ELEVEN

FRIDAY MORNING, SERGEANT HUANG parked his car in the shade near the center’s entrance, rolled down the window, and waited. According to the plan Chen had discussed with him, the first interviewee of the day would be Mi, Liu’s secretary at the chemical company.

It wasn’t exactly a surprising move to Huang, who’d already talked to Mi before Chen involved himself in the case. Huang lit a cigarette, trying to guess which approach the chief inspector would use.

At the appointed time, Chen showed up at the gate, where an elderly security guard hastened to salute him obsequiously. Huang stepped out of his Shanghai Dazhong, which, as Chen specified, didn’t look anything like a police car.

“Thank you, Huang,” Chen said, sliding in to the front passenger seat. “Before we go to see Mi, I want to take a look at Liu’s home office.”

Huang jumped at the suggestion. His team had hardly finished working at the crime scene, with several reports still waiting to be processed by the lab, when Internal Security intervened and pushed them straight to a conclusion that left little for them to do. Being the youngest member of the team, Huang knew better than to protest when the other team members, older and far more experienced, chose to keep their mouths shut.

But it wouldn’t be difficult for him to show Chen Liu’s apartment, which wasn’t being watched at the moment. They had talked about the photos of the crime scene, but Chen’s going over the scene in person could make a difference. In Sherlock Holmes stories, the detective never failed to find something important yet previously unnoticed by others who examined the crime scene.

“No problem,” Huang said. “We’ve gone over it closely, but you should definitely take a look.”

Less than ten minutes later, they arrived at the apartment complex, which was located near the back of the chemical company plant. Sure enough, there wasn’t any sign of police stationed near the complex, and no residents were out walking in the area.

“It’s a relatively new complex and it’s not fully occupied yet,” Huang remarked. He showed his badge to the security guard standing as stiff as a bamboo pole under the white arch of the entrance.

“There has been a lot of new residential construction in the last few years, but with the soaring housing prices, few can afford one of the new apartments.”

“But Liu had his for free, and that was in addition to his large house,” Chen noted.

The apartment building in question was six stories tall with a pink-painted exterior that looked new and impressive in the daylight. They went up to the third floor without seeing anyone else.

Liu’s was a three-bedroom apartment. Huang opened the door with a master key. They stepped into a hallway with hardwood floors that led into a living room and an open dining room, which in turn was connected to a kitchenette. On the other end of the living room were the three bedrooms, one of which was a guest room, and another the office where Liu had been murdered.

Chen looked at each of the rooms before he came back to the office. The office was practically furnished. On the L-shaped oak desk facing the door sat a computer with a large monitor, a printer, and a combination telephone and fax machine. A couple of chairs stood against one wall near the corner and beside a custom-made bookshelf, which had books and magazines on it. A flat-screen TV hung on the opposite wall.

“The people who live in these new apartment buildings don’t talk to one another much. That was particularly true in Liu’s case. He was only here once or twice a week, and usually in the evening. On that particular night, no one in the building saw him or heard anything from his apartment. But when their doors are shut, people can hardly hear anything from the outside. According to a neighbor on the fourth floor, a young woman was walking down the stairs around nine, but the staircase was dimly lit, so he didn’t get a clear look. She could have been visiting anyone in the building.”

“Yes, she could have come from the fifth or sixth floor,” Chen said while picking up a framed picture from the bookshelf. It was a photo of Liu and a young man standing in front of that same bookshelf in the office. Liu was a robust man of medium height with wide-set, penetrating eyes, deep-lined brows, and a powerful jaw, and the young man was a lanky one with a pensive look on his fine-featured face.

“The young man is his son, Wenliang,” Huang said. “He interned here at the company last summer.”

Placing the picture back on the bookshelf, Chen started examining the books themselves. It was a curious mixture, including a number of fashion magazines.

“He read fashion magazines?”

“Well, Mi came here from time to time,” Huang said.

Chen nodded in acknowledgment, then said, “Tell me again what you see as unusual about the crime scene.”

“There is no sign of forced entry, and no sign of struggle, either. The murderer was likely somebody Liu knew well, and it was probably a surprise attack. The security guard didn’t register any visitors for Liu that night. So it was possibly someone who lived in the complex, or even in the same building.”

“But as you said, he didn’t mix with his neighbors,” Chen said. “Of course, that doesn’t mean it’s impossible for the murderer to be one of them. But what would be the motive?”

