Was it possible that they were hacking her as well as the people related to her?

That might have been the reason why she had brought up the subject in the club. A necessary reminder to the others involved in the project, though she had refrained from being too specific.

However, no one else there seemed to have been aware of anything unusual when it came to their computers. Perhaps they were not that closely related to her.

The inspector was still not in a position to put the pieces together in a comprehensive way, he supposed, since he was far from having collected all the background information about them.

Where else could he try to find the missing pieces?

But Inspector Chen was unable to concentrate long enough on any of the pieces, as Detective Yu called into his special phone.

‘What’s up, Yu?’

‘Peiqin has just sent some Zongzi to Lianping, and she would like me to bring some to you as well. Dragon Festival is drawing nearer.’

‘That’s mouth-watering,’ he said, thinking it’s much more than mouth-watering. Peiqin had already had Zongzi delivered to him. The mention of Lianping’s name could be a hint about something too much to talk about on the phone.

For a sensitive investigation, it would be too difficult for partners to discuss cases on the phone or through text messages.

‘So where are you, Chief?’

‘At a café in the New World. How about having a cup of coffee with me? It’s a French café called La Maison, with a poster outside sporting French girls dancing a bong bong dance at night. You won’t miss it.’

‘You really have the leisure time for a cup of coffee …’ But Yu too was quick to catch the cue. ‘I’ll be there in twenty minutes.’

Raising his hand, Inspector Chen signaled to the French waitress for another cup of coffee. This time she carried over a pot of black coffee and, after adding some into his cup, left the pot on the table.

Sipping, he thought that some snacks might help to calm his upset stomach after too much coffee. Turning around, he glanced toward the glass counter containing a variety of French bakery products near the door.

Following his glance, the waitress seated herself at a table outside, lit a cigarette, and blew out a smoke ring – likely in expectation of his making the new order. She could turn out to be one of the girls performing on the stage in three or four hours. Possibly the very glamorous one in the poster, in which she looked so unbelievably sexy. For the moment, however, she appeared a little sleepy, quite slipshod, barefoot in the discolored slippers, her golden hair disheveled though not without a suggestion of exotic charm.

It was just not her moment yet – perhaps just like an investigator finding himself clueless, still at quite a distance from the conclusion.

Then he saw another lone customer inside the café who was moving out to a wooden shelf close to the door, picking up a copy of a magazine and perching himself on a table beside, perhaps another customer waiting for the performance in the evening. Instead of opening the magazine, he was holding up a cellphone. But that cellphone holder was not talking or typing, not even reading or surfing, with his glance over the phone stealthily following the French waitress, who remained sitting there, humming to herself, her shoulder-length hair lighting up the somber wall behind, her bare toes tapping on the gray concrete ground.