“You are scaring me, Chen.”
“No, I’m not. What happened to Detective Wei could happen to me, but I’ve found something they’re after-the information Zhou left behind. What I have could make the whole bunch of live, monstrous crabs inseparable, and their fate inescapable. And these are not just small crabs like Zhou.”
“In other words, you’re in a position to prove Zhou didn’t act alone, but with the help of people above him. You have evidence that they were all involved in corrupt deals involving Shanghai’s land allocation and housing development?”
“Not only that, I can prove that the death of Zhou in the hotel wasn’t suicide.”
“How?”
“You know the expression ‘a chain of crabs,’ don’t you?”
She nodded.
“Zhou must have expected the other ‘crabs’ to get him out of trouble, since they were all bound together-not by a straw rope, but by the secrets of their shared corruption. But the evidence unleashed in the human-flesh search was too strong. And it came out at a time when the Youth League faction in Beijing was gearing up to annihilate the Shanghai Gang, so the other people in the corruption scheme had to throw Zhou overboard. Shuangguied in the hotel, all alone in the dark, believing that they had left him in the lurch, he must have complained too loudly or threatened them in some way. After all, he’d secretly saved evidence of their involvement, and if he fell into hell, he could drag all of them down with him. They believed they had no choice but to finish him off, and it wasn’t unimaginable, they thought, for a shuangguied official to commit suicide. Usually, the police investigation after a shuanggui case is just for show. It was only because of Party Secretary Li’s obtuseness, however, that Detective Wei was chosen to handle the case, a cop too conscientious to perform according to their script.”
“Zhou’s entanglement with other corrupt officials above him might explain why he was murdered,” she said deliberately. “But it still leaves the question of how it was done in such a well-guarded hotel.”
“Remember the lead that Detective Wei mentioned in his phone call?”
“You said he said something about the interview with the hotel attendant. What did you learn from the attendant at the hotel? Did you talk to her?”
“No, not exactly. Detective Wei walked into that fatal ambush because of his overt move in that direction. I tried not to make the same mistake. I listened to the tape of the interview God knows how many times, and I even brought it with me all the way to Shaoxing,” he said, with a sudden sigh. “That night, after the festival dinner party, I tried to call you, but your cell phone was turned off, and you weren’t registered at the hotel.”
“I took the night train back to Shanghai before the party was even over. I thought you were just too busy to notice me,” she said, draining another cup, her face burning under the light. “I’m sorry, Chen, but I didn’t know how serious your situation was.”
“No, you don’t have anything to be sorry for.” He, too, drained his cup. “Anyway, I couldn’t fall asleep in the hotel, so once again I thought through the sequence of events the night Zhou died, as described in the hotel attendant’s statement. Then something occurred to me. That night in Shaoxing, when I stepped into my hotel room, the bedcovers were already turned down and there was a small bag of chocolate and a ‘Sleep well’ card placed on the pillow.”
“That’s not uncommon with a luxury suite in a five-star hotel. That shouldn’t be surprising. And does that relate somehow to the interview tape?”
“To something on the tape. According to Jiang, he left the hotel Monday afternoon for an important meeting and spent the night at home, all of which has been confirmed. But according to the statement from the hotel attendant, when she tried to turn down the covers for the other two guests on the third floor, both Liu and Jiang were in their rooms.
“Now, with turn-down service, usually an attendant knocks on the door and asks the guest inside if they want their bed turned down. If the guest isn’t in, she might let herself in and prepare the bed. Just like the attendant had done in my room earlier that night in Shaoxing. But if the guest is in, he’ll answer loudly, without opening the door, that it’s not needed, and then the attendant will leave. In other words, there had to be another man in Jiang’s room when the attendant knocked.
“If that’s true, then why and who? From the very beginning, there was something we took for granted. Jiang and Liu were the shuangguiing Party cadres, and as such, they were above suspicion. What made us further rule them out was that Jiang wasn’t at the hotel at the time and had a solid alibi, and Liu, a short and feeble old man, seemed physically unable to do such a thing. Building B is well guarded. Anyone who enters has to sign in, and then sign out when they leave. There is also a surveillance camera over the landing to the third floor.
“I managed to obtain copies of the register pages for building B for that Monday and Tuesday. To my surprise, I found a man named Pan Xinhua had signed in Monday afternoon, visiting Jiang in his room. Jiang left the hotel about an hour later, but there’s no record of Pan signing out that day. Pan could have stayed in Jiang’s room and could have been the one who spoke to the hotel attendant when she came around six fifteen. Several hours later, he could have sneaked into Zhou’s room, where Zhou was in a deep sleep after having taken sleeping pills, strangled him, and staged the room to make it look like Zhou had hanged himself from the beam.
“From the same source, which I have to protect, I was able to get the surveillance camera tape for those two days. On the video, Pan can be seen coming up to the third floor on Monday afternoon, but there’s no sign of him leaving later that day. The next morning, when the commotion broke out after Zhou’s death was discovered, Pan was caught by the camera walking down the stairs shortly afterward. It was total chaos then, with many people coming and going in a hurry, so no one paid any special attention to him-”
“I have to interrupt with a question, Chen. Did he stay in Zhou’s room the whole time? Or did he return to Jiang’s?”
“No, I don’t think so. After killing Zhou, Pan probably left Jiang’s room and stayed somewhere else. There were three unoccupied rooms on that floor. He waited until the morning, then during the pandemonium he slipped out of the room, and the building, without even signing his name to the register.”
“That’s unbelievable, Chief Inspector Chen, but you’ve solved the case. Congratulations.”
“No, not entirely-”
There came another knock on the door.
TWENTY-SIX
The door opened, and the waitress stepped into the room, carrying a large silver tray.
“I’m sorry for the interruption, sir. There’s one special course before the hot dishes. We thought you might enjoy that.”
She placed a white plate in front of each of them, and then a large platter in between. Each plate had on it a deshelled steamed blue crab, still in crab shape, with the legs and claws arranged meticulously. The platter contained chunks of liquor-immersed raw crab.
“It’s not river crab season yet,” the waitress said, introducing the course, “so we use live blue crabs flown in special from the sea. The deshelled crab is a favorite among Western customers here. The liquor-immersed crab is a celebrated dish in Shaoxing cuisine. We use live crabs, plus Maotai liquor, and it’s stored at fifty degrees, so there’s no need to worry about the freshness of it.”
“Thank you. Liquor-immersed crab is my mother’s favorite.”
“Why not have it boxed and take it to her?” Lianping asked.
“Good idea. I hardly touch raw seafood myself.” He turned to the waitress, “We’re in no hurry for the hot dishes.”