Chapter 3

The demolition policy I brought back from the neighborhood this morning is right there, along with the compensation an employee helped me calculate: between four hundred and six hundred thousand yuan.

Not forty. Not four hundred.

Four hundred thousand!

I had never seen so much money in my life!

That’s right. Our good days were finally within reach. The only disaster was that Liu Cheng was dead.

I thought it over and over.

On one side was the compensation money, almost in my hands.

On the other was Liu Cheng—a man who should have died long ago.

I had stopped thinking of him as my brother years ago.

He was the reason my whole life had been ruined!

I should have had a happy life.

Do you know? I got into university that year. My acceptance letter had already arrived!

And it was all because of him!

My parents sold everything in the house that could be turned into money for his sake. In the end, they were driven to their deaths, too.

Forget going to school—I couldn’t even get enough to eat. If it hadn’t been summer, with wild greens all over the mountain, the two of us would have starved to death long ago!

I was so close to getting free and living a better life.

Why did he have to come back now?

Why couldn’t he have died somewhere else?

I didn’t know when it happened, but the tears I thought I could no longer cry were running all the way down to my chin.

Xiaoning had already done it. There was no point dwelling on what to say now.

I might as well figure out what to do with the body.

Maybe we could get away with it.

Once I had made up my mind, I wasn’t afraid anymore.

I climbed down and dragged Liu Cheng’s body out.

I opened the plastic sheeting. Sure enough, there was his nauseating face. His body had gone stiff.

I wrapped him up again, intending to take him outside.

But he was too heavy. I couldn’t drag him by myself, and Xiaoning was unconscious with a high fever.

I needed help.

So I went to find Old Qian, the owner of the repair shop where Xiaoning worked.

“What was your relationship with Old Qian? Why did you go to him?”

“We were lovers. But he was getting ready to divorce his wife. They’d already drawn up the divorce agreement. He promised we’d get married once the divorce was final. He even showed me the papers…”

“You don’t need to tell me all that. How did you and Old Qian dispose of the body?”

“There’s a waste-treatment station behind our place. Garbage trucks come every day, compress the rubbish into blocks, then take it straight to the waste-to-energy incinerator.

“Old Qian said we needed a big container for the body, but there wasn’t one at my house. In the end, to make things easier, he took an axe and chopped Liu Cheng into pieces. Then we put them in plastic bags and threw them in the dump.

“Oh, and Old Qian hurt his hand. He lost a lot of blood.”

“With all that noise while you were dismembering the body, Liu Ning didn’t wake up?”

“No. He’s always been a heavy sleeper, and he had a high fever. He probably passed out.”

“What happened to the hammer Liu Ning used to kill him?”

“I don’t know. Old Qian probably tossed it into the dump without thinking.”

“Comrade Officer, Xiaoning was the one who killed him. Old Qian dismembered the body. I only went to find him and helped carry things out twice…”

“Is my crime serious? How many years will I get?”

“And I was the one who told Xiaoning to turn himself in. Does that count as helping make up for my crime?”

Captain Lin closed his notebook, picked up his cup of water, and walked outside.

A figure in a red padded coat was sitting by the door.

“Comrade Officer, what exactly happened to my Old Qian? What crime did he commit?”

It was Old Qian’s sickly wife.

“I knew it! Nothing good ever comes from getting mixed up with that unlucky fox, Liu Xiaofang! Old Qian went to Hunan because of that woman, didn’t he? Please, Comrade Officer, just tell me what happened! What did Old Qian—”

Hearing the commotion, Xiao Hu hurriedly gathered up the documents and went outside.

Not long afterward, two officers escorted me from the interrogation room back to the holding cell.

As we crossed the lobby, Old Qian’s wife was still clinging to Captain Lin, going on and on.

The moment she saw me, she lunged.

“You filthy bitch! You bring misery wherever you go! Ruining your own family wasn’t enough—you had to seduce my husband, too! I’ll beat you to death!”

Two female officers grabbed her and held her back.

I didn’t say a word to her.

