Silent Reading 默读 [BL Novel by Priest]

Chapter 41 to 50

CHAPTER 41 [Humbert Humbert- Eight]

"The missing girl is Qu Tong, eleven years old. She was originally on the bus. Attempting to help the teacher distract the thug's attention, she threw an alarm device out the window, then in the commotion climbed out the window and ran away. We don't know where she's run off to."

"Have some police dogs transferred over from West Ridge County." When he'd heard, Luo Wenzhou's reaction was fairly composed. "It's all right. A small child can't run far. Find some well-spoken people and have them reassure the parents. To tell you the truth, if she hadn't run, when the kidnapper had come around and realized that she'd been the one to throw the alarm device, the outcome doesn't bear thinking about. Seems to me the child is pretty sharp."

Fei Du turned his head and whistled towards his far-off disreputable companions. In this society of idlers, he could rally a hundred at a single call. The rich kids had first raced motorbikes in the rain; then, when the water on them hadn't fully dried, they'd participated in a hostage rescue operation. Though they'd only been props and hadn't even gotten to see whether the kidnapper had been fat or thin, it still counted as enough stimulus to last them for the rest of the year. Hearing Fei Du's call, they rushed up in a crowd. "Master Fei, what else is there?"

"From the City Bureau." In a few words, Fei Du gave a high-level summary of the entire glorious life of the handsome man in front of him. Then he said, "An eleven-year-old little girl went missing from that bus. I'll send a photograph to my friends group in a while. If you don't have anything going on tonight, help search."

"All right, no problem!" Zhang Donglai could for once stand up straight in front of Luo Wenzhou. He grinned cheekily and nodded to him. "Hello, Captain Luo. If you need anything, Captain Luo, give a shout, we're all family!"

Luo Wenzhou coldly looked this person over. He'd heard that after getting into trouble, Young Master Zhang had been shut up in a little dark room at home for a couple of months. Here and now, he had perhaps just been "released upon completion of his sentence." He was wearing a vest that left his arms bare and pants with a big hole on each side. He had a new haircut, shaved into the form of a rooster's crest, with a line of multicolored long hairs sticking up every which way from the top of his head. On the back of his head some character had been carved.

Curiously, Luo Wenzhou said, "What's that on your head?"

Zhang Donglai at once stood at attention and reported, "The character 'endure.'"

In spite of himself Luo Wenzhou felt some deep veneration—it turned out that Young Master Zhang's august countenance was the result of endurance.

"Captain Luo, set your mind at ease, I'm familiar with this place," said Zhang Donglai. "We bourgeoisie are the great pollutant over here. Aside from the extravagant and corrupt, there aren't any other scourges at all. For fifty kilometers around, the most aggressive wild animal is a little squirrel. There's definitely no danger!"

This was actually true. In this era, West Ridge was elite and remote to start with, and the rainstorm would have emptied it even more thoroughly. How far could a panicked little girl run?

Upon first hearing the news, no one got very agitated. All the work was carried out methodically.—The deranged Han Chengzheng was carried away in a body bag; an ambulance took away the seriously injured Teacher Hu and the still-breathing kidnapper Han Jiang. The crowd of frightened students left in groups, accompanied by parents, to collectively undergo physical examination and psychological counseling. The transferred police dogs were soon in position.

Several small search and rescue teams split up to operate. Zhang Donglai scared up a pile of brightly colored convertibles from somewhere, which, collectively broadcasting the theme song to Pleasant Goat and Big Big Wolf, quickly arrived on the nearby large and small roads to search.

The professionals and the counterfeit goods each went their own way, neither bothering the other, complimenting each other very well...even though the sound of "Don't Look at Me, I'm Only a Sheep" playing everywhere in waves was a little nauseating.

Fei Du put his hand on the car door and nodded to Luo Wenzhou. "Come on, let's go have a look at the place the child ran from."

Luo Wenzhou inconsiderately hitched a ride, and meanwhile pointed at his shirtfront. He spoke in very "feudal lord" tones: "Dress properly.—What kind of mass hell-raising were you getting up to out here?"

Fei Du lazily gathered up his shirtfront; without looking to see whether the buttons were aligned, he carelessly did up a few—the result wasn't any better than having it open, because his drenched shirt still hadn't dried all the way. "Racing."

"Racing convertibles?" said Luo Wenzhou.

"Motorcycles. Two of them overturned, too. Before you guys closed off the road, there was an ambulance that took away someone who'd fallen and fractured a bone." Fei Du gently put the car in motion. Using a rare cheerful tone without disparagement in it, he teased, "Of course, it really may be a little stimulating for the middle-aged and elderly."

Luo Wenzhou looked down at the mud-splattered boots on his feet and, to his sorrow, suddenly realized that he perhaps really was quickly approaching middle age—because he couldn't comprehend how these youngsters could be so vacant.

"What happened to your hand?" Fei Du carelessly darted a look at the three stripes on him. "Who was so fiery?"

Luo Wenzhou was focusing on listening to each search and rescue team's progress report. He inattentively answered, "Your little brother."

Fei Du was bewildered.

"Got it, pay attention to the difficult to reach places. A child would be under some psychological stress after an experience like that, perhaps she'll have hidden herself somewhere." Having spoken, Luo Wenzhou put down the walkie-talkie and turned to Fei Du. "Do these look like a primate's claw-marks to you? No common sense.—That trash mixed-breed cat Tao Ran gave you, did you forget? You little whelps. Whatever you do, it's two and a half days of novelty, and then we have to follow picking up after you."

At first Fei Du paused. Then he seemed to remember something, and his initially half-closed peach blossom eyes suddenly opened wide.

The night was hurtling past the car windows on both sides. For a long while he didn't answer, until they saw bright lights up ahead, already drawing near to the scene where the girl had initially run from. Then Fei Du finally spoke, in a tone that was hard to read. "After so many years, you still have it?"

"Oh, what else would I do? Give it to you? If you want it, hurry up and take it away, just don't come bringing it back to me." Remembering Luo Yiguo, Luo Wenzhou's hand hurt, and he involuntarily scratched it again. "Stop the car a little farther away. The child may have left footprints, don't disturb them."

Fei Du accordingly stopped the car at some distance. "Do you...uh, need to get vaccinated?"

Hearing this ordinary inquiry, Luo Wenzhou was very shaken—more shaken than if Luo Yiguo had run over to him for a cuddle. He was even a little tongue-tied. "N-no...no need, the last one hasn't expired yet."

Out of the twelve months of the year, Captain Luo was in an "unconquerable condition" for eleven and a half of them. The doctor who gave him the vaccine had proposed to get him a "yearly card," moving from retail to wholesale.

When Luo Wenzhou's shock had passed, he couldn't resist taking a cheap hit. "You being so filial all of a sudden makes me a little panicked."

Fei Du reined in the unusual expression on his face and once again put on his obnoxious drawl. With a smile that wasn't quite a smile, he said, "Caring for lonely elders is everyone's responsibility. Tsk, keeping company with a cat in the endless night seems very desolate."

Perhaps because Fei Du was so improperly dressed, and perhaps because Luo Wenzhou's good opinion of himself had gone to his head, he felt that Fei Du's glance, floating over as he talked nonsense, had a touch of seduction to it. Accompanying the hummed "in the endless night," it truly did inspire reverie. Thereupon his mouth accidentally went a little over the line.

"What," said Luo Wenzhou, casually taking a liberty, "you're offering oral consolation?"

Fei Du: "..."

Luo Wenzhou: "..."

As soon as this joke that had gone too far was spoken, the two of them became silent at the same time. Inside the small and narrow sports car, the atmosphere was so unusual as to defy description.

Luo Wenzhou would have loved nothing better than to somehow put those words, which had somehow slipped out, back into his mouth. He was dumbstruck for a moment, then gave a dry cough and not very brilliantly backtracked. "At the end of the year, don't forget to bring dad a box of snacks."

Fei Du forced out a laugh. "Should I also burn three incense sticks?"

After this, the two of them simultaneously climbed out, in tacit agreement, planning to forget the preceding awkwardness inside the innocent sports car.

Luo Wenzhou suddenly remembered something. He turned to Fei Du. "On the subject, I remember you quite liked that cat. Why were you unwilling to keep it no matter what afterwards?"

Fei Du put his hand on the car door. His movements paused. The distant lights fell on his exposed forehead and brows; the arcs seemed to have been carved that way, the outlines finely planned.

"A pet?" After his pause, Fei Du said, as if nothing had happened, "I don't like having pets. They're so much trouble. I didn't feel comfortable saying so in front of Tao Ran. Also..."

He looked up, the tip of one eyebrow moving lightly. "What if I have a hobby of sadistically killing small animals? I couldn't control myself, and I was afraid I wouldn't have a way to account for myself to Tao Ran, so I had to keep a safe distance. Captain Luo, do you think that's a reasonable explanation?"

Luo Wenzhou stared, intuitively sensing that these words of Fei Du's weren't a disgusting joke, but before he could read the meaning between the lines, the voice of a member of a search and rescue team came over his earbud. "Captain Luo, we've found the place where the girl threw the alarm device, as well as some footprints."

When Teacher Hu had been attacked, the rain had already slackened. The ruts where the bus had parked hadn't entirely been washed away by the water.—The driver had been at the front of the bus then, and the kidnapper had been pushed out of the bus's door by Teacher Hu. If the girl wanted to run, she had to jump out of the back of the bus and run in some direction where she could avoid the bus's headlights. Following this assumption, the searchers had quickly found some footprints left by a young girl.

The police dogs went off, following the track.

Everyone felt that their luck was good. In the place where the hijacker had chosen to stop, the road had fallen out of repair. There was a lot of bare earth. Qu Tong had left a good deal of marks; following the traces, the girl could definitely be found soon.

But by the latter half of the night, there had still been no news of Qu Tong.

Qu Tong's parents stared at the comings and goings of the police and the spontaneously searching drivers. The father's eyes were like sound-activated lamps—the least breeze or rustle of grass, and they'd light up; but when the searcher once again left, they'd go out time after time.

"Captain Luo, come here and have a look at this!"

Luo Wenzhou passed through the crowd. A few search dogs had stopped in the same place, crouching with their tongues hanging out. He casually petted one dog on the head and half-crouched. There were still faint traces of blood on a sharp stone, and a leather sandal strap was caught on it.

"Let the parents look at it, confirm this strap comes from Qu Tong's sandal," said a nearby search and rescue worker. "Behind this are a child's footprints. There are some long gouges here; is the assumption that the little girl ran here, then tripped on a stone and fell? There's also a grown-up's footprints, and the ruts of a car. My guess is it's a size forty-one or forty-two, most likely a male."

Luo Wenzhou was silent for a moment. "You mean, someone just happened to drive by here and take the child away."

"It's very likely. The dogs can't smell anything more."

By the light in his colleague's hand, Luo Wenzhou's gaze roamed over the area.

Complex footprints, and the place where the girl had fallen, wildly overturning ground that was muddy after the rain. At a glance it was very hard to determine what had happened here.

"Captain Luo, I think this must be good news. After all, it had just rained, and this is the mountains. The earth is loose, there could be hidden dangers.—Since someone went by and saved the girl, then at any rate she won't have to spend the night out in the wilderness."

Luo Wenzhou's expression was still very grim. He didn't make a sound. After a good while, he slowly nodded. "Fine, take care to preserve the scene. Notify the technicians to come see whether they can use the traces to determine whether the child went with this person willingly. Also...prepare to issue a missing person announcement, and closely monitor whether anyone around here has called the police after picking up a child."

"Right!"

"Go contact the museum the students visited today." With a heavy heart, Luo Wenzhou put a cigarette in his mouth and carefully thought over whether he'd omitted anything, then added, "Investigate the museum's visitors, and the cameras at the nearby highway exits."

The search and rescue worker next to him was perplexed. "Hm?"

"See what cars passed by," Luo Wenzhou said quietly. "Pay special attention to ones with single male drivers. I have a sudden feeling this thing isn't very sanguine."

In deserted open country, a distressed little girl suddenly appears in the middle of the road and tells you that nearby a thug has hijacked their bus; what would an ordinary person's reaction be?

A regular person presumably wouldn't have the guts to valiantly do battle against a knife-wielding thug. Perhaps he wouldn't even dare to let the child get into the car without confirmation; after all, stories regularly circulate through society about criminals using children. So either he would indifferently pretend not to have seen her and leave, or, after carefully inquiring into the circumstances, he would call the police right away.

After the police had determined that the bus had been hijacked within West Ridge County, all calls to the police in the county had been put through to him. Why had several hours passed since the girl had run away without any news?

The missing girl cast a shadow over the whole rescue operation.

Three days passed in a flash, and the police came up empty-handed. From start to finish, there was no news about the mysterious person who had picked the girl up; and whether from the investigation at the museum or from the nearby businesses that had agreed to help keep an eye out, there was still no useful information.

In the early evening on the third day, Qu Tong's parents came to the City Bureau, bringing a flash drive.

"We don't know who left it, and we don't know when... It was in the milk box. With the child not found, we haven't had the attention to spare to get it these last few days," said Qu Tong's father with reddened eyes. "It built up for a few days, and this morning the milk delivery person knocked on the door to ask. We only remembered to open the milk box then...and this thing fell out."

Wearing gloves, Lang Qiao accepted the little flash drive. "What's on it?"

When she'd spoken, Qu Tong's mother suddenly fell apart, beginning to cry bitterly.

"On it...there's a sound recording."

Fifteen minutes later, Lu Youliang, frowning, finished listening to the recording. The recording was less than a minute long. At first there was the sound of a girl's frightened screams, then a violent struggle. After several dozen seconds, the screams and sounds of struggle gradually became weaker, until all was silent. Finally there was a ringing noise, as if a metal box full of small bells had been forcefully shaken; the trembling buzzing sound seemed to knock on one's heart, drawing out long—then the recording abruptly cut off.

The corner of Lu Youliang's eye twitched, and he slowly lit a cigarette.

"Director Lu." Luo Wenzhou spoke first. "We have too few clues on hand now, we shouldn't speculate wildly, but I spent half my life listening to Lao Yang go on about Lotus Mountain, and the impression is really too deeply carved. I had to find you to confirm. The case was over twenty years ago, and we only know about it from hearsay. You're the only one who had personal experience with it. Do you think that this recording resembles the phone calls the kidnapper made to the victims' families then? Could it be a copycat of that case?"

Lu Youliang slowly exhaled a smoke ring and didn't speak for an age.

When a long time had passed, he dismally spoke. "This business made a huge fuss at the time. You can still find newspapers from the time with long and tedious articles about it. We lacked awareness of secrecy then, details like 'the victim's family received a frightening phone call' got out, but..."

The assembled group had very rarely seen such a grave expression on the old director-general's face.

"I remember the first girl who went missing—the one in the Lotus Mountain case. There was a detail," said Lu Youliang, "a detail that the victim's father in the case supplied while cooperating with the investigation. He said that he'd heard the sound of a pencil box over the phone. Metal pencil boxes were popular at one time. The missing girl's parent said, the little girl collected a kind of small round bell and put them in the metal pencil box. Sometimes she took it out and shook it to listen. The adults in the house didn't like the noise and chastised her... The sound that came over the phone was definitely the sound of a pencil box. That's why he was certain that the voice was definitely his daughter's."

Lang Qiao, taking down the minutes of the meeting to one side, gave a little shudder.

This detail was too small, and because they couldn't get recorded evidence at the time, there was only the victim's father's testimony. He was anxious and frightened, his psychological state was unsteady; there was a strong possibility that he had heard wrong. It was truly hard to determine the authenticity. Therefore it had only been used as a reference.

It hadn't been referred to in Yang Zhengfeng's notes; even Luo Wenzhou and Tao Ran hadn't known about it.

The police of course wouldn't have made such a dubious small detail known to the public, so...

CHAPTER 42 [Humbert Humbert- Nine]

"According to this inference," Lang Qiao, sporting dark circles about the same size as her eyes, said faintly, "either Wu Guangchuan climbed up out of the morgue, or we got the wrong person back then and over twenty years later the real killer has resurfaced to offend again."

"If a person succeeds in committing six crimes, with the police unable to catch a shadow and even helpfully finding someone to take the blame for him, an ordinary person would already be self-satisfied enough to go insane. If he's a real psycho, would he have stopped for so many years?" Luo Wenzhou said. "If we really got the killer wrong back then, the last twenty years and more are long enough for him to have filled up a mass grave."

Lang Qiao turned her head. "Captain Luo, what you're saying is appalling."

"What you're saying is pretty appalling, too." Luo Wenzhou rolled the shaft of his pen around in his hand. "However it is, I've already sent people to stake out Qu Tong's house to look into the person who left the flash drive."

"Don't quote me on it, but they're unlikely to turn anything up," said Lang Qiao. "I just got through asking the parents. Qu Tong's house is on an old estate, and the property management doesn't do anything thirty days out of the month. It's basically an open-door policy over there. Just last month they had some things stolen. Think about it, someone takes something from your house and they don't get caught; forget about someone leaving something."

Tao Ran asked, "What about other leads?"

"The flash drive is one of those ordinary cheap kinds, you can find exactly the same thing on hundreds of sites online. It's been wiped very clean, not half a fingerprint on it. The techs are stepping up their analysis of the contents of the recording, but the suspect's anti-reconnaissance awareness is evident." Luo Wenzhou paused and shook his head. "The outlook isn't optimistic."

The possibility of leads was very small, and the possibility that the girl was still alive was also very small.

The golden seventy-two hours had passed; the recording sent to the girl's parents seemed like some kind of preening "summing up"—I'm still here, I'm the victor again, you can't catch me.

"There's actually another line of thought," Tao Ran said after quietly muttering to himself for a moment. "On the night this happened, who would have been passing by? At the time, we investigated the security camera records of some nearby scenic spots, industrial parks, and major roads. If the person who took the girl had been driving past by coincidence, it would have been very hard for him not to leave any traces. But thus far, we haven't found any traces along that route. So is it possible that someone had been following Qu Tong all along—or perhaps his aim was another girl on that bus similar to Qu Tong, and he just happened to run into the hijacking?"

Having heard this, Lang Qiao already grasped his meaning. "You're saying that the stalker didn't succeed on his first try!"

On the last day of summer camp, the students had gone to the outskirts, but before that their activities had always been in the city, near the school. If this mysterious kidnapper had been tailing one of the students, then it would have been far more difficult for him to hide his tracks in the city. The traffic cameras and the surrounding residents may have noticed him!

Lang Qiao stood immediately. "I'll go arrange it."

