The Mao Case Read online

  He must have been spoiled by his chief inspector-ship, he mused with a touch of self-irony. In the last several years, his trips had been by airplane or in the soft sleeping cars, and he had forgotten about the discomfort of traveling on the hard seat.

  Sitting opposite him, across a small table, was a young couple, possibly on their honeymoon trip. Both were dressed too formally for the overpacked train: the man was wearing a new shirt and well-ironed dress pants, the woman, a pink dress with thin straps. Initially, she sat leaning against the window, but soon she shifted in her seat and was nestled against him. For them, the discomfort was nothing, as long as they had the world in each others’ eyes.

  Beside Chen was a young girl, apparently a college student, who wore a white blouse, a grass-green skirt imprinted with vines and trails, and light-green plastic slippers. There was a book on her lap — a Chinese translation of The Lover by Marguerite Duras. He had read the book, still remembering that the beginning of the novel echoed the lines by W. B. Yeats, “When you are old and gray and full of sleep… ”

  He wondered whether he was able to write — or even to say anything like that.

  “The train is reaching Tianjin in a couple of minutes. Passengers for the city of Tianjin should get prepared.” The train announcer spoke melodiously in the typical Beijing dialect, with the “er” sound more pronounced than in standard Mandarin.

  The train was already slowing down. Looking out, he saw on the gray platform several peddlers walking and hawking Dogs Won’t Leave. An unbelievable brand name for the steamed pork-stuffed buns, a special snack of Tianjin. Perhaps originally from a compliment: “The buns taste so good that the dogs won’t leave.” One of the peddlers moving up to the train looked like a thug, pushing a basket of buns up to the windows with an almost fierce expression.

  More people came crowding in at Tianjin, rushing and squeezing with luggage on their shoulders and in their hands, jumping at any vacant seat they could find. According to railway regulations, only passengers boarding at the first stop could be guaranteed a seat.

  The train started moving again, the green banner waving on the platform in the growing dark.

  He leaned against the window, trying to focus on the new development in Shanghai, the wind ruffling his hair as the train gained speed. Looking over the scant information available so far, Chen soon concluded it was pointless to speculate. But Song’s death was not from a random mugging on the street, of that much he was sure.

  A train conductor began pushing a dining cart through the aisle, selling snacks, instant noodles, teas, and beer. Squatting at the bottom rack of the cart were long-billed brass kettles. Chen chose fried beef and scallion instant noodles in a plastic bowl, into which the conductor adroitly poured out an arch of hot water. In addition, Chen had a tea-leaf egg soaked in it. It wouldn’t be pleasant to squeeze all the way through the train to the dining car and then back.

  He waited two or three minutes before taking out the egg, and he put a package of seasoning into the soup. The instant noodles tasted palpable, with the green specks afloat on the soup remotely redolent of chopped scallion. Just like in his college years, except that instant noodles then didn’t come in plastic containers.

  The couple opposite produced a stainless-steel container of fried steak and smoked fish, along with paper-wrapped chopsticks and spoons. They must have prepared well for the trip. The woman started peeling an orange and feeding her partner, segment by segment.

  Chen finished his egg, thinking he might as well have bought a couple of Dogs Won’t Leave buns. And he was surprised by the thought. He hadn’t lost his appetite even during such a trip. He fished for a cigarette in his pocket but did not take it out. The air was bad enough in the train.

  Beside him, the girl started reading her book without eating anything. She must have felt uncomfortable, sitting so long in the one position, so she kicked off her slippers and put a bare foot on the edge of the seat opposite. She highlighted paragraphs with a pen, her fingers tapping on the seat. Young, yet serious, her way with the book might just be like her way with the world. He tried to stretch his legs without disturbing his neighbors, but it was difficult. He nearly tipped over the noodle bowl onto the table. The woman opposite glared at him.

