Enigma of China (2 page)

“Come back to the bureau, Chief Inspector Chen. We’re having an emergency meeting. Liao and Wei are with me at my office.”

Inspector Liao was the head of the homicide squad, and his assistant, Detective Wei, was a veteran police officer who had joined the force at about the same time as Chen.

“I’m attending a meeting at the Writers’ Association, Party Secretary Li.”

“You are truly versatile, Poet Chen. But ours is a most special case.”

Chen detected a sarcastic note in Li’s voice, even though the phrase “a most special case” sounded like a typical cliché from the Party boss. Once a sort of mentor to Chen in bureau politics, Li now saw him more and more as a rival.

“What case?”

“Zhou Keng committed suicide while in the Moller Villa Hotel.”

“Zhou Keng-I don’t think I know who that is.”

“You’ve never heard about him?”

“The name sounds familiar, but sorry, I can’t recall anything.”

“You must have been working too hard on your poetry, Chief Inspector Chen. Let me put you on speaker phone, and Detective Wei will fill you in.”

The deep voice of Wei took over. “Zhou Keng was the director of the Shanghai Housing Development Committee,” Wei stated. “About two weeks ago, he was targeted in a ‘human-flesh search,’ or crowd-sourced investigation, on the Internet. As a result, a number of his corrupt practices were exposed. Zhou was then shuangguied and kept at the hotel, where he hanged himself last night.”

Another characteristic of China’s socialism was its reliance on shuanggui, a sort of extralegal detention by the Party disciplinary bodies. The practice began as a response to the uncontrollable corruption of the one-party system. Initially, the word meant “two specifics”: a Party official implicated in a criminal or corruption probe would be detained in a specific (gui) place and for a specific (
gui
) period of time. The Chinese constitution stipulated that all forms of detention had to be authorized in a law passed by the National People’s Congress, and yet shuanggui took place regularly, despite never having had such authorization. Shuanggui also had no time limit or established legal procedure. From time to time, senior Party officials vanished into shuanggui, and no information was made available to the police or media. In theory, officials caught up in the extrajudicial twilight zone of shuanggui were supposed to merely make themselves available to the Party investigation and, once that was concluded, to be released. More often than not, however, they were handed over to the government prosecutors months or even years later for a show trial and predetermined punishment. The authorities claimed that shuanggui was an essential element of the legal system, not an aberration to be corrected. More importantly, shuanggui prevented any dirty details from being revealed and tarnishing the Party’s image, Chen reflected, since everything was under the strict control of Party authorities.

A shuanggui case wasn’t in the domain of the police.

“Because of his position and because of the sensitivity of the case, we have to investigate and conclude that it was suicide,” Li cut in mechanically, as if suddenly a recording of readings from the
People’s Daily
had been switched on. “The situation is complicated. The Party authorities want us on high alert.”

“Since Liao and Wei are working on it, why am I needed?”

“As the most experienced inspector in our bureau, you have to be there. We understand that you’re busy, so we’ll let the homicide squad take care of it. Most of it. Still, you must serve as a special consultant to the investigation. That will demonstrate our bureau’s serious attention to the anticorruption case. Everyone knows that you are our deputy Party secretary.”

Chen listened in silence while he lit a cigarette and inhaled deeply. Then he remembered.

“Zhou. A crowd-sourced investigation. It was because of a pack of cigarettes.”

“Exactly: 95 Supreme Majesty. A picture of it online started the investigation, which resulted in a disastrous scandal. We can spare you the details,” Li concluded promptly. “You’ll consult with the homicide squad.”

“But I don’t know anything else about the case.”

“Well, you know about the background, and that’s important, very important.”

Chen had merely glanced at an article in a local newspaper. It was just out of curiosity that he even remembered the term “human-flesh search.” It was something connected with the Internet; that had been about all he could figure out at the time. A considerable number of Internet terms had started popping up in Chinese, their meanings barely comprehensible to non-netizens like himself.

Apparently, the case was a political one. A government official who fell dramatically as a result of scandal and later died while in shuanggui. It was a case that could easily lead to wild and widespread speculation.