“That suggests another possible scenario. Someone familiar with the complex could have come in without stopping at the entrance. The security guard might make things difficult for a diffident visitor, but wouldn’t try to stop a Big Buck who was striding in with an air of confidence.”

“Or driving in a luxurious car,” Chen said, as if he had done the same himself before. “Do you have the pictures of the crime scene with you?”

“Yes,” Huang said, producing a folder of pictures. “You’ve already seen all of them.”

Chen placed a few on the desk, examined them, and then looked around the room a couple of times.

He immersed himself in the comparative study for ten minutes or so. He walked out into the living room, but didn’t stay there long before heading back into the office. Huang followed, without interrupting, notebook in hand.

“Has anything been moved here?”

“No, of course not. Nobody—not even Mrs. Liu—has been in here, not since she was brought to check over the things in the apartment. That is, of course, except for those items bagged and taken to the lab for testing.”

“Do you have that list with you?”

“Yes, here it is.”

Chen checked it carefully, then placed it on the desk and rubbed his chin with a finger.

“Now, let me ask you a question. Where do you think the host would usually receive a guest?”

“The living room, naturally. But we thought about that too. Liu might have simply stepped into the office to get a document or something.”

“In that case, he would have entered the room first, and the murderer would have followed behind him—”

Chen didn’t go on, apparently having a difficult time visualizing the murderer striking Liu from behind.

“What do you think of the position of the other chairs in the office?” Chen resumed, sitting down on the swivel chair at the desk. “They haven’t been moved, right?”

“No. But what do you mean?”

“It doesn’t make sense. If Liu were sitting here, like I am, then the murderer would have been sitting opposite him. So why are the other chairs in the corner of the room?”

“That’s a good point,” Huang said, writing it down in his notebook.

“If he’d been talking to someone who was standing in front of him and who then swooped down on him ferociously—”

“Then,” Huang said, nodding, “how come there is no sign of a struggle?”

“Exactly.”

“But what about the possibility that Liu was showing his visitor a file on the computer—something like a document about the antipollution efforts—when the visitor struck him from behind? That’s a scenario that I discussed with my colleagues.”

“In the pictures, the computer isn’t on.” Chen picked up one of the photographs. “So, in your scenario, Liu had to have been struck at the very moment his hand was just touching the computer button.”

Huang could see the chief inspector wasn’t convinced. As a matter of fact, neither was Huang.

“That’s a good point. I’ll write it down,” Huang said, opening his notebook again.

“In the pictures, there wasn’t a glass or a cup on the desk in the office. Or in the living room. Or in the list of the items bagged for testing. For a man who was working late at night, a cup of coffee or tea on the desk would seem logical.”

“That’s true.”

“And another thing. The estimated time of death is between 9:30 and 10:30. That’s very late for a visitor such as the one theorized by Internal Security to arrive. Maybe Liu and the visitor had already been talking and arguing for an hour or more. But then where? Surely not in the office. That brings us back to your hypothesis—that they moved from the living room to the office. But then why wasn’t there a cup of tea in the living room for the guest?”

“Or at least a cup of water,” Huang said, scratching his head.

“Now look on the shelf. An impressive array of Puer tea cans, a very expensive tea from Yunnan—”

But Chen left his sentence unfinished, as he started to examine a row of gilded statuettes that were lined resplendently along the top shelf. He picked one statuette up. It was a tall, muscular worker holding aloft a shining globe and standing on a solid marble base. It bore an inscription: “In recognition of the outstanding increase in production and profit achieved by the Wuxi Number One Chemical Company for the year of 1995. Issued by the Wuxi People’s Congress.” The statuettes were all identical in design, size, and caption, except for the year.

“The chemical company under Liu’s leadership won that prestigious award nine years in a row,” Chen said

“Wow, they are gold-plated too, ” Huang said, picking one up. It was quite heavy. “Such a statuette could be quite expensive.”

“Let’s take some more pictures,” Chen said. “I’ll study them some more back at the center.”

Chen took out a camera he had brought with him. He took photos for no less than fifteen minutes before he placed the framed picture of Liu and his son flat on the desk and photographed it as well. He then glanced at his watch.

“By the way, I’ve contacted Liu’s attorney through some people I know in Shanghai,” Chen said. “While the Lius hadn’t made any specific moves regarding their marriage, Mrs. Liu made a joke over dinner about getting half of the IPO shares from Liu if he ever tried to divorce her.”

