The doctor said that for that type of injury, only immediate surgery at one of the big hospitals in Beijing or Shanghai could have saved her life. We didn’t have that kind of surgeon or that kind of equipment, but we could see her face getting paler and paler, her pulse weaker and weaker, her body colder and more still … Everyone was desperate to save her, and right up to the very last moment people were rushing around trying anything they could think of, but there was nothing they could do. This was a problem for a top-class hospital, and the people here couldn’t even make an accurate diagnosis, let alone save her life. In fact they only found out that it was a cerebral haemorrhage at the autopsy. It sounds really weird that someone could die like that without breaking their head open, without even a bruise. There was just a small scrape with a thin line of blood, and even that was covered by her hair. If you weren’t really careful you could easily miss it. It seemed that Huang Yiyi’s skin was as tough as leather, but that had not stopped the skull underneath from fracturing like an eggshell.

That was how our wonderful cipher-cracking Angel left us.

Huang Yiyi’s death was the most terrible shock, the worst tragedy that we ever had to face. I kept thinking that if someone was responsible for her death, no matter what the consequences, I would rip them to pieces with my bare hands and then trample the remains to a bloody pulp. But no one was responsible; everyone with whom she came into contact that morning had treated her with the utmost respect and concern. The abortion was done as carefully as they could, and after she collapsed they did their very best to save her. It was regrettable that they didn’t have the equipment to save her, but you couldn’t blame them for that. If anyone was to blame, it was the hospital managers who had not had the lavatory throne repaired in time. Why had Huang Yiyi fainted in the lavatory? She had always been someone who fainted easily, and on top of that she was feeling weak after the operation, so squatting down had been too much for her. When she stood up again she felt giddy and fell. That was all there was to it.