Shanghai Criminal Investigation Department headquarters

Shanghai Criminal Investigation Department headquarters is both a tightly guarded police complex and the working center of the investigation into eighteen women’s deaths. Marked by the gold numerals 803, it is where Li Yan assumes command alongside his deputy, Nien Mei-Ling, and begins turning a tense, uncertain inquiry into organized investigative work.

Setting and Entrance

The headquarters stands beyond the Zhongshan Beiyi expressway. A white-marble gatehouse faces the large gold numerals 803, mounted on an angled wall. Suspicious eyes watch from brightly lit windows until Nien Mei-Ling is recognized; her smile prompts the concertina gate to open, admitting their car through stone columns into a paved courtyard. Well-kept flower beds and neatly trimmed trees soften the formal approach, while an ebony bust of the deceased Shanghai detective Duanmu Hongyu stands on a plinth. Multi-storeyed, pink-tiled buildings rise around the courtyard.

That guarded threshold establishes the headquarters as a place of both authority and scrutiny. Nien Mei-Ling warns Li Yan not to expect a warm welcome, foreshadowing the professional and regional tensions he will encounter inside.

Offices and Investigative Work

A covered entrance bears large gold characters urging officers to pursue justice with courage and dedication. On the third floor, detectives work beneath fluorescent lights on the killings of eighteen women. Their crowded room is filled with telephones, conversation, keyboards, and computer terminals: a busy institutional workspace in which the scale of the case is present in the number of officers and the urgency of their work.

The Section Chief’s office offers a sharper contrast. It is dark except for the circle of light cast by an Anglepoise lamp onto the desk. The Section Chief, Huang Tsuo, is on the telephone when Li and Nien Mei-Ling enter; he turns his attention to them only after abruptly ending the call. His drawn, tired appearance and distracted manner reinforce Nien Mei-Ling’s warning that the welcome may be cool.

The Case Takes Shape

At a briefing attended by nearly twenty detectives, Huang Tsuo announces that Li Yan will lead the investigation in collaboration with his deputy. The officers’ guarded looks register the lack of goodwill between Shanghai and Beijing, making Li’s appointment more than a change of command: he must establish authority among colleagues already wary of an outsider.

The briefing reveals how incomplete the inquiry remains. Statements are accumulating from people present at the Lujiazui ceremony; detectives have located a night watchman from the site but have not yet found him, and he is expected back at seven. Nien Mei-Ling reports the number of bodies and Dr Lan’s initial assessment. News that partial autopsies have already been performed unsettles the room, but no one offers a constructive lead.

Li eases the meeting’s tension with a joke after asking for a cigarette, then directs attention toward missing-person records. He proposes looking for women between roughly fifteen and forty, reasoning that the victims may be among those reported missing. The shift from awkward silence to laughter gives him an opening to organize the team around a practical investigative task.

A Base for an Uneasy Inquiry

The address 803 Zhongshan Beiyi Road also becomes a point of contact for people drawn into the investigation: Nien Mei-Ling gives Jiang Baofu a card bearing her name and directs him to report there to Detective Dai the next morning. The instruction turns the headquarters from a guarded workplace into the destination for a formal statement.

The complex’s significance lies in the contrast between its ordered surfaces and the disorder of the case. Its gates, official exhortations, busy offices, and hierarchy promise a disciplined response, while the investigation opens with missing information, strained interdepartmental relations, and disturbing questions about the victims’ deaths. Within that setting, Li Yan’s first task is not simply to find evidence but to make a divided team work together.