A wronged wife out for revenge: that might throw a new light on a lot of things in the case. It gave Mrs. Liu a more plausible motive than Jiang’s. There was the possibility that Liu was going to divorce her before the IPO, with the little secretary pushing in the background. In that case, Mrs. Liu could have lost everything. She had the access to his home office, along with knowledge of his whereabouts that night. Furthermore, it would explain the points raised by Chen about the crime scene—Liu’s body being found in the office rather than in the living room, there being no sign of struggle, and the position of the chairs in the office. All of that would then make more sense.

“That was a brilliant stroke, Chen. Contacting the attorney, I mean. What she said about getting half of the shares from the IPO probably wasn’t a joke,” Huang said. “Liu was good at cover-ups, and so was she. The couple must have been trying to sound out possible divorce arrangements with the attorney. Liu was going to do it, and she knew it.”

There was a glitch with that scenario, however. Mrs. Liu had an alibi. Then again, the people who supported her alibi were close friends, and unlike witnesses in those mystery novels Chen translated, some Chinese didn’t worry too much about perjury. For one thing, there was no Bible for them to swear upon. For her friends, doing Mrs. Liu a favor might have outweighed other considerations. Besides, even if she were in Shanghai that night, she could have dispatched someone in Wuxi to achieve her ends.

“Time for the next item on our agenda, Huang,” Chen said, breaking out of his reverie. “Let’s go to the company office.”

“Fine,” Huang said, closing his notebook.

Huang had been there several times, so he suggested they walk from the apartment complex to the back door of the chemical company plant. “It’s only about five minutes away. We can leave the car here.”

Huang didn’t want to leave his name at the front gate of the chemical company while he was in the company of Chief Inspector Chen. His colleagues would be upset if they learned about this excursion, but he didn’t have to explain that to Chen.

“As when we spoke to Mrs. Liu, you’re the one in charge of the investigation,” Chen said as they made their way to the company’s back door.

At the door of the chemical company they saw an elderly security guard, who nodded at Huang’s badge and let them in without further ado.

“The back door is locked after eight P.M.,” Huang explained to Chen, “but people can still open it from the inside. On one occasion, when Liu had to come back to the company for some important documents, he had to call the guard at the front gate to come around and open the back door for him.”

“I see,” Chen said. “So it’s really a shortcut.”

The general manager’s office was in a two-story building in the middle of the chemical company complex. They had arranged to meet Mi in the outer office, and she was already there waiting for them.

“What can we do for you today, Officer Huang? Oh, this is—” she said, rising from her desk.

A tall, willowy girl in her early twenties, Mi had almond-shaped eyes, a sensual mouth, and a fashionably thin body like a runway model. She was wearing a short, white, neckless halter top, which revealed her belly button; jeans; and high-heeled sandals, which showed her toes painted bright red.

There wasn’t much about her, however, that really appealed to Huang.

“You know why I’m here, Mi. This is my colleague Chen. We want to talk to you about Liu’s murder.”

She pressed a key on a brand-new computer, which Huang didn’t remember seeing last time. She motioned them to sit down in two black chairs opposite.

“We’ve already talked about it, Officer Huang,” she said.

“I’m new to the team,” Chen cut in, “so anything you say will be of great help to me.”

“Anything specific,” Huang echoed. He noticed another difference about her desk. A silver-framed photo of Liu speaking at a national conference had disappeared, and a golden plaque stating Office Manager was in its place.

“Let’s start with what you can tell us about Liu,” Chen said.

“He was an extraordinary boss. When he first took over, the company was teetering on the brink of bankruptcy. In a large state-run enterprise like ours, with more than three thousand employees, his was not an easy job. But he managed to turn it around.”

“We learned about his work from all the media coverage. But what do you think of him as a man?”

“He was a good man—generous, intelligent, and always ready to help.”

“Now, let me ask you a different question. As someone who worked closely with him, what do you know about his family life?”

“He didn’t talk much about his family life.”

“Do you think he had a satisfactory one?”

“I don’t know,” she said, then added, “But a busy man like him should have had better care taken of him.”

“We talked to his wife,” Chen said, looking her in the eye. “She told us something.”

He paused deliberately, letting a silence eat away at her reserve like a crumbling wall in the room. Huang thought he knew what Chen was up to.

“Whatever she may have told you,” she said, without meeting his eyes, “I don’t think she was a good wife to him. Everybody here could see he wasn’t happy at home.”

“Can you give us any detailed examples?”

