The Mao Case

must be somebody,” the girl said, sitting close, “but you ate instant noodles instead of going to the dining car.”
    “Oh, I like the instant noodles.” He smiled a self-deprecating smile. In today’s society, an instant-noodles-eater on a hard
     seat was nobody, incapable of paying an extra two hundred yuan for himself, let alone for someone else. The gap between the
     rich and the poor was an appalling given, but even more appalling was people’s reaction. In Mao’s time, it was supposed to
     be an egalitarian society, at least in theory. Chen was disturbed. “It’s nothing but a business expense — I mean, the ticket.”
    It wasn’t exactly true. He might not have the train ticket reimbursed. Still, two hundred yuan wouldn’t worry him.
    The night lights went on in the train. The couple opposite closed their eyes, leaning against each other. The car gradually
     became quiet. Chen gazed at his reflection in the window, reflecting on the countryside in darkness.
    Beijing was left far, far behind.
    Drunk, I whipped an invaluable horse; / I’m worried about burdening a beauty with too much passion
. The two lines by Daifu came unexpectedly back to his mind. Years earlier, a friend of his had once copied the couplet for
     him in a paper fan, which he had lost. And he hadn’t even given Ling a call before leaving Beijing, he realized, with a wave
     of guilt.
    But then his thoughts wandered off to another poem Mao had written for Yang in their youth:
    Waving my hand, I am leaving. / Unbearable for us to stand / looking at each other, inconsolably. / Our sufferings told over
     and again, / your eyes brimming with sorrow, / holding back tears with difficulty. / You still misunderstand my letter, /
     but it will pass / like cloud and mist. / You alone understand me in this world./ Oh my heart aches, / does the heaven know?

    Chen didn’t like that poem, which was full of clichés. And it was still hard for him to understand how Mao could have been
     so callous to Yang, and to his other women.
    The ringing of his phone broke into his musing. It was Old Hunter. Chen glanced at the girl beside him, who, too, was dozing,
     with her mouth slightly open.
    Chen decided not to get up this time. A couple of fragmented sentences out of context might not be comprehensible to one who
     overheard them.
    “Oh, I’m on the train coming back to Shanghai. A crowded train, a lot of people sitting and standing around,” he said, making
     sure the retired cop would get the hint.
    “I went to see her maid.” Old Hunter went straight to the point, in sharp contrast to his characteristic Suzhou opera way.
     “Her name is Zhong.”
    “Her maid?” It must have been Shang’s maid, Chen realized. “Oh I see. That’s great. Did you learn anything from her?”
    “Xie visited Jiao at her orphanage. According to Zhong, he helped a lot financially.”
    “That’s something.”
    “Zhong says Xie’s behind the change in Jiao’s life.”
    “Really!”
    “With the help of Zhong, I’m going to check into it.”
    “No, don’t do anything, Old Hunter. I’ll be back early in the morning. Let’s discuss this first.”
    Chen had never thought about the possibility of Xie being the one behind the change in Jiao’s life. Financially, it wasn’t
     possible. Xie could hardly make his own ends met.
    Still, there was something between Xie and Jiao, something now beyond doubt, given the new information from both Yu and Old
     Hunter.
    Then why all the concealment on the part of Jiao and Xie? Neither of them had said anything about it, keeping it a secret
     from him — and not just from him. No one at the parties seemed to have known anything. If
Xie had visited Jiao, a small child in her orphanage, he did it out of friendship with Tan. Nothing wrong or improper that
     would require a cover-up. If anything was surprising at all, it was Internal Security’s failure to learn the history between
     Xie and Qian.
    The case seemed to be getting more and more mystifying.
    The girl next to him began snoring, though ever so lightly, a thin trace of saliva visible at the corner of her mouth.
    Around three, sitting stiff and straight like a bamboo stick, his head bumped against the hard seat, his mind worn out with
     thinking in the dark, he managed to doze off.
    His last thought was about that wooden-board mattress in the Central South Sea. Not a comfortable bed, by any means.

TWENTY-FOUR
    FINALLY, THE TRAIN ARRIVED at the Shanghai