‘You stay on here, Detective Yu, and fill me in with the rest of the discussion. I should be back in a couple of hours,’ Chen said, before turning to Qin. ‘Sorry, Detective Qin, but we’ll talk more about it.’

Inspector Chen had a hard time squeezing into the subway train to Pudong.

It was past the rush hour, but the train was still so packed – just like his mind, with possible scenarios jostling against each other.

Like the others in the bureau meeting room, Chen had no idea about Zhao’s real reason for summoning him to the hotel for ‘a chitchat’ on the first day of his vacation in the city of Shanghai.

To Chen, Zhao had been something of a political patron, having entrusted him with several high-profile cases and backed him up on a number of occasions. Chen could have long been crushed by his adversaries, as whispered in the inner circle, but for Zhao’s speaking out for him at the top.

Of late, Zhao had not been pleased with his work. Chen’s insistence on judicial independence in a murder investigation against a Red Prince, disregarding the instruction from above, ruffled enough high feathers. While the successful conclusion of the investigation was hailed online as another coup of the ‘brilliant inspector’, Zhao had called him in the middle of the night, saying, ‘It speaks volumes about your political immaturity for seeing only the tree instead of the forest.’

For today’s talk with Zhao, Chen thought he had to pick and choose each and every word with utmost caution.

An unexpected lurch of the subway train nearly made a young girl standing beside him fall against him, her high heel stamping on his foot. She was listening to the music from her smartphone through the earplugs, her eyes half-closed above a large mask, and her hips swaying to the rhythm, unaware of anything else happening around her.

Still, the subway made a reliable alternative for him, though Chen had got lost on several occasions in the maze of crisscrossing lines. In a city constantly suffering traffic congestion, cars could literally crawl along the road, and he could not afford to be late for Zhao.

In less than half an hour, he found himself moving out of Lujiazui Station.

Looking up to the street sign, he thought of the body of the third victim, a young girl named Yan discovered in the area, perhaps close to the station. It was a surreal, ominous coincidence.

He was trying to shake off the premonition under the surrounding high-rises, coughing with a hand covering his mouth, when his phone started to ring.

It was Detective Yu.

‘Is it OK to talk to you now?’

‘It’s OK. I’m just walking out of the subway station. The meeting finished?’

‘The meeting was stopped because of you. After you left, they saw no point discussing too much with me.’

‘You don’t have to say that, Yu. You’re the one in practical charge of our squad, they all know that. They were simply upset with my leaving in the middle of the meeting. Did Qin tell you something more about the fourth victim?’