"I've arranged it." Luo Wenzhou waved a hand towards her. "Sit down for now. After we finished investigating the scene that day without finding any suspicious individuals, I had people investigate following the tracks of some of the girls in their class. Of the eighteen students, eleven were girls, all around the same age as Qu Tong, with six of them who resembled her in stature and appearance. Even focusing our attention on those six, investigating everywhere they went, what people they passed by, it would still involve over a hundred people. After conducting a survey of the scene, we only know that this person wears size forty-two shoes. It's too little information; we can't even be sure of the person's age or sex. We have nothing to go on, unless his appearance is very suspicious, which at present it seems evident that it isn't."

Listening from beside him, Lu Youliang couldn't resist sighing. He acknowledged to himself that even if he had personally been in charge, he couldn't have been more thorough. But sometimes opportunity and luck were both indispensable.

"Back then the kidnapper called the victims's families directly. Now that he knows we can trace calls, he's changed to an untraceable means of delivery. He's really advancing with the times." Lang Qiao sighed. "Isn't this what you call good advances a chi and evil advances a zhang?"

In a different tone, Luo Wenzhou said, "I remember the victims back then were never found, dead or alive. In the end, why did we think that Wu Guangchuan was the culprit behind the serial kidnappings? Just because he had the children's bloody clothes on him?"

"No, we handled cases somewhat irregularly back then, but not that irregularly," said Director Lu. "Aside from the cut-apart clothes, the primary reason we determined that Wu Guangchuan was the culprit was the seventh girl. There were signs of sexual assault on her, and after she woke up, she named Wu Guangchuan. What was the child's name, now? I think she was surnamed Su, Su..."

"Su Xiaolan," said Tao Ran. "She's mentioned in my shifu's notebook. She was Wu Guangchuan's student."

"Right, that was it." Having thought for an age, Director Lu truly hadn't been able to come up with it. He had to sigh. "Ah, it's been too long, my old brain isn't any good. There's a lot of things I can't recall clearly anymore. You go ahead and request the files be transferred over."

Luo Wenzhou kicked the inattentive Lang Qiao with the tip of his foot, and she reacted, hastily agreeing and running off to start the procedures.

With Director Lu's name on the request, the old case's records were transferred over very quickly. Twenty years of dust was finally brushed off of notes more detailed and objective than the Venerable Yang's, once more revealing them to the light of day.

"Right, it must have been this girl." Director Lu pulled out a photograph.

Because she had still been alive then and wouldn't have wanted to be disturbed, the Venerable Yang hadn't kept her photograph in his personal notes.

The seventh victim, Su Xiaolan, was a very good-looking young girl. She had apricot stone eyes with long corners extending towards her temples. When the photograph was taken, she'd put on a little makeup, looking red-lipped and white-toothed, with her chin in her hand; she had an odd precocious look.

"Su Xiaolan was a student at Jinxiu Middle School then. When the crime occurred, she was in Year 2 of junior middle school."

Lang Qiao asked, "Didn't I hear that the girl's family background was very bad? She was missing for days without her mother knowing. How could she have afforded to attend a private school of the time?"

"She was a specially enrolled dance student. Her elementary school dance troupe teacher liked her very much and recommended her to Jinxiu. Jinxiu had a policy of waiving tuition fees for all specially enrolled students. Although because of her unusual family background, and because she was always practicing with the dance troupe, Su Xiaolan often missed class. As time went on, she didn't fit in with students her own age, and she didn't have any friends. Wu Guangchuan was her Year 1 homeroom teacher and used that to lure her in and compel her, carry out a violation against her."

"That's strange." Tao Ran couldn't resist putting in a word. "If Wu Guangchuan kidnapped and murdered six girls, why did he leave this girl alive?"

"I had only just started working then. I was doing legwork for the investigation team and didn't participate in much." Director Lu thought back for a moment. "The killer was already dead. We couldn't force his motive out of him. All of this is my elders' conjectures at the time they wrote the concluding report after the fact. There were two presumed reasons—first, many people around them knew that Su Xiaolan and Wu Guangchuan were regularly in close contact. If anything had happened to Su Xiaolan, it would have been very easy for the police to find him. So Su Xiaolan was a very dangerous target for a murderer. There was even an elder who concluded at the time that the other six girls could have been substitutes for Su Xiaolan.

"The second one is pure supposition on our part—unlike the other victims, Su Xiaolan's family background was particular. The killer couldn't use a phone call to torment Su Xiaolan's family. If the process of making the phone call had some special meaning and purpose for him, then he would have been unable to obtain a sense of satisfaction from Su Xiaolan."

It sounded like there were no problems anywhere in this course of events; the human testimony and material evidence were all there, the logical and psychological motives all made sense. The only problem was, if the murderer from twenty years ago had already passed on, then who had taken Qu Tong?

Who would have known the details about the metal pencil box and the little bells?

There could only be the relatives of Guo Fei, the victim in the first case...as well as the old criminal policemen who had handled the case at the time, including Director Lu.

In front of Director Lu's face, the people in the small conference room all fell silent for a time.

Director Lu, however, rather calmly broke the silence himself. He stood and patted Luo Wenzhou on the shoulder. "You take the lead on this. If there are any questions, report to Lao Ceng. I'll step back for the time being to avoid suspicion. In a while, I'll do a clear write-up of my whereabouts for the past few days. I'm afraid it won't be very easy to investigate the others who handled the case. I'll go ahead and say a few words for you, to forestall them feeling insulted and not cooperating when the time comes."

"We also have to question the victim's relatives in the Lotus Mountain case. They may have said something to someone." Luo Wenzhou raised this awkward point lightly. "There's also Su Xiaolan. She was around Wu Guangchuan the longest, it's likely she knows something—we'll split up along three lines. Tao Ran, continue following the tracks of those eighteen children before the crime occurred; just in case, don't overlook the boys. Xiao Lang will be responsible for leading the people investigating the area around Qu Tong's house; don't overlook the security cameras of any of the miscellaneous little shops around there. I'll think of a way to handle the rest."

The rest were all the things likely to offend people—investigating the elders within their own system and making inquiries about the victims.

Tao Ran wanted to say something but was cut off by Luo Wenzhou's raised hand. "Hurry up, don't waste words. It's been over twenty years. The evidence has disappeared and the witnesses are gone. The hopes for a result are remote. Your investigations are of the highest priority, in case the child is still alive."

With this being brought up, Tao Ran didn't dare to tarry; he had to file out along with Lang Qiao.

Lu Youliang tore open the packaging of a new pack of cigarettes and pushed it across the table towards Luo Wenzhou. "You've left all the glorious but arduous tasks for yourself. You're keeping up a pretty good style."

"If I go," said Luo Wenzhou, "at most I'll get a telling off. The two of them, if they mess it up, it may come to a fight.—Of course, whether I can find anything out when the telling off is over will depend on borrowing your venerable face."

"Of the old boys from back then, some have left, some have passed away. The ones who worked from beginning to end have mostly retired. And now Lao Zhang has been transferred away." As he spoke, Director Lu inexplicably felt rather melancholy. "I'm the only one left to lead you passel of monkeys. It won't be many years now."

"Is retirement a bad thing?" Luo Wenzhou smiled at him. "My dreams are all about retiring. Waking up naturally every day, going wherever I want, collecting my pension every month, taking my old spouse around everywhere, having all the little brats give up their seats for me when I get on the subway."

Lu Youliang very much wanted to foster his development; although Luo Wenzhou was a little too young, luckily the old man wouldn't be retiring immediately. There were still some years left; if he pushed him along, it was possible he would amount to something. Hearing this feckless discourse, Director Lu filled with anger; then he once again thought of some gossip concerning Young Lord Luo that couldn't be mentioned in polite society and became even more vexed. Pointing at Luo Wenzhou, he said, "You don't even have a 'young spouse.' Shut up. If you won't talk sense, get the hell out of my face."

Luo Wenzhou put a cigarette in his mouth, tucked the old case file under his arm, and duly prepared to get the hell out. But when he reached the door, Director Lu called him to a halt.

"Do you have any rough ideas about this case?"

With one hand on the conference room door, Luo Wenzhou's steps paused. "There are two unresolved questions from back then. First, where the missing girls' bodies went. Second, Wu Guangchuan's motive for calling the victims' families. I talked this case over with some people, and a friend said that it sounded like he wasn't aiming at the children, but at the grown-ups—that doesn't seem much like the average psychological characteristic of a pedophile... Also, while I think the two cases are connected, they weren't necessarily committed by the same person."

"How do you figure?"

"Making a phone call and going in person to the victim's house are two different things. One is hiding behind the curtain, the other is being unable to resist personally taking the stage. The latter runs a much greater risk, and the criminal has to be more arrogant, too. It's not just the anti-reconnaissance methods Lang Qiao mentioned."

All of Yan City was like a river; after decades of waste management, you could see though to the silt on the riverbed, almost comprehend it all at a glance. It was clear and safe; but there were still rapids, and there were still undercurrents.

The odds of the missing girl Qu Tong being found alive were growing increasingly remote, but for the countless other children her age, this was just an ordinary summer vacation, crammed with unremarkable make-up classes and extracurriculars, accompanied by the listless humming of cicadas and the drowsiness of waiting adolescents.

Chenchen had her portfolio on her back and was waiting for her tardy parents at a bus stop by the Children's Palace's back gate. Bored, she took out her tablet to play. Suddenly, a shadow fell in front of her. Chenchen looked up and saw a blind, humpbacked old man arrive near her, his face unwittingly turning towards her.

Chechen felt oddly uneasy. She remembered what the dagege who had treated her to a cream puff had said that day, and hastily moved a few cautious steps away, drawing closer to the crowd waiting for the bus nearby while stealthily keeping an eye on the stranger.

Just then, the bus pulled up to the stop, and the tight-packed crowd boarded one after another. The area around the bus stop's sign emptied; only she and the "blind old man" were left.

Suddenly, the blind old man tapped the ground and stepped over towards her. In an instant the hairs rose on the back of Chenchen's neck, and she turned and ran towards the Children's Palace. Turning a corner, she accidentally bumped into someone. The other person cried "Ow!" and the things she was holding fell and scattered over the ground.

This person was a girl a little older than her, wearing a floral-patterned dress, her hair done in two braids.

Chenchen hurriedly apologized. "I, I'm sorry."

The girl looked at her and didn't get angry. As she crouched to pick up her books, she asked, "Why were you running?"

Chenchen hurriedly helped her. "There's a weird person over there, I was a little scared."

Hearing this, the girl looked over to where she was pointing. "There's no one there. Where?"

Chenchen turned her head. The bus stop was deserted; there wasn't a single person.

The girl looked at Chenchen. "What grade are you in?"

"I'll be in sixth grade when school starts."

"Oh, then I'm a year older than you." With her books under one arm, the girl naturally took Chenchen by the hand with the other hand. "Are you scared? How about I wait with you for a while."

Chenchen couldn't have asked for better.

"I'm attending the summer photography class here." The girl's long lashes drooped, and she looked at Chenchen and smiled. "I'm called Su Luozhan." 

CHAPTER 43 [Humbert Humbert- Ten]

In twenty years, Lotus Mountain had undergone a bone-flattening, skin-swapping renovation; its face now presented an entirely different appearance. The streets and buildings were seamlessly joined together, their style identically "modern," more dignified even than in the city. Only the roadside trees had not yet had time to develop their shade, dimly revealing the haste beneath the heavy makeup.

Luo Wenzhou drove a few circles before finding the nondescript newsstand.

A man wearing reading glasses was sitting inside, his back stooped, minding the stand. You could have said he was middle-aged, or you could have said he was old. Looking at his face alone, he looked like he hadn't yet reached retirement age; but his whole body was permeated with a heavy lethargy, as if he was lingering at death's door.

It was the hottest part of the afternoon. The surface of the street had been baked by the sun until oil was coming out of it. Luo Wenzhou pushed his sunglasses up to the top of his head and walked in front of the newsstand. "I'll have an iced soda water."

The newsstand's owner heard him and put aside the book he was reading. He bent down and chose a cold drink thickly covered with frost, then handed it over.

Luo Wenzhou stepped under the newsstand's sunshade, twisted open the bottle cap, and downed half the bottle in one go.

Already having worked overtime, he'd spent all day engaging in battles of wits with all kinds of his fellow professionals. Relying on Director Lu's face and carrying the banner of inquiring about the old case, he'd attacked by innuendo, trying to determine whether there was anything suspicious about the other party. They all belonged to the same system, their tricks all followed the same lines; they went back and forth, each scene comparable to a scene of palace intrigue in a television drama, severely fatiguing.

Now Luo Wenzhou's head was wooden inside. His gaze dull, he drank until he was chilled all the way through, then leaned under the sunshade, relaxing entirely.

The newsstand owner saw that he had no intention of leaving immediately and stuck out his head to say, "Hey, young fellow, I have popsicles, too. Do you want one?"

Luo Wenzhou waved a hand. "I've drunk my belly full of gas. I won't be able to eat. I'll rest here a while."

The newsstand owner said an "all right" and moved over a long-legged plastic stool for him. "Sit down, then. On a hot day like this, no one has it easy.—What kind of work do you do?"

Luo Wenzhou put the soda water bottle on his knee and lightly shook it a couple of times. "I'm with the police."

The newsstand owner had one foot up on the stand's small threshold. Hearing the word "police," he froze in place. After a long time he turned his head. He took off his reading glasses and folded them away. His lips trembling faintly, he lowered his voice. "I've applied to have the charge withdrawn. The government approved it, too."

"I know," said Luo Wenzhou. "Uncle Guo, I don't mean anything by it, I just want to talk with you about Feifei's case from twenty years ago."

The newsstand owner was Guo Heng.

Guo Heng had killed Wu Guangchuan, then had been sentenced to prison for deliberate killing. Later his sentence had been reduced, and he had been released upon completion of the term two years earlier. Naturally he had lost his job. Twenty years had passed; everything had changed. His parents and relatives had died or left. His wife had divorced him before the killing. He had no relatives or connections, alone in the world. Returned to the wholly changed Lotus Mountain...District, he was doing a bit of business to make his living.

"There's nothing to talk about." Guo Heng's face hardened. "She's been dead over twenty years, and I personally sent her killer on his way. I was sentenced, I went to jail. There it is. What else do you want to know?"

Luo Wenzhou tried to soften his voice. "It's like this. You see, I haven't come here to tear up your scars for no good reason. We've encountered a case, also involving a missing little girl. There's evidence that shows there may be a link with the old case..."

"What link?" Guo Heng asked coldly.

"A girl, eleven years old, wearing a floral-patterned dress when she disappeared. Three days after she disappeared, the criminal sent her parents a recording. Aside from a girl's crying and screaming, it contained another noise, like someone shaking a metal box full of small bells." Luo Wenzhou knew that the other was fully on his guard. Therefore he looked directly into Guo Heng's eyes as sincerely as he could, rejecting all irrelevant description, using the shortest phrases to explain the matter clearly. "The elders who had experience dealing with the old case said, the circumstances were exactly the same as when Feifei was murdered, so I wanted to ask you a little..."

He hadn't finished when Guo Heng cynically interrupted him: "You mean interrogate a little? The killer is dead, the only people left who remember this are the police and me. Of course, if something bad's been done, it couldn't possibly be the police, it can only be me, with my record."

"It isn't only you; I've already been through the policemen who handled the case," said Luo Wenzhou. "I don't suspect anything, I only want to understand in detail what happened..."

Without warning, Guo Heng's mood suddenly erupted. He roared at Luo Wenzhou, "Back then I looked everywhere for someone to talk to about this case, none of you listened, no one wanted to understand. Now I've stabbed him and gone to jail, and here you come again! My daughter has been dead over twenty years, I don't want to talk about her, I don't want to! What the fuck have you been doing all this time!"

Luo Wenzhou opened his mouth, bit back the justifications he'd nearly blurted out, then in a low voice said, "I'm sorry."

"Go away, go! Scram!" Guo Heng grabbed him by the shoulder and pushed him out. "I don't have anything to say. If you think I'm suspicious, you're welcome to come and arrest me, I've been through it all before, anyway. For the rest of it, no comment. The next time you come, remember to flash your ID. If I'd known before you were the police, I wouldn't have sold you a drop of spit."

"Uncle Guo..." said Luo Wenzhou.

Guo Heng's eyes were red, and the veins at the corners of his forehead stood out. "Scram!"

Luo Wenzhou's mood really couldn't be called gentle, but at this time, even if his rage had towered to the heavens, he still wouldn't have been able to let it out.

The scorching sun directly overhead spurted its flames towards him. He shut his mouth and used the tip of his tongue to count each and every one of his teeth. Then he looked down and got out his wallet, pulled out a photograph from it, and held it in front of Guo Heng.

"This child is called Qu Tong," said Luo Wenzhou. "When school starts, she'll be attending sixth grade. Her studies are good. She was attending the 16th Middle School's recruitment summer camp a year early. She's normally very sensible, always taking the lead. It's already the fifth day since she went missing. Uncle Guo, you know what five days means? I heard that back then you made an intense study of child kidnapping cases, so you should understand that the chances of finding this child are already remote."

Guo Heng's gaze slowly fell on Qu Tong's photograph.

With twenty years between them, the two men stood opposed to each other on the street in high summer. After a long time, Guo Heng's fiercely undulating chest gradually calmed.

"But each day we don't find a body is another day we can't abandon the search," said Luo Wenzhou. "It's too sad about the children who vanished without a trace back then. We can't let what happened to Guo Fei happen again. But now we really don't have any other leads. We can only beg for your help. Do we have to wait until this asshole finishes a seventh offense and leaves traces before this can end?"

Guo Heng's expression altered slightly.

The girl in the photograph was smiling at him with her head titled, revealing a slightly crooked canine tooth. It may have been coincidence, but looking closely, Qu Tong actually had some similarities to Guo Fei.

Luo Wenzhou's tone relaxed. "I just have a few questions. I'll finish asking, and then I'll go. I won't bother you."

Guo Heng looked at him, silently pursed his lips for a moment, then turned and went into the newsstand. Luo Wenzhou hastily followed. "Did you mention the fact about the bells in the pencil box to anyone back then?"

"I did." Guo Heng had become over-agitated just now; his voice was still somewhat hoarse. "I mentioned it to the police working the case. After you abandoned it, my friends and family who were helping me keep investigating all knew some details."

"Could you give me a list of names?" said Luo Wenzhou.

Guo Heng looked at him. When Luo Wenzhou thought he was about to flare up again, the man only curled up on his chair and wearily rubbed his face. "Feifei's homeroom teacher, a relative who worked at the telephone exchange back then... Oh, some sanitation workers near the waste transfer station the phone call came from, they may have understood some of it. It's too confused. There are things I repeated so many times to so many people. I can't recall clearly."

"Then we'll pass on to something else." Luo Wenzhou got out a palm-sized notebook and sat on the long-legged stool from before. "Where did you start your investigation from then? How did you find Wu Guangchuan?"

Guo Heng's gaze went past him, falling on a small mirror hanging on the news-stand's door. The mirror reflected the man's withered face and white hair, making him in a flash feel the passage of time. He looked at Luo Wenzhou—if the young girl from back then were still alive, maybe she would be a few years older than this young man.

