She must have been abducted into the room, where the murderer stripped her like the others, put the red mandarin dress on her, and carried her out.

Again they reviewed the videotape. This time, they noticed something they had seen, but not suspected earlier. A man in a hotel uniform helped another one walking out in a hurry. Both of them were in identical hotel uniforms and hats. The man looked to be in his mid-thirties or early forties. With his hat pulled low, plus a pair of amber-colored glasses, the video didn’t catch a clear shot of his face. The other one appeared to be female, with a wisp of black hair escaping the hat, perhaps sick, leaning heavily on the first one’s shoulder.

The hotel manager hurried over, declaring that the two in the videotape were not hotel employees.

So the murderer had registered with a fake identity, forced Hong into the room, where he changed her clothes and walked her out. Judging from the tape, she was already nearly unconscious. She must have been overcome without the time to alert her colleagues. Once outside the Joy Gate, he moved her into a car parked nearby or hailed a taxi. The plainclothesman stationed outside, however, didn’t remember having seen two hotel people getting into a car.

The neighborhood committees and taxi companies were immediately contacted for information about two people in hotel uniforms, one of them probably unconscious.

Party Secretary Li was swearing on the phones, screaming, striding back and forth like an ant crawling desperately on a hot wok. In spite of his earlier opposition, he ordered citywide surveillance of the families with private garages, for which the police again enlisted help from all the neighborhood committees.

From the time recorded on the tape, it was now only about twenty-five minutes after their exit from the Joy Gate. The cops might still be able to intercept the criminal before he reached his secret den or catch him at the moment when he was entering the garage. They believed that he still had to put the red mandarin dress on her.

The hotel manager called. A waitress reported that a middle-aged man had approached her, asking whether there was a new girl that night, but she could barely give a description of the customer, except that he wore gold-rimmed spectacles with amber-colored lenses. Since he sat at a table, she couldn’t tell his height.

A neighborhood committee cadre also contacted them. Earlier in the evening, in a shabby side street one block north of the Joy Gate, he had seen a white car-a luxurious model, though he could not tell what brand-parked there. It wasn’t common for such a car to park on that street.

But for the cops, all these tips were of little use at the moment.

Time weighed on them, heavier by minute, the more unbearable because they had no information whatsoever, in spite of the fact that the entire city police machine was grinding on.

Finally, around one a.m., a call came from a patrol officer near the Lianyi cemetery in the Hongqiao suburb.

The cemetery had been deserted for years. In a recent security report to the bureau, it had turned into a hot spot for grave robbers, and the district police station sent a patrol there from time to time.

About an hour before, one of the grave robbers stumbled upon something totally unexpected. The body of a young female in a red mandarin dress. Like others in his profession, he was superstitious, so he screamed and scurried and was caught by the patroller. The mention of the red mandarin dress was enough to put the officer on the alert, so he called at once.

Liao had hardly started the van when a second call came in from the patrolling cop.

“A hotel uniform was also found there, not too far from the body, and a hotel hat too.” The patroller added, “Come quick. The grave robber has fainted. He believes he has seen a ghost.”

FRIDAY MORNING CHEN FINALLY woke up refreshed and reinvigorated.

He wondered how he could have slept like that for almost two days. It could have been due to the fabulous bu dinner. Some special herb with a miraculous effect. Manager Pei had real medical knowledge; he must have diagnosed Chen’s problem from Gu’s description and arranged for the particular bu dinner Chen needed. In traditional Chinese medical theory, Chen recalled vaguely, certain herbs could bring out the symptoms, so the body would adjust itself accordingly. Chen had overworked himself, so the special dinner enabled him to sleep soundly, making up for all those years of lost rest. Now yin and yang or other elements in his body would move in harmony again. Whatever the Chinese medical theory and practice, Chen hadn’t felt so good in a long time.

But he was slightly disturbed too. He’d had a weird dream shortly before dawn. He was sitting in an exotic garden, watching a young woman perform a striptease, dancing, singing like a siren, when he was suddenly seized with a fit of inexplicable abhorrence. He grabbed her, trying to strangle her in the flower bed. Struggling against him, the woman was no other than White Cloud, her dress turning into the red mandarin dress against the green grass.

The red mandarin dress case was still on his mind, but the appearance of White Cloud in the dream bothered him, not to mention his own behavior. Perhaps it was because of his experience in the Old City God’s Temple Market. Or perhaps it was the bu feast-such an unusual boost to yin or yang that he was aroused. Still, it might be a good sign. He had recovered enough to dream like a young man.

He decided not to think about it. It was not a morning for dream interpretation. He thought about the case in Shanghai again. It was Friday, he realized. Chen was tempted to call Yu, but he thought the better of it. Once he did so, his vacation here would be, for all practical purposes, finished, though he felt it had only started. He hadn’t even walked around the village a single time. Nor had he done anything about his paper yet.

He called White Cloud instead. She hadn’t read or heard anything new about the case, and she urged him to enjoy his vacation. She had visited his mother, who was getting along fine at home, so he didn’t have to worry.

Looking out of the window, he thought that he might take a stroll along the lake.

It was a bit cold outside and the lake looked rather deserted this time of the year. There was only one old angler sitting on the waterfront, wrapped up in a worn-out army overcoat. The bamboo basket beside him was empty. He seemed to be lost in meditation, or in a pose of meditation.

Chen walked on without disturbing him.

Chen looked up at the mountains silhouetted against the horizon. There seemed to be a cascade murmuring, not too far away. Looking back, he glimpsed, now at distance, a faint flickering light in the hand of the old man.

Against the woods and hills, the tiny light gleamed and was gone. A rustle of the pines swept through. A long deep sigh of the wind. He was strangely saddened. Then he turned onto a slippery trail, which wound between clumps of larches and ferns. He had to move slowly. It must have rained while he slept. Soon he reached a long carpet of pine needles, which muffled his footsteps. Then the trail widened unexpectedly, leading him to a local market.

The market was already alive at this hour, and most of the people there were tourists looking for souvenirs. He spent several minutes making his way through the crowd, when he came to a stop at a booth displaying afterworld money, a superstitious product not commonly seen in Shanghai.

“Dongzhi is approaching,” the peddler said warmly, folding the silver paper into a yuanbao-shaped silver ingot. In the Chinese afterworld, the main currency seemed to still be the silver ingot. “Folks need money to buy winter clothes there.”