‘Thank you for everything you have done for me, Jin.’

  ‘Don’t keep saying that, Chen.’

  ‘Oh, Hou has just sent me a text message.’

  ‘Any new leads?’

  ‘No. Just some things that are possibly irrelevant. The second victim, Nurse Huang from the orthopedics department, was temporarily dispatched to the emergency room that night because of a staff shortage. Only for one night.’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘It’s just a hunch I have—’

  He then heard a knock on the door, not that loudly.

  Chen opened the door to see Hou framed in the light reflecting against the snow.

  Hou had got back to the hotel shortly after Chen and Jin. He’d come straight over to Chen’s room, bringing in another flurry of snow, stamping forcefully at the doorway, yet still leaving wet footprints on the carpet.

  According to Hou, he had just had a meeting with the mayor and other high-ranking officials in the city government. They were very worried that the motives for the serial murders were increasingly being attributed to the zero-Covid policy.

  ‘Some netizens go so far as to portray the murders as a desperate protest, pointing fingers at the CCP’s disastrous zero-Covid policy.’ Hou continued after a short pause, ‘We have to stand firm with the Party’s policy. Thanks to the great and glorious leadership of our Party, the number of people infected in China is far less than in Western countries. It speaks volumes for the superiority of Chinese socialism.’

  Chen sat listening without trying to interrupt or respond. But the number in the Chinese newspaper is far from credible. He could not shake off a feeling that Hou was speaking like a robot, with the politically correct speech prerecorded.

  But it’s true that without a convincing conclusion to the case, people would keep on spreading wilder and wilder speculations. And the possibility of the murderer continuing with the killing spree would make things much worse, like adding frost to snow in this insufferable Covid winter.

  ‘Can you give me a cigarette?’ Hou turned to ask Chen abruptly.

  Chen pulled out a pack of China from his desk drawer without saying anything.

  ‘Believe it or not,’ Hou went on, ‘in the summer of 1989, I was a first-year college student in Beijing, and I too walked out with others to the Tian’anmen Square in protest. Luckily, the college Commissar shouldered the responsibility for us. In the final analysis, he said, things happening here will be judged by history. People are complaining, and I understand. Having said all that, we still have to take the bigger picture into consideration.’

  Chen was more than surprised by Hou’s statement, which seemed to come out of nowhere, but it could have been a devious trap for him. Any response from the former chief inspector would be easily recorded as thoughtcrime evidence against him as soon as the investigation was over.

  ‘Well, I said the same thing to Jin the day before yesterday. We have to take the bigger picture into consideration. People have been suffering horribly. The dragging on of the investigation could turn out to be the last straw for them.’

  ‘So what else can we do?’

  ‘That’s what I want to discuss with you, Hou.’

  It was perhaps a coincidence that Jin, too, happened to be knocking on the door.

  ‘Come on in, Jin. Hou and I are discussing what we have learned in the temporary hospital parking lot and the Red Dust Neighborhood Committee.’

  Hou stood up as Jin entered the room. ‘I think I have to go back to the hospital,’ he said abruptly. ‘Any specific instruction you have for me, Director Chen?’

  ‘No, you stay, Chief Hou,’ Jin said. ‘I just want to tell Director Chen that I need to make some phone calls, and then I’ll make a short trip back home.’

  ‘Take your time, Jin.’

  ‘Anything you need, just call us,’ Hou said, watching Jin retreat out of the room.

  ‘Yes, Jin and I did some thinking based on the information you have gathered,’ Chen said, ‘as well as on our checking into the hospital parking lot, and we’re more inclined toward the scenario that the third murder could have been committed by a different perpetrator. So we have to put more pressure directly on the Party boss of the hospital for any relevant information,’ Chen said in all seriousness. ‘In recent years, a Party boss has become someone with real power, whether in hospitals or universities. The leadership of the CCP is, of course, indisputable. Nothing wrong with that. But in these Covid times, being a political cadre, he could have chosen to cover something up for political reasons. To say the least, he could have been trying not to tell you everything. It’s a possibility we have to take into consideration.’

  ‘I’ll keep it in mind.’

  ‘If the case drags on, the scapegoat theory could turn into a real nightmare. You may have to point that out to him. And to be frank with you, if the case drags on, our special team, too, may turn out to be the scapegoat.’

  ‘That’s true, Director Chen. Right now, there’re all sorts of rumors flying around online. Last night, an attempted murder occurred near Xinhua Hospital in Yangpu District. As it’s so far from Renji Hospital, I don’t know how it could have been related to our case, but those irresponsible netizens are cooking up mindless scenarios, arguing that the murderer will strike three times at each and every hospital in Shanghai because of the collateral damage caused by the zero-Covid policy—’

  ‘I, too, am aware of it. Whatever people might choose to say or speculate, it means more pressure and responsibility for our team. As you may know, some people high above have long been displeased with my work, and the failure of the investigation could be another opportunity for them to push me down further into the mire.’

  ‘Don’t say that, Director Chen. Nominally, I’m the head of the team. I’ll take all the responsibility for it. In fact, I was the one who dragged you into it. If any trouble falls on your head because of the investigation, I would never be able to look myself in the mirror.’

