by Qiu Xiaolong
“From our newspapers, we learn that we’re entering a new period in socialist China. Some old diehards are grumbling that China is becoming capitalist rather than socialist, but who cares? Labels. Nothing but labels. As long as people have a better life, that’s all it is about. And we’re going to have a better life.
“And my pal, too, is most prosperous. He has not only received promotion—a chief inspector in his early thirties—but also he has this wonderful new apartment. And a most beautiful reporter is attending the house-warming party.
“Now the party begins!”
Raising his glass, Lu put a cassette into the player, and a waltz began to flow into the room.
“It’s almost nine.” Ruru was looking at her watch. “I can’t take the morning shift off.”
“Don’t worry,” Lu said. “I will call in sick for you. A summer flu. And Comrade Chief inspector, not a single word about your police work either. Let me be an Overseas Chinese in truth just for one night.”
“That’s just like you.” Chen smiled.
“An Overseas Chinese,” Wang added, “drinking and dancing all night. “
Chief Inspector Chen was not good at dancing.
During the Cultural Revolution, the only thing close to dancing for the Chinese people was the Loyal Character Dance. People would stamp their feet in unison, to show their loyalty to Chairman Mao. But it was said that even in those years, many fancy balls were held within the high walls of the Forbidden City. Chairman Mao, a dexterous dancer, was said to have had “his legs still intertwined with his partner’s even after the ball.” Whether this tabloid tidbit was fictitious, no one could tell. It was true, however, that not until the mid-eighties could Chinese people dance without fear of being reported to the authorities.
“I’d better dance with my lioness,” Lu said in mock frustration.
Lu’s choice left Chen as the only partner for Wang.
Chen, not displeased, bowed as he took Wang’s offered hands.
She was the more gifted dancer, leading him rather than being led in the limited space of the room. Turning, turning, and turning in her high heels, slightly taller than he was, her black hair streamed against the white walls. He had to look up at her as he held her in his arms.
A slow, dreamy ballad swelled into the night. Resting her hand on his shoulder, she slipped off her shoes. “We are making too much noise,’’ she said, looking up at him with a radiant smile.
“What a considerate girl,” Lu said.
“What a handsome couple,” Ruru added.
It was considerate of her. Chen, too, had been concerned about the noise. He did not want his new neighbors to start protesting.
Some of the music called for slow two-steps. They did not have to exert themselves as the melody rose and fell like waves lapping around them. She was light on her bare feet, moving, wisps of her hair brushing against his nose.
When another melody started, he tried to take the initiative, and pulled her around—but a bit too suddenly. She fell against him. He felt her body all the length of his, soft and pliable.
“We have to go,” Lu declared at the end of the tune.
“Our daughter will be worried,” Ruru added, picking up the ceramic pot she had brought.
The Lus’ decision was unexpected. It was hard to believe that half an hour earlier Lu had declared himself “Overseas Chinese” for the night.
“I’d better be leaving, too,” Wang said, disengaging herself from him.
“No, you have to stay,” Lu said, shaking his head vigorously. “For a housewarming party, it’s not proper and right for the guests to leave all at once.”
Chen understood why the Lus wanted to leave. Lu was a self-proclaimed schemer and seemed to derive a good deal of pleasure from playing a well-meant trick.
It was a pleasant surprise that Wang did not insist on leaving with them. She changed the cassette, to a piece he had not heard before. Their bodies pressed close. It was summer. He could feel her softness through her T-shirt, his cheek brushing against her hair. She was wearing a gardenia scent.
“You smell wonderful.”
“Oh, it’s the perfume Yang sent me from Japan.”
The juxtaposed awareness of their dancing alone in the room, and her husband in Japan, added to his tension. He missed a step, treading on her bare toes.
“I’m so sorry, did I hurt you?”
“No,” she said. “Actually, I’m glad you are inexperienced.”
“I’ll try to be a better partner next time.”
“Just be yourself,” she said, “the way—”
The wind languished. The floral curtain ceased flapping. The moonlight streamed through, lighting up her face. It was a young, animated face. At that moment, it touched a string, a peg, deep inside him.
“Shall we start over again?” he said.
Then the telephone rang. Startled, he looked at the clock on the wall. He put down her hand reluctantly, and picked up the phone.
“Chief Inspector Chen?”
He heard a familiar voice, somehow sounding as if it came from an unfamiliar world. He gave a resigned shrug of his shoulders. “Yes, it’s Chen.”
“It’s Detective Yu Guangming, reporting a homicide case.”
“What happened?”
“A young woman’s naked body was found in a canal, west of Qingpu County.”
“I—I will be on my way,” he said, as Wang walked over to turn off the music.
“That may not be necessary. I’ve already examined the scene. The body will be moved into the mortuary soon. I just want to let you know that I went there because there was nobody else in the office. And I could not reach you.”
“That’s okay. Even though ours is a special case squad, we should respond when no one else is available.”
“I’ll make a more detailed report tomorrow morning.” Detective Yu added, somewhat belatedly, “Please excuse me if I am disturbing you or your guests—in your new apartment.”
Yu must have heard the music in the background. Chen thought he detected a sarcastic note in his assistant’s voice.
