Qiu Xiaolong - Death of a Red Heroine

A difficult Tang dynasty poet, Li Shangyin was especially known for this elusive couplet. Certainly it was not about the ancient musical instrument. Why, all of a sudden, the lines came rushing to him, he did not know.

The murder case?

A young woman. A life in its prime wasted. All the broken strings. The lost sounds. Only half of its years lived.

Or was there something else?

The Shanghai Police Bureau was housed in a sixty-year-old brown brick building located on Fuzhou Road. The gray iron gate was guarded by two armed soldiers, but, like the other policemen, Chen entered the bureau through a small door adjacent to a doorman’s kiosk beside the gate. Occasionally, when the gates were opened wide for some important visitors, what could be seen from the outside was a curving driveway with a peaceful flowerbed in the middle of a spacious courtyard.

Acknowledging the stiff salute of the sentry, Chief Inspector Chen made his way up to his office on the third floor. His was just a cubicle within a large office which housed over thirty detectives of the homicide department. They all worked together, at communal desks, rubbing shoulders and sharing phones.

The brass name plaque on his cubicle door-CHIEF INSPECTOR CHEN CAO-shining proudly in the morning light, from time to time drew his gaze like a magnet. The enclosure was small. A brown oak desk with a brown swivel chair occupied much of the space. A couple of teacups had to stand on a dark green steel filing cabinet by the door, and a thermos bottle, by a bookshelf on the floor. There was nothing on the wall except a framed photograph of Comrade Deng Xiaoping standing on Huangpu Bridge under a black umbrella held by Shanghai’s mayor. The only luxury in the office was a midget refrigerator, but Chen had made a point of letting all his staff members use it. Like the apartment, the cubicle had come with his promotion.

It was generally believed in the bureau that Chen’s advance had resulted from Comrade Deng Xiaoping’s new cadre policy. Prior to the mid-eighties, Chinese cadres usually rose in a slow process, step by step. Once they reached a certain high level, however, they could stay there for a long time, and some never retired, hanging on to their positions to the end. So a chief inspector in his mid-fifties would have considered himself lucky in his career. With the dramatic change Deng had introduced, high-ranking cadres, too, had to step down at retirement age. Being young and highly educated suddenly became the crucial criteria in the cadre promotion process. Chen happened to be qualified in both aspects, though his qualifications were not so warmly regarded by some officers. To them, educational background did not mean much. Especially Chen’s since he had majored in English literature. They also felt that age signified experience in the field.

So Chen’s status was a sort of compromise. As a rule, a chief inspector would serve as the head of the homicide department. The old department head had retired, but no successor had yet been announced. Chen’s administrative position was just that of leader of a special case squad, consisting of only five people including Detective Yu Guangming, his assistant.

Detective Yu was not visible in the main office, but among the mass of papers on his desk, Chen found his report.

OFFICER AT THE SCENE: Detective Yu Guangming

DATE: 5/11/90

1. The body. A dead woman. Nameless. Naked. Her body found in a black plastic bag in the Baili Canal. Probably in her late twenties or early thirties, she had a healthy build, around 110 pounds in weight, 5’4” in height. It was hard to imagine how she had actually looked when alive. Her face was a bit swollen, but unbruised, unscratched. She had thin, dark eyebrows and a straight nose. Her forehead was broad. She had long, well-shaped legs, small feet with long toes. Her toenails were painted scarlet. Her hands were small, too, no rings on her well-manicured fingers. No blood, dirt, or skin under her nails. Her hips were broad with copious, coal black pubic hair. It’s possible that she had had sexual intercourse before her death. She didn’t look beaten up. There was only a faint line of bruising around her neck, barely discernible, and a light scratch on her collarbone, but other than that, her skin was smooth, with no suggestion of bruises on her body. A general absence of contusions on the legs also showed that she had not struggled much before her death. The small spotty hemorrhages in the linings around her eyes could be presumptive evidence of death by asphyxiation.

2. The scene. Baili Canal, a small canal on the Suzhou River, about ten miles west of the Shanghai Paper Mill. It is, to be more exact, a dead creek overhung with shrubs and tall weeds. Some years ago it was chosen as a chemical plant site, but the state plan was abandoned. On one side is something of a graveyard with tombs scattered around. It’s difficult to reach the canal, whether by water or by land. No bus comes there. According to the local people, few go there to fish.

3. The witnesses. Gao Ziling, captain of the Vanguard, Shanghai River Security Bureau. Liu Guoliang, Captain Gao’s high-school friend, a senior engineer in the nuclear science field in Qinghai. Both of them are Party members, with no criminal record. Possible cause of death: Strangulation in combination with sexual assault. When he finished reading the report, Chief Inspector Chen lit a cigarette and sat quietly for a while. Two possibilities arose with the curling rings of smoke. She had been raped and murdered on a boat, and then dumped into the canal. Or the crime had taken place somewhere else, and her body transported to the canal.

He was not inclined toward the first scenario. It would be extremely difficult, if not impossible, for the murderer to commit the crime with other passengers moving around on board. If it had been just the two of them in the boat, what was the point of covering her body up in a plastic bag? The canal was so out of the way, and most probably it had happened in the depth of night- there would have been no need to wrap the body. In the second scenario, the plastic bag might fit, but then the murder might have happened anywhere.

When he looked out into the large office again, Detective Yu was back at his desk, sipping a cup of tea. Mechanically Chen felt for the thermos bottle on the floor. There was still enough water. No need to go to the communal hot water boiler downstairs. He dialed Yu’s extension.

“Detective Yu Guangming reporting.” Yu appeared at the doorway in less than a minute, a tall man in his early forties, of medium build, with a rugged face and deep, penetrating eyes, holding a large manila folder in his hand.

“You must have worked quite late last night.” Chen offered a cup of tea to his assistant. “A well-done job. I’ve just read your report.”

“Thank you.”

“Any new information about the case this morning?”

“No. Everything’s in the report.”

“What about the missing person’s list?”

“No one on the list looks like her,” Yu said, handing over the folder. “Some pictures have just been developed. She could not have been too long in the water. No more than twenty hours is my guess.”

Chen started thumbing through photographs. Pictures of the dead woman lying on the bank, naked, or partially covered up, then several close-ups, the last one focusing on her face, her body concealed by a white covering, in the mortuary.

“What do you think?” Yu breathed slowly into his hot tea.

“A couple of possible scenarios. Nothing definite until Forensic finishes.”

“Yes, the autopsy report will probably be here late this afternoon.”

“You don’t think she could be someone from the neighboring villages?”