Qiu Xiaolong - The Mao Case

“A heavy metal bar -” A tell-tale weapon for Chen. “Now, who’s in charge of the investigation?”

“Another person from Internal Security. They called the bureau, demanding to be told your whereabouts. Party Secretary Li came to me, his face pulled as long as that of a horse.”

“I’m coming back today, Yu,” he said. “Find the name of the Internal Security officer for me. And his phone number too.”

“I’ll do that. What else, Chief?”

“You have done some asking around about Qian’s lovers, both the first and the second, haven’t you?”

“Yes, Old Hunter must have told you about Peng, the second one.”

“Now about Tan, the first one. A group of people from Beijing conducted a special investigation into him before his death.”

“Do you have anything about the investigation?”

“No, I don’t. Contact his neighborhood committee again. The neighborhood cop, I mean, since you know him well. At the time, the neighborhood committee provided something like an interview list for the Beijing group. A list of the people close to Tan and Qian.”

“I’ll go there,” Yu said, “and get the list. Anything else?”

“Call me immediately if there’s anything new.”

Closing the phone, Chen knew he had to leave the Central South Sea.

He was in no mood to go back into Mao’s rooms, though he had conveniently called this the Mao Case.

THE TRAIN WAS RUMBLING along in the dusk.

Chen had obtained the train ticket through a scalper, paying a much higher price for it. He didn’t try to bargain. There was no possibility of purchasing an airline ticket without showing official documents, which he didn’t have. It was a hard seat in a third-class car, but he considered himself lucky to have gotten on the train at the last minute.

During his college years, he had frequently traveled between Beijing and Shanghai, sitting on the hard seats, reading, dozing through the night. Now he was finding it very uncomfortable – his legs were stiff, and his back strained. He was unable to doze, let alone sleep. He didn’t have a book with him except for Cloud and Rain in Shanghai, which he was in no mood to take out, and the memoir by Mao’s doctor, which he couldn’t read openly.

He must have been spoiled by his chief inspector-ship, he mused with a touch of self-irony. In the last several years, his trips had been by airplane or in the soft sleeping cars, and he had forgotten about the discomfort of traveling on the hard seat.

Sitting opposite him, across a small table, was a young couple, possibly on their honeymoon trip. Both were dressed too formally for the overpacked train: the man was wearing a new shirt and well-ironed dress pants, the woman, a pink dress with thin straps. Initially, she sat leaning against the window, but soon she shifted in her seat and was nestled against him. For them, the discomfort was nothing, as long as they had the world in each others’ eyes.

Beside Chen was a young girl, apparently a college student, who wore a white blouse, a grass-green skirt imprinted with vines and trails, and light-green plastic slippers. There was a book on her lap – a Chinese translation of The Lover by Marguerite Duras. He had read the book, still remembering that the beginning of the novel echoed the lines by W. B. Yeats, “When you are old and gray and full of sleep… ”

He wondered whether he was able to write – or even to say anything like that.

“The train is reaching Tianjin in a couple of minutes. Passengers for the city of Tianjin should get prepared.” The train announcer spoke melodiously in the typical Beijing dialect, with the “er” sound more pronounced than in standard Mandarin.

The train was already slowing down. Looking out, he saw on the gray platform several peddlers walking and hawking Dogs Won’t Leave. An unbelievable brand name for the steamed pork-stuffed buns, a special snack of Tianjin. Perhaps originally from a compliment: “The buns taste so good that the dogs won’t leave.” One of the peddlers moving up to the train looked like a thug, pushing a basket of buns up to the windows with an almost fierce expression.

More people came crowding in at Tianjin, rushing and squeezing with luggage on their shoulders and in their hands, jumping at any vacant seat they could find. According to railway regulations, only passengers boarding at the first stop could be guaranteed a seat.

The train started moving again, the green banner waving on the platform in the growing dark.

He leaned against the window, trying to focus on the new development in Shanghai, the wind ruffling his hair as the train gained speed. Looking over the scant information available so far, Chen soon concluded it was pointless to speculate. But Song’s death was not from a random mugging on the street, of that much he was sure.

A train conductor began pushing a dining cart through the aisle, selling snacks, instant noodles, teas, and beer. Squatting at the bottom rack of the cart were long-billed brass kettles. Chen chose fried beef and scallion instant noodles in a plastic bowl, into which the conductor adroitly poured out an arch of hot water. In addition, Chen had a tea-leaf egg soaked in it. It wouldn’t be pleasant to squeeze all the way through the train to the dining car and then back.

He waited two or three minutes before taking out the egg, and he put a package of seasoning into the soup. The instant noodles tasted palpable, with the green specks afloat on the soup remotely redolent of chopped scallion. Just like in his college years, except that instant noodles then didn’t come in plastic containers.

The couple opposite produced a stainless-steel container of fried steak and smoked fish, along with paper-wrapped chopsticks and spoons. They must have prepared well for the trip. The woman started peeling an orange and feeding her partner, segment by segment.

Chen finished his egg, thinking he might as well have bought a couple of Dogs Won’t Leave buns. And he was surprised by the thought. He hadn’t lost his appetite even during such a trip. He fished for a cigarette in his pocket but did not take it out. The air was bad enough in the train.

Beside him, the girl started reading her book without eating anything. She must have felt uncomfortable, sitting so long in the one position, so she kicked off her slippers and put a bare foot on the edge of the seat opposite. She highlighted paragraphs with a pen, her fingers tapping on the seat. Young, yet serious, her way with the book might just be like her way with the world. He tried to stretch his legs without disturbing his neighbors, but it was difficult. He nearly tipped over the noodle bowl onto the table. The woman opposite glared at him.

What he had read about Mao’s special train came back to mind. The sleeping car was equipped with all the modern conveniences, the special bed with the wooden-board mattress, and those pretty conductors and nurses who waited on Mao hand and foot…

Chen was massaging his brows, half closing his eyes, in an effort to ward off an onslaught of headache, when his cell phone rang. It was Detective Yu again.

“Hold on,” Chen said into the phone.

He excused himself and squeezed out into the aisle, heading to the door. To his surprise, several people stood leaning against the door. Apparently, they were the seatless passengers. Behind them, he saw a toilet marked “unoccupied.” So he hurried in and locked the door behind him.

“Now, tell me what you’ve found,” he said, opening the small window. It was stuffy and smelly in the toilet.

“I went to the neighborhood committee. Hong wasn’t a neighborhood cop at the time, but he talked to Huang Dexing, the one before him. There was a group of people who came in from Beijing. The local government called Huang, telling him to cooperate in whatever way requested. It sounded like a highly confidential assignment. The team searched through both Tan’s and Qian’s places. And they wanted to talk to the people close to them.”