At the Lantern Festival last year,

  The fair was lit like a bright day.

  In the night, he met me here,

  the moon topping the willow tree.

  At the Lantern Festival this year,

  The same lanterns, the same moon.

  Where is the man I met last year?

  My spring sleeves are tear-sodden.

  ‘Indeed, what will the world turn out to be like next year, Chen?’

  ‘Everything is imaginable, but not pardonable – in the “space and time companionship” of surveillance.’

  As if in mysterious correspondence to his wandering thoughts, a short text message arrived with a ding, from Pang in Wuhan.

  ‘Oh, Pang’s sent a text message,’ Chen said. ‘You may take a look, too.’

  In the latest official news, the dire situation in Wuhan was said to be improving. According to the People’s Daily, it was all because of the CCP’s zero-Covid policy, and it spoke volumes about the superiority of China’s socialism over Western capitalism. Wuhan was scheduling a grand celebration party.

  ‘The CCP excels in politicizing everything,’ Chen said.

  It was not a long walk, but they had to stop now and then to clarify their points, which somehow made the distance longer.

  A corner of the sky was growing ghastly pale, like a patient lying on an operating table. A brownish smog seemed to be rubbing its back on the closed windowpanes and then licking its tongue into a tiny pool of melting snow.

  ‘I was thinking—’ Chen said.

  ‘About what?’

  ‘At this juncture, a large number of cameras would have been installed around the entrance of the parking lot. An experienced perpetrator should have been aware of that. For that night, from twelve to one, the surveillance camera caught Doctor Wu drive in, but no one else.’

  ‘That’s true.’

  Snowflakes began swirling up in the wind again. She put her arm through his, like two lovers in the imagination of others, strolling along under the same umbrella, careless of the slippery snow on the street. She took out her phone, touched on the map app, and exclaimed, ‘Oh, follow the side street to the end, make a right turn, and we’ll reach the parking lot. We are almost there,’ she added, holding her phone with the GPS app showing the direction.

  ‘To be fair to the hospital management,’ Chen replied, ‘they have done a good job constructing a temporary parking lot at a well-chosen location, and it’s truly a much-needed improvement for the hospital staff.

  ‘During the construction of the parking lot, it would have been enclosed with makeshift plastic walls. So the existence of the parking lot was probably not known to most people in the neighborhood. And then it opened with all the surveillance cameras installed. No car could get into the parking lot without a special parking card, given only to the hospital staff. So how could it be possible—?’

  ‘Not unless the murderer chose not to drive in,’ Jin said tentatively.

  ‘You are brilliant, Jin. So we are going to do the field investigation right now.’

  Sure enough, it proved to be a temporary parking lot, not made of high-quality materials, but not without some of the latest technology.

  In the city of Shanghai, such a place could be worth a fortune. Hence, it was temporary only for the duration of Covid.

  ‘Anyone could have come in here on foot under the cover of night,’ Chen said.

  ‘On a cold, snowy night, who would have taken a casual walk inside the lot, though, Director Chen?’

  ‘You have a point. No one, unless the murderer followed Doctor Wu into the parking lot—’

  ‘The murderer could have been someone familiar with the doctor’s movements.’

  ‘Right again, Jin. The murderer could have been following the doctor for days. You truly have the making of a smart police inspector.’

  ‘The making of an assistant to the chief inspector, I hope.’

  The big clock on the Customer House was striking the hour from afar. The melody of ‘The East Is Red’ kept reverberating over the Bund.

  They shuddered in an unanticipated blast of chilly air.

  Before going to bed, Chen thought he heard someone playing a bamboo flute in the distance, lonely, melancholy against the surrounding darkness. He was seized by a sudden impulse to translate a ci poem he had read long ago for the poetry collection. The second stanza seemed to be containing the moment and containing him for the moment.

  The flute sobbing,

  awaking from her dream,

  she sees the moon shining

  above her tower.

  The moon above her tower,

  the willows turn green, year

  after year, at the Baling Bridge,

  where lovers are parting in heartbreak.

