Chapter 5

“The driver’s family is still trying to frame me. The victim’s family has a recording of the call.”

“Received,” he replied.

Then another line: “For the time being, preserve all communications and any evidence of your whereabouts. We may need them at any point.”

I stared at those words.

Preserve them.

At any point.

They had found something I didn’t know about.

I got back to my rented apartment at two in the afternoon.

Someone was standing outside.

My eldest aunt.

A plastic bag of fruit hung from her hand.

When she saw me coming upstairs, she stepped forward with an awkward smile.

“Yanqing, I brought you some mandarins—”

“Come inside.”

I opened the door. She followed.

The room was small. A bed, a desk, a wardrobe. On the windowsill sat the pothos I had been growing for two years.

She put the mandarins on the desk and looked around.

“Living here on your own… it can’t be easy.”

“Auntie, just say what you came to say.”

Her smile faded.

She sat on the edge of the bed and rubbed her hands together.

“Your mother sent me.”

“I see.”

“She says… that fake license… Yanwen did it himself. She knew nothing about it.”

I pulled out the chair and sat down.

“That’s not the version she gave me at the station.”

“She’s changed her story. Says she’s a victim too. Yanwen kept it from her—”

“Do you believe that?”

My aunt didn’t answer.

I opened the screenshot of last night’s call history.

“This is her call. Nine thirteen last night. Four minutes and twenty-seven seconds. Her exact words were, ‘Your brother hit someone while driving drunk. Go and take the blame for him.’”

My aunt looked at the screen.

“When was the fake license made? Last year. When did my mother ask me to send her my ID photograph? Last year too. She said she needed it for my records. She asked, and I sent it.”

I switched to the photo gallery and found the screenshot of last year’s message.

“Here. Her WeChat message from last March, asking for my photograph. Look at the date.”

My aunt leaned closer. Her fingers were trembling.

“The police will find out when that fake license was registered. If it was March or April last year, it lines up perfectly.”

My aunt turned toward the window.

“I’m not telling you all this just to keep going on about it. But you’re here, so I want you to see clearly. This wasn’t something they dreamed up today. It was a plan. They prepared it in advance. The shoes, the copy of my ID, the fake license. One thing after another put in that car. Waiting for a time when they needed me to take the fall.”

She gripped the handles of the plastic bag. Held them tight for a long time.

“What on earth is your mother thinking…”

“It’s simple enough. Her daughter can spend a few years in prison for her son and still have a life afterward. But if her son goes to prison, her grandson grows up without a father.”

My aunt stood.

“I’ll go and talk to her.”

“Auntie, nothing you say will help. There’s only one thing you can do for me now. Stop carrying her messages.”

She picked up the bag of mandarins, stood uncertainly for a moment, then set it down again.

“Keep these. Eat them.”

She left.

Once the door was closed, I took the bag into the kitchen, washed a mandarin, peeled it, and ate.

Sour. Bitter.

Halfway through, my phone rang.

The younger officer.

An actual call this time. Not WeChat.

“Zhao Yanqing, can you come to the station at ten tomorrow morning?”

“What’s happened?”

“There’s been a development. We need to confirm a few things with you in person.”

“What development?”

He paused.

“We’ve recovered the complete dashcam recording.”

“Hadn’t you already recovered it?”

“Only part of it before. Our technicians retrieved the full video today.”

“What’s in the full recording?”

Another pause.

“You’ll see when you come in tomorrow.”

He hung up.

I held the half-eaten mandarin. Juice trickled between my fingers.

The complete recording.

He had said they had only recovered part of it before.

That part had been enough to show the driver was a man. Enough to clear me.

But he had gone out of his way to call me in.

He hadn’t sent a WeChat message.

He had called.

There had to be something else on that full video.

Something bigger than a drunk driver hitting someone.

At ten the next morning, I arrived at the station on time.

They didn’t take me into yesterday’s office.