"The police investigation wasn't making any progress. I felt anxious, I couldn't resist going to search for myself. I went over to that waste management station a few times—the place where the killer made the phone call. Back then, garbage often wasn't taken care of quickly. It smelled awful. No one lived nearby, and no buses went past. You had to drive a car if you wanted to go there. And coming from the county town, you'd have to pass a toll road. There weren't so many people on the roads then, the police could tell where all the cars had come from. If there'd been a problem with any of them, they would have found it. So I thought then, could the person who kidnapped my daughter have come from outside? Because there was a highway from the city to Lotus Mountain that made a half-circle to avoid the mountain, and it passed nearby. Although there wasn't a road, there was a large slope. I went to look myself. A car couldn't get down, but an ordinary adult could walk down."

Luo Wenzhou said, "You're saying that the person who kidnapped Guo Fei left Lotus Mountain with the child, and on the way, for some reason stopped his car on the highway, climbed halfway down the mountain carrying the child he'd kidnapped, and went to make a phone call next to a garbage dump—why would he do that?"

Guo Heng gave a slightly taunting smile. "When I told the police working the case my idea, they asked why in exactly that tone of voice."

"No." Luo Wenzhou adjusted his emotional state. "According to your inferences, the kidnapper came from out of town—Wu Guangchuan really did come from out of town, and per the investigation, neither did he spend much time in Lotus Mountain. Then how would he be familiar with a transfer station that even the locals didn't go to? He'd kidnapped a half-grown girl, not a baby weighing a few kilograms. To leave his car in the middle of the highway and climb down a mountain carrying such a big child to an unfamiliar place to commit an offense against her—the danger is too great. How would he know there wouldn't be workers passing by to collect the waste from the transfer station? That isn't logical."

Guo Heng said, "Has your logic caught the criminal?"

Luo Wenzhou was temporarily at a loss for words.

"The police also told me it was impossible, and they established a special investigation team. I thought, a special investigation team definitely has more expertise than me, let them investigate. I only needed to wait. And in the end... Ha! There really was nothing I could do, I had to keep investigating along that 'impossible' line of thought. I went to the area around Feifei's school and asked around at all the guesthouses and hotels one after another. Their teacher helped me a lot—that teacher had come back to work after retiring. She was very old; she's already passed on. She wouldn't be the one you're after."

Luo Wenzhou said, "During this process, you found Wu Guangchuan, who'd gone to Lotus Mountain to recruit students. I heard that he stayed in the hospital at the time. Why did you suspect him?"

"Jinxiu had money and flashed it around. The teachers who came to recruit students drove over in several cars. They came together, and when they were done with their business, some went back early because they had things to do at home, and some stayed on to play around in Lotus Mountain's limestone caves. Some had left midway because they got sick. They left in several groups. I found the cheapest guesthouse around Jinxiu and followed each of them in turn." Guo Heng said, "At first I didn't suspect Wu Guangchuan, but once when I was wandering around the area, I saw a child furtively following him."

Luo Wenzhou sat up straight at once.

"A little boy wearing Jinxiu's uniform. He said there was a girl in his class who was always missing class for no reason. He was the class leader, and the homeroom teacher told him to find out what was going on. The girl hadn't gone to class, and she hadn't gone home, either. He'd clearly seen the girl go find this Teacher Wu after getting out of school before, but when he went to ask the teacher about it, he wouldn't admit it.

"I thought at once something was off. Can you understand that? If you had a daughter of your own that age who'd gone missing just like that, you'd also be sensitive about everything."

"You told a policeman who had transferred to the City Bureau about this."

"Surnamed Yang, he'd been at the Lotus Mountain Public Security Bureau. He was the only one I knew," said Guo Heng. "But he didn't believe me."

Luo Wenzhou didn't make explanations for his shifu. He only followed up, "What happened then?"

"I could only investigate for myself. The boy from Jinxiu helped me quite a bit, too. One time, the boy suddenly paged me and I ran over to have a look. I just happened to see Wu Guangchuan leading a girl. The girl was struggling, and he dragged her away..." Separated from the event by many years, when Guo Heng spoke of it, his fist still clenched. It was a long while before he forced himself to keep going. "I made the child who'd passed on the information leave and I followed them to Wu Guangchuan's house. I saw that asshole take the girl home. At his door, I saw him do some...nauseating things. I..."

According to the record in the case files, Guo Heng had pretended to be collecting the electricity bill, knocked on Wu Guangchuan's door, then stabbed him.

Luo Wenzhou said, "What was the boy's name?"

"His surname was Xu." Guo Heng thought for a while. "I think he was called...Xu Wenchao."

Luo Wenzhou said goodbye to Guo Heng. Before he'd even driven away, he hastily passed on the information to Tao Ran, telling him to summon Su Xiaolan and Xu Wenchao from that year's junior middle Year 2 class at Jinxiu Middle School; then he raced back to the city.

Meanwhile, that same day, Fei Du also happened to leave the city.

"Did you make an appointment yesterday, Mr. Fei?" The receptionist flipped through the record, sneakily looking over the attractive visitor.

This sanatorium was between the mountains and the sea and had a garden that could be described as tasteful; though it was a medical establishment, there wasn't a trace of hospital smell or the stink of illness in the reception hall. All around was brightness and cleanliness and the soft voices of pretty receptionists. The leisurely sound of the tide and a piano melody were playing.

At a glance, it simply looked like a seaside resort.

"Room 407 in the Acute Ward. Please come inside, a staff member will take you through."

Fei Du nodded to her, pulled a dewy fragrant lily from the bouquet in the bag at his side, and stuck it into the vase on the front desk. "Thank you. I think this flower goes very well with you."

Then he left behind the crimson-cheeked young lady and went inside.

The people in the Acute Ward were those who had lost the ability to move. It had a special kind of peacefulness. The steps of the medical personnel were hurried and the thick shade of trees spread everywhere. Following the signs, Fei Du came to Room 407. A doctor had been waiting for him there and greeted him familiarly: "President Fei, I guessed you would come today."

"I just happened to have some time to spare." Fei Du put the flowers at the man's bedside. "How is it?"

"Overall very smooth," said the doctor. "Although it's already been three years. The likelihood that he'll wake up is small. His family needs to psychologically prepare."

Fei Du responded without any expression. He titled his head, examined the man in the hospital bed, and civilly answered, "I know. You've gone to a great deal of trouble all these years."

The doctor met his gaze and without reason was startled. There was a moment where he thought this young man's cold and withdrawn gaze didn't look at all like he was looking at his father; it didn't even look like he was looking at a living person—he seemed to be examining a not especially satisfactory ornament that he could just as well do without.

The doctor's mind was already envisioning a complete set of "wealthy family drama" and "seizing the throne" plots. He didn't dare to speak out of turn; he said goodbye to Fei Du and hurried away.

Fei Du urbanely watched the doctor leave, put his hands behind his back, and walked a few circles around the man's hospital room. The middle-aged man in the hospital bed lay there wholly insensible, surrounded by a bewildering array of medical apparatus. He seemed to be well taken care of; there wasn't a single white hair on his head. Looking closely, his features were very similar to Fei Du's, but the temperament was completely different. Though he lay there entirely unmoving, he still gave off a keen and somber feeling, like cold marble.

Finally, Fei Du stopped in a corner of the room. There was a small calendar hanging there. The nurse must have been careless; the date was from a few days ago.

He flipped the calendar to the proper date—the last day of July. It was his birthday, and of the two people who have given life to him, one lay in a sanatorium, and the other lay underground.

Fei Du turned and for a moment looked the man up and down with an indescribable expression. Suddenly, he reached out a hand towards the man's oxygen tube.

In the peaceful hospital room, the medical apparatus let out a regular rumble.

On the face of the young man who had just given a girl a flower, there wasn't a trace of warmth.

CHAPTER 44 [Humbert Humbert- Eleven]

Fei Du suddenly smiled, turning his head to blow a kiss to the hospital room's security camera. "Scared you."

He bent and picked up a card from a small table next to him—this was one of the characteristic services provided by a high-priced private sanatorium. For the relatives of patients who had no means of communicating, it could be hard to unburden themselves in unilateral jabber, so the sanatorium provided pens and small cards that the patients' relatives could write a few words on, passing along comparatively tangible emotions.

With a somewhat ironic look at the man in the hospital bed, Fei Du wrote without introduction or signature: "I hope you can hold out a few more years."

The private sanatorium's fees weren't cheap; the expense of him lying there on its own was enough to support several doctors and nurses.

After all, there were some people who, in their whole lifetimes, could only bring some benefit to the people around them during the years they spent lying insensate.

Outside the window the blazing sun burned like fire. In the hospital room, the central air-conditioning maintained a constant temperature year-round; under the drawn-out leafy shade, there was a chill in the air.

Having passed along the emotion of "seeing you unwell makes me feel better," Fei Du, seeming to have accomplished his yearly duty, drove back to the city alone.

Without any traffic, it was four hours from the seaside sanatorium to Yan City. Fei Du had arranged with Dr. Bai to come and borrow a book from her in the evening—he had already formally concluded his lengthy years of regular counseling, but he still maintained his friendship with Dr. Bai; as before, he would often go borrow some books she recommended.

If nothing unexpected occurred, a day of long-distance driving, a visit to a human vegetable, borrowing a book concerning mental illness and taking it home to read halfway into the night before lying down to sleep were the sum total of his arrangements for his twenty-second birthday.

Fei Du ordinarily went where the fun was, but all the people who were comparatively familiar with him knew that on his birthday, the anniversary of his mother's death, and any happened-upon holiday, he would be out of sight and out of contact. Even a person as undiscerning as Zhang Donglai wouldn't bother him at these times—he wouldn't have been able to bother him even if he'd wanted to. President Fei's phone, normally on twenty-four hours a day, would be unreachable.

The traffic conditions on the way back to Yan City were poor. The highway leading into the city was jammed up into a mess; he would be an hour later than anticipated. Fei Du was rather exhausted. He could only wait, relying on the car's radio to keep awake. He happened to hear Yan City's police force collecting leads concerning the missing girl Qu Tong from all the city's residents.

"...especially around schools, Children's Palaces, and summer training courses and camps. If you discover any suspicious individuals, please notify the police at once. ...Also, we remind our friends who have families that it's summer vacation now, and you must look out for the safety of children in your household..."

"How come this program suddenly turned into a hazard notice about open-water swimming?" Luo Wenzhou only returned to the City Bureau around quitting time, feeling that his three immortal souls and seven mortal forms were all about to evaporate out of the top of his head. Thereupon he rudely poured himself a cup from a pot of tea brewed by some unknown person and drank it.

However much Lang Qiao, running over, wanted to stop him, there wasn't time.

Lang Qiao's anguished wail: "Boss, that's the slimming tea I just brewed..."

Luo Wenzhou paused for a moment, then, without turning a hair, he downed the other half of the pot—at this moment, never mind slimming tea, provided that it was liquid, he wouldn't have passed up drinking insecticide. Having finished, he wiped his mouth. "What did the stake-out at Qu Tong's house turn up? Have Xu Wenchao and Su Xiaolan been found?"

"We reviewed all the security cameras from the shops around the estate. Counting package delivery, food delivery, milk delivery, and realtors, forty-some people come by every day. Luckily they all wear uniforms, and we were able to call each of their companies to confirm the employees' identities and whereabouts at the time of the crime. There were remaining questions about four of them, and we brought them back to the City Bureau to cooperate with the investigation," Lang Qiao said. "Apart from that, we made a list of all people coming into the estate during off-peak hours. There are over eighty altogether. We're just comparing them against the neighborhood committee's record of permanent residents."

Hearing this, Luo Wenzhou's head, already about to explode from the heat, swelled up further.

It was fortunate that City Bureau could command a great deal of police manpower. Otherwise, would they be investigating until the end of time?

Lang Qiao continued, "We've already found Xu Wenchao. Tao Ran is inside having a talk with him. Su Xiaolan can't come. She's gone."

Luo Wenzhou casually asked, "Out of town? Or did she go abroad?"

"No..." said Lang Qiao. "I don't mean she's not in the city. She's not on this planet—she's dead."

Luo Wenzhou's footsteps paused for a moment. "So young?"

"After that business, nothing went right for her. Her dancing came to nothing, and her grades were poor. She barely managed to get into a vocational college, then dropped out halfway through. She didn't have any regular employment, relying on good looks and youth to go around with some rich people. Before she was twenty, she'd given birth out of wedlock, and afterwards she lived very chaotically. She became ill and passed away two months ago—here's her information."

Lang Qiao passed him a thin file pouch. Luo Wenzhou took it and flipped through it.

He had soon finished reading it, because her life had been too short, and because there really was nothing to say for it. Inside were her past addresses, contact information, two disciplinary actions from the time she was at school, a record of once being detained for drunk and disorderly conduct, and a death certificate.

Last of all was a photograph taken shortly before her death. The woman, only a little older than thirty, already showed the ravages of time. Her thin cheeks were stretched tightly over her cheekbones, her chin was razor sharp, and there were lines around her mouth. There was faded makeup on her face, as if it couldn't be washed off. Looking very closely, it was just possible to see some vestiges of the little beauty she had been in her youth.

In the long corridor, Luo Wenzhou and Lang Qiao exchanged a helpless look—and this was the end of the last...surviving girl.

"You know what, Captain Luo," said Lang Qiao, "sometimes when I see these things, I think that 'surviving' is an ugly thing."

Luo Wenzhou hit Lang Qiao on the back of the head with the kraft-paper pouch. "Morning to night, you're so full of ideas. Go write some books, what do you want to be a police officer for? The most important objective now is to find Qu Tong—tell me, what does Xu Wenchao do?"

Xu Wenchao was a freelance photographer.

He was very tall and refined; he could have been described as a man of striking appearance. Suddenly asked down to a public security bureau, it was hard to avoid being somewhat nervous; his hands moved back and forth under the table.

Tao Ran poured him a cup of water. "We don't mean anything by it. We'd just like you to take time and remember some things."

Xu Wenchao lowered his head and pursed his lips, avoiding Tao Ran's gaze. He quietly thanked him.

Standing in front of the surveillance feed, Luo Wenzhou and Lang Qiao heard Tao Ran ask mildly, "Did you attend Jinxiu Middle School for junior middle?"

Xu Wenchao very elegantly sipped some water. "Yes."

"Do you remember having a classmate back then called Su Xiaolan?"

Xu Wenchao's fingers gave a tremble. He was silent for a long time, then spoke obscurely. "I remember."

Tao Ran asked, "Could you tell me about her?"

There was nothing ambiguous about these words, but Xu Wenchao didn't seem to have understood. He stared for a moment. "Hm?"

Tao Ran said, "Tell me about Su Xiaolan."

The fingers laying on Xu Wenchao's knees suddenly tightened, clutching at his own knuckles. "Oh, I, I haven't been in touch with her for many years, she...she was a rather cheerful girl...

"She wore her hair long, and she liked to wear all kinds of floral-patterned dresses."

Hearing these words, the faces of Tao Ran and those watching on the surveillance feed all tensed.

But Xu Wenchao's words had come to an abrupt stop. His gaze went back and forth between Tao Ran and the clerk several times. Suddenly, he said, "Did you bring me here because of that girl they were talking about on the radio? I heard on my way here."

"Then I won't go around in circles anymore," said Tao Ran. "How much do you know concerning the case of Wu Guangchuan kidnapping, killing, and sexually assaulting female children?"

Xu Wenchao thought with intense concentration. "Not much. I was little then. No one would tell a child about those things in detail, right?"

Tao Ran said, "But the father of one of the victims says that he found you, and the reason Su Xiaolan was rescued was that you told him she was in danger."

"Uh... It was over twenty years ago. I can't quite remember."

Tao Ran patiently said, "The father of one of the victims in the serial kidnapping case back then came to the area around Jinxiu to trail and investigate some of your teachers. He encountered you furtively following the male teacher Wu Guangchuan and went up to question you. The two of you suspected Wu Guangchuan of deviant behavior and investigated him together. Do you remember?"

Xu Wenchao still didn't speak. This time, his blank silence lasted for a minute. Then at last he deigned to speak: "I guess so. I don't remember clearly."

Speaking with this person was especially strenuous. He wasn't a criminal; the police couldn't forcibly interrupt his lengthy periods of silence. They could only sit and wait for him to speak, like a person suffering from mental retardation. Asked a question, he thought about it for half a year, then at last gave an equivocal answer—it was all variations on "Seems like it." or "Really?" or "I guess." or "I don't really recall."

Tao Ran spent over an hour questioning him over and over again. Having drunk two whole bottles of water, Xu Wenchao maintained an empty, wandering dejection, demonstrating total ignorance.

Lang Qiao said, "I really want to punch him.—Boss, do you think he's our suspect?"

"Just because he mentioned 'floral-patterned dresses?'" Luo Wenzhou shook his head. "Middle schools were very strict back then. Students wore identical uniforms. The girls either had to have all their hair off their faces in a ponytail, or cut it to their earlobes. The restrictions were only relaxed for the specially enrolled students for the sake of appearances. If Su Xiaolan was the only special one in the class, it's normal for him to remember. But..."

Tao Ran was saying to Xu Wenchao, "But I think it's a little strange. Wu Guangchuan's case must have caused a sensation at the time. How could you, who personally played a part in it, not remember clearly?"

Xu Wenchao smiled mildly. "During junior middle school, I got very sick. I had a fever that wouldn't go down and nearly died. Though I pulled through in the end, it's possible it damaged my brain. My memory hasn't been very good ever since, and my reactions are a little slow. Sorry, officer."

This explanation sounded perfectly reasonable. Tao Ran could only nod helplessly. "Are you married, Mr. Xu?"

Xu Wenchao shook his head.

"On the night of the twenty-seventh of this month, where were you?"

This time, Xu Wenchao didn't hesitate. He quickly answered, "At home."

"Alone?"

"I'm a bachelor. Of course I was alone."

"What were you doing at home?"

"Reading...a book about composition techniques."

Tao Ran's gaze sharped slightly. "Mr. Xu, in order to cooperate with the investigation, could we request your vehicle's location record?"

"Yes. It's parked outside." Xu Wenchao looked back at him calmly. "Do you have any other questions? Can I leave? I have work tomorrow, there are some things I need to prepare when I get back."

Tao Ran's eyes turned to the security camera. He heard Luo Wenzhou say to him over his earbud, "Let him leave. I've made arrangements. From the time he leaves, there'll be people watching him twenty-four hours a day."

Tao Ran stood and shook hands with Xu Wenchao. "You can leave. Thank you for your cooperation. I'll see you to the door."