  It was another surprising statement on the part of Hou, but for the first time, Chen felt a suggestion of sincerity in Hou’s voice.

  ‘So let’s concentrate on the serial murder case staring at us,’ Chen concluded.

  Chen was about to go down for dinner in the hotel canteen when a phone call came from Jin, her voice agitated.

  ‘Sorry, I’m rushing back home in a taxi. My father is suffering from a sudden asthma attack. Normally, he would be OK after having oxygen at the hospital. But we cannot send him to the hospital without a valid Covid test code acquired within the past twenty-four hours, as you know only too well. I’ve called several hospitals. The same answer: No valid green Covid test code, no admission.’

  ‘Don’t worry, Jin. We’ll find a solution. You wait for my phone call.’

  But he couldn’t find a solution, pacing about in his room. Several years ago, he’d managed to send Molong’s mother into East China Hospital through the ‘back door.’ The head of the hospital surnamed Wei happened to be someone owing him a favor, but Wei was now the head of a hospital in Beijing. And Chen was no longer a chief inspector trusted by the Party.

  Still pacing, he picked up the phone to reach Jin again.

  ‘At my mother’s home, she has a small rubber bag of oxygen. Certainly not as good as an oxygen tank, but it may help a little in your father’s situation—’

  ‘We have a rubber bag of oxygen at home, too, but it’s not enough. He has tried.’

  ‘Oh—’ He thought desperately. Perhaps he could still try to contact Wei … But he thought better of it. Wei would not have such a long arm to reach back to Shanghai. He did not even have Wei’s phone number. Nevertheless, East China Hospital was one specially reserved for high-ranking Party cadres, he recalled. It usually had some rooms for emergencies, as Wei had told him at that time.

  ‘Hold on, Jin, I think I have another idea. Send me your home address and home phone number in addition to your cell number – the non-special one.’

  Then he dialed Hou, explained Jin’s situation, and said, ‘As far as I know, East China Hospital is one for high-ranking cadres, and it usually has some rooms available for cadres in the city government. So I have to ask a personal favor of you. As you surely know some people in the hospital, can you ask them to let her father in? After a couple of oxygen intakes, an asthma patient would be able to recover. He may not have to stay in the hospital for a full day.’

  ‘Your problem is my problem, Director Chen. And Jin is a member of our special team, too. I’m calling them right now. An ambulance will be sent to her home in no time. Tell me her address.’

  ‘Thank you so much. Here is what she has just sent me. I know I owe you a big one, Hou.’

  ‘Don’t mention it. I’m glad you thought of me in this difficult situation.’

  It did not take long for Chen to receive a short text message from Jin: ‘Thank you, Chen. Already in the ambulance to East China Hospital. Your Jin.’

  Hou might not have told her that he was the one she should thank, but then it had been Chen that had asked Hou for his help.

  Instead of using the French press, which took time to prepare, Chen tore open a small packet of instant coffee, and then another one, to make a strong cup for himself. Breathing into it, he stared into the cup; there was nothing but darkness staring back at him.

  Draining the cup in two gulps, he took out his phone, pressed the cell number of Party Secretary Yan of the Red Dust Neighborhood Committee, and spoke, a bitter taste still clinging to his tongue.

  ‘Sorry, I have to ask another favor of you, Party Secretary Yan.’

  ‘Anything I can do, Director Chen. It’s an honor that you think of me in this important investigation.’

  ‘Regarding Doctor Wu’s brother. He lives in Yangpu District nowadays?’

  ‘You mean Big-headed Wu?’

  ‘Yes, that’s him.’

  ‘Yangpu District is where he lives, but I don’t know his address.’

  ‘But you may know some people in his neighborhood committee?’

  ‘I can try my connections there.’

  ‘Good. Contact your connections in his neighborhood committee. Tell them that I, in the name of the city government, want them to immediately pull out all the surveillance data concerning Big-headed Wu. Not just for the night Doctor Wu was killed. At least one week or so before that night, and then the days after his death.’

  ‘Got you. I’ll make sure they’ll carry out your instructions to the letter.’

  Ironically, he had been giving the order in the name of the city government, which was keeping him under surveillance at that very moment.

  No less ironically, the special envoy position with the symbol of emperor’s sword printed on the new business card had worked magically on a loyal Party cadre like Yan.

  An hour and a half later, Hou knocked on Chen’s door.

  ‘I’ve just had a phone call from the hospital,’ Hou said. ‘Jin’s father is out of the woods. In fact, he may go home tonight. The doctor there told me they would send him back in a hospital vehicle along with a full oxygen tank. No need to worry about him now.’

  ‘I cannot thank you enough, Hou!’

  ‘She’s a nice, pretty girl. So intensely loyal to you, I can see.’

  ‘Now I have to report to you in detail,’ Chen said, eager to change the direction of the conversation, ‘about the work I have done today – with help from Jin, of course. So many things keep happening. We have not had time for a proper discussion.

