Qiu Xiaolong - Death of a Red Heroine

It would not be difficult to find out.

Caviar-he jotted the word on the back of a matchbox.

Then he felt ready to fall asleep.

It was a humid Friday morning for May.

Detective Yu had slept fitfully, tossing and turning half of the night. As a result, he was feeling more tired than the night before, with patches of partially forgotten dreams hovering in his mind.

Peiqin was concerned. She made a bowl of sticky rice dumplings, a favorite breakfast for him, and sat with him at the table. Yu finished the dumplings in silence.

Finally, as he was ready to leave for the bureau, she said, “You’re burning yourself out, Guangming.”

“No, it’s just I’ve not slept well,” he said. “Don’t worry about me.”

When Yu stepped into the bureau meeting room, the restless feeling surged up again. The topic of the meeting, which had been requested by Commissar Zhang, was the progress of the investigation.

A week had passed since the special case group had taken the case. The team, formed with such a fanfare of political jargon, had made little progress. Detective Yu had been working long hours, making numerous phone calls, interviewing a number of people, discussing all the possible scenarios with Chief Inspector Chen, and making quite a few reports to Commissar Zhang, too. Yet there was no breakthrough in sight. In routine police work when a case went beyond a week without a solid lead, it might as well be thrown into the “open” file. Yu had learned from experience. In other words, it was the time to close the case as unsolved.

It was not the first time in the bureau’s history that this had happened, nor would it be the last.

Yu sat beside the window, smoking a cigarette. The streets of Shanghai were spread out beneath his gaze, gray and black roofs with curls of peaceful white smoke undulating into the distance. Yet he seemed to smell crime smoldering in the heart of the city. Skimming a copy of the bureau newsletter, he read of several robberies, each bigger than the other, and seven reports of rape in the last night alone. And then new cases of prostitution, even in the upper area of the city.

As the other divisions were so short of manpower, a number of cases had been designated as “special” and pushed over to their squad, but they were in no better shape. Qing Xiaotong had come back from his honeymoon, but with that dreamy look in his eyes, not really back to work, and Liu Longxiang was still recovering from his injury. With Chief Inspector Chen’s increasingly busy schedule of meetings and other activities, Detective Yu had to take on the main responsibility for the squad.

Why should they spend so much time on one case?

Political priority, of course-Yu knew the answer. To hell with politics. It’s a homicide case.

But others did not think so. Commissar Zhang, for one, sitting straight at the head of the table, wearing the neat but nondescript Mao suit, high buttoned as always, holding a pen in his hand, and leafing through a leather notebook. The commissar had never discussed anything with him, as far as Yu could remember, except politics. What could possibly be up that grizzled, skinny commissar’s sleeve, Yu wondered.

Looking at Chief Inspector Chen, who nodded at him, Detective Yu was the first to take the floor, “We have already put a lot of hours into the investigation. For my part, I’ve talked to the general manager of the First Department Store as well as Guan’s colleagues. In addition, I have checked with the Shanghai Taxi Bureau and a number of travel agencies. I’d like to sum up some important aspects of my work.

“A national model worker, Guan lived a model life, too, dedicated to the Communist cause, way too busy with all her Party activities for anything else. She seemed never to have dated anyone, nor was she involved with anyone at the time of her death. Needless to say, she did an excellent job at the store. With her position there, she might have been the envy of some people, but there’s no reason to suspect that this made her a murderer’s target.

“As for her activities on the day she was murdered, according to her colleagues, there was nothing unusual about her during that day. All routine work. Lunch at the canteen around twelve o’clock, and a Party meeting in the afternoon. She mentioned to a colleague that she was going to take some vacation time, but did not say where. Not too far away, not for long, it was assumed. Otherwise she should have submitted a written request to the general manager. She didn’t. The last time she was seen in the store was around seven ten, after her shift, which was not unusual for her. She went back to the dorm, where she was last seen at about ten thirty or a bit later, carrying a suitcase, alone, presumably leaving for her vacation.

“Now comes the difficult part. Where was she going? There are so many tourist groups nowadays. I’ve checked all of the local travel agencies, but Guan’s name was not registered with any of them. Of course, she could have chosen to travel by herself. To travel by air would have been out of the question. Guan’s name was not registered with any of the airlines. She might have gone to the railway station. In her neighborhood, no bus goes directly to the station. She might have walked to Xizhuang Road for Bus Number Sixty-four. The last scheduled bus arrives there at eleven thirty-five; after that there’s one every hour. Again it’s rather unusual for a young woman alone to carry a heavy suitcase along the street, when she might easily miss the last bus.

“So whether she was going to travel with a group or by herself, there’s reason to assume that she got into a taxi after leaving the dorm. But she did not finish the trip. Somewhere along the way, she was attacked and murdered by someone, who could be no one other than the driver. That also explains how her body came to be found in the canal. A taxi driver would have the means of transporting the body to dump it into a distant canal. That’s my hypothesis, and that’s why I have been conducting my investigation at the taxi bureau.

“My original plan was to check copies of all drivers’ receipts for the night to focus on those who failed to show any transaction during those few hours of the night. But according to the bureau, taxi drivers do not always give receipts, so there is no way to account for their activities. In fact, a considerable number of the drivers showed no business for the whole night-for tax avoidance reasons.”

“Hold on, Comrade Detective Yu,” Commissar Zhang interrupted. “Have you done any investigation into the political aspects of the case?”

“Well, as for the political aspects, I don’t think I have seen any. The murderer would have been a stranger to her. For her part, there would have been no reason for her to reveal her identity to a taxi driver. So it’s possible that he might not know her identity yet.”

“So what’s your suggestion for the next stage of the investigation?” Zhang continued, without changing his position in the chair, or the expression on his face.

“At present, with no evidence, and no witness,” Yu said, “there’s not much we can do. Let the case run its natural course. A rapist is a repeater, so sooner or later he will strike again. In the meantime, we will keep in close touch with the taxi bureau and travel agencies; hopefully, some new information will turn up. In fact, the taxi bureau has promised to give me a list of possible suspects, those drivers with something suspicious in their history. I have not gotten it yet.”

“So basically we’re not going to do anything until the criminal strikes again?”

“No, we are not going to close the case as unsolved. What I’m saying is-um, it’s not realistic to expect a quick solution. Eventually, we should be able to find the murderer, but that takes time.”