Becoming Inspector Chen Read online

  Contents

  Cover

  Also by Qiu Xiaolong

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Dedication

  Acknowledgments

  Epigraph

  Chapter One

  Confidence First Gained

  Fall of a Red Guard

  Chapter Two

  Because of Doctor Zhivago I

  Chapter Three

  Bund Park

  Evidence of Youth

  Chapter Four

  In the Imperial Shadow of Beijing Library

  Chapter Five

  Decision in the Dark

  Chapter Six

  Being and Becoming

  Chapter Seven

  Long Chain of Karma

  Chapter Eight

  Because of Doctor Zhivago II

  Merry Go Round

  Chapter Nine

  Also by Qiu Xiaolong

  The Inspector Chen mysteries

  DEATH OF A RED HEROINE

  A LOYAL CHARACTER DANCER

  WHEN RED IS BLACK

  A CASE OF TWO CITIES

  RED MANDARIN DRESS

  THE MAO CASE

  YEARS OF RED DUST (short story collection)

  DON’T CRY, TAI LAKE

  THE ENIGMA OF CHINA

  SHANGHAI REDEMPTION

  HOLD YOUR BREATH, CHINA *

  * available from Severn House

  BECOMING INSPECTOR CHEN

  Qiu Xiaolong

  This ebook is copyright material and must not be copied, reproduced, transferred, distributed, leased, licensed or publicly performed or used in any way except as specifically permitted in writing by the publishers, as allowed under the terms and conditions under which it was purchased or as strictly permitted by applicable copyright law. Any unauthorised distribution or use of this text may be a direct infringement of the author’s and publisher’s rights and those responsible may be liable in law accordingly.

  This first world edition published 2020

  in Great Britain and 2021 in the USA by

  SEVERN HOUSE PUBLISHERS LTD of

  Eardley House, 4 Uxbridge Street, London W8 7SY.

  Trade paperback edition first published

  in Great Britain and the USA 2021 by

  SEVERN HOUSE PUBLISHERS LTD.

  This eBook edition first published in 2021 by Severn House Digital

  an imprint of Severn House Publishers Limited.

  Copyright © 2020 by Qiu Xiaolong.

  All rights reserved including the right of reproduction in whole or in part in any form. The right of Qiu Xiaolong to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs & Patents Act 1988.

  British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data

  A CIP catalogue record for this title is available from the British Library.

  ISBN-13: 978-0-7278-9044-3 (cased)

  ISBN-13: 978-1-78029-753-8 (trade paper)

  ISBN-13: 978-1-4483-0491-2 (e-book)

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Except where actual historical events and characters are being described for the storyline of this novel, all situations in this publication are fictitious and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events or locales is purely coincidental.

  This eBook produced by

  Palimpsest Book Production Limited,

  Falkirk, Stirlingshire, Scotland

  To Guangming and Peiqin, whose friendship has sustained me through all these years.

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  I want to thank my editor Carl Smith, who helped to shape this book.

  ‘This process of coming to see other human beings as “one of us” rather than as “them” is a matter of detailed description of what unfamiliar people are like and of redescription of what we ourselves are like.’

  – Richard Rorty, Contingency, Irony, and Solidarity

  ‘When the true is false, the false is true: / where is nothing, there is everything.’

  – Cao Xueqin, Dream of the Red Chamber

  ‘It is a long night that there are so many dreams.’

  – An old Chinese saying

  ONE

  Chen Cao woke with a start in the night.

  In the dream scene fast fading into the surrounding darkness, he appears to be fastening a bronze name plaque to the door of a large office in the Shanghai Police Bureau. He studies the impressive title under his name on the plaque, whistling with a touch of satisfaction, when a headless figure creeps up from behind with a long iron chain trailing, rattling along the corridor—

  ‘Chief Inspector Chen,’ he murmured to himself, shaking his head before letting his glance sweep around the dark, dilapidated attic, and adding in self-satire, ‘of the Shanghai Police Bureau.’

  Still dream-disoriented, he had no idea of the time. He must have left his watch on the wooden dining table downstairs. It was still early – it was pitch black outside the crouching-tiger-shaped window. He decided not to climb down the squeaky ladder. The last thing he wanted was to wake his mother, sleeping beneath the attic.

  He had been sleeping badly of late. Because of too many things on his mind? The dream fragments about the new office seemed not to be totally irrelevant.

  After so many years, he found himself back in the retrofitted attic. It seemed so strange, distant, as if from another life. Sighing, he stared up at the low, depressing ceiling.

  The nightmare had most likely originated from the whispered speculations in the police bureau that he, once a well-known, well-connected Party-member chief inspector, had fallen out of favor – irrecoverably? – with the Party authorities in Beijing. It was because of the conclusion he had pushed for regarding a recent serial murder case linked to China’s disastrous air pollution. In the official newspapers, the conclusion of the bizarre case was at first commended as another coup for the legendary inspector, but it did not take long for top Party leaders to find reasons to be upset with the way Chief Inspector Chen had brought about a ‘successful’ end to the investigation. ‘It’s not in the interests of the Party, not at all, considering its political ramifications,’ they maintained in the Forbidden City. So they were said to be more than ready to remove him from the position.

