Chapter 5
Edward Quan ·
12
Qin Xuan finished.
The interview room was utterly silent.
Opposite him, I felt cold spread from my feet through my whole body.
Every word was Chinese. Every sentence coherent and logical.
Put together, they made no sense to me.
There was no reverence for life in his story. No protection for the woman he loved.
Only a grotesque ledger of debts and repayments, dragging everyone into hell.
It was horrifying. Barely human.
Suppressing my shock, I tried to fit in the missing pieces.
“So Qin Zhu didn't take the university entrance exam the following year?
“Was the strain of killing someone too much?”
He nodded.
“Yes. He's timid. He shut himself in the house when he got home. When the exam came, he didn't even enter the examination hall.
“Then… our father's condition worsened. Money got tighter. He gave up school and went out to work.
“I owed him again.”
His repeated talk of debts irritated me intensely. I turned my ring without thinking.
“What about Wang Kai?”
I brought us back to the central question.
“What did he do? You said he caused Nansheng's death. But from what you've just told me, he had nothing to do with it.
“Why did you still want to kill him?”
Qin Xuan's mouth twitched.
“The day after she died, I got an anonymous message.”
He spoke slowly.
“It contained a blurred photograph… of my brother and me carrying that sack.
“It said that if we didn't want the photograph to reach the police, we had to transfer five thousand yuan to a specified bank account.”
My fists tightened.
“Was the account in Wang Kai's name?”
“Yes.
“I only had fifteen hundred yuan for living expenses.
“My brother had brought me the tuition money for my second year. With that, I barely scraped together the five thousand.
“But it was only the beginning.”
His voice grew numb.
“For more than a decade, he clung to us like a bloodsucking leech.
“Every few days, he used the secret to demand money.
“Never a huge amount at once, but so often… like being cut apart slowly with a blunt knife.
“That's why my brother worked himself to the bone and still lived in poverty.
“Most of what he earned went into the bottomless pit called Wang Kai.
“The blackmail was a major reason he had to leave school and struggle for a living so early.
“Then, last month, I was diagnosed with cancer.”
His eyes turned cold.
“I thought I was dying.
“Would Wang Kai leave my brother alone after I died?
“No. He would squeeze him dry, or drive him over the edge.”
He looked up.
“So before I died, I had to clear the way for him.
“I had to kill Wang Kai.”
13
I watched him without expression.
I kept looking until he grew uncomfortable and glanced away.
“Qin Xuan.
“You're still not telling me the truth. How do you expect me to help you?”
I held his eyes.
“Your story has too many holes. If I can hear them, so can an experienced prosecutor.
“If you want to escape conviction, you have to trust me completely. Tell me everything you've buried, everything you can't bear to bring into the light. Leave nothing out.”
His throat moved.
“What's… wrong with it?”
“The two most important parts.”
I held up two fingers.
“First, Jiang Nansheng's death.
“Second, Wang Kai's blackmail.
“I checked the original file.
“The autopsy report clearly states that she drowned in the early hours. Your timing doesn't fit.”
I paused to let that sink in, trying to suppress the possibility that sent ice down my spine.
“Qin Xuan.
“When you were disposing of her body… she wasn't actually dead, was she?”
His face twitched.
He opened his mouth as if to deny it. Under my stare, the last of his hope ebbed away.
He lowered his head.
“Yes… We put her in the sack and carried her to the lake… Just before we threw her in… she woke up…”
I had suspected it. Hearing him say it still made my fists clench until my nails dug into my palms.
He continued as though describing something that had nothing to do with him.
“She struggled inside the sack… My brother was terrified. He wanted to let her out…
“But there was no way back… If she left alive, we were both finished…”
“Then what?”
My voice was cold.
“Despite my brother trying to stop me…
“I held her head under the shallow water at the edge until she… stopped moving…”
Silence filled the room again.
I could hear my own teeth grinding.
But I couldn't let my feelings show yet.
I took several deep breaths.
“So you deliberately blurred that detail earlier to ease your own conscience?
“Let me say this again. You cannot hide anything from me.
“Anything that hurts your case is simply material I need for the defense strategy. I won't disclose it to a third party.
“My only goal is to help you stay alive.”
14
I gave him no time to recover.
“All right. Now we've cleared up Nansheng's death.
“But the blackmail doesn't make sense either.
“An ordinary person, by a lake late at night, sees two men carrying a sack to dispose of a body.
“What would his first reaction be? Fear. Panic. Calling the police. That's how an ordinary person would react.
“But Wang Kai's first thought was to take a photograph, then somehow find exactly the right people to blackmail the very next day?
“Stop inventing stories, Qin Xuan. Trust me. This is your only chance to live.”
He lowered his head and couldn't meet my eyes.
Looking at him, I remembered the devoted man in his first story, silently enduring more than a decade for his dead lover.
“That Qin Xuan in your first account—the man who endured all those years after his girlfriend's wrongful death… You didn't invent him entirely, did you?”
His face went white. Disbelief filled his eyes.
The last of his defenses collapsed. Sweat broke out on his forehead.
“No. That story was based on Wang Kai.
“He was Nansheng's classmate. He'd always loved her in secret…”
His voice trembled with pain.
“After she died, he never believed it was suicide.
“He spent all those years quietly investigating her death.
“He came to see my brother and me several times…
“When my brother learned I had lung cancer, he broke down.
“He couldn't endure the pressure and guilt anymore.
“He thought it wouldn't affect me now, anyway. He wanted to tell Wang Kai, who was still investigating, what had really happened.
“He wanted release…”
Qin Xuan lost control.
“But I couldn't accept it!
“I couldn't let what happened that year come out!
“I couldn't let my brother go to prison after I died!
“I couldn't ruin his whole life! I couldn't keep owing him so much!
“So I acted first!
“I asked Wang Kai to meet me and killed him.
“I had cancer. Living or dying didn't matter.
“It was the only way to silence him for good and make my brother abandon the idea of confessing…”
At last, the layers of fog around the twins' murder case fell away.
The truth was ugly enough to suffocate.
A brotherly bond founded on mutual indebtedness had become twisted and corrupt, creating one tragedy after another.
15
I looked at the man governed by that warped logic and decided to tear away his final mask.
“In the first two stories you told me…
“You deliberately turned Wang Kai into a rapist and a contemptible blackmailer.”