  In classic Chinese poetry, it was common for poets to present solitary female personas in lovesickness, but they are actually expressing their own frustrations and disappointments.

  And he was seized with an inscrutable impulse to go out and knock on her door, the next door – they were so close – but he stopped himself. It was not a time to be romantic under the glaring stare of the surveillance cameras, he contemplated. It left a bitter taste in his dry mouth.

  A phone call was coming over from Wuhan.

  ‘What’s new, Pang?’ Chen asked.

  ‘I finally did something last night – or you could say this night, Chen.’

  ‘What did you do?’

  ‘I manage to sneak out and made it to the hospital, where Doctor Wen was dying—’

  ‘He is dying?’

  ‘Late this afternoon, the word came whispering around that Doctor Wen was dying of Covid in the hospital in which he had worked so hard and treated so many patients. But for him, the situation was beyond hope. The respirator failed to give any help. As his death could have enraged a lot of people, who had already demonstrated their solidarity with the unfairly punished doctor, the hospital had to put on a show of trying hard to save his life.

  ‘The hospital guard did not let me in. Producing a whistle, I told him what I was going to do in front of Doctor Wen’s ward. He was the first whistleblower against the government’s cover-up of the Covid breakout in Wuhan. So blowing a whistle would sort of symbolize a last, heartfelt tribute to him. To my surprise, the guard made a phone call, then broke down there and then, and asked if I had another whistle with me. I said I did, and he said he would go there with me.

  ‘“Doctor Wen just died,” the guard said between sobs. “It’s nothing but inhuman torture in there, breaking all his ribs in a futile rescuscitation attempt. Around eleven fifty-five, the hospital had to announce that he’s dead.”

  ‘With the help of the guard, we made it to an independent emergency room. The entrance was closed with thick iron chains, as if under angry siege. There were people putting candles and wreaths on the stone steps. We put down our phones on the top step, and turned on the video recording, and blew the whistles into the depth of the night. We paid our respects in the only way we could to the brave whistleblower. It was said that there were thousands of whistles blowing, reverberating throughout the dark midnight in Wuhan. We then put the video online. At least it was not deleted yet.

  ‘The hospital had no choice but to acknowledge Doctor Wen as a sort of a hero. The propaganda department changed its tune, and insisted that Doctor Wen, instead of being a whistleblower, was a loyal Party member. So my post mourning Doctor Wen as a whistleblower will be deleted, in a matter of two or three days …’

  Day 4

  The mountain ranges stretching,

  stretching far into the distance,

  the river water meandering,

  murmuring, I was worrying

  about a sudden dead end

  of the road when a village appeared

  out of the blue, willows dimming

  and flower brightening.

  – Lu You

  No one is more hated than he who speaks the truth.

  – Plato

  Life … is a tale

  Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,

  Signifying nothing.

  – William Shakespeare

  When you do not look at the flower,

  both the flower and your mind fall in oblivion.

  When you come to look at the flower,

  its colors immediately brighten up.

  So you know that the flower

  grows only in your heart.

  – Wang Yangming

  Another post goes viral online. The CCP government and Netcops invariably repudiate any posts revealing the seamy side of Chinese society as rumors, but this one comes with a recording of two people talking on the phone in their real voices. The Xinjiang (New Territory) Uygur Autonomous Region also fell under the lockdown, with an even stricter, more severe zero-Covid policy. What’s the reason behind it? Your guess is as good as mine. For a long period, the word ‘Xinjiang’ was a politically sensitive word for the Baidu search, which more often than not showed ‘non-existent page.’ So it was extremely hard for people to move in and out of Xinjiang.

  Anyway, in the phone recording, a middle-aged man was saying to a young woman, ‘I’ve heard that you’re anxious to go to Wuhan for the sake of your old and sick parents. To do that, you have to get a government-issued Xinjiang Exit Card. Here, the CCP is pushing state surveillance and suppression to the extreme, and people can hardly breathe with the suffocating zero-Covid policy. So the card is in high demand, and much more so in the Covid days. People are worried that the lockdown in Xinjiang could last indefinitely.

