“You’re the number-one finance journalist. It says so on your business card, as I remember,” he commented as she took a sip from a water bottle.
“Come on. It simply means that you’re the one trusted by the Party boss, the top journalist in the section. It does come with a bonus of one thousand yuan per month.”
“That’s fantastic.”
“But it also means that to keep it, you have to write every piece with the interest of the Party in mind.” The car took an abrupt turn, and she went on, “Oh, look at the new restaurant on your right. That is the number-one-restaurant choice for lovers, according to the Mass Recommendation Web Forum. It is totally dark inside, like a cocoon. The young people can’t even see the food—instead, they are touching and feeling and groping the whole time.”
She had a way of talking about things, jumping from one topic to another, like a sparrow flitting among the boughs, but she surely knew more than he did about the young, glamorous parts of the city.
“I grow old—”
“What do you mean, Chief Inspector Chen?”
“Oh, it just reminds me of a line.”
“Come on. You’re still the youngest chief inspector in the country,” she said, patting his hand lightly. “I’ve researched it on the Internet.”
When the car slowed down in the jam-packed tunnel to Puxi, he asked her where she lived.
“It’s close to Great World. My father is a businessman, so he was able to make the down payment for me on an apartment there. It’s been a good investment, having quadrupled in value in less than three years.”
“Oh, so it’s close to my mother’s place.”
“Really! Drop by my place next time you visit her. I’ve got the latest coffeemaker.”
The car was already pulling up, however, by his subdivision near Wuxing Road.
She got out of the car at the same time as he did and was now standing opposite him, her clear eyes sparkling under the starry sky. It was an intoxicating night with a balmy breeze.
“Thank you so much. I’ve really enjoyed the evening. Not just the music, but also the conversation.” He awkwardly added, “It’s late, and my place is a mess. Perhaps next time—”
“So that’s a rain check,” she said, smiling and sliding back into her car.
He stood watching as her car disappeared into the distance. It was a wasted evening in terms of the investigation, but as he hastened to reassure himself, not entirely so. There was his visit to the Internet café prior to the concert, the mail from Peiqin with the pictures, and then the latest information about Melong. Perhaps some dots were beginning to form into possible lines, though nothing was yet clear…
Alone, in the stillness of the night, he might be able to figure something out.
Lianping reminded him, he realized, of a character from a French book he read long ago—Rameau’s Nephew.
And again, he was getting confused.
SIXTEEN
MELONG WAS SITTING ALONE in his home office, brewing his third cup of Pu’er tea that morning, and restlessly alternating between putting his feet on the desk and then putting them back down on the floor.
He felt like a trapped animal.
The Confucian maxim that one should “pay respects to ghosts and spirits, yet keep yourself at a distance from them” had been working out so far—at least in his dealings with the cops, the netcops, and with Internal Security and the city government as well. But this time, “paying his respects” didn’t appear to be enough. The human-flesh search initiated by the photo of the pack of 95 Supreme Majesty appearing on his Web forum had resulted in an avalanche of questions from the authorities. The initial reaction to the picture wasn’t totally unexpected, but the subsequent developments astonished him. Still, Melong didn’t think he could be blamed for the results.
What he did wasn’t that different from what others in his position had done, and controversy adds to the traffic of a Web forum. What he hadn’t told the netcops was the sense of satisfaction he felt over the downfall of another corrupt official, and in seeing the embarrassment of the “ever-correct-and-glorious” Party authorities.
Still, what he did tell them was true. He had no idea who’d sent the original picture. Using all his expertise, he’d traced the IP address of the sender to a particular computer, but it turned out to be at an Internet café. The netcops must have made the same effort and come up with the same results. So that was the end of it. Or it should have been.
But it wasn’t. The netcops concocted a conspiracy theory that somehow Melong had gained access to Zhou’s computer, got hold of that picture, posted it online, and then invented the story of an anonymous user having sent the picture from an Internet café. They based their scenario on his hacker credentials. After all, they claimed, an ordinary person wouldn’t have been able to read the cigarette brand from a newspaper photo.