Chapter 2

My mentor was still in the interview room, questioning Cheng Sisi.

I returned and offered him the test report.

He waved it away.

“No need. If there'd been anything wrong, you'd have come charging in long ago. You wouldn't be standing there so calmly.”

Cheng Sisi remained convinced that Zhang Jun had poisoned her best friend.

Wiping away tears, she begged us to bring him to justice.

My mentor rested his elbows on the table and rubbed the bridge of his nose without a word.

There was only one way left to establish what had happened.

A forensic autopsy.

But that presented another problem.

Under judicial procedure, unless we could establish that the deceased had been murdered, the police had no authority to order an autopsy on their own.

We needed the family's consent.

Cheng Sisi had told us that Li Zihan and Zhang Jun had registered their marriage. She called him her friend's “fiancé” only because they had not yet held the wedding.

In other words, we needed Zhang Jun's permission.

And for him to give it...

He would have to have lost his mind.

Still, I decided to try.

To my surprise, he agreed immediately.

“I don't want people falsely accusing me of killing my wife.”

I quickly produced the consent form.

He signed it without even reading it.

Back at the police academy, I had made a friend from an older generation: Qin Ming.

He was a pathology professor at the forensic medicine college, a man in his fifties—ferociously strict, stubborn, and oddly endearing.

He wanted little from life. He had only two hobbies.

The first was reading manga.

As it happened, I was a longtime manga collector.

That was how we had met. I remember it well: to this day, he still hasn't returned the volume of Detective Conan he borrowed from me.

His second hobby...

Was performing autopsies.

The forensic medicine college also happened to be one of the institutions designated by the Ministry of Public Security to conduct forensic examinations.

I checked the time.

Midnight.

I hesitated over the call.

Would he yell at me?

After a prolonged internal debate, I dialed.

“Who is this? Are you out of your mind? Have you seen the time? Calling me at this hour, you little—”

“Professor Qin, it's me! Liu Tiankai! Liu Tiankai!”

He was plainly too angry to think straight.

“Tiankai, my ass! I don't care if you're the Jade Emperor himself! Get lost. Disturb my sleep again and I'll take your kidneys out!”

A chill ran down my spine. I gathered my courage.

“Professor Qin, I have a body here. Would you be interested in performing an autopsy?”

Silence.

Then his voice trembled with excitement.

“Where... is... it?”

“I'll bring it over right away.”

I was about to hang up when he stopped me.

“Wait. What did you say your name was?”

Through gritted teeth, I enunciated every syllable.

“Liu. Tian. Kai.”

Silence.

Awkward silence.

“The Liu Tiankai who lent you that volume of Detective Conan. Remember me now?”

Beep. Beep. Beep.

Well, that was quick.

Apparently he remembered.

At the forensic medicine college's autopsy room, four long hours passed before the examination was complete.

Qin Ming gave his findings.

“No external injuries. The internal organs show no signs of poisoning. In fact, they're very healthy. No lethal substance detected in the blood either. But you say she died of a heart attack. That's rather strange, because...”

He took out a Huazi cigarette, lit it, inhaled deeply, and sent a smoke ring drifting into the air.

I stared at him.

The eccentric old man had gone on standby halfway through a sentence.

Half a minute later, he finished the cigarette.

“Sorry. I don't like talking while I smoke.”

I smiled and nodded as though this were entirely reasonable.

He resumed.

“Anatomically speaking, she was exceptionally healthy. The likelihood of a completely healthy person having a heart attack is close to zero. That's what puzzles me most.”

He paused, considering something.

Then he nodded.

Then he shook his head.

Finally, with an unhappy sigh, he said:

“For now, my conclusion is that homicide can be ruled out. Perhaps it was... an unexplained accidental death.”

An unexplained accidental death?

Hearing those words from someone as famously rigorous as Qin Ming surprised me.

At that point, I felt there was no reason to continue investigating.

After a few pleasantries, I prepared to take the body away.

