Silent reading mo du vol.., p.6
Silent Reading: Mo Du Vol. 1, page 6
“This was the first proper case Wenzhou and I had ever handled, so it meant something special to us. We never forgot it. And it was so sad to see that kid without anyone to watch over him that sometimes I’d pick him up and look after him for a few days. He spent more time with us back then, and we gradually realized that the kid had a special talent.”
“For what?”
Tao Ran paused, then said softly, “Crime.”
Not “deduction,” Lang Qiao immediately noticed. Not “investigation.” Crime, specifically. But before she could press any further, Tao Ran fell silent, waved her off, and strode swiftly away.
Chapter 6
“D…DEPUTY SERGEANT T-TAO!”
Tao Ran turned around to see someone sprinting wildly toward him. It was the district bureau’s Little Four-Eyes—Xiao Haiyang, the one with the rapid-fire mouth.
It seemed Xiao Haiyang hadn’t had time yet to replace his broken glasses; they sat lopsided on his face, falling below his cheekbone as he skidded to a stop in front of Tao Ran. Xiao Haiyang’s features had a stiffness reminiscent of a facelift, and his expression was strangely severe, yet he was gasping for breath, panting so violently that Tao Ran felt a sympathetic choking sensation in his own chest. He wiped his sweaty palms on his trousers, then adjusted his glasses, which clung for dear life to the end of his nose. Finally, taking his phone out of his pocket so that he could read his notes, he began, “Deputy Sergeant Tao, I have a report for you.”
Tao Ran waited patiently for Xiao Haiyang’s breathing to steady. “Don’t panic. Take your time.”
“You see, during yesterday’s door-to-door inquiries on the West Side, I noticed that the living situation in that building is pretty chaotic. The turnover rate for tenants is high in general, and tends to be seasonal. Tenants change jobs and move so frequently that it’s less like an apartment complex and more like a fleabag extended-stay motel. The people living there aren’t very close to each other, except for those who come from the same area and watch each other’s backs. For all our efforts yesterday, we didn’t gather much useful information.”
“Mm.” Tao Ran nodded, encouraging him subtly.
“But one of He Zhongyi’s housemates did come from the same province as him. His name is…” Xiao Haiyang checked his notes. “Zhao Yulong. He and the deceased were very close, and we were told that he helped He Zhongyi get his delivery job. But Ma Xiaowei said Zhao Yulong had gone home for the past few days.”
Tao Ran raised his eyebrows in surprise. This Zhao Yulong was precisely the person he was looking for.
“Last night, I found the person in charge of stock delivery for that café chain and got Zhao Yulong’s contact details,” Xiao Haiyang continued. “After I called Zhao Yulong and told him what happened, he promised to take the last long-distance bus back to Yancheng that same night. I’m meant to meet him today.”
Tao Ran looked at Xiao Haiyang contemplatively. “I thought the district bureau was focusing its investigation on Ma Xiaowei.”
Xiao Haiyang’s face tightened even further. He fiddled with the hem of his button-down, perhaps unconsciously. “Well, something feels off about that mysterious person who gave He Zhongyi the phone. There are still too many unanswered questions for us to be certain that Ma Xiaowei was the perpetrator. I said that to our sergeant as well…but he told me to stop digging for no reason, and not to think I’m always right.”
At that, Tao Ran’s face darkened, his kindly smile disappearing. “What time are you meeting Zhao Yulong?”
“Oh.” Xiao Haiyang checked his watch. “In an hour, if his bus is on time.”
“I’ll go with you,” Tao Ran said decisively. “Come on!”
***
WHILE JUNIOR OFFICERS pounded the streets under the hot sun, Lord Fei reclined against the soft leather of his revolving office chair, his temple propped against his fingers. The laptop on his desk displayed a full encapsulation of He Zhongyi’s brief, unremarkable life. After a pause, Fei Du found a number in his contact list and dialed it.
“Hey, Chang-xiong? It’s me.” Fei Du listened to the reply over the phone, then bowed his head with a laugh. “Yeah. I’m a bit embarrassed to admit it, but there’s something I really need your help with.”
Less than half an hour later, Fei Du had successfully acquired what he’d sought: footage from the security cameras near Chengguang Mansion from the night the mansion opened.
It was lunch hour. Fei Du heated a bottle of sweetened milk in the kitchen microwave, complimented the secretary’s figure in passing, then locked himself in his office and put on his earphones. Through them, he looped the same song he’d played on repeat in his car. Then he pulled out a sheet of A4 paper. Using an abstract style of drawing that only he understood, he sketched a simple map, then twirled the fountain pen and thought for a moment. He drew a few light circles, then wrote “8:00 p.m. to 9:30 p.m.” Another pause followed, and then he changed “8:00” to “8:30.”
Fei Du drew a few files from the large collection of security footage and compiled them. Then he chose the sections of the footage timestamped 8:30 to 9:30 and fast-forwarded through them. Scenes from multiple different cameras flickered on-screen. Fei Du leaned back lazily in his chair, every ounce of focus in him seeming to concentrate in his eyes.
