At the end of his briefing, Huang took a sip of the lukewarm tea and leaned over across the table.
“You’re no outsider, Chief. There’s something about this case. Not only was a special team formed, but that the governmental authorities-not just at the city level-have been paying a lot of attention to the investigation. We’ve gotten several phone calls from the city government. I’ve heard that even Internal Security is looking into it, working sort of parallel investigation.”
“Internal Security,” Chen repeated. “Have they done anything?”
“For one thing, Liu’s phone records were snatched away before we could examine them.”
“That’s something. You’re very perceptive, Huang.”
“But I haven’t met with any of them-face to face, I mean. So I’m not sure how involved they are.”
“Yes, find out for me,” Chen said before he realized that he had unwittingly slipped back into his familiar role, talking as if he were in charge of the case and Huang his subordinate. While he hadn’t yet decided whether he would attempt to do anything about the investigation, it wouldn’t hurt, he thought, for him to take a look. “I’ve heard about the company. About its success at the expense of the environment, with the lake water and food around here being badly contaminated. ”
That enquiry, suggested by his talk with Shanshan, could also be seen as being in line with Comrade Secretary Zhao’s instructions. It was time for Chen to start paying attention to the problem. Still, he thought he had better not ask too many questions at this stage, or he could raise unnecessary alarm.
“Well, it is said that some people are getting sick by drinking the water or eating the fish, but nothing is really proven,” Huang said, scratching his head. “I don’t think it’s something relevant to the murder. There are many factories like Liu’s here. Wuxi has been developing rapidly, and as Comrade Deng Xiaoping put it, ‘Development is the one and only truth.’”
It wasn’t up to Chief Inspector Chen, coming from Shanghai, to debate economic development in Wuxi. And he wasn’t an environmental expert like Shanshan.
“Oh, another thing, Huang,” he said, on the spur of the moment. “Someone I know here has been getting threatening calls. Can you check on it for me?”
“What’s his name and number?”
“Her name is Shanshan, and here is her number.” He copied her number onto a scrap of paper and handed it to Huang.
“Shanshan?”
Chen thought he caught a fleeting hint of surprise in Huang’s expression. “Do you know her?”
“No, I don’t. You know her well?” Huang asked.
“No, I met her yesterday.”
“I’ll check it out for you, Chief,” Huang said, glancing at his watch as he stood up. “I think I have to go back to the team. It’s almost five.”
“Thank you so much, Huang. Call me when you learn anything new.” He added, almost as an afterthought, “Send me some information about the case.”
He watched Huang’s retreating figure disappear into the crowd, which began to thin out with the approaching dusk. Chen remained sitting there, brooding, and staring into his empty cup of tea.
After several minutes, he looked up at the bronze turtle statue, which must have overheard-if endowed with supernatural powers as in those folk tales-just another tale of human tragedy. But the brown turtle remained squatting, meditating, impervious to human suffering. What kind of a man was Liu? Chen hadn’t even seen a picture of him, but Liu might have come here himself, sitting, sipping at his own tea, and staring at the turtle statue.
Chen swept his gaze over to the tilted eave of a multistory wooden tower silhouetted against the evening spreading in the distance. The time-and-weather-worn tower suddenly appeared melancholy. He was struck with a sense of deja vu-possibly from recollecting more lines by Su Shi, his favorite poet from the Song dynasty.
FIVE
The center was a nice place, after all.
Chen took a walk around early Tuesday morning and began to get a better sense of the layout. The location spoke volumes for the center. Originally a huge lakeside area of the park, it had been converted into the Cadre Recreation Center for the benefit of veteran cadres, so they could enjoy the lake in peace and quiet without having to mix with the noisy tourist crowd.
There were several others like him walking around at a leisurely pace. Every one of them must have led a quite different life somewhere else, in a provincial town or in a large city, each powerful and privileged in their respective ways. In the blue-and-white-striped pajamas of the center, however, they appeared anonymous for the moment.
Even here, though, there was a sort of recognizable hierarchy. In the two gray multistory buildings near the entrance, the rooms were probably like those in a hotel; though still quite nice, each of them boasting a small balcony, they were probably not for very high-ranking cadres. In contrast, there was another building close to the center of the complex, and the size of the balconies indicated much larger rooms inside. Looking up, Chen saw a white-haired man step out onto a balcony on the third floor, stretch, and nod at him. Chen nodded back and moved on.
Soon, he saw a teahouse built in the traditional architectural style. It was much like the one he had seen in the park, but it stood embosomed in green foliage on the top of a raised plateau, adjacent to a modern-style building. From the distance, he could see several elderly people sitting outside by the white stone balustrade, drinking tea, talking, and cracking watermelon seeds.
It might be a good place, he reflected, for him to sit and study the initial report Sergeant Huang had faxed him that morning. The chief inspector was still debating as to whether he should get actively involved in the investigation.
He was surprised at the sight of a waterproof escalator stretching up the hill, leading directly to the teahouse. It wasn’t so much the technology of the escalator that surprised him but the fact that it was installed on the slope in the first place. Anyone who couldn’t walk up the flight of stone steps nearby could easily use the elevator inside the building next to it.
He turned away and walked to the clinic attached to the center instead. According to the brochure, the clinic provided convenient medical checkups for high-ranking cadres. Chen didn’t think there was anything wrong with him, but since he was there, he decided to see a doctor of traditional Chinese medicine.
Chen’s experience at the clinic proved to be quite different from that at a Shanghai hospital, where he usually had to wait a long time, standing in line, going through a lot of paperwork. Here, the nurses were practically waiting on him, not to mention that there was so much advanced equipment-all imported here for those high-ranking cadres.
The doctor felt Chen’s pulse, examined his tongue, took his blood pressure, and gave his diagnosis in a jumble of professional jargon spoken in a strong Anhui accent:
“You have worked too hard, burning up the yin in your system. Consequently both the qi and blood are at a low ebb, and the yang is insubstantially high. Quite a lot is out of balance, but nothing is precisely wrong, just a little of everything.” He dashed off a prescription and added thoughtfully, “You’re still single, aren’t you?”
Chen thought he knew what the doctor was driving at. According to traditional Chinese medical theory, people achieve the yin-yang balance through marriage. For a man of his age, continuous celibacy wouldn’t be healthy. The old doctor in Wuxi could be an ideal ally, Chen thought with a sense of amusement, for his mother in Shanghai, who worried and complained about his failure to settle down.
The prescription specified that the medicine be brewed fresh every day and then taken while still hot. The pharmacist at the clinic said that it was no problem to fill the prescription; Director Qiao had given specific instructions to provide whatever Chen needed.
Leaving the clinic, Chen continued walking instead of going back to his villa. He wasn’t entirely comfortable