  ‘Now I happen to have a friend in charge of granting the Xinjiang Exit Card to people who are anxious to run, regardless of the expense. The fair black-market price is 8,000 yuan per card, but through his connection, I can obtain one card for you for 3,000 yuan. It comes with a condition, though. As soon as I get the card, you have to pay me the money, and you also have to sleep with me four times.’

  She responded on the phone that she would think about it, but having recorded the phone conversation, she incorporated it into a post online. It’s a huge slap in the government’s face. Lest she should choose to reveal more, the Party authorities arrested the middle-aged man and granted her the card.

  – The Wuhan File

  Waking up with a jungle of dream images fading against the morning light, Chen remembered only a single word – Jinling – from the dream. The Chinese language is a contextual language. A word is made from one character in combination with another. Jinling could be the name of a city, the present-day Nanjing, but the character Jin itself could also be a person’s family name, like his secretary Jin, or gold, the precious metal. There are a variety of different meanings with different characters in combination.

  As before, instead of focusing on the first and second cases, Chen decided to concentrate on the third murder, as the scenes of the temporary hospital parking lot remained fresh in his mind.

  As he had discussed with Hou, the different murder weapon could spell a different scenario, which differed substantially from the earlier one about the serial murder case.

  He read Dr Wu’s file for the third time. He had practically memorized some of the basic details about the victim. A long-time resident in a lane of the former French Concession, it was said that the doctor was fighting with his brother over housing compensation, as the lane was going to be bulldozed—

  A sudden thought galvanized him, and he jumped up, snatched out his laptop, and started searching.

  The three key terms he put in together – ‘former French Concession,’ ‘lane,’ ‘being demolished’ – resulted in one and only one answer: Red Dust Lane. It was located on Jinling Road. In pre-1949 years, it was in the French Concession. And it was about to be pulled down.

  It was the very lane that three days ago he had walked through, though at the time he never imagined that it could have a bearing on the present murder case.

  As a cop, he did not believe in coincidence, but how the subconscious or the supernatural could have worked this out, he had to admit, was way beyond him. Like the word Jinling in the mysterious dream. He had long put Freud’s The Interpretation of Dreams on his ‘to read’ list. He really should make time to do the reading.

  At the hotel canteen, Chen and Jin came to sit at the same table, as before.

  ‘You really are my guardian angel, Jin.’

  ‘You are making fun of me again, Director Chen.’

  ‘Waking up this morning, I remembered only two characters, Jinling, in a fading dream. With the first character being Jin, and with you at the back of my mind, I naturally thought of you, and then several somersaults in my subconscious brought me close to a possible breakthrough in our investigation.’

  ‘Enough of your bogus compliments, Chen. I’m utterly bamboozled.’

  ‘I have salvaged some other fragments of the dream. They seemed to be related to a poem titled “A Scene of Jinling” by Wei Zhuang, a well-known Tang dynasty poet.

  The rain falling in the river,

  weeds overspreading the bank,

  six dynasties gone like a dream –

  the birds keep twittering for nothing.

  Nonchalantly, the willows lined

  along the City of Tai cover

  the ten-mile-long bank,

  like before, in the green mist.’

  ‘I’m getting more and more lost, my poet.’

  ‘It’s a long story—’

  Hou joined them at the breakfast table, as punctual as before.

  ‘What you two are talking about?’

  ‘Interpretation of dreams. Director Chen was lost in a dream about poems.’

  ‘Come on. You are just joking,’ Hou said, ‘but this morning, the deep-fried rice cake looks so golden and crunchy – like in a dream.’

  For this morning, the breakfast in the canteen being Oriental, each of them was served with a bowl of shrimp-and-pork-stuffed dumplings strewn with green onion and egg slices on top of the soup, plus a portion of steamed barbeque pork buns specially delivered from the Apricot Blossom Pavilion, and the deep-fried rice cake from a mobile stall not far from the hotel.

