"Red Mandarin Dress" - читать интересную книгу автора (Xiaolong Qiu)

FOUR

DETECTIVE YU CAME HOME later than usual.

Peiqin was washing her hair in a plastic basin on a folding table near the common sink, in the common kitchen area shared by the five families on the first floor. He slowed to a stop by her side. Looking up with her hair covered in soap bubbles, she motioned to him to move into their room.

In the room, the table held a platter of rice cakes fried with shredded pork and pickled cabbage. He’d had a couple of steamed buns earlier, so he thought he might have a cake later as a nighttime snack. Their son Qinqin was studying late at school, as usual, preparing for the college entrance examination.

Yu felt exhausted at the sight of their bed, with the dragon-and-phoenix-embroidered cotton padded quilt already spread out, the soft white pillow set against the headboard. Without taking off his shoes, he dumped himself across the quilt. After two or three minutes he sat up again, and leaning against the hard headboard, produced a cigarette. Peiqin would not come in for a while, he guessed, and he needed to think.

Smoking, he found his thoughts still stuck, as though in a pail of frozen glue. So he tried to review the work already done on the mandarin dress murders.

The whole bureau had been bubbling like a pot of boiling water. Theories were advanced. Cases were quoted. Arguments were pushed. Everybody appeared well-informed on the case.

Party Secretary Li’s insistence on the “reliance-on-people approach” hadn’t worked. The neighborhood committees accosted a large number of people seen in the vicinity and asked them to provide alibis, but that hadn’t led to anything. That was no surprise.

In the sixties and seventies, the committees had been an effective government watchdog because of the housing conditions and the ration-coupon system. When a dozen families lived together in a shikumen house, sharing one kitchen and yard, neighbors watched one another, and because the food and grocery ration coupons were distributed by the neighborhood committees, the committees’ power over residents was enormous. But with the improvement in housing conditions and abolishment of the ration coupons, committees no longer found it easy to monitor a resident’s life. They could still be somewhat effective in the remaining old neighborhoods of ramshackle overcrowded shikumen houses, but this killer apparently lived in a different environment, enjoying both space and privacy. In the mid-nineties, a neighborhood cadre could no longer so easily barge into a family’s life as during the years of Mao’s class struggle.

Inspector Liao’s revision was of little help. While his material profile narrowed the range of suspects, none of those with previous history of sex crimes met all of Liao’s specified conditions. Most of them were poor, just two or three lived by themselves, and only one, a taxi driver, had access to a car.

Their research into the red mandarin dress also failed to go anywhere. They sent out a notice to all the factories and workshops that made mandarin dresses, requesting any related information, but so far they had received nothing about that particular dress.

With each passing day, the possibility of another victim loomed closer.

Yu was gazing through a smoke ring from his cigarette, as if flying invisible darts, when he heard Peiqin pouring water down the kitchen sink. He ground out the cigarette and put the ashtray away.

He didn’t need her to start harping on his smoking tonight. He wanted to discuss the case with her. She had helped with his previous investigations-in her way. This time, she at least could tell him more about the dress. Like other Shanghai women, she liked shopping, though she was mostly confined to window-shopping.

Peiqin poked her head into the room.

“You look beat, Yu. Why not turn in for an early night? I’ll dry my hair quick and join you in a minute.”

He undressed, climbed into bed, and shivered under the chilly quilt, but it did not take long for him to feel warm and comfortable, expecting her.

She hurried in, treading barefoot on the wooden floor. Lifting the quilt, she slid in beside him, her feet touching his, still cold.

“Would you like a hot water bottle, Peiqin?”

“No, I have you.” She clung closer against him. “When Qinqin goes to college, there’ll be only two of us here, an empty old nest.”

“You don’t have to worry,” he said, noticing a single white hair at her temple. He took the opportunity to lead the talk in the direction planned. “You still look so young and handsome.”

“You don’t have to flatter me like that.”

“I saw a mandarin dress in a store window today. It would become you nicely, I believe. Have you worn one before?”

“Come on, Yu. Have you ever seen me wearing a mandarin dress? In our middle school days, such a garment was out of the question, decadent and bourgeois and whatnot. Then we both went to the godforsaken army farm in Yunnan, wearing the same imitation army uniform for ten years. When we came back, we didn’t even have a proper wardrobe for ourselves under your father’s roof. You have never paid any proper attention to me, husband.”

“Now with a room for ourselves, I can try to do better in the future.”

“But why are you suddenly paying attention to a mandarin dress? Oh, I know. Another case of yours. The red mandarin dress case, I’ve heard of it.”

“Surely you know something about the dress. Maybe you examined one in a store.”

“Once or twice, perhaps, but I never go into any of those fancy stores. Do you think a mandarin dress would fit me-a middle-aged woman working in a shabby restaurant?”

“Why not?” Yu said, his hand tracing the familiar curves on her body.

“No, don’t sweet-talk like your chief inspector. It’s not a dress for a working woman. Not for me, in that tingsijian office smeared all over with wok fumes and coal soot. I saw a long article about mandarin dresses in a fashion magazine. Why the style has suddenly become so popular again, I can’t figure out. But tell me about your case.”

