‘That’s really strange. What did his office assistant Meiling say?’

‘According to Meiling, Qiang had never mentioned any activities scheduled that afternoon or that night.’

‘When was Qiang last seen?’

‘Yesterday afternoon, shortly after your visit to him, as Meiling recalled.’

‘Well, Qiang and I moved down to the café for tea. It was about one thirty, and after twenty minutes or so, he went back to his office.’

‘Yes, Meiling saw him coming back to the office, but then he got a phone call and hurried out. He did not say anything to her about it.’

‘He could have left for something urgent.’

‘He’s retiring. For the last several months Meiling was practically in charge of the office work. There was nothing urgent or important scheduled yesterday. Besides, he would have told her if he had to leave because of something related to the office.’

‘That beats me, Ouyang. But don’t worry too much. I’ll try to come over to the association today. By that time, Qiang might have come back with an explanation.’

But Inspector Chen was truly worried about Qiang turning off his phone.

Could his disappearance have had something to do with his talk with the inspector at the café?

If that were the case, the net could be tightening around the inspector, relentlessly, for something still beyond his knowledge.

He must have been followed. His visit to Qiang’s office and then to the café downstairs raised the alarm for some, most likely Internal Security, who kept watching for each and every move he was making.

Because of that, Qiang had received ‘the invitation out for a cup of tea’.

‘The invitation out for a cup of tea’ was a newly coined Chinese expression, meaning that people were detained by Internal Security at an unknown location for questioning – for days, or even longer if the ‘tea drinker’ in question was believed not to have come out with everything useful. It was not seen as formal police procedure, nor acknowledged or reported in the official media. The invitation was carried out without a warrant or anything like that, and the ‘tea drinker’, usually scared to death by the ‘tea experience’, would never talk about it afterward.

For Qiang, the questioning possibly revolved around the contents of his talk with Chen in the café.

But both of them had talked carefully. As far as Qiang was concerned, there was nothing but an old man’s concerns about a younger colleague, even though some of his words could have been taken as oblique hints, open to different interpretations. On Chen’s part, he had not given away anything involving sensitive information. Still, Internal Security would not have believed it. Consequently, Qiang remained detained until he would start telling them what they wanted to uncover.

For an alternative scenario, Qiang could have known much more about Chen’s trouble. In order to make sure of his not leaking anything else to Chen, he was detained. That made sense, however, only if something catastrophic was going to happen to Chen really soon – within a matter of days. Until then, would Qiang have to remain in an unknown location holding his cup of tea?