Red Mandarin Dress (22 page)

It was a long article, and Yu didn’t have the patience to go through any more of it. It was potentially an additional headache to the bureau and the city government. As long as the case remained unsolved, wild stories would keep coming out.

But to an extent it was understandable. Even for a cop like him, the case took on something of a supernatural dimension. In spite of all the police effort, a criminal had ruthlessly murdered four young women with his elaborate “signature.” He seemed invisible as a ghost, especially at the Joy Gate, where every step involved enormous risk. His exit through the side door, for instance, where the bar girl could have moved back at any moment and seen him. And his escape in a hotel uniform, with an unconscious Hong supported in his arms, could have been easily suspected and stopped by hotel workers. Still, he pulled it off.

Yu opened another newspaper,
Oriental Morning
, which was very critical of the bureau. “Last night the police were at the Joy Gate—in an alleged raid against three-accompanying girls—while on the same night, another red mandarin dress victim appeared, far away, in a cemetery.”

It was perhaps only a matter of time, Yu thought, before the reporters found out the identity of the latest victim. Reading the article, Yu got a phone call from the bureau lab technician.

“About the fiber you found between the third victim’s toes,” the technician said. “The fiber is wool. Possibly from her socks. Scarlet wool socks, I think.”

“Thank you,” Yu said. That wasn’t too surprising. Peiqin, too, wore a pair of wool socks. It was a cold winter, and there was no heat at the shabby restaurant where she worked. But as he turned off the cell phone, Yu remembered something else. According to the description given by the eating girl’s neighbor, she went out that day in a dress with pantyhose and high heels. Then how come the wool socks?

“Hi, Detective Yu.”

Yu looked up to see Duan Ping, a
Wenhui
reporter who had once interviewed Chief Inspector Chen at the bureau.

“Have you read it?” Duan said, pointing at the Lianyi Cemetery article in the newspaper in Yu’s hand.

“It’s unbelievable.”

“It is the vicissitude of things in this world, and in the underworld too,” Duan said. “These days Chairman Mao cannot lie in peace in his crystal coffin.”

“Don’t bring Mao into your tall stories.”

“It is a tall story, like it or not. This time, this place—why? People believe it is because the root of the trouble lies here. They believe that the ghosts are out for revenge, that the murders are the retribution of the supernatural. Who else could have committed the crimes, dumped the bodies in those places, and have gotten away? It’s totally beyond me. Do you have any clue, Detective Yu?”

“That’s nothing but superstitious crap. Those atrocities happened during the Cultural Revolution. If there were really ghosts seeking revenge, they could have done so more than twenty years ago. Why the long wait?”

“Now that’s something you don’t understand. With the star of Mao still high and bright in the sky at the time, these ghosts wouldn’t have dared to come out and make trouble. But with Mao gone, it’s their turn,” Duan said. “There’s also a new interpretation, which I learned only twenty minutes ago. According to it, the red mandarin dress victims are all daughters of those Red Guards.”

So some people were taking the story to a more collective level. Instead of one unhappy woman buried in the cemetery, as maintained by that old scholar of local history, now it was all the ghosts of the disturbed cemetery, taking revenge on the daughters of their persecutors during the Cultural Revolution.

“These interpretations are totally unfounded,” Yu said.

“Let me ask you a question, Detective Yu. Does the name Wenge Hongqi mean anything to you?”

“What do you mean?”

“Did you notice a highly unusual ad in the
Shanghai Evening News
? It was put there under that name. If you think about the other red mandarin dress victims—one a singing girl, the other an eating girl, the message in the ad makes sense,” Duan said. “The Red Guard group that ‘made revolution’ to the cemetery was called Wenggehongqi. The connection is obvious. These interpretations are not so unfounded.”

“It’s wild speculation and nothing but coincidence,” Yu said emphatically, though he didn’t believe in coincidence. “How did you notice that ad?”

“There is no wall that does not let wind get through. Your people checked with the
Shanghai Evening News
, and we share the same office building. I believe the murders are a call for attention to the atrocities in the Cultural Revolution, particularly against a woman in a red mandarin dress. Is your interest in the ad part of your investigation?”

