by Qiu Xiaolong
Business was not bad. Lei soon had a local girl working with him, and she became his girlfriend. Nor did it take long for him to begin to plan to expand. In addition to the onion cakes, he began a lunchbox service, offering a variety of popular specialties such as pork steak, beef in oyster sauce, dry-fried belt fish, or Aunt Ma’s spicy tofu, each choice served on top of steamed rice, plus a small cup of hot and sour soup. Since his space was rent-free, Lei was able to provide fairly good food at low prices. The plastic boxes and disposable chopsticks especially appealed to white-collar workers from the new office buildings nearby. The fame of Lei’s lunch boxes spread. Customers had to stand waiting in long lines to order. He set up a second big coal stove at the lane entrance, and hired two provincial girls to help him.
“In misfortune, there is a fortune; in fortune, there is a misfortune. That’s exactly what Laozi said in Tao Te Ching thousands of years ago,” Old Liang commented. “How true it is, even today, even for Lei in our lane.”
“Someone with a new girlfriend and a fresh business plan,” Yu said, interrupting Old Liang’s narrative, “is unlikely to have murdered a neighbor.”
Old Liang argued, “But he needs money more than ever for business expansion. Where can he get capital? Judging by his tax return, Lei hardly breaks even.”
“Oh, his tax form. Have you talked to him about that?”
“Yes, I have. He denied having anything to do with the murder, of course, but he offered no explanation about where he plans to get capital for expansion.”
“What about his alibi?”
“Lei starts the coal stove fires around five thirty every morning. Several people recall seeing him at work at the stoves that morning.”
“So his alibi is solid.”
“Still, I don’t think we can rule him out. He could have dashed back home for a minute or two. No one would have noticed. He keeps most of his supplies in the courtyard, or in his room, so he often goes back and forth.”
“It’s possible,” Yu said. “Still, I think he must be grateful for Yin’s help. Her comment changed the course of his life.”
“Gratitude from such a man? No, no way.” Old Liang shook his head vigorously. “In fact, there’s something else about him. Of all her neighbors, Lei alone has entered Yin’s room a couple of times to deliver lunch boxes. Heaven alone knows what he might have noticed there.”
“You have a point, Old Liang. I’ll talk to him,” Yu said. “Now, the next one?”
“As for the next one, his name is Cai. Not exactly a resident here, at least not registered as a resident. So you see, we have not excluded other possibilities.”
“Okay, but why have you picked him out?”
“It’s another long story.” Old Liang lit a cigarette for Yu, and then another for himself. “Cai is Xiuzhen’s husband. She and her mother, Lindi, and her brother Zhengming live in a room at the end of the north wing. When Cai and Xiuzhen got married, he ran one of the few private hotels in Jinan District and talked a lot about buying a high-class apartment.”
“So he was a Mr. Big Bucks,” Yu said.
“Perhaps, at the time. Xiuzhen was then only nineteen years old. Most people believed that she had made the right choice, even though Cai was eighteen years older, and had served several years in prison for gambling. On their honeymoon, they stayed in a suite in the hotel because he was registered at home with his mother in the slums in the Yangpu District. Cai did not have time to look for a new apartment, Xiuzhen explained to her neighbors.
“But things with him were not as rose-colored as he had described them, she soon found out. The hotel business was in terrible shape, running into debt, and she was already pregnant. The rice is cooked, nothing that is done can be undone. When her baby was born, the prospect of moving into a nice apartment totally disappeared. Not long afterward, the hotel went out of business.
“His slum home is in an area designated for a new housing project, where most the buildings had already been torn down. A few families have refused to move out unless their demands are met, and they are still there. They are called ‘nail’ families, in the sense that they have to be forcefully pulled out, like nails. The district government has made it hard for those nails to stay there, cutting off their water or electricity from time to time, and when that happens, Cai comes to stay with Xiuzhen in Treasure Garden Lane.”
“That’s a different love story,” Yu said, anxious to bring Old Liang to the point. “So what does Cai do now?”
“Nothing. In the summer, he makes money as a cricket fighter. A cricket gambler, to be more exact, betting on the cricket fights. People say he has triad ties, which must help him greatly in this kind of business. For the rest of the year, heaven alone knows what he is really up to. He does not appear to be unemployed, like his brother-in-law Zhengming, who loiters about all day in the lane. As for Xiuzhen, still a young, pretty girl, she is like a fresh flower growing on top of a dung heap.”
“You can say that again,” Yu said, wondering at the appropriateness of the ancient proverb, for manure would be nutritious to a flower. “Does Cai gamble on crickets in the lane?”
“No, he does not fight crickets in the neighborhood. To make a living out of this, he has to mix with those nouveau-riches who will bet thousands of Yuan on a tiny cricket,” Old Liang said. “Once a Mr. Big Bucks, always a Mr. Big Bucks. People believe he still earns more than most of the others in the lane.”
“What about Zhengming?”
“He is good for nothing. He has not worked at any real job since high school. I don’t know how he manages to muddle along. Now he actually has a live-in girlfriend, and she doesn’t work either.’’
“Does he depend on his mother?”
