DETECTIVE YU WAS AT his office early the next morning.
Sitting behind his desk, he steadily drummed his middle finger knuckle on the desktop, as if counting the efforts made by the cops. Dozens of political lectures delivered by Party Secretary Li; the crime scenes photographed and studied hundreds of times; thousands of tips from the public registered and followed up on; the meager material from the victims examined time and time again by the forensic laboratory; two more computers installed for their group; numerous known sexual deviants checked and double-checked; several detained and questioned about their activities during the time of the first and second murders…
For all their work, there was little progress made in the investigation, but a considerable number of theories and speculations kept popping up both in and outside of the bureau.
Little Zhou, the bureau driver who had just started taking an evening police course, barged into Yu’s office.
“What do we find in common between the two cases, Detective Yu?” Little Zhou started dramatically. “The red mandarin dress. A dress known for its Manchurian origin in the Qing dynasty. What else? Bare feet. Both victims had no stockings or shoes on. Now, a woman may appear sexy walking barefoot in a bathrobe, but in a mandarin dress she has to wear pantyhose and high heels. It’s the basic dress code. Otherwise she simply makes a laughingstock of herself.”
“That’s true,” Yu said, nodding. “Go on.”
“The murderer was able to afford the expensive mandarin dress and had the time to put her body into the dress. Why would he have left off her stockings and shoes?”
“So what do you think?” Yu asked, beginning to be intrigued by the would-be detective’s argument.
“I was watching a TV series last night, Emperor Qianlong Visiting South of the Yangtze River. One of the gifted and romantic emperors in the Qing dynasty. There are different versions about his real parentage, possibly Han instead of Manchurian, you know-”
“Come on,” Yu said, cutting him short. “Don’t try to talk like a Suzhou opera singer.”
“Now, what set the Manchurian apart from the Han ethnic group? The Manchurian women did not bind their feet, and were able to walk barefoot. But the Han women in the Qing dynasty, though their bound feet received erotic comparison to three-inch-long golden lotuses, could hardly walk at all, let alone go barefoot. And the mandarin dress, of course, was only for a Manchurian woman-at least at the time.”
“Do you mean that the combination of the mandarin dress and bare feet delivers a message?”
“Yes. We have to take into consideration the obscene pose too. So it’s a message against Manchurian culture.”
“Little Zhou, you have watched too many of those shows about conspiracies of Han against Manchurian, or the schemes of Manchurian against Han. Before the Revolution of 1911, such a message might have made sense, since a large number of the Han people were against the Manchurian emperor. But nowadays it’s a myth found only on TV.”
“There’re so many TV shows nowadays about great Manchurian emperors and their beautiful and clever concubines. Some people might think it necessary to send the message again.”
“Let me tell you something, Little Zhou. Manchurians have disappeared-assimilated into the Hans. Last month a friend of mine for many years turned out to be a Manchurian. Why? Only because a good position requesting a minority ethnic background came along, did he reveal his Manchurian heritage. Sure enough, he got the job. But for all those years, he was never aware of any ethnic difference in himself. His family had changed their Manchurian surname to a Han surname.”
“But how do you explain the exquisite dress and bare feet-of both victims?”
“One possible scenario is that the criminal was victimized by a woman dressed just like that.”
“In such a dress,” Little Zhou said, “with the torn slits and loose buttons. How could a victimizer-not a victim-have appeared like that?”
Little Zhou was not alone in putting forth wild theories.
In the routine meeting in Party Secretary Li’s office that morning, Inspector Liao tried to modify his focus and his approach.
“Apart from what we have already discussed, the criminal must have a garage. In Shanghai, only about a hundred or so families have their own private garages,” Liao declared. “We could start checking them one by one.”
But Li was against it. “What are you going to do-knock on one door after another without a warrant? No. Such an approach would cause more panic.”
The private-garage owners were going to be either well-connected Big Bucks or high-ranking Party cadres, Yu observed. Liao’s suggestion amounted to swatting a fly on the forehead of a tiger, and it was a matter of course that Li opposed.
