it. Shen had breathed her last breath in the early morning, before six.