Red Mandarin Dress

TWENTY

IT WAS THE WORST blow Yu had suffered in his career as a policeman.

After a sleepless night first at the cemetery, then the bureau, he rubbed his bloodshot eyes and decided to go again to the Joy Gate, where a young colleague of his had been abducted and murdered while he was stationed outside, entrusted with the duty of protecting her. He could think of nothing else.

At the Joy Gate, the police were still searching and re-searching all the rooms, hoping against hope that they might find some undiscovered evidence left behind. He didn’t think joining them would be of any help.

He went to the front desk and asked for a list of regular customers. The criminal must be familiar with the building to be capable of having made such a plan. At his insistence, the day manager produced a printout.

“It really doesn’t mean any-anything,” the manager stammered, swallowing hard. “They are just good, regular customers.”

“Good customers, I see,” Yu said. “How regular?”

“The basic fee is not expensive, but with drinks and tips, it could be easy to spend five or six hundred Yuan an evening. A regular customer comes at least once a week.”

“Has any of the regulars stayed in the hotel above?”

“The hotel is not so fancy. Not too many care to stay here, what with the noise all night long. Nor is it always a good idea, either. People make assumptions about what a customer and a dancing girl are up to in a room upstairs. So many would rather go to another place.”

“That makes sense,” Yu said, nodding.

It was a list of names, addresses, and phone numbers. Some of them also indicated their profession or preferences. It was possibly a PR list.

“When we have special events,” the manager explained, “we like to notify them.”

He would make calls to some of the people on the list, Yu thought. Then one of the names seemed to jump out at him. Jia Ming, his profession indicated as a lawyer. It was a name Yu remembered. Chen had asked him to check into him with regard to a high-profile housing development case.

It was strange that Jia, a well-known lawyer, busy with a controversial case, would have the time to be a regular customer here.

“Can you tell me something about this man?”

“Jia Ming,” the manager said with an apologetic smile, “I am afraid I cannot tell you much. He’s not that regular.”

“What do you mean?”

“Most of the people on the list are Big Bucks. They come here to ‘burn money,’ squandering it on girls and services. Jia comes, but he pays only for an entrance ticket, sits in a corner, watching over a cup of coffee, seldom dancing, and never asking anybody out. He’s here just once or twice a month.”

“Then why is he on your list?”

“We wouldn’t have noticed him but for a phone call from the city government several months ago. Someone wanted us to report on any of his improper behavior here. But he didn’t do anything out of line-we’ve never seen him taking out a girl-and we reported truthfully. A strange request, you may say, but we always cooperate with the authorities.”

So the authorities had been following Jia, trying to find something against him in an effort to wreck the housing development case. Jia’s visits here might not mean anything. Intellectuals could be eccentric. Chief Inspector Chen, for me, still met with an ex-singing girl.

Yu grew upset at the thought of his partner. Since Wednesday, he’d repeatedly tried to contact Chen, but without any success. Last night Yu marked his call “urgent,” requesting an immediate call back, but still no response. Early this morning, he had Little Zhou drive over to Chen’s place, but no one was there.

How could the chief inspector have disappeared at this particular juncture?

Yu decided to revisit the cemetery. He didn’t really think he would find something new there. Still, in the daylight, he might be able to see more.

The cemetery was taped off as a crime scene. In the distance, a mud-covered hut stood silhouetted against the rugged hills. No one seemed to be caring for the place. He moved to the spot where they had found her body. He lit a cigarette against the chilly wind, shivering, as if going through the nightmare again. The image would be with him forever: she had been lying with the top part of her body half hidden by the tall wild weeds. Her legs, wide apart, were stretched out on the damp ground. Her skin appeared slightly bluish, with her black hair falling across her cheek. She was barefoot, and dressed in a mandarin dress that slipped up her waist, leaving her thighs bare…

A lone crow was circling overhead, crying, homeless in the winter.