“Don’t mention it,” Chen said. “Since you have checked out the crime scene, I think we can discuss it tomorrow.”
“So, see you tomorrow. And enjoy your party in the new apartment.”
There was certainly sarcasm in Yu’s voice, Chen thought, but such a reaction was understandable from a colleague who, though senior in age, had no luck in the bureau’s housing assignments.
“Thank you.”
He turned from the phone to see Wang standing near the door. She had put on her shoes.
“You have more important things to occupy you, Comrade Chief Inspector.”
“Just a new case, but it’s been taken care of,” he said. “You don’t have to leave.”
“I’d better,” she said. “It’s late.”
The door was open.
They stood facing each other.
Behind her, the dark street, visible through the corridor window; behind him, the new apartment, aglow in the lily-white light.
They hugged before parting.
He went out to the balcony, but he failed to catch a glimpse of her slender figure retreating into the night. He heard only a violin from an open window above the curve of the street. Two lines from Li Shangyin’s “Zither” came to his mind:
The zither, for no reason, has half of its strings broken,
One string, one peg, evoking the memory of the youthful years.
A difficult Tang dynasty poet, Li Shangyin was especially known for this elusive couplet. Certainly it was not about the ancient musical instrument. Why, all of a sudden, the lines came rushing to him, he did not know.
The murder case?
A young woman. A life in its prime wasted. All the broken strings. The lost sounds. Only half of its years lived.
Or was there something else?
Chapter 3
The Shanghai Police Bureau was housed in a sixty-yea
r-old brown brick building located on Fuzhou Road. The gray iron gate was guarded by two armed soldiers, but, like the other policemen, Chen entered the bureau through a small door adjacent to a doorman’s kiosk beside the gate. Occasionally, when the gates were opened wide for some important visitors, what could be seen from the outside was a curving driveway with a peaceful flowerbed in the middle of a spacious courtyard.
Acknowledging the stiff salute of the sentry, Chief Inspector Chen made his way up to his office on the third floor. His was just a cubicle within a large office which housed over thirty detectives of the homicide department. They all worked together, at communal desks, rubbing shoulders and sharing phones.
The brass name plaque on his cubicle door—CHIEF INSPECTOR CHEN CAO—shining proudly in the morning light, from time to time drew his gaze like a magnet. The enclosure was small. A brown oak desk with a brown swivel chair occupied much of the space. A couple of teacups had to stand on a dark green steel filing cabinet by the door, and a thermos bottle, by a bookshelf on the floor. There was nothing on the wall except a framed photograph of Comrade Deng Xiaoping standing on Huangpu Bridge under a black umbrella held by Shanghai’s mayor. The only luxury in the office was a midget refrigerator, but Chen had made a point of letting all his staff members use it. Like the apartment, the cubicle had come with his promotion.
It was generally believed in the bureau that Chen’s advance had resulted from Comrade Deng Xiaoping’s new cadre policy. Prior to the mid-eighties, Chinese cadres usually rose in a slow process, step by step. Once they reached a certain high level, however, they could stay there for a long time, and some never retired, hanging on to their positions to the end. So a chief inspector in his mid-fifties would have considered himself lucky in his career. With the dramatic change Deng had introduced, high-ranking cadres, too, had to step down at retirement age. Being young and highly educated suddenly became the crucial criteria in the cadre promotion process. Chen happened to be qualified in both aspects, though his qualifications were not so warmly regarded by some officers. To them, educational background did not mean much. Especially Chen’s since he had majored in English literature. They also felt that age signified experience in the field.
So Chen’s status was a sort of compromise. As a rule, a chief inspector would serve as the head of the homicide department. The old department head had retired, but no successor had yet been announced. Chen’s administrative position was just that of leader of a special case squad, consisting of only five people including Detective Yu Guangming, his assistant.
Detective Yu was not visible in the main office, but among the mass of papers on his desk, Chen found his report.
OFFICER AT THE SCENE: Detective Yu Guangming
DATE: 5/11/90
1. The body. A dead woman. Nameless. Naked. Her body found in a black plastic bag in the Baili Canal. Probably in her late twenties or early thirties, she had a healthy build, around 110 pounds in weight, 5’4” in height. It was hard to imagine how she had actually looked when alive. Her face was a bit swollen, but unbruised, unscratched. She had thin, dark eyebrows and a straight nose. Her forehead was broad. She had long, well-shaped legs, small feet with long toes. Her toenails were painted scarlet. Her hands were small, too, no rings on her well-manicured fingers. No blood, dirt, or skin under her nails. Her hips were broad with copious, coal black pubic hair. It’s possible that she had had sexual intercourse before her death. She didn’t look beaten up. There was only a faint line of bruising around her neck, barely discernible, and a light scratch on her collarbone, but other than that, her skin was smooth, with no suggestion of bruises on her body. A general absence of contusions on the legs also showed that she had not struggled much before her death. The small spotty hemorrhages in the linings around her eyes could be presumptive evidence of death by asphyxiation.
