Qingmu went inside and sat down at the bar, saying without ceremony, "Two beers, ice cold. Put them on my tab."
Bi Shenghua said, "Your tab's long enough to wipe your ass for a year. When are you going to pay it?"
Qingmu drank his beer and said, "Talking about money hurts our friendship."
"Not talking about money hurts it even more!" Bi Shenghua slammed a beer glass onto the counter, splashing foam everywhere.
Hu Xing giggled, and Qingmu chuckled too.
Bi Shenghua shook her head and sighed. "Hurry up and drink. Some chump's been waiting upstairs forever."
"What chump?"
"Someone here for a consultation with you. What else would he be?"
Qingmu's eyes widened. "You let a stranger upstairs when I wasn't back yet?"
"Have you got anything valuable up there? What, are you afraid someone will steal Boss Coal? Pfft!" Bi Shenghua said dismissively. "At least he spent three hundred whole yuan here."
Qingmu shrugged helplessly at Hu Xing, then led her toward the back door.
Bi Shenghua tossed a package over to him. "Feed this to Boss Coal."
Qingmu caught it and slipped it into his pocket without asking what it was.
Hu Xing wondered who Boss Coal was, but felt too awkward to ask. Could there be a whole other world upstairs, with even a coal tycoon working here?
The second-floor hallway was piled with all sorts of odds and ends. By the window stood a row of old chairs, like those in a hospital waiting area.
A middle-aged man who looked to be in his thirties sat on one of the chairs.
"Master Qingmu's back, is he?" The middle-aged man stood up, bowing. "Oh, why is there a police officer here too?"
Hu Xing noticed his shifty gaze when he looked at her. Her instincts as a detective told her there was definitely something wrong with him.
"What? Aren't police allowed here?" Hu Xing asked in return.
"Of course, of course." The middle-aged man bent even lower. "I've come at a bad time."
"Are you looking for me?" Qingmu asked.
"Ah, my name's Ma Fuqing. I'm looking for Master Qingmu." The middle-aged man had probably noticed how young Qingmu was and how little he looked like a master, and seemed unsure.
"Come in and sit." Qingmu showed no particular warmth, merely offering a lazy greeting. With both hands in his trouser pockets, he shuffled forward a few steps, his slippers clacking, and stopped before a door.
Above the door hung a sign reading "Divine Crow Studio," with a couplet pasted on either side-
Only the azure tree
Could shelter the divine crow
Hu Xing silently read the eight characters, feeling there must be some deeper meaning in them.
Qingmu opened the door and turned to gesture them inside.
Hu Xing hadn't seen him take out a key, so she judged that the door must have been unlocked all along.
The studio was a small, square room, with shelves against the walls crammed with all kinds of books. A desk stood in the middle, with a sofa and coffee table to the left. Magazines, newspapers, and cigarette butts littered the floor, rather like the conference room when the criminal investigation team worked through the night on a major case.
Qingmu pointed at the sofa. "Sit."
Hu Xing sat down without hesitation. Only after she had sat did Ma Fuqing carefully perch on the very edge of another sofa.
Instead of attending to them, Qingmu shouted into the air, "Boss Coal! Boss Coal!"
There was no response.
Hu Xing saw another small door inside the room and guessed that the Boss Coal Qingmu was calling must be sleeping in there.
Qingmu took out the package the proprietress downstairs had given him and made as if to throw it away. He called again, "Boss Coal, if you don't come out now, the treats Ruhua made you will be gone!"
A fluttering sound rang out, and a black shape flew out from somewhere, darted twice across the room, and landed on the coffee table in front of Qingmu.
Only then did Hu Xing see that the black shape was a crow.
The crow gave a caw and stretched its neck, opening its beak wide toward Qingmu like a swallow chick waiting to be fed, gurgling in its throat.
Qingmu picked a fingernail-sized morsel from the food wrapped in the plastic bag and tossed it into the crow's beak.
The crow swallowed the food, twisted its neck happily, and cried, "Braised pork hock, delicious! Braised pork hock, delicious!"
