Chen: Alas, karma goes all the way into today’s China.

  Zhou: So I followed and killed each of them near the hospital. The choice of location was a protest not just against the hospital practice, but against the inhuman zero-Covid policy as well. I was doing reconnaissance before striking out at a third victim when you and your people raided my home. But let me say again, Chief Inspector Chen, I killed the two not just out of personal revenge. It was more of a wake-up call to the CCP. The Beijing government has already started talking about the ‘great successes’ of the zero-Covid policy under the great, glorious CCP leadership. But what about the holocaust that is happening to the ordinary Chinese people?

  Chen: You sure can raise that question, Zhou.

  Zhou: Let me tell you something I read, just before your people broke in. Have you heard of a new term, the mobile zero-Covid policy?

  Chen: No, I haven’t. Nor can I imagine what it means.

  Zhou: Nobody really knows yet. Let’s say Wuhan was going to have an important Party conference. The CCP would send the infected Wuhan citizens, those possibly infected, those closely contacted, or even those contacted with the closely contacted, to other cities or counties, so at least Wuhan would be declared up to the standard of the mobile zero-Covid status. Anyway, such a Covid bus in Guiyang overturned into a deep valley at around two thirty last night. Twenty-seven people were killed in this crazy attempt at maintaining stability.

  Chen: That’s absolutely absurd and heart-breaking.

  Zhou: That’s another reason why I left the bodies near Renji Hospital – a statement against such catastrophic collateral damage. The CCP has politicized the battle against Covid, which will only lead to worse disasters.

  Chen: I understand. Trust me, I will do whatever possible to get your message out, Zhou.

  Hou and Jin joined Chen the moment Zhou was marched out of the hotel room.

  ‘Congratulations! A superb job, Director Chen,’ Hou said exultantly, giving a thumbs up.

  It surprised Chen. The interview had been done with Hou and Jin standing behind the black lacquer screen. Chen did not worry about Jin, but there was no trusting the former. Chen’s talk with Zhou would have been recorded, no question about it. Anything he had said would be checked and double-checked. Anything politically incorrect would give his enemies another excuse to finish him off. And he had said too much of what he had really wanted to say.

  ‘Well done,’ Jin said.

  ‘I had to make him talk,’ Chen said quickly.

  ‘That’s more than understandable, Director Chen. It’s absolutely necessary to make him talk. That’s what I have just said to Jin: “Director Chen had to conduct the interview like that.” It was a matter of great importance and urgency to have him spill the truth. With Zhou’s confession signed, with the video made of the interrogation, particularly the part about the “bigger picture” discussed between you two, it’s more than convincing. We don’t have to worry anymore.’

  Hou had not told him anything about making a video, but he should have guessed. The video would most likely be edited and put on CCTV, showing Zhou’s signing of the confession and showcasing a couple of sentences taken out of context.

  But what else could the former chief inspector on convalescent leave have possibly done?

  ‘It’s over at last. The interrogation must have been so exhausting,’ Jin cut in. ‘How about having a short break, Chief Hou?’

  ‘That’s a wise idea,’ Hou said.

  ‘A good idea,’ Chen echoed. ‘How about us having a meeting later in the afternoon?’

  He thought he understood why Jin did not want to have the discussion continuing in that direction.

  About two hours later, the three of them gathered again in Hou’s suite. A gracious host as before, Hou had dim sum served up from the canteen in a couple of buffet containers, and a pot of Oolong tea placed on the coffee table.

  Outside the window, a sparrow was chirping, pecking at some nondescript stuff, and hopping here and there, before it shot up in a mysterious panic, flashing its gray wings, shrieking. A black dog was pouncing out of nowhere, racing on the remaining white snow, barking violently.

  ‘It definitely calls for a celebration,’ Hou said, all smiles, pouring hot tea out for Chen and Jin.

  ‘Now, with all the pieces gathered,’ Chen said, savoring a spoonful of the shrimp dumpling and taking a leisurely sip of tea, ‘we have a fairly comprehensive grasp of the three murder cases.’