“It’s just something I heard. They were schoolmates in Shanghai—she from a good family in Shanghai, and he from a poor village in Jiangxi. In spite of her family’s opposition, she married down and followed him to Wuxi. She got it into her head that she should be compensated for her sacrifice, so to speak, by him waiting on her hand and foot, and obeying her in everything, big or small. She was a typical Shanghai woman.”

“But then in Wuxi he became successful.”

“Exactly. For a busy, overworked man like him—a virtuous wife would have taken good care of him at home, especially after she quit her job and became a housewife, leaving the family dependent on Liu’s income alone. But no. She frequently went back to Shanghai during the week and over the weekends too. He was often left all alone in the house. ”

“She has family in Shanghai. It’s natural that she would go back from time to time.”

“Who could tell what she was really up to in Shanghai? She used to be a high school flower, I heard, with a number of secret admirers hanging around.”

“Really!”

“And I can tell you why he sometimes stayed overnight at his home office. With all the responsibilities on his hands, he frequently worked late. But more often than not, he simply didn’t want to go back home. The home office was the only place he could really relax. But she wouldn’t leave him alone even there. One time when he was away on a business trip, she came over and turned the whole apartment upside down.”

Huang listened without interrupting. It was intriguing that Chen kept his focus on Mrs. Liu, even when interviewing Mi. It was possible that Mrs. Liu had killed him, as Huang had suggested at the crime scene, but after his initial excitement with it, it more and more seemed to him to be a theory that wasn’t supported by any evidence.

Mi’s accusations against Mrs. Liu were understandable, even though she had denied any knowledge of Liu’s family life. She knew that the cops had heard stories about her, so she was trying to downplay the relationship between her and Liu. Presenting Mrs. Liu as an irresponsible wife was designed to justify her own role in Liu’s life—if not morally, at least psychologically. But that self-justification was irrelevant to the murder investigation, with the exception that it presented a totally different version from that of Mrs. Liu.

Still, they learned some new things from the interview: for one, the frequency of Mrs. Liu’s trips to Shanghai. It wasn’t a long-distance trip, but it was nonetheless odd to so often leave her husband all alone at home.

And that led to the revelation about her having been a high school flower with many secret admirers. What could that possibly mean? If she had another man in Shanghai—which wasn’t unimaginable for a couple like the Lius, whose marriage was already on the rocks—it introduced a motive that had been so far overlooked. Mrs. Liu’s lover, whoever it might be, could have murdered for love or for money.

“Do you think Liu was planning to do something about his family problems?” Chen went on.

“What you mean?”

“Did he plan to divorce his wife?”

“No, not that I was aware of. As I’ve said, he didn’t discuss his family problems with us other than complaining a little, now and then, when he couldn’t help himself.”

Chen took out a cigarette, tapped it on the pack, and looked at Mi before asking, “Do you mind?”

“No. Go ahead. Liu smoked too.”

Chen changed the subject abruptly. “As you may have heard, Jiang is a possible suspect. Tell us what you know about him.”

“Oh, Jiang,” she said. “He called our office quite a few times. He was calling to speak with Liu, of course. What they talked about, though, I’ve no idea. I told Internal Security about all that.”

“Can you give us any more details?” Huang cut in. “Particularly, anything in connection with the night Liu was murdered.”

“Jiang called two or three days before the night Liu died, I think, but other than insisting on speaking to Liu, he didn’t say anything to me. That’s about all I know. And—” She cleared her voice before going on. “And as I told the police, Liu mentioned that morning he was going to see someone on some unpleasant business.”

“Did he say when or where?”

“No, not that I remember.”

“And who?”

“No, no names were mentioned either.” She added, “Oh, but two or three months ago, I saw Jiang arguing with Liu in his office.”

“His office here at the plant?”

“Yes, the inside office.”

“What were they arguing about?”

“They stopped talking the moment I stepped in, but I caught a word or two. It was, I think, about pollution.”

“Do you remember the date?”

“It was March, early March,” she said. “It was the day before the Women’s Day. Yes, now I recall…”

At that moment, a tall man burst into the outer office, greeting Huang in a loud voice.

“Hello, Comrade Officer Huang. What wind brings you over here again today?”

“Hello, General Manager Fu.”

“It’s only Acting General Manager for the moment. Please just call me Fu. And this is…”

“Chen, my colleague,” Huang said.

“Welcome. Come into my office.”

“Thank you, General Manager Fu,” Chen said. He then turned back to Mi. “We might come back to you if we have more questions. If you think of anything, please call us—or rather, call Sergeant Huang.”

