On May 24th, four days had passed since the young man He Zhongyi was killed.
Wearing gloves, Luo Wenzhou flipped through an old photo album—he had taken it from the black cab driver Chen Zhen.
Chen Zhen and his sister Chen Yuan were twins. They had grown up locally, raised by their grandparents. Afterwards, the elderly couple had passed away one after another; the sister Chen Yuan had tested into university; Chen Zhen’s grades were bad, however, so he had simply abandoned school early and gone out to earn money.
The girl in the photographs was very delicately-made, smiling broadly in every picture, revealing a pair of not very symmetrical little canine teeth.
This was the only thing she had left behind. The circumstances of her death had been obscure; due to the undignified manner of it, the police, on the grounds of suspecting the presence of hidden drugs, had searched through her personal possessions several times. Neither Chen Yuan’s second-hand computer, nor her cell phone, had been left behind.
Luo Wenzhou flipped through the photo album from beginning to end, his gaze pausing on a few photographs that seemed to be mementos of a university club event. There was a girl in them who seemed very close to Chen Yuan. On the backs of the photographs there was a date written in pencil, and the note: “At the Art of Tea Club with Xiao Cui; glad you were there.”
“Xiao Cui.” Luo Wenzhou turned to the cell phone record he’d found—about half a month before her death, Chen Yuan had made a phone call to a user named “Cui Ying.”
Just then, Lang Qiao knocked on the door of his office and beckoned to him, more dead than alive. “Chief, come and watch the moron. Tickets ten yuan each, your money back if he isn’t moronic.”
Yan City’s City Bureau’s Criminal Investigation Team’s appreciation for Young Master Zhang was extraordinary. Out of every ten sentences he said, nine were bullshit. Being detained at the City Bureau for forty-eight hours had boiled off his initially scant brains; it was anyone’s guess what had been left behind in the empty shell. The intellectual level of the words that came out was deeply affecting.
“‘Feng Niange’? Never heard of ‘em. I don’t know anyone with the surname Feng. Is it a man or a woman? Why don’t you tell me what they look like? I may have slept with them and not remembered the name.”
“Was there anyone I knew at Chengguang Mansion on the night of the twentieth? I knew all of them… What? Who was there? Ow, police uncles. Honorable police uncles! That night I got half a liter of white wine poured into me, I don’t know how many glasses of red, cut with half a dozen of champagne. The Holy Trinity! I was doing all right if I could still remember my own name. How could I tell you everyone who was there?”
“I haven’t quarreled with anyone recently. I’m very friendly. Huh? Hitting people counts? Oh, then I really can’t say… So I hit them, what are they going to do to get back at me? Don’t you know who I am!”
“How many times have I said it, that phone didn’t come from me. I only give gifts to my intimate friends. Anyway, if I were going to give someone something, it wouldn’t be a stupid phone, right? Who are you insulting?”
Aside from spending money and sleeping, Young Master Zhang’s daily life was full of chaos; matters big and small passed before his eyes like mist, making absolutely no impact on him; his psychological state could be described as “free of earthly concerns.”
Luo Wenzhou listened in for a while and issued a categorical assertion concerning Zhang Donglai. He said, “This child got dropped on his head by his dad when he was little.”
With all the patience in the world, Tao Ran tried every possible method to quiz him again and again from each and every angle, yet he was still unable to extract any useful information from Zhang Donglai’s carelessly formatted memory.
In a flash, the time came. The lawyer Zhang Ting had found stood at the City Bureau’s doors, contending on strong grounds that the Criminal Investigation Team had to release Zhang Donglai.
“There’s really nothing I can do.” Tao Ran let out two long breaths and helplessly shrugged his shoulders at Luo Wenzhou.
Luo Wenzhou considered and lightly lifted his chin. “The evidence is insufficient. Let’s release him.”
“Captain Luo!”
“Chief!”
Lang Qiao pulled at Luo Wenzhou. “Chief, yesterday when He Zhongyi’s mom was howling outside, some busybodies filmed her. Now there are a whole bunch of people who think there’s no smoke without fire and are waiting to see the fur fly. If you release him just like that, how will it look when it gets out?”
“We can release Zhang Donglai.” Tao Ran thought about it, then proposed, “According to the victim’s time of death and last known whereabouts, his alibi is fairly clear-cut…”
“No, don’t mention any of that for now. Just say that the evidence is insufficient,” said Luo Wenzhou, interrupting him. “Don’t announce the details of the investigation. Release him.”
