When Red is Black

you already searched his room?”
     
    “Yes, as soon as he made his confession. This is the ticket. I came across it in a notebook in his desk drawer. I had not really expected to find the murder weapon, but the ticket speaks volumes.”
     
    “So—” Yu had intended to ask if Old Liang had obtained a search warrant from the police bureau, but the question might have sounded pedantic. In the years of class struggle, Old Liang could have searched any home in the neighborhood without bothering about a search warrant. “Let me take a look at the ticket.”
     
    “It means that Wan planned a trip to Shenzhen,” Old Liang said as he turned the ticket over. “I have double-checked with the neighborhood committee. Wan does not have friends or relatives there. He is a retired worker, and he has no business there. The answer is self-evident. From there, he could try to sneak over to Hong Kong. A lot of people have done that. Wan knew that if he did not make his getaway, it was only a matter of time before we got to him.”
     
    It sounded logical, except that the ticket was for a soft sleeper, a detail Old Liang had overlooked, Yu thought, as he studied the piece of paper that he held. Why should Wan have paid the extra money for a soft sleeper if he were going to Shenzhen for the purpose suspected by Old Liang?
     
    “What did he tell you about the ticket?”
     
    “That’s more or less what he said.”
     
    “Can I keep the ticket?”
     
    “Sure.” Old Liang looked up at him in surprise. “When you think about it, there’s something else suspicious about him. As a residence cop, I should have noticed it earlier. About half a year ago, Wan started going out early in the morning—allegedly for tai chi exercise on the Bund. Yin also went out for tai chi in the morning. But there’s one marked difference. She practiced not only in the park, but in the lane too, especially on rainy days. Wan has never practiced here. That’s not like a tai chi devotee. No, I don’t think he told us the truth.”
     
    “Well, Wan may not be such a wholehearted exerciser. He only turned to tai chi, he told me, because the state-run company he had worked for can no longer cover its retirees’ medical insurance.”
     
    “That old die-hard still lives in the days of the Mao Zedong Thought Team, and he grumbles all the time. That’s why he committed the murder. Tai chi or whatever is just an excuse. He followed her around, to become familiar with her routine. Then he acted.”
     
    “Did he have to follow her around for months in order to kill her at home early that morning?”
     
    “Is it so impossible?” Old Liang said, becoming impatient with these questions from Detective Yu.
     
    “Let me make a phone call to Dr. Xia first, Old Liang, to ask about the fingerprints.”
     
    “Whatever you want, Comrade Detective Yu.”
     
    * * * *
     
    Afterward, alone in the office, Detective Yu admitted to himself that it was not absolutely impossible.
     
    Wan’s entire life—or most of it—had been the product of a totally different society. In the sixties and seventies, Chinese workers had been praised to the skies as the masters of society, the makers of history. People like Wan committed themselves unreservedly to Mao’s revolution, believing in their contribution to the greatest social system in human history, which, in turn, promised them a lot too, including retirement benefits: a generous pension, full medical coverage, and the political honor of being retired masters basking in the warm sunlight of communist China. Now these retired workers found themselves, helplessly, at the bottom of the heap. The praise for them as the “leading class” was irrelevant. They had a hard time making the ends meet. What was worse, state-run companies, going downhill, could keep few of their earlier promises.
     
    And things must have been even more unbearable for Wan, who had once been such a prestigious Mao Zedong Thought Propaganda Worker Team Member.
     
    Yu phoned Dr. Xia, asking him to recheck the fingerprints, focusing only on Wan’s.
     
    He made a second phone call to the Shanghai railway station. He thought he remembered that there were regulations regarding sleeping-car tickets. The information he received confirmed his suspicion. According to the railway station, tickets to Shenzhen were very hot, especially sleeping-car tickets. New entrepreneurs flocked to the special economic zone to seek their fortunes. Normally,