Death of a Red Heroine [Chief Inspector Chen Cao 01] (15 page)

“Now what about the public bathroom at the end of the corridor,” he said. “He could have been coming out of there, couldn’t he?”

“That’s not likely,” she said. “His host would have to accompany him there, or he would not be able to find it.”

“Yes, you have a point. What did this man look like?”

“Tall, decent looking. But the light’s so dim I could not see clearly.”

“How old do you think he was?”

“Well, mid-thirties, I should think, perhaps forty. Difficult to tell.”

“Anything else about his appearance?”

“He seemed neatly dressed; I may have mentioned it.”

“So you think he could have been coming out of Guan’s room?”

“Yes,” she said, “but I’m not sure.”

“Thank you, Comrade Zuo. We’ll investigate,” he said. “If you can think of anything else, give me a call.”

“Yes, I’ll do that, Comrade Chief Inspector,” she said. “Let us know when you solve the case.”

“We will, and good-bye.”

Walking down the stairs, Chen shrugged his shoulders slightly. He had been to the public bathroom himself without being accompanied by anybody.

At the bus stop on Zhejiang road, he stood for quite a long time. He was trying to sort out what he had accomplished in the day’s work. There was not much. Nothing he had found so far presented a solid lead. If there was anything he had not expected, it would be Guan’s fancy clothes and intimate pictures. But then—that was not too surprising, either. An attractive young woman, even if she was a national model worker, was entitled to some feminine indulgence—in her private life.

Guan’s unpopularity among her neighbors was even less surprising. That a national model worker would be unpopular in the nineties was a sociological phenomenon, rather than anything else. So, too, in the dorm building. It would have been too difficult to be a model neighbor there, to be popular with her neighbors. Her life was not an ordinary one. So she did not fit into their circle, nor did she care for it.

There was only one thing he had confirmed: on the night of May tenth, Guan Hongying had left the dorm before eleven o’clock. She had a heavy suitcase in her hand; she’d been going somewhere.

Another thing not confirmed, but only a hypothesis: She could not have been romantically involved at the time of her death. There was no privacy possible in such a dorm building, no way of secretly dating someone. If there had been anything going on behind her closed door, her dorm neighbors would have known it, and in less than five minutes, the news would have spread like wildfire.

It would also have taken a lot of courage for a man to come to her room. To the hardboard bed.

The bus was nowhere in sight yet. It could be very slow during this time of the day. He crossed to the small restaurant opposite the lane entrance. Despite its unsightly appearance, a lot of people were there, both inside the restaurant and outside it. A fat man in a brown corduroy jacket was rising from a table outside on the pavement. Chief Inspector Chen took his seat and ordered a portion of fried buns. It was a perfect place from which to keep his eyes out for a bus arriving, and at the same time, he could watch the lane entrance. He had to wait for quite a few minutes. When the buns came, they were delicious, but hot. Putting down the chopsticks, he had to blow on them repeatedly. Then the bus rolled into sight. He rushed across the street and boarded it with the last bun in his hand. It then occurred to him that he should have made inquiries at the restaurant. Guan might have sat there with somebody.

“Keep your oily hand away from me,” a woman standing next to him said indignantly.

“Some people can be so unethical,” another passenger commented, “despite an impressive uniform.”

“Sorry,” he said, aware of his unpopularity in his police uniform. There was no point in picking a quarrel. To hold a pork-stuffed bun in an overcrowded bus was a lousy idea, he admitted to himself.

At the next stop, he got off. He did not mind walking for a short distance. At least he didn’t have to overhear the other passengers’ negative comments. There was no way to prevent people from making such comments about one.

Guan, a national model worker, was by no means an exception. Not so far as her neighbors’ comments went.

Who can control stories, the stories after one’s life?

The whole village is jumping at the romantic tale of General Cai.

In this poem by Lu You, the “romantic tale” refers to a totally fictitious romance between General Cai and Zhao Wuniang of the late Han dynasty. The village audience would have been interested in hearing the story, regardless of its historical authenticity.

There is no helping what other people will say, Chief Inspector Chen thought.

* * * *

Chapter 9

t was Wednesday, five days after the formation of the special case group, and there had been hardly any progress. Chief Inspector Chen arrived at the bureau, greeted his colleagues, and repeated polite but meaningless words. The case weighed heavily on his mind.

At the insistence of Commissar Zhang, Chen had extended his investigation into Guan’s neighborhood by enlisting assistance from the local police branch office and the neighborhood committee. They came up with tons of information about possible suspects, assuming this was a political case. Chen was red-eyed from poring over all the material, pursuing the leads provided by the committee about some ex-counter revolutionaries with “deep hatred against the socialist society.” All this was routine, and Chen did it diligently, but there was a persistent doubt in his mind about the direction of the investigation.

In fact, the choice of their number-one suspect exemplified Commissar Zhang’s ossified way of thinking. This suspect was a distant relative of Guan’s with a long-standing personal grudge, which had originated from Guan’s refusal to acknowledge him, a black Rightist, during the Cultural Revolution. The rehabilitated Rightist had said that he would never forgive her, but was too busy writing a book about his wasted years to be aware of her death. Chief Inspector Chen ruled him out even before he went to interview him.