At this time, Xu Wenchao's body language finally relaxed slightly. At Tao Ran's gesture, he turned to leave. Just then, as if idly chatting, Tao Ran quietly said beside him, "Private schools must be very strict. I hear the teachers are all desperate to get a higher rate of enrollment in higher education."

Xu Wenchao said, "We just had to study harder. It's a good habit."

"You must not have had any time for young love. If you said one word to a girl, there would be eight teachers staring at you. Even if you liked someone, you'd have to hold back." With one hand on the doorframe, Tao Ran looked meaningfully at Xu Wenchao. "Were there any girls you liked, Mr. Xu? A specially enrolled student like Su Xiaolan must have been very noticeable in your class?"

Xu Wenchao was taken unawares. His expression altered at once; the hands hanging at his sides nervily picked at the seams of his pants. After a while, he forced out a smile. "Who doesn't like pretty girls when they're young? But she's dead, there's no sense in talking about it... Officer, there's no need to see me out."

Tao Ran frowned faintly—he had only discovered Su Xiaolan was dead when he'd wanted to summon her. Up to the present moment, he hadn't mentioned this fact to Xu Wenchao.

So had Xu Wenchao, who "hadn't been in touch with her for many years," learned the sad news from a concerned classmate, or...

Having said these words, Xu Wenchao quickly walked away without a backwards look.

At the same time, the policemen ready to take turns watching Xu Wenchao arranged their shifts and left silently under cover of night to follow him.

When Luo Wenzhou left the City Bureau, dragging his steps somewhat, it was already past eight. He didn't go directly home.—Although Director Lu had stepped back to avoid suspicion, this situation wasn't like Director Zhang's. Zhang Donglai had been a close relative under serious suspicion; by comparison, Director Lu at most could be said to have some connection to the old case. He wasn't a major operator. Someone less scrupulous may not have made anything of the connection.

With a scrupulous leader, it wasn't proper for his subordinates to be too easygoing, especially after running around all day using up the old man's face. Luo Wenzhou planned to bring Director Lu a box of peaches brought back from Lotus Mountain, and in the process give him a simple progress report.

He called Director Lu, mentioning only the peaches, not the case.

Lu Youliang agreed at once and gave an address. "Your auntie's colleague is getting married. She only decided to go this evening and didn't tell me in advance. I've gone over to my little sister's place to scrounge a meal. You can come over here."

Luo Wenzhou turned on his GPS and entered the words "North City Chenguang Road."

Fei Du flashed his headlights and saw a road sign reading "Chenguang Road Exit 1.5 km."

He let out a slight breath. This return trip had taken over six hours. There was traffic everywhere, and no place to rest. His back was so sore that it was about to go numb. Only now did the road conditions ease somewhat. Fei Du sped his car right up to the speed limit, considering how he should apologize to Dr. Bai.

But just as he had driven the last stretch and was planning to turn off onto the side-road, a car suddenly charged out up ahead. It came up right in front of him. Not only did it not brake, it accelerated, heading right for him. There was no time to make way. Fei Du slammed the brakes down to the floor—

Next, the whole car shook tremendously. His ears rang. The airbag pushed him back into his seat. Fei Du's eyes dimmed, his insides turned over, and there was a sharp pain in his left forearm.

His consciousness blurred for a second or two, but the sharp sounds of car alarms and human voices startled him awake.

A passerby quickly ran over, shouting, and pulled open the door of his car. The summer night's turbid warm wind hit him full in the face.

There was a moment where a thought slipped through his not very clear consciousness: "Retribution comes very quickly."

Luo Wenzhou was just thinking gratefully that the traffic situation was all right when he encountered an accident up ahead; the flow of traffic stopped.

He sighed heavily and, like the other drivers, stuck his head out to look. As soon as he looked up, from far off he saw a big SUV, a good bit taller than all the other cars, sprawled at the exit like a crane among chickens.

Luo Wenzhou's heart gave a jump—wasn't that car the same model as the one Fei Du had flashed around in front of Tao Ran? 

CHAPTER 45 [Humbert Humbert- Twelve]

There was sweat at the corners of Fei Du's forehead, whether from the heat or from pain. His face was paper-white. From between his teeth he squeezed out the words, "Are you done?"

Luo Wenzhou stood to one side with a grave expression, as if he were observing a moment of silence. He was silent for two seconds. Then he really couldn't hold back any longer; he turned his head aside and howled with laughter.

"Young fellow, this won't do," said the old orthopedic physician who was taking care of Fei Du's injured arm as he delivered a long-winded speech. "I can see your lifestyle isn't good, right? You young people these days, staying up all night, not exercising, spending all day sitting there playing on your computers, can your health be any good? It baffles me. What's so fun about that stupid piece of junk? Don't think it's all right just because you're young, getting osteoporosis in your twenties and thirties can happen..."

President Fei, who had never stayed up late playing on the computer, was so wronged he couldn't speak.

Near the Chenguang Road exit, Fei Du's passenger's side door had been hit by a car suddenly coming from the right side. The driver responsible was a beginner who'd only gotten his license two months ago. The guy had been taken away in an ambulance. Apparently he wasn't familiar with road signs, had missed his turn, and then, realizing that he'd somehow gone the wrong way, had just happened to see Fei Du's rather tank-like SUV coming towards him. He'd panicked and hit the gas pedal instead of the brakes—that was the conclusion issued by the urgently dispatched traffic police.

In short, the causes of this accident were that driving schools were incompetent and Fei Du was unlucky.

Luckily, Fei Du had been driving a car with a highly advanced safety system today, and his own reaction had been very timely. Therefore it was the other party's car that had been more seriously damaged; he for the most part had been more scared than hurt—he hadn't even broken his glasses.

...Though while the glasses were staunch glasses, President Fei's precious flesh paled in comparison somewhat; his left forearm had been fractured by the airbag springing out.

Fei Du persisted in thinking that it had been because of the coincidence of his posture.

Even more unlucky, by some happenstance, this rare unfortunate predicament of Fei Du's had been seen by that wicked piece of work Luo Wenzhou.

Luo Wenzhou had, while he was on his way, accompanied him on his day trip to the hospital. After learning the state of his injury, he had picked up President Fei's pair of firm-willed glasses and laughed uncontrollably; the depressed feelings caused by a whole day's stressful work were swept away at once.

"Doctor, this type of bourgeois delinquent doesn't play on the computer. They go out night after night for music and singing." Luo Wenzhou, eager to watch the fur fly, supplied color and emphasis from the sidelines. "Look at that face. It's vacant, a testimony to a dissipated life."

Through his reading glasses, his large eyes like a dragonfly's, the old physician scrutinized Fei Du's vampire-like face. "Oh, there is something of that."

Fei Du: "..."

"I've set it for you. The fracture isn't serious. Come get the cast off in a while. Remember not to engage in strenuous exercise. No smoking, no drinking, no sex," the old physician urged seriously. "Also, you must be sure to take calcium supplements, young fellow, otherwise in another decade, you'll just—'snap!'"

The last sentence somehow hit Luo Wenzhou right in the funny bone. He was about to lose his mind, seeming prepared to live the rest of his life based on this joke. While taking Fei Du along to drive him home, he still from time to time let out a strange laugh.

Fei Du pitied him a little, thinking that Captain Luo's life really was wretched, so lacking in interest that he had to gather up these low-grade delights to entertain himself with.

Of the two of them, one had originally arranged to meet Dr. Bai, and the other had arranged to meet Director Lu; after this, they both had to break their appointments.

"Turn left at that intersection up ahead...you've passed it." Fei Du looked up irritably. "My good uncle, do you know how to read a GPS?"

"Haven't you worked out yet that I'm planning to abduct and sell you? I've already contacted the buyer." Luo Wenzhou continued directly along the wrong route, driving all the way to a shopping center. He parked the car and beckoned to Fei Du. "Come on, get out, the buyer's waiting up ahead to inspect the goods."

"Could I trouble you to wait until my packaging is in better condition before selling me?" Fei Du looked irritably at his wrinkled shirt. He tried to move and felt that his whole body was covered in bruises; everywhere hurt. So he sat in the car and didn't move, feebly saying to Luo Wenzhou, "You'd better bring the buyer over. I can't walk."

Luo Wenzhou didn't insist. He only looked at his seeming paralysis and laughed, then walked away on his own, abandoning this man who wasn't as resilient as a pair of glasses in the car.

Fei Du thought that he was planning to take care of something on the way. He was hitching a ride and had no reason to request to be attended all the way home. Therefore he didn't pay it any mind.

He pushed the passenger seat further back, occupying half the territory inside the car. Nearly lying down, he leaned back with his eyes half-closed. Amidst the continuous pain, he recalled the car crash he'd just met with.

Read the road sign wrong, mistook the gas for the brakes... There was nothing new about this. Whether it had been done on purpose, or whether the responsible driver had gotten flustered and slipped up, no one could clearly say.

The only difference was that the former was a murder attempt, and the latter was only an accident.

Looked at like this, a car really was an ideal means of murder.

Thinking these things over, Fei Du had nearly thought himself to sleep when the car door next to him clicked open and Luo Wenzhou returned.

Fei Du carelessly turned his head and looked at him, then discovered in shock that he was actually holding a cake in his hands, with candles and stupid cartoon characters drawn all over its paper box.

Fei Du subconsciously dodged in the direction of the opposite car door, as if what Luo Wenzhou was holding wasn't a cake but a bomb.

"Haven't you ever seen a birthday cake? What are you dodging for, the cake isn't planning to violate you." Luo Wenzhou put the cake box away. "Didn't the guys dealing with the accident take down your information? Don't tell me the date on your ID is wrong."

Fei Du was stiffer than the cast on his arm. He had wholly entered into an unstable state, ready to jump out of the car and run.

But in the end, he didn't. While Luo Wenzhou's car stereo played a forced mix of ballads and folk songs, Fei Du sat there in this state until Luo Wenzhou had stopped the car downstairs at his own house.

"The doctor said no smoking, no drinking, and no sex for you. Look at that cast on your arm. You won't be going out to parade yourself around today, so come experience a taste of elderly life with a 'middle-aged-to-elderly' person." Luo Wenzhou lifted his chin at him. "Get out."

Fei Du looked at him with an unreadable expression for a while, then, carefully holding his dully aching arm, awkwardly crawled out of the car.

He walked too slowly; Luo Wenzhou kept having to stop and wait for him. "That bad, young master? Luckily I live on the first floor, or else I'd have to carry you up on my back."

Fei Du didn't make a sound and didn't retort.

He was like a cat brought to someone else's domain for the first time. Each bone in his spinal column was full of vigilance. Like this, he reached Luo Wenzhou's door a step and a shuffle at a time. As soon as Luo Wenzhou opened the door, the "master of the house" stuck out a long-prepared round little head and looked outside.

Luo Wenzhou said, "Get in, Luo Yiguo, don't block the way!"

Luo Yiguo's field of vision was blocked by the big paper box in his hands. It suspected that this was a new toy its litter box attendant had brought for it as tribute. It rudely stretched out its neck and flung out its paws. When Luo Wenzhou deftly rapped it over the paws, Luo Yiguo irately fell back to the ground and yowled twice. Then it finally saw that there was also a stranger behind Luo Wenzhou.

Fei Du and Luo Yiguo exchanged a look. Fei Du was rather reserved, only taking half a step back. Luo Yiguo, however, bristled on the spot and let out an un-catlike shriek. Simultaneously using all four paws, it executed a full turn in place, its claws and the slippery floor rubbing against each other. It opened its large, marble-like eyes wide and lowered its center of gravity, adopting a stance like it was ready to launch a desperate attack any time.

In this valorous posture, it exchanged another look with Fei Du. After a moment, Luo Yiguo came to a rapid decision. It abandoned the fight and charged into the crack under the couch without a look back. It didn't come out.

Luo Wenzhou: "..."

Having raised such a cowardly cat, he felt he'd rather lost face.

"No need to change your shoes." Luo Wenzhou pointed to the couch. "Sit where you like. Hey, this cat's never had a problem being shy of strangers before. Last time a colleague came over, it followed around after whining the whole time. Why is it only afraid of you?—Luo Yiguo, you get the hell out here. You're going to roll around under the couch getting covered in dust, then rub yourself all over my sheets, asshole!"

Luo Yiguo played dead, not budging.

Luo Wenzhou howled towards the couch, "Are you going to eat or not?"

This time, at his words, two raised whiskers cautiously stuck out from under the couch. Then it sniffed the stranger's scent and once again decisively retreated.

Comrade Luo Yiguo had been scared into a hunger strike.

Luo Wenzhou was helpless. He opened a can of cat food and put it next to the cat's food bowl, then opened a cupboard and rooted around, pulling out a box of candy and dropping it in front of Fei Du, who was sitting perfectly upright. "See if the stuff in there's expired. I'll go throw together some dishes. I'm telling you now, I'm not attending to a young master. You'll eat whatever I make, none of your fuss."

Fei Du for once didn't raise any objections. His posture was unbearably stiff, as if he wasn't sitting on a couch, but on the roof of the world.

A while after Luo Wenzhou had walked away, he at last strenuously used one hand to open the candy box in front him. Inside were all sorts of oddities; likely it was an assortment bought around New Year. The chocolates had already taken on very post-modern appearances that spoiled the appetite on sight... The very bottom layer, however, contained toffees, old-fashioned, with roughly manufactured packaging and irregularly shaped candies that glued your teeth together—he remembered how these things tasted.

Fei Du slowly picked out a toffee, used the tips of his teeth to rip open the package, and tossed the candy in his mouth. Then he oriented his gaze towards the kitchen, where the range hood was roaring, a vegetable knife and chopping board were rhythmically colliding, and Luo Wenzhou's back was appearing and disappearing.

What Luo Wenzhou had described as "throwing together some dishes" had actually been done conscientiously. In a very short time, he'd prepared several matching meat and vegetable dishes, and he arranged them around the cake in the center. He thought about it, then stuck in a candle and lit it.

Luo Wenzhou looked up and met Fei Du's eyes. Then he dryly said, "What are you looking at, I'm not going to sing you 'Happy Birthday'. Are you planning to make a wish? It can be something like, 'May I not get hit by a car again on my next birthday.'"

"Oh," said Fei Du.

The two of them exchanged helpless looks with the cartoon character candle on the cake. The atmosphere was very peculiar, as if it were a moment of deep mourning for ages past.

Luo Wenzhou immediately regretted it. "Hurry and blow it out. This is silly."

Of all the cakes in all the world, there were few that Fei Du hadn't eaten. Only a birthday cake was very strange to him. It seemed that he'd tasted one when he was very little. There had been many guests in Fei Du's house then. His birthday had basically been put on for outsiders to see. He'd only gotten one small symbolic piece of the expensive cake before it had been carried away. The next day when he'd gone to look for it, it was already gone—because the cream was no longer fresh.

In fact, what was the difference between a birthday cake and an ordinary breakfast cake? At most there were only a few holes left behind by candles. But Fei Du had always thought the flavor wasn't the same.

Luo Wenzhou's handiwork was very praiseworthy. The only thing missing was wine. Strictly following the doctor's orders, Captain Luo only gave him a bag of high-calcium breakfast milk.

There were some middle-aged and elderly men who were always making speeches in the outside world; back home in front of their wives and children, they would unconsciously bring out this unhealthy mannerism. When Luo Wenzhou was little, he'd despised his dad's habit of delivering a lecture before a meal. But after twenty years of subtle influence, he'd been infected himself. Ordinarily he only had Luo Yiguo around, and the disease had been incubating; today there was a Fei Du added to the dining table, and the disease erupted.

"Another year gone by." Luo Wenzhou poured the warmed-up breakfast milk into a glass and pushed it in front of Fei Du, launching into a lengthy speech that came down in a direct line from his old dad. "I'm not only talking about you, but you should do something proper after this. How long can you fool around? The greatest benefit of material life should be to give a person more pursuits, not to let him lie like a salted fish on a mountain of riches. A young person's life can't be too empty; sooner or later, something is bound to go wrong."

Fei Du had never experienced this type of Chinese-style head of household culture. Putting a croquette in his mouth, he felt that it sounded very novel.

Luo Wenzhou continued to jabber. "Basic human nature is like this. First we pursue food and shelter, financial security, comfort of the senses. Then inevitably we seek higher types of satisfaction, for example a sense of achievement, for example self-realization. Continuing to lose yourself in low-level extravagance is in fact only self-numbing. As time goes on, the invisible worries involved in it will cause a person great pain. A Maybach today, a Bugatti tomorrow—you can buy it all, but can it relieve the deep pain of struggling against human nature?"

"It can't." Fei Du composedly swallowed the croquette. "Although not being able to afford them at all is obviously a type of pain closer to the surface."

"..." Luo Wenzhou glared at him, but found that the corners of Fei Du's mouth held a trace of a smile. He was joking—even though the joke sounded like it was jabbing into the pit of one's heart. Luo Wenzhou said, "You even dare to interrupt when the head of household is lecturing. If this were my family's house, a little devil like you would have to move a bench to the door and sit there writing a self-reflection. You still want to eat?"

Hearing this, Fei Du thought of something, and his earlier smile gradually cooled. He was silent for a while, then suddenly said, "At my house, no one spoke during meals, unless there were guests. Otherwise my dad was rarely at the dining table. My mom's emotions were unstable. Often, halfway through the meal, she'd burst out for no reason: sometimes looking upset, throwing down the plates and leaving, sometimes suddenly sitting down next to the table and starting to cry."

Luo Wenzhou froze.

"Meals at my house were a very nerve-wracking thing." Fei Du shrugged, seeming a little helpless. "If it was ever calm, it was simply like winning the lottery."

Luo Wenzhou thought about it, didn't comfort him, only lightly said, "That sounds pretty miserable. I don't know whether it's more or less comfortable than writing a self-reflection."

Fei Du raised his brows.

"Seriously, imagine it. You're squatting at the door, leaning on a bench, holding a piece of writing paper towards your house's door. When it's warm, everyone only closes the burglar-proof door. From outside you can see what's happening inside your house. The neighbors all work with your parents, anyone who passes by looks down at you and asks, 'What have you done now, boy?' It's truly a humiliation towards a person's honor and dignity."

Fei Du couldn't resist laughing.

Luo Wenzhou was going to say something else. Suddenly, his phone rang; the call came from the landline at the office. Luo Wenzhou froze, a thread of an ominous premonition rising in his heart.

"Hello." Tao Ran's voice was a little breathless. "Captain Luo, a call came from Chang Ning's family to the police station in their jurisdiction. They say Chenchen's disappeared!"

His phone volume was very loud. Fei Du heard it, too.

Luo Wenzhou said, "When? Where did she disappear? Don't panic, it's not necessarily the same thing."

"She went for a drawing lesson at the Children's Palace today. Chang Ning dropped her off at midday. In the evening the adults arranged it with her, told her to wait half an hour at the Children's Palace and not come out. Her dad could only pick her up after he got out of work. Their class ended...around four-thirty. Her dad called her; she was still in the drawing classroom then. A little past five, when he came over, he couldn't find her." 