So he summed up what he and his colleagues had done, focusing more or less on the failure of routine police procedure.

At the end of his summary, she said quietly, “Have you discussed it with Chen?”

“We talked on the phone yesterday. He’s on vacation, working on a literature paper with a so-called deconstructive approach. About the case, he just mumbled several psychological terms, probably from his mystery translations.”

“Chen can be like that,” she said. “If the murderer is a nut, it can be really difficult, since he acts out of a logic comprehensible only to himself.”

He waited for her to go on, but she didn’t seem to be concentrating on the discussion.

“What about your chief inspector’s literature program?” she asked, changing the subject unexpectedly. “Do you think he’s going for a career change?”

“He’s unpredictable,” Yu said. “I don’t know.”

“He may be facing a midlife crisis-too much work and stress, and no one there for him back at home. Is he still seeing that young girl, White Cloud?”

“No, I don’t think so. He’s never talked to me about her.”

“But the girl had a crush on him.”

“How do you know?”

“The way she helped take care of his mother during his delegation trip.”

“Well, that Big Buck could have paid her.”

“No, she did a lot of things she didn’t have to just for the sake of money,” she said. “The old woman likes her a lot too. A college student, clever and presentable. In the old woman’s eyes, she must be a good choice. And he is a very dutiful son.”

“That he is. He keeps talking to me about his not having provided better care for his mother, about his having let her down by not following in the academic footsteps of his father and by not having had a family of his own.”

“When he called in yesterday, we talked a little. He explained that his decision to enroll in the special program was partially made for her. In spite of her deteriorating health, she’s still worried about him. He thought that, if he could do little to change his bachelor status, then at least an MA degree might comfort the old woman a bit.”

“According to a fortune-teller, he has no peach-blossom luck,” Yu said, sighing. “Like in a Chinese proverb, one with good luck in their career may have none in love.”

“Come on. He’s had his share of peach-blossom luck. Like his HCC girlfriend in Beijing. Things just didn’t work out. Still, White Cloud could be the one.”

“I’m not surprised about her crush, but I don’t think it will happen. There are so many rivals watching over him. What happens when they find out about her K girl background?”

“She might have worked as a karaoke girl, but a number of college students work at jobs like that today. It shouldn’t matter much, as long as she didn’t go all the way, and I don’t think she did,” Peiqin said. “What matters is whether she will make him a good wife. Clever, young, and practical, she may be a good match for your bookish boss. It’s not just his rivals that matter, though. I don’t know if he himself is capable of disassociating her from her K girl experience.”

“You are so perceptive, my wife.”

“It’s time for him to settle down with a family. He cannot remain single forever. It’s not good for his health either. And I don’t just mean somebody taking care of him at home.”

“Now you are talking like his mother, Peiqin.”

“As his partner, you have to help him.”

“You are right, but at the moment, I wish he could help me.”

“Oh, the red mandarin dress case. Sorry about the digression,” she said. “That case is urgent. You have to stop the perpetrator before he kills again. So what’s your direction?”

“We don’t have a workable direction,” he said. “And it’s the first case for me as acting head of the squad. I don’t think Liao is going to get anywhere with his routine focus. So I think I have to try something different.”

“You saw a mandarin dress in a store-not for me, for your case,” she said with a smile. “Perhaps more than one store. What did the clerks tell you?”

“Liao and I both visited boutiques specializing in the dress, as well as high-end department stores which carry them, but none of them carried such an old-fashioned mandarin dress. According to the store clerks, no store in the city would stock anything close to it. The specific style is too old. At least ten years old. In the mid-nineties, a mandarin dress usually comes with higher thigh-revealing slits and more sensual curves. It’s sleeveless and sometimes backless too, not at all like the ones on the victims.”

“Do you have a picture of the mandarin dress with you?”

“Yes,” Yu said, taking several photographs out of the folder on the nightstand.

“The dress may be worth further study,” she said thoughtfully, examining the pictures closely. “Also, there might have been something about the first victim which sent the murderer over the edge.”

“I’ve thought about that too,” Yu said. “Before his first psychopathic action, before he turned into a nut, his initial attack-the one on Jasmine-could have been triggered by something in her, something still comprehensible to us.”

As always, the discussion with Peiqin helped. Especially with regard to Jasmine. Yu had talked to Liao about it, but Liao insisted that his squad had already done a thorough job checking on her background and that there would be no point in repeating the effort. Lying beside Peiqin, however, Yu decided he would reexamine her file the next day.

Stretching himself under the quilt, his feet touched hers again. Slightly sweaty, he reached to caress her hair, his hand gradually moving down.

“Qinqin may come back soon,” she said, sitting up. “I’ll warm the cake in the microwave for you. You have not had your dinner yet, and we both have to get up early tomorrow.”

He was disappointed. But he would have to go into the bureau for an early morning teleconference tomorrow, and he was tired.