2. The scene. Baili Canal, a small canal on the Suzhou River, about ten miles west of the Shanghai Paper Mill. It is, to be more exact, a dead creek overhung with shrubs and tall weeds. Some years ago it was chosen as a chemical plant site, but the state plan was abandoned. On one side is something of a graveyard with tombs scattered around. It’s difficult to reach the canal, whether by water or by land. No bus comes there. According to the local people, few go there to fish.
3. The witnesses. Gao Ziling, captain of the Vanguard, Shanghai River Security Bureau. Liu Guoliang, Captain Gao’s high-school friend, a senior engineer in the nuclear science field in Qinghai. Both of them are Party members, with no criminal record.
Possible cause of death: Strangulation in combination with sexual assault.
When he finished reading the report, Chief Inspector Chen lit a cigarette and sat quietly for a while. Two possibilities arose with the curling rings of smoke. She had been raped and murdered on a boat, and then dumped into the canal. Or the crime had taken place somewhere else, and her body transported to the canal.
He was not inclined toward the first scenario. It would be extremely difficult, if not impossible, for the murderer to commit the crime with other passengers moving around on board. If it had been just the two of them in the boat, what was the point of covering her body up in a plastic bag? The canal was so out of the way, and most probably it had happened in the depth of night— there would have been no need to wrap the body. In the second scenario, the plastic bag might fit, but then the murder might have happened anywhere.
When he looked out into the large office again, Detective Yu was back at his desk, sipping a cup of tea. Mechanically Chen felt for the thermos bottle on the floor. There was still enough water. No need to go to the communal hot water boiler downstairs. He dialed Yu’s extension.
“Detective Yu Guangming reporting.” Yu appeared at the doorway in less than a minute, a tall man in his early forties, of medium build, with a rugged face and deep, penetrating eyes, holding a large manila folder in his hand.
“You must have worked quite late last night.” Chen offered a cup of tea to his assistant. “A well-done job. I’ve just read your report.”
“Thank you.”
“Any new information about the case this morning?”
“No. Everything’s in the report.”
“What about the missing person’s list?”
“No one on the list looks like her,” Yu said, handing over the folder. “Some pictures have just been developed. She could not have been too long in the water. No more than twenty hours is my guess.”
Chen started thumbing through photographs. Pictures of the dead woman lying on the bank, naked, or partially covered up, then several close-ups, the last one focusing on her face, her body concealed by a white covering, in the mortuary.
“What do you think?” Yu breathed slowly into his hot tea.
“A couple of possible scenarios. Nothing definite until Forensic finishes.”
“Yes, the autopsy report will probably be here late this afternoon.”
“You don’t think she could be someone from the neighboring villages?”
“No, I don’t. I have called the local county committee. There’s no one reported missing there.”
“But what about the murderer?”
“No, not likely, either. As the old saying goes, a rabbit does not browse near its lair. But he could be familiar with the canal.”
“Two possibilities, then,” Chen began.
Yu listened to Chen’s analysis without interrupting. “As for the first scenario, I don’t think it is so likely,” he said.
“But it would be impossible for the murderer to get her body to the canal without some sort of transportation at his disposal,” Chen said.
“He might be a taxi driver. We’ve had similar cases. Pan Wanren’s case, remember? Raped and murdered. A lot of resemblance. Except the body was dumped in a rice paddy. The murderer confessed that he did not intend to kill her, but he panicked at the thought of the victim’s being able to identify his car.”
“Yes, I do remember. But if the murderer raped this one in a car,
why should he have bothered to hide the body in the plastic bag afterward?”
“He had to drive all the way to canal.”
“The trunk would have served his purpose.”
“Maybe he just happened to have the bag in the car.”
“Maybe you’re right.”
“Well, when a rape precedes homicide,” Yu said, crossing his legs, “the motive comes down to concealing the rapist’s identity. She could have identified him, or the car. So a taxi-driver hypothesis fits.”
“But the murderer could also be the victim’s acquaintance,” Chen said, studying a picture in his hand. “With her body dumped in the canal, her disappearance would not be easily traced to him. That may account for the plastic bag, too. To conceal moving the body into the car.”
“Well, not too many people have their own cars—except high cadres, and they would not have their chauffeurs drive them around on such an errand.”
“It’s true. There’re not too many private cars in Shanghai, but the number is increasing rapidly. We cannot rule it out.”
“If the murderer was the deceased’s acquaintance, the first question we have to ask is why? A secret affair with a married man, we’ve had cases like that, but then the woman in such a case, almost without exception, is pregnant. I called Dr. Xia early this morning, and it was ruled out,” Yu said, lighting a cigarette just for himself. “It’s still possible, of course, I mean your theory.
If so, there’s probably nothing we can do until we find out her identity.”
“So do you think we should start checking with the taxi bureau—in accordance with your theory?”
“We could, but it would not be easy. There weren’t many taxis in Shanghai ten years ago—you could have waited on the street for hours without getting one. Now Heaven alone knows how many there are, running everywhere like locusts. Over ten thousand, I bet, not including the self-employed cab drivers. Maybe another three thousand.”
“Yes, that’s a lot.”
“Another thing, we’re not even sure that she was from Shanghai. What if she came from another province? If so, a long time will pass before we get information about her identity.”