But what about Li’s insistence that Chen serve as a consultant? Presumably it was a gesture on Li’s part. Zhou had been a high-profile Party cadre, so assigning Chen to the case underscored the fact that the bureau was taking a major investigation seriously.

“You said that Zhou committed suicide in a hotel?” Chen said.

“Yes.”

“Which one?”

“Moller Villa Hotel, the one on the corner of Shanxi and Yan’an Roads.”

“Then I don’t have to come back to the bureau. I’ll go there directly. It’s close. Are any of our people on the scene?”

“None of ours. But two teams are already there. One from the Shanghai Party Discipline Committee and a special team from the city government. They had checked into the hotel with Zhou at the very beginning of shuanggui.”

That could be something. A shuanggui investigation was usually the job of the Party Discipline bodies. There was no need for both the city government and the Party Discipline Committee to have people stationed there, especially now, with the police department involved.

“Well-” Chen said instead, “When will you will be there, Wei?”

“I’m leaving right now.”

“I’ll meet you there.”

Chen hung up and ground out the cigarette on a rock. He was ready to leave when he glimpsed the young journalist named Lianping walking around the pond, heading back into the hall, possibly for an article in
Wenhui
about the association meeting. She was speaking into a dainty cell phone.

There was a flash of a blue jay’s wings in the light overhead, and Lianping’s face blossomed into a bright smile. Chen was reminded of a poem by Lu You from the Song dynasty. It wasn’t one precisely suited for the occasion, except perhaps for the lines,
The ripples that once reflected her arrival / light-footed, in such beauty / as to shame wild geese into fleeing
.

He shook his head in self-mockery at his thinking of romantic lines when he was starting a major investigation. Perhaps, as An had just teased, he wasn’t meant to be a cop.

On second thought, he decided to go back to the meeting as he’d originally intended. After all, he was only a consultant to the investigation. There was no point in getting to the hotel before the homicide squad.

TWO

The Moller Villa Hotel was one of the so-called elite hotels in Shanghai. It stood on the corner of Yan’an and Shanxi Road and was meticulously preserved because of its history.

Eric Moller, a businessman who had made his fortune through horse- and dog-racing in Shanghai, had the fairy-tale-like mansion built in the thirties. It was designed in accordance with a dream of his young daughter. It turned out to be an architectural fantasy. It sported a northern European style, with Asian elements blended in, such as glazed tiles, colorful bricks, and even a crouching-tiger-shaped attic window, like those commonly seen in Shanghai shikumen. After 1949, it was used as a government office. Eventually the mansion was turned into an elite hotel, at which point it was completely redecorated and refurbished, its interior design and original details painstakingly restored. A new building in the same style was added next to it.

Chen must have passed by this corner numerous times, but he’d never paid any real attention to it, despite its recent rediscovery in the collective nostalgia that gripped the city.

Two uniformed security men guarded the entrance, standing alongside a pair of crouching stone lions.

He walked in and through to building B, located at the back. This was the new building made in fastidious imitation of the original, a three-story red brick villa with arched attic windows. Another uniformed security man sitting at a desk asked Chen to show his ID. The guard looked up at Chen, at the ID picture, then recorded the ID number in a register and made a phone call to someone inside before letting him pass.

The atmosphere of a fairy castle seemed to be completely lacking.

“Room 302,” the security man said. “They’re waiting for you.”

Chen went up to the third floor, which consisted of only six attic rooms, each sporting an art deco window in the original style. He stopped in front of room 302 and knocked on the door. Detective Wei opened the door for him, holding a mobile phone in his hand. There were two others, neither of them from the police department.

Chen hadn’t worked with Detective Wei before, though they had known each other for a long time. A hard-working cop, practical and experienced, Wei hadn’t had an easy time in his career, and on occasion Wei apparently spoke less than highly of Chen’s work.

“This is Comrade Jiang Ke, of the Shanghai city government,” Wei said, introducing a wiry man in his late forties or early fifties with a disproportionately wide forehead. “And this is Comrade Liu Dehua, of the Party Discipline Committee.”

