by Qiu Xiaolong
“There was at least one before Mi—that I know of.”
“What happened to her?”
“Dumped liked a worn-out mop.”
“Can you find out more about her?”
“I could try. Somebody told me she had been a karaoke girl. Mi used to work in a foot massage parlor,” she said. “As a Party cadre in charge of a large state-run company, it was very shrewd of him to maintain a quiet, stable home life by providing generously for his wife. At the same time, he had Mi serving him hand and foot like a concubine at his home office.”
“Yes, I see.”
“But tell me, Chen, what did you hear from Mi and Fu?”
“Mi described a most unhappy family life for Liu, which I think was an effort to justify her role as a little secretary. Fu said little. He’s also from Shanghai and mentioned going there—to Shanghai—this evening.”
“Fu goes back quite often. Now, as the boss, he can travel there whenever he likes.” She paused, then said suddenly, “Oh, I don’t know what will happen to the company or to China.”
It reminded Chen of something written by Fan Zhongyan, a Song-dynasty poet-statesman who described people “joyful with the joy of the country and sorrowful with the sorrow of the country. Alas, in whom can I find such a companion?”
Shanshan, herself besieged by troubles, was sorrowful with the sorrow of the country. She was so different from many of her contemporaries, standing out from the crowd in this acquisitive age by fighting for things beyond her own materialistic considerations. He couldn’t help but be reminded of himself from his long-forgotten years at college, when he, too, had cherished idealistic, passionate dreams.
Their eyes met, and they beheld each other. The air was abruptly filled with the sound of birds chirping, and a fitful breeze blew through the trees like a lost song.
A couple of lines he had written earlier came to mind—when you no longer belonged / to a place, nor a time, nor yourself. It was a poem about her, he realized.
At that moment, however, he didn’t know what to say, so he repeated the words he, as a cop, had said so many times.
“Thank you for telling me all this, Shanshan. If you think of anything else, anything unusual, let me know.”
THIRTEEN
IT WAS ONE OF the few mornings that Detective Yu, of the Shanghai Police Bureau, didn’t have to get up early. Nor did he want to. It was Saturday morning, and the clock on the wall read eight thirty, but he was still in bed with Peiqin. Qinqin, their only son, had left around six for an intensive review session in Pudong to prepare for the coming college entrance exam.
There was only a plasterboard partition wall between their room and Qinqin’s, so they couldn’t enjoy any real privacy. But this morning, it was different.
Peiqin was sitting up, reclining against a couple of pillows and watching TV with the volume turned up fairly loud. She didn’t want to go out to the food market early, either. With Qinqin away for the day, she had no motivation to prepare a special meal.
Yu understood. He lay beside her, contented. The moment would be perfect if he could smoke a cigarette in bed, but he knew better. He thought about talking to Peiqin about the recent work at the bureau but then thought better of it. It was a quiet moment, which he cherished. There were several none-too-special “special cases,” for which he wasn’t in a hurry to do anything. Chief Inspector Chen would come back in a week.
“Any special cases of late?” she said, turning off the TV. It was as if she was synchronized with his thoughts.
“No, not really,” he said. “There’s one involving an official in the city government, but he’s already a dead tiger, so to speak. It’s just a matter of process—first a list of his wrongdoings will be released to the public, and then an editorial will appear in Liberation Daily hailing the Party’s determination to fight corruption. Another case involves some dissidents planning to release a petition calling for improved human rights. The authorities in Beijing put them on a blacklist long ago, so the results are a foregone conclusion. I don’t think there is anything our squad can do. Even Chen couldn’t do anything to stop it.”
“So why the sudden vacation for your chief inspector?”
He had sort of anticipated the question. The inscrutableness of the inspector had become one of her favorite topics. “I don’t know of anything happening here that Chen had to get out of the way of. Not recently.”
“Did he give you any explanation for his sudden vacation?”
“No, not at all.”
“But you never know what your boss is really up to. Remember his trip to Beijing not too long ago?” she said, then added, “Not that I have anything against him, you know.”
