How did such a body come to be found in Bund Park?

There was one thing Chief Inspector Chen knew about the park’s security management. The security officers as well as the retired volunteer workers made their evening rounds diligently, looking in all directions, shouting over loudspeakers, “Hurry up! It’s time!” and flashing their flashlights at lovers in shadowy corners before the gate was closed. They had once made a special report to the bureau about it, trying to justify extra funding for their night work. With the severe housing shortage in Shanghai, the park lent itself to the romantic yearning of young people who had no privacy at home and could easily forget the passage of time and the public nature of the space. Security did a thorough job here. Zhang had been adamant in ruling out the possibility of anybody hiding in the park before it closed, and Chen believed him.

Alternatively, people could have sneaked in after closing time; it would not have taken much effort to climb over the walls. One could have killed the other, then fled. However, traffic and pedestrians passed the area all night. Surely such an incident would have been seen and reported. The scene around the bushes did not support this hypothesis, either. There was no sign of a struggle. Two or three broken twigs were about all Chief Inspector Chen could discover. The fact that the body was dressed in pajamas further suggested that the murder had occurred earlier, in a room, from which the dead body had been moved into the park. Perhaps the body had been thrown from the river. The embankment was not high. At night’s high tide, a body hurled from a boat could have landed on the embankment and rolled down into the bushes, which would also explain the line of the dark spots left on the bank.

But there was something puzzling Chen. No one would have tried to dispose of a body here without foreseeing its immediate discovery. The park was at the center of Shanghai, visited daily by thousands of people. Why transport the corpse here?