‘Well, like in a proverb, people do not go to the temple without praying for something. It’s about one of the victims in a case investigated by my husband, Yu. She’s from your newspaper.’

‘That’s what I’ve guessed. About Xiang, right? In fact, this café is not far from the crime scene.’ After taking a small sip at the coffee, Lianping added, ‘What do you want to know?’

‘To be honest, I have no idea what Yu exactly wants to know for the investigation, but how about telling me what you know about her?’

‘Then let’s go from the beginning. Xiang came to the newspaper about a year ago in an unusual way. A Wenhui job is generally considered a very good one. Secure, excellent pay, not to mention the benefits for a journalist in the age of connections. It’s difficult even for an MA graduate to land a job here. Xiang’s from Anhui Province, and having graduated from a two-year program in a third-class college she had no proper training or qualification whatsoever in the field.

‘People naturally had stories about the circumstances of her getting the job. Without going into details for the moment, suffice it to say that she obtained it because of her husband, Geng Hua, the head of Wenxin Group. In the crony socialism of China, such an arrangement was not a surprise. If anything is surprising at all, it is that Xiang did not choose to be a housewife – an enviable status in today’s society.

‘To be fair to her, Xiang had been working hard here without throwing up any air like a young, spoiled wife of a high-ranking Party official might do. On the contrary, she kept her tail tucked in, so to speak.

‘It took just a couple of months for her to become the head of the new economy section, though there’re people who’ve worked here much longer. Having said that, it’s not an easy job for her. As a rule, the section head had to work late twice a week, as the newspaper gave half a page to the section Wednesday and Friday. The final galley had to be signed by the person in charge before it’s sent to print early in the morning. It was said that our editor in chief told her that she did not have to do so, considering her responsibility to take care of Geng, but she insisted on doing it most of the time. Last Thursday, with her husband away in Beijing for a meeting, she came to the office for the night shift.

‘On that fatal Friday morning, with all the contents of the section proofread and set up, it was around five thirty. She hurried out alone under a gray sky for her favorite Shanghai morning snack – earthen oven cake with fried dough stick from a stall around the street corner.

‘Usually, she would come back to the office in five to ten minutes. There’s nothing on the street for her to see so early in the morning.