***
LUO WENZHOU STROLLED PAST an intersection in Huashi, a briefcase under his arm and his flashy sunglasses set firmly on his face. Now and then, he raised his arm to hail a passing taxi, but none were vacant. Seeing that, the drivers of unlicensed cabs—a local specialty in Huashi—called out to him in unison from their parking spots on the side of the street.
“Hey, man, need a ride?”
“Where’re you headed?”
“It’s cheap—and faster than a taxi!”
Luo Wenzhou inspected the platoon fastidiously, at last pausing in front of a young man with a flattop. The young man was extremely shrewd. He opened the door for Luo Wenzhou immediately. “Hop in, sir. Where are you headed?”
Luo Wenzhou didn’t say a word. He bent down and got in.
The driver switched the AC on and pulled the car out of the line. He was very young, no older than twenty. Compared to his comrades, with their grease-slick style of wooing customers, he seemed inexperienced and cautious. Glancing at Luo Wenzhou in the rearview mirror, he politely reminded his customer, “You haven’t said where you’d like to go, sir…?”
“Just keep driving.” Luo Wenzhou took his shades off, and his piercing gaze met the driver’s in the mirror. The driver froze, his expression growing nervous. Unhurried, Luo Wenzhou opened the briefcase and pulled out a photocopied document. “I have an anonymous report here.” He flipped casually through it.
The driver’s face immediately fell, and his car nearly grazed the one next to it, which responded with a long, loud honk.
“Don’t worry. I’m not from your district bureau,” said Luo Wenzhou. “Keep driving.”
***
BY THAT POINT, Tao Ran and Xiao Haiyang had successfully met up with Zhao Yulong, He Zhongyi’s friend who hailed from the same province. The three entered a small noodle shop together.
Zhao Yulong was well past middle age. Despite his continued difficulties finding a foothold in Yancheng after all his years struggling to do so, he looked far more dignified than the young men who met with closed doors at every turn. The fatigue of his nearly twenty-hour bus journey was plain on Zhao Yulong’s face, and he blinked hard, the wide bags under his eyes drooping. “I really never expected anything to happen to him… May I smoke, officer?”
Nobody was about to stop anyone from smoking in the little noodle shop; it was already chock-full of men puffing out gray clouds. Zhao Yulong took two hard drags and rubbed his face.
“Zhongyi was an honest kid,” he said. “Lots of the others go to billiard rooms or those game parlors to bet on chess and cards and mahjong, but he wasn’t like that. He never went. He worked hard and made money honestly. Said he wanted to bring it home so his mom could see the doctor. Tell me why a kid who never stole or gambled or caused any trouble was the one to… Ask whatever you like, officers. I’ll tell you everything I know.”
Tao Ran studied Zhao Yulong. He noticed that, although the man ate with his chopsticks in his right hand, he held his cigarette with the left. The handle of his teacup also pointed left, among other signifiers of left-handedness. This was a common phenomenon. In earlier times, parents had forcibly “corrected” children who ate left-handed, so that their elbows wouldn’t battle anyone else’s for table space.
Tao Ran took a photo out of his wallet. It showed the shoes on the deceased’s feet. “I’d like to ask—did you lend He Zhongyi these shoes?”
Zhao Yulong bent down for a look. His eyes turned a little red, and he nodded, looking dazed. “Those are mine. Was he…was he wearing these shoes when he died?”
“Yes,” said Tao Ran. “Do you know why he borrowed them?”
Zhao Yulong seemed bewildered at first. He pondered it carefully, then said in an uncertain tone, “I think…he was going someplace fancy to meet someone. Somewhere called…Something-guang… The Chengguang Building? Manor…?”
Xiao Haiyang sat up abruptly. “Chengguang Mansion!”
“Right, right.” Zhao Yulong nodded repeatedly. “That was the name.”
“Who was he meeting? What for?”
Zhao Yulong shook his head. “I asked, but he wouldn’t say. That kid was tight-lipped, but his intentions were always on the straight and narrow anyway. It didn’t seem right to probe when all he wanted was a pair of shoes.”
“Mr. Zhao,” Xiao Haiyang followed up quickly, “He Zhongyi had a new phone, right?”
“Ah—yes, he did,” Zhao Yulong confirmed. “That white one, you mean? He usually couldn’t even bring himself to use it—he stuck to his old one. He’d just take it out from time to time and look at it. There were layers of screen protectors on it.”
“Do you know who gave him that phone?” Xiao Haiyang inquired.
Zhao Yulong’s brow slowly furrowed.
“What is it?” asked Tao Ran.
“Well, at first he said it came from some other friend from our province. I thought that was strange, since he’d never talked about anyone else he knew around here. He was naive, and I worried that he’d met someone bad. Think about it—buying him something that expensive out of the blue like that? Doesn’t that sound like someone just trying to butter him up for some other reason?” Zhao Yulong tapped the ash from his cigarette. “I wouldn’t stop asking about it, and he finally told me that he’d gotten into a fight with someone while he was making deliveries. They beat him up, but he never fought back. They must’ve regretted it or something, because they gave him that phone as an apology.”