“Come on. There were a large number of Red Guard organizations with names like that. I really have to warn you, Duan. You have to take responsibility for such wild stories.”

“That’s nonsense, Comrade Detective Yu. If the case isn’t solved, more and more stories will come out. Several colleagues of mine are coming now, I think,” Duan said, pointing to a minivan that was pulling up to the cemetery entrance. “By the way, how is it that Chief Inspector Chen is not here with you today? Please say hi to him from me.”

With more reporters swarming over, Yu knew he had to leave. Hurrying toward the cemetery exit, he called Chen’s mother.

“It’s so nice of you to call, Detective Yu, but I’m fine. You don’t have to worry,” she said, as if she had been expecting his call.

“I’ve been looking for Chen, Auntie. Do you know where he is?”

“You don’t know where he is? Oh, I am so surprised. Two or three days ago he called me, saying that he was going away for something important. Out of Shanghai, I believe. I thought he must have told you about it. What has happened?”

“No, nothing. He must have left in a hurry. Don’t worry, Auntie. He’ll contact me.”

“Call me when you hear from him,” she said, obviously concerned. She, too, apparently felt that, unless something unusual had happened, her son wouldn’t have kept Yu out of it.

“I will,” Yu said. He recalled Chen’s having seemed different of late. Too much stress, as Peiqin saw it, but Yu didn’t really think so. Who wasn’t under stress?

“Oh, White Cloud called me yesterday,” she said, murmuring as if to herself. “She said everything is fine with him.”

“Yes, he must have phoned her,” Yu said. “I’ll call you later.”

But Yu had more immediate things to worry about. Party Secretary Li called him, demanding, “You are going to take care of the press conference today.”

“I have never done it before, Party Secretary Li.”

“Come on, Chief Inspector Chen has done it many times. You’ve surely learned the necessary tactics from him.” Li added, “By the way, where on the earth has he been?”

“I’ve just left a message for him,” Yu said evasively. “He’ll call back soon.”

On the way back to the bureau, he got White Cloud’s phone number from Peiqin.

It was not so enviable to be Chen’s partner, Yu thought.

TWENTY-ONE

IN A TAXI THAT
was literally crawling through the traffic of Shanghai, Chen sat devastated by the news of Hong’s death.

Wednesday morning. A week earlier, he had been sitting in a car bound for the vacation village, worrying about his nervous breakdown; now he was heading back, sweating over the latest development in the serial murder case. So many things had happened in Shanghai, while all the time—or most of the time—he had slept on like an idiot and mused about love stories from thousands of years ago.

He shivered at the thought of the afterworld money he had bought at the local market Friday morning. He wasn’t a superstitious man, but he was unnerved at the coincidence.

It wasn’t until Yu succeeded in contacting White Cloud that she became aware of the desperateness of the situation. Still, she had been too concerned about Chen’s health to deliver the message to him instantly. She wasn’t a cop, and she was not to blame for it. After learning of his recovery at the vacation village that morning, she told him the news about the Joy Gate. He at once cut short his vacation and boarded the first long-distance bus to Shanghai, without even saying good-bye to his host.

Sitting in the car, his thoughts revolved around Hong. He hadn’t known much about her until their contact on the red mandarin dress case.

Hong was said to have a surgeon boyfriend at a Japan-China Friendship Hospital who had urged her to quit. He insisted that her income wasn’t worth all his worrying about her. But she happened to believe in her job. At a Chinese New Year Party in the bureau, she read a poem about being a “people’s cop.” Not much of a poem, but it was passionate about a young officer patrolling the city. One of its refrains read, Chen remembered,
The sun is new every day
.

Not for her, not today.

He would never regain his peace of mind, he knew, looking out onto the traffic snarl along Yan’an Road, if he failed to avenge her.

He opened his briefcase for the folder on the red mandarin dress case. While at the vacation village, he managed not to touch it. But now as he took out the folder, to his astonishment, he saw his cell phone lying under it. Turned off, of course, but lying there all the time. Before he had left for vacation, he had decided not to carry it, he remembered clearly. How the phone had gotten into the briefcase, he had no recollection. There might be something in Freud’s argument about forgetting, but he decided not to worry about Freud.

