Free Don't Cry Tai Lake by Xiaolong Qiu

him.
    Before he could say anything, however, her fingers began brushing his groin.
    â€œLet me rub your little brother too.”
    â€œWhat are you talking about?”
    â€œYou’ll really enjoy it, and you can take pity on me at the same time. For washing your hair, I make only ten yuan, but for rubbing your little brother, I make sixty.”
    He was going to protest as her hand started reaching for his belt, when Huang burst into the room. Without seeing Chen, whose hair was covered in lather and whose face was partially obscured by a towel, Huang started shouting for him.
    â€œChief Inspector Chen!”
    The salon was thrown into consternation and all the girls were flabbergasted. Green Jade was transfixed at the sight of Huang in his police uniform, raising her two hands high as if in surrender.
    â€œI’m here. Don’t worry, Sergeant Huang,” Chen said, rubbing his hair with a towel. “Let’s leave.”
    He paid in accordance to the price listed on the menu on the wall. Green Jade kept thanking him, her face flushed, her hair disheveled. It was not as expensive as he had anticipated, but then perhaps the price charged was due to the presence of Sergeant Huang.
    As they left the salon, Chen saw that Huang had come in a local police car.
    Uncle Wang was serving a customer at an outside table, and there was no other place outside for them to sit and talk, so Chen followed Huang into the car and lost no time in asking about Shanshan.
    â€œYour people have detained Shanshan, haven’t you?”
    â€œYou’re right on top of the latest developments, Chief,” Huang said, offering him a cigarette. “There’s a new focus in the investigation—on the people who had a grudge against Liu. She’s been detained because of her arguments with Liu. According to Mi, Liu had said something about firing her. So Shanshan has a possible motive. She was also heard threatening Liu about a week or so before his death in his office—saying that he would pay a terrible price. At least a couple of people in the company heard it.”
    â€œI have reason to believe she was arguing with Liu about work, and she was warning him about the consequences of the industrial pollution. I strongly suspect she made no threat to Liu personally. So, who heard her make the threat?”
    â€œMi, and Zhou Qiang, the sales manager, who called her a bitchy busybody. It is true that some people in the company don’t like her.”
    â€œWhat about her alibi?”
    â€œShe doesn’t have one. She said she was alone in her dorm room that evening, watching TV and reading, and she then went to bed around ten.”
    â€œMost of the people in the dorm would have given you a similar answer. A considerable number of them are single, and Wuxi is not a city with a lot of entertainment at night.”
    â€œWuxi is not Shanghai, I know,” Huang said. “But the murderer is someone who was not a stranger to Liu. As we suspected from the very beginning, it’s someone who knew where Liu was spending the night.”
    â€œBut others in the company also know about Liu’s home office. It’s no secret. As you mentioned yesterday, Mi, the secretary, knew Liu’s whereabouts better than anybody else. And Mrs. Liu too.”
    â€œThat’s true.”
    â€œIt would make more sense for Liu to have told the people close to him about his plans for the night. With the rancor between Shanshan and Liu, how could she have possibly known where he would be?”
    â€œHow—I don’t have an answer to that.”
    â€œBesides, with the problems between the two, it’s beyond me why Liu would have let her in, and then let her strike a fatal blow without struggling—even if she had paid him an unexpected visit that evening.” Chen paused before going on, “No, I don’t think she should be detained without any evidence or witnesses.”
    â€œI see