Qiu Xiaolong - When Red is Black

He thought of several lines by Yan Jidao, an eleventh-century poet.

The narrator of the poem was a young girl like White Cloud, and then he thought of another line by an American poet, already paraphrased in his mind: I do not think she will sing to me.

He had the waitress bring the dinner menu as White Cloud returned to their table. He did not have much experience choosing non-Chinese cuisine, but a medium-done steak was something he could not order in a Chinese restaurant. She had Red House baked clams as an appetizer, and French roast duck for her entree. He tried to encourage her to choose the more expensive items, caviar and champagne. People at other tables appeared to be doing so. He felt he was obliged.

To his surprise, she chose a bottle of Dynasty, a fairly inexpensive domestic wine from Tianjin. “Dynasty is good enough. No point choosing the imported XO whiskey or champagne,” she said, pushing aside the wine list.

The steak was tender. The waitress insisted that it was genuine American beef. He did not know whether this made any difference, except in price. The clams appeared exquisitely done, golden in the candlelight, with the clam meat picked out, mixed with cheese and spices, and put back onto the shells. It was easy for her to pick up the mixture on her fork.

“So delicious,” she exclaimed, putting a second helping on her fork, and offering it across the table to him to taste.

For Chen, it was still not going to be an evening of Golden Time Rolling Backward. His cell phone started ringing again. This time it was Yu, reporting the latest development in the investigation. Chen smiled apologetically to White Cloud.

“I have just received a new report from Dr. Xia. None of the fingerprints in the room matches Wan’s. That throws his statement further into question. At the very least, we may assume that the drawer-searching part is a fabrication.”

“Yes, that’s an important point.”

“I tried to discuss it with Party Secretary Li again, but he said that Wan might not have remembered everything while he was committing the murder in a moment of rage; afterward, since everybody talked about the emptied drawers, Wan spoke of them too.”

“No, Party Secretary Li cannot brush it aside like that.”

“Absolutely not,” Detective Yu said in a voice of mounting frustration. “But when I pressed the point, Li lost his temper, shouting ‘It’s a case of high political significance. Someone has already confessed, but you still want to go on investigating forever. For what, Comrade Detective Yu?’”

“Li understands nothing but politics.” Normally, it was Chen who had to deal with Party Secretary Li about “politically significant cases,” and he understood how frustrating it must have been for Yu.

“If political considerations override everything else, what is the point of being a cop?” Yu asked. “Where are you, chief? I think I hear music in the background.”

“I’m with a business associate on the translation project.” That was true, Chen thought, to some extent. He felt upset, not with the question, but because of it. “Don’t worry. Go on speaking, Detective Yu.”

White Cloud poured more wine into his glass, in silence.

“And then, after the talk with Party Secretary Li, guess who I met just in front of the bureau? Li Dong.”

“Ah, Li Dong.” Li, a former member of the special case squad, had quit the police force to run a private fruit store. “How is he?”

“Li Dong has developed that single store into a business chain that supplies fruit for the Shanghai airport and the Shanghai railway station. He’s used the connections he made in the police force. And he talks like another man. ‘Nowadays, one month’s profit from the airport alone is more than the bureau pays in a year. You are still working here, Comrade Detective Yu, but for what?’”

“That little rascal. Now that he has gotten a little money, he speaks like a rich man. How could he have changed like that? It’s only a year since he quit the police force.”

But that was not the answer Yu sought, Chen knew. What had Detective Yu been working so hard for? The official answer was that people worked for the sacred cause of communism. Party newspapers might still occasionally say this, but everybody knew it was a joke.

Chief Inspector Chen worked hard too, yet at least he could say that he worked for his position, for the benefits of his position: the apartment, the bureau car, the various bonuses-including this well-paid project from Mr. Gu. That, too, came from his position; there was no question about it.

In terms of social Darwinism, what was happening was not too surprising. In any social system, the strong stay in power, whether they be the CEOs of capitalism, or the Party cadres of communism. Actually, he had first read this argument in Martin Eden, an American novel translated by Yang.

“The steak is getting cold,” White Cloud whispered as she cut off a small piece with his knife to feed to him.

He stopped her with a wave of his hand.

He could also say that he worked for a night like this, with a little secretary at his service.

“Where are you, Yu?”

“At home.”

“Let me call you back in five minutes.”

The cell phone bill for this month was going to be staggering. The police bureau would pay it, but Chen did not want the accountant to raise her eyebrows at him again. Nor did he want to say more in front of White Cloud.

The antique phone in the corner still worked, he had noticed. It was a pay phone for the bar. Most of the status-conscious customers here, with their cell phones, would never consider using the pay phone.

Chen picked it up and dialed Yu’s number.

“I have been doing some thinking about the case,” Chen resumed. The sound quality of the phone was affected by the wear and tear of time, but it was reasonably clear. “In a shikumen house like that, with so much broken stuff and furniture stored here and there, it would not have been impossible for someone to hide until he had a chance to sneak out, especially if the shrimp woman was temporarily absent. But a question occurred to me: why should the murderer have wanted to hide if he was an outsider?”

“That’s a good question,” Yu said.

“One possibility is that he was not so much afraid of being seen as of being recognized. With that in mind, I called the Shanghai Archives Bureau. I asked them to check all Yin’s relatives, with special focus on information about a possible nephew of hers. But the information they provided is the same you had obtained.”

“She could have referred to someone who was a boy as a ‘nephew.’ He did not have to be her real nephew.”

“Yes, that’s possible. But would she have let someone totally unrelated stay with her, and for a week?” Chen asked. “And then there is Peiqin’s point. Now that I have read a few chapters of the novel, I agree with Peiqin: Yin may well have plagiarized somebody else’s work.”

“Peiqin reads too much. I believe she applies Yang’s high standard to the work of others,” Yu said. “But I just do not see how this can possibly be related to our investigation.”

“I have a feeling that there may be something in it. Coincidentally, I had a phone call earlier this evening, from a former colleague of Yang’s. According to him, Yang had been writing a novel before his death. There may be a connection,” Chen said slowly, feeling something eluding him in the hidden recesses of his mind as he spoke.