Death of a Red Heroine [Chief Inspector Chen Cao 01] by Qiu Xiaolong Read Free Book Online Page A

Apparently not a peddler, not one out there for profit, just a kid from the village, still small and innocent, reading against the idyllic background—perhaps a poetry collection in her hand, providing a convenience to thirsty travelers who might pass by.
     
    Little things, but all of them seemed to be adding up into something like an image he had once come across in Tang and Song dynasty writings:
     
    Slender, supple, she’s just thirteen or so,
    The tip of a cardamom bud, in early March.
     
    “Excuse me,” he said, pulling up his motorcycle by the roadside. “Do you know where Baili Canal is?”
     
    “Baili Canal, oh yes, straight ahead, about five or six miles.”
     
    “Thank you.”
     
    He also asked for a big bowl of tea.
     
    “Three cents,” the girl said, without looking up from her book.
     
    “What are you reading?”
     
    “Visual Basics.”
     
    The answer did not fit the picture in his mind. But it should not be surprising, he thought. He, too, had been taking an evening class on Windows applications. It was the age of the information highway.
     
    “Oh, computer programming,” he said. “Very interesting.”
     
    “Do you also study it?”
     
    “Just a little.”
     
    “Need some CDs?”
     
    “What?”
     
    “Dirt cheap. A lot of advanced software on it. Chinese Star, TwinBridge, Dragon Dictionary, and all kinds of fonts, traditional and simplified ...”
     
    “No, thank you,” he said, taking out a one-Yuan bill.
     
    The CDs she offered might be incredibly cheap. He had heard people talking about pirated products, but he did not want to have anything to do with them, not as a chief inspector.
     
    “I’m afraid I don’t have enough change for you.”
     
    “Just give me all you have.”
     
    The little girl scooped out the coins to give him, and put the one Yuan bill in her purse, instead of into the tin cup at her feet. A cautious teenage profit-maker in her way. She then resumed her readings in cyberspace, the bow on her ponytail fluttering like a butterfly in a breath of air.
     
    But his earlier mood was gone.
     
    What irony. The wistful thoughts about the innocent tip of a cardamom bud, a solitary curl of white smoke, an unlost innocence in a rural background, a poetry collection . . . And a lapse in his professional perspective. Not until he had ridden another two or three miles did he realize that he should have done something about the CD business—as a chief inspector. Perhaps he had been too absent minded, in a “poetic trance,” and then too surprised by the realities of the world. The episode came to him like an echo of his colleagues’ criticism: Chief Inspector Chen was too “poetic” to be a cop.
     
    It was past two o’clock when he reached the canal.
     
    There was not a single cloud drifting overhead. The afternoon sun hung lonely in the blue sky, high over a most desolate scene, which was like a forgotten corner of the world. Not a soul was visible. The canal bank was overrun with tall weeds and scrubby growth. Chen stood still at the edge of the stagnant water, amid a scattering of wild bushes. Not too far away, however, he thought he could hear the hubbub of Shanghai.
     
    Who was the victim? How had she lived? Whom had she met before her death?
     
    He had not expected much from the scene. The heavy rains of the last few days would have washed away any trace of evidence. Being at the crime scene, he had thought, might help to establish a sort of communion between the living and the dead, but he failed to get any message. Instead, his mind wandered to bureau politics. There was nothing remarkable about the recovery of a body from a canal. Not for Homicide. They had encountered similar cases before, and would encounter them in the future. It did not take a chief inspector to tackle such a case, not at the moment, when he had to prepare himself for the important seminar.
     
    Nor did it appear to be a case he could solve in a couple of days. There