In the bureau, there were wild theories about the location. Unlike the places where the first three victims were dumped, the cemetery was far from the center of the city. Party Secretary Li declared that the criminal had dropped the body there because of police pressure. Little Zhou incorporated a Qing dynasty ghost story into his earlier theory. Yu didn’t believe either of them, but he didn’t have a convincing theory of his own.

To his surprise, he saw a boy coming over to him carrying a bag of newspapers, shouting, “Special edition! Red mandarin dress victim found in the cemetery here!” Giving him a handful of coins, Yu grabbed several of them.

It turned out that the man who patrolled the cemetery was a superstitious and garrulous man. While he had lost no time informing the police, he was also spreading the news around. The mention of the red mandarin dress was like a loud siren cracking the night sky, and people shivered.

As Yu dreaded, the newspapers were full of the latest victim in the red mandarin dress case. These reporters hadn’t yet discovered her identity, but some of them had already sensed something unusual about the commotion at the Joy Gate last night. One reporter even hinted at a connection between the dance hall and the cemetery.

In the newspapers, Yu read a number of superstitious interpretations about the latest twist in the case.

Wenhui, for instance, had a special report titled “Lianyi Cemetery!” Narrated from the collective perspective of local residents, the reporter launched into a lurid, superstitious interpretation.

It used to be an expensive cemetery in the fifties and sixties, well-maintained and well-guarded. It was regarded as a propitious site with the dragon-shaped hill in the background, in accordance to a popular belief that a burial ground with such excellent feng shui would bring good luck to the offspring. At that time, only the wealthy Shanghainese could obtain a resting place here, lying at peace in expensive coffins, surrounded with luxurious clothes, quilts, silver and gold jewelry-supposedly for their benefit in the underworld.

In spite of its feng shui, the cemetery bore the brunt of the Cultural Revolution like anywhere else. The practice of burial in a coffin was declared feudalistic, and overnight most of the people buried here became “black” in their class status. To denounce the “black spirits and monsters,” the Red Guards had their tombs demolished and their bodies dug out, as in a Beijing opera, “to be whipped three hundred times.” Some coffins were opened to search for so-called criminal evidence as part and parcel of the Campaign of Sweeping

Away the Four Olds-old ideas, old culture, old customs, and old habits. The cemetery was practically destroyed.

After the Cultural Revolution, the political statuses of some of the dead were rehabilitated, but not their tombs. Their families were too brokenhearted to come back there for ancestral worship services. Some families removed the existing remains, if any, to other places. So the cemetery lay in ruins, with stray dogs sulking around, digging up white bones from time to time. Some local residents reported scenes of ghosts walking around at night, but according to a police report, the rumors originally started among the superstitious grave robbers.

That gave an insightful property developer an excuse. No longer a cemetery in use, nor a good image for the city, the land might well be used for new commercial construction. The developer bought the cemetery from the city government, planning to convert it into a golf course.

In spite of all the new science and technology of our time, people can still be superstitious. The commercial transformation of a cemetery was considered an unpardonable disturbance of the dead. Some old residents nearby were worried that the dead would rise to haunt the living. To reassure them, the developer lit tons of firecrackers and had a feng shui master write an article saying that after the disaster of the Cultural Revolution, the feng shui was restored, and with a new subway to be built nearby, “the energy of the dragon” would make the area really valuable.

Now the body in the red mandarin dress found in the cemetery has reminded people of all the superstitious stories. As an old scholar of local history argues that the red mandarin dress murder has originated from the disturbed cemetery. Several months earlier, people saw a woman in a red mandarin dress walking in the midst of the tombs at night. According to his research, there was a movie star so attired buried there, though he chose not to reveal her identity. She was terribly wronged in life, and even more terribly after death-with her body tossed out of the coffin, and her red mandarin dress stripped by a group of Red Guards. That’s why the dead appears in an old-fashioned mandarin dress.

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.