Lian wrinkled her nose and, with a sigh, decided to follow them. She stopped, feeling a tug on her trouser leg. A soldier on the ground reached out to her. His legs were bandaged stumps, his face drawn with pain. He tried to speak but could only point at his mouth and the teapot beside him. She kneeled down and held the spout to his mouth, pouring in a dribble of weak tea until he nodded and closed his eyes, exhausted.

She had to go outside, breathe in some fresh air. But as she passed the row of chairs, one of the patients clutched at the hem of her coat. She looked down at a swollen, discolored face. Both the man’s eyes were blackened and one hand was bandaged down to the fingers.

She recoiled. It was Mr. Lee.

“I must talk to you,” he said, standing up slowly. “Please, Miss Hu. Let’s talk where it’s more private.”

She jerked her coat away from him, ready to flee.

“Please. I don’t know what you’re doing in Changsha and I don’t want to know,” he said. “I just need to tell you something. About the dossier I have on you. On your family.”

She followed as he dragged his chair around the corner to another, narrower corridor. It was mercifully empty. He sat down, wincing.

“Don’t worry about the file on your father,” he said. “There’s nothing in there to incriminate him. Not anymore. Not for the past few years. I was just trying to frighten you.”

Mr. Lee kept records on as many students as he could. He always checked up on family backgrounds and when the files for Minghua’s scholarship winners arrived, Lian’s was unusually thick. Whether it was the work of an overzealous clerk or a lazy one who hadn’t bothered removing outdated documents, the file contained far more than he’d expected. He read her father’s history with interest. He’d been so intrigued he’d made inquiries of his own about the man who’d shot her father. He learned that the officer had been a lieutenant, the chief of police’s nephew. And that the young lieutenant had died three years ago.

But of more direct consequence to Lian and her mother, Tientsin’s all-powerful chief of police had been arrested for fraud. A litany of crimes and indiscretions had come out during the trial, including the cover-up over her father’s death.

“The trial was held behind closed doors,” Mr. Lee said. “It was an embarrassment to the police. They didn’t publicly confess to their wrongdoings, but they did update their records. Your father’s file is clean, his innocence documented.”