“Yes. Do you know anything about her?”

“The author of Death of a Chinese Professor.The name of the professor was Yang Bing.” She added, drying her feet with the towel, “What happened to her?”

“She was murdered in her home.”

“Is the government involved?” Peiqin asked, cynically.

He was taken aback by her response. “The bureau wants us to solve the case in the shortest time possible. Party Secretary Li said so.”

“Everything may be political for your Party Secretary Li.”

She might be referring to the way some investigations were conducted under Li, but also, possibly, to the withdrawn housing assignment. Peiqin suspected that the state-run corporation three-way-debt explanation Li had given was only as an excuse to take back the apartment. Yu had no political clout at the bureau.

Yu himself had suspected this, but he did not want to discuss it now. “What was Yin’s book about?”

“The book was based on her personal experience. It’s about an old professor falling in love during the Cultural Revolution. It received a lot of media attention, and was controversial for a while.” Peiqin got up, holding the basin in her hand. “Shortly after its publication, it was banned.”

“Let me help you,” Yu said, carrying the basin out to the courtyard sink. She followed him outside in her slippers. “There are a lot of books about the Cultural Revolution. What made hers so special?”

“People say that some descriptions in the book are too realistic, too full of bloody details for the Party authorities to swallow,” she said. “The novel attracted critical notice abroad, too. So the official critics called her a dissident.”

“A dissident, I see. But the book is about the Cultural Revolution, about the past. If she’s not involved in today’s freedom-and-democracy movement, I cannot see why the government would have had to get rid of her.”