Qiu Xiaolong - When Red is Black

“But I think it’s worth looking into,” Chen said after a pause. “Yes, I think so.”

Then it was Yu’s turn to tell his boss about his hypothesis regarding the shrimp woman.

“That’s very perceptive,” Chen said.

“I’ll talk to the shrimp woman.”

“Yes, talk to her.”

Yu arrived at the neighborhood committee office quite early in the morning. It was not difficult for him to make a detailed list of Yin’s and Yang’s relatives, based on the information already gathered by Old Liang, even though Old Liang did not himself see any point in contacting them.

Yin’s parents had both passed away. She was their only daughter. She had two aunts on her mother’s side, much younger than her mother, but they had been out of contact since the early sixties. The Cultural Revolution had complicated a lot of things, including relationships among relatives. In her personal dossier, these relatives were not mentioned at all. According to several phone calls Old Liang had made, they had neither written nor spoken to her after the Cultural Revolution.

As for people close to Yang, in addition to a distant aunt in her nineties, there was only one sister, Jie, who had passed away three or four years ago. Even in the years before the Cultural Revolution, a Rightist was to be avoided like the plague. Jie had had her own family to worry about. Partially because of him, she also had been put on the “control and use” list. Jie had given birth to a daughter, Hong, in the late fifties, shortly after the commencement of the Anti-Rightist movement. When Hong was born, Yang had mailed a money order of fifty Yuan to Hong, but the money was returned to him. And that was that. Jie also got into trouble during the Cultural Revolution, and Hong went to the countryside as an educated youth, married a local peasant, had a son, and seemed to have settled down there.

When Yu had finished making the list, Old Liang, who lived only about five minutes away from the lane and spent more time in the office than at home, had still not shown up. Zhong, the security director of the neighborhood committee, was devouring a hot, oily green-onion cake. He poured a cup of wulong tea for Yu.

“Comrade Old Liang is investigating somewhere else this morning,” Zhong said, taking a seat opposite Yu at the desk. “Do you need any help from us, Comrade Detective Yu?”

“Are you familiar with the background of the shrimp woman? Her surname is Peng.”

“Oh, the shrimp woman! You have come to the right man,” Zhong said. “She’s been my next-door neighbor for years. A good, honest, timid woman, without even the nerve to kill a fly. She worked in a silk factory for more than twenty years, never having the guts to say no to her boss, never once. And then what? She was among the first laid off, and she ended up peeling shrimp in the lane early every morning.”

“She has an arrangement with the food market, I’ve heard.”

“Yes, it’s part of a government effort to help those sinking beneath the poverty line. Some of the shrimp in the market do not look fresh. In order to sell them for a better price, the market has the shrimp peeled early in the morning. A lot of Shanghai wives shop there before they go to work. So the market makes a point of having the peeled shrimp on sale before seven thirty.”

“So she has to start working at around six every morning?”

“She has no choice. Her family depends on what she earns from the food market,” Zhong said. “Is she in any trouble?”

“No. I just have a few questions for her.”

“I’ll send for her.”

“No, thanks. I am going to the shikumen house. She is probably sitting in the lane.”

Sure enough, the shrimp woman was there, sitting on her bamboo stool, opposite the back door of the shikumen house, busy working, with a basket of frozen shrimp at her feet. She was in her late forties or early fifties, her face as thin as one of the brown sugar cakes of his childhood. She wore a pair of old-fashioned glasses smeared with broken pieces of shrimp shells.

Peng smiled nervously as Yu stopped beside her. He squatted down and lit a cigarette without speaking. It was cold; he kept one of his hands in his pants pocket.

“Comrade-Comrade Detective,” she stuttered.

“You surely know why I’ve come to you today, don’t you?”

“I don’t know, Comrade Detective,” she said. “Well, I suppose it’s about Yin Lige. Poor woman. Old Heaven is blind, truly. She did not deserve it.”

“Poor woman?” He was rather surprised by her sympathetic tone. The shrimp peeler was wrapped in an ancient imitation army overcoat, its collar raised against the cold wind, and her fingers were swollen, cracked, covered with the shrimp slime. Surely she, not Yin, was to be pitied.

“She was good-hearted. Life is not fair. She suffered such a lot during the Cultural Revolution,” she explained.

“Can you tell me something more about her?” Yu asked. It was strange, he reflected: her attitude toward Yin was quite different from that of her other neighbors. “About what you call her good-heartedness. Give me one or two examples.”

“A lot of people in the lane treat me like trash, complaining about the smell of the shrimp. I understand. But I have no choice. I cannot prepare them in the courtyard, or the other residents would have kicked me out of the house.

“Yin alone was really compassionate. After her piece in Wenhui Daily, the neighborhood committee came to her, asking whether she had some other suggestions for lane work. She put in a good word for me as well. Afterward, the neighborhood committee gave me a special permit allowing me to work in the lane.”

“It sounds like she could be quite helpful to people in need.”

“She was. She gave several textbooks to my daughter. And a new plastic folding chair, a recliner, to me. She gave it to me three or four years ago.”

“She gave you a new plastic folding chair? Why?”

“That summer she had a visitor, her nephew, I think-”

“What?” Yu cut in. He had never heard of a nephew before. Nor had one been mentioned by Old Liang. “Hold on-her nephew? Did she describe him that way?”

“I’m not absolutely sure, but she introduced him to me. He was just a boy, maybe thirteen or fourteen years old at the time. He came from the countryside, I don’t know where. He had no other relatives in the city, she explained.”

“Did he stay with her here in the tingzijian room?”

“Yes, but not exactly. It would not be convenient to have a guest in so tiny a room. She bought the folding recliner for him to use, so he could sleep in the courtyard. It’s quite common for people to sleep outside here. Some even sleep in the lane. One night, the courtyard was so full, Yin had to set up the folding chair for him in front of my door. That’s when she introduced him to me, but her introduction was not that specific.”

“How long did he stay here with her?”

“Maybe four or five days. Less than a week.”

“Did you talk to him?”

“No, he was out during the day, I think. I saw him coming back with her one evening. She must have gone out with him. After he left, she gave the chair to me.”

“Has he ever returned since?”

“No, not that I know of. Perhaps he was a poor relative from the countryside making his one visit to the city.”

Yu took out his notebook. The shrimp woman wiped her hands on her apron apprehensively, which reminded him once more of the trace of coal dust on his hand the previous afternoon.

“Let me ask you another question. You said you that were busy peeling shrimp on the morning of February seventh, the morning Yin was murdered, and that you never moved a step away from here.”