“Wait. Something still feels wrong. Hold on a moment. I'll retain a little blood from her heart. You never know what might turn up.”

It was past six when we left. The sky was beginning to lighten.

Back at the station, Qin Ming's autopsy report arrived.

It said much the same as he had told me in person, except for one detail he had not mentioned.

“Virgin.”

My mentor and I both froze at the word.

She and Zhang Jun were legally married, yet they had never had sex.

Then why had he married her?

Surely not for her.

For money?

But Li Zihan did not seem to own anything of significant value.

Damn it. Something about this was wrong.

The truth seemed just ahead of us. Yet whenever we drew closer, it slipped behind a door. We opened that door, only to find another.

Forget it.

My mentor filed the report.

“Tiankai, that's as far as we go. Release Zhang Jun. Ask what the family wants to do with the body while you're at it. If they want a local cremation, help them contact the funeral home.”

Once everything was settled, I saw Cheng Sisi again.

She still insisted that Zhang Jun had killed her friend. We must have missed something.

“Officer Liu, if I find any evidence later, can I still come to you?”

“Of course.”

For once, she smiled.

We exchanged phone numbers, and she left Binhai.

I thought the matter would gather dust from then on.

But six months later, on October 8, 2007, it resurfaced.

It was the first day back at work after the National Day holiday when my phone rang.

The name on the screen was Cheng Sisi.

It took me a few seconds to remember who she was.

She got straight to the point.

“Officer Liu, I have something to report. Evidence that Zhang Jun murdered Zihan.”

My first thought was that this woman was far too stubborn.

We had reached a conclusion six months earlier. Bringing it up again would probably achieve nothing.

But she kept pleading, and eventually I agreed to meet her the next day.

“I'm in Binhai now,” she said. “Could we meet right away?”

After a moment's hesitation, I agreed.

Before leaving the unit, I considered telling my mentor.

On reflection, I decided it was unnecessary and went straight to the café.

My first impression was that Cheng Sisi had lost weight. She looked worn out.

Thinking of everything she had done for her friend, and of her determination to uncover the truth she believed in, I felt an involuntary flicker of admiration.

She stood to greet me.

When we sat down, I noticed three drinks in front of me: water, juice, and coffee.

“I didn't know what you liked, Officer Liu, so I ordered one of each.”

I smiled. Thoughtful of her.

She took a folder from her bag and carefully arranged its contents on the table, sorting the documents into neat piles.

She drew a deep breath and let it out heavily.

“These past six months have been so hard.”

Then she selected a set of papers and slid them toward me.

“Read these first.”

I put down my coffee and picked them up.

One glance told me she had put a great deal of effort into this. She might even have hired a private investigator.

Including Li Zihan, Zhang Jun had been married three times.

And...

All three wives were dead.

The cause of death in each case was a heart attack.

Every nerve in my body went taut.

The three marriages shared several characteristics.

By the time I finished reading, I was absolutely certain something was wrong with Zhang Jun. He had found some ingenious way to commit his crimes without anyone noticing.

But...

What was his motive?

As though reading my mind, Cheng Sisi spread another set of documents in front of me.

“After I returned to Mingzhou six months ago, I kept watching Zhang Jun. I noticed he was constantly visiting an insurance company. To find out why, I paid one of its employees for information. And this is what I found.”

“Just days after he and Zihan registered their marriage, he took out a very large personal accident insurance policy on her. He was the beneficiary. In other words, insurance fraud was his motive.”

Looking at the copy of the policy, I was completely convinced.

Zhang Jun was the killer.

After our meeting, Cheng Sisi returned to Mingzhou immediately.

Before leaving, she pleaded with me again.

“Please, Officer Liu.”

I spent the rest of the day at the station verifying the documents.

Once I had confirmed they were genuine, I reported everything to my mentor.

All the leads now pointed to Zhang Jun. We had a motive too. My mentor immediately decided to open an investigation.

But we ran into another problem almost at once.

The body had been cremated.

How were we supposed to investigate now?