Chapter 5

So the rough-looking man had a calculating side after all.

“Enough talk. Let's eat, drink, and get to bed early. We've got work tomorrow.”

“All right.”

“And don't think about running.”

Six the next morning.

I drove again, with Lu Jiu giving directions.

We arrived at a construction site where work had been suspended.

He led me straight into an abandoned, unfinished building.

Up stairs with no handrails, all the way to the roof.

A man was already waiting there.

We looked at each other.

Both our pupils contracted.

“Wu Yang, you son of a bitch! I knew it was you!”

The sudden curse left me stunned.

What had I done?

He rushed up and grabbed my collar.

“Wu Yang, give me back my daughter!”

Lu Jiu lifted him like a chick and hauled him aside.

I brushed my collar in disgust.

“Fu Sansheng. Had that molar replaced yet?”

Fu Sansheng was my client from back then.

The man whose tooth I'd knocked out.

The sight of him sent a swarm of unpleasant memories flooding into my head.

It was sickening.

I wondered how he was doing these days.

Back then, he'd been quite successful.

His own company, his own business.

A few bars on the side.

The bastard knew how to make money.

He opened his bars near the university district, without spending much on decor.

Watered-down fake liquor, sold cheap.

A few third-rate bands that did nothing but scream. The principle was simple: cheap and lively.

He hired students as agents to promote the bars on campus.

They earned commission for bringing people in to drink, rather like today's beer promoters.

He also made a show of hiring plenty of pretty female students as respectable servers, their only job to bring drinks.

Many students taking their first steps into society were desperate for that glittering, noisy, luxurious life.

Here was somewhere right outside the campus gates, affordable and full of attractive young people.

How could they stay away?

His bars had done very well.

But what made him a true bastard was this...

Under the pretext of group activities, he got pretty female students drunk and raped them.

That was how he had raped the victim back then, Luo Susu.

When I represented him, he told me Luo Susu was more or less a part-time prostitute.

At university, she supposedly often went out to rent rooms with classmates.

He said she had initiated sex that day.

They'd already flirted with each other before.

According to him, she had only accused him of rape because she'd demanded twenty thousand yuan and they couldn't agree on the price.

But my investigation revealed that he really had drugged and raped her that night.

I was young. After a long argument with Fu Sansheng, I lost my temper and punched him in the face.

That one punch cost me my career.

Later, a friend told me the final ruling had still been that there were insufficient grounds to establish rape. Their encounter was classified as a sexual transaction.

There were several main reasons.

1. Records showed monthly transfers between them of 1,200 yuan each time. The transfers weren't labeled as wages for part-time work. In the end, they were treated as payment for sex.

2. Luo Susu's classmates testified that she already led an improper life at university. They also said that although she'd been drinking on the day in question, she wasn't drunk, and had willingly got into Fu Sansheng's car.

3. Most importantly, a woman with a prostitution record, still working in the trade, testified that Luo Susu was her colleague. She said biological traces of Luo Susu had been found in a room they had rented together to receive clients.

I knew Fu Sansheng had fabricated all that evidence.

But that was how courts worked. They looked at evidence.

Yet plenty of things couldn't be judged by evidence alone, could they?

Evidence wasn't the same as truth.

Lu Jiu interrupted my memories.

“That... has nothing to do with him. I'm the one who took your daughter.”

I froze.

Lu Jiu had kidnapped Fu Sansheng's daughter?

Fu Sansheng looked surprised too. Surprised that I wasn't the mastermind. Apparently, this was their first meeting as well.

“What do you want? Name your ransom.”

“Relax. I'm not trying to hurt anyone. I don't want your money either. Just help me with something.”

Fu Sansheng frowned deeply. My eyelid twitched.

When a kidnapper asked for a favor instead of money, you had a serious problem. Whatever it was, money couldn't solve it.

“What?”

“Help me change a dead person's identity.”

“Bullshit! How could I do that?”

“Don't be hasty. You know this line of work.”

Lu Jiu pointed at me.

“What was that woman called? The one in your old case?”

“Luo Susu,” I said.

“Right. Luo Susu. Didn't you turn a university student into a prostitute? Impressive work, man.”

Fu Sansheng hurried to deny it.

“Don't talk nonsense. I never did that.”

“Fine. Wait for your daughter's corpse, then.”

He pulled me toward the stairs.

“Wait.”

We found a spot sheltered from the wind on the roof and sat on the ground, not caring about the dirt.

Lu Jiu spoke first.

“We're all old foxes. Who are you trying to fool? Wu Yang can testify to it. If you say you can't help, it means you won't. It means you're refusing me.”

I folded my arms and gave a soft laugh.

Under these circumstances, I would be very happy to testify.

Fu Sansheng glared at me. Instead of answering directly, he asked, “Whose identity?”

“Tao Yuan's.”

An unfamiliar name. I'd never heard it before.

Fu Sansheng shot to his feet.

“You killed Tao Yuan?”

“Bullshit. We're in this together. How else would I know about all your old dirty business?”

Fu Sansheng was silent for a full five minutes.

“How much... did she tell you about back then?”