CHAPTER 46 [Humbert Humbert- Thirteen]

"Impossible, impossible!"

It was after midnight. The Children's Palace's administrator had evidently been yanked out of dreams. His drowsy eyes were swollen up to his brow ridge, his shirt-buttons were unmatched, and he was shuffling along in a pair of slippers. "How many children pass through here all day? We have the strictest security, even parents have to sign in when they come in. We have 360 degree security camera coverage, no blindspots. You're saying human traffickers are involved? Is that a joke? I guarantee it with my own head, it's absolutely impossible! Unless the child picked up and left on her own, then even if aliens have invaded the earth, they still couldn't get into our school!"

"Deputy Tao, we just used the tracking software on Zhang Yuchen's cell phone to remotely turn on the device, and we've already located its approximate position. It's near White Peach Lane!"

"White Peach Lane." Tao Ran stared. "Why would it be White Peach Lane?"

White Peach Lane was approximately three stops away from the Children's Palace. It was a well-known small commodities distribution center in the city. Quite a few online stores did business there, often working through the night. There were clothes wholesalers, those who sold small trinkets by the kilogram, wholesalers of large and small packages scattered all around. The street was full of pickpockets and swindlers. It was bustling and disordered.

For a child sneaking away to have fun, White Peach Lane was too disordered, and there was really nothing fun there; for a child-abducting pervert, White Peach Lane was too full of people and eyes, the risk too high.

Tao Ran pinched the bridge of his nose. "Slow down, let me think..."

Before he'd finished, Chenchen's mother had pushed aside two criminal policemen and run over. "Officer Tao, I was listening, have they located Chenchen's phone? Where is she?"

Lang Qiao, just arrived after racing through the night, quickly came over to block and quietly soothe her.

"I clearly said to her, I told her every day to be careful when she goes out, not to go along with strangers, not to go to unfamiliar places, to get word to an adult if anything goes wrong. I said it so much I thought I was being annoying myself. If my mouth were made of iron I'd have worn a layer off..."

Chang Ning wiped away tears with one hand and held her with the other. "Aunt, don't be like that."

Seeing Chang Ning wiping away tears, Tao Ran's mild fretfulness rose sharply. "Xiao Qiao'er, you stay here to go through the security camera footage. You guys come with me to White Peach Lane."

The police car set out through the night like a shooting star, its four wheels almost leaving the ground. In five or six minutes they'd covered the three stops worth of distance. The season was about to change, and the first collections of autumn clothes would soon be hitting the shelves; White Peach Lane was so crowded it was about to turn into "White Fur Lane," the throngs of merchants creating a local heat island in the city with their breath.

Going back and forth among this crowd, within three minutes a person's forehead would be covered in sweat.

Tao Ran looked around blankly and asked the technician, "Can you narrow the range a little?"

"It's just approaching the west end of White Peach Lane," came the technician's voice over Tao Ran's earbud. "They haven't noticed that the phone is on yet. Deputy Tao, you have to hurry."

Tao Ran gave his subordinates a look, and they immediately split up in a well-coordinated fashion, approaching the west side of White Peach Lane from different directions. Tao Ran ran over, gaze sweeping over every person who went past him. Garbage trucks, carts, human-sized bags... No place that could conceal a person was overlooked, they were all searched one by one. Although no one had sounded a police siren, the quick search still instantly raised a nervous atmosphere on White Peach Lane.

Suddenly, the technician's alert came over Tao Ran's earbud: "Deputy Tao, they've noticed something, the phone's been turned off!"

Tao Ran's strained gaze subconsciously swept his surroundings and happened to fall beside a garbage can. A small, skinny man inadvertently looked up. Their gazes met. The man paused for a second, then got a clear look at Tao Ran's uniform. He threw down the thing in his hand, took to his heels, and ran.

What he'd thrown down had been a white cell phone, the back of it stuck full of stickers.

Tao Ran's pupils contracted. "Stop!"

Up ahead a wholesaler was just pushing a cart past. The man familiarly stepped up on the side of the cart like a monkey; accompanied by the surprised cry of the woman pushing the cart, the clothes on the cart came falling down like a landslide. A motorcyclist moving with difficulty alongside immediately braked to avoid the stuff that had fallen under his wheels, then let out a torrent of abuse.

In the chaos, the man had already put a foot up on the guard rail around the road. He went over in a flash and was about to dart across the street when a tall and sturdy policeman leapt out from a nearby small street and grabbed the back of his collar as if lifting a chick. With a twist of his arm, he had the man pressed down to the ground. Tao Ran turned back and picked up the white cell phone. He turned it back on. The background was Chenchen's cat-faced selfie.

He let out a long breath and went over to the man, who was already under control. "Where is she?"

The man's nose had been injured when he went down. He raised his head, his face brightly colored. He looked at Tao Ran with an entreating expression and said on a sobbing note, "I-I-I-I was wrong, Mr. Government Man, I'll mend my ways this time, I won't do it again... Ow... Hss... Gently, please..."

Tao Ran grabbed him by the collar. "Where's the girl?"

"Huh?"

At this time, Luo Wenzhou had already driven to the gates of the Children's Palace.

Seeing the familiar license plate, Lang Qiao bounded over. "Boss!"

"What's happening, where's Tao Ran?" Saying so, Luo Wenzhou looked back and waved towards the car's interior. "Sit in the car for now."

The person in the car wasn't having this. He got out, hoisting his arm.

Lang Qiao stared in spite of herself. "Wow, President Fei, what...what's with the armor?"

"A little accident." Fei Du looked at the buildings around the Children's Palace. "Is there news?"

Before Lang Qiao could answer, a police car braked noisily at the Children's Palace's gates. Tao Ran and a few criminal policemen got out, their faces grim.

Seeing Luo Wenzhou throw him a questioning look, Tao Ran shook his head. "Chenchen's phone was stolen. An old fox, a habitual offender. He's just been released from detention. He says there was a girl tying her shoes by the road. She put her phone down on a street planter next to her. When her shoes were tied, she left and forgot the phone there. So he only 'picked it up.'"

"Which street? When did he take it?" said Luo Wenzhou.

"It must be right around the Children's Palace..." Tao Ran raked a hand through his hair, his forehead tightly furrowed. "We found seven or eight phones ready to be resold on that joker, all today's accomplishments. He's not sure of the concrete times and locations himself."

"Ge," Fei Du asked beside him, "what are you panicking about? What's wrong?"

"I asked Chang Ning. Chenchen was wearing a floral-patterned dress today." Tao Ran's face looked awful, and his voice was quick and anxious. "If it really is... If the killer's kidnapped two children within five days, the frequency is too high. It shows that there's a hundred percent chance Qu Tong is... Chenchen was kidnapped around five, and now it's already been over seven hours, she may very well also..."

"Hush." Fei Du patted him on the arm. "Settle down a little."

"What do I have to settle down about?" Tao Ran laughed bitterly. "I'm not the child's parent.—I haven't dared to tell Chenchen's family my guesses yet... You said that the suspicious individual last time was an old man, right? Are you sure?"

"I'm not sure. I was too far away," said Fei Du. "Chenchen is a sensitive girl. When I warned her to be careful last time, I scared her. She wouldn't have forgotten so soon. I believe she wouldn't let down her guard, even around old people and acquaintances. Even if someone had tricked her into leaving, she wouldn't have forgotten to send word to her family."

"Deputy Tao, we've found the child on the drawing classroom's security camera!"

Tao Ran swiftly turned around and was about to go; Luo Wenzhou put a hand on his shoulder. "Leave it to me. You take responsibility for talking to the little girl's parents. See if there's been anything unusual about the child lately, whether the parents have offended anyone, how their family relationships stand—we can't overlook any possibilities."

Fei Du leaned to one side. "Do you need my help?"

Luo Wenzhou hesitated. "In what capacity?"

Fei Du very shamelessly answered, "Friends and family."

Luo Wenzhou help up a finger and pointed at him with a trace of warning, but in the end he didn't tell him to go cool his heels.

The drawing classroom's security camera was very clear. Around four-thirty, the other children were successively picked up by their parents, and Chenchen sat in the classroom alone, indifferently flipping through an album the teacher had left. From time to time she looked out the window; in ten minutes, she spent over five of them looking seriously towards the window.

Uncertainly, Luo Wenzhou said, "What's she looking at?"

"A mirror," said Lang Qiao.

Luo Wenzhou looked bewildered.

"Little girls use glass windowpanes as mirrors, you know. You can look at the scenery just by turning your head, no need to turn your whole body or come closer. She's also using her pen to twist the ends of her hair," Lang Qiao said. "All girls understand this... Huh?"

While she was speaking, she saw Chenchen suddenly sit up straight, slightly leaving her chair. Then she smiled, stood up, and quickly packed up her things and ran off—the timestamp in the corner of the recording was around 4:40.

Luo Wenzhou immediately looked up to check the drawing classroom's position; the window was right across from the playground.

The security camera on the building closest to the playground was quickly searched. You could see Chenchen running quickly out of the classroom building towards a group of children gathered on the playground. The camera was a little distant; it only caught her lingering briefly among the crowd of children. Then she walked towards a camera blindspot with some other girls, quickly leaving the frame.

Judging from the scene, they were heading towards a row of red buildings at the Children's Palace's northwest corner.

"What's this?" Luo Wenzhou asked, frowning. "Didn't the administrator say there were no blindspots?"

"The row of buildings in the northwest corner are public toilets. There aren't any cameras installed."

"Why the fuck didn't you say so earlier! Determine the identities of those children on the tape, question them immediately.—Bring the map."

The Children's Palace's northwest corner adjoined a little park, very sloppily managed. The outer lawn had been crushed all out of sorts by residents taking walks, the footprints and dog shit evident. No one went to the depths of the park, however; the vegetation was overgrown, and the mosquitoes were like bombers. The police dogs were swiftly in position, flashlight beams and barks rising and falling.

Fei Du listened in as Tao Ran spoke with Chenchen's father.

"I came around 5:05, I'd arranged it with her... First I called her from the door. When I heard her phone was off, I thought it had run out of battery and signed in with the caretaker and went in to look for her—but she wasn't in the classroom. I didn't think she could have gone missing. It was a Children's Palace, no different from a school. I thought she'd gone to the bathroom or to play somewhere... I was pretty angry, too. I waited in their drawing classroom for a while. When the security guards started to inspecting the doors and windows and turning off the lights, I started to panic a little and went to ask around and have a female teacher check for her in the restrooms..."

Chenchen's mom tugged on his shoulder, her face covered in tears. "Is she that kind of child? Running off without a word when she clearly knew a grown-up was waiting for her... Well? What kind of a dad are you? Anything goes wrong, and you want to blame my daughter right away. If anything at all happens to the child, I..."

Chenchen's dad was reeling from her pulling. He shut his mouth tightly and didn't make a sound. Tao Ran and Chang Ning, one to the left and one to the right, quickly separated the two of them.

Fei Du suddenly said, "I heard that child tracking systems on phones can be used to turn the device on remotely. The officers must have located Chenchen's phone like that earlier. Why didn't you think of turning her phone on then?"

"I thought of it." Chenchen's dad looked on the point of collapse; he resisted desperately, forcing down his shuddering breaths. "But there was something wrong with the software. It kept telling me that the remote function link had failed... I'm not used to using that thing..."

"We've found Chenchen's phone," said Tao Ran. "The battery is at least half full. It must have already been stolen by the pickpocket the first time you called. Could the child have discovered the phone was missing and gone to look for it?"

"The risk of stealing a phone in a Children's Palace is too high." Fei Du shook his head. "The likelihood isn't great. She must have left by herself for some reason. It was half an hour and more from the time class ended to the time you'd arranged to pick her up. She may have gone to buy snacks in the shops around here, or to play with her classmates... It's all possible, but ordinarily she would stay within a kilometer radius. That way, she could come back to the door of the children's palace as soon as she got your call.—Have you taught her what to do when she has something stolen outside?"

"Yes." Chang Ning looked at Tao Ran and quietly said, "I was just joking with her a few days ago, saying that from now on if anything happened she could go to Tao Ran-gege. She knows how to phone the police, and if that won't work, she knows to go back to school and find a security guard..."

Tao Ran patted the back of her hand and gave her a consoling look. He quietly said, "The Children's Palace is surrounded by crowded neighborhoods. It was the peak evening rush hour, it would have been fairly safe. Except for the depths of the little park at the northwest corner..."

"No, she wouldn't." As if seeking comfort, Chang Ning grabbed him by the wrist. "Chenchen is very timid. She doesn't dare to go to sleep alone after she's watched a thriller. She wouldn't have gone on her own where there weren't any people!"

Fei Du suddenly said, "What if it wasn't on her own, but with her classmates?"

All of them stared at him.

Fei Du walked up in front of Chenchen's father. "Around what time was it the first time you tried to remotely turn on her phone?"

"Six...after six," said Chenchen's dad. "Her teacher reminded me about it."

Fei Du said, "How did you operate it? Could you demonstrate it for me?"

"Boss, that teacher over there just contacted the children on the security camera footage for us!" Lang Qiao pushed aside a cluster of branches blocking her eyes and quickly went over to Luo Wenzhou. "They went to the restrooms to change their clothes, then went to the little park together to take photographs."

"Take photographs?"

"A student in the photography class had homework to hand in and arranged for some girls to model for her. Some children brought clothes especially to put on for the photographs. They did that for a while. When they finished with the photographs, Zhang Yuchen had to go back to the Children's Palace. They parted at the gates of the park, and no one knows where Zhang Yuchen went after that."

Luo Wenzhou took a deep breath—this was bad.

If Chenchen had discovered her phone was gone after parting from her friends, the child's first thought would have been of the place where they'd taken their photographs. She would have returned to the deserted depths of the little park—but the little park wasn't the street; it was hard to follow what had happened afterwards.

"Boss, what do we do?" said Lang Qiao.

Luo Wenzhou muttered to himself for a moment, then fished out his phone and called the person responsible for keeping an eye on Xu Wenchao.

"Report on Xu Wenchao's movements today."

"Xu Wenchao let Deputy Tao copy his vehicle location record. He only left the bureau at 5:45. He drove twenty-some minutes to a fast food restaurant, got takeaway, and went home. He hasn't moved since."

Luo Wenzhou quietly asked, "Are you sure he's been home the whole time?"

"I'm sure. He hasn't drawn the curtains. He's been sitting in his study and hasn't left our sight.—What's wrong, boss?"

"Boss, either we suspect the wrong person," said Lang Qiao, "or this case is unrelated to Qu Tong's disappearance.—What the hell, are there really this many perverts in the world?"

Before Luo Wenzhou had spoken, his phone rang; the caller ID said "Feishir."

"What is it?"

On the other end, Mr. "Feishir" calmly said, "The pilferer didn't steal the phone directly from Chenchen; there's a point to his sophistry. The girl who put the phone down really did 'forget' it."

Luo Wenzhou quickly followed up, "How do you know?"

"Around six, Mr. Zhang tried to use the remote function the child's phone on, but the remote link failed. I think there was no problem with the way he operated it. Under the circumstances, either one of them didn't have a signal, or the battery had been removed from the child's phone." Fei Du paused briefly. "There was no need for the pilferer to remove the battery and put it back in, and he wouldn't know what software was on the phone. I can only think of one possibility—while Chenchen was changing her clothes or posing, one of the children in that group hid her phone. When Chenchen noticed, the child suggested she go back to the little park to look for it, and volunteered to go with her."

She would naturally have trusted her own friend, and also told that person that her phone had a remote system.

"You're saying that a child—likely another girl—planned this thing." Luo Wenzhou sucked in a breath. "She not only kidnapped her friend, she also deliberately tossed the phone to mislead the police? That's too..."

Fei Du gave a light, unreadable laugh.

Luo Wenzhou immediately remembered that teenager back then with his dark, ice-cold gaze and bit back the rest of his words.

"Why are you thinking along those lines?"

"Because I warned her to be careful of grown-ups—familiar ones, strange ones, men and women, even old people," said Fei Du. "The only thing I didn't tell her was to be careful of children like her."

Why couldn't it be a child?

Little girls just over ten were like flower buds, beautiful and delicate, ignorant and fragile; the whole world saw them as potential victims, as if they were lacking in wit and intelligence, and however much you protected them it wouldn't be enough. How could anyone suspect them of committing a crime?

Luo Wenzhou hung up the phone with Fei Du and turned to Lang Qiao. "When the Children's Palace teacher made those phone calls just now, was there a call where a parent didn't pick up at first?"

Even when arresting a knife-wielding murderer bare-handed, Lang Qiao didn't look so horrified. "I think...I think there was one..." 

CHAPTER 47 [Humbert Humbert- Fourteen]

Hello, is this Student Su Luozhan? I'm Teacher Wang from the Children's Palace, the one who issued your registration cards when school started. Do you remember?"

"I remember, Teacher Wang."

"It's so late; you aren't sleeping yet? Are your mom and dad nearby? I want to say a few words to you, but I need to have your mom and dad agree first."

"Dad hasn't come home yet. Mom is sick. She's sleeping and I can't wake her up. Why don't you just tell me?"

"Oh...all right, I'll just ask you a few questions. It's like this: there's a child in the art class called Zhang Yuchen. She went missing after school let out today. Someone said they saw you two playing together. Do you remember where you saw her for the last time?"

Silence.

"Hello, Student Su Luozhan, are you still there?"

"...I'm here. Sorry, teacher, the signal is bad here. You were saying the art class's..."

"Student Zhang Yuchen. The one who's very short, with her hair in a little braid."

"Oh, we went to the little park to play together a while. There were lots of us, from other classes, too. Afterwards we all left. We didn't know where she went."

"Really? All right, then. You go to bed soon. Don't be late for class tomorrow."

"Okay, teacher. If you find her, don't forget to call and tell us. I'm worried."

Lang Qiao turned off the record of the phone call. "Because there was no guardian with this child, and because her explanations more or less matched with the others, the teacher didn't ask any more. What do you think of this dialogue? I still think it's hard to believe, but when I think about it, if the suspect is a child, that explains why Qu Tong would be willing to get into a stranger's car in an extremely frightening situation, and why Deputy Tao and I couldn't find anything on all of those security tapes. It's...too horrifying."

Luo Wenzhou pushed Su Luozhan's personal information in front of her. "I'll show you something more horrifying."

The name filled in as Su Luozhan's emergency contact was "Su Xiaolan"; the relationship was "mother and daughter."

A few police cars arrived swift as the wind at Su Luozhan's recorded address.—It was a fairly well-appointed estate. In the middle of the night, all was still. The dozing door guard was startled awake and looked blankly at the ID in Luo Wenzhou's hand.

"Do you have a mother and daughter surnamed Su living here?"

