by Qiu Xiaolong
“Don’t get me wrong, Comrade Chief Inspector Chen. Of course the Party trusts you. That’s why I wanted you to come to my office today, I’d also like to make a suggestion to you. For a politically sensitive case like this, I think we all need to proceed with the utmost caution. It is best left in the hands of the Internal Security.”
“Internal Security? It’s a homicide case, Comrade Director Yao. I don’t think I see the necessity.”
“You will, if you think about the possible political impact.”
“If Wu Xiaoming proves to be innocent, we’re not going to do anything. But if he is guilty, everybody is equal before the law.” He added, “Of course, Comrade Director Yao, we’ll be very careful to keep your instruction in mind.”
“So you’re determined to go on with the investigation.”
“Yes, I’m a cop.”
“Well ...” she said finally, “it is just my suggestion. You’re a chief inspector, and it is up to you to decide. Still, I would appreciate it if you’d report to me when you make some progress in your investigation. It is in the Party’s interests.”
“That will be fine,” he said, trying to be vague again. He did not think it was his responsibility to report to her. “I’m a Party member. I will do everything in accordance with bureau procedure, and in the interests of the Party, too.”
“People are talking about your dedication to your work. Their praise seems to be justified,” she said, rising from her desk. “You’ve a great future ahead of you, Comrade Chief Inspector Chen. We are old. Sooner or later we will have to entrust our socialist cause to young people like you. So I expect to see you soon.”
“Thank you, Director Yao,” he said. “Your advice and instructions are very important to me.”
Everything she said was like a quotation from a political textbook, he reflected, nodding nonetheless.
“Also,” she continued in the same serious voice, “we’re concerned about your personal life.”
“My personal life?”
“You are a young cadre in the process of being promoted, and it’s proper and right for us to be concerned. You’re in your mid-thirties, aren’t you? It’s time for you to settle down.”
“Thank you, Comrade Director Yao. I’ve just been so busy.”
“Yes, I know. I’ve read the article about your work by that Wenhui reporter.”
She walked him to the elevator. Once more, they shook hands, formally.
Outside, the drizzle was heavier.
Director Yao’s interference was ominous.
It was not just that this senior Party official knew Wu Xiaoming so well. Yao and Wu’s families had moved in the same circles. An old cadre herself, her reaction to an investigation against an HCC was not too surprising. But her knowledge of the case was alarming, and she was so inquisitive about his investigation in Guangzhou, and even about his personal life, including “that Wenhui reporter.” In her position, Yao was not supposed to be aware of these things— unless Chen himself was under investigation.
The committee was the most powerful institution determining a cadre’s promotion or demotion. A week earlier, Chief Inspector Chen had told himself that he was on the way up—to serve the people.
Now he was not sure.
* * * *
Chapter 26
W
hen Chief Inspector Chen returned to the bureau, it was past twelve o’clock.
Party Secretary Li was still not in. Nor was Detective Yu. And Chen’s phone was ringing off the hook. The first call came from Beijing headquarters. It was about a case solved long ago. He had no idea why Chief Inspector Qiao Daxing, his counterpart in Beijing, wanted to talk to him about it. Qiao spent twenty minutes of a long-distance call without mentioning anything new or substantial, and ended up saying that he looked forward to seeing Chen in Beijing and to treating him to Beijing roast duck on Huangfujing Avenue.
The second call was also a surprise. It came from the Wenhui Daily, not from Wang Feng but from an editor whom he hardly knew. A reader had written to the newspaper, asking the editor to forward her thanks to the poet for the realistic description of down-to-earth police officers. Ironic, he thought, since no one had called him “realistic” before.
The most unexpected call came from Old Hunter, Detective Yu’s father.
“You recognize my voice, Chief Inspector Chen. I know you’re busy, but I want to discuss something with you. Guangming, that young rascal, is going to send my gray hair into the grave.”
“What! Guangming? He’s the most filial son under the sun.”
“Well, if you can spare me half an hour of your precious time, I will tell you all about it. Now you’re having your plastic box of lunch again, I guess. No good. What about coming to the Mid-Lake Teahouse, you know the one, behind the City God’s Temple. I’ll buy you a cup of genuine Dragon Well green tea. It will agree with your stomach. I’m calling from a pay phone there.”
It was a request to which Chen could hardly say no, and not just because of his friendship with Detective Yu. Old Hunter had served in the force for over thirty years. Though retired, the old man still considered himself an insider, with his connections in the bureau and out.
“Okay, I’ll be there in about twenty minutes. Don’t worry, Guangming’s fine.”
In the case of serious trouble between father and son, however, Chen didn’t think that he was the best choice as a mediator, nor was it the right time for him to intervene. The talk he had just had at the Discipline Committee weighed heavily on his mind. But he swallowed his plastic-box lunch, then made his way to the temple in a hurry.
