No excuse to avoid a showdown.
As soon as he had received Dr. Xia’s report the previous afternoon, Chen called Party Secretary Li. Li heard him out, for once not attempting to interrupt him.
“You’re positive,” Li finally said, “Wu Xiaoming drove the car that night?”
“Yes, I’m positive.”
“You’ve got Dr. Xia’s report?”
“Not yet, but he confirmed on the phone that it was Guan’s hair found in Wu’s car.”
“And Guo will also testify against Wu about his false alibi?”
“Yes, Guo has to save his own neck.”
“So you think it’s time to conclude.”
“We have motive, evidence, and a witness. And Wu’s alibi is gone.”
“It is not a common case,” Li seemed to be lost in thought, exhaling into the phone before he continued, “and it doesn’t come at an ordinary time. We will have a meeting with Superintendent Zhao tomorrow. In the meantime, do not say a single word to anybody else.”
When Chen arrived at Li’s office, he saw a small note taped to the office door. COMRADE CHIEF INSPECTOR CHEN: Please wait for us in the Number 1 conference room. Important meeting. Superintendent Zhao will be there too.
Li.
There was no one else in the conference room. Chen took a leather-cushioned chair at the end of the long table. Waiting there, he went over his notes. He wanted his presentation to be organized, succinct, to the point. When he finished reviewing, he looked at his watch again. It was twenty minutes after the appointed time.
He was not optimistic about the meeting. Nor did he think his bosses would be looking forward to it. They would harp on the interests of the Party and dismiss him from the case. In a worst-case scenario, they would officially remove him from his position.
But Chen resolved not to retreat, even at the cost of losing his position and Party membership, too.
As a chief inspector he was supposed to seek justice by punishing the murderer, whoever it was.
As a party member, he knew what he was supposed to do. It had been the first lesson of the Party Education Program. A Party member must serve, above all things, the interests of the Party.
Here’s the problem. What were the interests of the Party?
In the early fifties, for instance, Chairman Mao had called on Chinese intellectuals to find fault with the Party authorities, and Mao said that it was in the interests of the Party. When the invitation was taken literally by some, however, Mao flew into a rage and called those naive fault-finders antisocialist rightists. He sent them to jail. That, too, was done, of course, in the interests of the Party, as the Party newspapers declared, justifying Mao’s earlier speech as a tactic to “lure the snake out of the cave.” So, too, with a number of political movements, including the Cultural Revolution. Everything was done in the interests of the Party. After Mao’s death, these disastrous movements were written off as Mao’s “well-intended mistakes,” which should not detract from the glorious merit of the Party; and once more, the Chinese people were taught to forget the past in the interests of the Party.
Chen had been aware of the difference between being a chief inspector and being a Party member, but he had not thought much about the possibility of his two roles coming into direct conflict. And here he was, waiting for the resolution of just such a conflict.
There was no retreating. In the worst-case scenario, Chief Inspector Chen was prepared to resign, to work in Overseas Chinese Lu’s restaurant. In the Western Han dynasty, Sima Xiangru had done the same thing, opening a tiny tavern, wearing short pants, sweating, ladling wine out of a huge urn, and Wenjun had followed him, serving the wine to customers, smiling like a lotus blossom in the morning breeze, her delicate eyebrows suggesting a distant mountain range. All the details could have been the romantic imagination of Ge Hong, of course, in The Sketches of the Western Capital. But it would be honest work, and an easy conscience. To make a living just like others, whether or not he had a Wenjun at his side-possibly a Russian girl in a Chinese Qi skirt, with the fashionable high slits revealing her white thighs, her red hair flashing against the gray walls.
It was so absurd, he admonished himself, to be lost in such a daydream while he sat awaiting the confrontation in the Number 1 conference room.
Then he heard footsteps. Two men loomed on the threshold, Party Secretary Li and Superintendent Zhao.
Chen rose to his feet. To his surprise, several people followed the two into the conference room, including Detective Yu, Commissar Zhang, Doctor Xia, and other important members of the bureau.
Yu took a seat next to him, looking puzzled. It was the first time they had been together since Chen’s return from Guangzhou.
“I was summoned back last night,” Yu said simply, shaking Chen’s hand.
The enlarged Bureau-Party-Committee meeting was an unusual one, for Detective Yu was not a member of it, and Dr. Xia, not even a Party member.
Standing at the head of the long table, Party Secretary Li opened with long quotations from the Party Central Committee’s latest “red-character titled” document on the campaign against the influence of Western bourgeois ideology, and moved on to the topic of the bureau’s recent work:
“As you may have learned, a tremendous breakthrough has been made in Chief Inspector Chen’s case. It is a case speaking volumes for the necessity of our Party’s new campaign. With the great economic achievement made through our Open Door Policy, we should be all the more alert against Western bourgeois influence. This case shows how serious, how disastrous such an influence can be. The criminals, though of revolutionary cadre families, fell prey to it. It is an important case, comrades. People are in support of our work. So is the Party Central Committee. We want to compliment Chief Inspector Chen on his achievement. He has overcome major difficulties conducting the investigation. Of course, both Comrade Detective Yu and Commissar Zhang have done a great job, too.”
“What case are you talking about, Comrade Party Secretary Li?” Yu cut in, completely confounded.
“The case of Wu Xiaoming,” Li said solemnly. “Wu Xiaoming was arrested together with Guo Qiang, last night.”
It was no surprise that Yu was confused, Chen thought. One day the cops were suspended, and the very next day the criminals were arrested. The opposition had evaporated overnight. The conclusion seemed to come out of the blue. In the best scenario Chen had conceived, Wu would have escaped punishment until after Wu Bing’s death. Now the son was arrested while the father was still breathing.
“How could that possibly be?” Yu stood up. “We did not know anything about it.”
“Who made the arrests?” Chen asked.
“Internal Security.”
“It is not their case,” Yu protested. “It is ours. Chief Inspector Chen and I-with Commissar Zhang as well, of course, as our always politically-correct adviser. We have been in charge from day one.”
“It’s your case. No question about it. You have all done a great job. It’s just because of the sensitive nature of the case that Internal Security took it over at the last stage.” Party Secretary Li said, “Unusual problems require unusual remedies, comrades. A very unusual situation, indeed. The decision has been made, in fact, at a much higher level. Everything is being done in the best interests of the Party.”
“So we are kept in the dark,” Yu said doggedly, “in the best interests of the Party.”
“Party Secretary Li has not finished yet, Comrade Detective Yu,” Chen said, although he understood Yu’s frustration at being deprived of the satisfaction of closing the case. After all the twists and turns, they deserved the chance to bring Wu down. Yu did not know, of course, that Internal Security had been involved with the case for a long time.
Chen decided not to say anything more at the moment. This unexpected development could signify something with enormous political dimensions.
“The special case group has made a great contribution,” Party Secretary Li continued. “The Party and the people appreciate their work. We have decided to award them a first-class citation collectively. Of course, that doesn’t mean our work is over. There’s still a lot for us to do. Now, the superintendent will give us a speech.”
“First of all,” Superintendent Zhao started, “I’d like to compliment the comrades of the special case group, especially Comrade Chief Inspector Chen, for his intelligence and persistence.”
“For his commitment,” the Party Secretary joined in, “and the highest-level consciousness of the Party’s