But as I passed, I spat hard in her face.

She froze for a moment, then frantically wiped herself clean.

I burst out laughing.

“Old Qian loves me. He’d gladly walk through fire and water for me. That’s his choice!”

“If you can’t keep your man, go home and ask yourself why!”

“You call me a slut every time you open your mouth. Hmph. When Old Qian was with me, he used to say your private parts smelled like a dead fish!”

The little color in Old Qian’s wife’s face turned red, then green. She was so mortified she looked ready to sink into the floor.

After we sent Old Qian’s sobbing, shrieking wife away, Xiao Hu came to find me with the interview record and a birth certificate.

“Captain, I checked. Liu Ning’s ID says he was born on April 14. I went to the maternity hospital, and he wasn’t born there. His birth certificate was issued later, but it gives the same date as his ID. On April 14, he really was still under fourteen.”

“But they keep stressing that he was under fourteen. They’re laying it on a little too thick.”

“There’s something else. Liu Xiaofang seems strange to me, too.”

“What about her?”

“I can’t quite put my finger on it, but she definitely isn’t like other parents.”

Xiao Hu scratched his head and looked at me expectantly.

“Work it out for yourself. By the way, any progress from the evidence team?”

“It’s tough. The whole bureau has been pulled in to help. The house was demolished a month ago. Finding evidence in hundreds of tons of rubble would be like looking for a needle in a haystack.”

“What about the dump and the waste-to-energy plant?”

“The dump is in the demolition zone, too. We still haven’t made any progress with the compactor.”

“It was the twelfth month then. A body left outside would freeze solid within half an hour. Under that much pressure, there probably wouldn’t be much splatter.”

“The excavators and compactors have done everything they can to collect evidence. They’ve sent it to the forensic lab for analysis.”

“At the plant, the garbage goes straight into the furnace. Two officers went to check the incineration process and came back.”

Back in my office, I looked down at the notebook in my hand.

The phrase “under fourteen” appeared again and again—far too deliberately.

At this point, apart from Liu Ning’s and Liu Xiaofang’s statements, there was no other evidence that Liu Ning had killed his father.

That morning, when I went to see Old Qian at the repair shop, his wife said he had bought a ticket to Hunan on the morning of April 15 and left that afternoon. He still hadn’t come back.

This afternoon, Old Qian’s wife had made a scene at the station, but she refused to say where in Hunan he had gone.

A conviction required a complete chain of evidence.

And right now, we had almost nothing. It was giving me a headache.

The office phone rang. City Hall was pressing us again, and my headache got worse.

I didn’t answer. I grabbed my coat and headed out.

Xiao Hu came running up to me.

“Captain Lin, I figured out what’s wrong with Liu Xiaofang!”

“Most parents would be frantically looking for reasons and excuses to get their child off the hook at a time like this.”

“But Liu Ning’s aunt has seemed to be helping him take the blame from the very beginning!”

Xiao Hu pulled out the earlier case files.

Assault case 211:

“My son was forced into it. If he hadn’t fought back, he would have been killed. He acted in self-defense…”

Harassment case 814:

“My son has always been a good kid. He’s never done anything wrong. He definitely didn’t mean it this time; he was just drunk and lost control… Please forgive him. Give him another chance…”

…and so on.

But in Liu Xiaofang’s statement, she had never once tried to defend Liu Ning!

“There’s another problem.

“Liu Xiaofang was involved with Old Qian, but Liu Ning said she was being forced.

“Yet from Liu Xiaofang’s own statement, and from what happened when the two women fought today, it’s obvious she was with him willingly.

“And based on our investigation, Old Qian isn’t the kind of man who’d take the fall for a woman.

“What part did he actually play in all this?

“Captain Lin, let me make a bold guess. What if his aunt was the killer?

“She wants to escape punishment, so she’s making her underage nephew take the blame for her!

“Look at the two of them. Liu Xiaofang clearly had the stronger motive to kill…”

“Or maybe Old Qian did it—or he and Liu Xiaofang were in it together…”

I barely heard the rest of Xiao Hu’s analysis.

