Chapter 2

“He must have other moves in reserve. Tampering with the trial, for instance.

“I'm a lawyer myself, but I can't defend myself. Nor can I investigate and collect evidence outside.

“So I need counsel.

“A famous lawyer elsewhere, or someone from my own firm—any of them could be bought.

“I need to choose this person myself. Only then can I trust him.”

He had a point. If someone really had framed him, that person had resources and methods far beyond anything I could imagine.

There was no way he would leave the trial alone.

But that raised another question.

“Why couldn't I be bought?”

He gave a faint, derisive laugh.

“A man who can knock down his own client can hardly be bought with money, can he? And even if you do like money, I can pay you too.

“Besides...”

He leaned forward slightly.

“You have a sense of justice. If I really have been falsely accused, you'll do everything you can to help me.”

“All right. Let's talk about the case.”

Zheng Shaoming gave me far more detail than the files contained.

At two p.m. on July 19, he had left the office to meet a very important client.

His driver had accompanied him.

He drank a fair amount with the client, but wasn't drunk yet. At least, his mind was still clear.

He parted company with the client at around six that evening.

At seven, he left his driver and went alone to a small bar for some plum wine.

He had wanted to find someone to satisfy his physical needs, without his driver knowing too much.

Through an intermediary, he arranged to meet a prostitute at the bar.

At about seven-thirty, he settled the bill and left for the hotel.

His last memory was of the hotel's sign. After that, nothing.

When his memory returned, his head was splitting. Beside him lay a headless woman's body in a pool of blood.

Someone was pounding frantically on the door.

“I only had a little plum wine at the bar. About a hundred milliliters. It couldn't have made me that drunk. There must have been something in it.”

I wrote down the suspicious points.

1. Why had the driver let his drunken employer get out of the car so readily?

2. If the wine had been tampered with, how could the person behind it have known he would visit that particular bar?

3. The receptionist said Zheng Shaoming had booked the room alone. Where was the prostitute at the time? How had she entered the room, and why had she met such a horrible death there?

4. The intermediary wasn't mentioned anywhere in the file. In other words, Zheng Shaoming had concealed something from the police. Why hide a pimp's identity?

“Lawyer Zheng, we're both in the profession, so I'll be blunt.”

“Go ahead.”

“There's something we always tell our clients: don't hide anything from me.”

“What are you suggesting?”

“If you want my help, you have to tell me the truth.”

“Oh?”

The corner of his mouth lifted. He gave me a challenging look.

“What have I lied about?”

Most lawyers have this bad habit, especially the famous ones.

They can't stand having their word questioned.

Years of arguing in court will do that to you.

But I'd taken this case. I had to get to the bottom of it. I couldn't let him intimidate me.

“The police examined your phone. There were no messages or payments connected with buying sex. That's one of the main reasons they're treating this as rape.

“So how did you contact the pimp? If it wasn't online, you must have met in person. At that bar.

“And he doesn't appear in your statement to the police. Which means you're deliberately concealing him. Who is he? What's your relationship?”

He fell silent again.

His right index finger tapped steadily on the table.

Beat after beat, like some ancient drum.

“I hired you to win my case, not investigate my private life.”

I nodded for him to continue.

“First, investigate the hotel. Find out how the dead woman entered the room.

“Then establish her identity. Prove she really was a prostitute.

“Finally, prove that I was too drunk that night to rape or murder anyone. All I did was pay for sex. Understood?”

When he stopped speaking, I said, “Understood. But you still haven't told me who the pimp is.”

“Wu Yang, if I can hire you, I can replace you. Do you understand? I've handled more cases than you've had hot dinners. Just listen to me. Do what I tell you. Got it?”

“Of course you can replace me. But have you still got time to find someone else?”

He glared and muttered a curse.

“The intermediary knows about a lot of irregularities in my affairs. If he gets arrested, I'm finished too. He wouldn't frame me. Even if he wanted to, he wouldn't need anything this complicated. That's all I can tell you.”

With that, he stood and left.

There was a lot packed into that statement.

The man wasn't merely a pimp.

He had powerful backing himself.

At the very least, he and Zheng Shaoming were working together.

Who was he?

I went to the bar before visiting the hotel.

The hotel staff weren't going anywhere. The bar, on the other hand, might close down in a few days.

“Hello. What would you like?”

“A jug of plum wine.”

“Certainly. Any snacks?”

“No, thanks.”

As the waitress turned to go, I called her back.

