When Red is Black

the bookstore for several months, and it had changed almost beyond recognition. It was like seeing an old acquaintance after he’d had plastic surgery: recognizable, yet different.
     
    He decided not to go inside, for he wanted to focus on the case. He merely took a look at a bunch of new magazines and newspapers near the entrance: One Week in Shanghai, Shanghai Culture, Bund Pictorial, One Week’s Life. All of them featured big color photos of stars. He did not read any of these new trendy magazines, and only recognized one picture, that of a Hong Kong actress, on one cover.
     
    Things had been changing very fast in the city.
     
    Chen then tried to tackle the case from another perspective. Motive aside, what would an outside murderer have done after committing the crime?
     
    Surely he would have tried to escape immediately.
     
    In his attempt to get away, there was a possibility of his being seen by someone in the building. But that would not be too much of a risk. In a shikumen building, people might have relatives or friends staying over or visiting early, and a stranger’s presence would not have caused instant alarm. No one would have taken drastic action to stop him from leaving. In the worst-case scenario, if Yin’s body was immediately discovered, one of the neighbors might be able to produce a rough sketch of the suspect for the police bureau later, but such a sketch alone would not be much help to a homicide investigation.
     
    To stay in her room with the dead body, with the growing possibility of a knock at the door, would have presented a much greater risk. The longer the murderer stayed in the room, the more people would go upstairs and down, passing by the closed tingzijian door, and the more suspicious they would grow if Yin did not emerge.
     
    According to Yu’s hypothesis, the murderer could have waited in hiding, either in the tingzijian room or somewhere else, until an opportune moment to leave the shikumen building.
     
    In terms of hiding places, Chen did not think it totally impossible for someone to hide briefly amidst the broken furniture pieces and other junk stored here and there in various nooks and crannies in the building; he might have hidden behind the open back door, for instance, or behind the tapestry under the staircase.
     
    So either when the shrimp woman stepped away from her position, or when all the neighbors rushed upstairs, the murderer could have escaped in the confusion if he had been waiting in hiding.
     
    But hiding and waiting involved another risk. If he were found lurking, he would instantly be seen as a suspect and grabbed, or at least questioned.
     
    Why would the murderer have taken that risk? And why kill Yin? For what?
     
    Those were questions to which he did not have answers.
     
    * * * *
     
    In the afternoon Chen threw himself into his translation work. He had told White Cloud that he would spend the day in the Shanghai Library. Whether she believed him or not, she neither called nor came to his door.
     
    He had told himself that he had probably done all he could in the criminal investigation. Cops may spend days, or weeks, on a case without getting anywhere. And he could not afford, despite his determination to do his best, to spend any more time on it.
     
    Toward the evening, he got a phone call from Overseas Chinese Lu. As always, Lu started by referring to a loan Chen had made to him in the early days of his restaurant, Moscow Suburb, and then Lu repeated his usual dinner invitation.
     
    “Now I have several Russian waitresses dressed in white, tightly laced corsets and garters, as if they were walking out of those posters of old Shanghai. Absolutely sensational. Customers have come pouring in. Particularly young customers. They say the atmosphere is full of xiaozi.”
     
    “Xiaozi —petty bourgeoisie?”
     
    “Oh, yes, it is a fashionable new term. Xiaozi —petty bourgeoisie, a sort of trendy, highly cultivated, status-conscious consumer. It is particularly hot among those white-collar workers employed by foreign joint ventures. ‘If you are not a xiaozi, you are nothing.’”
     
    “Well, the language surely changes,” Chen said, “and it changes us too.”
     
    “Oh, by the way,” Overseas Chinese Lu said at the end of the conversation, “I called your mother yesterday. She had some stomach problem. Not serious. Nothing to worry about, I trust.”
     
    “Thanks. I’ll give her a ring. I talked to her two days ago; she