Red Mandarin Dress Read Free Page A

seriously, though he had been in effective charge of the squad for longer periods before: weeks when Chen had been too busy, what with his political meetings and his well-paid translations. Still, Yu was seen as stepping in the shadow of Chen.
    What troubled Yu was Chen’s inexplicable determination to undertake the literature program. It was a decision that had given rise to numerous interpretations at the bureau. According to Liao Guochang, head of the homicide squad, Chen was trying to stay low after having ruffled high feathers, and so was adopting a bookish pose to keep himself out of the limelight for a while. It seemed to Little Zhou that Chen had his eye on a MA or a PhD—something crucial to his future career, for an advanced degree made a huge difference in the new policy of the Party cadre promotion. Commissar Zhang, a semiretired cadre of the older generation, saw Chen’s studies in a different light, claiming that Chen planned to study abroad with a hongyan zhiji —an appreciating and understanding beauty—who was a US marshal. Like most of the rumors about Chen, no one could prove or disprove it.
    Yu was not so sure about any of those views. And there was another possibility he could not rule out: something else might be going on. Chen had asked him about a housing development case without offering any explanation, which was unusual between the chief inspector and Yu.
    Yu did not have much time to worry that morning. Party Secretary Li had summoned him to Inspector Liao’s office.
    Liao was a solidly built man in his early forties, owlish-looking with an aquiline nose and round eyes. He frowned at Yu’s entrance.
    At the bureau, only a case of extraordinary political significance would go to the special case squad under Chen and Yu. Liao’s sour expression implied that another case proved to be too much for Homicide.
    “Comrade Detective Yu, you have heard about the red mandarin dress case,” Li said, more a statement than a question.
    “Yes,” Yu responded. “A sensational case.”
    A week earlier, a girl’s body in a red mandarin dress had been found in a flower bed on West Huaihai Road. Because of its proximity to a number of high-end stores, the case had been much reported and was now conveniently nicknamed the red mandarin dress case. The news about it had caused a terrible traffic jam in the area—people hurried over, window-shopping and gossip-shopping, in addition to all the photographers and journalists milling around, information-shopping.
    Newspapers went wild with theories. No murderer would have dumped a body in such a dress, at such a location, without some reason. One reporter saw it pointing to someone at the Shanghai Music Institute, located across the street opposite the flower bed. One deemed it a political case, a protest against the reversal of values in socialist China, for the mandarin dress, once condemned as a sign of capitalistic decadence, had become popular again. A tabloid magazine went further, speculating that the murder had been orchestrated by a fashion industry tycoon. Ironically, one result of the media coverage was that several stores immediately displayed new lines of mandarin dresses in their windows.
    Yu had noticed the mystifying aspects of the case. According to the initial forensic report, bruises on her arms and legs indicated that the victim could have been sexually assaulted before death of suffocation, but no trace of semen was found on or in the body, and the body had been washed after her death. She had nothing on underneath the dress, which was in contradiction to the common dress code. Then the location itself was so public that few would have chosen to dump a body there.
    In one of the bureau’s initial theories, the murderer, having committed the crime, put clothes on her for the purpose of transporting, but in a hurry, he either forgot to put on her panties and bra, or did not think it necessary. The dress could have been the same one she had