When Red is Black - [Chief Inspector Chen Cao 03]

by Qiu Xiaolong

  “Yin alone was really compassionate. After her piece in Wenhui Daily, the neighborhood committee came to her, asking whether she had some other suggestions for lane work. She put in a good word for me as well. Afterward, the neighborhood committee gave me a special permit allowing me to work in the lane.”

  “It sounds like she could be quite helpful to people in need.”

  “She was. She gave several textbooks to my daughter. And a new plastic folding chair, a recliner, to me. She gave it to me three or four years ago.”

  “She gave you a new plastic folding chair? Why?”

  “That summer she had a visitor, her nephew, I think—”

  “What?” Yu cut in. He had never heard of a nephew before. Nor had one been mentioned by Old Liang. “Hold on—her nephew? Did she describe him that way?”

  “I’m not absolutely sure, but she introduced him to me. He was just a boy, maybe thirteen or fourteen years old at the time. He came from the countryside, I don’t know where. He had no other relatives in the city, she explained.”

  “Did he stay with her here in the tingzijian room?”

  “Yes, but not exactly. It would not be convenient to have a guest in so tiny a room. She bought the folding recliner for him to use, so he could sleep in the courtyard. It’s quite common for people to sleep outside here. Some even sleep in the lane. One night, the courtyard was so full, Yin had to set up the folding chair for him in front of my door. That’s when she introduced him to me, but her introduction was not that specific.”

  “How long did he stay here with her?”

  “Maybe four or five days. Less than a week.”

  “Did you talk to him?”

  “No, he was out during the day, I think. I saw him coming back with her one evening. She must have gone out with him. After he left, she gave the chair to me.”

  “Has he ever returned since?”

  “No, not that I know of. Perhaps he was a poor relative from the countryside making his one visit to the city.”

  Yu took out his notebook. The shrimp woman wiped her hands on her apron apprehensively, which reminded him once more of the trace of coal dust on his hand the previous afternoon.

  “Let me ask you another question. You said you that were busy peeling shrimp on the morning of February seventh, the morning Yin was murdered, and that you never moved a step away from here.”

  “That’s correct. The food market pays by the weight of the finished product. I cannot even afford time to go to my chamber pot.”

  “You work very hard, I know. But I also know that you got to Yin’s room some time between six fifty-five and seven ten. Now, with the back door open, you must have heard Lanlan shouting for help and seen others rushing upstairs. How could it have taken you somewhere between ten and fifteen minutes to reach Yin’s room?”

  “Fifteen minutes?” She was momentarily flabbergasted. “I don’t know. I do not know what you are driving at, Comrade Detective. I heard the noise, let me think, yes, I heard the noise, and I went over.”

  “Don’t be nervous. We don’t punish innocent people,” Yu said. “Did something else happen in the lane that morning?”

  “No, nothing I can remember.”

  “Take your time. Try to recall every detail, from the moment you picked up the frozen shrimp supply from the market. It might have been trivial, perhaps an unexpected sound in the lane, or something else that distracted you.”

  “A sound—let me think—yes, I do remember now. There was some noise coming from the green-onion-cake booth. It’s always a noisy place. Lei hawks his wares at the top of his voice, you know. But that morning the noise was louder, mixed with another voice. So I stepped out to the main lane to take a quick look.”

  “How long did that take?”

  “I don’t know. One minute. A couple of minutes, maybe. From where I stood, I could not hear clearly. It took a little time for me to make out what was happening.”

  “Did you walk up to the booth?”

  “I took a few steps in that direction, but I never went really close to it, not with my hands covered in shrimp slime.”

  “Don’t move, Comrade Peng,” Yu said, standing abruptly. “I’ll be right back.”

  He strode to the front lane entrance, and came back with Lei following him, his hands covered in flour. The shrimp woman, her face now a mask of anxiety, was unaware that she was crushing a shrimp to a pulp between her fingers.

  “Did you have an argument or a quarrel with somebody on the morning of February seventh, the morning Yin was murdered?” Yu asked.

  “Yes, I did. Some bastard complained about a piece of hair in his onion cake, and he demanded ten Yuan as compensation. That’s bullshit. He could have put his own hair into his food. Anyway, we don’t claim to be a five-star restaurant!”

  “Do you remember the time?”

  “Quite early. Around six thirty.”

  So the shrimp woman’s statement was true.

  One fact was now established: there had been three or four minutes that morning during which somebody could have left through the back door without being seen.

  Yu crossed off Lei from Old Liang’s suspect list, since at least his time was now accounted for.

  It was far from a breakthrough, though. This merely made it possible, in theory, to consider an outsider as the murderer.

  Yu thanked Peng and Lei. The shrimp woman grasped Yu’s hand in gratitude, forgetting about hers being wet and dirty.

