The neighborhood committee had been a dynamic ‘watchdog’ for the Party authorities during the Mao period, when the word yinsi – privacy – did not exactly exist in the Chinese language. If anything, yinsi was totally negative, meaning something done in secret from the surveillance of the ‘revolutionary people’. So the committee could have done everything in those years in the name of the ‘class struggle’, spying on and suspecting anyone as a possible ‘class enemy’. In recent years, however, it was no longer that easy for a committee member to barge into a resident’s home without a justifiable reason.

Yu left the park. It took him less than ten minutes to get back to the apartment building, of which Lou’s was on the sixth floor. For an apartment without an elevator, it required some energy to climb to the top floor, but it was the least expensive in the building.

On the sixth floor, the door to Lou’s unit was locked, as was no surprise, and Yu knocked on the door opposite.

It opened with a slender woman in her mid-thirties reaching out wearing her florid pajamas, barefoot in plastic slippers.

Yu raised a finger to his lips and handed over his police badge to her.

Examining the badge, she nodded and let him into her apartment without much ado.

‘My name is Mi,’ she said, gesturing for him to sit on an old leather-covered chair in a scantily furnished room. She had a lean face and pale, thin lips.

‘I just want to ask some questions about your neighbor, Lou. And I hope I won’t take too much of your time.’

‘Ask any questions you want to ask. I got fired from my old job last month, and I am still looking for a new one. Time is one thing I have a lot of nowadays. Did he do something horrible?’

‘We don’t really know anything yet. But perhaps you can help by telling me about what you know about him?’

‘He moved in here only half a year or so ago, but prior to that, he and Shen, still his girlfriend at the time, came quite regularly to renovate the apartment opposite, doing all the hard work themselves. Not well-to-do, but a loving, happy young couple they were! But about a month after they moved in, she was checked into the hospital. What a tragic story! You must have heard about it.’

‘He must have been so devastated.’

‘Yes, he’s a totally different man after her death.’

‘So is there anything strange, abnormal about him now?’

‘It’s difficult for one to remain normal after suffering such a terrible loss. From time to time, he could be heard weeping alone in the apartment. And cursing too.’

‘So he shut himself up all the time?’

‘Not all the time, but he could stay in for the whole day.’

‘He does not go to work any more?’

‘I think he took his leave, but you may have to ask his company about it,’ she said, wetting her lips with the tip of her tongue. ‘And there may be something else. He spares no expense for the seven-seven ritual for her at home, you know, bringing basketfuls of fish and meat for the meal dedicated to her every week. Now it is conventional to invite other family members to the seven-seven meal, for he surely buys enough for a “round table banquet”. But you know what? He declared he just wanted to be with her alone. No relatives or friends were invited. He simply locked himself in with her tablet on the table. And almost all the food was dumped afterward.’