Chapter 2

After watching the recording, we interviewed Zhou for the third time that very night.

“Still refusing to confess? Someone filmed you killing Ma Xiaohu!”

He started.

“No! I didn't kill him!”

I signaled Liu to play the video.

As soon as it ended, Zhou denied the allegation.

“No, no, no. I wasn't killing him. I was trying to save him, trying to undo what was fastened around his neck!”

“Another lie!” Liu snapped. “Do you think we're blind or deaf? We've got it on video, and you're still making excuses!”

“I really was trying to help! His head was covered. He couldn't see. He thought I was the killer, so he begged me to spare him.”

“Then why did you stop halfway?”

“He thought I was trying to kill him and fought back. He even kept headbutting me. I got angry that he couldn't see I was helping. And I was scared. What if the real killer attacked me from behind? So I ran.”

“Why didn't you tell us before that you'd tried to help?”

“Because you wouldn't believe me. Nobody would! And now you've got that video, I'm fucking finished!”

“Whether we believe you is our business. Yours is to tell the truth!”

Zhou swallowed several times.

“Officers, please don't let that video fool you. I wasn't killing him. I was saving him!”

“You'd save someone who was blackmailing you? You wanted him dead!”

“Yes, he kept squeezing money out of me. Yes, I wished he'd die. But I didn't kill him that night!”

“You had a motive, and we have video evidence. We can get a conviction without a confession. I suggest you tell us the truth if you want leniency.”

Liu's words left Zhou thinking for a long time.

Then he asked, “Could you really convict me on the evidence you have?”

His resolve was wavering. Liu had got through to him.

I nodded at once, emphasizing that an honest confession would matter.

“What sentence would I get?”

“That's for the law to decide. But the method in this case was particularly cruel. If it isn't death, it could be life. If you start cooperating now, you might get a lighter sentence.”

Then Zhou said, “Manslaughter would get a lighter sentence, wouldn't it?”

“What? How could suffocating someone like that be manslaughter?”

Thinking it over, I suddenly understood what he meant.

He was suggesting Xiaohu's death might, at most, have resulted from his failure to help. Manslaughter at worst.

He still had no intention of confessing.

After some thought, he spoke slowly.

“Both videos were taken around six that evening. All they can prove is that I was at the scene then. When I left the frame, Ma Xiaohu was still alive.”

“You told me he died after seven. There was more than an hour between my leaving and his death. The witness with the camera—or rather, the real killer—was still there. That person could have saved him after I left. But he died anyway. What does that prove? That the person behind the camera wanted him dead. That's your killer!”

He was very good at exploiting gaps in an evidence chain.

And his argument wasn't entirely unreasonable.

Logically, both he and the person recording were suspects.

But if the person with the camera was the killer, why send us footage?

The charitable explanation was that a witness wanted the truth exposed.

The darker possibility was exactly what Zhou claimed: the killer was misleading us and framing him.

Why?

Did this person have a grudge against both men?

The thought sent a chill down my spine.

If so, what sort of person were we dealing with?

6

The technical team's next report was much the same.

They couldn't identify the sender.

They could establish that the email had again come from the Dayu Mountain area.

The two videos had come from different accounts, but we suspected one person was behind both.

More striking was the timing.

The recordings had been made just two minutes apart.

Yet they'd been sent separately, from different accounts, at different stages of our investigation.

This had clearly been planned.

A day later, Zhou asked to be interviewed.

The moment he saw me, he repeated his earlier question.

“Officer, am I really going to be convicted?”

I answered from experience.

“The evidence is very unfavorable to you. The video shows physical contact with the victim, and the conversation suggests both motive and intent.”

“I told you. I was trying to save him.”

“That's your account. Whether a court believes it is another matter.”

He shook his head dejectedly.

“They won't. Nobody will.”

A colleague called me out of the interview room.

We had a new lead.

7

A third video had arrived.

Another new account. Another untraceable sender. The same crime scene.

This time, the recording lasted ten seconds.

Its time stamp read 6:40 p.m.—roughly twenty minutes before Xiaohu died.

Two people were visible.

Xiaohu lay bound on the ground.

