“Cai says he was not here that morning, but with his mother in that ‘nail’ room. That’s just what he says, of course.”
“Yes, we will check on that.”
But he was not so sure whether the interview of either of these two suspects would lead to anything. When Old Liang left to pursue background checks, Yu decided to do something different. He made a telephone call to Qiao Ming, the ex-dean of the cadre school, upon whom Yin had spat at the memorial service.
Peiqin and he had discussed the possibility that Qiao might have had a motive to murder Yin. In view of the autobiographical nature of the novel, even though Yin had named no names, many people might have been nervous or indignant. Wan, the upstairs neighbor, was only one example. Those who had been at the cadre school must have been panic-stricken. Furthermore, no one could predict whether Yin might produce a second book, containing even more embarrassing realistic details. Anything was possible.
“Don’t believe anything you read in Death of a Chinese Professor,” Qiao began. “It’s a pack of lies.”
“Death of a Chinese Professor is a novel, I understand. But I’m working on a homicide case, Comrade Qiao, so I have to investigate every possible aspect.”
“Comrade Detective Yu, I know why you want to talk to me, but let me make one point first. With respect to what happened during the Cultural Revolution, we must have a historical perspective. No one was a fortune-teller, capable of foretelling all the changes in the future. At that time, we simply believed in Chairman Mao!”
“Yes, everyone believed in Chairman Mao, I have no question about that, Comrade Qiao.”
“The book makes a selling point of the persecution they suffered in the cadre school. Now, that was no place for people to fall in love-not at the time. The top priority was, according to Chairman Mao, for people to reform themselves there. Because of that phone call from Beijing about Mao’s poems, the cadre school actually made a point of allowing Yang books and dictionaries. That was a real privilege at the time. Someone reported he was writing a book, and we did not even try to interfere at first. You see, for Yang, those years were not totally wasted.”
“Did you find out what kind of book he was writing?”
“Later, when we put him into the isolation room, we searched his dorm room, but we did not find anything. It might have been a manuscript in English.”
“Please tell me about the circumstances of Yang’s death.”
“It was a sweltering hot summer. We all worked in the rice paddy, just like the local farmers. It was not Yang alone who had to work there. In fact, a lot of people were sick. As for any possible negligence, now by hindsight, if we had known he was so seriously ill… But perhaps he was not aware of it either. The cadre school was located in Qingpu. Transportation then was not like it is today. There wasn’t a single taxi in the area in those years. How could the cadre school be possibly held responsible for his tragic death?”
“It may be too much to say that he was persecuted to death, but we can understand Yin’s reaction. She suffered a lot those years.”
“So did I!” Qiao snapped. “All those years, I stayed at the cadre school, working there. Have I gained anything? No, nothing. At the end of the Cultural Revolution, I was subjected to ‘political examination’ for two years. And my wife divorced me, discarded me like a dirty sock.”
“Just one more question. Where were you on the morning of February seventh?”
“I was in Anhui, collecting debts for my company. A number of people, including those at the hotel, can testify to that.”
“Thanks, Comrade Qiao. I don’t think I have any more questions for you today. ‘Look to the future,’ as the People’s Daily always says.”
The telephone interview had been unhelpful, although not a total waste. For one thing, Yu learned that in his last few years, Yang had kept on working, which could have resulted in the translation of classical Chinese love poems they had found in Yin’s safety deposit box. Also, it reconfirmed Old Hunter’s maxim, that the past is always present. Almost twenty years later, people still looked at the Cultural Revolution from their own perspective forged at the time.
He removed the cassette on which he had taped the phone call. Chief Inspector Chen might be interested in it, Yu thought. He dialed the home number of his boss.
“You may suspect everyone in the building,” Chen said after having listened to Yu’s short briefing, “but when everyone is a suspect, nobody is a suspect.”
“Exactly,“ Yu said. “Old Liang sees only what he wants to see.”
“Old Liang has been a residence cop for too many years. The job of a residence cop, however important in the years of class struggle, is hardly relevant nowadays. But he still cannot help seeing the world from his outdated angle,” Chen said. “Su Dongpu has put it so welclass="underline" You cannot see the true face of the Lu mountains, / When you are still inside the mountains.”
That was just like his boss, quoting some long-dead poet in the middle of an investigation. This penchant of Chen’s could occasionally be annoying.
Then Detective Yu went over to the shikumen building.
Cai was not at home. Lindi, a fine-featured woman in her late forties, was in the courtyard, cutting open a pile of river scallop spiral shells with a pair of rusted scissors. Wan was also there, seated on a bamboo stool, drinking from a purple stone teapot. At this time of the year, people normally did not sit outside doing nothing. At the sight of Detective Yu, Wan mumbled a few words and left.
After Yu introduced himself to her, Lindi led him upstairs to a small room. It would be difficult for a medium-sized family to squeeze into such an all-purpose room, let alone three families. But she lived in it with her son and his “wife,” her daughter, a crying baby and, most of the time, her son-in-law, Cai. Fortunately, it was a room with a relatively high ceiling, which made possible the construction of two added make-shift lofts, with a common ladder leading to both of them. In comparison, Detective Yu reflected with deep sarcasm, his living conditions could be considered great.
According to Lindi, Cai was not at home this morning. Nor had he been here on the morning of February 7. “No one can tell what he’s really up to,” Lindi said with a sigh. “I warned Xiuzhen about her choice, but she would not listen.”
“I have heard about it. How about your son Zhenming?”
“Home for him is like a free hotel, and a free restaurant too. He comes whenever he wants. Now he brings another person with him as well.”
“Please tell me what you know about Yin, Comrade Lindi.”
“She was different.”
“How?”
“She had a room all for herself, whereas in our one single room there are three families. She suffered during the Cultural Revolution? Who didn’t? My husband died in the ‘armed struggle’ among worker organizations, believing he was fighting for Chairman Mao to the last drop of his blood. After his death, there was not even a memorial service for him.” She went on after a pause. “One of the reasons Xiuzhen married Cai was not because of his money-he did not have such a lot to begin with-but because she had lost her father when she was only four years old.”
“I see,” Yu said. He was surprised by her thoughtful analysis of her daughter’s reason for marrying the much older Cai.
“I’m sorry, I can’t tell you much about Yin. The Cultural Revolution has left so many tragedies in its wake. Yin was a writer, and had published a book about it, but she was not willing to talk about it to us.”
Detective Yu thanked her at the end of the conversation. As he moved downstairs, he felt totally depressed. People here still seemed to be covered with the dust of the past, just like the shikumen building itself. To be more exact, they were still living in the shadow of the Cultural Revolution. The government called on the people to look forward, never turning their head heads back, but this was extremely hard for some, including Yin, Lindi, Wan, almost everyone he had interviewed here except Mr. Ren. Now Yu wondered whether Mr. Ren really could forget, drowning his memories in a bowl of steaming noodles.