The room was a scene of desolation, as if corresponding to his state of mind: the bed unmade, the cup on the nightstand half empty, a mildew-covered orange pit in the ashtray looking like a mole – the mole on Mao’s chin.

He pressed hard on the lid of the thermos bottle. Not a single drop of water came out. Putting the kettle on the stove, he hoped that a cup of good tea might help to clear his head.

But what first came to mind was, unexpectedly, a fragmented image of Ling serving tea in a Beijing quadrangle house, her fingers breaking and strewing petals into his teacup, standing by the paper window in a white summer dress, silhouetted against the night like a flowering pear tree…

The news of her marriage wasn’t entirely unexpected. She wasn’t to blame, he told himself again; she couldn’t help being the daughter of a Politburo member.

No more than he could help being a cop at heart.

He willed himself to focus on the waiting work, pressing a fist against his left cheek, as if battling a toothache. He didn’t want to conduct an investigation concerning Mao, even indirectly. Mao’s portrait still hung high on the gate of Tiananmen Square, and it could be a political suicide for a Party member cop to be even tangentially associated with the skeleton of Mao’s private life.

Chen took out a piece of paper and was trying to scribble something down to help him think, when Party Secretary Li called.

“Minister Huang told me about your special assignment. Don’t worry about your work at the bureau,” Li said. “And you don’t have to tell me anything about it.”

“I don’t know what to say, Party Secretary Li.” The water began boiling and the kettle hissing. Li, at one time a mentor for Chen in bureau politics, had come to regard him as a rival. “I hardly know anything about it, not yet. It’s just that I cannot refuse the assignment.”

“The minister told me that you are to have access to all the available resources of the bureau. So simply tell me what you need.”