For a couple of times in the next several minutes, Lou closed in on other people – apparently at a striking distance.

Detective Yu became increasingly doubtful about his being able to move up in time to stop Lou – Lou could flash out his hammer in a split second.

Yu sweated profusely. He noticed for the first time that Lou’s trouser pocket was slightly bulging. He quickened his steps, moving to a closer distance behind Lou, almost bumping against him.

It was a call for Detective Yu to make. No more than five minutes to six. Lou was now closing fast on a white-haired man close to La Maison, suddenly plunging his hand into his pocket …

As Inspector Chen opened the magazine in the park, a cool breeze was carrying a melody over from the big clock atop the Shanghai Customs Building. Six o’clock. It had been one of the ‘reddest tunes’, The East Is Red, in praise of Mao as a great savior of China during the Cultural Revolution. After the ending of the Cultural Revolution in 1976, a light-hearted tune took its place, but now once again it was The East Is Red being played over the Bund.

As if on cue, loud music was coming out of a small square in the park. It was something new in the city, commonly called ‘square dancing’ or ‘old aunties’ dancing’. A huge hit among old people, who threw themselves into a sort of dance/exercise wherever they could find any open space as a temporary stage, with CD players blaring the music around.

Chen saw nothing wrong with it, but it happened to be another ‘red song’ popular during the Cultural Revolution. Perhaps the old people were just being reminiscent of their youthful days.

There was no stepping back twice into the same park.

He found it hard to concentrate on the poem, but he did not really have to. Those lines were inerasable images in his mind. Still, he needed the feeling of sitting there in the park, thinking, and holding the magazine in his hand.

The visit to the park would help, hopefully, to regroup his mind, just like in the mornings so many years earlier, or like Antaeus’s effort to regain his strength by coming into contact with the earth.

During those long-ago mornings here, he had made for himself a number of future plans, none of which came close to what was happening to him on this gray, smoggy morning.

Looking over his shoulder, he could hardly discern the silhouette of the Hyatt Hotel across the river.

As he was about to leave the park, his cellphone started ringing.

So early in the morning. He thought he could guess who was calling, and he hurried into a recess behind a small bamboo groove in the park and picked up the phone.

‘I’ve got him, Chief.’

‘You’ve got Lou, Detective Yu?’

‘Yes.’

‘Where?’

‘The New World.’

‘The New World!’

‘Not far from the café where we met just the day before, under the poster of those French bong bong dancers.’