Free When Red is Black by Qiu Xiaolong

bottom, it begins to change. With the whole society caught up in a gigantic reform, there was a reshuffling of cards among the residents. Mr. Ren’s son went to study in the United States and started a high-tech company there. On a recent visit back to Treasure Garden Lane, he offered to buy his father an apartment in the best neighborhood in the city, but Mr. Ren declined.
     
    It seemed to Old Liang, however, that there was something suspicious about Mr. Ren’s choosing to stay in the building. Mr. Ren might have harbored a secret resentment for all he had suffered in those years. As the proverb says, A gentleman may seek revenge even after waiting ten years. So maybe Mr. Ren was trying now to create trouble for the Party authorities, acting out of long-suppressed anger.
     
    If that were the case, Yin turned out to be a well-chosen target. The murder of a dissident writer might easily bring embarrassing pressure on the government. If the case was not solved, it could tarnish the image of the Party authorities. And then, too, Yin had been a former Red Guard. Symbolically, her death would also provide him with revenge for all his personal miseries.
     
    Like Wan, Mr. Ren had only an unconfirmed alibi. That morning he had gone to a noodle restaurant called Old Half Place. He had breakfasted in the company of several other customers, he said, although he could not produce a receipt for that particular morning nor the address of these breakfast-mates.
     
    The theory advanced by Old Liang was an elaborate one, perhaps inspired by the Harbor, one of the revolutionary Beijing operas written in the early seventies, in which a capitalist performed every possible sabotage activity out of his deep hatred for socialist society. But it appeared to Yu that this was stretching too far for a motive in the reality of the nineties.
     
    Yu decided to interview Mr. Ren, but for a quite different reason. In the material concerning Mr. Ren, there was no mention of any unusual contact or confrontation between him and Yin. Nothing was noted of his relations with his neighbors either. Mr. Ren was like another outsider in the house, which might make him a more objective witness. In fact, the “Mr.” before his surname indicated his marginal status in the shikumen. In the revolutionary years, the most common address had been “Comrade,” although, in recent years, “Mr.” had staged a comeback. It seemed his previous black status had been transmuted into an outmoded honorific title. Political fashions changed; still, people’s memories were long.
     
    Mr. Ren was a man in his early seventies who looked rather spirited for his age. He wore a Western-style suit with a scarlet silk tie, like a capitalist image from those modern Beijing operas. Surprisingly, he reminded Yu of Peiqin’s father, whom he had seen only in a black-framed photograph.
     
    “I know why you want to talk with me today, Comrade Detective Yu,” Mr. Ren said in a cultured voice. “Comrade Old Liang has already approached me.”
     
    “Comrade Old Liang has been a residence cop for many years. Perhaps he is too familiar with Chairman Mao’s words about class struggle and all that. I’m just a cop in charge of the investigation, Comrade Ren. I have to talk to everybody in the building. Any information you can give me about Yin will be really helpful to my work. I appreciate your cooperation.”
     
    “I can guess what Old Liang has told you,” Mr. Ren said, studying him through his glasses. “In years past, I wore a ‘Black Capitalist’ blackboard around my neck, and Yin wore a Red Guard armband on her arm. So he imagines I must have harbored resentment all these years, until now. But that’s nonsense. For me, a lot of things are long gone—with the wind, the political wind. A man of my age cannot afford to live in the past. She was a Red Guard, but there were millions of them. Most of them suffered too, as she did. There’s no point singling her