“Do you mean that the combination of the mandarin dress and bare feet delivers a message?”

“Yes. We have to take into consideration the obscene pose too. So it’s a message against Manchurian culture.”

“Little Zhou, you have watched too many of those shows about conspiracies of Han against Manchurian, or the schemes of Manchurian against Han. Before the Revolution of 1911, such a message might have made sense, since a large number of the Han people were against the Manchurian emperor. But nowadays it’s a myth found only on TV.”

“There’re so many TV shows nowadays about great Manchurian emperors and their beautiful and clever concubines. Some people might think it necessary to send the message again.”

“Let me tell you something, Little Zhou. Manchurians have disappeared-assimilated into the Hans. Last month a friend of mine for many years turned out to be a Manchurian. Why? Only because a good position requesting a minority ethnic background came along, did he reveal his Manchurian heritage. Sure enough, he got the job. But for all those years, he was never aware of any ethnic difference in himself. His family had changed their Manchurian surname to a Han surname.”

“But how do you explain the exquisite dress and bare feet-of both victims?”

“One possible scenario is that the criminal was victimized by a woman dressed just like that.”

“In such a dress,” Little Zhou said, “with the torn slits and loose buttons. How could a victimizer-not a victim-have appeared like that?”

Little Zhou was not alone in putting forth wild theories.

In the routine meeting in Party Secretary Li’s office that morning, Inspector Liao tried to modify his focus and his approach.

“Apart from what we have already discussed, the criminal must have a garage. In Shanghai, only about a hundred or so families have their own private garages,” Liao declared. “We could start checking them one by one.”

But Li was against it. “What are you going to do-knock on one door after another without a warrant? No. Such an approach would cause more panic.”

The private-garage owners were going to be either well-connected Big Bucks or high-ranking Party cadres, Yu observed. Liao’s suggestion amounted to swatting a fly on the forehead of a tiger, and it was a matter of course that Li opposed.

After the meeting, Yu decided to take a trip to Jasmine’s neighborhood without mentioning it to Liao. There was something about her that made the effort worthwhile, Yu convinced himself, as he walked out of the bureau. Also, there were some differences between her and the second victim that couldn’t be dismissed. The fact that she showed bruises on her body, which was subsequently washed, suggested a possible sexual assault and then an effort to cover it up. In contrast, the second victim, a more easily picked-up target for a sex murderer, showed no traces of sex before her death. Nor was her body washed afterward.

Shortly before noon, he arrived at the street Jasmine had lived in: a long and shabby lane on Shantou Road, seemingly forgotten by the reform. It was close to the Old City area.

It turned out to be almost like a visit back to his old neighborhood. At the lane entrance, he saw several wooden chamber pots airing with contented grins in the midst of the chorus of two women’s sweeping with their bamboo brooms, a scene still fresh in his memory.

The neighborhood committee was located at the end of the lane. Uncle Fong, the head of the committee, received Yu in a tiny office and poured a cup of tea for him.

“She was a good girl,” Uncle Fong started, shaking his head, “in spite of all the problems at home.”

“Tell me about her problems at home,” Yu said, having heard of some of them, but Liao’s version was not detailed.

“Retribution. Nothing but retribution. Her old man deserves it, but it’s not fair for her.”

“Can you be more specific here, Uncle Fong?”

“Well, her father, Tian, was somebody during the Cultural Revolution, and he had his fall afterward. Fired, jailed, and paralyzed. So he became a terrible burden for her.”

“What did he do during the Cultural Revolution?”

“He was one of the Worker Rebels, wearing an armband, bullying and beating people. Then he became a member of a Mao Zedong Thought Worker Propaganda Team sent to a school. Really powerful and swashbuckling at the time, you know.”

Yu knew. The Mao Zedong Thought Worker Propaganda Teams-sometimes shortened as “Mao Teams”-were a product of the Cultural Revolution. At the beginning of the movement, Mao had rallied young students in the name of the Red Guards to take back power from his rivals in the Party, but the Red Guards soon went out of control, posing a threat to Mao’s own power base. So he declared that the workers themselves should play the leading role in the Cultural Revolution, and he sent Mao Teams to schools as unchallengeable forces, crushing the students and teachers. A teacher at Yu’s middle school had been beaten into a cripple by a Mao Team member.

“So he was punished,” Uncle Fong said. “But there were millions of rebels like him in those years. It’s just his luck to be chosen as an example. Sentenced to two or three years in prison. What karma!”

“Jasmine was still quite young?”

“Yes, she was only four or five then. She lived with her mother for a couple of years and then, after her mother’s death, she moved back. Tian never took good care of her, and five or six years ago, he became paralyzed,” Uncle Fong said, taking a long thoughtful drink of his tea. “She, on the other hand, took good care of him. It wasn’t easy, and she had to save every penny. He didn’t have a pension or medical insurance. She never had a boyfriend because of him.”

“Because of the old man? How come?”

“She did not want to leave him alone. Any prospective suitor would have had to take over the burden. And few were interested in doing that.”

“Very few indeed,” Yu said, nodding. “Didn’t she have any friends in the lane?”

“No, not really. She did not mix with girls of her own age. Too busy working and taking care of things at home. She had to work at other odd jobs, I believe.” Uncle Fong added, putting down the teacup, “Let me take you there, so you may see for yourself.”

Uncle Fong led Yu to an old shikumen house in the midsection of the lane, pushing open a door directly into a room that looked to have been partitioned out of the original courtyard. It was an all-purpose room with a disorderly bed in the center, a ladder to an attic of later construction, an unlit coal briquette stove close to the bed, an ancient chamber pot practically uncovered, and hardly any other furniture. For the last few years, this small room must have been the world for Tian, who now sprawled face-up on the bed.

Jasmine might have had reasons not to stay at home much, Yu realized, nodding at her father.

“This is Tian,” Uncle Fong said, pointing. The man looked as emaciated as a skeleton, except for his eyes, which followed the visitors around the room. “Tian, this is Comrade Detective Yu of the Shanghai Police Bureau.”

Tian hissed something indistinct in response.

“She alone understood his words,” Uncle Fong commented. “I don’t know who will come to help now. It’s no longer the age of Comrade Lei Feng and no one wants to follow the selfless communist model.”

Yu wondered if Tian’s mind was clear enough to grasp what they were talking about. Perhaps better if not. Better a total blank page than to mourn the death of his daughter and face his own inevitable end. Whatever he had done during the Cultural Revolution, the retribution was enough.

Yu pulled the ladder over and climbed up cautiously.

“Yes, that’s where she lived.” Uncle Fong remained standing on the floor, looking up. The climb was too difficult for him.

It was not even an attic. Just a “second floor,” added in a makeshift way over Tian’s bed, which occupied most of the first floor. A grown-up girl, she had to have some space for herself. Yu was unable to stand erect up there, his head touching the ceiling. Nor was there a single window. In the darkness, it took him a minute or two to find a lamp switch, which he turned on. No bed, only a mattress. Beside it squatted a plastic spittoon-possibly her chamber pot. There was also an unpainted wooden box. He opened the lid to see some clothes inside, most of them cheap and old-fashioned.