“Yes. I cannot make out these young people. The world is really going to the dogs.” Old Liang added “But we don’t have to worry about him. He broke a leg ten days ago, and can hardly move out of the attic.”
“Then what about Cai—apart from his history?”
“History is like a mirror, capable of showing what a man really is. Once a criminal, always a criminal.”
“That is another quote from Chairman Mao,” Yu observed in a matter-of-fact way.
“Cai says he was not here that morning, but with his mother in that ‘nail’ room. That’s just what he says, of course.”
“Yes, we will check on that.”
But he was not so sure whether the interview of either of these two suspects would lead to anything. When Old Liang left to pursue background checks, Yu decided to do something different. He made a telephone call to Qiao Ming, the ex-dean of the cadre school, upon whom Yin had spat at the memorial service.
Peiqin and he had discussed the possibility that Qiao might have had a motive to murder Yin. In view of the autobiographical nature of the novel, even though Yin had named no names, many people might have been nervous or indignant. Wan, the upstairs neighbor, was only one example. Those who had been at the cadre school must have been panic-stricken. Furthermore, no one could predict whether Yin might produce a second book, containing even more embarrassing realistic details. Anything was possible.
“Don’t believe anything you read in Death of a Chinese Professor,” Qiao began. “It’s a pack of lies.”
“Death of a Chinese Professor is a novel, I understand. But I’m working on a homicide case, Comrade Qiao, so I have to investigate every possible aspect.”
“Comrade Detective Yu, I know why you want to talk to me, but let me make one point first. With respect to what happened during the Cultural Revolution, we must have a historical perspective. No one was a fortune-teller, capable of foretelling all the changes in the future. At that time, we simply believed in Chairman Mao!”
“Yes, everyone believed in Chairman Mao, I have no question about that, Comrade Qiao.”
“The book makes a selling point of the persecution they suffered in the cadre school. Now, that was no place for people to fall in love—not at the time. The top priority was, acc
ording to Chairman Mao, for people to reform themselves there. Because of that phone call from Beijing about Mao’s poems, the cadre school actually made a point of allowing Yang books and dictionaries. That was a real privilege at the time. Someone reported he was writing a book, and we did not even try to interfere at first. You see, for Yang, those years were not totally wasted.”
“Did you find out what kind of book he was writing?”
“Later, when we put him into the isolation room, we searched his dorm room, but we did not find anything. It might have been a manuscript in English.”
“Please tell me about the circumstances of Yang’s death.”
“It was a sweltering hot summer. We all worked in the rice paddy, just like the local farmers. It was not Yang alone who had to work there. In fact, a lot of people were sick. As for any possible negligence, now by hindsight, if we had known he was so seriously ill. . . . But perhaps he was not aware of it either. The cadre school was located in Qingpu. Transportation then was not like it is today. There wasn’t a single taxi in the area in those years. How could the cadre school be possibly held responsible for his tragic death?”
“It may be too much to say that he was persecuted to death, but we can understand Yin’s reaction. She suffered a lot those years.”
“So did I!” Qiao snapped. “All those years, I stayed at the cadre school, working there. Have I gained anything? No, nothing. At the end of the Cultural Revolution, I was subjected to ‘political examination’ for two years. And my wife divorced me, discarded me like a dirty sock.”
“Just one more question. Where were you on the morning of February seventh?”
“I was in Anhui, collecting debts for my company. A number of people, including those at the hotel, can testify to that.”
“Thanks, Comrade Qiao. I don’t think I have any more questions for you today. ‘Look to the future,’ as the People’s Daily always says.”
The telephone interview had been unhelpful, although not a total waste. For one thing, Yu learned that in his last few years, Yang had kept on working, which could have resulted in the translation of classical Chinese love poems they had found in Yin’s safety deposit box. Also, it reconfirmed Old Hunter’s maxim, that the past is always present. Almost twenty years later, people still looked at the Cultural Revolution from their own perspective forged at the time.
He removed the cassette on which he had taped the phone call. Chief Inspector Chen might be interested in it, Yu thought. He dialed the home number of his boss.
“You may suspect everyone in the building,” Chen said after having listened to Yu’s short briefing, “but when everyone is a suspect, nobody is a suspect.”
“Exactly,“ Yu said. “Old Liang sees only what he wants to see.”
“Old Liang has been a residence cop for too many years. The job of a residence cop, however important in the years of class struggle, is hardly relevant nowadays. But he still cannot help seeing the world from his outdated angle,” Chen said. “Su Dongpu has put it so well: You cannot see the true face of the Lu mountains, / When you are still inside the mountains.”
That was just like his boss, quoting some long-dead poet in the middle of an investigation. This penchant of Chen’s could occasionally be annoying.
Then Detective Yu went over to the shikumen building.
Cai was not at home. Lindi, a fine-featured woman in her late forties, was in the courtyard, cutting open a pile of river scallop spiral shells with a pair of rusted scissors. Wan was also there, seated on a bamboo stool, drinking from a purple stone teapot. At this time of the year, people normally did not sit outside doing nothing. At the sight of Detective Yu, Wan mumbled a few words and left.