  What he had read about Mao’s special train came back to mind. The sleeping car was equipped with all the modern conveniences, the special bed with the wooden-board mattress, and those pretty conductors and nurses who waited on Mao hand and foot …

  Chen was massaging his brows, half closing his eyes, in an effort to ward off an onslaught of headache, when his cell phone rang. It was Detective Yu again.

  “Hold on,” Chen said into the phone.

  He excused himself and squeezed out into the aisle, heading to the door. To his surprise, several people stood leaning against the door. Apparently, they were the seatless passengers. Behind them, he saw a toilet marked “unoccupied.” So he hurried in and locked the door behind him.

  “Now, tell me what you’ve found,” he said, opening the small window. It was stuffy and smelly in the toilet.

  “I went to the neighborhood committee. Hong wasn’t a neighborhood cop at the time, but he talked to Huang Dexing, the one before him. There was a group of people who came in from Beijing. The local government called Huang, telling him to cooperate in whatever way requested. It sounded like a highly confidential assignment. The team searched through both Tan’s and Qian’s places. And they wanted to talk to the people close to them.”

  “Did they find anything?”

  “No. Huang helped make up an interview list, but it wasn’t used. Tan died, and Qian almost died, lying delirious in a hospital bed for days. So the group gave up and went back to Beijing.”

  It was now like an oven in the train toilet, though the sun had long gone down.

  “Huang tried to remember the interview list, but with no success,” Yu went on. “It happened so many years ago, and there is no record of it anywhere. As far as he could remember, the list included some people from the circle Qian moved in, before the outbreak of the Cultural Revolution, and from the middle school Tan graduated from. One of them seen with him shortly before his attempt to flee to Hong Kong, and another one was also from a black family background. I went one step further and checked into the Great Leap Forward Middle School. I talked to a retired teacher who had taught Tan. According to him, one of Tan’s close friends was Xie —”

  “What do you know about Xie, Detective Yu?”

  “Well, Old Hunter followed Jiao to Xie Mansion. So he must be connected to the case, I guess.”

  In spite of his warning, Detective Yu had moved ahead on his own, which Chen should have anticipated. But the information just obtained by his capable partner could prove to be crucial. It put Xie into the perspective, as someone who, to say the least, had been withholding information.

  “The information about Xie is important. But remember, you and Old Hunter keep your hands off him. I’m on my way back to Shanghai. We have to discuss Xie before anyone makes a move. Now, have you found anything else out about Song’s death?”

  The door handle started rattling. Someone waiting outside was impatient.

  “Nothing. But I got the name of his replacement, Liu, and Liu’s cell number, Chief.”

  “That’s great.” Chen put the number into his phone. “I’ll call you when I’m back in Shanghai.”

  Chen decided to make a phone call to Liu, in spite of the raging door handle. A short call.

  “Liu, I’m Chen Cao.”

  “Oh, Chief Inspector Chen! Where have you been?”

  “I’m on the train back to Shanghai. Meet me in the train station around eight in the morning,” he said without answering Liu’s question, and then added, “I was sick.”

  Hanging up, he finally walked out of the toilet. A giant of a man with a large beard glared at him, hurried in, and slammed the door behind him.

  There was a pleasant breath of wind streaming in from the
crevice of the door. But he had to squeeze back to his seat. A middle-aged, stout woman was sitting on the floor with her legs stretched out in front, and her small daughter, behind her in a similar position, their backs supporting each other. Chen had to step carefully, high lifting his feet.

  Edging near to his seat, he was surprised to see an elderly woman seated there, with her face resting flat on the small table. She had to be in her seventies or eighties, dressed in black homespun, her silver hair shining. Possibly one of the passengers from Tianjin, who had taken the seat during his phone call.

  “She didn’t understand my words,” the young girl murmured apologetically, who might have tried to speak up for Chen, but to no avail.

  “Call the conductor over,” the man sitting opposite said. “That’s against the rules.”

  The conductor was supposed to drag the black-attired woman away, who mumbled something indistinct in response to him, sitting there without budging, like a rock.

