Qiu Xiaolong - Death of a Red Heroine

“Congratulations, Comrade Chief Inspector. A poem published in the Wenhui Daily. Quite an achievement.”

“Thank you,” he said. “It’s just a poem about our police work.”

“It’s a good one. Politically, I mean,” Li said. “Next time, if there’s something in such an influential newspaper, tell us beforehand.”

“Okay, but why?”

“There are a lot of people reading your work.”

“Don’t worry, Party Secretary Li, I’ll make sure that it is politically correct.”

“Yes, that’s the spirit. You are not an ordinary police officer, you know,” Li said. “Now, anything new in the investigation?”

“We’re going all out. But unfortunately there’s not much progress.”

“Don’t worry. Just try your best,” Li said before putting down the phone, “And don’t forget your seminar in Beijing.”

Then Dr. Xia called. “This one is not that bad, this ‘Miracle’ of yours.”

“Thank you, Dr. Xia,” he said, “your approval always means such a lot to me.”

“I especially like the beginning-’ The rain has soaked the hair / Falling to your shoulders / Light green in your policewoman’s / Uniform, like the spring / White blossom bursting / From your arms reaching / Into the gaping windows- / ‘Here you are!’”

“It’s a true experience. She persisted in sending out relief to the victims, despite the pouring rain. I was there, too, and was touched at the sight.”

“But you must have stolen the image from Li He’s ‘Watching a Beauty Comb Her Hair.’ The image about the green comb in her long hair.”

“No, I didn’t, but I’ll let you in on a secret. It’s from another two classical lines- With the green skirt of yours in my mind, everywhere, / Everywhere I step over the grass ever so lightly.” Our policewoman’s uniform is green, and so, too, the spring, and the package. Looking out in the rain, I had the impression of her long hair being washed green, too.”

“No wonder you’ve made such an improvement,” Dr. Xia said. “I’m glad you are acknowledging your debt to classical poetry.”

“Of course I do. But so much for the poetics,” Chen said. “Actually, I was thinking of calling you, too. About the black plastic bag in the Guan case.”

“There’s nothing to recover from the plastic bag. I made some inquiries about it. I was told that it is normally used for fallen leaves in people’s backyards.”

“Indeed! Imagine a taxi driver worrying about the fallen leaves in his backyard!”

“What did you say?”

“Oh, nothing,” he said. “But thank you so much, Dr. Xia.”

“Don’t mention it, Comrade Chief Inspector Chen, also Chinese imagist poet.”

Out of the black plastic bag, her white bare feet, and her red polished toenails like fallen petals in the night. It could be a modernist image.

Chen then dialed Detective Yu.

Entering his office, Yu, too, offered his congratulations, “What a surprise, Comrade Chief Inspector Chen. A terrific breakthrough.”

“Well, if only we could say that about our case.”

Indeed they needed a “miracle” in their investigation.

Detective Yu had come up empty-handed. Following his theory, Lu had made inquiry at the taxi bureau. To his dismay, he found that obtaining anything close to reliable information for the night was impossible. There was no point in checking the taxi drivers’ receipts. Most drivers-whether the taxi company was state-run or private-kept a considerable portion of their money by not giving receipts to customers, he was told, so it was possible for a driver to claim to have driven around for the night without being able to pick up one single passenger-thus avoiding taxation.

In addition, Yu had checked all the customer lists of Shanghai travel agencies during May. Guan’s name had not been on any of them.

And Yu’s research with respect to the last phone call Guan had made from the department store was not successful either. Many people had used the phone that evening. And Mrs. Weng’s recollection of the time was not accurate. After spending hours to rule out other calls made roughly around the same time, the one most likely made by Guan was to weather information. It made sense, for Guan had been planning her trip, but that only confirmed something they had known.

So like Chen, Yu had not gotten anything, not even a tip worthy of a follow-up.

And the more time that elapsed, the colder the trail became.

They were under pressure, not just from the bureau and the city government. The case was being buzzed about among people in general, in spite of the low-profile treatment it had been given by the local media. And the longer the case remained unsolved, the more negative impact it would have on the bureau.

“It is becoming political,” Chen said.

“Our Party Secretary Li is always right.”

“Let’s put something in the newspaper. A reward for information.”

“That’s worth trying. The Wenhui Daily can run the request for help. But what shall it say? This is so sensitive, as Party Secretary Li has told us.”

“Well, we don’t have to mention the case directly. Just ask for information about anything suspicious around the Baili Canal area on the night of May tenth.”

“Yes, we can do that,” Chen said. “And we’ll use some of our special case group funds for the reward. We have left no stone unturned, haven’t we?”

Detective Yu shrugged his shoulders before leaving the cubicle.

Except one, Chief Inspector Chen thought. Guan Hongying’s mother. He had refrained from discussing this with Yu, who did not get along well with the commissar.

The old lady had been visited by Commissar Zhang, who had gotten nothing from her. A late-stage Alzheimer’s patient, she was totally deranged, unable to provide any information. It was not the commissar’s fault. But an Alzheimer’s patient might not be deranged all the time. There were days when the light could miraculously break through the clouds of her mind.

Chen decided to try his luck.

After lunch, he dialed Wang Feng. She was not in the office, so he left a message expressing his thanks to her. Then he left. On his way to the bus stop he bought several copies of the Wenhui Daily at the post office on Sichuan Road. Somehow he liked the editor’s note even more than the poem itself. He had not told many of his friends about his promotion to chief inspectorship, so the newspaper would do the job for him. Among those friends he wanted to mail the newspaper to, there was one in Beijing. He felt that he had to say something about his being in this position, an explanation to a dear friend who had not envisioned such a career for him. He thought for a moment, but he ended up scribbling only a sentence underneath the poem. Somewhat ironically self-defensive, and ambiguous, too. It could be about the poem as well as about his work: If you work hard enough at something, it begins to make itself part of you, even though you do not really like it and know that part isn’t real.

He cut out the section of the newspaper, put it into an envelope, addressed it, and dropped it into a mailbox.

Then he took a bus to Ankang, the nursing home on Huashan Road.

The nursing home arrangement was not common. It was not culturally correct to keep one’s aged parent in such an institution. Not even in the nineties. Besides, with only two or three nursing homes in Shanghai, few could have managed to move in there, especially in the case of an Alzheimer’s patient. Undoubtedly her mother’s admission had been due to Guan’s social and Party status.

He introduced himself at the front desk of the nursing home, A young nurse told him to wait in the reception room. To be a bad news bearer was anything but pleasant, he reflected, as he waited. The only cold comfort he could find was that Guan’s mother, suffering from Alzheimer’s, might be spared the shock of her daughter’s violent death. The old woman’s life had been a tough one, as he had learned from the file. An arranged marriage in her childhood, and then for years her husband had worked as a high-school teacher in Chengdu, while she was a worker in Shanghai Number 6 Textile Mill. The distance between the two required more than two days’ travel by train. Once a year was all he could have afforded to visit her. In the fifties, job relocation was out of the question for either of them. Jobs, like everything else, were assigned once and for all by the local authorities. So all those years she had been a “single mother,” taking care of Guan Hongying in the dorm of Number 6 Textile Mill. Her husband passed away before his retirement. When her daughter got her job and her Party membership, the old woman broke down. Shortly afterward she had been admitted to the nursing home.