A thought had come to me.

Had Liu Ning really killed him?

“Xiao Hu, go to the newspaper office. Put out a reward notice for information, and issue a warrant for Old Qian while you’re at it. I’m going to see the bureau chief.”

The next day, along with the reward notice, a sensational story appeared in the papers:

“Liu Ning’s Patricide Case Takes a Stunning Turn! The Real Killer May Be Someone Else! Was It His Own Aunt—or a Child Under Fourteen?!”

The bureau chief practically slapped the paper against my face.

“We only finished the interrogation yesterday. I haven’t even seen your report, and the whole country already knows about it?!”

I picked up the newspaper.

Unlike the few lines in the earlier reports, this article devoted most of its space to Liu Xiaofang’s history with Liu Cheng and to the story of how, over the years, she had relied on one man after another for money.

The article’s descriptions were crude and lurid, making Liu Xiaofang sound like a wanton woman who would sleep with anyone.

At the end, it said:

“Did Liu Cheng really die at the hands of Liu Ning, the child who had spent more than ten years longing for his father to come home?”

“Or did a woman who would do anything for money deliberately kill him, then make her nephew—who was not yet fourteen—take the blame?”

“According to an informed source, the police have now named Liu Xiaofang the prime suspect in Liu Cheng’s murder!”

The inflammatory claims almost made me believe, for a moment, that Liu Xiaofang really was the killer.

I quickly came to my senses.

I was a police officer.

Everything had to be decided by evidence.

“Lin Yesheng! If you still want to be a captain, then do your job properly! If you don’t, say so. There are plenty of people who can take your place!”

“Look at this! Did the newspaper editor come to your office to hear you talk, or did you actually show him your report?!”

“It reads as if it’s all true! You’d better get to the bottom of this. Whoever leaked the information can explain it to the higher-ups!”

“It’s not just one or two departments watching this anymore! The case has spread across the whole city! Hundreds of eyes are on us!”

“Hundreds of people from this bureau have been out under the blazing sun helping you look for evidence, and now you’re telling me we’ve all been played by one woman?! Where does that leave the police department?!”

“If you still can’t solve this case, every last one of you can get out!”

The bureau chief slammed the door on his way out.

I picked up the newspaper again.

After yesterday’s statement, I really had considered treating Liu Xiaofang as a suspect.

But for an article like this to suddenly appear right now…

It was too strange.

As if an invisible hand were pushing us in that direction.

“Xiao Hu, we’re going to the newspaper office.”

The newspaper’s owner seemed to have been expecting us.

He had left behind only two envelopes, each assembled from cut-out letters.

The last sentence had not been printed:

“An exclusive. Don’t change a single word, or there won’t be another one.”

There would be another one?

I immediately told Xiao Hu to put officers near the newspaper’s submissions mailbox.

I also told him to investigate the people around Liu Xiaofang.

The article was vicious, but its logic and structure were exceptionally clear. Whoever wrote it was educated.

When we got back to the bureau—

“Captain Lin! Good news! We have a new lead!”

I didn’t even make it back to my office. I went straight into the interrogation room.

“Liu Cheng was killed by Liu Xiaofang!”

“I saw it with my own eyes!”

“I’d had a bit too much to drink that night, so I was asleep.

“Liu Xiaofang knocked on my door in a hurry.

“‘Dr. Wang, are you asleep?’ I recognized her voice and climbed out of bed to open the door.

“Her face was deathly pale. She looked completely panicked.

“She didn’t even realize the bandage on her head was bleeding through.

“She said Liu Ning’s wound had reopened and asked to buy more gauze and medicine to stop the bleeding.

“She hadn’t brought any money. At first she asked me to come back to the house with her so she could pay me, then she changed her mind and said she’d bring the money the next day.

“After that, I could tell something was wrong with her. So once she left, I secretly followed her.

“The lights were off in her house. I could just make out two figures inside.

“Could you tell who they were?”

“No.”