Checking through his phone messages he found that, in addition to the detailed messages left by Yu, Li and several senior officers had also called, repeatedly, urging him back to work. Even Old Hunter began fidgeting about his absence, leaving a message to the effect. A young cop had laid down her life in an effort to trap a serial murderer who struck out in defiance of the whole police force. It was a crisis beyond any that the bureau had experienced before.

What’s more, they weren’t able to openly investigate. As in the Chinese proverb, they had to swallow the knocked-out tooth without spitting out the blood. Any public knowledge of the identity of the latest victim—killed in a messed-up decoy attempt—would not only spell the worst humiliation for the police but also send new waves of panic through the public.

Although the identity of the victim still “remained unknown,” no one in the bureau believed that it would remain so for long. According to a message left by Yu, reporters were already suspicious. For the moment, Yu and his colleagues had even more serious worries. What would happen this week? No one had any doubt about it now. And no one believed that they could stop the killer in less than two days.

Chen looked at his watch. It was close to ten. He decided not to go to the bureau or even, for the moment, to contact Yu.

There was one thing in particular about the case that alarmed him. The devilish masterstroke—the whole Joy Gate episode, from the newspaper ad to the backdoor exit—could very possibly have been planned by the murderer from the first day of Hong’s work as a decoy. Everything had been arranged too perfectly. The more Chen thought about it, the more he suspected that the ad in the newspaper hadn’t come out of the blue. More likely, it was a countertrap set with the use of inside information.

So whatever Chen was going to do, he would keep the bureau out of it. People talked about the chief inspector having lost himself in his literature paper, or having lost his guts in the serial murder case. Let them talk like that. He would continue to stay in the background.

“Sorry, I’ve changed my mind,” he said to the driver. “Let’s go to the Joy Gate instead.”

“Joy Gate? The cops raided it last week.”

It was perhaps a well-meant caution. In his trench coat, with his bag and briefcase, Chen looked like a tourist interested in the must-see attraction of the city.

“Yes, the Joy Gate.”

He would do whatever was possible because he felt responsible for her death, more than anyone else in the bureau. If it weren’t for his vacation, he could have led the investigation and prevented her from going to the Joy Gate, or at least stayed with the cops outside.

He took out the copy of
Oriental Morning
he had bought at the bus terminal. The newspaper had a picture of her lying spread-eagled in the cemetery, in a torn red mandarin dress, against the ruined tombstones. Underneath the picture was a couplet, “The apparition of her in a red mandarin dress, / Petals on a wet, black bough.”

It read like a parody of an Imagist poem, but was poetry relevant at a moment when innocent people were dying, one after another?

Finally emerging out of the traffic congestion, the car came in sight of the refurbished art deco facade of the Joy Gate.

It might not be the time yet for regular customers to start arriving. There were only two or three people taking pictures in front of the building. Possibly journalists or plainclothes cops. He walked on in, keeping his head low. A middle-aged man sitting at the front desk didn’t even look at him.

His colleagues would have combed the place already. He didn’t expect to find anything new. Still, he wanted to step inside, as if to establish a bond between the living and the dead.

Moving up the marble staircase, he saw posters of 1930s movie stars on the walls. Each of them had danced here, leaving behind stories or pictures that echoed through the passage of time.

On the second floor, he thought he caught sight of a familiar face in the hall. So he turned aside, climbing up into a small balcony with a dark alcove behind. There he stood for several minutes, looking down at the now empty ballroom where Hong had danced like a radiant cloud. He murmured her name.

Several workers were arranging the tables and chairs for the night. The business would go on, as usual. He decided to leave.

As he stepped out of the Joy Gate, he saw, not too far away, a magnificent Buddhist temple with its glazed tiles and tilted eaves shimmering in the sunlight. It was Jin’an Monastery, allegedly built hundreds of years earlier, and lately redecorated. In his childhood, his parents had taken him there for ancestral worship services, sometimes renting a partitioned room, bringing in a variety of special snack offerings, and engaging monks for scripture-chanting.