Death of a Red Heroine

o’clock he’d met with Commissar Zhang in the bureau.
    “It’s a difficult case,” Commissar Zhang said, nodding after Chen had briefed him. “But we mustn’t be afraid of hardship or death.”
    Don’t be afraid of hardship or death— one of Chairman Mao’s quotations during the Cultural Revolution. Now it reminded Chen of a faded poster torn from the wall of a deserted building. Being a commissar for so many years had turned Zhang into something like an echoing machine. An old politician, out of touch with the times. The Commissar was, however, anything but a blockhead; it was said that he had been one of the most brilliant students at Southwest United University in the forties.
    “Yes, you’re right,” Chen said. “I’m going to Guan’s dorm this morning.”
    “That’s important. There might be some evidence left in her room,” Commissar Zhang said. “Keep me informed of anything you find there.”
    “I will.”
    “Have Detective Yu contact me, too.”
    “I will tell him.”
    “Now what about me?” Zhang said. “I also need to do something, not just be an advice-giving bystander.”
    “But we have every aspect of the initial investigation covered at present. Detective Yu’s interviewing Guan’s colleagues, and I’m going to check her room, talk to her neighbors, and afterward, if I have the time, I will visit her mother in the nursing home.”
    “Then I’ll go to the nursing home. She’s old, too. We may have things to talk about between us.”
    “But you really don’t have to do anything. It is not suitable for a veteran cadre like you to undertake the routine investigations.”
    “Don’t tell me that, Comrade Chief Inspector,” Zhang said, getting up with a frown. “Just go to Guan’s dorm now.”
    The dormitory, located on Hubei Road, was a building shared by several work units, including that of the First Department Store, which had a few rooms there for its employees. Considering Guan’s political status, she could have gotten something better—a regular apartment like his, Chen thought. Maybe that was what made Guan a model worker.
    Hubei was a small street tucked between Zhejiang Road and Fujian Road, not too far away from Fuzhou Road to the north, a main cultural street boasting several well-known bookstores. The location was convenient. The Number 71 bus was only ten minutes’ walk away, on Yan’an Road, and it went directly to the First Department Store.
    Chen got off the bus at Zhejiang Road. He decided to walk around the neighborhood, which could speak volumes about the people living there—as in Balzac’s novels. In Shanghai, however, it was not up to the people to decide where they would get a room, but to their work units, Chen realized. Still, he strolled around the area, thinking.
    The street was one of the few still covered with cobblestones. There were quite a number of small, squalid lanes and alleys on both sides. Children raced about like scraps of paper blowing in the wind, running out of one lane into another.
    Chen took out his notebook. Guan Hongying’s address read: Number 18, Lane 235, Hubei Road. But he was unable to find the lane.
    He asked several people, showing them the address. No one seemed to have heard of the lane. Hubei was not a long street. In less than fifteen minutes, he had walked to the end and back. Still no success. So he stepped into a small grocery store on the corner, but the old grocer also shook his head. There were five or six hoodlums lounging by the grocery, young and shabby, with sparse whiskers and shining earrings, who looked at him challengingly.
    The day was hot, without a breath of air. He wondered whether he had made a mistake, but a call to Commissar Zhang confirmed that the address was right. Then he dialed Comrade Xu Kexin, a senior librarian of the bureau—better known by his nickname of Mr. Walking Encyclopedia—who had worked in the bureau for over thirty years, and had a phenomenal knowledge of the city’s history.
    “I need to ask a favor of you,” he said. “Right now I’m at Hubei Street, between Zhejiang and Fujian Road, looking for Lane 235. The address is correct, but I cannot find that lane.”
    “Hubei Street, hmm,” Xu said. “It was known, before 1949, as a notorious quarter.”
    “What?” Chen asked, hearing Xu leafing through pages, “‘Quarter’—what do you mean?”
    “Ah yes, a brothel quarter.”
    “What’s that got to do with the lane I cannot find?”
    “A lot,”