“Their door wasn’t glass. It was just a torn plastic sheet and half a piece of plastic board. Seeing two people at all was about the best I could do.

“Then why did you say you saw Liu Xiaofang kill someone?”

“I heard her.

“She was in the room and said to the other person, ‘I killed him. Xiaoning had nothing to do with it.’

“What exactly were her words?”

“Those were her exact words: ‘I killed him. Xiaoning had nothing to do with it.’

“Then I don’t know what the other person said, but she lowered her voice and added:

“‘No. I killed him. None of you had anything to do with it.’

“What happened after that?” Officer Xiao Hu pressed.

“I don’t know. When I heard her say ‘murder,’ I was terrified and ran straight home.

“Why didn’t you report it to the police?”

“I’d had too much to drink. When I woke up the next morning, my head was all foggy. I wasn’t sure whether it had really happened or I’d dreamed it. I didn’t want to make a false report and waste the officers’ time. Better to avoid trouble if I could.”

“What was your relationship with Liu Xiaofang?”

“Comrade Officer, we have absolutely no relationship! Don’t believe what the newspapers say. It’s all made up! We’re innocent!”

“Besides buying medicine from your shop, did you have any other contact with her?”

“No, none at all.”

“Liu Ning had his head split open a few times before. Liu Xiaofang brought the child to me for treatment several times.

“That aunt and nephew had a hard life. They were so poor they could barely eat, and that brute Liu Cheng kept beating them nearly to death.

“Had you ever met Liu Cheng?”

“No. I saw him a few times when we were young, but I never saw him again after he ran away.

“How did you know Liu Cheng was the one beating him?”

“I wasn’t the only one who knew. Everyone in the neighborhood knew.

“That time Liu Ning was nearly beaten to death, I don’t know what got into Old Qian, but he even went with Liu Xiaofang to get the boy treated.

“He even paid two hundred yuan in medical bills for Liu Ning. I thought that iron rooster had finally decided to pluck a feather.

“Then I saw Liu Ning’s head… The gash was enormous, and even his skull was cracked.

“Two hundred yuan, and you wanted me to do twenty thousand yuan’s worth of work. If Liu Xiaofang hadn’t begged me and promised I wouldn’t be held responsible if anything happened, I’d never have dared treat him.

“Tsk, tsk… but you have to hand it to that kid Liu Ning. He was lucky. With an injury that bad, he spent a week in bed and still survived.

“For days, Old Qian told everyone he met:

“‘Liu Cheng is a vicious bastard. He beat his own son half to death. If it weren’t for me, Liu Ning would be dead.’”

“Hmph. Old Qian was the biggest bastard around, but just like that, he became Liu Ning’s lifesaving benefactor.

“What was the relationship between Old Qian and Liu Xiaofang?”

“What do you think? That sort of relationship.

“Liu Xiaofang was famous as a beauty when she was young, and she was educated, too. She used to be formidable. You could look at her one extra time and she’d scold you for half an hour without repeating herself—and you wouldn’t even realize she’d insulted you.

“Then her family fell apart. She had a child to look after, not a penny to her name, and tens of thousands in debt. There was no way she could keep studying.

“When you’re desperate for food, and with Old Qian, it was just a matter of one willing buyer and one willing seller.

“And it wasn’t just Old Qian. Liu Xiaofang had been involved with plenty of men.

“Do you have any other leads?”

“No, that’s all. Heh-heh. Comrade Officer, I saw in the newspaper that there’s a ten-thousand-yuan reward for information. When do I get paid?”

“Once we confirm your information is genuine and solve the case, the finance office will contact you to collect it. All right, sign here if there’s nothing else.”

“Oh, Comrade Officer, you wrote it down wrong. It was April 15, not April 14.”

The older officer across from him sprang to his feet.

“Are you sure? April 15?”

“Yes, yes, yes, I’m sure! It had to be April 15. I get paid on the fifteenth of every month. Every time I collect my wages, I buy some braised pork as a treat. I don’t drink on ordinary days.

“It definitely wasn’t the fourteenth. It was the fifteenth!”