When Red is Black

Afterward, it will be important for us to have a meeting with the neighborhood committee. Can you arrange one?”
     
    “What about twelve o’clock at the office?” Old Liang asked. “Before I leave you, Detective Yu, here is a more detailed report for you, about the crime scene. Three pages in all.”
     
    Detective Yu started glancing through it as he stood on the landing, watching Old Liang disappear into the midst of the stoves in the common kitchen area.
     
    In the earlier information he had reviewed on the bus, the crime scene was described in one sentence as “practically destroyed.” Hardly anything had been left untouched in Yin’s room, due to the way the body had been discovered. An assistant who worked with Doctor Xia had come to collect fingerprints, but he said not much could be isolated from the multiple prints and smears on every surface.
     
    The report read:
     
    On the morning of February 7, Lanlan, a resident at the end of the eastern wing on the second floor, returned from the food market at around six forty-five a.m. She went upstairs and passed by Yin’s door. Normally, the door was shut tight. It was known that Yin usually went out to practice tai chi early in the morning, in People’s Park, and she would not come back until after eight. The door was slightly ajar that morning. It was none of her business, but, as it was unusual, Lanlan noticed this. She bent to tie her shoelace, and peeping through the door, she saw something like an overturned chair. She knocked on the door, waited for a minute or two before pushing it open, and found Yin lying on the floor. A white pillow lay beside her face. Sick, passed out, fell from the bed —Lanlan guessed. She rushed in and pressed the indentation above Yin’s upper lip, [ CPR in traditional Chinese medicine. ] and started shouting for help. Immediately, seven or eight people ran in. One sprinkled cold water on Yin’s face, one felt her pulse, one dashed out to call for an ambulance, before they realized that Yin was not breathing, and noticed that several drawers had been pulled out, and their contents ransacked. Soon more people came crowding into the room. Before anyone suspected foul play, nothing in the room was left untouched.
     
    Then Old Liang arrived with the neighborhood committee members, but this hardly contributed to the preservation of the scene. One member went so far as to put the pillow back on the bed and push in all the drawers.
     
    One thing was not mentioned in the report. According to Party Secretary Li, shortly after Old Liang got there, Internal Security also arrived at the scene. They conducted a thorough search of the room. They should have observed the proper procedure and worn gloves, but Li had not asked about this. He knew nothing about the objective of their search. With a dissident writer like Yin, however, the involvement of Internal Security was not surprising. Internal Security had requested that the bureau keep them informed about the progress of the investigation.
     
    Stroking his chin, Yu put the report back in the folder, tore the seal off the door, and entered the room. It was a barren, shabby cubicle. As indicated in the report, there was no sign of a struggle—or, more accurately, no sign of one remained. After a day, and in light of the description he had just read, Detective Yu did not really expect to find much.
     
    The furniture appeared to be what she had bought when she had moved out of the dorm; it was typical of the eighties, plain, dark brown, utilitarian, but still in usable condition, consisting of a single bed, a desk, a chair, a wardrobe with a tall mirror over it, a sofa with a faded red cover, and a stool that might have served as a nightstand.
     
    In an ashtray on the desk, he saw several cigarette butts. Brown cigarette butts. An American brand, More. There was also something like a typewriter on the desk. It was not a computer, Yu was sure. Perhaps it was an electric typewriter.
     
    In a tiny cupboard fastened to the wall, there were several cans of tea leaves, a bottle of Nestlé’s instant coffee, a few rough bowls, a small bunch of bamboo chopsticks in a tree root container, one cup, and one glass. Apparently, she entertained few visitors here.
     
    The bed had been made, probably by one of her neighbors. There was no mattress under the sheet; she’d slept on the plain hardboard. The faded cotton-padded quilt must have been four or five years old, and had plenty of