  It was not the first time he had gotten into trouble for walking a thin, treacherous line in his investigations, but this time it came with an astonishing price tag.

  ‘In accordance with the new governmental regulation, I’m sorry to say, Chief Inspector Chen, that your medical insurance policy can no longer cover the nursing home expense for your mother,’ Party Secretary Li Guohua, the number one Party boss of the police bureau, had informed him in the corridor outside his office while stroking his chin thoughtfully.

  It was little wonder. The governmental regulation concerning the insurance policy was made according to people’s position in the Party system. And as they both knew only too well, it was about to be announced that Chen would soon be deprived of his position as chief inspector, not to mention the possibility of a more severe punishment being in store for him.

  The soaring nursing home expense was more than he could afford. So he’d had to talk to his mother about moving her to his apartment, but she’d insisted on moving back to her old home instead, which had just one small shikumen room under the attic.

  ‘In the nursing home, I have dreamed of it so much. Shortly after your father and I came back from the US, we moved into this tiny yet cozy room, you know. Indeed, so many memories of these years have accumulated here. Don’t worry about me. I can still take good care of myself. If anything, I’ll ca
ll you with the cellphone you bought for me. It’s proper and right for me to spend my remaining days in the old home.’

  That sounded ominous to him. He suspected her decision was made more out of her unwillingness to be too much of a burden to him at his apartment, where she said he should have peace and quiet for his important work. In a matter of days, however, that so-called important work would be taken away from him. He had chosen not to tell her anything about his trouble, though.

  Consequently, he had to make frequent visits to her. Late last night, after getting a bagful of the take-out specials from Peiqin’s restaurant, he had come over to her place.

  She looked so fragile in the trembling ring of the dim, yellowish lamplight – like a piece of Ming dynasty china in a museum. Consumed with guilt, he stayed on until after she finished the meal and washed the dishes for her. It then started raining outside. She wanted him to stay overnight.

  ‘You sleep in the attic. Just like in the old days.’

  To his confusion, the once-familiar attic had an immediate inexplicable effect on him. Looking around, he felt utterly bewildered, with the fragments of the past and the present juxtaposed for him in the dark. He could not help getting sentimental, reminiscing under the surreal spell of the old room. In a corner near the foot of the mattress, a lone cobweb stretched out of the dust. Amidst it the half-forgotten details started resurfacing in the ripples of the night …

  How long ago was the night that he had lain in the attic thinking about the imminent prospect of chief inspectorship in the police bureau?

  And that long-ago night had seemed so much like this night, he recollected: waking from a dream, wondering how he had come all this way, to the eve of becoming an inspector, and what he could possibly do with himself at the start of his new career.

  A new Party policy in the mid-eighties had urged the promotion of young Party-member intellectuals to higher cadre positions in the system. ‘You are the youngest in the police bureau history,’ Party Secretary Li had said to him at the time.

  In addition to the new policy, the promotion had materialized on account of the successful conclusion of a case involving the murder of an old gourmet that he had helped with in Red Dust Lane. It was nonetheless an unexpected advancement, considering his lack of proper training in the police field, what with his major in English literature and his aspiration to be a poet.

  Ironic as it might have seemed, it was from another unexpected, though well-meant, interference by an overseas Chinese ‘uncle’ during the process of the state-job assignment for college graduates that had landed him a job at the Shanghai Police Bureau in the first place. And then, with another twist in the changing political discourse of China’s reform under Comrade Deng Xiaoping, Chen had stood out as a most promising candidate for the chief inspectorship in light of the new cadre promotion policy, as few young people were credited with higher education in the police force at that time.

  Party Secretary Li had rushed him through the application to the CCP membership; failing that, Li insisted, a chief inspector position would never have been imaginable for a young man like Chen.

  In retrospect, how many other unbelievable changes had since taken place in China? Just like the Tang dynasty poem by Du Fu about the shifting clouds in the blue sky, one moment looking like a white shirt, and the next changing into a black dog.

  And these changes had changed Chen too.

  Now he had come full circle. From the eve of his becoming a chief inspector, to a night that witnessed him drawing nearer to the end of his career. And in the same old attic, he whistled lightly, managing to pull his train of thought back to the present.

  Earlier in the day, Party Secretary Li had mentioned a case to him, though it was not one meant for him, they both knew.

  ‘It really takes a poet / inspector to figure out a case of poetry interpretation, right?’

  The sarcasm in Li’s comment seemed so subtle, but nonetheless palpable. Chen’s removal from his position had not been announced yet, but there was no helping him. Internal Security had started investigating the case in question, which had been turned over from the Webcops. It was said to involve an anti-Party poem posted on WeTalk, one of the most popular social media networks with more than a billion users in China. It was out of the question for a politically unreliable man like Chen to deal with such a case at this critical moment.

