Beijing Municipal Police

The Beijing Municipal Police enters the narrative through Li Yan’s official affiliation rather than through a detailed portrait of the force as a whole. Its clearest significance is practical: Li works alongside Shanghai police in the investigation, and the formal record of a suspect interview identifies him as a deputy section chief from Beijing. The institution thus marks both his authority and the cross-city character of the case.

Identity and Representation

The novel gives the Beijing Municipal Police a precise but limited institutional identity. In the recorded interview with Jiang Baofu, Li is identified as Deputy Section Chief of Section One, Beijing Municipal Police, while Nien Mei-Ling is identified as Deputy Section Chief of Section Two, Shanghai Municipal Police. This roll call places the two investigators within distinct municipal organizations even as they participate in the same inquiry. The evidence establishes Li’s rank and section, but does not elaborate on the Beijing force’s broader structure or operations.

Investigative Method

The organization’s investigative presence is conveyed through Li’s reasoning in discussions with other detectives. Faced with the possibility that one person could not have performed every part of the killings, he takes seriously the suggestion that the crime required collaborators. He recognizes that this possibility complicates the theory of a solitary killer, but insists that speculation must not displace the immediate priority of identifying the victims. Through this exchange, the Beijing Municipal Police is associated with an inquiry that tests competing explanations while keeping the victims’ identification at the center of the work.

Cross-City Casework

The interview record makes the institutional partnership concrete: Li and Nien Mei-Ling are both present when Jiang is formally treated as a suspect and confronted with the allegation that he murdered young women by operating on them while they were alive and removing vital organs. The shared interrogation shows Li exercising his Beijing title within a scene involving Shanghai police personnel. The force’s role in the story is therefore defined less by an independent institutional storyline than by Li’s participation in a joint investigation, where jurisdictional identities remain distinct but the work proceeds together.