Chapters 5-8 Summary

Chapter five demonstrates a busy Chief Inspector Chen struggling to cope with his workload. He is interrupted by a call from Wang telling him that a national newspaper has decided to publish one of his poems. They flirt and he invites her to lunch. Chen has been too busy preparing for the Party seminar to give much thought to the case, but Wang's call reminds him of the dead woman. Chen checks in with Yu about the murder, but there has been no progress.

Chen calls Dr. Xia, who performed the autopsy, and asks him to prepare a description of the deceased more detailed than the clinical language of the autopsy report. From Dr. Xia he learns that she was a beautiful woman who took care of her physical appearance; she had never had a child and had no scars; though...