Death of a Red Heroine [Chief Inspector Chen Cao 01] (35 page)

“Yes. I did.”

“You went there by yourself?”

“No. It was in a tourist group sponsored by a travel agency. So I went there with a number of people.”

“According to the record at East Wind Travel Agency, you bought tickets for two. Who’s the other one you booked the ticket for?”

“Er—now you mention it,” Wu said. “Yes, I did buy a ticket for another person.”

“Who was it?”

“Guan Hongying. I happened to mention the trip. She, too, was interested in it. So she asked me to buy a ticket for her.”

“But why was the ticket not booked in her own name?”

“Well, she was such a celebrity. And she did not want to be treated as such in a tourist group. Privacy was the very thing she craved. Also, she was afraid that the travel agency might put her picture up in its windows.”

“What about you?” Yu asked. “You did not use your own name either.”

“I did it for the same reason, my family background and all that,” Wu said with a smile, “though I am not such a celebrity.”

“According to the rules, you must show your I.D. to register with a travel agency.”

“Well, people travel under different names. It is not something uncommon even if they show their true I.D.s. The travel agency is not too strict about it.”

“I’ve never heard of that,” Yu said. “Not as a cop.”

“As a professional photographer,” Wu said, “I have traveled a lot. I know the ropes, believe me.”

“There’s something else, Mr. Professional Photographer for the
Red Star.”
Yu could barely control the mounting sarcasm in his voice. “You not only registered under the assumed names, but also as a couple.”

“Oh, that. I see why you’re here today. Let me explain, Comrade Detective Yu,” Wu said, taking a cigarette out of a pack of Rents on the desk, and lighting one for himself. “When you travel with a group of people, you have to share rooms. Now, some tourists are so talkative, they would never give you a break all night. What is worse, some snore thunderously. So instead of sharing the room with a stranger, Guan and I decided it might be a good idea to share a room between ourselves.”

“So the two of you stayed in the same hotel room during the trip?”

“Yes, we did.”

“So you knew her inside out,” Chen cut in, “knowing that she would keep her mouth shut when you were in no mood to listen, and that she slept sweetly, never snoring or tossing about in bed. Vice versa, of course.”

“No, Comrade Chief Inspector,” Wu said, tapping his cigarette lightly over the ashtray. “It’s not what you might think.”

“What do we think?” Yu detected the first slight sign of discomfort in Wu’s voice. “Tell me, Comrade Wu Xiaoming.”

“Well, it was all Guan’s idea,” Wu said. “To be honest, there’s a more important reason why she wanted us to register as a couple. It was to save money. The travel agency gave a huge discount to couples. A promotional gimmick. Buy one and get the second at half price.”

“But the fact was that you shared the room,” Yu said, “as man and woman.”

“Yes, as man and woman, but not as what you are implying.”

“You stayed with a young, pretty woman in the same hotel room for a whole week,” Yu said, “without having sex with her. Is that what you’re telling us?”

“It surely reminds me of Liu Xiawei,” Chen cut in. “Oh, what a perfect gentleman!”

“Who is Mr. Liu Xiawei?” Yu said.

“A legendary figure during the Spring and Autumn War Period, about two thousand years ago. Liu once held a naked woman in his arms for a night, it is said, without having sex with her. Confucius had a very high opinion of Liu, for it’s against Confucian rules to have sex with any woman except one’s wife.”

“You don’t have to tell me these stories,” Wu said. “Believe it or not, what I’m telling you is the truth. Nothing but the truth.”

“How could the travel agency have permitted you to share a room?” Yu said. “They are very strict about that. You must show your marriage license, I mean. Or they will lose their own business license.”

“Guan insisted on it, so I managed to get some identification materials for us.”

“How did you manage that?”

“I took a piece of paper with the company’s letterhead on it. I typed a short statement to the effect that we were married. That’s all. We did not have to show a marriage license. Those travel agencies are after profits, so such a statement is enough for them.”

“It is a crime to fabricate a legal document.”

“Come on, Comrade Detective Yu. Just a few words on an office letterhead, and you call it a legal document? A lot of people do it every day.”

“It’s nonetheless illegal,” Chen said.

“You can talk to my boss if you want. I did play a little trick, using a piece of paper with the official letterhead. It’s wrong, I admit. But you cannot arrest me for that, can you?”

“Guan was a national model worker, a Party member with high political consciousness, and an attendant at our Party’s Tenth National Congress,” Yu said. “And you want us to believe she did it just to save a couple of hundred Yuan?”

“And at the cost of sharing herself, an unmarried woman,” Chen added, “with a married man for a whole week.”

“I’ve been trying my best to cooperate with you, comrades,” Wu said, “but if all you want is to bluff, show me your warrant. You can take me to the bureau.”

“It’s an important case, Comrade Wu Xiaoming,” Chen said, “We have to investigate everyone related to Guan.”