  ‘Finally, the dramatic moment at the ending of Agatha Christie movies! The great independent Belgian detective would come to explain the inexplicable,’ Jin said, looking at Chen sitting by the window, the late-afternoon sun streaming in and caressing his hair like a lover’s soft fingers.

  ‘Who’s Agatha Christie?’ Chen said. ‘I have no time for any light reading. Nor do I know anything about a so-called independent investigation.’

  She giggled, a dimple on her cheek, recognizing his attempt at self-satire, through which he sometimes tried to pull himself out of a dire mood.

  ‘Thanks to Chief Hou’s excellent, effective work,’ Chen said deliberately, ‘our investigation has a successful conclusion.’

  ‘Don’t ever say that to me again, Director Chen,’ Hou said with a sincere air. ‘Even now, I still have no idea how you could have spotted and located Zhou out of the blue. I have just been carrying out your orders in the dark.’

  ‘No, you don’t have to be modest, Hou. From the very beginning, your discussion about the possibility of medical disputes helped tremendously. You exhibited enough supporting details for that scenario. So I was able to plod a long way in that direction, which led to the successful conclusion of the case. What’s more, your argument about medical disputes turning violent in the heat of the moment was highly enlightening. Remember the night we went to the hospital for the first time? We met with Molong, a dutiful son distraught over his mother’s body getting cold, stiff on the hard bench outside the emergency room. I sent Jin to the funeral home on my behalf the next morning, where she found Molong still deeply troubled but calmer. At the same time, she learned in the funeral home that what happened to Molong had happened to a lot of people in the city. They’re so angry, heartbroken. It’s not unimaginable that some of them could lose control, seeking revenge with a logic understandable only to themselves. It’s a common feature of a serial murder case.’

  ‘You threw yourself into the investigation from day one, Director Chen. And you have come such a long way getting to the bottom of the case.’

  ‘But I have to say,’ Chen said, ‘the flower wreath given to Molong’s mother in the name of the city government helped, too. It gave him respect, but it gave me even more, I know only too well about it.’

  ‘Spare me, Director Chen. You have to spare me. All this has never even crossed my mind. As for the wreath, it’s more because I felt bad about dragging you out while you’re still on convalescent leave.’

  ‘Well, back to a topic recurring in our team discussion,’ Chen said. ‘The unimaginable motive for the murderer, who must have been somehow related to the hospital and familiar with the hospital area. Who could that man be?

  ‘It was perhaps another coincidence. In his last days, my father also stayed in the observation area at Renji Hospital – there’s nothing there except several hard benches with a plastic partition. He was not admitted into the emergency room because he was classified as a Black capitalist in the light of Mao’s class-struggle theory. So I had to keep him company in the crowded observation area, perching on a bamboo stool by his bedside, running out for errands, reading.’

  ‘I’m sorry to hear that, Director Chen.’

  ‘So, many years later, walking around the hospital in the last several days, I was suddenly struck with a sense of karma. Instead of being someone living in the neighborhood, the murderer could have been the one keeping a patient company or, for some unknown reason, staying here for a week or so. Consequently, he had become temporarily familiar with the neighborhood, and with the short cuts, too.

  ‘In the meantime, like other people, I have been following the Wuhan situation online. My capable secretary Jin told me the posts she had read about things happening there. One post was about how a middle-aged man swore loudly to avenge his father. An old man in his nineties – possibly Covid positive because of his fitful coughing – was marched into a suffocating Covid transportation bus, in a suffocating plastic uniform, suffered a stroke, and died on the way to the quarantine camp. The son was targeted as a suspect by the Netcops and Big Whites, who followed him twenty-four hours a day, believing he had been doing reconnaissance around the Wuhan hospital. He was about to jump out to attack with a knife in his hand, but he was caught by the police in the nick of time. And Hou, you also told me about something similar happening near Xinhua Hospital in Shanghai.

  ‘Anyway, when these and other pieces were put together, the puzzle began to make sense. Here, I also have to acknowledge Jin’s most valuable work. She helps to organize all the seemingly irrelevant details into an organic whole.’

