“I don’t know what pictures you are talking about, but you don’t have the right to publish them.”
“The photographer’s widow has the right. For a poor old woman, the money from the pictures may help a little.” Chen helped himself to a spoonful of the snakeskin before he took up the magazine again. “When I first looked at the picture, it reminded me of several lines from Othello: ‘If it were now to die, / ’Twere now to be most happy; for, I fear, / My soul hath her content so absolute / That not another comfort like to this / Succeeds in unknown fate.’ Absurd, you may say, but I came to understand your insistence of putting each victim in a red mandarin dress. You want to remember her at her happiest moment, your happiest as well. To do you justice, you might have wanted those victims to be happy, and beautiful too, for that moment.
“So I’ll call attention to the similarities between the pictures and the murder case. In a couple of the pictures, the bosom buttons of her dress appear slightly undone. And in several of them, she walks barefoot. Not to mention the mandarin dress itself. The same material and style. The same craftsmanship too. An authority I have consulted about the mandarin dress will back me up. And what about the background of the original mandarin dress? A private garden. Now except for the last victim, the scenes where the victims were found invariably had something to do with flower and grass. The symbolic correspondence is impressive too. In fact, the flower-bed background for the first victim is only a stone’s throw from the music institute.”
“You are misleading people-”
“No, I don’t think I have to,” Chen pressed on. “The pictures of the beautiful hostess of the Ming Mansion-nowadays the celebrated Old Mansion-shall prove more than enough. There are about eighty pictures in all. Apart from using them in my story, I’ll sell one or two to a newspaper or a magazine-to achieve the maximum effect. Also, let’s think about a title for it. How about ‘The First Red Mandarin Dress’? People will surely unearth all the details. Dirty details. Sensational details. Sexual details. It will be a feast for the reporters. And I will do my best to help them.”
“We don’t have to talk anymore, Chief Inspector Chen. You invited me here for a story of yours, and I listened patiently to the end. Now you are suddenly talking about a felony, accusing me of being the murderer. I don’t think I need stay here any longer. As an attorney, I know my rights,” Jia said, looking at Chen in the eye. “You can come to me tomorrow with a warrant, either before, during, or after the trial.”
“Don’t leave, Mr. Jia.” Chen made a gesture for his patience. “I haven’t even started telling you about another selling point. For romantic suspense, I’ll include part of my interview with Xia.”
“You contacted Xia!” Jia said. “Yes, to undermine the housing development case, you are capable of anything.”
“No. A romantic affair between a successful attorney and a celebrated model is just another selling point for ‘The First Red Mandarin Dress.’ ”
“You are grasping at straws. We parted such a long time ago. It has nothing to do with your fiction or nonfiction.”
“People meet, people part, no one can help it. But why part? There are interpretations and interpretations. She may not say a lot, not to begin with, but I bet those paparazzi won’t let her get away. Sooner or later, they will be able to dig out more intimate details about your personal life, fitting them to the psychological profile of a sex killer. They will be especially interested to learn about the source of one peculiarity of the murder case: the fact that all the victims were stripped naked but not sexually attacked. It has already riveted the attention of the reporters.”
“You are making a serious mistake,” Jia retorted, standing up indignantly. “Before you can lock up the attention of the reporters, there may be one or two more victims. I don’t think people would be grateful to an irresponsible cop lost in his fantasy of a bestseller.”
That was a threat Chen had to take seriously. Like in a Chinese proverb, a desperate dog jumps over the wall. Jia was capable of striking out again, like he did at the Joy Gate, in spite of the police surveillance.
White Cloud came into the room again, still wearing the red mandarin dress.
“Sorry, it’s the time to put in the seasoning for the soup.” She lifted up the lid and poured in the seasoning. She also changed the spoons and saucers for them before she turned to Jia, smiling an apologetic smile. “Please be seated.”
She could have seen or heard what was going on through the frosted glass of the door. The turtle was swirling frantically in the pot, splashing out the soup.
Neither Chen nor Jia said anything in her presence. She left, lightfootedly. The room was silent except for the turtle hissing in the pot.
“It is Dongzhi night tonight. A night for family reunions, for the living and the dead,” Chen resumed. “My mother wants me to be with her. But in terms of Confucian priority, a matter for one’s country is more important. I have no choice. So I have to make sure there’s not another victim in a red mandarin dress, and I’ll take responsibility for it.”
“Then it’s your responsibility,” Jia said, “if you hang on to your wild story at the expense of letting the real criminal slip away.”
“The real criminal won’t slip away. No more than the turtle in the soup. Incidentally, it is a great boost to yin and yang, fantastic ambrosia.” Chen took a look into the pot. “Readers will really enjoy the part about sexual desire of the son for the mother. A taste of Oedipus complex as delicious as the soup!”
“Chinese people will not be bamboozled by your psychological terms like Oedipus complex.”
“Exactly. Our readers will not care so much about the difference between the conscious and unconscious. They will say, ‘He’s so damn horny for his mother, he can’t fuck any other women, and he kills them in a perverted way, achieving an orgasm in the imagined company of his mother.’ ”
Jia did not speak, gazing into the glass pot, in which the turtle was still moving, but much slower.
“In one of the thrillers I translated,” Chen went on, “a serial killer cares little about what happens to himself, for his life is just a long tunnel without a light at the end, but he cares about the one he loves. In our case, what about her? Again, her memories will be dragged through the mire of shame and disgrace-even worse than in the Cultural Revolution-with every detail examined and exaggerated. What will those reporters really do? I have no control over that.”
“Now that you have concocted such a story, you will move ahead, regardless of your responsibility as a cop,” Jia said, looking up. “But there is something else you have to think about, Chief Inspector Chen. The housing development case is at a critical juncture. Any action against the plaintiff attorney could be seen as a political trick to cover up the government corruption. It is a case closely followed by media.”
“I’ll let you in on something too, Mr. Jia. About a month ago, somebody in the city government wanted me to look into the housing development case. I said no. Why? I, too, want to have those corrupt officials punished. However, they have kept updating me about the latest developments. A short while ago, I got a phone call about it in this room. A compromise has been reached in Beijing for the trial here, as you may know through your own channels.”
“A compromise indeed! So you know how dirty all this is.” After a pause Jia resumed, “In this case, not only are a number of high-ranking officials involved, but they are also interlocked in a power struggle at the top. You are no novice with politics, Chief Inspector Chen. If Beijing had really wanted to put an end to the case, I wouldn’t have been allowed to move it to the present stage. So do you think they want to see a dramatic twist at this juncture?”