  Lei insisted on treating Yu to a brown bag full of his hot green-onion cakes. “Yin was a good woman. We will do whatever we can to cooperate with your investigation. As long as you are working in the lane, breakfast and lunch are on me. Free. But for her help, I would not have my business today.”

  Savoring a hot cake stuffed with chopped green onion and minced pork fat, Yu returned to the neighborhood committee office, where Old Liang was waiting with excitement written all over his face.

  “A breakthrough, Comrade Detective Yu!”

  “What?”

  “Remember Cai, the cricket gambler we discussed yesterday?”

  “Yes, I do. Is there new information about Cai?”

  “I have been working hard on the background checkups, as I told you,” Old Liang said, pouring out a small white porcelain cup of Dragon Well tea for Yu, and then another for himself. “This is extraordinary, excellent tea; all the tea leaves were picked and processed before the Yuqian festival. I keep it for special occasions, like today. It’s really special.”

  “Oh, yes. Please tell me what you have found out,” Yu said. “You surely have done a great job. The older the ginger, the spicier.”

  On the first day of the investigation, before Yu’s arrival, Cai had told Old Liang that on the morning of February 7, he was not in Treasure Garden Lane, but at his “nail” room in Yangpu District, and that his mother would support his alibi. Old Liang had tried to call the mother, but was told that public phone service there had been canceled several months earlier, as part of the government’s pressure to force out those “nails.” Old Liang did not let the matter drop; he himself went to the nail room. Cai’s mother was not there—and, according to her neighbors, living conditions in the area were so hard that she had long since moved out to stay with her daughter. On the night of February 6 and then on the morning of February 7, no one had seen Cai at that address. As there was only one common sink with running water in the building, residents encountered one another several times a day. They had not seen him, however, for at least a week.

  Old Liang had another talk with Cai, who clung to his earlier statement. Instead of contradicting him, earlier that morning Old Liang insisted on walking with him back to his nail home in Yangpu District. When the door was opened, the mail that had accumulated there for over a week stared Cai in the face. One unopened letter bore the stamped date of January 25. Cai had no explanation. Old Liang immediately took Cai into custody, and re-approached his wife and mother-in-law. They continued to swear that C
ai had not been in the shikumen building on the morning of February 7, although they could not say where he might have been. They also proclaimed his innocence—which, of course, had no effect on the investigation. All suspects were “innocent.”

  “Walking him back to the nail room was really a master stroke,” Yu commented.

  “Cai has a motive,” Old Liang said. “As an addicted gambler, he may have been desperately short of money. Cai has that history. And even more important, Cai has a key to the house. He could have sneaked into Yin’s room to steal, not knowing that she would come back earlier than usual, then murdered her, and run upstairs. I don’t think we can rule out the possibility that his wife and mother-in-law are attempting to cover up for him.”

  “What did he say after you had destroyed his alibi?”

  “He denied having anything to do with the murder,” Old Liang said. “Don’t worry, I have ways of cracking such nuts.”

  “Cai is a suspect, I agree,” Yu said. “But I have just a couple of questions. Somebody like Cai bets big-time, thousands or ten-thousands of Yuan on a little cricket, as you have told me. Yin seems to be too small a fish for someone with his appetite.”

  “No, I disagree. When you’re desperate, you’re desperate. As an incorrigible gambler, if he had lost several cricket fights in a row, he might have done anything for a few hundred Yuan.”

  “It’s a possibility. But why should he have given a false alibi? It didn’t help him at all.”

  “Well, you remember the saying, If you had not stolen, you would not be so nervous.”

  “Yes, you have a point,” Yu said. “We’ll work on him.”

  Yu told Old Liang about his discovery, the possibility that someone could have left through the back door without being seen by the shrimp woman.

  Old Liang, proud of his own breakthrough, brushed aside that possibility. “Let’s say there was an opportunity to leave unseen for two or three minutes at most. So the murderer must have waited somewhere in the shikumen house for his chance. But where could he have waited without being seen?”

  Detective Yu did not have an answer, not immediately.

  * * * *

  Chapter 15

  I

  t was Detective Yu’s case, Chief Inspector Chen told himself once again.

  But for the new cadre policy, with its emphasis on the candidate’s educational background, it was Yu, who had more years of service in the police force, rather than Chen, who would have been appointed as leader of the special case squad. Chen did not want to give people the impression that he thought he had to be there, supervising every case. Nor should Party Secretary Li’s repeated phone calls have had an effect.

  With the steady progress of the New World translation, especially after he had read the introduction-to-marketing book obtained by White Cloud, however, his mind kept wandering back to the Yin case. It might have been because of his growing confidence that he would deliver the translation on time, but it was also because, ironically, it seemed that police work had somehow become the norm for him. In the midst of investigating a crime he now seemed to feel truly himself.