  ‘I had an extra cup of strong black coffee last night, thanks to the French press Jin bought for me. I did some thinking with a clear, fresh mind,’ Chen said. ‘As Eliot said, I was literally measuring out my energy with a coffee spoon, yet still getting nowhere.

  ‘Not until this morning, after dreaming a dream with two Chinese characters in it, and after having another cup of fresh coffee made in the French press, I jumped up at a small footnote in Doctor Wu’s file.’

  ‘What’s that?’

  ‘It’s about Doctor Wu living in a soon-to-be-demolished lane on Jinling Road, which used to be part of the French Concession. I double-checked, and I’m pretty sure it has to be Red Dust Lane. In that lane, I did the first real investigations in my cop career, so the neighborhood is fairly familiar to me. It’s quite likely that the people in the Neighborhood Committee Office may still know me, too. It wouldn’t hurt for me to take a walk around the lane and talk to the cadres of the Red Dust Neighborhood Committee.’

  ‘That sounds like a fantastic plan,’ Hou concurred, spooning the last dumpling into his mouth. ‘I don’t know how your mind can work so ingeniously.’

  ‘Nor do I,’ Jin echoed.

  ‘Nor do I,’ Chen said, ‘but it’s a fine morning. How about going to Red Dust Lane with me, Jin?’

  ‘Why not?’ Jin said with a little hesitancy. ‘But it’s a bit cold today. The ground is slippery with the melting snow. I nearly slipped while out jogging earlier.’

  ‘The lane is close, Jin. A short walk may do me good, as you have told me many times.’

  ‘I cannot agree more. You go there with Director Chen, Jin. So much depends on the guidance of our legendary chief inspector – and he depends on you,’ Hou added with a knowing grin. ‘I’m leaving him in your soft hands.’

  ‘It’s a long shot, I know,’ Chen said, ‘but we cannot afford to leave any stone unturned.’

  ‘Oh, I almost forgot, Director Chen,’ Hou said, producing a tiny silver box out of his pocket. ‘Here is a box of your new business cards approved by the Party authorities. It may help a little when you are turning over one stone after another.’

  Walking past the still-closed bookshop, past the Apricot Blossom Pavilion which had a new notice on its door about its business having changed to takeout only, past the hospital wrapped in a shroud of somber smog in the wake of ambulances, past an old woman shambling over, holding a tall incense stick in her hand and murmuring prayers, past a withered tree circled by black crows on the corner of Guangdong Road …

  Chen raised his head and said in frustration, ‘Sorry, I should have taken Fujian Road instead. We cannot cross Yan’an Road because of the subway station here. I forgot all about it.’

  ‘Subconsciously,’ Jin said with a smile as they turned right into Guangdong Road, ‘you might have wanted to take one more look at the hospital along the way, but then the homeless crows cawing around the dead tree appeared to be too ominous a sign.’

  ‘No, not about this or that sign. If anything, I could be reminded of some lines. “Alas, His Majesty should have asked about the people’s welfare, / but not about the way of becoming an immortal.”’

  ‘What do you mean, Director Chen?’

  ‘Sorry, it’s Li Shangyin’s couplet. It describes how Emperor Wen of the Han dynasty kept asking a wise man how he could live and rule forever, but not about how he could help his people who were suffering. In ancient China, homeless crows circling a dead tree could forebode ill for a declining dynasty.’

  ‘I see. It’s the same from the ancient to the present,’ she said, stamping her feet on the dirty wet ground. ‘Anyway, China’s constitution has been changed. The CCP’s supreme ruler can rule forever and ever now. The Pig Head does not have to worry about a limit to his term in office.’

  ‘Well, Li Shangyin was my favorite Tang dynasty poet,’ Chen said, switching the topic. ‘And Red Dust Lane happens to be one of my favorite lanes.’

  ‘Director Chen, you’ve mentioned the lane to me before, I remember.’