Death of a Red Heroine

detour signs popped up like mushrooms after a spring rain, adding to the traffic problem. Near the Eastern Bookstore, he noticed another old building being pulled down. In its place, a five-star hotel would soon arise. An imported red convertible rolled by. A young girl sitting by the driver waved her hand at a postman late on his round.
    Shanghai was changing rapidly.
    So were the people.
    So was he, seeing more and more meaning in his police work, though he stepped into a bookstore, and spent several minutes looking for a poetry collection. Chief Inspector Chen was not that obsessed with the case, nor with its political significance for his career.
    There was, perhaps, one side of him that had always been bookish, nostalgic, or introspective. Sentimental, or even somewhat sensual in a classic Chinese version— ”fragrance from the red sleeves imbues your reading at night.” But there was also another side to him. Not so much antiromantic as realistic, though not as ambitious as Wang had accused him of being at the Riverfront Café. A line memorized in his college years came back to him: “ The most useless being is a poor bookworm.” It was by Gao Shi, a well-known general, successful in the mid-Tang dynasty, and a first-class poet at the same time.
    General Gao had lived in an era when the once prosperous Tang dynasty was torn by famine, corruption, and wars, so the talented poet-general had taken it upon himself to make a difference— through his political commitment—for the country.
    Today, China was once more witnessing a profound change, with significant challenges to the established systems and views. At such a historical juncture, Chen was also inclined to think that he could make a more realistic difference as a chief inspector than just as a poet. A difference, even if not as substantial as General Gao’s, which would be felt in the lives of the people around him. For example, by his investigation of this crime.
    In China, and perhaps anywhere else, making such a difference would be more possible from a position of power, Chief Inspector Chen thought, as he inserted the key into the lock of Guan’s dorm room door.
    To his dismay, the hopes that led him to make a second visit to Guan’s room were evaporating fast. He stood there under the framed portrait of Comrade Deng Xiaoping, musing. Nothing seemed to have changed in the room. And he could find nothing new in the photos, either, though there were several showing Guan in the mountains. He took these out and arranged them in a line on the table. Vivid images. Sharp colors. Standing by the famous welcoming pine, she smiled into the camera. Looking up at the peak, she lifted up her arms to the white clouds. Sitting on a jutting rock, she dabbled her bare feet in the mountain stream.
    There was also one in a hotel room. Perching on the window sill, she was dressed rather scantily, her long, shapely bare legs dangling gracefully beneath a short cotton skirt. The morning sun shone through her thin cotton tunic, rendering it almost transparent, the swell of her breasts, visible beneath the material, suggesting the ellipse of her abdomen. Behind her, the window framed the verdant mountain range.
    No mistaking her presence in the mountains. There was not a single picture, however, of her together with somebody else. Could she have been that narcissistic?
    The idea that she’d made the trip by herself did not make sense, as Wang had pointed out at the café. But supposing she had, there was another question—Who had taken all the pictures of her? For her? Some had been taken at difficult angles, or from a considerable distance. It was hard to believe that she could have managed to have taken them by herself. There was not even a camera left among her few belongings. Nor a single roll of film, used or unused, in the drawers.
    Comrade Deng Xiaoping himself appeared to be leaning down out of the picture frame, beneath which he stood, frustrated at Chen’s frustration.
    One metaphor Chen had translated in a mystery came to his mind. Policemen were like wind-up toy soldiers, hustling here and bustling there, gesticulating, and chasing around in circles, for days, months, and even years, without getting anything done, and then suddenly they found themselves put aside, shelved, only to be wound up for another time.
    Something about this case had been winding him up. It was a nameless impulse, which he suspected might not totally be a