It was out of the question for him to wait in uncertainty, doing nothing.

The night was spreading out against the sky, reminiscent of the cold, darksome water Shanshan and he had touched as she dabbled her feet in Tai Lake.

Finally back to the desk in the study, Inspector Chen was no longer hungry, having finished three Zongzi out on the balcony, yet he’d made no real progress whatsoever on the case except for another text message from Ouyang.

‘I’ve just checked with our office assistant Nanhua. Two groups requested copies, both from Beijing. She’s positive about that. One, the Party Central Discipline Committee, and the other, from some office in the China Petroleum Building, possibly related to the Ministry of Petroleum Industry.’

The request by Zhao was no news. But the inspector did not remember having anything to do with the people in the Petroleum Ministry. Why should they be interested in the poem?

In the hotel, Zhao had mentioned about his recommendation of the poem to some others in Beijing, who too could have requested copies as a result. That seemed to be a plausible interpretation, but not really a convincing one.

Then he recalled something else – albeit just a glance of it – about the petroleum industry in a document spread out on the desk in Zhao’s hotel room.

‘That’s intriguing,’ Chen texted back.

‘Come and talk to her if you have some specific questions. She may be able to tell you more about it. Nanhua has prepared the copies of the magazine for you.’

It was just like Ouyang, meticulous about everything.

But what if Ouyang’s message was intended as an urge for the inspector to approach Nanhua for more information about the petroleum industry? It had been criticized for its impact on air pollution.

He might have just been too paranoid of late, he tried to reassure himself, in connection with Shanshan.

‘Thanks, Ouyang. I will. See you tomorrow.’

There was no point in continuing to cudgel his brains out in the dark. Exhausted, he felt more like a hollow man, his head filled with straw, with the shadow inevitably falling between the idea and the reality, and between the speculation and the action.

Out of the window, he glimpsed a faint light flickering in the distance, then vanishing. The room appeared so still, solitary, with nothing except the tick of the electric clock measuring the invisible yet the always present second moving into the past. The stars were staring down through the dark and murky sky, as if trying to whisper to him from a long-lost dream in which thousands of ships were sailing out in the silence of the night.

Was he being Eliotic again?

On a moment of impulse, he dug out the copy of Shanghai Literature and turned to the poem, in which he found himself moving with her with a real purpose – not at all like a hollow man.

Who is the one walking beside you?

Last night, a white water bird

flew into my dream again,

like a letter, telling me

that the pollution’s under control –

I awoke to see the night cloud

breaking through the ether, thinking

with difficulty, shivering,

as if the prison cell key was

heard turning only for once

before the door opens

to the anemic stars lost

in the lake of the waste …