Qiu Xiaolong - A Loyal Character Dancer

“Chief Inspector Chen did not want to make a false alarm, Inspector Rohn,” Yu intervened hastily.

“I understand.” She did not think it necessary for Yu to rush to defend his boss, who had raised valid alarms-not false ones. “Still-”

“The investigation has been full of twists and turns, Inspector Rohn. I’d better try to recapitulate chronologically. We each had our suspicions at various stages of the investigation, and discussed them. It was your observations that more than once threw light on the situation.”

“You are being very diplomatic, Chief Inspector Chen.”

“No, I am not. Do you remember our talk in the Verdant Willow Village? You called my attention to a fact: Despite Feng’s request in his last phone call to Wen, she did not try to contact him when she reached an apparently safe place.”

“Yes, that puzzled me, but I was not so sure then that she was in a safe place. That was the seventh or eighth day of her disappearance, I think, the day we had that discussion in the restaurant.”

“Then in Deda Cafe, you convinced me that Gu knew something more than what he had told us. That prompted me to explore further in that direction.”

“Oh no, I cannot take credit for that. At the club, you had already told Gu about your connection with the Traffic Control Office-” She stopped herself at a glance from Chen. Had he told Party Secretary Li about the parking lot deal? Or even the visit to the club?

“You did an excellent job in dealing with a man like Gu, Chief Inspector Chen,” Li commented. “ ‘You have to fish for a golden turtle with a sweet-smelling bait.’”

“Thank you, Party Secretary Li,” Chen said with surprise. “And then in the evening after the Beijing Opera, following your instruction, I walked Inspector Rohn back to the hotel. On our way, we had some drinks in Bund Park. There I mentioned the two cases I had been assigned to on the same day-the park victim case, and the search for Wen. She touched on the possible connection between the two. I had never thought about such a possibility until that evening. More importantly, she discussed the ax wounds on the body in connection with a Mafia novel, in which a murder was committed in such a way as to direct suspicion onto to a rival gang-”

“The ax wounds suggested a triad killing. It was a signature,” Li cut in, “as Detective Yu pointed out at the outset.”

“Yes, it’s called the death by Eighteen Axes,” Yu observed. “The highest form of punishment inflicted by the Flying Axes.”

“That’s true, and that’s exactly what made me suspicious. Wasn’t such a signature too obvious? So Inspector Rohn’s comment started me thinking of another possibility. The victim in Bund Park could have been killed by somebody in deliberate imitation of the Flying Axes to cast the blame on them. As a result, the Flying Axes had to look into the matter and lose their focus on the search for Wen. Besides, muddying the water diverted the attention of the police, too. Under that hypothesis, who benefited? Someone with an even higher stake in the race to find Wen.”

“I’m beginning to see, Chief Inspector Chen,” Yu said.

“So you deserve the credit, Inspector Rohn. In spite of my suspicions, I was as puzzled as anybody else, unable to put the pieces together into a comprehensible whole. Your comments really helped.”

“Thank you, Inspector Rohn. It’s a marvelous example of the fruitful collaboration between the police forces of our two countries. Almost like the tai chi symbol, yin in perfect match with yang-” Li stopped abruptly, coughing with a hand against his mouth.

She understood. As a high-ranking Party official, Li had to be careful in his speech, even in using a seemingly harmless metaphor, which nevertheless crossed the line, due to the male and female elements suggested by the ancient symbol.

“I also got a call from Old Hunter that evening,” Chen went on. “He told me that Gu had called to ask for information about a missing Fujianese. That was a surprise. Gu had told us about a mysterious visitor from Hong Kong. Why was Gu looking for a Fujianese? So that evening in Bund Park put me on the right track for the first time.”

“The park is a lucky place for you,” she said, “in accordance with the five-element theory. Little wonder, Chief Inspector Chen.”

“Explain, Chief Inspector Chen?” Li asked.

Apparently Li did not know so much about Chen’s life as she did, though the Party Secretary had hand-picked Chen as his successor.

“It’s a joke made by my father, Party Secretary Li,” Chen said. “Actually I had another idea that evening. Inspector Rohn happened to ask me about the two lines on my folding fan. Daifu’s couplet. My thoughts flowed to the mysterious death of Daifu, and then back to the body in the park. It further supported the supposition that the body had been placed there to distract attention or to shift the blame, as I had suspected in Daifu’s case.”

“But you did not mention that to me, Chief Inspector Chen,” she said.

“Well, these ideas did not coalesce until I got back home late that night. I dug out the poem in an attempt to recollect all the possibilities I had studied before writing it. As an unexpected result. I was able to recite those lines in Moscow Suburb the following day,” he said with a smile. “No, it’s not my favorite poem, Inspector Rohn, though it might have put me in a poetic mood at the Huating Market.”

Party Secretary Li looked at Chen, and then at Catherine, before he broke into a broad smile. “That’s how Chief Inspector Chen moves in his investigation-by leaps and bounds.”

“As for what happened at the market, let me say a word about contingency. There’s no better way to describe it. I happened to be there, together with Inspector Rohn. As she put it, it’s a chain of seemingly irrelevant links. Daifu’s couplet, a light green cellular phone, the rain, the line of Oriole’s wet footprints, Su Dongpu’s lines. So I thought of the poetry anthology left at Wen’s home. If one link had been missing, we would not be sitting here at this moment.”

She wondered whether his colleagues could follow this cryptic explanation. She happened to be there, but even she did not understand all his references. The light green cellular phone, for instance. He had never mentioned that before.

Yu made an obvious effort to refrain from asking questions. Qian remained respectfully self-effacing throughout. But Li appeared eager to season the discussion with political clichés.

“You have performed brilliant work in the glorious tradition of the Chinese police force, Chief Inspector Chen,” Li declared, though perhaps he was still largely in the dark.

“I could not have made progress without the collaboration of Inspector Rohn, or the work of Detective Yu,” Chen said earnestly. “In his interview with Zheng, for example, Detective Yu pushed for the clarification of a gangster’s phrase- She changed her mind. What did he mean-changed her mind? That was a question I had in my mind while talking with Wen the following day.”

“You kept a lot of questions to yourself, Chief Inspector Chen,” Catherine said.

“I was not sure whether they were worth exploring, Inspector Rohn. After our visit to Wen, you asked me why I insisted on talking to Wen and Liu instead of bringing in the local police. For one thing, Wen’s cup is full. I did not want to put too much pressure on her. But there’s another reason. I tried to find some answers from my conversation with them.”

“Did you find any?”

“Not from Liu, except that Wen had not told him anything. Then we both talked to Wen. What she said about her life in Fujian was true, but she did not say a single word about the gang’s contact with her. Nor did she really answer my question about the delay in making her passport application. But what made me most suspicious was her insistence on going back to Fujian.”