Qiu Xiaolong - Shanghai Redemption

“I don’t have time to dwell on some of the cases Yu and I have explored and reexplored in the past few days, so I’ll stick to the pertinent details.

“Now, shortly after I was removed from the police bureau and made a director, I went to Suzhou on some personal business. There I met a young woman named Qian, who mistook me for a PI. She offered me the job of catching her cheating man back in Shanghai, and I took on her case in exchange for her help making inquiries about the nightclub. Before any progress was made on my part, however, Qian was killed in a home invasion robbery. As it turned out, her phone was tapped and her calls recorded, including the inquiries she made on my behalf.”

He produced the CD, with her profile still smiling wistfully on the cover.

“She was also a very attractive woman, like you,” he said with difficulty. “I hold myself responsible for her death.”

Wei made no response, studying the cover of the CD intently.

“Meanwhile, Detective Yu, who took my place as the head of the Special Case Squad, was working on the Liang missing person case. He investigated various scenarios to find out what had happened to Liang. When officials who are the subject of a corruption investigation disappear, the most likely scenario is that they’ve gone into hiding with the hope of staging a comeback later. With so many scandals in today’s China, any given transgression might easily blow over. But when Liang’s body turned up in Nanhui, that changed things. Both Detective Yu and you ruled out the possibility of suicide. Then what had happened?

“Somebody must have been anxious to quickly and permanently get him out of the way. With Liang in the limelight, his death had to be orchestrated as a disappearance, so that the real cause of his death wouldn’t come to light for months, or years, if ever. It might have played out that way but for a crane accident at a faraway construction site.

“Now, Qian’s death and Liang’s might appear unrelated, but there was one thing the victims had in common. Both were threats to a person or persons in power. The murderers wanted them out of the way to make sure they couldn’t speak out against them.

“Speak about what? About something in which the stakes were too high for the murderers to risk failure. Were there several important secrets to protect, or just one? I didn’t have any clue initially.

“I came back to Shanghai two days ago to deliver a long-promised lecture. The car that the police bureau sent over to take me to the conference was practically destroyed in an explosion. I happened to have already left to take care of something else before the car arrived, but the driver, my former colleague Skinny Wang, was paralyzed in the incident.

“In the meantime, in the midst of my bumping about like a headless fly, I also heard about the death of an American in Sheshan. Intriguingly, I heard about it more than once, and from various sources. That death wasn’t even a case for our squad. Nor for the bureau. But the topic came up repeatedly.”

She nodded contemplatively, picking up her glass but putting it down again without touching a drop.

“Have you heard of it?”

“Yes, different versions.”

“People talked about his connections to the top.”

This time, she didn’t respond.

“Now, that death may have had nothing to do with me, with Qian, with Liang, or with the other cases we’ve been looking into,” Chen went on. “But then there was another missing person, a local policeman from Sheshan named Fei. At this moment, Fei’s still listed as missing, but I got a call from Wuxi just about an hour ago. A body was found there, matching Fei’s description. He was the first one in the hotel room where the American died. Later, he was joined there by Internal Security and another local cop. Fei and his colleague were told to turn the investigation over to Internal Security. The American was cremated the next day without an autopsy being performed. The cause of his death was announced as alcohol poisoning. The dead man, however, was known to be someone who didn’t drink, according to the gossip in social media.

“Back in the hotel room, Fei had sensed this American’s death was something more than merely gossip material. He moved fast, and he got the recordings from the hotel surveillance camera before Internal Security arrived. He didn’t report this to the higher authorities immediately, for the people implicated by the hotel footage were untouchable. Before he could do anything, however, he found himself under suspicion and questioned about his actions at the crime scene. It could only mean more trouble, he knew, if he turned over the footage from the hotel surveillance camera. He’d seen too much, and had become too much of the threat to those involved in the murderous conspiracy resulting in the American’s death. Fei was suddenly sent to Wuxi, where he went missing…”

“Yes, horrible things are happening, Chief Inspector Chen,” Wei said, “but I’m having a hard time following you. What’s connection among all of these and, in particular, with my husband’s death?”

“You’re right. It’s difficult to see the connections. That’s why I didn’t think of coming to you earlier. That’s also why I’m telling you the story in this way. It’s a long chain of related and interrelated links. Almost too long. All these diabolical actions weren’t just about Liang, about me, or about any other victim. It’s a particularly high-stakes political move at this crucial moment that is the hidden common denominator among all of them.”

“At this crucial moment?”

“The National Congress of the Communist Party of China is scheduled for the end of the year, when the members of the most powerful Politburo Standing Committee will be replaced by new people. Shanghai Party Secretary Lai is on the rapid rise and has a good chance to grab one of the top positions. But he has political rivals within the Forbidden City. So he can’t afford to have anything go wrong at this moment. As luck would have it, things went wrong.”

“You mean Liang’s… trouble?”

“That’s part of it. Under normal circumstances, Liang might have gotten shuangguied and punished for the high-speed train contracts, and then the newspaper would have declared it another victory attributable to the Party’s great determination to fight corruption. But what if Liang spilled his guts out about the other people involved in the scandal? You know what law firm Liang hired as the company’s legal representative, don’t you?”

She kept her head hanging low, muttering an inaudible word, her chin involuntarily quivering. Beside her, the bronze pendulum in a mahogany antique clock went on swinging, measuring the seconds in perpetual tranquility.

“Coincidentally or not, Liang’s company and the Heavenly World were both represented by the Kaitai law firm,” he resumed after a pause. “But perhaps most significantly here, the dead American, Daniel Martin, was also connected to the law firm. For some reason still beyond me, he posed such a threat that he had to be removed-or at least, so it seemed to Lai, or the people close to him.

“Now, there’s one thing I’ve learned during all my years as a cop. Murderers are capable of seeing something that makes sense only to their twisted and paranoid imagination. So what would paranoid people in power do? For one thing, anything or anyone that might be in their way would have to go. That’s why I was removed from my position. But that wasn’t enough: they were worried that I would still try to find out what was going on. For that reason, they put together an elaborate setup at the nightclub, one that would result in my complete disgrace. Then there was the explosion of the police bureau car. I’ll accept the consequences of my choices as a cop, but I can’t bear to see an innocent victim caught in the crossfire.”