Zhao had most likely known about Shanshan’s project as well as her being the heroine in his poem. So the text message would have served as proof that the inspector was throwing himself into the investigation and keeping nothing from Zhao.

As for any other details about the meeting at the club, he did not know what to say. The promise about ‘more to follow’ might prove reassuring to Zhao for the moment. As for the mention of Zhonghua Petroleum Company and the people behind it, it was intended as another indirect push in ‘the right direction’, hopefully, as mentioned in Zhao’s earlier text message.

But the inspector still had no clue regarding what he could possibly do for Qiang. He gulped at the second cup of instant coffee, hardly tasting it.

He rose to open the window. In the distant sky, the stars too seemed to be chilly, dim.

Two lines from the Qing dynasty poet Huang Zhongze came flashing back to mind, unexpectedly.

Alas, tonight is not last night, for all the sparkling stars,

For whom I stand out long, long against chilly dew drops?

He was missing Shanshan.

But he became aware of getting ‘drunk’ with coffee again, feeling suddenly sick in the stomach and sweating profusely. The window under the lamplight showed a pale face staring out vacantly into the night.

The memory of that far away night surged back in the dark, intensely, illuminating him in fragmented remembrances at the unlikely hour …

With the intensity of their passion accentuated by a touch of desperation that affected them both, they were aware there was no telling what would then happen – to her, to him, to the world. Nothing for them to grasp except the fleeting moment of being, losing, and finding themselves again in each other’s arms for the present.

With her above him, she turned into a dazzling white cloud, languid rolling, soft yet solid, sweeping, almost insubstantial, clinging, pressing and shuddering when she came, then into a sudden rain, incredibly warm yet cool, splashing, her long hair cascading over his face like torrents, washing up sensations he had never known before. Then she undulated under him like the lake, ever-flowing, rising and falling in the dark, arching up, her hot wetness engulfing him, rippling, pulling him down to the depth of the night, and bearing him up to the surface again, her legs tightening around him in waves of prolonged convulsion.

Afterwards, they lay quietly in each other’s arms, languorous, in correspondence with the lake water lapping against the shore, lapping in the quietness of the night.

‘We’re having the lake to ourselves.’

‘Yes, we’re the lake,’ she whispered a throaty agreement before falling asleep in his arms …

A night bird hooted eerily, not too far away. Possibly an owl, which seemed to be quite a rarity in this increasingly mega-metropolitan city. It was supposedly unlucky at the late hour. An inexplicable sense of foreboding brought him back to the role of an inspector standing at the end of his rope, alone, in the dark.