After Yu introduced himself to her, Lindi led him upstairs to a small room. It would be difficult for a medium-sized family to squeeze into such an all-purpose room, let alone three families. But she lived in it with her son and his “wife,” her daughter, a crying baby and, most of the time, her son-in-law, Cai. Fortunately, it was a room with a relatively high ceiling, which made possible the construction of two added make-shift lofts, with a common ladder leading to both of them. In comparison, Detective Yu reflected with deep sarcasm, his living conditions could be considered great.
According to Lindi, Cai was not at home this morning. Nor had he been here on the morning of February 7. “No one can tell what he’s really up to,” Lindi said with a sigh. “I warned Xiuzhen about her choice, but she would not listen.”
“I have heard about it. How about your son Zhenming?”
“Home for him is like a free hotel, and a free restaurant too. He comes whenever he wants. Now he brings another person with him as well.”
“Please tell me what you know about Yin, Comrade Lindi.”
“She was different.”
“How?”
“She had a room all for herself, whereas in our one single room there are three families. She suffered during the Cultural Revolution? Who didn’t? My husband died in the ‘armed struggle’ among worker organizations, believing he was fighting for Chairman Mao to the last drop of his blood. After his death, there was not even a memorial service for him.” She went on after a pause. “One of the reasons Xiuzhen married Cai was not because of his money—he did not have such a lot to begin with—but because she had lost her father when she was only four years old.”
“I see,” Yu said. He was surprised by her thoughtful analysis of her daughter’s reason for marrying the much older Cai.
“I’m sorry, I can’t tell you much about Yin. The Cultural Revolution has left so many tragedies in its wake. Yin was a writer, and had published a book about it, but she was not willing to talk about it to us.”
Detective Yu thanked her at the end of the conversation. As he moved downstairs, he felt totally depressed. People here still seemed to be covered with the dust of the past, just like the shikumen building itself. To be more exact, they were still living in the shadow of the Cultural Revolution. The government called on the people to look forward, never turning their head heads back, but this was extremely hard for some, including Yin, Lindi, Wan, almost everyone he had interviewed here except Mr. Ren. Now Yu wondered whether Mr. Ren really could forget, drowning his memories in a bowl of steaming noodles.
As he walked out of the shikumen building, he caught sight of Lei’s booth at the front lane entrance. Detective Yu was not in a great hurry to interview Lei. Looking at his watch, he decided to buy a lunch box for himself. There was a line of customers stretching toward the booth, and he stood in it patiently. He watched. In spite of the help he had recently hired, Lei himself was busy, constantly stirring the contents of a heavy wok. Several rough, unpainted wooden tables and benches stood clustered around the lane entrance. Some customers walked away with lunchboxes in their hands, but some chose to eat there. Yu also took a seat.
The meal was quite good. A large portion of rice paddy eel slice fried with green onion and sesame oil on top of steamed white rice, plus a soup of pickled vegetable and shredded pork, for only five Yuan.
Afterwards, he phoned Peiqin with a question. “Do you think we can rely on Yu’s tax form?”
“No, I don’t think so,” Peiqin replied. “Private restaurants make lots of money by not paying tax. It’s an open secret. All business is done for cash. No one asks for a receipt for four or five Yuan. His tax form is not something you can trust. Nor does he put all his money in the bank either. This is a common practice among restaurant owners.”
“That’s true,” Yu said. “I did not ask for a receipt this afternoon.”
“I have done some spreadsheets for Geng. I know what I am talking about.”
Yu believed Peiqin.
* * * *
Chapter 11
S
itting in her cubicle at the Four Seas restaurant, Peiqin finished the accounting work for the month. It was hardly the middle of February. Still, she would come to her so-called office every day to sit with the books and papers spread ou
t on the long desk, even though there was no work left to do. Originally a tingzijian, it was not much of a room, but it served as an office separated from the business downstairs. She shared the office with Hua Shan, the restaurant manager, who had an all-day-long meeting somewhere else. Slipping off her shoes, she placed her feet on a chair, then put them down again. There were two small holes in her socks.
“Peiqin, it’s time for lunch,” Luo, the new chef shouted from the kitchen located below the office. His voice boomed up through the cracks of the old worn floor, the air was filled with swirling dust making weird patterns in the light. “We’ll have fish-head soup with red pepper today.”
“Great. I’ll come as soon as I finish here.”
In the first year she had worked there, Peiqin had occasionally come downstairs to help. Soon she stopped doing so. In a state-run company, employees were paid the same amount regardless of how long or how hard they worked. As an accountant, she needed only to finish her bookkeeping, which normally took her a week, instead of a month. If she sat there afterward, doing nothing for the rest of the time, no one would care. So for the last few years, she had read Qinqin’s textbooks under the cover of her accounting books. Qinqin would not let his school years slip away, unlike hers. To help him with his homework, she started learning English too, so as to be able to practice with him at home. Qinqin had to get a good education, at a top university. A college education could make a world of difference in China’s fast-changing society. In fact, Chief Inspector Chen had obtained his position—in part at least—because of his superior educational background, although she acknowledged Chen was one of the few Party cadres who deserved his position on his own merit.