“Xie, you should have told the cops that I was posing for you here last night.”

It was a dramatic development. The officer stationed at the foot of the staircase looked flabbergasted. Chen wondered whether she was shouting for Xie’s benefit upstairs.

But Xie could have told Song about his painting session with her; he didn’t have to say that she was posing nude. There was no need for him to be that overprotective – at such a cost to himself.

If what she said wasn’t true, however, why did she take the risk of making up an alibi for him? That confirmed, if anything, his earlier impression that there might be something between Jiao and Xie.

Chen was lighting a cigarette for himself when Song hurried back into the living room.

“What, Chen?”

“Jiao was with Xie last night.”

Song stared at Chen, who said nothing else. It was a surprise move by Jiao, for which Chen didn’t hold himself responsible, though it served his purpose.

He decided to leave. There was no point staying with Song, who appeared increasingly infuriated with the unexpected development. With Xie and Jiao providing alibis for each other, it would be out of the question for Internal Security to revert to their original plan.

Besides, Chief Inspector Chen was going to make a phone call to Beijing, like a capable and conscientious cop, as the minister had commended.

AGAIN, CHEN WAS LOST in a recurring dream scene – of an ancient gray gargoyle murmuring in the twilight-covered Forbidden City, in the midst of black bats flapping around the somber grottos – when he was awakened.

For several seconds, he lay with his face burrowed in the white pillow, trying to tell whether it could possibly be the sound of water dripping in the palace. It was the phone shrilling through the first gray of the morning. Picking it up, he heard Yong’s voice coming from Beijing.

“She has come back. You know what? He has a little secretary, that heartless bastard. She just found out. So she’s staying with her parents for now.” Yong’s voice was crisp and clear, not at all like the blurred murmuring in the dream. He listened, rubbing his eyes, still disoriented.

“What?” he said. “Who has a little secretary?”

“Who else? The damned bastard she married.”

“Oh.” He reached for a cigarette when the anger in Yong’s voice finally dawned on him. He propped himself up on an elbow.

“Now don’t keep saying oh. Say something else. Do something, Chen.”

But what could he do?

It wasn’t for the police to catch somebody’s “little secretary,” which had become part of the “socialism with Chinese characteristics.” An upstart invariably had a little secretary – his young mistress – as a symbol of his wealth and success. In some cases, even a “little concubine” as well. For Ling’s husband, a businessman and official of an HCC family background, it would actually be surprising for him not to have one.

“Things might not be beyond hope between you two. Come to Beijing, Chen. She isn’t happy. You and Ling should talk. I have a lot of suggestions for you.”

“I’m in the middle of an investigation, Yong,” he said, his mouth inexplicably dry. “An important investigation.”

“You’ve always been busy – thinking of nothing but your police work. That’s really your problem, Chen. She told me she thought of you even on her honeymoon. You may be an exceptional cop, but I’m so disappointed in you.”

Yong hung up in frustration – an echo of his neighbor’s door slamming shut across the corridor.

Chen dug out the ashtray full of cigarette butts and burnt matches from the last couple of days. What he had told Yong was true. This was a Mao Case, he couldn’t explain even to her.

It wasn’t the time for a trip to Beijing, even for all the suggestions Yong would offer him Ling’s honeymoon was barely over – whatever problem she might have at the moment, it wasn’t up to him to interfere.

He finished his cigarette before getting up. Still groggy from the shattered dream, he went to the sink and brushed his teeth vigorously, the image of the gray gargoyle fading, yet a bitter taste lingering in the mouth.

There wasn’t much left in the small refrigerator. A leftover box of roast duck from about a week earlier and half a leftover box of barbeque pork from god-knows-when – both from meals with business associates – and a bowl of cold rice as hard as a rock. He was in no mood to have his breakfast out. In the last two weeks, he had already spent his monthly salary and had to dig into his savings again. He could have some of the recent expense reimbursed in the name of his special assignment, but he wasn’t sure how the Mao Case would end up, and he didn’t want to submit a staggering bill for nothing. He decided to make himself a chop suey with all the leftovers boiled in a pot of hot water, along with the remaining scallion and ginger and dried pepper from the refrigerator. On an impulse, he took out the small bottle of fermented tofu and threw in the last piece along with the multicolored liquid.

As the pot was boiling on the gas head, Song called.

“I’ve talked to Gao Dongdi, a lawyer for whom Yang had once worked, as well as some other people close to Yang…”

To be fair, Chen admitted to himself that Song, though pushing for the “tough measure,” had lost no time checking into other aspects of the murder.

Chen listened, lighting another cigarette. If Xie was not the criminal, there was a murderer at large, responsible for Yang’s death and for planting her body in the garden. It might not necessarily be part of the Mao Case, but it was nonetheless a case for him.

“People go to Xie Mansion for their own reasons,” Song went on. “Some may go for a sense of elite social status, but others, for something real or practical. For instance, in the case of Yang, who had something of her own business network, it was for connections. She was also in the business of making herself irresistible to Big Bucks, and possibly she had something more substantial in mind – the mansion itself. Xie is in his sixties. Divorced. No heir.”

“So that’s a possible motive for murder -” Chen said, “at least for those young rivals who’re close to Xie.”

“But in that scenario,” Song said, contradicting himself, “Yang’s body would have appeared anywhere but in Xie’s garden.”

Besides, Yang hadn’t been close to Xie, as Chen had noticed. She wasn’t a likely threat to a rival.

As for someone really close to Xie, it would have to be Jiao. Her consideration for Xie had gone further than Chen had expected, not to mention the alibi she had provided for him. Still, Chen couldn’t bring himself to conceive of Jiao as a materialistic girl with such a motive. It didn’t fit what he knew of her.

But for once, Song and Chen seemed to be converging on the same point the possible relation between Xie and Jiao.

After finishing the phone conversation, Chen lost himself in thought for several minutes before he found the chop suey badly burnt on the gas head. He moved to stand by the window, lighting a third cigarette that morning, staring out at the new high-rises that had been popping up around the city like bamboo shoots after a spring rain. His left eyelid started twitching. An ominous sign, according to the folk superstition Old Hunter believed in. Chen frowned, trying to find a strong tea that might suit his mood.

Searching the drawer again, he saw only a tiny bottle of gin. Possibly a souvenir from an airplane trip. How it could show up this morning, like the gargoyle in the dream, he was confounded. The bottle was tiny, smaller than the “small firecracker” he had seen in Gang’s hand the day when he first got the assignment.

A plan for the morning came to mind, abruptly.

He was going to the eatery near his mother’s place. Gang had said that he would be sitting there, from morning until evening. It was a long shot, but Chen wanted to give it a try. A breakfast there wouldn’t be expensive at all. And he might drop in at his mother’s place for a short visit afterward.