Huang and Chen then turned and followed Fu into the inner office. Fu motioned for them to sit on two leather chairs opposite his oak desk. The wall behind the desk exhibited a striking array of framed awards, with Liu’s name on most of them, but under the glass on the desk, Huang saw several pictures of Fu.

“Is that Bund Park?” Chen asked unexpectedly, indicating a picture of Fu standing in front of the park, his hand pointing proudly to the river.

“Yes, I came from Shanghai.”

“So, do you go back there frequently?”

“I went back last Saturday, and I’m going there again this weekend. Nowadays, it’s so convenient to go back and visit. It’s only one hour by the new high-speed train. That is a picture I took two weeks ago.”

“You know what we’re here for, General Manager Fu,” Chen said, moving on to the heart of the matter.

“Yes. We need to get justice for Liu. He worked really hard and did a great job turning around the company. We owe our success to him, and we will never change the course that Liu charted out for us. We will, of course, cooperate with your investigation in every way possible.”

Fu spoke about Liu in a respectful and quite grateful way, as a young successor should, though his words were fulsome and couched in official language.

“We were just talking to Mi about Jiang,” Chen said, coming straight to the point. “Can you tell us something about him?”

“Not much, I’m afraid. Jiang talked to Liu, not to me.”

“So you knew about his contacts with Liu.”

“Well, I saw him talking with Liu in the office one day, but as a matter of fact, I didn’t even know at the time that his name was Jiang. Mi filled me in afterward.”

“Did Liu tell you anything about Jiang’s threat to expose the company’s industrial pollution problem?”

“Now, let me first say something about this so-called pollution, Officer Chen. There is a city environmental protection office in Wuxi. They have checked and double-checked our production procedure. Our samples have always proven to be up to the state standard,” Fu said with a serious look on his face. “Liu’s job was an extremely difficult one. In today’s market, it’s not easy for a state-run factory to survive, let alone to succeed. But Liu was successful, and it was no real surprise that he became a target for cold-blooded criminals like Jiang and other irresponsible critics who know nothing about our industry.”

“We understand all this, Comrade Acting General Manager Fu,” Chen said. “And we’ve spoken to Mrs. Liu too.”

“Really! That’s good. Considering Liu’s contribution to the company, we’re going to offer his family an adequate sum. In addition, there will be a position for Mrs. Liu—that is, if she wants to work here.”

“That’s so thoughtful of you. She’s originally from Shanghai. I wonder whether she might prefer to move back there.”

“That I don’t know,” Fu said, suddenly shifting the topic as he looked at his watch. “Have you had lunch, Officers? I worked late last night, and then skipped breakfast this morning.”

It was an obvious attempt to end the interview.

“We had a late breakfast,” Chen said, also glancing at his watch. It was near one thirty. “Yes, I think it’s time for us to leave.”

As they left the office, Chen didn’t speak. Both he and Huang were lost in thought as they moved to the front gate.

“I’m sorry,” Huang said. “I forgot that the car is parked near the apartment complex. Let’s go back.”

Chen came to an abrupt stop and then looked up. There were several visitors signing a register book at the front entrance. Instead of turning and heading to the back door, Chen walked over to the security guard standing there.

“So, is it required that people sign in and out here?” Chen asked the security guard, pointing at the register book.

“We’re from the Wuxi Police Bureau,” Huang said, producing his badge in a hurry.

“Anything you want to know, sir,” the security guard said, “and yes, that’s the rule. All visitors have to sign in.”

“Oh, and there’s a video camera here too,” Chen said, pointing at it.

“Yes, our late boss ordered a lot of equipment, including the video cameras. They’re state of the art, appropriate for a large state-run enterprise, but we still stand here on guard twenty-four hours a day.”

“I see. That’s good. I’d like a copy of the visitor registration book for the last seven days, along with the tapes from the camera.”

“That can be easily done, sir,” the security guard said, nodding his head like a rattle drum.

But it took more than a few minutes to duplicate the tape and the pages. Huang was watching, bewildered, when his cell phone rang. He looked at the number, excused himself, and walked over to a shaded corner, out of their hearing.

It proved once again to last longer than he had expected.

When he returned to the front entrance, Chen was already holding a large envelope in his hand.

“Let’s have a bite at the canteen here,” Huang said. “I still have the company canteen coupons Fu gave us the first time we were here. So I can afford to be your host today.”

“That’s a good idea,” Chen said.

They made their way to the canteen. It was past the lunch hour, but there were still a handful of employees eating and talking. They chose a table toward the side, close to the window, where there were no people around.