After the meeting, Yu decided to take a trip to Jasmine’s neighborhood without mentioning it to Liao. There was something about her that made the effort worthwhile, Yu convinced himself, as he walked out of the bureau. Also, there were some differences between her and the second victim that couldn’t be dismissed. The fact that she showed bruises on her body, which was subsequently washed, suggested a possible sexual assault and then an effort to cover it up. In contrast, the second victim, a more easily picked-up target for a sex murderer, showed no traces of sex before her death. Nor was her body washed afterward.
Shortly before noon, he arrived at the street Jasmine had lived in: a long and shabby lane on Shantou Road, seemingly forgotten by the reform. It was close to the Old City area.
It turned out to be almost like a visit back to his old neighborhood. At the lane entrance, he saw several wooden chamber pots airing with contented grins in the midst of the chorus of two women’s sweeping with their bamboo brooms, a scene still fresh in his memory.
The neighborhood committee was located at the end of the lane. Uncle Fong, the head of the committee, received Yu in a tiny office and poured a cup of tea for him.
“She was a good girl,” Uncle Fong started, shaking his head, “in spite of all the problems at home.”
“Tell me about her problems at home,” Yu said, having heard of some of them, but Liao’s version was not detailed.
“Retribution. Nothing but retribution. Her old man deserves it, but it’s not fair for her.”
“Can you be more specific here, Uncle Fong?”
“Well, her father, Tian, was somebody during the Cultural Revolution, and he had his fall afterward. Fired, jailed, and paralyzed. So he became a terrible burden for her.”
“What did he do during the Cultural Revolution?”
“He was one of the Worker Rebels, wearing an armband, bullying and beating people. Then he became a member of a Mao Zedong Thought Worker Propaganda Team sent to a school. Really powerful and swashbuckling at the time, you know.”
Yu knew. The Mao Zedong Thought Worker Propaganda Teams-sometimes shortened as “Mao Teams”-were a product of the Cultural Revolution. At the beginning of the movement, Mao had rallied young students in the name of the Red Guards to take back power from his rivals in the Party, but the Red Guards soon went out of control, posing a threat to Mao’s own power base. So he declared that the workers themselves should play the leading role in the Cultural Revolution, and he sent Mao Teams to schools as unchallengeable forces, crushing the students and teachers. A teacher at Yu’s middle school had been beaten into a cripple by a Mao Team member.
“So he was punished,” Uncle Fong said. “But there were millions of rebels like him in those years. It’s just his luck to be chosen as an example. Sentenced to two or three years in prison. What karma!”
“Jasmine was still quite young?”
“Yes, she was only four or five then. She lived with her mother for a couple of years and then, after her mother’s death, she moved back. Tian never took good care of her, and five or six years ago, he became paralyzed,” Uncle Fong said, taking a long thoughtful drink of his tea. “She, on the other hand, took good care of him. It wasn’t easy, and she had to save every penny. He didn’t have a pension or medical insurance. She never had a boyfriend because of him.”
“Because of the old man? How come?”
“She did not want to leave him alone. Any prospective suitor would have had to take over the burden. And few were interested in doing that.”
“Very few indeed,” Yu said, nodding. “Didn’t she have any friends in the lane?”
“No, not really. She did not mix with girls of her own age. Too busy working and taking care of things at home. She had to work at other odd jobs, I believe.” Uncle Fong added, putting down the teacup, “Let me take you there, so you may see for yourself.”
Uncle Fong led Yu to an old shikumen house in the midsection of the lane, pushing open a door directly into a room that looked to have been partitioned out of the original courtyard. It was an all-purpose room with a disorderly bed in the center, a ladder to an attic of later construction, an unlit coal briquette stove close to the bed, an ancient chamber pot practically uncovered, and hardly any other furniture. For the last few years, this small room must have been the world for Tian, who now sprawled face-up on the bed.
Jasmine might have had reasons not to stay at home much, Yu realized, nodding at her father.