“But that’s all I can tell you. I took a trip to the mountains in her company. It did not mean anything. Not in the nineties.”

“It’s definitely more than that,” Yu said. “Now, what is your explanation for your phone call to her on the night she was murdered?”

“The night she was murdered?”

“Yes, May tenth.”

“May tenth, uh, let me think. Sorry, I cannot remember anything about the phone call. Every day I make a lot of calls, sometimes more than twenty or thirty. I cannot remember a particular call on a particular day.”

“We’ve checked with the Shanghai Telecommunications Bureau. The record shows that the last call Guan got was from your number. At nine thirty p.m. on May tenth.”

“Well, it’s possible, I think. We did talk about taking another set of pictures. So I might have called her.”

“What about the message you left for her?”

“What message?”

“‘We’ll meet as scheduled.’“

“I don’t remember,” Wu said, “but it could refer to the photo session we had discussed.”

“A photo session after nine o’clock in the evening?”

“I see what you are driving at,” Wu said, flicking cigarette ash at the desk.

“We are not driving at anything,” Chen said. “We’re just waiting for your explanation.”

“I forget the exact time we scheduled, but it could be the following day, or the day after that.”

“You seem to have an explanation for everything,” Yu said. “A ready explanation.”

“Isn’t that what you want?

“Now where were you on the night of May tenth?”

“May tenth, let me think. Ah, I remember. Yes, I was at Guo Qiang’s place.”

“Who is Guo Qiang?”

“A friend of mine. He works at the People’s Bank in Pudong New District. His father used to be the deputy director there.”

“Another HCC.”

“I don’t like people to use that term,” Wu said, “but I do not want to argue with you. For the record, I just want to say that I stayed at his place for the night.”

“Why?”

“Something was wrong with my darkroom. I had to develop some films that night. I had a deadline to meet. So I went there to use his study instead.”

“Haven’t you got enough rooms here?”

“Guo likes photography, too. He dabbles in it. So he has some equipment. It would be too much of a hassle to move things around here.”

“A convenient answer. So you were with your buddy for the whole night. A solid alibi.”

“That’s where I was on May tenth. Period. And I hope it satisfies you.”

“Don’t worry about that,” Yu said. “We will be satisfied when we bring the murderer to justice.”

“Why should I have killed her, comrades?”

“That’s what we’ll find out,” Chen said.

“Everybody’s equal before the law, HCC or not,” Yu said. “Give us Guo’s address. We need to check with him.”

“All right, here it is. Guo’s address and phone number,” Wu said, scribbling a few words on a scrap of paper. “You’re wasting my time and yours.”

“Well,” Yu said, standing up, “we’ll see each other soon.”

“Next time, please give me a call beforehand,” Wu said, rising up from his father’s leather swivel chair. “You won’t have any problem finding the way out, I believe?”

“What do you mean?”

“The Wu mansion is huge. Some people have lost their way here.”

“Thank you for your important information,” Yu said, looking at Wu squarely. “We’re cops.”

They had no problem finding the way out.

Outside the gate, Yu turned back for another look at the mansion still partially visible behind the tall walls, and set off without saying anything. Chen walked beside him, trying not to break the silence. There appeared to be an unspoken understanding between them: The case was too complicated to talk about on the street. They continued to plod in silence for several more minutes.

They were supposed to take Bus Number 26 back to the bureau, but Chief Inspector Chen was not familiar with this area either. At Chen’s suggestion, they attempted to take a shortcut to Huaihai Road, but found themselves turning into one side street after another, and then to the beginning of Quqi Road. Huaihai Road was not visible. Quqi Road could not be far from Henshan Road, but it appeared so different. Most of the houses there were the cheap-material apartment buildings from the early fifties, now discolored, dirty, and dwarfed. It was there, however, Detective Yu was finally able to shake off his feeling of oppression.

The weather was splendid. The blue sky above seemed to transform the sordid look of the back street through which they were passing in silence. A middle-aged woman was preparing a bucket of rice field eels by a moss-covered public sink. Chen slowed his step, and Yu stopped to take a look, too. Having slapped an eel hard like a whip against the concrete ground, the woman was fixing its head on a thick nail sticking out of a bench, pulling it tight, cutting through its belly, deboning it, pulling out its insides, chopping off its head, and slicing its body delicately. She might be an eel woman for some nearby market, making a little money. Her hands and arms were covered with eel blood, and her bare feet too. The chopped-off heads of the eels lay scattered at her bare feet, like scarlet-painted toes.

“No question about it.” Yu came to an abrupt halt. “That bastard’s the murderer.’

“You handled him quite well,” Chen said, “Comrade Young Hunter.”

“Thank you, chief,” Yu said, pleased with the compliment, and even more so with the invention of this nickname by his boss.