“I don’t believe a single word of it, Sergeant Lou. I’ve known Hua for twenty years. All that must have been a setup,” Old Hunter said. “Have you found anything suspicious?”

Lou told the old man what suspicions he had for the night.

“Damned Internal Security must have been part of it. Today’s China is like a rice barn ravaged by those red rats. A good man like Hua tried to do something about it, but what?”

“Yes, those corrupt Party officials, like fattened rats. But why call them red rats?” Lou asked.

“Those Party officials are of course politically red-before their corruptions are exposed. The so-called red spearhead of the proletariat marching along the road of the socialist construction. But they are really barn rats moving all around. The one-party system is like a specially designed barn, where they can run amok without getting caught. Why? Because the barn is theirs. Nothing independent of this system can challenge or question it. Think about the Xing case. To smuggle on such a large scale involves a long chain of numerous links-ministry, customs, police, border inspection, transportation, distribution, and whatnot. And this chain of connection and corruption worked all the way-”

“You are right, Old Hunter.” Lou recalled another nickname for the retired cop-Suzhou Opera Singer, a reference to a popular southern dialect opera known for its singers’ tactics of prolonging a narrative by adding digressions or ancient anecdotes. But it was too late to stop the old man.

“In the Qing dynasty,” Old Hunter went on, “high-ranking Manchurian officials wore red-topped hats. If an official happened to do business on the side, people would call him a red-topped businessman. It was such a notorious term at the time, that few liked to be called so. Nowadays it is taken for granted. And those officials are hardly businessmen. They simply steal or smuggle, like Xing, like rats in their own barn. So how could they let an honest cop get in there?”