“This is Tian,” Uncle Fong said, pointing. The man looked as emaciated as a skeleton, except for his eyes, which followed the visitors around the room. “Tian, this is Comrade Detective Yu of the Shanghai Police Bureau.”
Tian hissed something indistinct in response.
“She alone understood his words,” Uncle Fong commented. “I don’t know who will come to help now. It’s no longer the age of Comrade Lei Feng and no one wants to follow the selfless communist model.”
Yu wondered if Tian’s mind was clear enough to grasp what they were talking about. Perhaps better if not. Better a total blank page than to mourn the death of his daughter and face his own inevitable end. Whatever he had done during the Cultural Revolution, the retribution was enough.
Yu pulled the ladder over and climbed up cautiously.
“Yes, that’s where she lived.” Uncle Fong remained standing on the floor, looking up. The climb was too difficult for him.
It was not even an attic. Just a “second floor,” added in a makeshift way over Tian’s bed, which occupied most of the first floor. A grown-up girl, she had to have some space for herself. Yu was unable to stand erect up there, his head touching the ceiling. Nor was there a single window. In the darkness, it took him a minute or two to find a lamp switch, which he turned on. No bed, only a mattress. Beside it squatted a plastic spittoon-possibly her chamber pot. There was also an unpainted wooden box. He opened the lid to see some clothes inside, most of them cheap and old-fashioned.
It seemed pointless to stay any longer. He climbed down to the side of the bed, raising no questions. How could Fong know anything about the case?
Yu said good-bye to Uncle Fong and left the lane, feeling depressed by the visit.
If a girl, in her flowering age, had chosen to live like that, she wouldn’t likely have been an easy target for a sex murderer or triggered a serial killing.
Instead of going back to the bureau, Yu went to the hotel where Jasmine had worked, which was located in the Old City area. The Seagull wasn’t a fancy hotel, but because of its convenient location and reasonable price, it had become a “hot choice for budget travelers.” In the crowded lobby, Yu saw a group of foreign students carrying huge knapsacks. The front desk manager appeared professional in his scarlet uniform, speaking fluent English to them. He stammered, however, at the police badge Yu produced. He led Yu into an office, closing the door after them.
“Whatever we talk about here, please don’t let any media people know about the hotel’s connection to the red mandarin dress murders. Or our business will go down the drain. People are superstitious and they won’t stay in a hotel where they think someone has met a violent death.”
“I understand,” Yu said. “Now tell me what you know about her.”
“A good girl, hard-working, easy to get along with. We’re all shocked by her death. If anything, perhaps she worked too hard.”
“I’ve talked to her neighborhood committee. They also told me she worked really hard, and she did not stay much at home. Do you know anything about a possible second job of hers?”
“That I don’t know. She worked overtime here, for which we paid her time and a half. She worked for housekeeping in the morning and helped at the hotel canteen. She worked extra nights too. She had to pay her father’s medical bills. Ours is a hotel capable of housing foreign tourists, so we would rather have trusted employees working here. Our general manager gave her as many hours as she pleased. People like a young pretty girl.”
“People like a young pretty girl-what do you mean?”
“Don’t get me wrong. We do not tolerate any improper service here. A girl of her age could have chosen to work somewhere else-say, a nightclub-for far more money, but she stayed here, working longer hours.”
“Do you know anything about her personal life? For instance, did she have a boyfriend?”
“I don’t know,” the manager said, stammering again. “That’s her private life. She worked hard, as I’ve said, and she did not talk much to her colleagues here.”
“Is it possible that there was anything between her and someone staying at the hotel?”
“Comrade Detective Yu, ours is not a high-end hotel. And the people staying here are no Big Bucks. They come for a convenient location at a reasonable price, not for…companionship.”
“We have to ask all sorts of questions, Comrade Manager,” Yu said. “Here is my card. If you can think of anything else, please contact me.”
The visit to the hotel yielded little new information. If anything, it only confirmed his impression that a girl like Jasmine probably wouldn’t have set off a lust killer who happened to cross her path, either by the grubby lane or at the shabby hotel.