The security guard stared so hard he went cross-eyed. "I, I-I don't know, I-I-I just came..."

"Go to the property management and get the previously recorded register of owners," Luo Wenzhou said quickly. "Everyone be careful. If this girl really is the suspect we're looking for, the circumstances will be very unusual. She'll be more unstable than the average adult. We absolutely must not provoke her. In case the victims are still alive, our actions can't be allowed to lead to an unimaginable consequence."

"Captain Luo, it's 401!"

"If everyone's got it, then let's go."

In the fourth floor corridor, a crowd of people concealed themselves in a corner of the stairs. Luo Wenzhou lifted his chin, indicating for Lang Qiao to knock on the door.

Lang Qiao rubbed at her frosty face, which looked as if it had been injected with Botox, twisting it into the kindest and gentlest expression it had ever worn. She went up to the door and knocked. "Is there anyone home?"

No one answered her.

Lang Qiao felt rather harassed—she was used to acting the fiend; displaying a "kindly" aspect wasn't really in her line.

She squeezed a soft and gentle voice out of her throat. "Is there anyone home? I'm the tenant who just moved in upstairs. My apartment seems to have sprung a bit of a leak. I'm sorry, I hope it hasn't poured down?"

As before, there wasn't a sound.

An accompanying technician furtively passed her a reverse peephole. Lang Qiao attached it to the peephole, bent slightly, and peered inside.

There was no one at the entrance. She could see to the living room at the end of the entry hall. The apartment was dim. The only light was at the center of the living room. Looking closely, Lang Qiao found that source of the light was an incense altar; on each side were electric red candles and altar lamps, laid out in front of a black and white photograph of the deceased.

The woman's somber face reflected a bit of the light from the incense altar, coldly exchanging a look with her. A shiver leapt up Lang Qiao's spine, and she subconsciously backed away.

Luo Wenzhou gave her a questioning look.

Lang Qiao gave a fierce shudder and hastily shook her head. She raised her hand and knocked on the door once again. "Anyone there? If you'd rather not open the door, you can just answer me. I just want to ask whether you have a leak."

The awkward silence stretched out in the small corridor. Luo Wenzhou suddenly reached out a hand and made Lang Qiao back away. "Open the door."

Lang Qiao stared. "Boss..."

There was no evidence and no witnesses; they hadn't even been able to obtain a warrant. All they had were subjective guesses...

"It's all right," Luo Wenzhou said heavily. "If there's a problem, I'll take responsibility. Open it."

Several criminal policemen and technicians swarmed up and had the door pried open in a flash.

An indescribable odor surged up and hit them full in the face—it was a grotesque combination of incense and candle scents mixed with the stuffiness of midsummer humidity and long-unopened windows, fermented so that the sense of smell somehow registered it as almost an odor of decay.

And there was no one in the apartment.

The apartment wasn't large, fifty or sixty square meters at most, a regulation one living room and one bedroom, but Su Xiaolan's black and white portrait keeping watch there alone gave it an odd sense of void.

The portrait of the deceased faced a double bed arranged in the living room. The silk bedspread was darkly colored; at the head of the bed were a bottle of dark nail polish and half a pack of cigarettes.

The bedroom next door was a little smaller and looked like a place where a little girl lived. A row of dull-eyed cheap Western dolls was arranged on the small single bed, sitting shoulder-to-shoulder, facing the door together; all of them wore floral-patterned dresses.

"Heavens." Lang Qiao pulled open the wardrobe in the girl's room. Inside, without exception, everything was floral-patterned dresses. Even stranger, the designs on these clothes matched the dresses on the dolls. Gooseflesh stood up on Lang Qiao's arms. "Is this a place for a person to live?"

Luo Wenzhou put on gloves and rooted around in the wardrobe. Suddenly, he found a small box among the pile of clothes.

He found the latch and snapped open the lid of the box. The sound of "Für Elise" was set free from the box's crevices. It was a music box; presumably the power was running low, making the piano music a little off key, seeming sluggish and weird.

Then the surrounding criminal policemen got a clear look at what was inside.

Lang Qiao covered her mouth—inside the box was a naked doll with one arm and one leg removed, the limbs laid out on strips of bloody cloth.

The strips of cloth were cotton, with a lively pattern of small white flowers opening cluster after cluster—

"This is Qu Tong's dress. Her parents showed us a photograph of her wearing that dress at home. I remember the quality of the dress wasn't very good, some of the pattern had gotten into the side seam. It looked very uneven..." With difficulty, Lang Qiao pointed at a strip of cloth with stitches on it. "Just...just like that."

His face grim, Luo Wenzhou closed the box's lid. "Take it back to be examined."

Then he turned and went into the bathroom.

The damp bathroom had grown an abundance of mold, which was aggressively spreading everywhere. In front of the carved mirror missing a corner were two toothbrushes, a row of many-colored lipsticks, and some used cotton swabs that hadn't been thrown away.

"What did she say to the teacher then?" Luo Wenzhou muttered to himself, walking around in a circle, "'Mom is sick. She's sleeping and I can't wake her up. Dad hasn't come home yet?' But there are no signs of a man living here. What 'dad' was she talking about? Are you sure that the phone call earlier was taken around here?"

"Captain Luo, I've found the phone she took the call on." A criminal policeman cautiously picked up an elderly, heavily scratched-up cell phone from under a small coffee table in the living room. After going through it, he reported, "The teacher's phone call is in the recent calls!"

So the girl had just been there!

Luo Wenzhou swiftly turned and walked over. "But where is she now?"

Su Luozhan was a child, after all. She wouldn't have known how many security cameras the Children's Palace had. It was likely she hadn't expected she would be filmed at the playground. Then, having taken the teacher's phone call in the middle of the night, would she have realized in a panic that she had exposed herself?

What would she do?

And most importantly, where was Zhang Yuchen?

When Qu Tong had gone missing out in the wilderness, the person who'd taken her had worn size forty-two shoes and been able to drive a car. That couldn't have been such a small girl. This meant that Su Luozhan's mysterious "dad" was very likely her accomplice.

It was evident that Zhang Yuchen wasn't in this small apartment with its offerings to the dead. Then could she be with the accomplice? If that was the case, then would Su Luozhan have run over to find her accomplice when she'd been alerted by the phone call?

If Chenchen was still alive, would they act recklessly because of this, "freeing" themselves of Chenchen ahead of time?

Could the child live until daybreak?

The midsummer night was like a piece of caramel melting in the heat, thick and sticky. The girl ran quickly through the silent streets, the clattering of her own footsteps like a shadowing monster. Around her were the occasional movements of stray cats and dogs, all of them making her quiver with terror. The girl charged right into an old-fashioned "small two-story."

These so-called "small two-stories" were a type of building from twenty to thirty years ago, built in a row, usually only two or three floors high. Each small building had a yard in front of it, with just about enough space in each yard to plant a grapevine. At first glance they looked something like villas, but in fact the space inside was very cramped, and the conditions were poor. A few families usually shared one little yard. Living there was very inconvenient, and once summer came there was every evil imaginable, the wind and rain seeping in. They were supposed to be torn down soon.

The girl tried twice before she succeeded in getting the key into the lock. She rushed in and grabbed the phone by the door, quickly dialing a number. The call connected. Lengthy dial tones sounded, each one knocking on the pit of her stomach. She unconsciously reached out her long nails and restlessly picked at the mottled wall.

But after a dozen rings, the call automatically disconnected.

The girl's eyes opened wide, as if she couldn't believe that the other person would actually dare not to take her call. She didn't give up, quickly dialing the number again; as before, no one picked up.

This girl was very pretty, with apricot stone eyes, round cheeks, and a sharp little chin. She looked more like a Western doll than those cheap goods did. Innocence and charm combined in her, perfectly complementing each other. But soon, a frightening hatred climbed up her little face. Without warning, she suddenly slammed the telephone against the wall and screamed hysterically.

Just then, there was a weeping sound in the dark room, like the sobs of a small animal.

The frantic girl swiftly twisted her head, expressionlessly turning on the wall light.

The person tied up in the corner curled away from the light. Through her tears, she gave a disbelieving look—

This was the vanished Chenchen.

At this time, Chenchen's family were still waiting in a state of anxiety at the Children's Palace.

Tao Ran went out to take a phone call. When he returned, he avoided Chenchen's family and whispered something to Fei Du.

"You're saying she had an adult male accomplice?" Fei Du frowned faintly. "You mean, first they used the girl to entice Chenchen into the little park, and then the man appeared, took her unawares, and carried her off?"

"What is it?" said Tao Ran.

"No...I was just thinking there was something strange." Fei Du hoisted his unfortunate arm and turned around in place, talking quietly to himself. "Too strange—when Mr. Zhang called his daughter just after five, the phone was off. That means that the kidnapping plot was already underway. In another hour, his attempt to use the remote software to turn on Chenchen's phone failed, which shows that Chenchen was already under the criminal's control. But the criminal hadn't started to deal with follow-up arrangements yet. When the girl lost the phone on purpose, it must have been at least after six. Why?

"An adult man, even half-immobilized, definitely wouldn't need to spend an hour getting a child like Chenchen under control." Fei Du's steps paused. "And after all this was finished, the girl put the battery back into Chenchen's phone and left it on purpose for someone to take—why was that?"

Since she'd already removed the battery, taking the phone apart and dropping the pieces on her way would have been safe and convenient; the police dogs wouldn't have been able to find them.

And the explanation of temporarily turning away the police force's line of sight didn't work, because even a child would have seen enough television dramas to know that more than one police officer would be handling the case; they wouldn't be so easily distracted.

And if the person who'd picked up...or stolen the phone had happened to see her, wouldn't that increase the risk?

"Is there a possibility that kidnapping the little girl in West Ridge was a cooperative crime, but this time, for some reason, the man wasn't there, only the girl, and she had to spend more time?"

Tao Ran stared, grabbing Fei Du's shoulder. "The girl's physical abilities are limited, she can't accomplish a sadistic killing on her own...and can't complete the recording. But she knows that Chenchen's phone has remote software and that her parents will definitely try to use it to find their child. She's covertly tormenting the parents, accomplishing the same end as the recording by other means!"

Give you hope, make you search desperately, then make you lose hope.

Only she hadn't expected that the timing would be a little off; the time she delayed was longer than she'd imagined.

"If that's how it is, she couldn't have dragged away a girl about the same size as her on her own. She could only have tricked her away." From far off, Fei Du looked at the mother, again crying bitterly. "When Chenchen clearly knew that her dad would be looking for her, why would she agree to go with her?"

Tao Ran took a deep breath and quietly said, "I didn't bring my phone today, but my house is closer than the Children's Palace. Your dad may already be at school looking for you, and it would be easy to miss each other if you're both looking. You can come to my house and call him."

"The distance must have been very short, much closer than the Children's Palace. A distance a child would think was comfortable and convenient."

Tao Ran pulled over the map. "A kilometer... No, within five-hundred meters..."

There was an old residential area about to be torn down less than one intersection away from the little park's other gate.

"Wait a minute," said Tao Ran, "why do I think I've heard this address somewhere?"

Luo Wenzhou and the others had turned Su Luozhan's house upside down, primarily looking for any masculine products, searching for a trace of the mystery man.

Lang Qiao opened a drawer and turned it over, finding that among other things it contained residence certificates, ID cards, school entry notices, and other such documents and credentials. She only picked up a set of medical records and flipped through it, giving the rest of the items a rough look and quickly dropping them to one side, spreading them over the ground.

Luo Wenzhou's gaze swept over them. After a moment, as if he'd suddenly thought of something, his gaze fixed, and he crouched down and picked up the certificates of property ownership—two of them.

One of them was for this one bedroom, one living room apartment, and the other was for a building in some factory's residential quarters that had been converted to private ownership during the housing reforms. The house was older than Su Xiaolan.

"Xiao Qiao'er, check this for me," said Luo Wenzhou. "Twenty years ago, when Su Xiaolan was little, was this the address recorded for her?"

Lang Qiao didn't understand his reasons, but she instinctively complied and went to check at once. Before she'd found anything, a phone call came from the criminal policeman Luo Wenzhou had assigned to keep an eye on Xu Wenchao. "Captain Luo, we planted a listening device in Xu Wenchao's room. He just got two phone calls in a row, and he definitely heard them, but he didn't pick up—do you think he's noticed he's being watched? Oh, we've also found the phone number the calls came from. It's a landline, the address is..."

"Children's Road Trading Company Intersection, Unit 3," said Luo Wenzhou.

The surveilling policeman was surprised. "Captain Luo, how did you know?"

At the same time, Lang Qiao charged in. "Boss, when Su Xiaolan cooperated with the investigation as a victim back then, that's the address she provided in her contact information!"

Luo Wenzhou said, "Come on!"

CHAPTER 48 [Humbert Humbert- Fifteen]

Chenchen had been woken up by the press of the cold floor. At first she didn't understand what had happened. She only remembered going home with a little jiejie from the photography class—her house really was very close, just around the corner from the park. Though it looked rather destitute, it was still fairly tidy.

The telephone hadn't been very useful, the connection always bad. The little jiejie had sworn up and down that she only had to yank on the wire to fix it, and had also brought her a chilled drink in a bottle.

With the straw in her mouth, Chenchen had sipped mango juice and thought that she was perhaps being too much of a bother. She'd been wavering over whether she should say "I should go back to school instead," but before she could speak, she'd felt as though she'd been yanked out of her body, all her limbs losing control. She'd struggled a few times, and after that she didn't know anything.

Chenchen's braid had come unravelled, she was covered in dust, and her limbs were bound. She must have been violently dragged over the floor, because all her exposed skin had been scraped raw and ached sharply. The duct tape stuck over her lips had a rubbery taste. She curled up with difficulty, desperately trying to hide—Su Luozhan was a few steps away, looking loftily down on her!

Su Luozhan had her head tilted, one long strand of hair falling from her temple. She twisted it around one long, slim finger next to her cheek, her cold eyes like those of some dangerous cold-blooded animal.

Then she pursed the corners of her mouth, sneering at Chenchen. "You're really despicable."

Chenchen trembled violently.

"I despise your type of clueless toady the most. You're all scheming sluts. At your age, relying on throwing tantrums, always needing someone to take you places, getting anything you want. At the least little thing, you act like you're a little kid, like the whole world has to accommodate you." As she spoke, Su Luozhan bent down and got a curved chopper out of the shoe cupboard at the door. The metal tool was a little too heavy for her thin hands; the knife scraped against the old wooden cupboard with a rustle.

Chenchen struggled violently. Her mouth was sealed; she produced weak little whimpering sounds like a small animal's, her face turning red from the strain as she fought to struggle free of her bonds.

"If he won't come, I can do it myself!"

Su Luozhan suddenly flared up, lifting the knife and charging towards Chenchen.

Under extreme terror, a person's latent strength can be limitless. In that moment, despite her bound condition, Chenchen somewhere found the strength to get the floor under her feet. Before she could stand, the knife had already drawn near. Chenchen closed her eyes and threw herself forward, scrambling out from under Su Luozhan's knife, bumping her head into the corner of the coffee table and instantly splitting open the corner of her forehead.

Chenchen was disoriented and dizzy from the bump. All she wanted was to wail and call for someone to help her, but she knew there was no use crying. She had to press her shoulder against the coffee table, again trying to stand up.

The knife in Su Luozhan's hand swung too fiercely; it stuck in a wooden cabinet in a corner. The knife was heavy, after all; using all her strength, she still couldn't pull it out. Flustered and exasperated, Su Luozhan went up and grabbed Chenchen's hair from behind. Chenchen felt like her whole scalp had been torn off. She could only bend awkwardly under the draw. Her unstoppably flowing tears had already soaked the edge of the duct tape. She was like a little lamb being taken to slaughter.

But it only aroused the other's desire to torment.

Su Luozhan raised a hand and slapped her. Chenchen, who had never had a finger laid on her, was nearly knocked out of her senses.

"Slut," said Su Luozhan, "you're just a slut!"

Under the influence of movies and television, the word "slut" was in fact widely used in middle schools and the higher grades of elementary school. There were always some children, developing a little earlier than their contemporaries, who had this sort of adult-flavored strong vocabulary hanging off their lips—even if at home each one of them played dumb, as if butter wouldn't melt in their mouths.

Su Luozhan fiercely pushed Chenchen towards the coffee table. Chenchen's lower back bumped against the short table. The dead person in the old photograph under the table's crystal top showed an intrigued not-quite-smile towards the two living, breathing girls. The duct tape on Chenchen's mouth, soaked with her tears, fell away during this struggle. Right away she cried out, "Help me!"

The first cry was hoarse and weak. Then, as Chenchen quickly became accustomed to the feeling of speech, her voice became resounding. "Help me! Help me!"

Su Luozhan froze at her shout. She had just felt that something had been missing; it wasn't quite "scratching the itch." Now she found it was that she hadn't heard screams. Chenchen's tearful "help me" stimulated her; she was like a child who'd received a present, looking at Chenchen with an expression of happy surprise. She stamped her foot, bringing it down on Chenchen's hand spread out on the floor.

At a certain point, the pain was so great Chenchen could no longer scream. She opened her mouth wide, silently sucking in air.

Su Luozhan said, "Scream! Why won't you keep screaming?"

Chenchen was crying so hard she couldn't breathe. Using her remaining strength she forced out some wavering words: "Su...uh...jiejie...I really...really like...envy you... You...you..."

At first Su Luozhan was indifferent; only the word "envy" made her pause slightly. Her hand, about to grab the girl's hair, stopped in midair, her large eyes like black beans staring at Chenchen.

Just then, someone pounded heavily on the door several times. A man's gruff voice said, "What's all that racket! Can't a guy get some sleep!"

Inside the room, Su Luozhan and Chenchen trembled simultaneously.

The man angrily said, "Open the door, or I'm calling the police! Are you watching horror movies at home in the middle of the night? All this shouting, do you think you're the only ones living here?"

Su Luozhan covered Chenchen's mouth. From a cardboard box near her, she pulled out some paper towels left over from who knew when, rolled them up, and stuffed them into Chenchen's mouth.

"Sorry, uncle." Su Luozhan took a deep breath. Her expression cooled. She spoke softly. "The grown-ups aren't here. I can't just open the door for a stranger. I'll turn the volume down."

The man at the door paused, then very severely said, "What's all this? A child? Get over here, I'll take your parents' place and teach you a lesson!"

Su Luozhan frowned. Before she had answered, the mental case at the door was already carrying on. "Proper behavior means being public-spirited. Do you know what public spirit is? The very minimum requirement is not to bother people. And you! What school do you go to? I'll have to give your teachers a call. What are they teaching you little devils!"

Seeing he hadn't finished talking, Su Luozhan's small, pretty face was cold. "Uncle, I'm sorry, is it all right if I apologize?"

"What did you say? I can't hear you! Weren't you plenty loud kicking up a fuss before?"

