Yan City's Central Bureau of Public Security, precisely 8:00 AM.
Each department's workers were arriving at their posts bit by bit. The administrative office's supply worker Xiao Sun (6) yawned and shouldered a new water barrel to deliver to the old Director-General's office. As soon as he opened the door, he found that Director Zhang had already steeped his first cup of tea and was just making a phone call, his expression stern.
Their old Director-General had passed his fifth decade. He was very lean, a fiery-tempered old antique. Wherever he went, he had to carry his own water to brew tea. He always carried an old-style dumb phone that could be charged once in half a month. He never wore civilian clothes to work, but in all four seasons alternated between a few uniforms. At the center of his forehead there was a deep crease, like the Erlang God's third eye: this was the gradual accumulation of his attitude of "everyone I see is displeasing"; if he smiled once, it was like an iron tree blossoming.
The sound from the office's elderly landline phone leaked out a little. Half-kneeling on the floor ripping open the water barrel's packaging, Xiao Sun could hear the person on the other end of the phone clamoring: "Sir, I know this thing happening now in my jurisdiction really shows a dereliction of duty on my part, but…"
Xiao Sun snuck a glance at Director Zhang's rarely parted brows and thought, What's happened now?
Yan City was just hosting a very important international conference. The leaders and reporters of every nation in the world were present; many business schools had taken off; all private vehicles in the city were restricted to alternate days; all the safety and security branches were on high alert.
Xiao Sun saw the old Director-General starting to brew a storm from the neck up. Then he purposefully lowered his voice and said as mildly as possible, "North Nanping Road is less than three kilometers from the conference hall. I said before at the meeting that this month, no matter what, nothing could go wrong. It would be best if you could even clear away the roving vendors by the roadside. And here you've cooked up a homicide case for me. Lao Wang, you've 'exceeded the quota' in completing this mission!"
"But, sir, it was the middle of the night…"
"The notice to reinforce the nighttime patrols was sent to every unit a month in advance. So you also want to ask the offenders to keep to an eight-hour work day and then knock off?"
"Of course, of course, it's not like I'm trying to shift responsibility, but you know, the West Flower Market District is always a mess, there are so many people coming in from outside…"
Director Zhang had restrained his temper going back and forth with the person in charge of the Flower Market District for five minutes. He found that not only did the other have no intention of examining his own conduct, he also had an excuse ready for everything. Director Zhang erupted in a rage; with no warning at all he burst out, howling with the ease of long experience: "Bullshit! Isn't the West District your jurisdiction? Isn't it your territory? You're telling me now that it's a mess? What the fuck have you been doing!"
Xiao Sun and the sub-bureau Director on the phone were both stunned silent as cicadas in winter by this howl.
Director Zhang picked up his cup and drank a mouthful of tea to relieve his anger. He accidentally sipped some tea leaves and spat them back into the cup.
Then he extended a "finger of death" and typed the word "strangling" on the dust-covered keyboard. The screen was flooded with news screenshots from the internal network.
In the small hours of the morning, a male corpse that appeared to have died by violence had been discovered in a small alley in the West Flower Market District. Right away it had been taken as a novelty and posted online; though there were far more sensational things than this online, so at first it hadn't made a splash. But the head of the Flower Market District Sub-Bureau had been afraid of anything going wrong at such a sensitive time and so had done something idiotic: wanting to quietly suppress this matter, he had first deleted the posts, then, trying to cover up after the fact, had made matters worse by saying that the body of a vagrant had been discovered, the cause of death unknown.
He hadn't expected the little layabouts who'd first found the body to get busy. Having taken clear photographs of the crime scene, they used methods calculated to play to the crowd to broadcast them, reacting in direct proportion to the sub-bureau's tight-lipped measures. City residents riding buses and subways during the morning rush hour were able to develop abundant associations from these photographs, fermenting this trifling business into a city-wide thunderstorm. Even the city government had called to make inquiries.
Director Zhang put on his reading glasses and clicked open the post that had had the most hits before it had been deleted. It was titled "Suspected Looting and Strangling Gang in the City," clearly a description with mass appeal to public interest. There were pictures, and there were facts. As soon as he opened it, an entirely unpixelated photograph of the body walloped him from the screen.
Director Zhang: "…"
He felt that he had just howled too early, but he was advanced in years and couldn't attain a higher volume, so he had to resume an ordinary speaking voice. "I think your talents are wasted in our system here. I should send you to work for an advertising agency. Your propaganda skills are amazing."
"It's all that bunch of troublemaking whelps. Taking group pictures with a dead person! Don't you call that wicked? Sir, set your mind at ease, I've nabbed all of them, the photographs and posts are being deleted, I'll definitely be able to control this!"
Director Zhang leaned back in his chair, ceaselessly rubbing his brow. "The most important thing now is to hurry and solve the case. If there's a murderer, seize him. If there's a criminal, catch him. As for deleting posts…are you a webmaster? This has to be taken care of as soon as possible. Make sure your subordinates keep their mouths closed. I'll send over some people from the City Bureau to coach you through it. Wang Hongliang, if you haven't solved this case in a week, you can beat it!"
After telling off the sub-bureau director, Director Zhang hung up the phone. Xiao Sun quickly put the empty water barrel aside and got out his little notebook. He had a premonition that the old Director-General might have something to say.
Sure enough, Director Zhang gestured at him. "Go call the Main Criminal Investigation Team's people in."
Xiao Sun looked up. "Director Zhang, should I call all of them?"