Hearing this arbitrary decision, Lang Qiao couldn’t help saying, “Chief, have you been infected by Zhang Donglai? If it can infect you through a window, his mental deficiency must be a virulently infectious disease.”
Luo Wenzhou rapped once on the back of her head. “Glib, aren’t you. Careful you don’t get laugh lines.”
Meanwhile, Tao Ran muttered quietly to himself for a moment, then thoughtfully said, “You’re thinking…”
“Right, starting now, no one is allowed to reveal any details concerning the course of this investigation. Tell them ‘the evidence is insufficient, no comment, we’re currently once again investigating all of the victim’s relationships starting from childhood.’” Luo Wenzhou nodded at Tao Ran, then evenly said, “This is discipline. Anyone leaks, I’ll deal with them. Disperse.”
A little transient worker had met an unusual death, the City Bureau’s Director-General’s nephew was a murder suspect, and he had been quickly set free due to “insufficient evidence”—this news was even more explosive than Lang Qiao and the others had been afraid of. Before the procedures for setting Zhang Donglai free had been finalized, all kinds of print and digital media were already staking out the City Bureau’s doors.
The Criminal Investigation Team’s phones were like a hotline, ringing one after another, wave after wave. Even Director Zhang’s replacement Director Lu was alarmed and called Luo Wenzhou in to question him.
Director Lu looked out the window at the people crowding outside the reception area. With a rather grave expression, he asked Luo Wenzhou, “Are you sure you can handle it?”
Luo Wenzhou smiled at him without the least shred of concern. “I’m on the job, and you’re still worried?”
Director Lu rolled his eyes at him. “When you want to let out some line to hook your fish, you have to be careful not to let it slip away.—The city’s higher-ups are sure to put pressure on us for the next few days. I’ll hold them off for you, and you can do as you see fit.”
“Thank you, Uncle Lu.” Luo Wenzhou thought, then lowered his voice slightly. “You can relax about Wang Hongliang, too. People just haven’t been looking into him for the past few years. I don’t believe anyone can blot out the sky with one hand.”
Director Lu pursed his lips and turned serious, looking at him. “As long as you can verify that the substance of that report is true, it doesn’t matter how extensive his network is or who is protecting him. As long as Lao Zhang and I are still here, we’ll be able to handle him.—And you be careful, you hear me?”
Luo Wenzhou came downstairs just in time to run headfirst into Zhang Donglai’s “group of family and friends.”
In order to minimize the social impact, the Zhang family hadn’t sent their people to come pick him up; they only had Zhang Ting show her face, wanting to be as low-key as possible.
But things unexpectedly turned out contrary to their wishes. Children are a debt: Zhang Donglai’s crowd of disreputable companions had somehow gotten wind; wanting nothing but to see the world in chaos, they ran over to the City Bureau as a group. Several luxury cars parked at the City Bureau’s doors and several gorgeously dressed young men and women made brilliant appearances, though it was unclear whether they had come to mount the stage or makes fools of themselves.
The lawyer rolled up his sleeves and went in first to scoop up Zhang Donglai, while Zhao Haochang didn’t budge from Zhang Ting’s side—among Zhang Donglai’s crowd of good-for-nothing friends, the young couple stood out, refreshing and refined, simple and honest.
Fei Du was of course present as well, though this time he had come purely as an outside observer and was unobtrusively standing behind Zhang Ting. When Luo Wenzhou saw him, he was wearing his beast in human clothing get-up, earbuds stuck in his ears, completely absorbed in playing a game on a very old model PSP.
Luo Wenzhou had meant to bundle up the forces of evil and throw them out, but when his gaze fell on Fei Du’s scratched-up old game machine, his expression suddenly relaxed. In a groundbreaking occurrence, he didn’t open his mouth to pick a fight; almost gently and peacefully, he strolled over beside Fei Du, taking a deep breath to mentally prepare himself—even if he saw the brat playing some violent and bloody assault game, he had determined he would maintain his emotional stability.
But after spending so much time preparing, when he looked over at the screen of Fei Du’s old game machine, he saw a crowd of charmingly naive “big-eyed lamps” running around—this domineering director-general was enthusiastically playing Patapon.