“Oh, how strong is the plum wine? I can't hold my drink.”

“About five percent. It won't get you drunk easily.”

At five percent, a hundred milliliters really shouldn't make someone lose consciousness on the spot.

She soon brought the wine.

The jug looked antique, as though it had been carved from some kind of stone. The cups matched it.

Each held about fifty milliliters.

So Zheng Shaoming had only drunk two cups that night.

I took a sip.

Awful stuff...

The bar wasn't big. The main room could fit a dozen or so tables. A small stage at the front held a few instruments. They occasionally had live music.

There was no second floor.

Off the main room was a shared restroom with two toilets, no separate facilities for men and women.

“Excuse me, I'd like—”

“Sorry. Staff only.”

I quickly stepped back.

“Sorry. I wanted to ask how to get to the Yunduan Hotel. My phone's dead.”

“Head west. Follow the little road straight down.”

“Thanks.”

That one glance had been enough to see the bar's entire layout.

Nothing unusual.

“Hang on!”

Something suddenly struck me.

There were no surveillance cameras.

Small bars like this were usually classed as food-service businesses. Cameras weren't compulsory.

But wherever alcohol was involved, trouble was bound to follow.

Surely very few owners would go without cameras?

If customers fought one another or caused trouble for the owner, footage could save a lot of hassle.

Could someone who could afford to open a bar really not afford a few cameras?

And judging by its sign and frontage, this place had been here for years.

With wine that bad, how had it stayed in business?

I walked west to the Yunduan Hotel.

I checked the time.

Twenty minutes.

There was no record of Zheng Shaoming taking a taxi that night. The street cameras had only caught him leaving the bar.

There were no cameras on the little road he took afterward.

To account for his drunken state, I'd deliberately walked very slowly.

If he left the bar at seven-thirty, he should have reached the hotel by eight at the latest.

Yet the receptionist said he had checked in at eight-thirty.

Where had he spent that missing half hour?

Why hadn't he told me?

“Hello, sir. Checking in?”

I looked up at the room types and prices on the wall.

Not cheap.

“Any hygiene problems with the rooms?”

The receptionist froze. Perhaps she hadn't heard that question in a very long time.

“Uh... rest assured, sir. We clean and disinfect every room as soon as the guests check out.”

“How do you usually clean?”

“Well... thoroughly.”

“You wipe every corner with a cloth?”

“Not... quite that thoroughly...”

I took my lawyer's identification from my jacket and lowered my voice.

“I'm representing the man involved in the case a few days ago.”

She immediately grew tense.

“We've already told the police about it many times.”

“I understand. I just wanted to ask whether anyone's staying in Room 1203. I'd like to see it.”

“Of course. It's been left vacant.”

“It's that easy?”

“The manager told us to cooperate fully.”

I took the elevator to the twelfth floor. When she opened the door, a fresh scent wafted out.

Nothing suggested that a murder had taken place here only days earlier.

“I'm sorry. We cleaned it after clearing it with the police.”

“That's fine. I just want a look.”

It was an ordinary business-class king room, with nothing remarkable about its furnishings.

“Is the cleaner who reported it here? I'd like to speak with her.”

“Certainly.”

She called the cleaner, then left.

The woman seemed nervous, her forehead covered in sweat.

For some reason, she looked familiar, as though I'd seen her somewhere before.

But I couldn't place her.

“Sir, I really don't know anything. I've already told them everything I saw and heard.”

“Don't be nervous. I asked you here because I'd like a favor.”

“What kind of favor?”

“Just a moment.”

I went straight into the bathroom and took a great big piss.

Under her bewildered, astonished gaze, I then made a complete mess of the room, as though a guest had just stayed there.

“Sir, what are you...?”

“Would you mind cleaning it again?”

“What?”

“Just your usual routine. As though someone's just checked out.”

“Oh... all right...”

She worked briskly. A little over ten minutes later, the room was clean, looking exactly as it had when I arrived.

“Thank you. That's all.”

As though she'd been granted a pardon, she hurried away with her cleaning cart.

I'd watched every step of her routine closely.

She was careful and thorough, but she hadn't wiped down and disinfected every single surface.

The windowsill I'd rested my hand on, for example.

So...

Why did the case file say there were only Zheng Shaoming's fingerprints in the room?

What about other guests' prints?

Or the cleaner's?

In other words, someone else had entered that room. And it had been cleaned.

Cleaned meticulously, without leaving a single fingerprint.

Which meant...

Zheng Shaoming really had been framed.