  ‘Why keep on bringing me into the picture here, Director Chen?’ Jin said bashfully. ‘I have done nothing.’

  ‘No, you have done such a lot, too, Jin,’ Hou said, raising his teacup. ‘A toast to you and your pretty, capable, and devoted secretary!’

  ‘I just have one question, Director Chen,’ Jin said. ‘In the hospital surveillance room, you got a phone call and rushed into action. What happened?’

  ‘Once we started targeting Zhou, I had my long-time partner Detective Yu in the Shanghai Police Bureau gather all the related information concerning Zhou. In the hospital surveillance room, I got Detective Yu’s phone call, saying that Zhou was seen prowling around the hospital in the last couple of days – possibly preparing for another murderous strike.’

  Deep into the night, Chen felt tired yet sleepless, his mind turning into a meandering stream of muddy, troubled water.

  Out of nowhere, an almost-forgotten image of a girl studying English in Bund Park years ago rose to the surface of his memories. It was so inexplicable; they had hardly spoken to each other in the park during those Cultural Revolution days. He did not even know her name. But like her, he’d also been full of youthful idealism and passion long ago …

  Why was he growing so helplessly nostalgic, as Jin had pointed out to him, in the middle of a serial murder investigation, in which he himself was being secretly investigated?

  I grow old … I grow old … though he tried to tell himself he was not exactly old.

  Confucius was right: Time flows away like water.

  The Song dynasty poet Liu Kezhuang was also right.

  Alas, time flows by me like water,

  leaving nothing behind

  to speak of.

  Not until a bookish man gets old,

  the opportunity finally comes to him?

  In the turgid wave of his thoughts, he realized that the opportunity in Liu Kezhuang’s poem referred to the opportunity in his official career, of which the former Chief Inspector Chen no longer dreamed.

  Still, he could have applied the lines to his own situation. But in a way, he could not. To say the least, Liu Kezhuang had left behind these unforgettable lines, which were still so popular among the contemporary Chinese readers today.

  What about Chen himself?

  Not a single line like this for his own redemption.

  But he was not, perhaps, just a bookish poet.

  He thought of Jin in the next room.

  Then the girl in Bund Park became juxtaposed with Jin in his thoughts …

  Day 7

  God remains dead. And we have killed him. How shall we comfort ourselves, the murderers of all murderers? What was holiest and mightiest of all that the world has yet owned has bled to death under our knives: who will wipe this blood off us?

  – Friedrich Nietzsche

  All that has a form is illusive and unreal. When you see that all forms are illusive and unreal, then you will begin to perceive your true Buddha nature.

  – Diamond Sutra

  Es muss sein.

  – Ludwig van Beethoven

  Any moment might be our last. Everything is more beautiful because we’re doomed. You will never be lovelier than you are now. We will never be here again.

  – Homer

  A little girl was suffering from stomach flu or acute appendicitis in our neighborhood, crying and yelling with pain in the apartment which had its door nailed up from outside. All the begging to the neighborhood committee and Big Whites failed to work. They would not budge from the regulations of the zero-Covid policy. And stomachache could not convince the hospital to send an ambulance – not in the Covid days.

  Driven crazy, her mother made a desperate decision: they would try to slide down from the back window to the backyard, which was partially covered with the subdivision wall, and then they could sneak out. So she tied the little girl to her back, rolled two bed sheets into a sort of rope, with which she climbed out of the window.

  But the unimaginable happened. The rope snapped halfway down. The mother and the daughter fell from up high, their skulls crushed into a scarlet pulp on the ground. In the dark, one neighbor was heard declaring, ‘If I had been the husband and father, I would never have forgiven myself if I hadn’t killed the head of the neighborhood committee in revenge.’

  – The Wuhan File

  Chen rose, stretched with a yawn, and looked out of the hotel window, still rubbing his sleepy eyes. Overnight, the snow had mostly melted away.

