“So he uses your car all the time-late into the night?”
“For really personal business,” Lai said slowly, “Director Jiang does not always request my service. Taxis are available outside that famous subdivision of his-Riverside Villas. It takes too much time for me to get there.”
“I see. Does he ever drive himself?”
“No, he doesn’t. So he doesn’t have the car parked in his subdivision. It saves me one and half hours of taking bus home, the tunnel is usually terrible with traffic congestion.”
But that didn’t necessarily mean Jiang stayed at home last night. In fact, Chen himself didn’t request car service all the time either. For his visit to the bathhouse, for instance, or his date at Golden Island. As a fast-rising Party cadre, he had to be careful about his image. He thought he detected a slightly sarcastic note in Lai’s emphasis on “really personal business.”
“One more question-what is his schedule for the day?”
“He’s going to Qingpu in the afternoon. Then there will be a dinner party there. I don’t think I will make it back until after ten. Is there something you want to talk to him about today?”
“No, I’ve finished all my questions. The last one was really for the duck bones. You’d better keep them in a refrigerator if you’re going back home so late.”
“I see. Yes, there’s a refrigerator in the office.”
“That’ll be great. To make the duck bone soup, you have to cook them over a small fire for two hours at least, I think, until the soup turns milky white. You can add some cucumber slices into the soup with a handful of black peppers,” Chen said, pushing open the door. “It’s been a wonderful lunch, Lai. I don’t think you need to mention it to anybody. Bye.”
“Bye. Chief-” Lai reached out of the car, a piece of duck in his hand and puzzlement in his eyes. It could have appeared like a free lunch to him, an inexplicable one. Chen did not think Lai would talk to Jiang about it.
Chen then hailed a taxi, telling the driver to go to Riverside Villas in Pudong.
“Go through the tunnel?” the driver said.
“Yes,” Chen said. “It’s quicker.”
“Perhaps, if there’s no traffic.”
Pudong had once been a largely rural area east of the Huangpu River, with a few old factories interspersed here and there. In his days of English studies at Bund Park, the view across the river was mostly an expanse of somber-colored farmland. There was a popular saying at the time, he remembered: A bed west of the river is better than a room east of the river. At the end of the eighties, however, the city government began a tremendous effort to turn Pudong into the Wall Street of Asia, declaring it a special zone and offering attractive government policies for foreign investment. The landscape soon underwent a fundamental change; new buildings shot up, and housing prices soared to the skies.
Chen had heard of the Riverside Villas. It was one of the most expensive new residential areas in Shanghai, bordering on the eastern bank of the Huangpu and boasting a superb view of the river and of the Bund across it. People described the area as another Bund, even more modern and magnificent. Such a change no one would have dreamed of half a decade earlier. Jiang must have purchased the apartment here through his insider knowledge.
Riverside Villas was a high-end subdivision, where a security guard stood in front of its gate with an archlike top. There was a booth with a phone, a desk, and a chair. Once more Chen had to produce his badge. The middle-aged security guard named Aiguo cooperated zealously. According to him, the gate closed at midnight, and residents returning later had to speak to the night security through the intercom before getting in. Aiguo happened to be the one working here last night.
“Oh, you’ve been working continuously for more than forty hours,” Chen said, glancing at his watch.
“It’s not a fancy job, but I can doze, off and on, in the booth at night,” Aiguo said, scratching his head. “There were only two who came back after twelve last night. Jiang was one of them, around one, in a taxi. I had to put it in my time sheet.”
It did not exactly fit with the time of death the police estimated for An, Chen thought.
“In addition, I had the taxi license number copied,” Aiguo went on. “If you want to know more, I can call for you here, Chief Inspector Chen. The taxi belongs to the People’s Taxi Company, I know.”
“I appreciate your offer, Aiguo.” Chen was surprised by his eagerness to cooperate. He wondered whether Aiguo bore any personal grudge against Jiang. “But tell me first a little bit about Jiang in general. He’s lived here for a couple of years-one of the earliest residents in the subdivision, I’ve heard.”
“Who can afford to live here?” Aiguo responded. “Corrupt officials and big-buck capitalists. At the price of twelve thousand yuan per square meter, I could save all I earn for ten years, without eating and any other expense, and I still would not be able to buy a bathroom in the area. The gap between rich and poor is really like that between cloud and clod. When Jiang bought it, he paid only one thousand yuan per square meter, not to mention a special discount no one knows about. Is that fair in our socialist society?”
“No, it’s not fair.”
“But what can you do? Jiang, like other residents here, simply takes a security guard like me as trash. Especially Jiang, one of those damned night animals. It seems as if they never have to sleep, like rats. Two or three times a week, he comes back after the closing of the gate. Sometimes two or three o’clock. I have to get up to open the gate for him. But I’m a man, and I need to sleep. Right now it’s not too bad to get up a couple of times at night, but in the winter, it’s hell. I shiver like a straw man. They have heating at home, but there is nothing in the booth here. Nothing but an old army overcoat. And what can he be up to until two or three at night? Not official business, surely.”
“It’s hard for you,” Chen said, nodding. Aiguo’s animosity was understandable. And it was an opportunity for Chen. He might as well gather as much information as possible here, even if Jiang’s nocturnal activities were not related to An’s case.
“Now, one night’s expense for people like Jiang can be far more than one month’s pay for me, Chief-” Aiguo made an abrupt halt as a black Lexus came rolling in view.
Out of the car emerged a middle-aged man Chen recognized from the pictures as Jiang.
“Hello, Chief Inspector Chen,” Jiang said in a loud, warm voice, walking over in strides. “You are looking for me, I’ve heard.”
It was an encounter Chen had not anticipated. Jiang must have cut short his visit to Qingpu. But it was an inevitable encounter, Chen reflected, considering the photographs in his briefcase.
“I’ve heard a lot about the area. I happen to have a meeting in Pudong this afternoon, so I wanted to take a look here.”
“Now that you’re here, why not come in?”
“Yes, in front of a temple, I’d better go in to kowtow to the clay image.”
“Well, you won’t go to a temple without having something to pray for.”
Aiguo listened to the exchange of proverbs between the two with a knowing smile, waving his hand at Chen as he walked in with Jiang.
Jiang’s apartment was on the top of a twenty-two-story high rise. The suite was renovated, featuring a spacious living room and a bedroom on one level and another bedroom and a study on an added second level. It looked like a townhouse in a new style called fushi, popular for its economical use of space in the overcrowded city.
But this apartment, Jiang explained, had been designed for a different purpose: Jiang’s paralyzed wife. The barely furnished living room was simply a larger area where she could move around in her wheelchair. His wife managed to hiss out a greeting in a raucous voice.