‘They were killed to make the murder of Xiang even more sensational,’ Qin said, with increasingly visible impatience.

‘It’s difficult for me to imagine Zhou could have done all that for such a reason.’

‘Zhou had another deeper reason, like your Inspector Chen says, “known only to himself”. He had been seeing a young woman for several years. With the prospect of his being promoted to the section head, and then possibly the associate editor in chief for the newspaper, things were not bad between the two, but she recently dumped him.’

‘What’s that to do with the murder?’

‘With Xiang serving as his boss, he’s seen as one with no future. Xiang’s much younger, plus with Geng’s power behind her, there’s no way for him to move up any more, and that’s the way Zhou’s girlfriend saw it.’

‘So you mean he did all the killings as a sort of prelude for the killing of Xiang? But he could have been caught in one of the earlier murders, then his revenge plan would have been totally finished even before it had started. Zhou would have known better.’

‘For a serial murderer, he knows only the logic of his twisted mind. Twisted mind, isn’t that your Inspector Chen’s phrase? His choice of those central locations could have been made out of the same consideration. The more sensation, the more devastating to the Gengs.’

Qin was apparently so deep into the scenario pushed by Internal Security, Yu saw no point arguing any more. It was pointless. With no other leads or clues, Internal Security’s scenario could have appeared like a life-saving straw to Qin.

But Yu was far from convinced.

Back in his apartment after meeting with Old Hunter in People’s Park, carrying with him a flash memory stick from the old man who had got it from Peiqin the night before, Inspector Chen did not even have the time to really check into the contents of it before he got a text message from Zhao. It was unexpected from the senior Party leader.

‘You are moving in the right direction. Good job, Chief Inspector Chen. Keep at it.’

He wondered at Zhao’s comment about ‘the right direction’. The trip to Wuxi? Nothing like any breakthrough was reported as far as Zhao’s inquiry was concerned. Was it in relation to the mention of the petroleum industry in the earlier message from Chen? It did not take a chief inspector to point a finger at its contribution to the air pollution.

The message was too vague.

Again, Chen felt like walking out for a while. The apartment suddenly felt suffocating as he recalled the fresh air machine in Zhao’s hotel suite, as well as all the other types of machine Bian had told him about the day before.

He too should have one installed at home – perhaps at his mother’s small room first in that old shikumen house. He wondered whether he would have the time to visit her the next day, feeling pretty bad about having given away the Wuxi specials to Qiang.