The request could not have come at a worse time-for his paper. Still, he had to do something. It was the first serial murder case for the city, for the bureau. At the very least, he had to make a gesture of concern.

“Bring me the information you’ve gathered, Hong. I’ll take a look in the evening.”

“I’m on my way.”

The lunch box remained untouched, now totally cold. He threw it into the trash can. He rose and moved toward the gate in question, trying to imagine the scene earlier.

The Newspaper Windows were located at the intersection of Nanjing and Xizhuang Roads, an area that permitted no parking along the curb. Any car parked there would get immediate attention, and the police patrol went on all night.

The murderer must have planned it carefully, Chen reflected.

There was a large crowd of people there, but the area around the Newspaper Windows was not taped off. He didn’t see any cops moving around, either.

He caught the sight of a young girl walking over in a white overcoat, like a pear blossom in the morning light. A far-fetched metaphor, for it was still early winter. She was not Hong.

Several old people stood in front of the Newspaper Windows, reading, talking, as usual. To his surprise, the newspaper section that drew the most readers was that of the stock market. “The Bull Is Crazy,” the headline read in bold.

DETECTIVE YU CAME HOME later than usual.

Peiqin was washing her hair in a plastic basin on a folding table near the common sink, in the common kitchen area shared by the five families on the first floor. He slowed to a stop by her side. Looking up with her hair covered in soap bubbles, she motioned to him to move into their room.

In the room, the table held a platter of rice cakes fried with shredded pork and pickled cabbage. He’d had a couple of steamed buns earlier, so he thought he might have a cake later as a nighttime snack. Their son Qinqin was studying late at school, as usual, preparing for the college entrance examination.

Yu felt exhausted at the sight of their bed, with the dragon-and-phoenix-embroidered cotton padded quilt already spread out, the soft white pillow set against the headboard. Without taking off his shoes, he dumped himself across the quilt. After two or three minutes he sat up again, and leaning against the hard headboard, produced a cigarette. Peiqin would not come in for a while, he guessed, and he needed to think.

Smoking, he found his thoughts still stuck, as though in a pail of frozen glue. So he tried to review the work already done on the mandarin dress murders.

The whole bureau had been bubbling like a pot of boiling water. Theories were advanced. Cases were quoted. Arguments were pushed. Everybody appeared well-informed on the case.

Party Secretary Li’s insistence on the “reliance-on-people approach” hadn’t worked. The neighborhood committees accosted a large number of people seen in the vicinity and asked them to provide alibis, but that hadn’t led to anything. That was no surprise.

In the sixties and seventies, the committees had been an effective government watchdog because of the housing conditions and the ration-coupon system. When a dozen families lived together in a shikumen house, sharing one kitchen and yard, neighbors watched one another, and because the food and grocery ration coupons were distributed by the neighborhood committees, the committees’ power over residents was enormous. But with the improvement in housing conditions and abolishment of the ration coupons, committees no longer found it easy to monitor a resident’s life. They could still be somewhat effective in the remaining old neighborhoods of ramshackle overcrowded shikumen houses, but this killer apparently lived in a different environment, enjoying both space and privacy. In the mid-nineties, a neighborhood cadre could no longer so easily barge into a family’s life as during the years of Mao’s class struggle.

Inspector Liao’s revision was of little help. While his material profile narrowed the range of suspects, none of those with previous history of sex crimes met all of Liao’s specified conditions. Most of them were poor, just two or three lived by themselves, and only one, a taxi driver, had access to a car.

Their research into the red mandarin dress also failed to go anywhere. They sent out a notice to all the factories and workshops that made mandarin dresses, requesting any related information, but so far they had received nothing about that particular dress.

With each passing day, the possibility of another victim loomed closer.

Yu was gazing through a smoke ring from his cigarette, as if flying invisible darts, when he heard Peiqin pouring water down the kitchen sink. He ground out the cigarette and put the ashtray away.

He didn’t need her to start harping on his smoking tonight. He wanted to discuss the case with her. She had helped with his previous investigations-in her way. This time, she at least could tell him more about the dress. Like other Shanghai women, she liked shopping, though she was mostly confined to window-shopping.

Peiqin poked her head into the room.

“You look beat, Yu. Why not turn in for an early night? I’ll dry my hair quick and join you in a minute.”

He undressed, climbed into bed, and shivered under the chilly quilt, but it did not take long for him to feel warm and comfortable, expecting her.

She hurried in, treading barefoot on the wooden floor. Lifting the quilt, she slid in beside him, her feet touching his, still cold.

“Would you like a hot water bottle, Peiqin?”

“No, I have you.” She clung closer against him. “When Qinqin goes to college, there’ll be only two of us here, an empty old nest.”

“You don’t have to worry,” he said, noticing a single white hair at her temple. He took the opportunity to lead the talk in the direction planned. “You still look so young and handsome.”

“You don’t have to flatter me like that.”

“I saw a mandarin dress in a store window today. It would become you nicely, I believe. Have you worn one before?”

“Come on, Yu. Have you ever seen me wearing a mandarin dress? In our middle school days, such a garment was out of the question, decadent and bourgeois and whatnot. Then we both went to the godforsaken army farm in Yunnan, wearing the same imitation army uniform for ten years. When we came back, we didn’t even have a proper wardrobe for ourselves under your father’s roof. You have never paid any proper attention to me, husband.”

“Now with a room for ourselves, I can try to do better in the future.”

“But why are you suddenly paying attention to a mandarin dress? Oh, I know. Another case of yours. The red mandarin dress case, I’ve heard of it.”

“Surely you know something about the dress. Maybe you examined one in a store.”

“Once or twice, perhaps, but I never go into any of those fancy stores. Do you think a mandarin dress would fit me-a middle-aged woman working in a shabby restaurant?”

“Why not?” Yu said, his hand tracing the familiar curves on her body.

“No, don’t sweet-talk like your chief inspector. It’s not a dress for a working woman. Not for me, in that tingsijian office smeared all over with wok fumes and coal soot. I saw a long article about mandarin dresses in a fashion magazine. Why the style has suddenly become so popular again, I can’t figure out. But tell me about your case.”

So he summed up what he and his colleagues had done, focusing more or less on the failure of routine police procedure.

At the end of his summary, she said quietly, “Have you discussed it with Chen?”

“We talked on the phone yesterday. He’s on vacation, working on a literature paper with a so-called deconstructive approach. About the case, he just mumbled several psychological terms, probably from his mystery translations.”