Qiu Xiaolong - Death of a Red Heroine

“Bang!”

“Stop! Don’t you see he is a police officer?” said his mother.

“That’s okay,” Chen said. “I’m sorry to bother you, Comrade Yuan. You must have heard of your neighbor’s death. I just want to ask you a few questions.”

“Sorry,” she said. “I cannot help you. I don’t know anything about her.”

“You’ve been neighbors for several years?”

“Yes, about five years.”

“Then you must have had some contact with each other, cooking together on the corridor, or washing clothes in the common sink.”

“Well, I’ll tell you what. She left home at seven in the morning, and came back at seven-sometimes much later. The moment she got back, she shut the door tight. She never invited us in, nor visited us. She did her laundry in the store, with all the washing machines on display there. Free, and perhaps free detergent too. She ate at the store canteen. Once or twice a month, she would cook at home, a packet of instant noodles or something like that, though she kept her stove in the corridor all the time. Her sacred right to the public space.”

“So you’ve never talked to her at all?”

“When we saw each other, she nodded to me. That’s about all.” Yuan added. “A celebrity. She would not mix with us. So what’s the point of pressing our hot faces up to her cold ass?”

“Maybe she was just too busy.”

“She was somebody, and we’re nobody. She made great contributions to the Party! We can hardly make ends meet.”

Surprised at the resentment shown by Guan’s neighbor, Chen said, “No matter in what position we work, we’re all working for our socialist China.”

“Working for socialist China?” her voice rose querulously. “Last month I was laid off from the state-run factory. I need to feed my son; his father died several years ago. So making dumplings all day is what I do now, from seven to seven, if you want to call that working for socialist China. And I have to sell them at the food market at six in the morning.”

“I’m sorry to hear that, Comrade Yuan,” he said. “Right now China is in a transitional period, but things will get better.”

“It’s not your fault. Why should you feel sorry? Just spare me a political lecture about it. Comrade Guan Hongying did not want to make friends with us. Period.”

“Well, she must have had some friends coming to visit her here.”

“Maybe or maybe not, but that’s her business, not mine.”

“I understand, Comrade Yuan,” he said, “but I still want to ask you some other questions. Did you notice anything unusual about Guan in the last couple of months?”

“I’m no detective, so I do not know what’s usual or unusual.”

“One more question,” he said. “Did you see her on the evening of May tenth?”

“May tenth, let me think,” she said. “I don’t remember seeing her at all that day. I was at my son’s school for a meeting in the evening. Then we went to bed early. As I’ve told you, I have to get up to sell the dumplings early in the morning.”

“Perhaps you’d like to think about it. You can get in touch with me if anything comes to you,” he said. “Again, I’m sorry about the situation in your factory, but let’s hope for the best.”

“Thank you.” She added, as if apologizing in her turn now, “There may be one thing, now that I think about it. For the last couple of months, sometimes she came back quite late, at twelve o’clock or even later. Since I was laid off I have been worried too much to sleep soundly, so once or twice I heard her coming back at such hours. But then, she could have been really busy, such a national model worker.”

“Yes, probably,” he said, “but we will check into that.”

“That’s about all I know,” she said.

Chief Inspector Chen thanked her and left.

He next approached Guan’s neighbor across the corridor, beside the public bathroom. He was raising his hand toward the tiny doorbell when the door was flung open. A young girl dashed out toward the stairs, and a middle-aged woman stood furiously in the doorway, with her hands firmly on her hips. “You, too, have to come and bully me. Little bitch. May Heaven let you die a thousand-stab death.” Then she saw him, and stared at him with angry, pop-eyed intensity.

He immediately adopted the stance of a senior police officer with no time to waste, producing his official identity card and flashing it at her with a gesture often shown on TV.

It caused her to lose some of her animosity.

“I have to ask you some questions,” he said. “Questions about Guan Hongying, your neighbor.”

“She’s dead, I know,” she said. “My name is Su Nanhua. Sorry about the scene you have just witnessed. My daughter’s seeing a young gangster and will not listen to me. It’s really driving me crazy.”

What Chen got after fifteen minutes’ talk was almost the same version as Yuan’s, except Su was even more biased. According to her, Guan had kept very much to herself all those years. That would have been odd in a young woman, though not for such a celebrity.

“You mean that she lived here all these years and you did not get a single chance to get acquainted?”

“Sounds ridiculous, doesn’t it?” she said. “But it’s true.”

“And she never talked to you?”

“Well, she did and she didn’t. ‘It’s fine today.’ ‘Have you had your dinner?’ So on and so forth. Nothing but those meaningless words.”

“Now what about the evening of May tenth, Comrade Su?” he said. “Did you see her or speak to her that evening?”

“Well, that evening, yes, I did notice something. I was reading the latest issue of Family quite late that evening. I would not have noticed her leaving the dorm, but for the sound of something heavy being dropped just outside my door. So I looked out. There she was, going to the stairs, with her back me, and I did not know what she had dropped. All I could see was that she had a heavy suitcase in one hand. So it could have been the suitcase. She was going downstairs. It was late. I was curious and looked out of the window, but I saw no taxi waiting for her at the curb.”

“So you thought she was taking a trip.”

“I guessed so.”

“What time was it?”

“Around ten thirty.”

“How did you know the time?”

“I watched Hope that evening on TV. Every Thursday evening, in fact. It finishes at ten thirty. Then I started reading the magazine. I had not read much before I heard the thump.”

“Had she talked to you about the trip she was going to take?”

“No, not to me.”

“Was there anything else about that night?”

“No, nothing else.”

“Contact me if you think of anything,” he said, standing up. “You have my number on the card.”

Chen then climbed up to the third floor, to a room almost directly above Guan’s. The door was opened by a white-haired man, probably in his mid-sixties, who had an intelligent face with shrewd eyes and deep-cut furrows around his mouth. Looking at the card Chen handed him, he said, “Comrade Chief Inspector, come in. My name is Qian Yizhi.”

The door opened into a narrow strip of corridor, in which there were a gas stove and a cement sink, and then to another inner door. It was an improvement over his neighbors’ apartments. Entering, Chen was surprised to see an impressive array of magazine photos of Hong Kong and of Taiwanese pop singers like Liu Dehua, Li Min, Zhang Xueyou, and Wang Fei on the walls.

“All my stepdaughter’s favorite pictures,” Qian said, removing a stack of newspapers from a decent-looking armchair. “Please sit down.”

“I’m investigating Guan Hongying’s case,” Chen said. “Any information you can give about her will be appreciated.”