Shanghai Municipal Police

The Shanghai Municipal Police are the institutional force behind the investigation of the women found at Lujiazui, working alongside forensic specialists and pursuing leads that eventually connect the Shanghai murders to a Beijing killing and the abduction of Li Yan’s niece, Xinxin. The novel presents the force less through a formal account of its hierarchy than through the practical work of its detectives: securing warrants, assembling teams, questioning suspects, and revising theories as new evidence emerges.

Investigative Mandate and Collaboration

The investigation relies on cooperation between police officers and Margaret Campbell, whose forensic expertise gives physical evidence investigative meaning. During examination of the remains, Margaret identifies short blue suture ends among the traces left by organ removal, then continues checking the major vessels and other parts of the body. This work supplies the kind of specific medical detail that can challenge assumptions about how the crimes were carried out. The police inquiry is therefore not portrayed as separate from forensic practice: it depends on specialists recognizing what the evidence can establish and detectives deciding how to act on it.

The detectives also have to distinguish plausible leads from premature conclusions. In discussion of the night watchman, Mei-Ling Nien considers whether his conspicuous position might itself be misleading, while Li Yan raises the possibility that the perpetrator’s conduct suggests a disturbed individual. Dai points out that the procedures described would have required another person to administer drugs and assist with breathing. Li accepts that this changes the working hypothesis: the crimes may have involved a collaboration, not a solitary offender. He nevertheless directs attention back to the immediate investigative priority of identifying the victims, resisting speculation that could distract from practical casework.

Warrants, Searches, and Operational Work

The Shanghai Municipal Police’s operations are shown through searches that require both formal authorization and coordinated execution. When the team goes to Jack Geller’s apartment on Xinzha Road, Li presents a search warrant bearing the Shanghai Municipal Procuratorate’s authorization. The security officer examines it before admitting the group. Detectives accompanying Li, Margaret, Dai, and Nien Mei-Ling carry weapons signed out from 803 by Section Chief Huang shortly before the search. At the apartment door, officers take positions and enter in a practiced pattern, searching room by room. The scene conveys an organized response while keeping Li and Margaret, the two unarmed members of the group, distinct from the armed detectives.

The department’s internal meetings provide another view of its work. After Jack Geller is found dying, Li briefs nearly the entire department in a crowded room lined with displays of skulls. He reports Geller’s identification of Xinxin’s kidnapper as his attacker and explains that the same man is suspected of stalking women connected to the mass grave and Margaret. Li then states his conclusion that the Shanghai murders, the Beijing murder, and Xinxin’s abduction are linked. The meeting turns separate investigations into a shared problem for the assembled detectives, and Li explicitly invites them to contribute ideas.

Suspect Accounts and Changing Hypotheses

Questioning Jiang Baofu adds a material chain to the investigation. He says that about a year and a half earlier, while working as an orderly, he discovered body parts in a freezer. He claims he did not know what had taken place in the operating theatre and describes his role as an arrangement to dispose of remains in exchange for money. His other job as a night watchman at a western building site gave him a place where the bodies could be dumped before construction buried them under concrete. The account implicates him in disposal while preserving the distinction he insists on between handling the remains and killing the women; the police must assess both the admission and its limits.

The inquiry’s central explanation changes as details accumulate. Margaret later recognizes that a victim’s having a child matters to the pattern, after realizing that the investigators’ abundance of names and information has obscured a more basic connection. The scene frames insight not as a substitute for evidence but as a correction to where investigators have been looking. Li’s involvement in the exchange makes the realization part of the joint investigative process, while the earlier debate over whether the killer acted alone shows how each new observation can force the team to revise its account of the crimes.

The Clinic Search and the Expanding Case

A warrant to search Cui Feng’s clinic marks the transition from discussion to a major coordinated operation. Inside operating room number one, Margaret and Nien Mei-Ling examine the equipment and supplies, including the surgical table, electrocautery equipment, containers, and plastic devices used in the room. The physical setting gives the investigators a possible location for the crimes and ties the medical traces found on the victims to a working clinical environment. The room’s tools and arrangements are treated as evidence to be examined, not as proof in isolation.

The search also leads to a computer whose stored information opens a route beyond the clinic. Margaret recalls that computers can retain traces their users forget, goes online, and finds the Transplants Online page in the machine’s memory. Access to its kidney listings reveals recipient requirements, including age, sex, blood type, and HLA information. The discovery raises the possibility that the clinic’s activities connect to an organ-matching network; at this stage, the screen provides a new investigative lead rather than a complete account of who used the service or how. Across the case, the police work by joining evidence that belongs to different systems—medical examination, construction-site disposal, warrants, and digital records—until the crimes can be understood as linked rather than isolated.