  ‘We had a long talk with Yan, the head of the Red Dust Neighborhood Committee, concerning the fight between Doctor Wu and his brother Big-headed Wu. The latter’s full name is Wu Zheng, a stubborn man in his mid-sixties. He swore in the lane he would kill Doctor Wu. That happened just four or five days before the doctor’s death. In light of our earlier investigation in the hospital parking lot, and the information from the Red Dust Neighborhood Committee, I would consider Big-headed Wu to be someone with a strong motive and in a position to carry out the murder that night. He moved out to Yangpu District years ago. So we have to obtain his current information as fast as possible. I have just called Yan for help, but it may take time. I’m wondering if you would be able to enlist the help of big data though the city government? It could speed things up a lot. I’m no longer a cop, you know.’

  ‘Of course, I’ll do so first thing tomorrow morning. We’re on the same team.’

  ‘And I think we have to bring pressure to bear on the hospital regarding its surveillance system. It’s urgent for us to view all the video concerning the three victims. Not just those nights when each of them were killed, but for a longer period.’

  ‘No problem. I’m going back to the hospital tomorrow.’

  Chen remained alone in the hotel room. Absentmindedly, he made a cup of strong coffee in the French press before he inserted into the laptop a flash memory stick from Molong – containing The Wuhan File by Pang.

  He copied part of its contents, written in Chinese, to a Word document and started translating it directly into English, a line at a time. That way, he worked much faster, capable of double-checking between the two languages.

  In addition, he opened a sample page sent to him by the editor of the Wuhan classic poetry collection. One side of the page displayed a landscape painting of the Yangtze River, a tiny figure wandering on the beach, and the other side a Tang dynasty poem in Chinese and English. He liked the format, which echoed ancient Chinese poetics about ‘poetry contains painting, and painting containing poetry.’ It could be like a dialogue.

  For the moment, though, the Tang poetry served only as a cover for The Wuhan File.

  The real-life details made The Wuhan File an intriguing read. He was still not sure if he could get it published outside China, but it was worth trying. Some of the details in the file were elusive, and he thought he should do some double-checking.

  One was about the collateral damage people were suffering under the zero-Covid policy. An incredibly large number of people were being denied hospital admission or even ambulance transportation. At least a dozen people were barred from entering hospital on one night alone, because of their failure to present the valid green Covid code for a test carried out within the last twenty-four hours, and quite a few of them died miserably. More than a few pregnant women had suffered miscarriages because of the government’s zero-Covid policy.

  He had hardly started his double-checking when, out of the blue, he was thunderstruck by the story of a pregnant woman unable to get into any hospital because of the zero-Covid policy, who suffered a disastrous miscarriage and died in pools of blood right outside the hospital.

  A moment of disorientation gripped him. What had happened in Wuhan might be happening in Shanghai, and in other cities in China, too. In the file about the city of Shanghai, Molong had mentioned something similar, and the former chief inspector was galvanized with a horrible sense of déjà vu.

  Was he being confounded by too much information, too fast, shifting from one city to another?

  As he saved and closed the translated pages of The Wuhan File, he felt utterly worn out.

  His glance shifted involuntarily to the document of his classical poetry translation. It happened to present a poem by Du Fu, ‘Thoughts in a Night During Travel.’ The last stanza of the poem read:

  Alas, with a fame coming

  only from my poetry writing,

  old, sickly, I can hardly

  complain about the loss

  of my insignificant position.

  Forever wandering,

  wandering, a sand gull wings

  between the vast sky

  and the immense earth.

  The stanza could be read, paradoxically, as a portrait of the former chief inspector himself. No longer in a real position, he was kept on convalescent leave, still trying to find his way, yet without knowing in which direction to go. What was worse, it was not possible that a single poem of his would still be read in a thousand years, like the Tang poet-saint Du Fu’s.

  But he could try to include this poem in the Wuhan poetry translation, with the scene of the Yangtze River rolling on to the horizon in the background, arguably somewhere near Wuhan. Taking out an annotated copy of the poetry collection in Chinese, he turned to the page of that poem.

  ‘Take your time,’ Hou had said repeatedly to him. ‘There is no hurry for the poetry translation.’

  It was not about the poetry translation. For the moment, he had not world enough and time. The next minute, he could be quarantined because of his close contact with someone who had tested positive for Covid, or shuangguied because of his political stance. He had to finish the sample translation of The Wuhan File while he still could work. He owed that to the people of Wuhan.

  He called Jin. She told him that she was ready to come back to the hotel.

  ‘It’s so late, Chen. You should go to bed now. It has been such a hectic day for you, too.’

  Putting down the phone, he caught himself wishing intensely that Jin could be sitting with him at this moment, in the hotel room, talking quietly, holding his hand.

  Lines from an English poem – possibly the saddest love poem in the world – washed up from the fathomless depths of his mind.

  … the world, which seems

  To lie before us like a land of dreams,

  So various, so beautiful, so new,

  Hath really neither joy, nor love, nor light,

  Nor certitude, nor peace, nor help for pain;

  And we are here as on a darkling plain

  Swept with confused alarms of struggle and flight,

  Where ignorant armies clash by night.

  Day 5

  People travel to wonder

  at the height of the mountains,

  at the huge waves of the seas,

  at the long course of the rivers,

  at the vast compass of the ocean,

  at the circular motion of the stars,