Su Luozhan only wanted to send this suddenly appearing weirdo away. She stuffed the paper towels more firmly into Chenchen's mouth and stood up, walking towards the door.

One step, two steps... Suddenly, on her seventh step, Su Luozhan stopped in place.

Although that person always cleaned the old house and paid the fees regularly, the residents around it knew that no one lived here. It had stood empty for a long time. Why would the person at the door, on hearing there was a child without adults there in the middle of the night, be wholly unsurprised?

Su Luozhan abruptly turned to run. At the same time, the old wooden door was forcefully broken open from outside.

A few criminal policemen charged in shortly after. Su Luozhan grabbed up the chopper stuck in the cabinet. Under severe pressure, the chopper that she hadn't been able to pull out no matter how hard she tried slipped easily from the crack in the cabinet. But the police were about to grab her—

Su Luozhan pointed the chopper at the back of Chenchen's neck. The point of the knife immediately tore open a cut on the girl's snow white neck. Su Luozhan screamed, "Stay away!"

The door that had been broken down was shaking restlessly along the wall; the atmosphere in the room had already congealed.

Su Luozhan immediately crouched down, hiding behind Chenchen, wielding the clumsy chopper as though about to drop it. It circled quickly, at last stopping at the side of Chenchen's neck.

Her hand was shaking uncontrollably. Her eyes stared up like those of a small wild beast fighting to the death, fierce and wrathful.

Tao Ran hastily stopped the approach of those beside him and stood cautiously some steps away. "Su...Su Luozhan, right?"

Su Luozhan didn't make a sound.

All kinds of thoughts spun through Tao Ran's mind. For a time he didn't know how he should negotiate with such a small suspect. Just then, Fei Du slowly appeared at the door.

He turned aside slightly, blocking his injured arm, his gaze absently sweeping a circle around the inside of the room. "Where's the person we want to arrest?"

Su Luozhan paused, involuntarily looking at him.

"Oh, there's a kid." Fei Du seemed to have just discovered her. Rather slightingly, he asked, "Where did the kidnapping murderer who was with you go?"

Su Luozhan looked at the knife in her hand. She looked at the person under the knife. She raised her head and looked at Fei Du as if she didn't know how to answer.

"Why don't you hurry and put the knife down? It's all right now, you don't have to be so nervous." Fei Du looked around the room. While the previous generations of owners were already dearly departed, the traces of their chaotic lifestyle had been left behind. The walls were stained faint yellow with smoke, and there was still a pile of liquor bottles in a corner. "It's really all right. Forcing a child to act as bait and hiding himself—this is my first time seeing such an evasive criminal. Little lady, set your mind at ease. There's a whole crowd of policemen outside. He won't get away. The police uncles and the laws protecting minors will protect you... It's really unfair to make you hold such a big knife. Isn't it heavy?"

It had been all right before he'd said it. As soon as he mentioned it, Su Luozhan at once felt that her wrist couldn't stand the burden; it would soon be numb from the weight of the large chopper. At the same time, she consciously understood Fei Du's words—the police thought this had all been done by that person, and she was only the pitiful bait!

The complacency of duping others rose in Su Luozhan's heart. She blinked her eyes red, actually seeming rather more pathetic than Chenchen, abjectly staring towards Fei Du.

Tao Ran moved forward a step at Fei Du's words. Seeing Su Luozhan cower, he kept a close watch on her hand holding the knife and crouched down, spreading his hands towards her, bringing his gaze level with the girl's. His gaze passed as quickly as possible over Chenchen, concentrating on Su Luozhan. "Is that true? Did someone coerce you?"

Su Luozhan only hesitated a few seconds, then nodded resolutely.

Tao Ran's voice softened further. He slowly, bit by bit, reached one spread hand towards her. "Give uncle the knife now, and then you'll take us to arrest the bad guy, is that all right?"

Su Luozhan stared at his hand, seeming undecided for a time. When Tao Ran's hand reached too close, she rather nervously raised the knife again, the constantly quivering blade leaving several small cuts on Chenchen's neck—she really wouldn't be able to hold the knife much longer.

Tao Ran duly stopped his hand in midair. "Is the bad guy called 'Xu Wenchao?' Did he use you to catch Qu Tong? Did he do bad things to you?"

Fei Du said, "When your mother was alive, in order to get close to him, did she often dress you up like a Western doll and do your makeup?"

Su Luozhan took a thin breath, seeming to use all her power to hold back her agitated emotions.

"She'd gotten old herself and didn't look like she had back then, so she used a child. She didn't permit you to wear other clothes, didn't permit you to cut your hair, right?" Fei Du fixed his gaze on her. "Did she abuse you? Did she hit you before?"

Su Luozhan's tears, real or fake, flowed swiftly as he spoke, obscuring her field of vision. Suddenly, she felt a tightness on her wrist. Tao Ran had taken the opportunity to grab her hand holding the chopper. Su Luozhan struggled subconsciously. Tao Ran quietly said, "Don't be afraid, it's all right now, it's all right. Uncle knows you're a good child. The bad guy forced you to do all these things, you don't have to worry..."

His voice was gentle and the strength he was using to hold her wrist was great. Su Luozhan had no way to resist. For a moment she didn't budge. Then she finally relaxed her hold and allowed Tao Ran to snatch away her knife.

A criminal policeman came up at once and picked Chenchen up, taking her out of range of Su Luozhan.

Luo Wenzhou, who had just arrived, heard a colleague say over his earbud, "Captain Luo, one of the suspects has been captured. She accuses Xu Wenchao of being her accomplice. Can we request a warrant for his arrest?"

"Yes, notify the guys keeping an eye on him at once. Don't let the joker get away." Luo Wenzhou turned and helped lift Chenchen's stretcher up into the ambulance. He turned to Su Luozhan, who had been contained by the police. "Where is Qu Tong? Is she still alive?"

Su Luozhan didn't speak, only shook her head at him. She seemed to think of something; the delicate corners of her mouth turned up uncontrollably. Then she noticed it and very meekly lowered her head.

Even though he'd been mentally prepared after seeing the music box, Luo Wenzhou still felt stifled.

His gaze flitted over the girl's slightly curled hair and long, thick eyelashes. Suddenly he felt a strain of hard-to-name, preposterous sadness.

He waved a hand, letting his colleagues escort Su Luozhan to a police car. He turned his head and looked towards the ambulance.

A few doctors were attending to the wound on Chenchen's forehead as they asked her some questions. Chenchen's family had already arrived as quickly as possible. The stifling loss and recovery caused Chenchen's mom's legs to give out; she nearly went to her knees. Beside her, her husband quickly helped her up. The temporary mutual accusations between the two of them had vanished in an instant. Supporting each other, they walked towards their daughter.

She had been missing for nearly eight hours. Although she'd had her fill of fright, aside from being covered in small wounds, Zhang Yuchen had been brought back safe and sound. It was already nearly a miracle.

After a night of bustle, at least they'd saved one.

Luo Wenzhou sighed, then raised a hand out of habit. But he waited an age, and the partner who normally would have given him a high five hadn't moved.

Luo Wenzhou turned awkwardly and saw that Tao Ran was circling Chang Ning. Chang Ning's tears were still flowing, and Tao Ran was quietly saying something comforting, getting a handkerchief out of his pocket and passing it to her. He'd entirely forgotten about having a partner.

Luo Wenzhou: "..."

There was actually a man on earth who valued sex over friendship this much!

Just then, the palm he hadn't yet pulled back was lightly patted. Flabbergasted, Luo Wenzhou turned his head. He saw that the crippled president Fei Du, his arm hanging, had strolled over beside him, and furthermore from some unknown motive had condescended to do such a superfluous thing.

Having done it, he unhurriedly put his hand in his pocket and looked at Luo Wenzhou with a smile that wasn't quite a smile. "How childish, Captain Luo."

Luo Wenzhou was speechless. He stared wide-eyed as this temporary staff member, as a matter of course, got into his car and composedly crossed his legs, waiting to be driven.

He would vouch for his own well-travelled, well-tested ability to read people; he had absolutely read a flavor of improper flirtation from Fei Du's tone and expression.

Luo Wenzhou thought in disbelief, Is he trying to climb all over me... No, climb up to the heavens? 

CHAPTER 49 [Humbert Humbert- Sixteen]

The days of my youth, whenever I look back on them, seem like white snowflakes in a morning snow storm, blown away from me in a flurry. - Lolita

"You're going to have to put in some work, comrades. I'll reimburse you for midnight snacks and the ladies' facial masks. The ones who have wives and children, I'll send home letters of repentance in your place.—Even if we have to work all night, even if we have to dig all the way down in the old Su home, we must get to the bottom of this. I want to see that little girl Qu Tong, alive or dead." Having finished speaking into the walkie-talkie, Luo Wenzhou turned to Fei Du, who was watching him, full of interest. "Youngster, I feel you may be the reincarnation of a bearer of ill fortune. This birthday of yours has truly been happy and blessed. I can't take you all the way home. Should I call you a cab, or let you down at some hotel on the way to make do?"

Fei Du didn't answer. Apropos of nothing, he said instead, "What do you guys normally eat for a midnight snack when you're on duty?"

"Normally we eat luxurious set meals of illegally recycled cooking oil." Luo Wenzhou's expression was a little bitter. "An unreasonable person may sometimes eat something of a slightly higher grade, for example McDonald's."

Fei Du: "..."

"Nonsense." Luo Wenzhou turned the steering wheel in the direction of the City Bureau. Irritably, he said, "If they were all as hard to please as you, could I afford to reimburse them? There's a hotel up ahead, half a month's wages for one night. Should I stop?"

"I won't stay at that one," Fei Du said unhurriedly towards the bitterly oppressed public servant who had fried chicken to fill his hunger and illegally recycled cooking oil to assuage his thirst. "The incense in their lobby is too strong, and the bathrooms don't have tubs." Next, disregarding the surges of enmity he'd attracted, he directed, "Just drive on. There's a six-star service hotel near your bureau that I can make do with. I can stroll over there myself."

Luo Wenzhou: "..."

He resisted for an age but in the end couldn't hold back. "President Fei, from morning to night, all you do is play around and raise hell. You don't do any proper business. Is your family money enough to squander all your life? What'll you do when you've wasted the whole fortune? No one will even blow wind for you to drink. And you're all grown up now. After today...yesterday, if you go to the civil administration bureau, you can legally apply for a marriage certificate. Can't you be a little less high-maintenance?"

The elbow of Fei Du's uninjured arm rested against the car door; he didn't answer, only smiled with his chin in his hand.

Luo Wenzhou didn't know what there was to smile about; he got anxious at the sight of him. If he hadn't taken pity on his walking wounded status today, he would have nearly thrown this person out of the car.

After a while, Fei Du asked, "Are you sure you don't need me to keep helping?"

"Do you have a rank? Do you get paid?" In the end, Luo Wenzhou didn't make him walk. Still criticizing, he turned off onto an opposite side-road as he approached the City Bureau, driving towards a hotel building that could be called a local landmark. "What does this have to do with you?"

"I heard that the so-called 'accomplice' you arrested was accused by that savage little girl, and aside from that you have no other evidence, right?"

Luo Wenzhou, expressionlessly, said, "Ongoing investigations are confidential."

Before he'd finished, Fei Du was already evenly going on: "Oh, right, it was also that he had some connection to the serial kidnappings of little girls twenty years ago, so he seemed suspicious."

Luo Wenzhou secretly ground his teeth, internally plotting to get back and closely investigate just which bastard's mouth had been so unguarded.

"That is, you don't have evidence. The little girl isn't fully thirteen years old. Her IQ seems high, but her mental state can't be described as stable. How much credibility can her testimony have? The alibi of the man you arrested today was personally supplied by the police force. What if he persists in denials?" Fei Du spread his hand slightly. "And there's that little girl. You won't get anything out of her mouth. At any rate, you can't torture a confession out of her. Are you really planning to call in a specialist on children's criminal psychology this very night?"

Each word Fei Du spoke was true; all of these things were giving Luo Wenzhou a headache.

All of tonight's operations lacked the support of real evidence. If they hadn't rescued Chenchen in the end, having relied solely on Luo Wenzhou acting on his own initiative, shooting first and asking permission later, he'd have been in for it the next day.

He'd already driven up to the ground floor of the hotel. Surplus cold air assaulted the senses, carrying the scent of the lobby's chill and serene incense, refreshing to the heart and mind.

Though it was the small hours of the morning, there was still a doorman on duty who energetically stepped up to welcome the guest.

Fei Du got out of the car and was about to go when he suddenly remembered something and turned back. He leaned down and knocked on the window of Luo Wenzhou's car, then pulled open the driver's side door.

"I left my phone," he said. "Could you pass it to me?"

Luo Wenzhou gave an "okay" and picked the phone up from the passenger's seat. He was about to pass it over, but Fei Du, seeming unable to wait, reached out his hand to take it.

His shirt, disheveled from the car accident, hung down loosely. From Luo Wenzhou's point of view, he could just see into his drooping collar. His chest was a little thin, but, displayed under a set of clearly defined collarbones, it had a sense of restrained power. He hadn't purposefully sprayed himself with cologne today, but this person's degenerate flesh had absorbed all the world's essences; from his collar came a faint, almost undetectable masculine scent, vanishing without a trace before it could be clearly considered.

Reaching out his arm to take the phone, Fei Du almost brushed against him; after this near contact, his finger, by accident or by design, touched Luo Wenzhou as he grabbed his phone.

Luo Wenzhou: "..."

In the middle of the night, for a young and vigorous man, interested in men and having no fixed partner, under the infinite stress of work, to be taken by surprise by this sort of provocation was no less tragic than for a person who had been fasting for three days to see a late-night online ad for a Michelin restaurant.

"I should still be here in the morning. Come find me if you need me." Fei Du straightened as if nothing had happened, sticking the pestilential phone in his pocket. "I can talk to the girl for you. While I'm not an expert in troubled young people, I have a considerable wealth of experience being a troubled young person."

Mentally and physically exhausted, Luo Wenzhou waved his hand. "Go away already."

When Fei Du had really gone away, Luo Wenzhou stopped his car by the side of the road and smoked two cigarettes in a row before he had finally recovered from his awkward half-hard condition. He started the car and went back to the City Bureau, his heart full of vicissitudes in spite of himself.

When an ordinary person was busy with studies or work, he could still resolve his personal problems by the "blind date" method; matters were much less convenient for those with niche interests.

When he'd just graduated, Young Lord Luo had, like Fei Du, fooled around all over for a few years. Later he'd found that while dissolution was easy, finding a suitable person was very hard. Moreover, he'd found that so-called "enchantment" was a four-step process: first infatuation, then habituation, then insipidness, and finally a revulsion of taste. Adding in his increasing stress at work taking away his attention, Luo Wenzhou had slowly evolved an "elderly" lifestyle of going to and from work, coming home, and petting the cat.

But while his mentality was "elderly," his body was after all still young; an enormous contradiction had arisen between his physiological and mental states. Luo Wenzhou had the perturbed thought that if he carried on like this, one day he just might take a shine to Luo Yiguo's big fluffy tail.

He irascibly floored the gas pedal. The car groaned and gave a bound, charging towards the brightly lit City Bureau.

"Captain Luo, Xu Wenchao's been arrested. He's in an interrogation room, and Su Luozhan is in another. Xiao Lang is watching her. Are you planning..."

Before the words were spoken, Luo Wenzhou's hurried steps had halted. He'd seen a stooped figure in the corridor.

"Uncle Guo?"

Guo Heng pinched out the end of his cigarette and slowly stood, striving to straighten his back...but it still wouldn't straighten.

Luo Wenzhou said, "Why would you be..."

"Did you come to see me today because you're investigating the old case again?" Guo Heng looked at him with a scorching gaze. "That's right, isn't it? My daughter... You haven't found her after all these years. I heard you've just brought a girl back, still living, is that true? Have you arrested the suspect? Is there a hope that you can clear up what happened to Feifei? Aside from Wu Guangchuan, was there also an accomplice?"

In the old man's turbid eyes, the flames described by the Venerable Yang seemed to have been rekindled, making it hard to look directly at him.

Luo Wenzhou didn't know what to say. He could only awkwardly muddle out, "We'll do our very best."

Having said it, he greased his steps and hurriedly ran off; when he had gone far, he could still feel Guo Heng watching him go, eyes about to burn through his back.

In the interrogation room, Xu Wenchao, called before the throne twice in one day, having gone from "assisting in the investigation" to "suspect," arrested in his residence in the middle of the night, was looking very bad. His face was wan from missing sleep, and there was stubble at the corners of his mouth.

His manner didn't seem so polite now. All ten fingers were laced together, laid on his legs; there was an inexpressible strain on his pale face.

"I didn't." Xu Wenchao's tone was helpless and blameless, but his words were sharp. "I'll say it again, I didn't kidnap any little girls, and I didn't kill anyone. You've seen my vehicle location record, illegally followed and spied on me. I'd like to ask, if I may, having encroached upon a person's fundamental rights to this extent, what evidence have you found that I've killed someone?"

The criminal policeman interrogating him coldly said, "Su Luozhan kidnapped a girl at her school, maltreated her and attempted to murder her. At the crime scene, she called your number twice. In front of everyone, she accused you of being her accomplice. What else do you have to quibble about?"

Xu Wenchao leaned back in his chair and used his unique gentle voice to say, "A phone call and the words of a child, and suddenly I'm a murderer. I think I've understood today what's meant by, 'If you're determined to hang someone, you can always find a pretext.'"

"Why would Su Luozhan call you, and why would she make a false accusation against you?"

Xu Wenchao paused and calmly raised his eyes. Watching on the surveillance feed, Luo Wenzhou got a clear look at his expression and had a sudden surge of foreboding—this person was too calm, too confident, wholly without a hint of panic, as if he held some unknown trump card.

"Because her mom and I were in a romantic relationship," said Xu Wenchao. "Yes, I didn't say so when I was here this afternoon...because I was afraid it would cause trouble.—I've loved Su Xiaolan since I was little, but she didn't love me. She'd rather have lived in abject misery than have me. Only when she learned she didn't have long to live did she selfishly afford me a bit of warmth as alms. But I shed tears of gratitude for it, even wanted to marry her... If not for the fact that she didn't make it that long, I'd be Su Luozhan's stepfather now. Because we don't have a legal relationship, it's very difficult for me to take the child in to raise her. I've had to slowly think of a way, meanwhile doing everything in my power to materially support her. She'd call me if she ever needed anything. That's very normal."

"But you didn't pick up."

"I didn't pick up because I'd discovered that I was being spied on," Xu Wenchao said blandly. "Even if it hadn't been her on the phone, only some package delivery service or real estate marketer, I still wouldn't have picked up. Officer, I suppose that under the severe press of public rights, I'm still entitled to maintain some last bit of freedom?"

