Hold Your Breath, China by Qiu Xiaolong

Author:Qiu Xiaolong
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781448304165
Publisher: Severn House Publishers
Published: 2020-01-12T16:00:00+00:00

DAY FOUR

THURSDAY

Early Thursday morning, Inspector Chen woke up suffering from a splitting headache, what with so many cups of coffee the previous night, and with the ‘wild turtle’ the previous day, which must have thrown the yin/yang disastrously out of balance in his body.

But it could only make the headache worse, he knew, to lie tossing and turning in bed and doing nothing.

He rose, made a pot of strong black tea, and started working on a draft of the report to Comrade Secretary Zhao.

Short, vague text messages would no longer be enough for the senior Party leader. Chen had promised ‘more to follow’. There was no putting it off any more.

It would not be too difficult for him to produce an objective report about the documentary, but as for Zhao’s possible reaction to it, Chen thought he could guess.

For him, what was the report trying to achieve at this stage?

However hard he might try to go through the stratagems in The Thirty-Six Stratagems, none seemed to be enough to win Zhao over to Shanshan’s side.

In impotent frustration, he took out the magazine again, as if in an attempt to get some inspiration from those lines written by the side of Shanshan.

The broken metal-blue fingernails

of fallen leaves clutching

into the barren bank, the rotten fish

afloat on the water, shimmering

with their mercury-filled bellies,

their glassy eyes still flashing

the last horror at the apparition

of a black-bikinied witch dancing

with her raven hair streaming

on her alabaster shoulders, hopping

from the woods of the plant chimneys.

Who’s the one walking beside you?

Coincidentally, it happened to be a stanza full of horror. The moment he put it down, however, another thought came across his mind.

The horror of the yellow mask serial murder case.

What could the murderer be doing at this moment?

And for that matter, what could Detective Yu be doing right now?

Last night, Yu had texted him about the discovery at the hospital, particularly concerning a patient named Shen who’d died seven days earlier than Peng, the first victim in the case, and her devastated husband Lou. These could prove to be potential leads, but no more than that at the moment.

Chen wished he had been able to give Detective Yu some more help in the investigation.

Sighing, the sickly inspector ended up swallowing a couple of pills for the worsening headache. Perhaps no help any time soon, he frowned with the knowledge.

To his dismay, the pills began to make him feel drowsy and depressed, and he dosed off in spite of himself, his head rested on the desk, beside the report with only a couple of lines written.

Shortly after five in the morning, Detective Yu found himself standing in view of Lou’s apartment in Zabei District. It was not a new residential complex, built at least twenty years earlier, but nonetheless ‘modern’ compared to some others in the area.

The only thing for him to do there, Yu thought, was to wait on the street corner, keeping the apartment building closely in sight.

Fortunately, there was a twenty-four-hour dumpling eatery on that particular corner.

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