Chapter 3

The village police station had been established in 2013. It had only four officers, including the chief.

In other words, it might not even have existed when the victim was killed. They could tell us very little.

Or perhaps that had something to do with the chief's surname being Zhou.

His favorite response to our questions was:

“It's not that we don't want to help. We really don't have any leads.”

We all understood what he meant.

Xu finally lost his temper.

He smashed a teacup on the floor, kicked over the flimsy table in the reception room, and unleashed a tirade at Chief Zhou that couldn't possibly go into the record.

Eventually, the chief cracked under the pressure.

He gave us a name.

Ma Qiulian.

A woman in her seventies.

A woman who had been sold into this mountain village more than forty years earlier.

7

Xu found the colleague who had canvassed Ma's house and asked what she was like.

The officer looked blank for a moment before remembering.

“Just an ordinary old lady. All white hair, but still quite lively. Her husband's been dead for years. Her youngest son lives with her. He's thirty-seven.”

Xu frowned.

“Her youngest? Still unmarried?”

“Yes. She had two sons and three daughters altogether. All three daughters married and moved far away. Her elder son went to work in another province and started a family there. He hardly ever comes back.”

The family didn't sound particularly close.

Chief Zhou must have had a reason for giving us her name.

In a mountain village like this, traffickers needed someone local to arrange the sale of a woman.

They couldn't exactly drag her through the streets advertising her for sale.

Ma was probably that local contact.

Her family seemed reasonably comfortable. They had a two-story house with a courtyard.

When Xu and I arrived, she was standing in a corner of the courtyard, leaning on a cane and feeding the chickens.

She looked like any other old woman.

Xu went in and showed his identification, deliberately setting a grave tone.

She barely seemed to care. She didn't even invite us inside. We could talk at the stone table in the courtyard, she said.

Once we sat down, Xu came straight to the point.

“The woman found preserved in salt in Zhou Yongdong's old house—which family bought her as a daughter-in-law?”

Ma stared at him for a long time.

Then her mouth twisted into a cold smile.

“How would an old woman like me know?”

Xu kept his expression stern and tried to intimidate her.

“You helped traffic those women here. We have evidence.”

“Evidence?” She spat contemptuously. “Hmph. Arrest me, then. If you have evidence, go ahead. What are you waiting for?”

Xu paused. He knew he was dealing with someone who wouldn't be pushed around.

He changed tactics and tried appealing to her feelings.

“The woman's dead,” he said with a sigh. “She doesn't even have a name. Nobody knows who she was. Isn't that pitiful? You're a woman too. Can't you put yourself in her place?”

What Ma said next was truly chilling.

“If we're both women, why couldn't she settle down and be a good daughter-in-law?”

I stared at her, unable to keep quiet.

“But she was sold here. She didn't come willingly.”

Ma immediately shrieked:

“Then didn't she deserve to die? Wasn't I sold here too? The women in the X family and the XX family—weren't they sold here? Why aren't we dead?”

Xu and I were speechless.

She kept shouting.

“Did anyone really mean her any harm? All anyone wants is to carry on the family line!”

“They put in the effort! They paid good money for her! Who wouldn't want a peaceful life, if she'd only behave?”

“But if she keeps making trouble, what else can we do? How is that our fault?”

“It's that filthy woman's fault! How could it be ours?”

...

Her voice was shrill, her certainty absolute.

She had even built a complete, self-contained logic out of her excuses.

Xu slammed his palm on the table and stood.

“Ma Qiulian! Do you hear what you're saying?”

She rose too, every bit as loud.

“That's how we do things here! That's how it was then, and that's how it is now! I'm going to find my son a wife the same way! What can you do about it? Why don't you mind your own business?”

The veins stood out on Xu's forehead. He was almost ready to hit her. I hurriedly pulled him back into his seat.

I was angry too.

But I still had enough sense left to know that hitting her would achieve nothing. It would only get us into trouble.

At her age, she could drop to the ground and claim injury whenever she pleased. Even bringing her back to the unit might accomplish nothing.

We didn't actually have any evidence.

And even if we did, it might not help.

Under our country's law, an intentional offender aged seventy-five or over could receive a lighter or reduced sentence. In ordinary circumstances, someone who had reached seventy-five at trial would not face the death penalty.

We really had no way to deal with this old hag.

And she was still shouting.

“I know everything! But I'm not telling you a thing. Go on, be furious! Kill an old woman if you've got the guts!”

“This village was perfectly peaceful until you people came and made it like this!”

“Keep barking! Bark like dogs! See if anyone speaks up for you. Not a soul in this village will tell you anything!”

...

Xu looked closer and closer to lashing out. In the end, I had to drag him away.

Yes. Drag him.

We could still hear her shrieking after we left the courtyard.

He couldn't accept it. He even rounded on me.

“We're just leaving? You're dragging me away just like that?”

When it comes to dealing with bad people, I can be full of tricks. Some of them aren't particularly honorable.

“We can't do anything to her,” I said, “but she has children.”

Xu caught on at once.

“Right! Back to the unit. Dig into every one of them!”

The visit hadn't been a complete waste.

At least we had confirmed one thing.

The woman in the jar had been trafficked here.

8

We returned to the criminal investigation unit seething with anger.

It was evening by the time we arrived.

But this couldn't wait. If we could get past Ma, the whole case might open up.

Still, I couldn't stop thinking about her.

Ma Qiulian was a woman herself, wasn't she?

Hadn't she been sold here too?

Yet not only did she feel no sympathy, she had become an abuser herself.

It was terrifying.

We were working late, trying to find some way of dealing with that old hag, when Dr. Zhong suddenly rushed in with a stack of reports, looking for Xu.

The kinship test results were back, she said. We could identify the victim.

Xu and I shot to our feet and stared at each other.

For a moment, I felt utterly disoriented, as though I'd stepped into another time and place.

We were still struggling to establish her identity. How had Dr. Zhong suddenly come up with this?

A kinship test?

Against whose DNA?

Who had supplied the sample?

She looked at us.

“Didn't your unit send over the information on the presumed relative, along with the hair follicles?”

We had?

Xu was so excited that he could barely get his words in order.

“Never mind that! Tell us about the victim first. That first!”