  It occurred to Chen that he had an excuse to take a look at the progress of the investigation. He could go to Treasure Garden Lane, ostensibly for a field study of a shikumen-style house and lane, for the translation project.

  When he approached Yu about making such a visit, the latter agreed readily even though this was, one had to admit, a fairly feeble excuse. Chen did not have to go to that particular shikumen building. Yu must have known this. But, close partners as they were, a lame excuse was better than none.

  During this conversation, Yu also discussed with Chen the possibility that the murderer had waited somewhere in the shikumen building for Peng to leave before he sneaked out.

  “I will keep it in mind when I look around,” Chen said.

  The “field study” might have served as a face-saving excuse. It was even more important to appease Old Liang, who insisted that now—with Cai in custody—the case should be concluded, though the cricket gambler still denied everything. When Yu mentioned the lack of witnesses or evidence, Old Liang took this personally. Without notifying Yu, he searched Cai’s room in Treasure Garden Lane as well as his nail room in the Yangpu district, without any success. At this juncture, Chen’s visit could easily be seen as a step toward rejecting Old Liang’s solution. Chen did not want the old man to suffer any unnecessary loss of face. So Chen left a phone message for Old Liang, assuring the old man that he simply wanted to look around, take some pictures, and try to visualize the New World arising in similar surroundings.

  When Chen arrived at Treasure Garden Lane, to show due respect, Old Liang was waiting in front of the shikumen house to greet him. “Welcome to our neighborhood, Comrade Chief Inspector Chen. Your instructions will prove to be most valuable to our work.”

  “You don’t have to say that, Comrade Old Liang. I’m on vacation, as I told you in my phone message,” Chen said. “I just want to observe this neighborhood for a project of my own.”

  “Detective Yu is interviewing some relatives of Yin’s, though I would like to say, at this stage, we really should focus—”

  “You have been doing a great job. Detective Yu has told me quite a lot about you. But I’m not here to discuss the investigation with you. I know you must be very busy. You don’t have to accompany me.”

  “Still, I’m the host here, Chief Inspector Chen. I will gladly do whatever I possibly can. If there is anything you need, please let me know.”

  “I have been doing some research with respect to an old architectural style. Detective Yu told me that this is a typical Shanghai lane, and a typical shikumen house. That’s why I have chosen to come here today.”

  “Well, you cannot find a better guide, Chief Inspector Chen. I have done my homework,” Old Liang said with a fresh air of pride. “A residence cop has to be familiar with everything in the neighborhood, even its architectural history.”

  Chen offered the would-be guide a Panda cigarette. He did not care much for Old Liang’s company. Yu had warned him about the old man’s loquacity. Still, he might provide interesting information for the translation, if not for the investigation. “Please tell me about it, Comrade Old Liang.”

  “Now, look at this lane. The lane, or longtang, in itself tells you something of the early history of Shanghai.” Old Liang started speaking while they remained in front of the shikumen house. Perhaps the residence cop could talk more eloquently with both the house and the lane in full view.

  “After the First Opium War, with the Treaty of Nanking, the city was forced to open itself to the West as a treaty port, and some areas were designated as foreign concessions. The small number of Western residents was not sufficient for the exploitation of Shanghai’s potential. So a number of Chinese, who were worried about the civil wars raging outside the concessions, were permitted to move in. The British authorities took the lead in having collective dwellings built for the Chinese on designated lots. For the convenience of management, those houses were all built in the same architectural style, arranged in lines like barracks, row after row, accessible from sub-lanes leading to the main lane. French authorities soon followed suit—”

  “What about the shikumen?” Chen, much impressed by Old Liang’s narrative flow, interrupted him as Liang paused to take a long pull at his cigarette. This general introduction might go on and on, for much longer than Chen was prepared to listen. And he had already learned some of these details elsewhere.

  “I am coming around to it, Chief Inspector Chen,” Old Liang said, lighting another cigarette from the butt of the first one. “This is a really good brand; it’s reserved for high Party cadres only, I know.

  “In the early days, not too many Chinese could have afforded to move into a concession. A shikumen house—the typical Shanghai two-storied house with a stone door frame and a small courtyard—was originally designed for one family, usually a large, extended, and well-to-do fam
ily, with various rooms for different purposes: dwelling wings, hall, front room, dining room, corner room, back room, attic, dark room, and tingzijian too. As a result of the housing shortage, some of the rooms came to be leased, then subleased, with rooms undergoing further partitioning or subdivision.

  “This has been an on-going progress to the present day. You may have heard of a Shanghai comedy called Seventy-two Families in a House. It is about such an overcrowded condition.

  “Our Treasure Garden is not exactly like that. Generally, there are no more than fifteen families in a shikumen house.”

  “Yes, I have seen the comedy. So hilarious, with a mixture of so many diverse types. Life in a shikumen house must be quite interesting.”