“Everything.”

“That whore.”

“Why else would I come to you?”

I didn't understand these references, but I kept quiet and tried to remember everything.

Still, I had a bad feeling.

They were discussing this openly in front of me, without the slightest concern. Were they planning to silence me afterward?

“Wu Yang, don't be so nervous. Look at all that sweat.”

Lu Jiu looked at me.

“I'll be straight with both of you. Once this works, Tao Yuan and I are leaving the country to enjoy ourselves. Report us to the police, hire someone for revenge—do what you like. If you catch me, I'll be impressed.”

Lu Jiu always seemed able to read my mind.

“It's not the same. What happened back then was slander. This is an actual change of identity. I can't do it.”

“It won't all be on you. Just repeat the process you used back then.”

From their subsequent conversation, I pieced together a rough picture.

Lu Jiu and Tao Yuan were a couple. Or, more precisely, partners.

Whether they actually loved each other was unclear.

Zheng Shaoming had Lu Jiu under his thumb, while Tao Yuan worked as a prostitute at one of Fu Sansheng's nightclubs.

While entertaining a client, she had accidentally discovered a major secret. She and Lu Jiu had conspired to squeeze an enormous sum out of him.

They already had the money.

But the client would certainly seek revenge. Their only option was to flee abroad.

He didn't know Lu Jiu's identity. All Lu Jiu had to do was escape Zheng Shaoming's control, and he could leave.

So he'd devised this whole scheme to frame Zheng Shaoming.

Whether Zheng died or not, he would face years in prison.

By the time he figured everything out, Lu Jiu would be long gone.

But the client knew who Tao Yuan really was.

For her to escape, she had to fake her death. They also had to stage things to suggest Lu Jiu had murdered her in a reckless attempt to keep all the money.

That required attaching Tao Yuan's identity to another dead person.

And that dead person...

Was probably the body at the meat-processing plant.

“See? You know this business. It's still giving someone the identity of a prostitute. The only difference is that one was alive and this one's dead.”

Fu Sansheng looked close to tears.

“Do you know who you've crossed?”

“Of course. Why do you think we can trust you with this? If he finds out, you won't survive either.”

“Please, I really can't do this. It's not like framing Luo Susu. I'm begging you. Let my daughter go.”

Lu Jiu patted my shoulder.

“Tell us what the procedure is for changing a corpse's identity.”

What the fuck?

I had to join in too?

“Normally, the police establish the identity of an unidentified body in two steps...

“First, identification by family members. They usually start with recent missing-person reports.”

If the missing person's information matched the body's basic characteristics, the police would ask the family to identify it.

If the face couldn't be recognized, they'd look for other identifying features.

Birthmarks, scars, surgical records...

But that kind of identification applied only to deaths from accidents or suicide, not criminal cases.

For a criminal case, the procedure was more complicated.

The most reliable method was DNA comparison. The police would collect blood samples from immediate family members. Only a successful DNA match could establish the dead person's identity.

That was almost impossible to fake.

So changing a dead person's identity was virtually an impossible task.

After hearing my explanation, Lu Jiu spoke to Fu Sansheng in a tone that allowed no argument.

“You find someone to identify the body. I'll handle the DNA. I'll give you the body's identifying details when the time comes.”

Fu Sansheng shook his head.

“I can find someone. But don't give me the details. Talk directly to that person.”

He didn't want to get in too deep. If it came out, he would still have grounds to deny responsibility.

With the plan settled, the three of us left the abandoned site.

In the car, I asked again to confirm.

“The body you mentioned is the one at the processing plant, right?”

“That's right.”

“The police have it. How can you fake anything?”

“Not your concern.”

“Was that person... really killed by Zheng Shaoming?”

Lu Jiu didn't answer. He only smiled calmly, as though he had everything in the palm of his hand.

Nine-tenths of the body at the meat-processing plant had been ground up. Only about three-quarters of the skull remained.

You could hardly even call it a body anymore.

Just a little over half a head.

How could anyone identify it?

The next day, the person Fu Sansheng had found to identify the remains called.

Lu Jiu made no attempt to keep the call from me. He gave a rough description of the woman, but half the features belonged to the dead person and half to Tao Yuan.

Another piece of misleading information for the police.

Then the woman on the call supplied the most important identifying detail.

The woman's head had been injured, apparently some time ago. Her skull showed signs of a treated fracture, as though she'd been struck with a blunt object.

That certainly counted as a significant identifying feature.

Apparently, he'd planned out every piece of evidence long ago.

And something else made my scalp prickle...

Lu Jiu must have been there when Zheng Shaoming disposed of the body. Otherwise, he couldn't have known about the skull injury.

He told the woman to identify the remains as a pimp, saying she and “Tao Yuan” came from the same hometown, and “Tao Yuan” worked for her.

She'd been missing for two weeks.

Visual identification was easy enough. But what about the DNA?

“Tao Yuan has no blood relatives who can be contacted. If the police want a DNA test, they'll have to collect material from places where she lived.”

He held up the black plastic bag in his hand.

“This contains the dead woman's hair, skin cells, and bodily fluids.”