Chapter 4
Edward Quan ·
“Sun Hao, what you’ve done constitutes defamation and false accusation.”
I put the phone away.
“But I can refrain from reporting you, on one condition. Help me with something.”
“What?”
“Investigate someone for me.”
“Who?”
“Zhao Qian’s brother-in-law. He didn’t just run away. Someone forced him to. Find out who was behind it.”
Sun Hao stared.
“How do you know someone forced him?”
“Because his debts aren’t small.”
I drank some coffee.
“Zhao Qian told me he takes renovation contracts and couldn’t collect payments at year-end. I checked. Five credit cards in his name, all maxed out. With online loans, he owes at least four hundred thousand.”
“That much?”
“An ordinary renovation contractor wouldn’t owe that much.”
I put down my cup.
“Unless someone set him up.”
He was silent for a long time.
“All right. I’ll investigate.”
“Within three days.”
6
Sun Hao worked quickly.
On the second evening, he sent a file.
Zhao Qian’s brother-in-law was Liu Qiang.
Thirty-two. He had indeed taken renovation contracts, and six months earlier he had landed a big job.
An interior-renovation company offered to subcontract part of a commercial complex to him. Total contract value: 1.2 million yuan.
Liu Qiang accepted.
To finance the work upfront, he borrowed from loan sharks.
When he had finished a third of the project, the renovation company vanished.
He never received a cent of the 1.2 million.
He went looking and discovered its registered address was false and its legal representative was a shell company.
Only then did he realize he had been scammed.
Too late.
Loan sharks came to his home daily. He told Zhao Qian he was working elsewhere to repay them.
In reality, he was hiding from his creditors.
“Did you investigate the renovation company?”
“Yes.”
Sun Hao sounded tense.
“It’s registered under Zhao Lei’s name.”
I nearly dropped my coffee.
“What?”
“Zhao Lei is its legal representative. Registered last March. Five hundred thousand in registered capital, zero paid in. The address is false, but the business registration details are real.”
“How could Zhao Lei—”
“One more thing.”
He interrupted.
“Zhou Min handled the registration.”
Zhou Min.
My mother-in-law’s name.
My head rang.
“Ms. Jiang? Are you still there?”
“Yes.”
“I think you should talk to Zhao Lei directly.”
“I know.”
After hanging up, I sat in my flat staring at the neon lights outside.
The pieces connected.
A shell company had scammed Liu Qiang.
Its legal representative was Zhao Lei.
My mother-in-law had handled its registration.
Where had the money gone?
I remembered Zhao Lei telling me last month, “Business is bad. They halved the year-end bonus.”
The company he had worked at for seven years had never claimed business was bad.
His annual bonus was always at least a hundred thousand.
Suddenly it dropped to forty thousand?
It made no sense.
I went further back.
He replaced his car, paid eighty thousand upfront, said he was short, and asked for forty thousand from our household account.
Where had his money gone?
I called him.
“At home.”
“I’m coming now.”
“What’s the matter?”
“Explain why you’re the legal representative of the company that scammed Liu Qiang.”
Silence.
Twenty minutes later, I reached home.
Zhao Lei sat on the sofa with two cans of beer before him.
One was empty.
“Talk.”
“You know everything?”
He looked up, his eyes red.
“Not much. Fill in the rest.”
He opened the second can and took a large drink.
“What happened to Liu Qiang was Mum’s idea.”
“Your mother?”
“She couldn’t stand him. Thought he had no ambition, couldn’t earn money, and made Qian suffer.”
He continued.
“She found a way. Get someone to register a shell company, give him a fake project, put him in debt, then—”
“Force Zhao Qian to divorce him?”
He nodded.
“You scammed Liu Qiang into more than four hundred thousand of debt to make her divorce?”
My voice shook.
“Has your whole family lost its mind?”
“I didn’t think that far—”
“You didn’t? You’re the legal representative! If anything happens, you’re the first one arrested!”
“I know.”
He crushed the beer can.
“That’s why I regret it.”
“What good is regret? Liu Qiang borrowed from loan sharks. He’s fled. Zhao Qian’s raising two children alone. Did you consider the consequences when you set him up?”
He said nothing.