Qiu Xiaolong - Death of a Red Heroine

“Did he tell you what he was going to do about it?”

“No, he didn’t. He was in such a murderous rage, cursing like mad.”

“Then what happened?”

“Then one night in mid-May, he suddenly came to my place to develop pictures, saying there was something wrong with his darkroom. He stayed in my study that night. It was a Sunday, I remember, because my wife complained to me about it. We usually go to bed early on Sunday. Several days later he called me, and during our conversation, he repeated two or three times that it was the night of May tenth, the night that he came to work at my place. I did not understand his emphasis on the date until one of your men asked me about that night.”

“You told Detective Yu exactly what Wu had told you to, and established an alibi for him.”

“Yes, but I didn’t know that I was providing an alibi for him, nor did I know that Wu had committed murder. Later I looked up the date. That Sunday was actually May thirteenth. But at the time I spoke to Detective Yu, I didn’t recall that.”

“Did you ask him about it afterward?”

“I called him the following day, telling him that a policeman had interviewed me. He asked me out to the JJ Bar. Between cups, he said that he was going to be promoted to be Acting Culture Minister of Shanghai, and that he would pay me back with interest.”

“Did he mention Guan at all?”

“No, he didn’t. He just asked what date I had told Comrade Detective Yu, and he seemed to be relieved by my answer.”

“Anything else?”

“No, he did not say anything else that day, and I did not ask,” Guo said. “I’m not holding anything back, Comrade Chief Inspector Chen.”

The phone started ringing. “It’s Comrade Adviser Yu on the line, and he says it is urgent,” Meiling said. “Do you want to speak to him?”

“Yes, put him through.”

“We’ve found something in the car trunk, Chief Inspector Chen,” Old Hunter said. “A long strand of a woman’s hair.”

“Send the evidence to Dr. Xia immediately,” he said. “And book Guo and hold him as a material witness.”

It was the time for Chief Inspector Chen to have his showdown at the bureau.

S tanding in a crowded bus the next morning, Chen tried to plan what he would say at the meeting with Party Secretary Li and Superintendent Zhao, but he was too distracted by a strong perfume mixed with a no less pungent body odor from a young woman passenger flattened against him. Unable to budge, he resigned himself to being like a canned sardine, brainless, almost breathless.

The bus was crawling along Yan’an Road. People kept moving in and out, elbowing and shouldering. So many possible results could come from the confrontation for which he was preparing himself, but he could not put off the meeting any longer. The chain was complete: The motive, the evidence, the witnesses. There was no missing link. No excuse to avoid a showdown.

As soon as he had received Dr. Xia’s report the previous afternoon, Chen called Party Secretary Li. Li heard him out, for once not attempting to interrupt him.

“You’re positive,” Li finally said, “Wu Xiaoming drove the car that night?”

“Yes, I’m positive.”

“You’ve got Dr. Xia’s report?”

“Not yet, but he confirmed on the phone that it was Guan’s hair found in Wu’s car.”

“And Guo will also testify against Wu about his false alibi?”

“Yes, Guo has to save his own neck.”

“So you think it’s time to conclude.”

“We have motive, evidence, and a witness. And Wu’s alibi is gone.”

“It is not a common case,” Li seemed to be lost in thought, exhaling into the phone before he continued, “and it doesn’t come at an ordinary time. We will have a meeting with Superintendent Zhao tomorrow. In the meantime, do not say a single word to anybody else.”

When Chen arrived at Li’s office, he saw a small note taped to the office door. COMRADE CHIEF INSPECTOR CHEN: Please wait for us in the Number 1 conference room. Important meeting. Superintendent Zhao will be there too.

Li.

There was no one else in the conference room. Chen took a leather-cushioned chair at the end of the long table. Waiting there, he went over his notes. He wanted his presentation to be organized, succinct, to the point. When he finished reviewing, he looked at his watch again. It was twenty minutes after the appointed time.

He was not optimistic about the meeting. Nor did he think his bosses would be looking forward to it. They would harp on the interests of the Party and dismiss him from the case. In a worst-case scenario, they would officially remove him from his position.

But Chen resolved not to retreat, even at the cost of losing his position and Party membership, too.

As a chief inspector he was supposed to seek justice by punishing the murderer, whoever it was.

As a party member, he knew what he was supposed to do. It had been the first lesson of the Party Education Program. A Party member must serve, above all things, the interests of the Party.

Here’s the problem. What were the interests of the Party?

In the early fifties, for instance, Chairman Mao had called on Chinese intellectuals to find fault with the Party authorities, and Mao said that it was in the interests of the Party. When the invitation was taken literally by some, however, Mao flew into a rage and called those naive fault-finders antisocialist rightists. He sent them to jail. That, too, was done, of course, in the interests of the Party, as the Party newspapers declared, justifying Mao’s earlier speech as a tactic to “lure the snake out of the cave.” So, too, with a number of political movements, including the Cultural Revolution. Everything was done in the interests of the Party. After Mao’s death, these disastrous movements were written off as Mao’s “well-intended mistakes,” which should not detract from the glorious merit of the Party; and once more, the Chinese people were taught to forget the past in the interests of the Party.

Chen had been aware of the difference between being a chief inspector and being a Party member, but he had not thought much about the possibility of his two roles coming into direct conflict. And here he was, waiting for the resolution of just such a conflict.

There was no retreating. In the worst-case scenario, Chief Inspector Chen was prepared to resign, to work in Overseas Chinese Lu’s restaurant. In the Western Han dynasty, Sima Xiangru had done the same thing, opening a tiny tavern, wearing short pants, sweating, ladling wine out of a huge urn, and Wenjun had followed him, serving the wine to customers, smiling like a lotus blossom in the morning breeze, her delicate eyebrows suggesting a distant mountain range. All the details could have been the romantic imagination of Ge Hong, of course, in The Sketches of the Western Capital. But it would be honest work, and an easy conscience. To make a living just like others, whether or not he had a Wenjun at his side-possibly a Russian girl in a Chinese Qi skirt, with the fashionable high slits revealing her white thighs, her red hair flashing against the gray walls.

It was so absurd, he admonished himself, to be lost in such a daydream while he sat awaiting the confrontation in the Number 1 conference room.

Then he heard footsteps. Two men loomed on the threshold, Party Secretary Li and Superintendent Zhao.

Chen rose to his feet. To his surprise, several people followed the two into the conference room, including Detective Yu, Commissar Zhang, Doctor Xia, and other important members of the bureau.

Yu took a seat next to him, looking puzzled. It was the first time they had been together since Chen’s return from Guangzhou.