Death of a Red Heroine

form of contact—letters, postcards, phone calls?
LAI: It was she who dumped me. So why should I? Besides, she became more and more of a national celebrity, with big pictures in all the newspapers, so I couldn’t avoid her national model worker image.
YU: Male pride and ego, I understand. It has been a difficult subject for you, Comrade Lai, but you have been most helpful. Thank you.
LAI: You will keep it confidential, won’t you? I am married now. I’ve never told my wife anything about it.
YU: Of course. I said so in the beginning.
LAI: When I think of the affair, I am still confused. I hope you will catch the criminal. I don’t think I will ever forget her.
There was a long silence. Apparently the conversation came to an end. Then he heard Yu’s voice again:
Comrade Chief Inspector Chen, I found Engineer Lai Goujun through Huang Weizhong, the retired Party Secretary of the First Department Store. According to Huang, Guan had made a report to the Party committee when they first started dating. The Party committee had looked into Lai’s family background and discovered that Lai had an uncle who had been executed as a counterrevolutionary during the Land Reform movement. So the Party committee wanted her to end the affair. It was politically incorrect for her, an emerging model worker and Party member, to get involved with a man of such a family background. She agreed, but she did not make a report to Huang about her parting with Lai until two months later, and she did not give any details about it.
I’m collecting more information about Lai, but I don’t think he is a suspect. It was so many years ago, after all. Sorry I cannot stay in the office this morning; Qinqin is sick. I have to take him to the hospital, but I’ll be home after two or two thirty. Call me if there’s anything you need.
    Chen punched the off button. He slumped back in his seat, wiping the sweat from his forehead. It was getting hot again. He took a cola out of the little refrigerator, tapped on the top, but put it back. There was a small fly buzzing in the room. He poured himself a cup of cold water instead.
    That was not what he had expected.
    Chief Inspector Chen had never believed in such a mythical embodiment of the Communist Party selfless spirit as Comrade Lei Feng. A sudden wave of sadness washed over the chief inspector. It was absurd, Chen thought, that politics could have so shaped a life. If she had married Lai, Guan would not have been so successful in her political life. She would not have been a national model worker, but an ordinary wife—knitting a sweater for her husband, pulling a propane gas tank on her bike rack, bargaining for a penny or two when she bought food in the market, nagging like a broken gramophone, playing with a lovely child sitting on her lap—but she would have been alive.
    If Guan’s decision appeared absurd in the early nineties, it would have been most understandable in the early eighties. At that time, someone like Lai who had a counterrevolutionary relative was out of the question. Lai would have brought trouble to the people close to him. Chen thought of his own “uncle,” a dis- tant relative he had never seen, but it was that uncle who had determined his profession.
    So it could be said that the decision of the First Department Store Party committee, however hard, was made in her interest. As a national model worker, Guan had had to live up to her status. That the Party should have interfered in her private life was by no means surprising, but her reaction was astonishing. She gave herself to Lai, then parted with him without having revealed the true reason. Her act was intolerably “liberal” according to the codes of the Party. But Chen thought he could understand. Guan had been a more complicated human than he had supposed. All that had happened, however, ten years earlier. Could it have anything to do with Guan’s recent life?
    It might have been a traumatic experience for her, which would explain why she’d had no lover for years until she crossed Wu Xiaoming’s path.
    Also, Guan had been one who dared to act—despite the shadow of politics.
    Or was there something else?
    Chen dialed Yu’s home.
    “Qinqin is much better,” Yu said. “I’ll come back to the office soon.”
    “You don’t have to. Nothing particular is going on here. Take good care of your son at home.” He added, “I’ve got your tape. A great job.”
    “I’ve checked Lai’s alibi. On the night of