Who is the one walking beside you?

By the water, an apple tree

blossoming again, flashing

smiles among the waking boughs,

petals transparent in the dazzling light,

she walks in a red trench coat

carries a report in her hand

like a bright sail cutting

through the contaminated currents

to the silent splendid sun.

It was an optimistic ending, suggested by the editor for the sake of circumventing government censorship, which Chen understood and complied.

But it was also a scene he had been envisioning, in a sentimental fantasy, time and again.

In a fleeting figment of imagination, she seemed to be coming over to him just like that, with the white apple blossom dazzling under the sun, her arms reaching out, smiling after the successful release of the documentary, and inhaling the new fresh air.

But what about the development in real life – in his as well as hers?

Willows at Zhangtai, willows at Zhangtai,

still so green as in the past?

The soft, long shoots still clinging –

in another man’s hand …

The lines from the Tang dynasty poem came back to him like a satirical echo of the present moment, of the poem he was holding in his hand.

The refrain ‘Who is the one walking beside you?’ had been originally put in there as a means for the spatial structure of his poem, but in his subconscious mind he must have projected himself into the ‘one’, and not just in the lines of the poem.

Now the refrain read like a self-fulfilled sign. It’s somebody else, not him, walking beside her at the moment.

And he was doing the investigation as a cop, not as a poet, with the utmost detachment imaginable for him.

As if through a mysterious correspondence in cyberspace, Detective Yu gave Inspector Chen an unexpected call.

‘You know where Old Hunter will be in the morning, Chief?’

‘The Bird Corner in People’s Park. It’s good for your father to really enjoy his life in retirement in the midst of twittering birds.’

‘Tomorrow morning, he wants to show you a new bird he has just got. A very sexy bird.’

‘Really!’

He had met Old Hunter there before – not for the sake of birds.

Nor could it be the real reason for the meeting next morning. It would probably be something not safe for Detective Yu to send electronically.

‘I’ll be there. Six o’clock. I’ve not seen him for a couple of months.’

Chen thought he got the hint about the ‘sexy bird’. And he also had to get a new email address for himself.

DAY THREE

WEDNESDAY

EARLY WEDNESDAY MORNING, Detective Yu went to have another talk with Detective Qin in his office.

‘You’re not our legendary infallible chief inspector, Detective Yu,’ Qin started with a tone quite different from the day before, ‘so I’ll keep nothing from you.’

‘Thanks, Detective Qin.’

‘I think we have got the one with the real motive for Xiang, victim number four.’

‘How?’