Qiu Xiaolong - Shanghai Redemption

The waiter came by to add hot water to the teapot. How long had he been sitting here? Customers around him were beginning to leave. It was eight thirty. Once again, it seemed too late for him to go out to Lu’s apartment in Pudong. A Shanghai melody was coming out of a speaker somewhere. It wasn’t a red song; rather, it was a black, decadent song banned during the Cultural Revolution.

After our parting tonight, / when can you come again? / Drink the cup, / help yourself to a delicacy. / How many times can you get really drunk? / Enjoy! Seize the moment…

He noticed the waiter hurrying past, carrying a large box to the entrance, where a young man in a restaurant uniform took it and rode off on an electric bike.

“Your restaurant also does delivery?” he asked the waiter when he came back to his table.

“Yes, we do. Because of our location, some of the deliveries are for the consulates nearby. Some of them place orders quite late in the evening, too. Our delivery men wear the restaurant uniform and ride electric bikes with our logo painted on the side so the guards there recognize them.”

“That’s a good idea. People in those offices might work late, and it’s convenient for them to order delivery. But hold on…” Chen said. He counted out five hundred yuan. “That’s for dinner, and the rest is a tip for you. Also, can you lend me a uniform and a bike?”

“Why do you need that?” The waiter looked confounded.

“You don’t have to know. The bike and uniform will be returned to you tomorrow.”

“Don’t do anything stupid. The guards at the consulates check every delivery and call for confirmation before letting anyone in.”

“Come on. What do you think I am?” Chen showed him his police bureau business card as well as his ID card. “It’s highly confidential. Don’t say a word to anyone.”

“So you are…” The waiter stopped and broke into a smile. “Of course, anything you want, Chief Inspector Chen. You should have told me earlier. Of course, not a word to anyone.”

Fifteen minutes later, Chen walked out dressed in a restaurant uniform, carrying an insulated box, and picked up an electric bike.

IT TOOK CHEN ONLY five or six minutes to ride over to the lane off Wulumuqi Road where Wei lived. He circled the area before he got off the bike and locked it to a poplar tree near the lane. Then he trotted over to a European-style condo, one hand carrying the box like a delivery man, the other pulling out his cell phone.

“You gave me this new number just the other day, Wei,” he said the moment she picked up. “I’m at your door.”

“What?”

Wei opened her door with surprise on her peculiarly pale, fatigue-laden face. She was wearing a black embroidered silk robe and black silk slippers. She was in mourning, as Yu had described. Her sadness was not something temporarily put on for a cop or a delivery man.

“Delivery from the Heavenly Sichuan,” he said, and then added in a hushed voice before she uttered another word, “Detective Yu gave me this number.”

“Come on in,” she said, managing to respond, “I love the spicy tofu from your place.”

Chen stepped inside, and she quickly closed the door after him. It might be suspicious for a delivery man to step into her condo without leaving again almost immediately, but it was a quiet residential neighborhood with apparently no one around to notice.

Chen set the box down on the corner table. “The box is from the restaurant, but I’m the partner of Detective Yu. Or, rather, the ex-partner, and an ex-chief inspector of the Shanghai Police Bureau. My name is Chen Cao. At this moment, I’m also the head of the Shanghai Legal Reform Committee.”

He handed her his new business card. It was only the second time he’d ever used that card. The first time had been back in the office of the cemetery where his father was buried. Perhaps this was another bad omen-to a widow.

On the wall behind Wei, there was a long silk scroll painting of a white tiger crouching on a lone singularly shaped rock. The painting bore the signature of Zhang Shanzi, a celebrated modern painter. The artist’s winged aspiration had created a tiger vividly ferocious, its eyes burning bright in the forest of the night. The painting was probably worth a fortune.

She looked confounded, but she waved him over to the leather sofa, which was covered in scattered books, magazines, newspapers, a white blouse, jeans, and other random items.

“I remember seeing your picture in the newspaper,” she said. She changed her mind and pulled out a chair for him, then seated herself on the sofa. “But why are you here, dressed in a restaurant uniform?”

“No one pays attention to a delivery man.”

“Liang talked to me about you as well, Chief Inspector Chen. I’m sorry that the room is such a mess…”

“It’s not a night for formality, Wei. I’m here to talk about what happened to Liang, and about you. I’ve worked on quite a number of complicated cases, as you know, but this is the most difficult and dangerous one. And quite possibly, my last one, too. Now, to answer your question, why do I have to approach you like this? It’s a long story. Let me start by telling you what has happened to me in the last few days. A lot of things that seemed unrelated, at least initially, are actually connected. I’m just beginning to see from what direction they were coming.”

He hadn’t prepared what he was going to say. He was just going to present a comprehensive picture, with all the necessary details, of the diabolical intrigues that threatened to ruin both their lives. He hoped to make her see the impending danger and then persuade her to cooperate with his plan, even though he had no idea how that would play out. He also hoped that talking about it might help him sort out the tangled ideas that were still crowding his mind.

It was like a win-or-lose move in a go game. So much remained as yet unknown, he felt as if he were jumping into an abyss. But he didn’t have much left to lose anyway, and soon, there would be nothing left.

“Please go on, Chief Inspector Chen.”

There was half a bottle of whiskey on the coffee table, along with a single glass. Was she drinking alone? She got up and fetched another glass from the cabinet, poured out a finger, and offered it to him. There was a faint touch of alcohol on her breath as she leaned over to hand him the glass.

“This evening, I’m not talking to you as a police officer, which I’m not, though I still can’t help feeling like one,” he started. “You might have heard that I was moved to a new position outside of the police bureau. As a cop, I’ve ruffled high feathers, so I wasn’t totally surprised. But after that, things happened in such quick succession that I was overwhelmed. To begin with, I nearly fell prey to a setup in the Heavenly World last week.”

“The Heavenly World?” she interrupted.

“Yes, it was touch-and-go. If not for an unexpected phone call from my mother, I might have ended being another Pan Ming that night.”

She didn’t appear to be mystified by the name Pan Ming. It had been a notorious setup.

“Detective Yu thought that all of this-my sudden removal from the police department, the attempt to discredit me in a setup-must have something to do with one of the cases recently assigned to the squad. In other words, it was to prevent me from looking into one of those cases. So that’s exactly what we did. Detective Yu and I checked into each and every one of those cases, including those involving Shang’s son, the dead pigs on the river, and your missing husband. To our surprise and confusion, though, everything turned out to be unbelievably bizarre. I’ve translated some mysteries, as you may have heard, and from time to time, I find fault with the implausibility of the plots. That’s just fiction, you may well say. But things in China can be far stranger than fiction.