  “It would be hard for her to stand throughout the night,” a passenger across the aisle said.

  “That can’t be helped,” the conductor said, beginning to push at the old woman. “Rules are rules. There’s a sleeping berth available. An upper berth. One can go there by paying the extra.”

  “A sleeping berth,” Chen said. It could have become available when someone got off in Tianjin. “I’ll take it.”

  “Two hundred yuan extra,” the conductor said. “Far more comfortable. That will solve the problem for a Big Buck like you. You don’t have too much luggage, do you?”

  “No, I don’t have much luggage, but you may take the old woman there. I’ll pay for it. I like the seat here.”

  The couple opposite eyed him in surprise. Chen took out two one-hundred-yuan bills. The old woman turned out not to be that hard of hearing. She rose without further invitation. The conductor, relieved to get the matter over with, led her away without further ado.

  “Not too many people want to learn from Comrade Lei Feng anymore,” the man across the aisle commented. “It’s not Mao’s time.”

  Chen took his seat against the window without response. With an upper berth in a sleeping car, it would be more difficult for him to climb up and down in case of another phone call. His decision had nothing to do with a model of selflessness like Lei Feng during Mao’s time. Even though he was burdened with a Mao case.

  “You must be somebody,” the girl said, sitting close, “but you ate instant noodles instead of going to the dining car.”

  “Oh, I like the instant noodles.” He smiled a self-deprecating smile. In today’s society, an instant-noodles-eater on a hard seat was nobody, incapable of paying an extra two hundred yuan for himself, let alone for someone else. The gap between the rich and the poor was an appalling given, but even more appalling was people’s reaction. In Mao’s time, it was supposed to be an egalitarian society, at least in theory. Chen was disturbed. “It’s nothing but a business expense — I mean, the ticket.”

  It wasn’t exactly true. He might not have the train ticket reimbursed. Still, two hundred yuan wouldn’t worry him.

  The night lights went on in the train. The couple opposite closed their eyes, leaning against each other. The car gradually became quiet. Chen gazed at his reflection in the window, reflecting on the countryside in darkness.

  Beijing was left far, far behind.

  Drunk, I whipped an invaluable horse; / I’m worried about burdening a beauty with too much passion. The two lines by Daifu came unexpectedly back to his mind. Years earlier, a friend of his had once copied the couplet for him in a paper fan, which he had lost. And he hadn’t even given Ling a call before leaving Beijing, he realized, with a wave of guilt.

  But then his thoughts wandered off to another poem Mao had written for Yang in their youth:

  Waving my hand, I am leaving. / Unbearable for us to stand / looking at each other, inconsolably. / Our sufferings told over and again, / your eyes brimming with sorrow, / holding back tears with difficulty. / You still misunderstand my letter, / but it will pass / like cloud and mist. / You alone understand me in this world./ Oh my heart aches, / does the heaven know?

  Chen didn’t like that poem, which was full of clichés. And it was still hard for him to understand how Mao could have been so callous to Yang, and to his other women.

  The ringing of his phone broke into his musing. It was Old Hunter. Chen glanced at the girl beside him, who, too, was dozing, with her mouth slightly open.

  Chen decided not to get up this time. A couple of fragmented sentences out of context might not be comprehensible to one who overheard them.

  “Oh, I’m on the train coming back to Shanghai. A crowded train, a lot of people sitting and standing around,” he said, making sure the retired cop would get the hint.

  “I went to see her maid.” Old Hunter went straight to the point, in sharp contrast to his characteristic Suzhou opera way. “Her name is Zhong.”

  “Her maid?” It must have been Shang’s maid, Chen realized. “Oh I see. That’s great. Did you learn anything from her?”

  “Xie visited Jiao at her orphanage. According to Zhong, he helped a lot financially.”

  “That’s something.”

  “Zhong says Xie’s behind the change in Jiao’s life.”

  “Really!”

  “With the help of Zhong, I’m going to check into it.”

