Qiu Xiaolong - Death of a Red Heroine

“Or a prosperous businessman from abroad?” she said, giggling. “You’re certainly dressed like one.”

He was wearing his dark suit, a white shirt, and one of his few ties that looked exotic, a gift from a former schoolmate, an owner of several high-tech companies in Toronto who had told him that the design on the tie represented a romantic scene in a modern Canadian play. There was no point in sitting with her in his police uniform.

“Or just a lover,” he said impulsively, “head over heels.” He met her gaze, guessing he had made himself as transparent as water. Not the water in the Huangpu River.

“You’re being impossible,” she said, smiling, “even in the middle of your murder investigation.”

It did slightly disturb him that he could be so sensitive to her attractiveness when he should have been concentrating on solving the case. When she was alive, Guan Hongying might have been as attractive. Especially in those pictures in the cloud-wrapped mountains, Guan posing in a variety of elegant attire, young, lively, vivacious. All in such a sharp contrast to that naked, swollen body pulled out of a black plastic garbage bag.

They sat at the table, not speaking for a couple of minutes, watching an antique-looking sampan swaying in the tide. A wave shook the sampan near the parrot wall, bringing down a cloth diaper from a clothesline stretched across the deck.

“A family sampan, the couple working down in the cabin,” he said, “and living there too.”

“A torn sail married to a broken oar,” she said, still chewing the gum.

A bubble of metaphor iridescent in the sun.

A half-naked baby was crawling out of the cabin under the tarpaulin, as if to satisfy their expectation, grinning at them like a Wuxi earthen doll.

For the moment, they felt they had the river to themselves. Not the river, but the moment it starts rippling in your eyes…

He was on the track of a poem.

“Your mind is on the case again?”

“No, but now that you mention it,” he said, “there is something puzzling about it.”

“I’m no investigator,” she said, “but talking about it may help.“

Chief Inspector Chen had learned that verbalizing a case to an attentive listener was helpful. Even if the listener did not offer any constructive suggestions, sometimes questions alone from an untrained-or simply a new-perspective could open fresh paths of inquiry. So he started talking about the case. He was not worried about sharing information with her, even though she was a Wenhui reporter. She listened intently, her cheek lightly resting on her hand, then leaned forward across the table, gazing at him, the morning light of the city in her eyes.

“So here we are,” Chen said, having recapitulated the points he had discussed in the special group meeting the previous day, “with a number of unanswered questions. And the only fact we have established is that Guan left the dorm for a vacation around ten thirty on May tenth. As for what happened to her afterward, we have discovered nothing-except the caviar.”

“Nothing else suspicious?”

“Well, there is something else. Not really suspicious, but it just does not make sense to me. She was going somewhere on vacation, but no one knew where. People are usually so excited about their vacation that they will talk a lot about it.”

“That’s true,” she said, “but in her case, couldn’t her reserve result from a need for privacy?”

“That’s what we suspect, but the whole thing seemed to be just too secretive. Detective Yu has checked with all the travel agencies, and there’s no record with her name registered either.”

“Well, she might have traveled by herself.”

“That’s possible, but I doubt that a single young woman would travel all by herself. Unless she had some other people, or one man as her companion, I think it unlikely. That’s my hypothesis, and the caviar fits. What’s more, last October she had made another trip. We know where she went that time-the Yellow Mountains. But whether she went there by herself, with some- one, or with a group, we don’t know. Yu has researched that, too, but we have no leads.”

“That’s strange,” she said, her eyes half closing in thought. “No train goes there. You have to change to a bus in Wuhu, and to get from the bus terminal to the mountains, you have to walk quite a distance. And then to find a hotel for yourself in the mountains can be a headache. It saves you a lot of money, and energy, too, to go with a tourist group. I’ve been there, I know.”

“Yes, and another thing. According to the records at the department store, her vacation in the mountains lasted about ten days, from the end of September through the first week in October. Detective Yu has contacted all the hotels there. But her name did not appear on any of their records.”

“Are you sure that she went there?”

“Positive. She showed her colleagues some pictures from the mountains. In fact, I’ve seen quite a few in her album.”

“She must have a lot of pictures.”

“For a young pretty woman, not too many,” he said, “but some are really good.”

Indeed, some of the pictures appeared highly professional. Still vivid in his mind, for instance, was the one of Guan leaning against the famous mountain pine, with white clouds woven into her streaming black hair. It would do for the cover of a travel brochure.

“Are there pictures of her with other people?”

“A lot of them, of course. One with Comrade Deng Xiaoping himself.”

“Pictures from that mountain trip?” Wang said, picking up a grape with her slender fingers.

“Well, I’m not sure,” Chen said, “but I don’t think so. That’s something-”

Something worth looking into.

“Supposing Guan made the trip all by herself,” she was peeling the grape. “She could have met some people in the mountains staying in the same hotel, talked about the scenery, taken pictures for each other-”

“And taken pictures together. You’re absolutely right,” he said. “And some of the tourists would have worn their name tags.”

“Name tags-yes, that’s possible,” she said, “if they were traveling in a group.”

“I have looked through all the albums,” he said, stealing a glance at his wristwatch, “but I may do it all over again.”

“And as soon as possible,” she was putting the peeled grape into his saucer.

The grape appeared greenish, almost transparent against her lovely fingers.

He reached across to take her hands on the table. They had a sort of mutual understanding that he appreciated: Chief Inspector Chen had to investigate.

She shook her head, looking as though she was about to say something, but changed her mind.

“What is it?”

“I’m concerned about you.” She withdrew her hand with a small frown.

“Why?”

“Your obsession with the case,” she said softly, standing up from the chair. “An ambitious man is not necessarily obnoxious, but you are going a bit too far, Comrade Chief Inspector.”

“No, I’m not that obsessed with the case,” he said. “In fact, you are just reminding me of two lines- ’With the green skirt of yours in my mind, everywhere, / Everywhere I step over the grass ever so lightly’. ”

“You don’t have to cover yourself by quoting those lines,” she said, starting to move toward the staircase. “I know how much your work means to you.”

“Not as much as you think,” he said, imitating the way she shook her head, “certainly not as much as you.”

“How is your mother?” she was changing the subject again.

“Fine. Still waiting for me to grow up, get hitched, make her a grandma.”

“Work on growing up first.”

Wang could be sarcastic at times, but it might just be a defense mechanism. So he laughed.