Hold Your Breath, China

Chief Inspector Chen and Detective Yu Guangming are brought into a serial murder case when the Homicide squad proves incapable of solving it. But before Chen can make a start, he is called away by a high-ranking Party member for a special assignment: to infiltrate a group of environmental activists meeting to discuss the pollution levels in the country and how to prompt the government into action. Chen knows it will be a far from simple task, especially when he discovers the leader of the group is a woman from his past. Meanwhile, Yu is left to investigate a serial murder case on his own. Both Chen and Yu face pressure from those above to resolve the cases in a satisfactory way … even if that means innocents face the punishment.

Qiu Xiaolong

Hold Your Breath, China

Inspector Chen Cao - 10

ePub r1.0

Titivillus 17.05.2021

Original title: Hold Your Breath, China

Qiu Xiaolong, 2020

e-ISBN 9781448304165

Digital editor: Titivillus

ePub base r2.1

For my friends Yesi and Lingjun, two victims of China’s air pollution.

DAY ONE

MONDAY

DETECTIVE YU GUANGMING of the Shanghai Police Bureau was dragging his feet toward the bureau meeting room early Monday morning.

As the police officer in practical charge of the Special Case squad, he was far from eager to attend the first joint meeting of his team and the Homicide squad. In fact, Yu was both upset and worried, his mood almost as foul as the smoggy air outside.

It was upsetting that a serial murder case, initially reported to the Special Case squad three weeks ago, had been assigned instead to the Homicide squad under Detective Qin Xiejun.

What had happened since was no less upsetting. Qin and his people had proved not to be up to the job, having wasted three weeks with no progress made at all, and with two more bodies found in a similar manner in the early mornings.

As a result, Party Secretary Li Guohua, the number one Party boss of the bureau, wanted Detective Yu, as well as his long-time partner and personal friend, Chief Inspector Chen Cao, to help. They were supposed to serve as something like informal consultants, but with the case still under the charge of Qin’s squad, and with the implication that the credit went to Qin’s squad if and when the case came to be solved.

For Yu, however, that was not his main concern. He was more worried for Chen.

It was another ominous sign for the chief inspector. Once a rising star in the system, Chen was now being seen as having fallen out of the Party’s grace. It was because of several successful anti-corruption investigations, ironically, involving high-ranking Party officials. With the conclusions not being what the high-above had wanted to see, Chen was noted down in an inside ‘blacklist’ as one who stubbornly pushed the investigations to the end – in his own way – in the name of law and justice, but not in the interests of the Party.