“Some people are saying that he will soon be removed from his position because he has ruffled too many high feathers and that the vacation is just a face-saving maneuver. But I don’t think so. His vacation was arranged by Comrade Secretary Zhao. If anything, that should indicate that Chen remains in favor in Beijing. So it might be nothing more than a vacation. It’s not unimaginable for him.”
“He needs a break, what with his nervous breakdown not too long ago, and his ex-girlfriend having married somebody else. A vacation will do him good. But still, I wonder what he’s doing in Wuxi. I can’t picture him relaxing, drinking tea, and sightseeing like a tourist. Your boss seems to bring trouble with him wherever he goes.”
“Well, I’ve heard from Sergeant Huang, a local cop in Wuxi. According to him, Chen might be having a vacation fling with a young pretty woman—much younger than Chen.”
“Really!” Peiqin said, sitting up straighter. “He has a way with women.”
“But this time he might not be in luck. According to Huang, there’s a snag. She’s connected to a man in trouble. Big trouble—”
Before Yu could continue, the phone rang.
“Oh, Chief Inspector Chen,” Yu said after picking up the phone. “We were just talking about you.”
“Yu, I need a favor.”
“Yes, Chief?”
“I need you to do a background check on someone. She lives in Wuxi, but was originally from Shanghai and comes back regularly.”
“A young girl?”
“She’s middle-aged, one Mrs. Liu. Her husband, head of a large chemical company, was murdered a few days ago.”
“I see. So you’re in Wuxi to investigate the murder?”
“No. I’m on vacation in Wuxi. It’s not my case. It’s up to the Wuxi police, but I do need your help,” Chen said. “Last Tuesday, Mrs. Liu was in Shanghai, playing mahjong with three others. I’ll text you her Shanghai address, along with the name and number of one of the three with her that evening.”
“So you want me to check her alibi.”
“Yes, but not officially, if you can avoid it. The Wuxi police have already made some enquiries, but she’s not a suspect. Not exactly.” Chen then added quickly, as if in afterthought, “Also, see if you can find any background information about a man named Fu. He also works in Wuxi, but was originally from Shanghai. And he too was back in Shanghai this weekend.”
“Why? Is there some connection between the two?”
“There might be—something that I’m still failing to grasp. The Wuxi police haven’t made any enquiries about him. He’s not a suspect, and I’m just curious, you know. It’s probably nothing more than a hunch.”
It was strange. Despite what he was saying, Chen sounded more than casually curious to Yu.
“Oh, Fu lives in the Old City area, quite close to the intersection of Renmin and Henan Road. I’ll also text you his Shanghai address,” Chen went on. “Unless I’m remembering wrong, it shouldn’t be too far from Peiqin’s old home.”
“I’ll get on it, Chief. Is there anything specific you’re looking for?”
“Anything you can find out. I know it’s a Saturday, so I owe you one, Yu. Give my regards to Peiqin.”
“What’s up?” Peiqin said the moment Yu put down the phone.
Yu r
epeated Chen’s requests, which had come out of nowhere, especially if Chen was truly in Wuxi on vacation. He wished that Chen had explained further, but as always, the chief inspector must have his reasons.
“I see,” Peiqin said. “Sure, we’ll do our best to help.”
Yu got up, smiling at the pronoun in her quick and crisp response. As in the past, she was eager to join in.
In years past, Peiqin had been reluctant to get involved in his duties as a policeman. But since he started working for the chief inspector, she had completely changed. In fact, she had helped—in her way—with the investigation in several difficult cases.
After getting Chen’s text message, Yu dialed the phone number of the woman who had been with Mrs. Liu the evening of the murder. Bai was her surname. She was not at home, so Yu left a message asking her to call back at her earliest convenience.
“We might try to talk to her neighbors,” Peiquin said.
“Good idea.”
The lazy Saturday that Yu had envisioned was suddenly no more. But it wasn’t the sort of thing that Yu would complain about.