Luo Wenzhou: “…”
While Fei Du was surmounting all difficulties on his path to victory, Zhang Donglai at last breezed out. Before he’d even made his way out of the police station, he was already beside himself with joy and loudly proclaimed, “All of you here today are my brothers who have passed through life and death with me. If there’s anything you need in the future, just say the word. I, your brother, will be pierced from both sides by knives for you, pierced until I turn into a knife block!”
Fei Du’s big-eyed legion had been progressing steadily, but this bloodthirsty cry knocked them off tempo; the drumbeat skipped, and the troops were at once defeated in a landslide.
Luo Wenzhou held back until he got a “Game Over”, then slowly spoke: “It has always perplexed me a little, why you’d hang out with Zhang Donglai and his ilk.”
Fei Du shot a glance at him and calmly stuck the game machine in his pocket. “Because I think he lives especially philosophically.”
Luo Wenzhou was unable to distinguish whether these words had a positive or negative connotation.
Fei Du waved a hand at Zhang Donglai, who was running over to him, turned to give Luo Wenzhou an artificial smile, then went to talk to Tao Ran.
The crowd of young masters swaggered out of the City Bureau; even thinking with your toenail, you could imagine how this excited the media lurking outside.
Lang Qiao seemed to have seen the next week’s worth of trending topics. She couldn’t resist covering her eyes with her hand and quietly saying to Tao Ran, “I can’t look.”
“Then don’t look,” said Tao Ran. “Get to work.”
When the young masters had just walked out through the gates, without warning a figure suddenly burst out among Zhang Donglai’s group of friends and relatives.
She was small and skinny, her hair withered and yellow. This was He Zhongyi’s mother.
The leading wastrels looked in helpless bewilderment at this comically dressed woman. Someone quietly said, “Who’s that?”
He Zhongyi’s mother’s eyes were dry and bloodshot; they swept over these people’s faces. Her lips trembled violently, and a voice as indistinct as a kitten’s came out of her throat: “Who killed my son?”
Her pronunciation was unclear and her accent was heavy. Only when she had repeated herself three or four times did they understand what she was saying.
Zhang Donglai’s expression sank slightly. He rather calamitously said, “Who knows? It wasn’t me anyway.”
Then he looked down, avoided the woman’s line of sight, and started walking away, brushing past her. His group of friends and family followed closely after him, splitting into two halves as though they were avoiding the plague, keeping away from the woman as much as they could.
“Is that woman a little insane?”
“Quiet, she’s a little pitiful.”
“And being stuck in a little dark room for no earthly reason isn’t sad?”
“I’m telling you, I’m nearly on Dou E’s [27] level, I don’t even know who her son is…”
[27] Character from “The Injustice of Dou E,” a play in which the titular character is wrongly accused of a bunch of things.
The woman stood blankly where she was, hazily looking at the people walking by her without touching her. “Who killed my son? You…all of you, you can’t go…”
Seeing that this crowd of people was about to walk away from in front of her eyes, the woman panicked, clawing wildly at the air, accidentally catching a girl’s hair.
The girl shrieked as if she’d had her tail stepped on, snatched back her hair and clutched it in front of her chest. She leapt away and hid behind a friend. A young man next to her instinctively reached out to block the woman. “What are you doing?! Are you crazy?!”
The woman bumped into his solid arm and fell to the ground, bumping into Fei Du, who was bringing up the rear.
Fei Du had been saying goodbye to Tao Ran. Being bumped into unexpectedly, he was startled and took half a step back.
Before he could react, she reached out a hand like a chicken’s claw and desperately grabbed Fei Du’s costly pant leg like she was grasping at her last hope. Over and over, she said, “You can’t go, you can’t go! You owe me an answer… You can’t go…”
A few policemen went over wanting to pull her off, and the young man who had knocked her down came over as well, frowning. “Master Fei…”
Wrongly attacked, Fei Du frowned as he looked at the woman clinging to him, then awkwardly patted her shoulder. “Would you like to stand up?”
The woman suddenly looked up, her gaze locking with Fei Du’s. She was sobbing, tears running down her face. Her appearance really wasn’t very dignified, powerful grief having turned her into a heap of mud.
Fei Du suddenly froze, seeing someone else in her eyes.
He bent, very gently took hold of the woman’s shoulders, and lifted her back to her feet. He waved a hand at Zhong Donglai and the others. “You guys go on ahead.”