  Still, could there be something else in Li’s choosing to bring up the case with him?

  Detective Yu, his friend and long-time partner, chose to share that question.

  ‘I’ll take a look into the case, Chief. Internal Security needs help from us, so I should be able to find something out. I don’t think Party Secretary Li would have mentioned the case to you for nothing. People may say all kinds of things about your position in the bureau. It’s not over until it’s officially announced, as we all know.’

  Chen doubted it, making no response to Detective Yu’s assertion. It seemed to be a foregone conclusion to him, whatever he might try to do for himself.

  A couple of lines from a Song dynasty poem flashed through his mind:

  Long, long I lament about the lacking

  of a true self for me to claim.

  When can I ever forget

  about all the cares of the world?

  The night deep, the wind still, no ripple on the river.

  Shu Shi had written the poem in exile, after waking from a drunken stupor.

  Whatever had happened to Chen over the years, the soon-to-be-ex-chief inspector did not think he could really complain. But how could he have gone from a ‘black puppy’ to a chief inspector, only to now be fired from the position?

  It was a journey such as he had never visualized for himself in his middle school or college days. And he remained astonished, exhausted even, at the thought of it. Life is like a poorly written mystery, but even more absurd, bizarre and suspenseful.

  That all accounted for his dreaming of his long-ago promotion in the police bureau. But what about the headless monster pulling an iron chain? Possibly something from his deep-rooted, though well-covered, insecurity. From his early childhood, he had found himself lacking in self-confidence, suffering a sort of inferiority complex owing to his black family background in the light of Mao’s class struggle theory.

  Unbelievable as it might have appeared, the first time for him to gain confidence in anything actually occurred in a hospital at the beginning of the Cultural Revolution in 1966.

  But he immediately started to doubt himself, tossing and turning on the mattress as he tried to recapture the details. Could it have been somewhere else? Or was there more than one hospital? Still, what his mother had said to him that long-ago afternoon seemed not to be totally unrelated.

  He was getting increasingly confused. He stared at the stains on the attic ceiling, as if they could somehow provide meaningful clues to the mystery of those bygone days. Then more torn fragments of the past began to emerge out of the dark and, even more to his befuddlement, to converge into a sequence with a pattern unrecognized before.

  The shapes of the stains shifting in nightly shadows reminded him of something he had seen long ago: a piece of blood-speckled gauze, and a gray lizard with a strange name he failed to recollect …

  Confidence First Gained

  In the early days of the Cultural Revolution that broke out in 1966, a common scene in China was the ‘revolutionary mass criticism’ staged against ‘class enemies’.

  There was no official definition of the nationwide movement. To begin with, it had little to do with ‘criticism’ in the proper sense of the word. It came closer, if anything, to public denunciation and humiliation of the target in question. Among the accepted rationales for the new trend, one of them was to rally the proletariat and to demoralize the ‘class enemies’, which also gave rise to a variety of interpretations. In the light of Mao’s class theory, the struggle between socialism and capitalism will exist throughout a long, long period of history unti
l the final realization of communism for the whole of mankind. For the proletariat, the class enemies in China include landlords, rich farmers, counter-revolutionaries, bad elements and rightists in the late 1950s, and then for the expanded category during the Cultural Revolution, capitalists, unreformed bourgeois intellectuals, historical counter-revolutionaries and capitalist-roaders, the last being a newly coined term in reference to ‘the Party officials pushing along the capitalist road against Chairman Mao’.

  As a rule, the format of the revolutionary mass criticism involved the class enemies being marched onto a temporary stage, or into a cordoned-off open space, under a large portrait of Mao, with their heads bent low in repentance, weighed down by blackboards hung around their necks sporting their names written and crossed out – and for a possible variation, further demonized with tall white paper hats on their heads, symbolic of evils from the netherworld. Red Guard organizations made indignant denouncements on the stage, with the audience shouting slogans in thunderous response and raising their fists high in the air. A much-talked-about example might well illustrate it. Liu Shaoqi, the Chairman of the People’s Republic of China, seen at the time as the arch rival to Mao Zedong, the Chairman of the Chinese Communist Party, had to face the revolutionary mass criticism, along with his wife, Wang Guangmei, groveling beside him wearing a badly torn, bosom-revealing mandarin dress and a necklace made of ping pong balls – the dress and necklace being emblematic of bourgeois decadency. In the heat of the revolutionary mass criticism, some of the class enemies were savagely beaten, and quite a number of them beaten to death.

  For a teenager like Chen Cao, a lot of things appeared to be baffling. Before 1949, his father had studied and taught at an American college, hence was an ‘unreformed bourgeois intellectual’ in the eyes of Mao’s class system, even though he had come back to China and started teaching in a Chinese university. At the beginning of the Cultural Revolution he was seen as a ‘black monster with problems in the past and the present’ because of his international fame as a Neo-Confucian scholar. As a result, he was deprived of the right to teach. He had to undergo the ‘reformation through hard labor’ and work like a janitor. What’s worse, he had to go through one revolutionary mass criticism after another.