Chen shook hands with both of them. Jiang was the deputy director of the city government, known as a shrewd, scheming man and one of the most powerful confidants of Qiangyu, the first Party secretary of Shanghai. Liu was an elderly-looking man, short, feeble, bald, and with a slight suggestion of a limp. He seemed to be more self-effacing by contrast, possibly because he’d already reached retirement age.

Behind them was the body of Zhou, which had been taken down from a noose dangling from an exposed ceiling beam. His face looked distorted, his mouth twisted as if in a sinister final question never to be answered, one eye still slightly open. Judging from the rigor mortis in Zhou’s body, Chen guessed the time of death was late last night.

It was ironic, Chen observed, that in a city in which it was extremely difficult to find an exposed beam from which to hang oneself, Zhou happened to be detained in one of the few rooms with original beams “preserved” in the old style.

It’s not you that chose the beam, / but the beam chose you.
A couple of lines came echoing out of nowhere, but Chen failed to recall the author.

What thoughts would have come across Zhou’s mind at the sight of the rope dangling in the last minutes of his life? It wasn’t hard to understand the rationale behind his suicide. A Party cadre, at the peak of his successful career, tripped up because of a pack of cigarettes, had fallen headlong into an infinite abyss, from which he saw no hope for a comeback.

“I’m glad you’re here, Chief Inspector Chen,” Jiang said cordially.

Chen had met Jiang a couple of times at city government meetings but had never been formally introduced. Liu smiled beside him, nodding without saying anything. Chen had a feeling that Jiang was the one that dominated here.

“Both Liu and I have talked to the hotel night-shift staff,” Jiang said. “Nothing suspicious or unusual was seen or heard the previous night.”

“In such a well-guarded hotel,” Wei commented, “people might have slept too soundly to notice.”

Before there was any further discussion, the crime scene technicians arrived. Chen nodded to one of them he knew. The scene itself was compromised. Jiang and Liu had been there for hours, moving about, touching here and there, examining this or that. In spite of their expertise in shuanggui interrogation, they weren’t cops. A considerable number of hotel people had been in the room too, helping to take Zhou’s body down and move it to the floor.

Jiang led Chen and the others into another room-room 303-next to Zhou’s on the same floor. It was an impressive suite, which turned out to be Jiang’s.

When they were all assembled, Jiang started up with an air of authority. “Since each of us arrived at the scene at different times and from different angles, Detective Wei, you might as well sum everything up for the benefit of Chief Inspector Chen.”

Wei started accordingly.

“Zhou checked into the hotel at the beginning of shuanggui, about a week ago. Since then, he never stepped outside. Shuanggui consisted of a strict routine. He got up around seven, with breakfast delivered to his room at eight, then he talked to Jiang or Liu about his problems or wrote self-criticisms in his room. Lunch and dinner were delivered to him the same way. He seldom talked to the hotel people, he never made any outside phone calls, and he wasn’t allowed visitors.

“This morning, a hotel attendant came to his door with a breakfast tray as usual, but there was no response from inside. The attendant returned about thirty minutes later. Still nothing. After a while, he called another attendant, and they opened the door-only to see Zhou hanging from the beam.

“To the best of their memories, despite their being very flustered, there was no sign of a break-in or struggle, no indication that anything had been removed or was missing from the room.

“Liu, who had stayed overnight in the hotel, was immediately awakened. That was about eight forty-five or nine in the morning. As for Jiang, he was delayed by a special meeting of the city government the previous evening, so he’d gone home instead. Upon getting Liu’s call, he rushed over less than twenty minutes later. They examined the scene together, and around nine thirty, Jiang called Party Secretary Li of the police bureau.”

At the end of Wei’s summary, Jiang stated emphatically, “We were going the extra mile in Zhou’s case. Whoever was involved, we were determined to learn everything. But it wasn’t easy to make him talk. We thought we could bring more pressure to bear by staying in the same hotel with him. For security reasons, there were only the three of us staying here on the third floor.”