Hu Xing's jaw nearly dropped. "It can talk!"
She had seen talking parrots and mynas, but never a talking crow. Its pronunciation was clear and its accent flawless. Had she not seen it herself, she would never have imagined it was a bird mimicking speech.
Ma Fuqing was even more astonished, his mouth hanging open as he kept saying, "A divine bird! A divine bird!"
Qingmu smiled. "Crows are the smartest animals apart from humans."
Hu Xing didn't believe him. "Smarter than apes?"
The crow suddenly turned toward her and cawed. Another strange noise came from its throat, and then it spoke in human language. "Stupid ape! Stupid ape!"
"Ha! It really is pretty smart!" Hu Xing said.
Qingmu tossed the crow another bite. "Aren't you going to thank the proprietress?"
The crow swallowed the food, flapped its wings, and took off out of the room. It stopped somewhere around the entrance to the hallway and called down the stairs:
"Thank you-the proprietress. Thank you-the proprietress."
After several calls brought no response, the bird began calling in a distinctive, trembling, drawn-out tone, almost like singing:
"Ru-hua-, Ru-hua-..."
There came the sound of a washbasin hitting the floor downstairs, followed by the proprietress's curses:
"Got a death wish? Keep squawking nonsense and I'll pluck every feather off you, stew you with tomatoes and potatoes, add three spoonfuls of white sugar, and turn you from a black crow into a white crane of the heavens!"
The stairwell suddenly fell silent for ten seconds. Then the crow's peculiar voice rang out:
"So-scared-oh-"
Another metallic clanging sounded downstairs, followed by thudding footsteps on the stairs.
Hu Xing saw the crow flap back into the room and land on the desk, shouting at Qingmu:
"Shut the door! Ruhua's losing it! Shut the door! The proprietress is losing it!"
Hu Xing couldn't hold back any longer and burst out laughing, her slender figure shaking inside her police uniform. Even the stiff Ma Fuqing grinned broadly without restraint, laughing so hard he couldn't close his mouth.
"Uh-oh-" Seeing that no one was paying him any attention, the crow turned to watch the doorway. After watching for a long time without seeing Bi Shenghua appear, he relaxed and shook out his feathers, then opened his beak wide with another squawk, begging Qingmu for food.
Qingmu tossed the entire bag of braised pork hock onto the desk. "Help yourself. Don't stuff yourself."
The crow grasped the bag of meat in its claws and flew to the screen wall behind the desk. Only then did Hu Xing notice a bird perch there, with a feeding dish on it. The crow dropped the bag of meat into the dish and worked at it with its beak and claws a few times, pulling out the plastic bag.
"This is the 'Boss Coal' you were talking about?" Hu Xing was curious. Giving a pet such a bizarre name really left her speechless.
"That's right," Qingmu said. "Look how pitch-black it is. Doesn't Boss Coal sound imposing?"
"You people really are strange." Hu Xing giggled, then picked up a magazine. "All right, I'll read for a while. If you've got business to discuss, go ahead. Don't mind me."
Qingmu looked at Ma Fuqing. "Go on, then."
"Well, I..." Ma Fuqing glanced at Hu Xing's conspicuous police uniform and grew awkward again. "I just... wanted to ask you to interpret a dream, Master."
Qingmu asked, "What dream?"
Ma Fuqing said, "Lately, I keep dreaming about a woman."
Qingmu said nothing.
Dreams like that were far too common. No one would go to such lengths to find someone to interpret an ordinary dream. Qingmu wasn't anyone famous; Ma Fuqing must have gone through quite a roundabout search to find him.
Sure enough, Ma Fuqing continued, "She chases me and says she wants my life. I can't get away. Every time, I only wake up after she catches me. I have this dream every few days, and afterward I can't sleep, and I feel panicky when I get up. My mother and younger brother have both fallen ill again recently, too. They're all muddleheaded. I wanted to ask you to take a look, Master, and see if we're being haunted by a ghost."
Qingmu asked, "Who is that woman?"
Ma Fuqing stammered, "I... I don't know her. That woman, she... she... has no head."