“Oh, about Shanshan’s phone record,” Huang went on, “I’ve found something for you.”
“Yes?”
“The threatening calls were made from public pay phones. They were by no means a kid’s prank calls.”
“That’s what I suspected.”
“What’s more,” Huang said after a pause, “somebody else is interested in her phone calls. Her calls are being tapped in connection with the investigation into Jiang.”
“Oh, that’s interesting. Who’s bugging her?”
“Internal Security. According to them, she and Jiang know each other well. She could have been involved.”
“Have they found anything?”
“Not yet. At least, they haven’t said anything to me. But I’ll follow up, Chief.”
“Thanks for telling me this, Huang,” Chen said. “Call me immediately if there’s anything new.”
After he hung up with Huang, Chen tried to fit the new information into the puzzle. As before, his efforts failed to lead anywhere. So, for the sake of change, he decided to write a report about the environmental issue to Comrade Secretary Zhao. Chief Inspector Chen was a cop, and a busy one, but nonetheless a responsible citizen like Shanshan. It was up to him to write this report, whether it would appeal to the top leaders or not.
He had hardly completed the first paragraph when he found himself slowing down. It was turning out to be much harder than he had anticipated. So far, all he had was a hodgepodge of high-sounding yet empty sentences that didn’t prove anything. It wasn’t his territory, and he didn’t have anything concrete or solid to support his argument. He was quickly losing confidence in his ability to write such a report.
He lit another cigarette and his mind began wandering back to the case. He realized, much to his dismay, that it was only when he was thinking like a cop that he was able to proceed with confidence.
Since when had he become a cop who looked only at his own feet? True, in case after case, Chief Inspector Chen had been too busy with his job to do anything else, but there’s no denying that there were privileges for an emerging Party cadre. He wasn’t exactly a high-ranking cadre yet, but he felt a sense of obligation to the system that had treated him well.
Thinking of Shanshan and her arduous uphill battle for the lake, he turned back to the table, opened the laptop and started to type.
In a trance of blazing poppies
or in the cooling shade, deeply covered
with moss, you have forgotten
the night we spent on the bridge,
the light in the distance, and the lights
beyond them converging
into music on your retina, while
you conducted with your cigarette
a tone poem of the sleepless lake,
when you no longer belonged
to a place, nor a time, nor yourself.
When another white water bird flies
from the calendar, may you dream
no longer of a pale oyster
clinging to the grim limestone.
(Where are you now, as dawn taps
at my window with her rosy fingers,
as the fragrance of coffee and bread
penetrates the wakening mind,
and as the door, like a smile,
welcomes flowers and newspapers?)
The lines came almost effortlessly, more or less to his own bewilderment. Was he the persona “you” in the first stanza? That’s not possible. He had been staying by the lake for only a few days. But a sense of guilt in it was unmistakable. In a symbolist way, perhaps. The second stanza in parentheses probably was the result of his recent experience at the center, but what did it really mean?
Nevertheless, these lines could develop into a long poem and not one about himself, but more about her and the lake, about what’s happening in China, and about an unyielding spirit …
Then he paused and compelled his thoughts back to the case again, thinking with confidence. There was something else at the crime scene; what, exactly, he couldn’t yet tell. So he picked up the list of things in Liu’s apartment, a list he had already gone over several times.
This time he came to a stop at one particular item-a lacquer jewelry box with a black pearl necklace, gold earrings, and a green jade bracelet. None of it was of extraordinary value. But it was at his office, not his home. According to Mrs. Liu, she didn’t stay there. So why was a jewelry box there? If anything, it only served to confirm Shanshan’s account about Mi, the little secretary. But that didn’t prove helpful, however, in his effort to connect the dots of possible clues.
Then he pulled out the pictures of the crime scene. He placed them on the floor of the living room, then seated himself in the midst of them. He looked over them one by one. Still, he failed to see anything; all he had was a vague feeling that there was something missing. Perhaps something common in everyday life, but it eluded him for the moment.
He could no longer hide in the background, he concluded. At the very least, he should personally examine the crime scene and talk to some of the people involved. It wouldn’t be a big risk. Chief Inspector Chen couldn’t help being curious, one could argue, about a murder investigation in Wuxi, the town where he happened to be on vacation.
And he might still keep his movements secret as long as he and Huang proceeded cautiously.
After he took the herbal medicine, fielded a mysterious wrong number phone call, and drank a third cup of lukewarm coffee, he realized that he had spent practically half a day doing nothing in the villa. He was like one of those high-ranking cadres supposedly recuperating there in lassitude, still wearing pajamas around eleven o’clock.
He felt stupidly useless sitting there.
So he got up to get ready for the rescheduled lunch with Qiao, which he could no longer put off.
The restaurant was in the main building of the center, where the waitresses all wore colorful silk mandarin dresses with high slits, like Qing palace ladies. In the midst of their bowing and greeting, he walked up a flight of steps covered by a red carpet held in place by shining brass clips.
It turned out to be an expensive banquet of “all lake delicacies,” just as Qiao had promised, in an elegant private room. Several high-level executives of the center joined in, greeting and toasting the distinguished guest.
“All the lake delicacies are carefully selected. They are not the so-called ‘lake special’ that you might find in the market,” Qiao said reassuringly.
It was quite possible that the meals here were specially prepared for Party officials. Chen had heard about the unique treatment reserved for high cadres-not just for those staying by the lake here.
But what about the ordinary people who lived by the lake?
A huge platter of hilsa herring covered in sliced ginger and scallion was served. The fish was steamed with Jinhua ham and chicken broth, along with some white herb Chen didn’t recognize.
“It’s not from the lake here,” an executive named Ouyang said, the oldest of the group, who was probably going to retire soon. “We simply call it shi fish. The chef has to clean and peel off its scales first, but after putting the fish in the bamboo steamer, he will gingerly place the large scales back on the body to prevent the loss of juice and to keep the texture tender.”
Shi fish was extremely expensive, costing at least five or six hundred yuan a pound at the market. The way it was prepared was also exceedingly time-consuming.