  Just as he was ready to go down to the hotel canteen for breakfast, Hou came to knock on his door, breaking the week-long convention between the two, and asked him to step over to his suite alone.

  ‘Have a cup of coffee with me, Director Chen,’ Hou said. ‘I’m sorry to knock on your door so early.’

  ‘No need to be sorry. I have already been up for a while.’

  ‘As you might have supposed, I reported the successful conclusion of the case to the city government last night and had a long discussion with the leading comrades there. So here is a draft of the official statement that will be made in the name of the city government. Take a look, Director Chen.’

  Hou held out two pieces of paper, which Chen took into his hand.

  ‘This is so quick, efficient, Hou. You must have worked late into the night.’

  ‘It wasn’t just me, but the mayor and his colleagues as well. And I have to say, they did the writing, not I.’

  Thanks to the hard, effective work of the special investigation team under Comrade Hou of the Shanghai City Government, and thanks to the brilliant strategic help from Director Chen Cao (the first consultant of the team, none other than our legendary former Chief Inspector Chen) and his capable assistant Jin, the Renji Hospital murder cases have been brought to a successful conclusion—

  ‘Wait a little here, Director Chen. The investigation has been carried out entirely under your guidance, and I raised the point two or three times to them, but …’ Hou stammered in genuine embarrassment.

  ‘Nothing wrong about it, Hou. It’s all to the credit of the Shanghai City Government that the difficult investigation has been successfully carried out in the time of Covid.’

  Chen continued reading. According to the statement, the culprit, surnamed Zhou, who was responsible for the first and second murders, had confessed that he’d intended to carry out a series of muggings in the chaotic situation around the hospital. Hospital staff usually worked late, and there were few people moving around the neighborhood at night. Little did he think the muggings could have gone so disastrously wrong.

  The first victim, who looked like a distinguished doctor from a distance, turned round to fight back fiercely as Zhou crept up from behind. At the same time, two or three people happened to be getting out of a black car that had just pulled up near the front entrance of the hospital. So Zhou had no choice but to kill him hastily with a heavy steel rod concealed in his long overcoat, delivering vicious blows to the head of the victim before the others could have hurried over.

  As for the second victim, she was a young nurse who happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time. Waiting for another opportunity to mug a member of the hospital staff late at night, Zhou caught a glimpse of her emerging out and turning into a side street with no one else visible. As he came closer, however, she started screaming hysterically. Once again, Zhou had no choice but to silence her with the steel rod and run away.

  Empty-handed after the two unsuccessful attempts, Zhou was making plans to strike out for a third time when the police burst into his room.

  In the next part of the city government’s statement, Chen read that the third murder case turned out to be unrelated to the first two. It was a copycat murder committed in an impulsive moment. That was why the police had initially been led in the wrong direction.

  With numerous fights breaking out about relocation and compensation in the course of Shanghai’s urban developments, the scenario of the third case sounded fairly credible. Especially because a detailed interview given by the Red Dust Neighborhood Committee was also published in Wenhui Daily, along with a picture of the neighborhood cadres, the local police, and Chen, Hou, and Jin from the special team, standing together, all smiling proudly, in front of Red Dust Neighborhood Committee with the office sign shining in the background. The picture carried a caption underneath: At the conclusion of Big-headed Wu’s murder case.

  Chen did not make an instant response when he finished reading through the statement and the other material.

  Draining his cold coffee in one gulp, Chen started with a sarcastic smile, ‘True, I may have made one or two suggestions during the investigation, but as for the investigation as depicted in the official statement, I don’t think I should have been mentioned at all, as you may well understand.’

  ‘Your contribution to the successful conclusion has to be mentioned – no, not just mentioned, but emphasized, Director Chen. As our mayor pointed out in the meeting, the statement with your name on it will go a long way toward reassuring the people of Shanghai, and much more so now, with the Covid lockdown looming over the city. In our final analysis of the serial murder case, we have to take the bigger picture into consideration. In your interview with Zhou, you, too, touched on the importance of looking at the bigger picture.’