Director Zhang muttered to himself for a moment, his glance falling on the LCD screen in front of him—the face of the body in the photograph was swollen, the features warped, but you could still see that the face belonged to a young man. His mouth was open, and he seemed somewhat astonished, blankly facing the camera lens.
"Find Luo Wenzhou. Tell him to take some people over there himself," said Director Zhang. "The case may not be very complicated. Tell him that by the end of the month I'll have dealt with that Wang Hongliang. He'll know what to do."
Xiao Sun: "…"
Director Zhang's gaze went around his reading glasses to look at him doubtfully.
"D-director Zhang." Xiao Sun squeezed out a smile with difficulty. "Captain Luo… He, um. He hasn't come in yet."
Luo Wenzhou was an idler who came to work as regular as clockwork. As long as he wasn't on duty, he would arrive precisely at 8:30. At 8:29, he absolutely couldn't be found at his desk.
Today was a day his car was under the restriction. Luo Wenzhou didn't want to crowd onto a bus, so he had simply gone to his basement and dug up a big old-fashioned bike fit to be put in a museum, fixed it up himself, and wobbled out onto the road.
His features were very handsome, handsome almost to the point of giving the impression of extreme youth, but from his bearing and manners it could be seen that he was a mature man. He was wearing headphones, and his shirtsleeves were rolled up. His well-fitted casual shirt intermittently revealed the outlines of his muscles. His legs were long enough to reach the ground even riding the tall old-fashioned bike. A bag of jianbing hung from the bike's left handlebar, and from the right handlebar six or seven cups of soy milk. With his hands loosely holding the severely overloaded handlebars, Luo Wenzhou sailed through the City Bureau's main gate precisely on time.
Just through the gate, Luo Wenzhou saw the guard blocking the way of a girl delivering flowers.
"You aren't allowed in—why aren't you allowed in? Miss, this is a Public Security Bureau, not Mount Huaguo (7), all right? All deliveries go to the mailroom to be put through a security check and be logged."
"How can you put fresh flowers in the mail room? They'll wilt, won't they." The flower delivery girl turned, looked at Luo Wenzhou and pointed. "You won't let me in, so why's the delivery guy allowed in?"
The guard: "…"
Luo Wenzhou looked up and gave the flower delivery girl a flirty white-toothed smile. "Because the delivery guy is incredibly handsome and surpassingly elegant."
The guard was deeply depressed about the City Bureau's image. "…Good morning, Captain Luo."
"Morning. Have you eaten? If you haven't, help yourself." Pushing his bike with one foot on the ground, Luo Wenzhou said, "Who are the flowers for, beautiful? I'll take them in for you."
The young lady delivering the flowers felt very flustered and scrambled to look at the card. "Oh… For the Main Criminal Investigation Team, for a gentleman called…called Tao Ran."
At precisely 8:30, Luo Wenzhou punctually came into the office and threw the flowers onto Tao Ran's desk. "You little…"
He had gotten this far when the frustrated and exasperated Director Zhang sent someone to catch him. Luo Wenzhou had to hold back the rest of his speech. He leaned a hand heavily on Tao Ran's desk. "Just wait till I get back."
The whole Main Criminal Investigation Team was startled, simultaneously going dumb as wooden chickens and staring at the bouquet of fresh flowers in front of Officer Tao as if there was a time bomb buried at their stems.
Policewoman Lang Qiao got a magnifying glass and a pair of single-use gloves out of a drawer, then cautiously reached out towards the desk next to hers. She investigated the bouquet of flowers, then picked up a perfumed kraft-paper card.
With everyone's attention on her, her face solemn, this daring young woman opened the card. She saw written in tidy regular script: "The wind is strong, my hands and feet are frozen through, yet my heart is warm. But I don't know why, there is always a softness in my heart. I want to be beside you, just on the point of sadness (8)."
"It's signed 'Fei,'" said Lang Qiao. "Fei who?"
Tao Ran snatched it back. "Don't fool around. Give that to me."
"After all that fuss, it's just from your girlfriend. Here I was thinking Chief Luo was publicly confessing his feelings for you."
The group of colleagues surrounding them all relaxed, each calling out "I was so scared" one after another. Then, at the speed of light, this crowd of ruffians returned to combat readiness and divided up the breakfast Luo Wenzhou had brought, at the same time dedicatedly carrying the banner of denouncing Tao Ran's "heresy."
"Deputy Tao, when did your resign? Did you write up a report? Did the association agree?"
"Taotao, you really are unfeeling and ungrateful."
"Deputy-Captain Tao, I only have 37.6 left of this month's wages, no money to buy dog food, but you'll have to do as you see fit."
"Go on, go on," said Tao Ran, putting away the card. Then he found an inconspicuous place to stash the flowers. "What girlfriend? Don't make a big deal over nothing."
Hearing that with such a great public proof of his crime as this revealing bouquet, this person still wanted to go away unpunished, everyone immediately flared into an uproar, planning to encircle and intercept Deputy-Captain Tao.
Just then, Luo Wenzhou, having rushed off, came in through the door once more and struck the doorframe. "There's been a homicide in the Flower Market District. A couple of you come with me to have a look, quickly."
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Authors Note:
(6) Xiao (小) and lao (老), respectively "young" and "old," are used as familiar nicknames.
(7) Flower and Fruit Mountain, a location in Journey to the West.
(8) From a letter collection by Shen Congwen (沈从文); no published translation exists, as far as I know, so you're stuck with my best attempt.