  “No, don’t do anything, Old Hunter. I’ll be back early in the morning. Let’s discuss this first.”

  Chen had never thought about the possibility of Xie being the one behind the change in Jiao’s life. Financially, it wasn’t possible. Xie could hardly make his own ends met.

  Still, there was something between Xie and Jiao, something now beyond doubt, given the new information from both Yu and Old Hunter.

  Then why all the concealment on the part of Jiao and Xie? Neither of them had said anything about it, keeping it a secret from him — and not just from him. No one at the parties seemed to have known anything. If Xie had visited Jiao, a small child in her orphanage, he did it out of friendship with Tan. Nothing wrong or improper that would require a cover-up. If anything was surprising at all, it was Internal Security’s failure to learn the history between Xie and Qian.

  The case seemed to be getting more and more mystifying.

  The girl next to him began snoring, though ever so lightly, a thin trace of saliva visible at the corner of her mouth.

  Around three, sitting stiff and straight like a bamboo stick, his head bumped against the hard seat, his mind worn out with thinking in the dark, he managed to doze off.

  His last thought was about that wooden-board mattress in the Central South Sea. Not a comfortable bed, by any means.

  TWENTY-FOUR

  FINALLY, THE TRAIN ARRIVED at the Shanghai Railway Station.

  The new station was larger and more modern. It was another attempt to upgrade the image of the “most desirable metropolitan city internationally,” as advocated in the Shanghai newspapers.

  Chen got off after the couple, who hugged and kissed, stepping out onto the ground in Shanghai for possibly the first time, before they merged into the throng, oblivious to the crowd milling around. The young girl came down after him, waving at him before disappearing in another direction.

  He remained standing on the platform, next to the train door, waiting for five or six minutes before he spotted a middle-aged man hurrying over, raising his hands in a gesture of recognition. He could have seen Chen before — or his picture. The man was of medium build, yet heavy-jawed and broad-shouldered, inclined toward stoutness.

  “Comrade Chief Inspector Chen?”

  It was Liu, the officer who succeeded Song as head of the special Internal Security team.

  They walked out into the hall swarming with people, where, in the midst of escalators running up and down, Chen saw the young girl again, studying an electronic information display.

  “Someone you know?” Liu asked.

  “No,” he
said, moving down the escalator after Liu.

  The square outside appeared no less crowded, with people standing in lines for tickets, peddlers showing their products, and scalpers shouting with tickets in their hands. The restaurants and cafés nearby appeared noisy and cramped. It was out of the question for them to find a quiet place to talk.

  Liu led Chen across the square, into a parking lot tucked in behind the station tower. Liu pressed a remote control, unlocking the doors to a silver Lexus in the corner. As soon as they got into the car, Liu started the engine and turned on the air conditioning before handing Chen a folder about Song’s murder, all without saying a word.

  Chen started reading immediately. He understood Liu’s accusatory silence. Beyond a shadow of a doubt, Song had been killed because of the investigation he had been pursuing — in the company of Chen, until the chief inspector’s unannounced, and so far unexplained vacation.

  It was no coincidence that Chen had been attacked in similar circumstances. Only Chen had been luckier.

  Lighting a cigarette, waving his hand over the document, Chen couldn’t shake the feeling that he was responsible, at least partially, for Song’s death. Fragmented memories of their unpleasant collaboration spiraled up with the smoke. Had he let Song have his way, the situation could have developed differently; had he informed Song of the attack on him, Song might have acted with more caution; had he stayed in Shanghai, he himself might have been the target.

  In spite of the air conditioning in the car, Chen began to sweat profusely. Liu remained silent, puffing hard at his cigarette — his third one. Chen wiped at his brow with his hand, like a mole smoked in a tunnel.

  There wasn’t much in the folder. Song had been plodding along in another direction, different from Chen’s. There must have been some point of overlap that bundled the two of them together in this investigation, a something known neither to Song, nor to Chen, but to the murderer alone. Chen failed to find anything helpful in the file.