They set out to Mrs. Liu’s old neighborhood in Zhabei. It was a part of Shanghai not familiar to either of them. Zhabei had been something of a slum—full of old, shabby, ramshackle houses and dirty, ugly factories. The construction of plain-looking concrete “workers’ homes” there in the sixties and seventies had hardly helped. There weren’t any well-known stores or attractions there, and with the terrible traffic congestion in the city, they had previously no reason to spend a couple of hours going there.
But Zhabei had changed a lot in recent years. As Yu and Peiqin stepped out of the subway, recently extended to this part of the city, they saw a number of new high-rises.
The overall impression was, however, singularly mixed. Just two or three blocks from an ultramodern skyscraper, they saw shabby side streets with dilapidated buildings, tiny lanes with sordid entrances, and scenes that they imagined were typical of the old neighborhood.
They approached a small family grocery store near the entrance of the lane in which Mrs. Liu had lived. To their surprise, Xiong, the owner of the store, a garrulous woman in her early fifties, claimed to know Mrs. Liu well, having been her childhood neighbor and friend. According to Xiong, Mrs. Liu came back quite regularly, though her parents had passed away. Her old home was unoccupied most of the time, with only occasional visitors staying there. Among her old neighbors, Mrs. Liu had plenty of face, having once invited a large group of them to a fancy restaurant. She also owned a high-end apartment in Xujiahui, one of the top areas in Shanghai, but she didn’t seem to go to that apartment often, and none of her old neighbors here had ever visited. Still, the very location of it spoke volumes about her wealth.
“You should see the way she plays mahjong—a hundred yuan a game, not including tips. It’s as if she was printing money at home,” Xiong said, in proud excitement.
“She comes all the way back here to play mahjong? Does she lose a lot too?”
“She won’t bankrupt herself on a mahjong table. You don’t have to worry about that. For a woman, having a good husband is far more important than having a good job,” Xiong concluded. “She always has an eye for men. In the early years, Liu was still a nobody from the countryside, yet she followed him all the way to Wuxi. No one else had that kind of far-sighted vision. No wonder he provides her whatever she wants.”
But all of this information was neither here nor there, and despite her claims of profound friendship with Mrs. Liu, Xiong hadn’t even heard about the death of Mrs. Liu’s husband.
After taking their leave of Xiong, Yu and Peiqin then approached some of the other neighbors. They didn’t learn much, and some of the neighbors were suspicious of them and refused to answer their questions. Yu and Peiqin managed to get into the stunted two-story building and up to the room Mrs. Liu kept there. The door was locked, of course, but from the outside it looked no different from her neighbors’.
Mrs. Liu appeared to be a success story, all the more so when compared to her neighbors, Yu thought. He went fishing for a cigarette in his pocket, but he decided not to take one out around Peiqin. Why Mrs. Liu kept coming back to the impoverished old neighborhood remained a mystery. Her family hadn’t been that well off, though in the context of the neighborhood, they might have done okay. The only possible explanation Yu could think of was that she wanted to show off, but what would be the point of showing off repeatedly, continuously, for years?
“If she was happily married,” Peiqin said, as if reading his mind, “why would she come back so often?”
“I don’t know,” Yu said, shaking his head. He had no idea what Chen wanted him to find out. But then Chen himself might not have a clear idea.
It was then that his cell phone rang. It was Chen again.
“I have to ask you another favor, Yu.”
“Go ahead, Chief,” he said, then added, “I’m in Mrs. Liu’s old neighborhood right now.”
“Thanks, Yu. The Wuxi Number One Chemical Company here is about to go public. The head of the company, Liu, was the one who was murdered. I have only a little information about its IPO plan. It could help if I knew more about how such a plan works. Now, as I recall, Peiqin said that her restaurant belongs to Plum Blossom Pavilion Group, which is also going public soon. I’m wondering whether Peiqin could, as an accountant, find out something about the IPO for the Wuxi company. Perhaps she knows a thing or two about it.”
