“Rely on the people,” Zhang was continuing. “That’s where our strength lies. Chairman Mao told us that long ago. Once we get the people’s help, there’s no difficulty we cannot overcome…”
Yu had had it. It was more and more difficult for him to concentrate on the commissar’s lecture filled with such political rhetoric. At the bureau political education sessions, Yu sometimes could choose to sit in the back of the room and let the speaker’s voice lull him while doing meditation exercises. But that morning he could not.
Then Chief Inspector Chen took the floor. “Commissar Zhang’s instruction is very important. And Comrade Yu Guangming’s analysis makes a lot of sense, too. It is tough, especially when we’ve got so many other cases on our hands. Comrade Yu has done a lot of work. Most of it, I would say. If we have so far made little progress, it’s my responsibility. There is one point, however, that has just come to my attention. In fact, Comrade Yu’s analysis is bringing it into focus.
“According to the autopsy report, Guan had a meal between one and two hours before her death. The food she had consumed included, among other things, a small portion of caviar. Caviar. Expensive Russian sturgeon caviar. Now there are only three or four top-class Shanghai restaurants serving caviar. I’ve done some research. It’s hard to believe that she would have chosen to dine at one of those expensive restaurants by herself, with a heavy suitcase at her feet. Think about the timing, too. She left home around ten thirty; she died between one and two. So the meal would have to have been eaten around midnight. Now, according to my investigation, not a single restaurant served caviar to a Chinese customer on that particular night. If this information is accurate, it means she had caviar somewhere else. With somebody who kept caviar at home.”
“That’s something indeed,” Yu said.
“Hold on,” Zhang raised his hand to interrupt Chen. “So you are suggesting the murderer could be somebody Guan knew?”
“Yes, that’s a possible scenario: perhaps the murderer’s no stranger to Guan. After she left home, they met somewhere and had a midnight meal together. Possibly at his home. Afterward they had sex-remember, there were no real bruises on her body. Then he murdered her, moved her body into his car, and dumped it in the canal. The plastic bag would make sense, too, if the crime was committed at the murderer’s home. He was afraid of being seen in the act of moving the body-by his neighbors or other people. Furthermore, that also explains the choice of that far-away canal, where he hoped that the body would never be found, or at least not for a long time. By then no one might be able to recognize her, or remember with whom she was involved.”
“So you don’t think it’s a political case either,” Zhang said, “though you are offering a different theory.”
“Whether it is a political case or not, I cannot say, but I think there are some things worth further investigation.”
Yu was even more surprised than Zhang by Chen’s speech.
The plastic bag was not something new, but the caviar was something they had not discussed. Whether Chen had purposely saved it for the meeting, Yu was not sure. It appeared to be a master stroke, like in those of western mysteries Chen had been translating, perhaps.
Was Chen doing this to impress Commissar Zhang?
Yu did not think so, for Chen did not like the old man either.
It was nonetheless a crucial detail Yu had overlooked, that portion of caviar.
“But according to the information at the department store,” Yu said, “Guan was not seeing anyone at the time of her death.”
“That puzzles me,” Chen said, “but that’s where we should be digging more deeply.”
“Well, do it your way,” Zhang said, standing up to leave. “At least, that’s preferable to waiting for the criminal to act again.”
So Detective Yu was placed in an unfavorable light. A cop too lazy to attend to the important details. Yu could read the negative message in the old man’s knitted brows.
“I overlooked the caviar,” Yu said to Chen.
“It just occurred to me last night. So I have not had time to discuss it with you.”
“Caviar. Honestly, I have no idea what it is.”
Afterward he made a phone call to Peiqin. “Do you know what caviar is?”
“Yes, I’ve read about it in nineteenth-century Russian novels,” she said, “but I have never tasted it.”
“Has your restaurant ever served caviar?”
“You’re kidding, Guangming. Ours is such a shabby place. Only five-star hotels like the Jinjiang might have it.”
“Is it very expensive?”
“A tiny dish would cost you several hundred Yuan, I think,” she added. “Why your sudden interest?”
“Oh, just something about the case.”
Chapter 11
C hief Inspector Chen woke with a slight suggestion of headache. A shower did not help much. It would be difficult to shake off the feeling during the day. And it happened to be a day in which he had so much work cut out for him.
He was no workaholic, not in the way some of his colleagues claimed. It was true, however, that often it was only after he had successfully forced himself into working like a devil, that he felt the most energetic.
He had just received a rare collection of Yan Shu’s poems-a hand-bound rice paper edition, in a deep blue cloth case. An unexpected present from Beijing, in return for the copy of the Wenhui Daily he had sent.
There was a short note inside the cloth case. Chief Inspector Chen: Thanks for your poem. I like it very much. Sorry I cannot send you anything of my own in return. I alighted on a collection of Yan Shu’s poems in Liulichang Antique Fair a couple of weeks ago, and I thought you would like it. Also, congratulations on your promotion.
Ling
Of course he liked it. He recalled his days of wandering around in the Liulichang Antique Fair, then a poor student from Beijing Foreign Language Institute, examining old books without being able to buy any of them. He had seen something like it only once-in the rare book section of the Beijing Library where Ling had compared his ecstatic sampling to that of the silverfish lost in the pages of the ancient volumes. Such a hand-bound collection could be very expensive, but it was worth it. The feel of the white rice paper was exquisite. It almost conveyed a message from antiquity. Like his, Ling’s note did not say much. The choice of such a book spoke for itself. Ling had not changed. She was still fond of poetry-or of his poetry.
He should have told Ling about the seminar in October, but he did not want her to think that he had thrown himself into politics. For the moment, however, he did not have to think too much about it. There was nothing like spending a late May morning wandering about in the green ivy-covered world of the celebrated Song dynasty poet.
He flipped through the pages. Helpless the flowers fall, The swallows return, seemingly no strangers.
A brilliant couplet. Often people see something for the first time, but with the feeling of having seen it before, of deja vu. Such a phenomenon had been attributed to the effects of half-remembered dreams or else to misfiring neurons in the brain. Whatever the interpretation, Chen, too, had a feeling-both strange and familiar-like the swallows in Yan’s lines, of having visited Guan’s world. As he held the book in his hand, the feeling was mixed with the elusive memories of his college years in Beijing…
It was disturbing. Guan no longer represented an esoteric character. The case had somehow become a personal challenge. People had seen Guan as a national model worker, ever politically correct, an embodiment of the Party’s much propagandized myth. But he did not. There must have been something else, something different in her. Just what it was, he could not say yet, but until he was able to explain it to himself, he would continue to be oppressed by an indefinable uneasiness.
It was not just because of the caviar.
He had talked to a lot of people who seemed to have thought well of her. Politically, of course. Personally, they knew practically nothing. It seemed that she had so committed herself to her political role that she could play no other part, personal or otherwise. A point Detective Yu had made.
She had no time, perhaps. Eight hours a day, six days a week, she had to be busy living up to what was