A man in black was straddling him, apparently tightening the coverings and restraints around his head.

Unlike the earlier recordings, this one didn't show the man's face.

His clothes and build resembled Zhou's.

We couldn't be certain it was him.

After some thought, we decided to show Zhou.

Unexpectedly, hope flashed in his eyes.

“That man isn't me! He's the one who killed Ma Xiaohu!”

Liu and I exchanged a glance.

“His face isn't visible, but you're still our strongest suspect.”

“No, no. I've got proof! I've got an alibi!”

“What alibi?”

“I told you in the first interview. Three witnesses!”

“Are you playing games with us?” Liu demanded. “You admitted you'd fabricated that alibi!”

Zhou shook his head calmly.

“No. I lied about that. It wasn't fabricated. It was true. Check with them again.”

8

By now, I was convinced Zhou was playing cat and mouse with us.

Each lie tested whether we had new evidence that could expose him.

The moment he found a gap, he sent us back to the beginning.

The key was his alibi.

Those three witnesses.

Their statements had bothered me all along.

We'd checked them twice, including once after Zhou admitted fabricating his alibi.

The second time, they'd given exactly the same account as the first.

I'd assumed they were sticking to their story to avoid responsibility for false testimony.

Now I wondered if they'd been telling the truth from the start.

If so, why had Zhou volunteered that his alibi was false?

He'd even asked us not to hold his three friends responsible for lying on his behalf.

Yet here he was, using the very alibi he'd disowned to clear himself.

I felt as though he were spinning me in circles.

Regardless, we questioned the three men a third time.

Again, we stressed the consequences of lying.

Again, the same result.

They insisted Zhou had been with them from half past six that evening until the following morning.

They'd spent the night watching football and playing mahjong at a grocery store in town.

There was no surveillance footage to support their account, however.

We still couldn't rule out false testimony.

9

We went over the case again.

I set out the points Zhou had admitted.

First: he'd been at the scene at about six. He said he'd tried to help Xiaohu, then soon left the mountain.

Second: he claimed he'd been at the grocery store with three friends from half past six until the next morning.

If both were true, we had a problem.

Dayu Mountain was remote wilderness. There were no roads down for vehicles. You had to walk.

The trail to town covered about forty kilometers.

Zhou had left around six and reached the store by six thirty.

How had he covered nearly forty kilometers of rough mountain terrain in thirty minutes?

On foot.

I was particularly qualified to question that.

On the day the body was reported, my colleagues and I had spent four hours walking back from the scene.

An ordinary person simply couldn't make that journey in half an hour.

10

With the investigation stalled again, Liu reminded me of something.

The case closely resembled the death of Xiaohu's father, Ma Guobing, a year earlier.

I was new to the area and unfamiliar with its older cases.

At first, I didn't understand what he meant.

Then he showed me the file.

“Resembled” didn't begin to cover it.

I decided we needed to reopen Ma Guobing's case.

He'd died on Dayu Mountain a year before.

Even some of the crucial dates and times matched.

Ma Guobing died on August 25, 2017.

Ma Xiaohu died on August 25, 2018.

Father and son, same place, same date a year apart.

An extraordinary coincidence.

More extraordinary still, Zhou had been the prime suspect in both cases.

And in both, he'd produced almost identical alibis.

Ma Guobing had died at approximately six on the evening of August 25, 2017.

After extensive inquiries, the police had identified Zhou as a key suspect.

He denied killing anyone and produced numerous witnesses placing him elsewhere.

Quite a few people had seen him in town, forty kilometers from the mountain, at half past six.

Officers checked with more than twenty witnesses, door to door.

All gave the same answer.

The police had faced precisely our problem.

How could Zhou kill someone on Dayu Mountain at six and walk forty kilometers to town by six thirty?

The file recorded repeated tests by ten young, fit officers.

They'd tried different routes at the greatest speed they could manage, conducting more than ten trials.

The fastest had taken nearly three hours.

If even those officers couldn't do it in thirty minutes, how could the already middle-aged Zhou?

The only possibility was a shortcut known only to him.

The police would have to find it.

And prove that it could take him from the scene to the town forty kilometers away in half an hour.