“I’ll tell her. In fact, she’s right beside me. Do you want to talk to her?”
“No, that’s about all I could tell her. Please let her know that I appreciate her help. I owe you both.”
Chen said his good-bye, and Yu returned the phone to his pocket. He looked over at Peiqin.
“Something for me to do again?” Peiqin inquired with a smile.
Yu explained Chen’s request.
“Ours is just one of the numerous small restaurants owned by the Group,” Peiqin said, shaking her head. “These things are determined by the bosses of the Group and have nothing to do with me.”
“But do you know something about the way an IPO works?” He knew she had been dabbling a little in the stock market.
“Different companies have different ways. It’s something new and unprecedented in China, at least since 1949,” she said. “I’ve heard a little about the so-called large noncirculating shares and the small noncirculating shares. The bosses who initiate an IPO each get a number of shares, an amount in accordance with his position, at a symbolic price which is practically for free. Once a state-run company goes public, the Party member CEO can become a millionaire or even a billionaire. No one can tell the difference between socialism and capitalism anymore.”
“That’s totally against the Party tradition. Cadres are supposed to serve people wholeheartedly, selflessly.”
“That’s why people want to be Party cadres nowadays,” she said with an ironic smile. “But as for an IPO, that’s about all I know. How could I know anything about a company that’s far away in Wuxi? Your boss must be desperate. As the proverb says, When one’s seriously sick, he will go to any doctor.”
“You mean you think that Chen’s in trouble?”
“He’s desperate for something. Perhaps it’s because of the affair with the young woman. Anyway, the stock market is closed on Saturday, so it would be useless for us to go there. Besides, I don’t know anyone who works there.”
“And I can’t approach anyone there. Chen made a point of saying he didn’t want me investigating officially. Even if I did try to ask a few questions, they wouldn’t have to cooperate with me. I have no authority whatsoever in these matters.”
“No, it would be of no use,” Peiqin said. “Unless we could find someone who has inside connection and information.”
“So, what are we going to do now?”
“Let’s go to visit the other one’s neighborhood. Fu’s.”
That area happened to be Peiqin’s childhood neighb
orhood, where she had lived until the start of the Cultural Revolution. Her family, being a “black” one, had never mixed much with their neighbors and then during the Cultural Revolution had been driven out of the neighborhood. The memory of being a “black puppy,” with its head hung low and its tail tucked in, still stung. Peiqin hardly ever went back there.
“After so many years,” she said pensively, “I may not find anyone who still knows me, let alone someone who will tell us anything about Fu. The address you have is in a side lane, if I’m not remembering wrong, and in those years I didn’t go there often.”
However, after having made several calls on the way, Yu had better luck. One of his colleagues was acquainted with the neighborhood cop there, Wei Guoqiang, who promised to help.
Wei was waiting for them at the neighborhood committee office. Though no longer as powerful as it had been in the years of “class struggle” under Mao, it was still something of a grass-roots organization responsible for neighborhood security. Wei had no problem obtaining information for a general background check on a local resident.
According to Wei, Fu had been born to and raised by a poor family here in this mainly lower- and middle-class neighborhood. Three generations of Fu’s family had been squeezed into a single room of fifteen square meters in a shikumen house: his grandfather, his parents, and Fu and his younger brother. Even though Fu worked in Wuxi now, he still came back quite regularly. When there, he shared a retrofitted attic with his brother.
“Hold on,” Yu cut in. “Fu serves as the head of a large state-run company in Wuxi. He should have been able to buy an apartment for himself, if not for the family.”
“Is he already the head?” Wei asked, then went on without waiting for an answer. “But there’s a reason he hasn’t bought an apartment here, that I can tell you. This neighborhood is included in the city reconstruction plan. The old houses may soon be pulled down and replaced by new construction. When that happens, the Fu family will be given at least two apartments as compensation, and Fu could have one of them when he gets married. If instead he bought one now and moved out, it would be a different story. Housing compensation is based on the number of people in the family.”