Red Mandarin Dress

case remained unsolved, wild stories would keep coming out.
    But to an extent it was understandable. Even for a cop like him, the case took on something of a supernatural dimension. In spite of all the police effort, a criminal had ruthlessly murdered four young women with his elaborate “signature.” He seemed invisible as a ghost, especially at the Joy Gate, where every step involved enormous risk. His exit through the side door, for instance, where the bar girl could have moved back at any moment and seen him. And his escape in a hotel uniform, with an unconscious Hong supported in his arms, could have been easily suspected and stopped by hotel workers. Still, he pulled it off.
    Yu opened another newspaper, Oriental Morning , which was very critical of the bureau. “Last night the police were at the Joy Gate—in an alleged raid against three-accompanying girls—while on the same night, another red mandarin dress victim appeared, far away, in a cemetery.”
    It was perhaps only a matter of time, Yu thought, before the reporters found out the identity of the latest victim. Reading the article, Yu got a phone call from the bureau lab technician.
    “About the fiber you found between the third victim’s toes,” the technician said. “The fiber is wool. Possibly from her socks. Scarlet wool socks, I think.”
    “Thank you,” Yu said. That wasn’t too surprising. Peiqin, too, wore a pair of wool socks. It was a cold winter, and there was no heat at the shabby restaurant where she worked. But as he turned off the cell phone, Yu remembered something else. According to the description given by the eating girl’s neighbor, she went out that day in a dress with pantyhose and high heels. Then how come the wool socks?
    “Hi, Detective Yu.”
    Yu looked up to see Duan Ping, a Wenhui reporter who had once interviewed Chief Inspector Chen at the bureau.
    “Have you read it?” Duan said, pointing at the Lianyi Cemetery article in the newspaper in Yu’s hand.
    “It’s unbelievable.”
    “It is the vicissitude of things in this world, and in the underworld too,” Duan said. “These days Chairman Mao cannot lie in peace in his crystal coffin.”
    “Don’t bring Mao into your tall stories.”
    “It is a tall story, like it or not. This time, this place—why? People believe it is because the root of the trouble lies here. They believe that the ghosts are out for revenge, that the murders are the retribution of the supernatural. Who else could have committed the crimes, dumped the bodies in those places, and have gotten away? It’s totally beyond me. Do you have any clue, Detective Yu?”
    “That’s nothing but superstitious crap. Those atrocities happened during the Cultural Revolution. If there were really ghosts seeking revenge, they could have done so more than twenty years ago. Why the long wait?”
    “Now that’s something you don’t understand. With the star of Mao still high and bright in the sky at the time, these ghosts wouldn’t have dared to come out and make trouble. But with Mao gone, it’s their turn,” Duan said. “There’s also a new interpretation, which I learned only twenty minutes ago. According to it, the red mandarin dress victims are all daughters of those Red Guards.”
    So some people were taking the story to a more collective level. Instead of one unhappy woman buried in the cemetery, as maintained by that old scholar of local history, now it was all the ghosts of the disturbed cemetery, taking revenge on the daughters of their persecutors during the Cultural Revolution.
    “These interpretations are totally unfounded,” Yu said.
    “Let me ask you a question, Detective Yu. Does the name Wenge Hongqi mean anything to you?”
    “What do you mean?”
    “Did you notice a highly unusual ad in the Shanghai Evening News ? It was put there under that name. If you think about the other red mandarin dress victims—one a singing girl, the other an eating girl, the message in the ad makes sense,” Duan said. “The Red Guard group that ‘made revolution’ to the cemetery was called Wenggehongqi. The connection is obvious. These interpretations are not so unfounded.”
    “It’s wild speculation and nothing but coincidence,” Yu said emphatically, though he didn’t believe in coincidence. “How did you notice that ad?”
    “There is no wall that does not let wind get through. Your people checked with the Shanghai Evening News , and we share the same office building. I