“What do you think?” Huang said over a steaming-hot bowl of beef noodles strewn with chopped green onion.

“To begin with, Mi may be an unreliable narrator.”

“What do you mean?”

“It’s a term I picked up in my literature studies in college, which means a narrator who doesn’t provide a reliable account from an unbiased perspective,” Chen said, adding a lot of black pepper to his noodles. “Mi put on a passionate defense of Liu, but it was more a defense of her own actions, at least subconsciously, on the grounds that a happy, contented husband wouldn’t have an extramarital affair. Like an echo of the old saying, ‘If the fence is tight, no dog will stray in.’ But it’s undeniable that Liu hadn’t been a good husband, and that he kept the home office for his rendezvous with Mi. In her attempts to defend her position as a little secretary, Mi may not be able to give us truthful statements.”

“I see your point, Chief. There are some inconsistencies in the statements regarding Liu. I put them together on a piece of paper while she was talking, in an effort to connect them, but some of them simply couldn’t be connected.” Huang then said, “I still like the theory that Mrs. Liu was responsible.”

“That’s just one of the possible theories,” Chen said, seeming to back away from his earlier assertiveness. “It’s unsupported so far.”

“True. By the way, the phone call I took earlier was about a new development. Well, not exactly new, since it’s based on an old scenario being pushed by Internal Security. As of now, they have reached their conclusion, obtained approval from above, and officially taken Jiang into custody.”

“Have there been any new evidence or breakthroughs?” Chen asked, apparently surprised at how quickly Internal Security was moving the case along.

“No, not any I’m aware of. From what I just learned from the head of our local team, the case has been attracting a lot of attention internationally; the longer it drags on, the more damage it could do to the government’s image. So people from above gave the green light to Internal Security’s plan. I don’t like it. If this is how it’s going to work, then what the hell are we cops for?”

“I don’t like it either,” Chen said, putting down the chopsticks even though he hadn’t finished his noodles. “Can you me get a copy of Jiang’s statement regarding his argument with Liu?”

“Yes. He insisted that he hadn’t talked to or met with Liu for months. I’ll get you a copy.”

“Also, can you get a copy of the phone records for the company? Particularly the general manager’s office, if that’s available.”

Huang wasn’t sure he was following Chen’s thinking. He had assumed the scenario in which Mrs. Liu murdered her husband was beneath Chen’s approach, his examination of the crime scene, and the questions he asked at the company.

Perhaps Chen had another objective in mind, Huang mused. Maybe he wanted to rule out the possibility of Jiang’s being the murderer.

But was it too late? The “approval from above” that Internal Security had received sounded ominous. A chief inspector on vacation, no matter how well connected, could hardly match that. Perhaps that was what made Chen a different kind of cop—persistence. Chen plodded on, conscientiously, if circumspectly, in his own way.

“But Internal Security is ready to conclude the case in the interests of the Party. It’ll be over in just a matter of days, I’m afraid,” Huang said, broodingly. “Not that I’m not willing to confront them if we could obtain any real evidence or witnesses, and with you at my side—”

He broke off his sentence, however, at the sight of Shanshan walking into the canteen and striding over toward them.

“Oh, you’re here, Chen!” Shanshan said, fixing her stare on him, “and along with Officer—”

Her face showed surprise, which was quickly turning to something like anger.

There was surprise on Chen’s face too, though perhaps for a different reason.

“This is Shanshan, my friend. And this is Officer Huang.” Chen rose and made a hurried introduction, which wasn’t necessary for either of them. “He is a fan, having read every one of my mystery translations.”

The second part of the introduction was meant for her benefit, Huang realized. He wondered whether she would buy that explanation, but he picked up on the cue not to reveal that Chen was a cop.

“Mr. Chen is truly a master. I’ve read all the books he’s translated. He’s also a poet, you know, and that makes a huge difference in his translations. The language is superb.”

“You seem to know your fans among the police very well, Master Chen,” she said, with undisguised sarcasm. “Or is this another ‘chance’ meeting?”

“I think I have to leave now, Mr. Chen,” Huang said, rising. “You may call me any time.”

“No, stay, Officer, and please continue discussing your important police work,” she said. “I’m leaving.”

They watched her retreat from the canteen in a hurry.

“I have some explanations to make, I think,” Chen said, rising and smiling a bitter smile.

“Catch up with her,” Huang said. “We’ll talk later.”

All of a sudden, the legendary chief inspector looked defeated and crestfallen, not that legendary after all.