"So you're saying that Su Luozhan falsely accused you?"

"I don't know why the child said that. If it's true, then I'm very grieved. Her mom always rather neglected her. Comparatively speaking, I feel myself qualified for the responsibilities of a stepfather. The girl's upbringing was free, and her conduct really was somewhat overboard. I disciplined her. Perhaps she feels a little rebellious towards me." At this point, Xu Wenchao paused slightly. "Or perhaps she didn't know what she was saying at all. There was someone prompting her."

The criminal policeman smacked the table. "None of that bullshit! The surviving victim testified that after Su Luozhan called you, she said, 'If he won't come, I'll do it myself.' The old Su family residence has been kept clean by hourly workers hired by you, and the water and electricity bills have been paid out of your bank account! What were you doing maintaining an old house that was about to be torn down? It clearly shows you were up to something unspeakable! If we hadn't been keeping an eye on you today, the kidnapped girl may not have lived to see tomorrow's sun!"

Xu Wenchao shook his head. "What's the causal relationship between maintaining an old residence and kidnap and murder? Following your logic, I suppose all the crimes that take place within the scope of the city are the responsibility of the city government?"

"Didn't he say he'd had his brain damaged by a fever?" Luo Wenzhou raised his brows in astonishment. "This looks pretty quick-witted to me. Can being a stupid cunt be intermittent?"

"Captain Luo, if he continues to deny it, and we don't have evidence, are we going to have to give him a lie detector test?"

"Go look into his bank accounts, credit cards, vehicles and properties under his name... Take his photograph to all the large car rental agencies and ask around. There's also his personal relationships; he may have been driving a borrowed car when he committed the crime. The fact that there's nothing wrong with his driving history for the day Qu Tong was kidnapped shows that he didn't drive a car under his own name. I don't believe that he has the ability to hide an entire four-wheeled vehicle..."

While Luo Wenzhou was still speaking, the criminal policeman inside the interrogation room said, "I'll ask you again, where were you on the night of the twenty-seventh?"

"At home, reading a book." Xu Wenchao's expression didn't flicker. "I'm a freelancer. I don't go to work every day. Reading at home is very normal."

"If you were at home reading, then what did you rent a car for?"

This was a bluff.

If the car Xu Wenchao had driven that day in West Ridge hadn't been his own, then whether he'd borrowed it from an acquaintance or had a personal car registered under someone else's name, there would be traces to follow; it would be easy to investigate. The best choice would have been for him to go to an irregularly managed rental agency and rent a car; there were some unregistered companies that were purely illegally operated, very well hidden. This was Xu Wenchao's most likely method.

Luo Wenzhou closed his mouth, crossed his arms over his chest, and focused, waiting for Xu Wenchao's excuse.

But Xu Wenchao unflappably raised his brows in seemingly sincere astonishment. "Officer, what are you talking about?"

"On the evening of the twenty-seventh, you followed a school bus that set out from West Ridge, waiting for an opportunity to act against one of the eleven girls on the bus. You happened to witness the school bus being hijacked. In the process, a girl called Qu Tong jumped out of the bus and ran into you and Su Luozhan. She trusted you, asked for your help, and got into your car. She didn't know she was delivering herself to her ruin at your beastly hands!"

Xu Wenchao sneered. "That's simply..."

The interrogating criminal policeman sternly interrupted his defense. "The security cameras around the museum caught your car's license plate number. What else have you got to quibble about?"

"Officer," Xu Wenchao asked coldly, "could you tell me at what time on the twenty-seventh this happened?"

The interrogating policeman coldly said, "You don't know yourself?"

"I really don't know." Xu Wenchao lightly raised his hands and shook his head. "All right, since you're determined to trap me, it seems you won't tell me the exact time, but I have to say a few words for myself. If this crime occurred during the first half of the night, I'm afraid I wouldn't have had time to go over there. You've seen where my house is located. Driving to this West Ridge you're talking about would take at least three hours...and that's not considering traffic and poor weather conditions. Around 8:30 on the night of the twenty-seventh, I ordered take-out at home. The order number and delivery time are recorded. If I'm lucky, the delivery person will remember me."

Luo Wenzhou's heart gave a thump; he found that his premonition had come true.

"I advise you to verify it as fast as possible and clear my name." Xu Wenchao looked down at his watch. "It seems I'll be spending the night at a public security bureau. Can you tell me when I can ask for a lawyer? Oh, right, also, although I still don't clearly understand what Su Luozhan is meant to have done, she's still little, after all. Can you officers go easy on her? If necessary, I'm willing to bear the responsibility of acting as her guardian." 

CHAPTER 50 [Humbert Humbert- Seventeen]

"At 8:30 pm on the twenty-seventh, Xu Wenchao actually was at home." Tao Ran had first followed to the hospital and had a few words with the Chenchen, who was gradually regaining awareness, then had once again rushed back. On the way he'd received word and stopped on his way to verify Xu Wenchao's alibi. "I also checked into his take-out record for the past half-year. It's very regular, a handful of restaurants, the delivery people all know him."

A criminal policeman asked, "Could he have bought off the delivery person?"

"Go ahead and have a look into the witness's personal relationship with Xu Wenchao, but I think the possibility isn't great," said Luo Wenzhou. "Take-out delivery people are all kids, they don't stay long at their jobs. They change over every two or three months. At most they're passingly familiar with customers. It's not very possible that they'd perjure themselves in a major case of this sort for the sake of a customer who orders food. And besides, it's not every person who'd dare talk nonsense In front of the police... There's another point."

"What?"

"My shoes are a size forty-two." Luo Wenzhou lightly stamped one foot. "When Xu Wenchao came in in the afternoon, he was wearing sneakers and I couldn't really see, but judging from the leather shoes he was wearing when he came in now, my visual assessment is that they should be smaller."

There was an uproar in the conference room.

Just then, Lang Qiao came into the conference room last of all and flung herself into a chair. "Boss, hurry and get someone else to do it, I'm at my wits' end with that child. Looking at her gives me the creeps."

Luo Wenzhou asked, "What's happening with Su Luozhan?"

"Oh, she's extremely relaxed, eats and sleeps." Lang Qiao shook her head and took a can of coffee tossed by a colleague. "She's not afraid of grown-ups, and she's not afraid of the police. I still don't know what the theory is. Maybe she's too young and doesn't understand the consequences of what she's done, or maybe she's too crafty, knows she's young, and so she has no fear. If you talk to her nicely, she plays dumb, simpers and puts on a scene. If you try to scare her, she looks at you with a cheeky grin.—Oh, yeah, just now she asked me for a bottle of sweet milk. When she finished drinking it, she said, 'I'm sleepy, can I sleep for a bit?' And then she really did sleep. I'm telling you the truth, if I'd done a bad thing and got caught red-handed and taken to a public security bureau, I'd be scared to death. I definitely wouldn't be able to sleep. Is this child human?"

Luo Wenzhou didn't answer. With a very grave expression, he lit a cigarette. Without putting it in his mouth, he became lost in thought.

Without any doubt, Xu Wenchao had played some role in this business. Otherwise there couldn't be so many coincidences.

He had a series of ties to the cases twenty-some years ago and now, his relationship with Su Xiaolan and her daughter ran deep; Su Luozhan had called him twice from the crime scene and had accused him without any hesitation when the police had asked.

And his bearing the two times in one day that he'd been brought before the throne was very worthy of consideration. The first time, his bearing had been gentle and polite, but he'd shown himself as not the sharpest knife, readily resorting to the excuse of memory loss; and when pressed by Tao Ran into an awkward position, he seemed not to have expected such a development and panicked a little.

But the second time he was sharp and calm, methodical, his speech watertight. In the middle of the night, the police had burst into his home to arrest him, and he'd been fully dressed.

The first time Xu Wenchao had come, he'd indicated that he'd heard the radio broadcast and knew about Qu Tong's case. The information released to the public had of course not included concrete details, but the two keys points of "the night of the twenty-seventh" and "West Ridge District" had been there. He clearly had such a definite alibi, so why hadn't he mentioned it?

Had he been wholly unprepared, panicked, and forgotten, or had he not noticed that the police suspected him?

Or...had he just been testing the police force's reaction?

If it was the latter, then that was too frightening.

But no matter what, a person couldn't split himself in two, couldn't be in two places at the same time. That was an objective fact.

Luo Wenzhou muttered silently to himself for a moment, then knocked on the table. "Come on, everyone listen up, in a while I'll need your help getting some statistics..."

Just then, the conference room door was pushed open from outside. The officer on duty in the reception room stuck his head in and interrupted Luo Wenzhou. "Captain Luo, I think this is the take-out you guys ordered. They've delivered it."

Luo Wenzhou froze; before he could speak, some strapping young fellows who'd been rushing about half the night had already thrown themselves over, their eyes glinting green; then they took the bags, had a look, and were struck dumb.

What had been delivered in the middle of the night wasn't roasted skewers or malatang; it wasn't even McDonald's or KFC.

Altogether, two large bags had been delivered. One was a heat-preserving ready-to-eat bag, and the other was a cold-storage bag packed with dry ice, both printed with a sumptuous logo; the plates and cutlery, packed away in a special cardboard box, were so exquisite that they simply didn't seem like single-use products.

Once opened, they contained Chinese cuisine and Western cuisine, cold dishes and hot dishes; the cold-storage bag also contained a few cartons of very fresh ice cream, as if it had come from the dining room of some luxury hotel!

Luo Wenzhou choked himself half-dead on a mouthful of smoke.

Lang Qiao was the first to recover, deftly snatching up a carton of ice cream and hugging it to her chest. "My goodness, boss, you're too nice!"

Tao Ran, shaken, said, "What are you doing? Are you not planning on living for the second half of the month?"

"Boss, did you buy a winning lottery ticket?"

"You must have won big in the European Cup betting pool!"

"What are you saying, could our captain do that? Hey, Captain Luo, did your mom and dad suddenly give you spending money?"

"Spending money for no reason? To be paying special attentions out of nowhere, do you think they're bribing you because they're going to have a second child?"

Luo Wenzhou said, "...bribe my ass. Beat it!"

This truly was a group of beloved colleagues.

He turned over the heat-preserving bag and with a shock saw a familiar logo on it—he'd just been at their door.

The corner of Luo Wenzhou's eye began to twitch.

"Hey, this seems to be that nouveau riche hotel to the north," Lang Qiao said suddenly. "Their dining room is as snooty as all get-out. How come they're working in the middle of the night, and even...even delivering take-out? So in touch with the people!"

"Eating can't even stop up your mouth." Two small veins stood out at the corner of Luo Wenzhou's forehead. "Where the fuck are all these questions coming from? If you don't want to eat, get to work!"

Lang Qiao scrutinized Luo Wenzhou's expression, and the corpse of her long-dead teenage girl's heart twitched.

Thinking about it carefully, a midnight snack out of a romantic novel like this really didn't seem to fit with Captain Luo's "jianbing, fruit, warm soy milk" homebody style. A whole new line of thought poured into her brain. Lang Qiao blurted out, "Wait a minute, is someone trying to put the moves on you by sending you all your favorite foods on purpose... Ow!"

Luo Wenzhou had used a rolled-up paper to hit her squarely on the forehead.

Feigning deafness and dumbness, Luo Wenzhou forcibly ignored the subject of the midnight snack. Among the scents of food stuffs assaulting the nose, he unflappably picked up where he'd left off before the interruption. "You eat while I talk. I need all of you to split into two groups. The first group will go through the missing child database and pull the records of all missing child cases from each of the city's administrative districts and counties. Focus particularly on the children's sex, age, physical appearance at the time they went missing, and an outline of the details of the case. Using these four criteria, in that order, we'll roughly sift through them—first restrict the time to the last two years."

"You suspect Qu Tong wasn't the first?" asked Tao Ran.

"The suspect's lengthy stalking was done without leaving traces, and in an emergency situation they calmly carried off Qu Tong. That clearly shows they had a definite goal then, following and kidnapping. It doesn't feel like they acted on sudden impulse. I think Qu Tong definitely isn't the first." Heavily, Luo Wenzhou said, "Even if we can't find evidence this time, we'll have to find it for before.—The second group, I want you to dig into all of Su Luozhan, Su Xiaolan, and Xu Wenchao's materials: school transcripts, bank accounts, phone records, personal computers and other such equipment—thoroughly investigate everything."

These two assignments were like two great mountains. Even listening with your ankle, you could have heard the immense pressure settling over everyone's heads like the Five Elements Mountain. Some took notes, some kept their heads down and ate. Even the gourmet midnight snack had lost its flavor; no one cared now to probe into the truth about it.

Luo Wenzhou picked up a fried chicken wing with a paper napkin and in flash picked it clean, like locusts descending on a rice field. "This is all demanding work. Once you've finished replenishing your strength, get to it. Xiao Lang, come collect the results."

"Boss, should we question Su Luozhan again?"

"It's no use," said Luo Wenzhou. "Dealing with a grown-up, you can excite him, scare him, trick him, but this Su Luozhan... When she's sitting across from you, she doesn't consider you as the same type of creature as herself. Maybe in her eyes, there's no difference between humans and sheep, all prey and food. And she's also too young; her testimony can only be used as a reference. This has to be solid. The relative of a victim from the case twenty years ago is out the corridor now. I think none of us wants this to drag out until we retire—hop to it."

This sort of dry and dull work of sifting through documents couldn't get the adrenaline flowing; the small hours of the morning especially made people drowsy, and only by relying on inferior coffee could they force themselves to focus. The records of missing children were all very succinct: boy or girl, how old, when and how they disappeared... As for how the child had acted, what they'd liked, what their temperament had been, what family members still woke from nightmares every night, planning to spend the remainder of their lives immersed in a hopeless search—none of this would be reflected on paper.

All the tragedies spread out together were like an inscription tablet of the victims of a disaster, both heart-breaking and monotonous.

In the blink of an eye it was light; the conference room was piled with empty coffee cans and cigarette ends.

"Girls aged nine to fourteen, disappeared for no reason, no news to this day, excluding those who left letters saying they were leaving home and those whose deaths were later confirmed when their bodies were found. In the last year there were thirty-two in all, thirty-one in the year before that. Considering physical characteristics, removing those who developed comparatively early and rather resembled adults in appearance, as well as those who had yet to enter puberty and still looked like they'd just lost their first tooth, last year there were twenty-six cases, twenty the year before."

Luo Wenzhou poured water onto a damp towel and wiped his face. "Adding in the floral-patterned dress?"

"Seven last year, eight the year before." Lang Qiao looked up. Around her, her colleagues were all yawning their heads off; only she, her face white from the glare of the computer screen, all at once didn't have a trace of sleepiness in her bloodshot eyes. "Captain Luo, do you guys want to have a look?"

She linked the laptop to the conference room's projector, throwing the collected photographs up onto the projection screen. Tao Ran, halfway through a yawn, forced it back—

The fifteen girls, looked at individually, didn't look alike; but assembled together, their particular characteristics were strangely and endlessly diluted. Only the delicate quality belonging to girls between early childhood and teens was prominent, uncommonly unified; at a glance, one simply couldn't tell them apart!

Tao Ran whispered, "No way..."

These girls were like dried flowers sprinkled on the ground, submerged in the sea of missing child notices, gradually becoming pressed among the pages of unsolved cases, gone without a trace. If not for this chance, no one would have discovered that these cases had grown on the same vine.

This was a poisonous vine growing hidden in a deep forest under a bright sun; its root system was colossal, its tendrils dolorous, like an invisible net. Revealing only the tip of the iceberg already made one tremble in fear.

"Go back," said Luo Wenzhou. "Look ten years...no, twenty years back, trace all the way back to the Lotus Mountain serial kidnapping case!"

First thing in the morning, Fei Du had a change of clothes brought over. He arranged himself and had his assistant drive him to Dr. Bai's house. But the door was opened by a middle-aged man.

The man was of medium height, square-faced, with very broad shoulders. He wore glasses and was dressed so plainly as to be unnoticeable, but his gaze inexplicably made Fei Du frown.

His expression was neither powerful nor sharp, but it had a special presence, like a thin needle silently passing through a person's pores.

Fei Du stared, then very politely said, "Hello, I'm looking for Dr. Bai. I arranged to see her yesterday."

"Oh." The middle-aged man pushed up his glasses. "I know, you must be young Mr. Fei? Bai Qian is my spouse. Please come in."

As he spoke, Dr. Bai had already come out to meet her guest. The man seemed to be in a hurry to go; he said a warm goodbye to Dr. Bai, stuck his briefcase under his arm, and left.

"He works at Yan City Public Security University." Seeing Fei Du turn his head to look at the man, she gave a brief introduction. "In fact he's just a quote-spouting bookworm who can't do anything. Morning to night, he only teaches class and writes essays—that book you wanted to borrow was edited by him."

Fei Du's gaze fell on the book in his hand—Study on the Psychology of Criminal Abusers (3rd Edition)—lingering momentarily on the editor's name, Pan Yunteng.

"How have you been recently?" Dr. Bai poured him some tea. "Last time when you told me you wanted to do a post-graduate degree, you really gave me a scare. That was my first time hearing of a successful social figure like you having such a completely incongruous plan in life. Do you think you've flipped through too many scholarly texts with me?"

"I'm just a mascot to begin with," said Fei Du, not minding. "My father left me an outstanding team of professional managers who can cooperate and also balance each other out. They have no use for me taking everything onto myself. The other shareholders are even more eager for me not to put my hand in, just behave and collect my dividends. What everyone loves to see is for my type of useless 'son of the house' to go earnestly study something, instead of waving around a 'Westpac' diploma and making a spectacle of himself."

Surprised, Dr. Bai said, "For your requirements, wouldn't going abroad to get an MBA be more helpful? Our field is too out-of-the-way, isn't it?"

Fei Du laughed. "Dr. Bai, other wastrels like me are doing 'mystical studies' or 'specializing in the Beatles.' Comparatively speaking, my hobbies and interests aren't especially niche."

Dr. Bai laughed in spite of herself. "That's true, and anyway you don't need to worry about employment prospects.—Which area are you most interested in? Perhaps I could introduce you to an advisor."

"This area's pretty interesting." Fei Du waved the thick book in his hand.

Dr. Bai stared, then saw the young man's face show a trace of joking self-mockery. "I've heard there are quite a few fine-looking beauties in the public security system. What if I can put myself in a favorable position?"

When Fei Du said goodbye to Dr. Bai and left, it was already after noon. His fully-charged phone had lain peacefully in his pocket, not ringing. Fei Du thought it over a while, got his assistant's attention, and said, "Go to the City Bureau."

His assistant stared. "President Fei, what's happened? Are you going to report a case?"

Fei Du smiled at her. The assistant had been with him for several years and could identify the meaning of each of this playboy's smiles. She at once gave a shudder, feeling that this young master's tastes were becoming increasingly intense.