A Loyal Character Dancer

supported the supposition that the body had been placed there to distract attention or to shift the blame, as I had suspected in Daifu’s case.”
     
    “But you did not mention that to me, Chief Inspector Chen,” she said.
     
    “Well, these ideas did not coalesce until I got back home late that night. I dug out the poem in an attempt to recollect all the possibilities I had studied before writing it. As an unexpected result. I was able to recite those lines in Moscow Suburb the following day,” he said with a smile. “No, it’s not my favorite poem, Inspector Rohn, though it might have put me in a poetic mood at the Huating Market.”
     
    Party Secretary Li looked at Chen, and then at Catherine, before he broke into a broad smile. “That’s how Chief Inspector Chen moves in his investigation—by leaps and bounds.”
     
    “As for what happened at the market, let me say a word about contingency. There’s no better way to describe it. I happened to be there, together with Inspector Rohn. As she put it, it’s a chain of seemingly irrelevant links. Daifu’s couplet, a light green cellular phone, the rain, the line of Oriole’s wet footprints, Su Dongpu’s lines. So I thought of the poetry anthology left at Wen’s home. If one link had been missing, we would not be sitting here at this moment.”
     
    She wondered whether his colleagues could follow this cryptic explanation. She happened to be there, but even she did not understand all his references. The light green cellular phone, for instance. He had never mentioned that before.
     
    Yu made an obvious effort to refrain from asking questions. Qian remained respectfully self-effacing throughout. But Li appeared eager to season the discussion with political clichés.
     
    “You have performed brilliant work in the glorious tradition of the Chinese police force, Chief Inspector Chen,” Li declared, though perhaps he was still largely in the dark.
     
    “I could not have made progress without the collaboration of Inspector Rohn, or the work of Detective Yu,” Chen said earnestly. “In his interview with Zheng, for example, Detective Yu pushed for the clarification of a gangster’s phrase— She changed her mind. What did he mean—changed her mind? That was a question I had in my mind while talking with Wen the following day.”
     
    “You kept a lot of questions to yourself, Chief Inspector Chen,” Catherine said.
     
    “I was not sure whether they were worth exploring, Inspector Rohn. After our visit to Wen, you asked me why I insisted on talking to Wen and Liu instead of bringing in the local police. For one thing, Wen’s cup is full. I did not want to put too much pressure on her. But there’s another reason. I tried to find some answers from my conversation with them.”
     
    “Did you find any?”
     
    “Not from Liu, except that Wen had not told him anything. Then we both talked to Wen. What she said about her life in Fujian was true, but she did not say a single word about the gang’s contact with her. Nor did she really answer my question about the delay in making her passport application. But what made me most suspicious was her insistence on going back to Fujian.”
     
    “Was that so suspicious?” Li asked. “A mother wanted to see her son’s grave for the last time.”
     
    “Did she go to visit his grave when we were there? No. She did not even mention it. Back home, the first thing she did was to take a small package of chemicals from under the table. To keep as a souvenir, she explained to me. That might make sense, but the fact that she explained her action to me did not. It was her home. She could have taken anything she wanted without comment. On the way, she had said little, and now she was volunteering explanations.”
     
    “That’s true,” she said, “Wen hardly said anything during the trip.”
     
    “After the battle in the village, she could have paid a visit to the grave, but she still didn’t. It no longer seemed important to her. Then I happened to hear one of the local policeman silence a wounded gangster speaking Mandarin. That was strange. Before I had time to inquire, however, Superintendent Hong’s request for elucidation of a proverb diverted my attention.”
     
    “The Chinese proverb about justice eventually overcoming evil,” she said.
     
    “Exactly. So it was not until we reached the airport, and heard the flight announcement in both Mandarin and Fujian dialects, that I realized what I