A Loyal Character Dancer

police.”
     
    He put down his coffee to consider this. It was possible, he conceded, that the park victim had been killed by somebody purposely copying the methods of the Flying Axes.
     
    “If so, there must be a reason for it.”
     
    “A third party who would benefit?”
     
    “A third party—” He had not yet considered a third party in connection with the Bund Park corpse.
     
    What would a third party gain by transporting a body with multiple ax wounds to the park and leaving it there?
     
    He was disturbed by elusive yet confusing ideas, like the sparkle of the candlelight, which could not be caught before it dissolved in the darkness.
     
    The candle on the table before them was burning low, flickering. Draining her drink, she sighed. “I wish I were here on vacation.”
     
    But she was not and they had work to do. There were so many unanswered questions.
     
    They rose slowly, descended the stairs and left the cafe.
     
    Walking toward the corner, he found one answer. Behind the bush that had seemed to move, a young couple sat on a yellow plastic sheet, their arms locked around each other, shutting out the world. They had no idea that a body had been discovered on the spot a few days earlier.
     
    So his thought about one aspect of the case was reconfirmed. The body could not have been left there before the closing time. Park security would have easily noticed anyone hiding behind the bushes, even at night.
     
    “A romantic image?” she asked, noticing his abstraction.
     
    “Oh no, I’m not thinking about poetry.” He did not want her to associate this romantic scene with a corpse.

Chapter 18
     
     
    T
    hey left the park.
     
    People stood in a line along the bank, shoulder to shoulder, talking to each other without regard for those standing next to them. After a few steps, Catherine noticed a young couple vacating a small space by the embankment wall.
     
    “I would like to stand here for a while.” She added, mischievously, “Stuck on the wall like a snail, to use your simile.”
     
    “Whatever our distinguished guest prefers,” Chen said. “Perhaps more like a brick in the wall. A brick in the socialist wall. As a metaphor, that was more popular during the socialist education movement.”
     
    They stood there, leaning on the railing. To their left, the park gleamed like a “night-brightening pearl,” a phrase she had read in a Chinese legend.
     
    “How do you find time for literary pursuits in your present job?” she asked.
     
    “Politics aside, I like my job because, in a way, it helps my writing. It gives me a different perspective.”
     
    “What perspective?”
     
    “In my college days, to write a poem meant such a lot to me, it seemed there was nothing else worth doing. Now I doubt that. In China’s transitional period, there are many things more important to the people, at least of more immediate, practical value.”
     
    “You put it defensively, as if you had to keep on convincing yourself,” she said.
     
    “You may be right,” he said. He took a white paper fan out of his pants pocket. “How much I’ve changed since then.”
     
    “Changed into a chief inspector. A rising star in the Shanghai Police Bureau, I believe.” She saw that there were lines in brush calligraphy on the folding fan. “Can I have a look?”
     
    “Sure.”
     
    She took the fan. There was a couplet on it. The writing was difficult to read in the flickering illumination provided by the ever-changing neon lights.
     
    Drunk. I whipped a precious horse; / I do not want to weigh down a beauty with passion.
     
    “Your lines, Chief Inspector Chen?”
     
    “No, Daifu’s. A confessional Chinese poet, like Robert Lowell.”
     
    “Why the parallel between a horse and a beauty?”
     
    “A friend of mine copied the couplet for me.”
     
    “Why those two lines?” She waved the fan lightly.
     
    “His favorite couplet, perhaps.”
     
    “Or a message for you.”
     
    He laughed.
     
    The ringing of his phone took them by surprise.
     
    “What’s up, Uncle Yu?” he said, one hand cupped over the phone. He then took her by the elbow, and they began to walk as he listened.
     
    She understood why he had to resume their stroll. Wedged between people along the wall, confidential conversation was out of the question. And the use of a cell phone was still rare and attracted attention. They encountered covetous glances from the milling crowd.
     
    There was no change of expression