It was
not
a political case. Yet he was expecting another of Commissar Zhang’s morning lectures about “carrying out the investigation by relying on the people.” That morning, however, he had a pleasant surprise.

“This is for you, Comrade Chief Inspector,” Detective Yu said standing at the door, holding a fax he had picked up in the main office.

It was from Wang Feng, with a cover page bearing the
Wenhui Daily
letterhead. Her neat handwriting said “Congratulations,” on the margin of a photocopied section of the newspaper, in which his poem “Miracle” appeared. The poem was in a conspicuous position, with the editor’s note underneath saying, “The poet is a young chief inspector, Shanghai Police Bureau.”

The comment made sense since the poem was about a young policewoman providing relief to storm-damaged homes in the pouring rain. Still holding the fax in his hand, he received his first call from Party Secretary Li.

“Congratulations, Comrade Chief Inspector. A poem published in the
Wenhui Daily.
Quite an achievement.”

“Thank you,” he said. “It’s just a poem about our police work.”

“It’s a good one. Politically, I mean,” Li said. “Next time, if there’s something in such an influential newspaper, tell us beforehand.”

“Okay, but why?”

“There are a lot of people reading your work.”

“Don’t worry, Party Secretary Li, I’ll make sure that it is politically correct.”

“Yes, that’s the spirit. You are not an ordinary police officer, you know,” Li said. “Now, anything new in the investigation?”

“We’re going all out. But unfortunately there’s not much progress.”

“Don’t worry. Just try your best,” Li said before putting down the phone, “And don’t forget your seminar in Beijing.”

Then Dr. Xia called. “This one is not that bad, this ‘Miracle’ of yours.”

“Thank you, Dr. Xia,” he said, “your approval always means such a lot to me.”

“I especially like the beginning—
’The rain has soaked the hair / Falling to your shoulders / Light green in your policewoman’s /
Uniform, like the spring /
White blossom bursting / From your arms reaching / Into the gaping windows
—
/
‘Here you are!’“

“It’s a true experience. She persisted in sending out relief to the victims, despite the pouring rain. I was there, too, and was touched at the sight.”

“But you must have stolen the image from Li He’s ‘Watching a Beauty Comb Her Hair.’ The image about the green comb in her long hair.”

“No, I didn’t, but I’ll let you in on a secret. It’s from another two classical lines—
With the green skirt of yours in my mind, everywhere, / Everywhere I step over the grass ever so lightly.”
Our policewoman’s uniform is green, and so, too, the spring, and the package. Looking out in the rain, I had the impression of her long hair being washed green, too.”

“No wonder you’ve made such an improvement,” Dr. Xia said. “I’m glad you are acknowledging your debt to classical poetry.”

“Of course I do. But so much for the poetics,” Chen said. “Actually, I was thinking of calling you, too. About the black plastic bag in the Guan case.”

“There’s nothing to recover from the plastic bag. I made some inquiries about it. I was told that it is normally used for fallen leaves in people’s backyards.”

“Indeed! Imagine a taxi driver worrying about the fallen leaves in his backyard!”

“What did you say?”

“Oh, nothing,” he said. “But thank you so much, Dr. Xia.”

“Don’t mention it, Comrade Chief Inspector Chen, also Chinese imagist poet.”

Out of the black plastic bag, her white bare feet, and her red polished toenails like fallen petals in the night. It could be a modernist image.

Chen then dialed Detective Yu.

Entering his office, Yu, too, offered his congratulations, “What a surprise, Comrade Chief Inspector Chen. A terrific breakthrough.”

“Well, if only we could say that about our case.”

Indeed they needed a “miracle” in their investigation.

Detective Yu had come up empty-handed. Following his theory, Lu had made inquiry at the taxi bureau. To his dismay, he found that obtaining anything close to reliable information for the night was impossible. There was no point in checking the taxi drivers’ receipts. Most drivers—whether the taxi company was state-run or private—kept a considerable portion of their money by not giving receipts to customers, he was told, so it was possible for a driver to claim to have driven around for the night without being able to pick up one single passenger—thus avoiding taxation.

In addition, Yu had checked all the customer lists of Shanghai travel agencies during May. Guan’s name had not been on any of them.

And Yu’s research with respect to the last phone call Guan had made from the department store was not successful either. Many people had used the phone that evening. And Mrs. Weng’s recollection of the time was not accurate. After spending hours to rule out other calls made roughly around the same time, the one most likely made by Guan was to weather information. It made sense, for Guan had been planning her trip, but that only confirmed something they had known.

So like Chen, Yu had not gotten anything, not even a tip worthy of a follow-up.

And the more time that elapsed, the colder the trail became.

They were under pressure, not just from the bureau and the city government. The case was being buzzed about among people in general, in spite of the low-profile treatment it had been given by the local media. And the longer the case remained unsolved, the more negative impact it would have on the bureau.