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longer found it easy to monitor a resident’s life. They could still be somewhat effective in the remaining old neighborhoods of ramshackle overcrowded shikumen houses, but this killer apparently lived in a different environment, enjoying both space and privacy. In the mid-nineties, a neighborhood cadre could no longer so easily barge into a family’s life as during the years of Mao’s class struggle.
    Inspector Liao’s revision was of little help. While his material profile narrowed the range of suspects, none of those with previous history of sex crimes met all of Liao’s specified conditions. Most of them were poor, just two or three lived by themselves, and only one, a taxi driver, had access to a car.
    Their research into the red mandarin dress also failed to go anywhere. They sent out a notice to all the factories and workshops that made mandarin dresses, requesting any related information, but so far they had received nothing about that particular dress.
    With each passing day, the possibility of another victim loomed closer.
    Yu was gazing through a smoke ring from his cigarette, as if flying invisible darts, when he heard Peiqin pouring water down the kitchen sink. He ground out the cigarette and put the ashtray away.
    He didn’t need her to start harping on his smoking tonight. He wanted to discuss the case with her. She had helped with his previous investigations—in her way. This time, she at least could tell him more about the dress. Like other Shanghai women, she liked shopping, though she was mostly confined to window-shopping.
    Peiqin poked her head into the room.
    “You look beat, Yu. Why not turn in for an early night? I’ll dry my hair quick and join you in a minute.”
    He undressed, climbed into bed, and shivered under the chilly quilt, but it did not take long for him to feel warm and comfortable, expecting her.
    She hurried in, treading barefoot on the wooden floor. Lifting the quilt, she slid in beside him, her feet touching his, still cold.
    “Would you like a hot water bottle, Peiqin?”
    “No, I have you.” She clung closer against him. “When Qinqin goes to college, there’ll be only two of us here, an empty old nest.”
    “You don’t have to worry,” he said, noticing a single white hair at her temple. He took the opportunity to lead the talk in the direction planned. “You still look so young and handsome.”
    “You don’t have to flatter me like that.”
    “I saw a mandarin dress in a store window today. It would become you nicely, I believe. Have you worn one before?”
    “Come on, Yu. Have you ever seen me wearing a mandarin dress? In our middle school days, such a garment was out of the question, decadent and bourgeois and whatnot. Then we both went to the godforsaken army farm in Yunnan, wearing the same imitation army uniform for ten years. When we came back, we didn’t even have a proper wardrobe for ourselves under your father’s roof. You have never paid any proper attention to me, husband.”
    “Now with a room for ourselves, I can try to do better in the future.”
    “But why are you suddenly paying attention to a mandarin dress? Oh, I know. Another case of yours. The red mandarin dress case, I’ve heard of it.”
    “Surely you know something about the dress. Maybe you examined one in a store.”
    “Once or twice, perhaps, but I never go into any of those fancy stores. Do you think a mandarin dress would fit me—a middle-aged woman working in a shabby restaurant?”
    “Why not?” Yu said, his hand tracing the familiar curves on her body.
    “No, don’t sweet-talk like your chief inspector. It’s not a dress for a working woman. Not for me, in that tingsijian office smeared all over with wok fumes and coal soot. I saw a long article about mandarin dresses in a fashion magazine. Why the style has suddenly become so popular again, I can’t figure out. But tell me about your case.”
    So he summed up what he and his colleagues had done, focusing more or