The City God’s Temple was said to have been built during the Southern Song dynasty in the fifteenth century. The temple had been rebuilt and refurbished a number of times, the last in 1926. The main hall had been reinforced with concrete, the clay images gilded. In the early sixties, the images had been smashed to pieces as a result of the Socialist Education Movement, and in the early eighties the temple had undergone another drastic renovation after being used as a general storage place, for it was then turned into an arts-and-crafts shopping center. The original appearance of the temple was now restored, with black-painted doors and yellow walls. Its interior presented a dazzling array of shining glass counters and stainless steel shelves. On the door was a couplet engraved in bold brush strokes: Be an honest man so that you can enjoy a peaceful sleep, / Do something good so that God will know about it.
Communists, of course, did not believe in God, Oriental or Occidental, but it was nonetheless good advice to people to do something good and to have a clear conscience, especially from a cop’s point of view.
So a marketplace had been made from a temple.
In front of the temple, however, he saw a group of elderly women gathering around something like a cushion. Several were kneeling on the ground. One was kowtowing before the cushion with bunches of burning incense in her hands and murmuring something almost inaudibly:
“City God . . . protect . . . family . . . stock ...”
It was obvious that the temple was still a temple—at least to these worshippers.
Appearance and reality.
Some people said that sooner or later a temple would be made out of the market. Maybe this was a metaphor for commodity fetishism. Maybe not. He was becoming befuddled.
The surrounding bazaar consisted of numerous small shops selling a variety of local products, but what made the bazaar special was an incredible number of Chinese snack shops, bars and booths. The snacks were not expensive, but delicious in their unique flavors. In his high-school years, Chen had once invited Overseas Chinese Lu and Four-Eyed Jiang to an ambitious campaign—to sample every snack shop in one afternoon. Their tactic was to share everything. Each tried no more than one small bite. So in one afternoon they had tasted chicken and duck blood soup, radish-shred cake, shrimp and meat dumplings, beef soup noodles, fried bean curd and vermicelli. . . . They had not succeeded. Halfway through, their joint funds ran
out. But that had been one of their happiest days.
Four-Eyed Jiang had thrown himself into a well during the Cultural Revolution, Overseas Chinese Lu had his restaurant now, and he, he was a police inspector.
The Mid-Lake Teahouse was a place they had not visited during that campaign, but he knew it to be a two-storied pavilion shaped like a pagoda in the middle of a man-made lake, opposite the Crane and Pine Restaurant. There was a nine-turn stone bridge with a flight of steps leading to the teahouse. He made his way across the bridge, which was full of tourists at every turn: People pointing at the lotus flowers swaying in the breeze, throwing bread crumbs to the golden carp swimming among the blossoms, or posing for pictures with the teahouse in the background.
There were only a few tea drinkers on the first floor. Chen looked around without catching sight of Old Hunter, so he walked up the vermilion-railed stairs. On the second floor there were even fewer customers, and he saw the old man sitting by the window with a teapot.
“Come and sit with me, Comrade Chief Inspector,” the old man said, waving his hand, as Chen moved toward a seat beside him.
“Thank you,” Chen said. “It’s so elegant here.”
Their table overlooked the lake filled with lotuses. The view was serene.
“On the second floor everything costs twice as much. But it’s worth it. A cup of tea here is the only indulgence I’ve permitted myself since retirement.”
Chen nodded. A cup of tea here was different from one in the crowded, stuffy room that contained the retired old man’s daily life since he had relinquished the front room to his son.
There was a whisper of southern bamboo music in the teahouse, perhaps from a tape player somewhere. A silver-haired waiter carrying a heavy shining brass kettle poured the water in a graceful arc into the tiny cup before Chen. There was lore to this. In ancient China, teahouse waiters had been called Doctors of Tea, and the teahouse was a place of spiritual cultivation, as well as where people exchanged daily information.
“I know you also like good tea,” Old Hunter said. “I do not know how to say this without sounding too condescending, Comrade Chief Inspector. There are not too many people I’m willing to drink tea with.”
“Thank you,” he said.
That’s true, he thought. The old man had always been proud in his way, but nice. And helpful to him.
“I’ve something for you, Comrade Chief Inspector. Since I cannot get hold of Guangming, I may as well tell you.”
“He’s so busy,” Chen said. “I have not seen him today, either.”
“Working on that model worker case?”
“Yes, but what’s the problem?”
“It’s not really about Guangming, but about the case. Guangming has discussed it with me. I’m no outsider, you know. I have some information about it.”
“Really, older ginger is spicier than young, Uncle Yu,” Chen said, resorting to a cliché. “You surely have the knack of digging out information.”
“A woman called Jiao Nanhua told me that Guan was having an affair shortly before her death.”
“Who is Jiao Nanhua?”
“She’s a dumpling vendor on Guan’s street, on the corner, in front of the grocery shop. A night vendor with a miniature kitchen on her shoulder. She literally carries everything on a bamboo pole. On one end of the pole, a stove, and a pot of steaming water, and on the other, a shelf with dumpling skins, ground pork, vegetables, bowls, spoons, and chopsticks. She does her business when restaurants are closed, making dumplings then and there for the customer on the street. In three minutes, she’ll have a steaming bowl in your hands.”
