‘You have done cases like that, I know, but a murder case and the People’s Congress are two different matters, and you don’t have to put them together. As a young emerging cadre, you should not be concerned just with these cases, Comrade Chief Inspector Chen. Remember what the Tang dynasty poet Wang Zhihuan says in the poem on the Guanque Tower?’

‘You have to climb even higher to see further … thousands of miles away to the horizon.’

‘Exactly. I’ll talk to Li about it. He should understand that too.’

Chen was not ungrateful with the way Zhao responded, apparently ready to throw in his weight to back the inspector again. Still, Chen hesitated.

‘But it is really out of my element.’

‘Don’t keep on saying no, Comrade Chief Inspector Chen.’ Zhao produced a large manila envelope from the pile on the desk. ‘Take a look at the material inside. Yuan Jing used to be based in Wuxi, but she now has an office in Shanghai, too. A well-connected activist, as well as a super VIP on the Internet for her posts about environmental issues. It’s said she has millions of online followers who forward and reforward each and every post of hers. She’s quite influential.’

‘She’s from Wuxi?’ he asked mechanically, more like an echo than a question.

‘For the project she has been pursuing, some of her associates are in the city of Shanghai, including several wealthy and influential Big Bucks. You know the city and its people well, don’t you?’

Chen took the envelope and pulled out a folder. The moment he opened it, unexpectedly, a color picture fell to the floor.

It seemed as if – in a moment of disorientation – something like a fortune-telling bamboo slip was falling, portentously, to the flagstone-covered ground of an ancient temple in ruins.

Chen caught himself staring at a picture of Shanshan, who was smiling back at him contemplatively.

Realization hit home. His mind briefly wandered, trying to remember the last time he saw her.

Yuan Jing was the micro-blogging name for Shanshan.

So she had come to the fore for her environmental activities and writings on the Internet in the last several years, in an unbelievable transformation, of which he had not heard anything.

Or was it simply a result of his subconscious effort to keep her out of sight, out of mind?

He was at a loss for words.

To his unexpected relief, Zhao’s cellphone started ringing in the hotel suite. The senior Party leader frowned at the number and started moving to the bedroom, holding the phone in one hand and gesturing for Chen to wait with the other.

It must have been an important phone call.

With the bedroom door shut after Zhao, Inspector Chen had the large living room to himself.

Looking out the window, he still failed to catch a clear view of the river. Instead, his imagination began wandering with the waves in the Huangpu River, rolling, splashing and converging, for a fleeting moment, with the waves in Tai Lake, by which he had stood with Shanshan, her hand touching his …