‘But she did not come back as usual. No one in the office paid attention to it at first. With the job done, she could have gone wherever she pleased. About an hour later, however, a police officer hurried into the Wenhui building.

‘Her body was discovered on the street corner still wearing the Wenhui name tag over her white silk blouse. She appeared to have suffered a fatal blow from behind with a heavy, blunt object.

‘According to the police report, there were some things puzzling about the crime. It’s not exactly one of the central locations of the city, with just a few people moving around there in the early hours. For instance, there are only those working for the newspapers, and some customers going to that popular snack stall as soon as it starts business around five fifteen. Why should the criminal have chosen to attack there and then?’

‘What a story! I’ll tell all this to Yu,’ Peiqin said, taking a sip of the cooling coffee, which she did not like. ‘Now, have you heard of anything specific about her experience before her coming to work here?’

‘Gossip about her, and about him, had been around before her arrival here. Particularly about where she had worked – as a massage girl in a private club,’ Lianping said, stirring the spoon slowly in the cup. ‘Again, it’s not something too surprising. According to a colleague of mine in the entertainment section, quite a number of young college graduates choose to work in those dubious “clubs” or “massage salons”. Excellent pay for them. That background, and their college education as extra qualification, is sometimes a must to the Big Bucks who can show them off not just with their voluptuous bodies, but with their intelligent talk too. For a young girl like Xiang from Anhui Province, anxious to stay on in Shanghai, her working at such a temporary job was understandable.’

‘But people all know what the job there is really about?’

‘You bet! The moment the massage room door is closed, what’s happening inside is pretty much imaginable,’ Lianping said, producing a laptop and inserting a flash memory card into it. ‘You have not seen the video tape, have you?’

‘No, I haven’t. Nor has Yu.’

‘No need to play it here. Perhaps one image from the tape may tell you more than enough.’

Sure enough, it vividly demonstrated what was happening inside the massage room. Geng was sitting on the massage bed with his pants pulled down to his ankles, and with her nestling stark naked, leaning partially on his lap and partially on the edge of the massage bed, one of her long legs stretching out, her bare foot pressing the door, making sure it was closed. The old man was forcefully rubbing her hairy crotch to a climax, her eyes closed in ecstasy.

It was like a graphic movie scene.

‘Judging by the date printed on the video, it was about one month before he married her.’