“That’s nice! I wish there was one like that in our neighborhood, too,” Chen said, aware of Old Hunter’s other nickname, “Suzhou Opera Singer,” a reference to a popular southern dialect opera known for its performers’ tactics of prolonging a story through endless digression. “So what did she say?”
“I am just coming round to it.” Old Hunter was sipping at his tea with a leisured show of enjoyment. “A story must be told from the very beginning. Don’t get impatient, Comrade Chief Inspector. Now on several occasions, very late in the night, Jiao saw a car pulling up across the street. Just about ten feet away. A young woman would emerge, hurrying toward the dorm building at the entrance of Qinghe Lane. The dorm was at some distance from where Jiao stood, so she could not see clearly, and she did not pay much attention at first. It was not her business. Still, she grew more and more curious. Why didn’t the car pull up just in front of the lane? It’s really easy to do so. It was not pleasant for a young woman to walk the distance, alone, in the depth of the night. Jiao was also a bit upset, I believe, because the mysterious woman never came over to buy a bowl of dumplings from her. One night, she moved her mini-kitchen over to the other side of the street. She was licensed to do business on Hubei Street, so it did not matter where she positioned herself. And the car appeared again—”
“Then who did she see?” Chen was growing impatient.
“Guan Hongying. None other! The well-known national model worker. Jiao immediately recognized her, having seen Guan’s picture so many times in newspapers and on TV. Guan walked very fast, never looking around.”
“Did she see anybody else with Guan?”
“No, except the one who drove the car.”
“Did she see him?”
“Not clearly. He stayed in the car.”
“What kind of a car?”
“A fancy one. White. Perhaps imported. She could not tell what make. But not a taxi. There was no taxi sign on top.”
“Could there have been someone else in the car besides the driver?”
“No, she does not think so. In fact, she’s quite positive there was only one person in the car.”
“How can she be so positive?”
“She observed something Guan did. Every time, before heading for the dorm, Guan would lean into the window on the driver’s side.”
“What could that mean?”
“Guan leaned into the window for a long, passionate kiss.”
“Oh, I see.” It started to sound like a scene from a romantic movie, but the peddler could be right.
“She’s certainly imaginative,” Old Hunter chuckled. “A devilish woman.”
“Excuse me, Uncle Yu. I’m just curious,” Chen said. “How did she come to tell you all this?”
“Well,” Old Hunter took a deliberately slow sip at his tea before reaching the climax of his story. “I’ll let you in on a secret, but don’t tell Guangming or anybody. And you can take the credit for discovering the witness.”
“I won’t tell anybody, but the credit remains yours.”
“It’s another long story. After my retirement, I made up my mind not to be a bore. I have seen too many retired policemen dogging their grandchildren’s footsteps. I just wanted to walk around by myself, visiting various parts of the city I hadn’t seen for years. Shanghai has changed such a lot. Slums have turned into parking lots, parks into factories, and a few streets have disappeared completely. But soon I had seen them all. To keep myself from being idle, I started working for the neighborhood security committee as a sort of watchdog. One of the areas I have patrolled is the food market on Fuzhou Road.”
Chen knew that part of the story well. Detective Yu had told him all about it. At first, the patrolling job seemed to work out well for the old man. With the free market still regarded as politically “black”—an undesirable threat to the state market system—the work consisted of taking private peddlers’ bamboo baskets and stamping on them vigorously. The job paid little, but the market patroller derived a good deal of pleasure from it, wearing a red armband, imagining himself a staunch pillar of justice whenever he drove a weeping country wench out of the market. But when times changed and the free market became a necessary complement to the socialist state market, the old man suddenly lost his purpose there.
“Are you still working there?”
“Yes. Things change so fast no
wadays. Guangming and the other kids all wanted me to quit, but I’m still doing it. Not for money—just for something to do. Besides, a number of the peddlers are still up to no good, selling bad stuff and overcharging customers. And my job is to catch those guys in the act. It’s not too much to do, but it’s better than nothing at all. There should be somebody to keep an eye on them.”
“I see,” Chen said, “and I think you’re right. So you patrol the market on Fuzhou Road.”
“I can position myself anywhere close to the market, or the area related to it. These days peddlers no longer have to confine themselves to a market. So of late, I positioned myself close to Qinghe Lane, and I happened to catch Jiao, the peddler, in the act of stuffing her dumplings with ground pork that wasn’t fresh. For something like that, she could have her license taken away. I told her that I used to be a cop, and that my son works in the bureau. That scared her out of her wits. I guessed she must have heard of Guan’s death, since she does business in the neighborhood. I beat about the bush a bit, asking her to give me some information about the case. And sure enough, she did offer something in return for my not dragging her to the police station.”