Tao Ran and Xiao Haiyang exchanged a look. Nobody had mentioned this when they were making their rounds, and it was odd. If He Zhongyi had been in a fight and received the phone as an apology, what was there to conceal? If the story was true, then why had He Zhongyi acted so cagey and pretended he’d gotten it from a friend? And He Zhongyi lived with a number of people, but nobody had noticed that he’d been beaten up, so the physical aspect of the fight couldn’t have been severe. In light of that, why had this person given him such an expensive apology gift?
They’d thought that investigating the deceased’s personal connections would easily reveal the truth, but all at once, everything had grown even more tangled.
Zhao Yulong wasn’t certain of the mysterious phone’s exact origin, but he was able to provide a rough time frame for the fight He Zhongyi had mentioned. All Tao Ran and Xiao Haiyang could do was follow that lead to the delivery company He Zhongyi worked with and search for more clues there.
***
THAT AFTERNOON, the sky—which had been infinitely clear and blue—suddenly changed its mood. Dark clouds came out of nowhere to lay siege to the brilliant rays of sunlight, and a humid wind whistled gloomily. A sudden rainstorm seemed on the cusp of erupting.
The unlicensed taxi driver dropped Luo Wenzhou off near a subway entrance, but Luo Wenzhou didn’t leave immediately. He got out, but then pressed a hand to the car door, looking all around. When his gaze flickered across a van by the intersection, it abruptly began to move, driving slowly off as if Luo Wenzhou had caught it red-handed. Luo Wenzhou stooped to the half-open car window and said in the driver’s ear, “Someone’s watching you. Careful. If anything happens, let me know.”
The driver’s forehead beaded with sweat despite his vehicle’s air conditioning. He quickly nodded. Luo Wenzhou gave him a searching look, then turned and walked to the subway station.
Just as he went through security there, his phone rang.
“Tao Ran? What’s up?” he asked, tapping his card on the reader and walking to the platform. Suddenly, he stopped. “What? Repeat that name.”
***
THE WIND SLAMMED the loose window in Fei Du’s office shut. Papers scattered across the floor. Fei Du’s hand, draped across the mouse, finally moved.
Fei Du was focused on one particular frame of the footage. He zoomed in, then rewound the video. The timestamp was approximately 8:50 p.m.
The footage was from a camera situated on the very fringes of the area, almost beyond the outskirts of Chengguang Mansion. It faced a small stone-paved lane. The thoroughfare was close to water, so there were plenty of bugs around at the beginning of summer, meaning that few people passed this way after dark—and those who did walked quickly. Yet one hesitant figure had been pacing under a streetlight for a long time.
The video revealed only the poor, coarse-looking fit of the man’s suit and his short, slight figure. He loitered and smoked several cigarettes, one hand gripping a brown paper bag tightly. Occasionally, he would look in one direction for a few seconds. After a while, he seemed to receive a call; he spoke on his phone for a moment, then walked quickly out of the frame.
Fei Du watched that chunk of footage several times, but he wasn’t sure whether the man in the video was the dead man he’d met only once. Picking up his car keys, he closed the laptop, and left. Forty minutes later, Fei Du arrived in Huashi’s central business district.
With a glance up at the darkening sky, he retrieved an umbrella from the trunk of his car, then walked toward the green space near Chengguang Mansion. He knew this place well; his path barely wavered, and he soon found the security camera.
The air was so saturated with water vapor that rain seemed on the verge of falling. Fei Du examined the position of the camera, recalling the direction the man had been looking in. Then he turned. At the end of the little lane, he made out Chengguang Mansion. Next, Fei Du’s gaze fell upon the nearby trash can. Several butts lay quietly on the pebbled ashtray.
Few people passed this way, so the can was clean; nobody at all seemed to use it. The cleaners only attended to it once every ten days, or maybe even once every two weeks. Pulling a silk handkerchief from his pocket, Fei Du picked the cigarette butts up with great care.
Then his phone rang. He wrapped the butts unhurriedly in the handkerchief before taking out his phone. Seeing the name on the display, he smiled. “Do you miss me that much, Tao Ran-ge? Does every day seem like a lifetime?”
But Tao Ran’s tone was serious. “Were you at Chengguang Mansion two nights ago?”
“Yeah.” Fei Du paused. “Why?”
“With someone named Zhang Donglai?”
Fei Du froze. Before he could respond, a thunderclap shook the ground, and torrential rain whooshed down.
Chapter 7
LANG QIAO MARCHED QUICKLY into the city bureau building with a compact umbrella in her hand, leaving a long trail of wet shoeprints behind her. As she climbed the steps, she slipped and almost face-planted. Scrabbling pathetically for the handrail, she looked up and saw Luo Wenzhou coming down from the director general’s floor.
He met her eyes, his face unusually somber. Lang Qiao reached up to push her wet bangs from her forehead. “What’s wrong, boss? You look so serious it’s freaking me out.”
“Tao Ran and Little Four-Eyes from the district bureau followed a clue from He Zhongyi’s roommate today and figured out that he might’ve met up with an unknown person before he died,” Luo Wenzhou said in an undertone. Tall and long-legged, he walked rapidly; Lang Qiao had to jog to keep up. “This person reportedly got into a fight with He Zhongyi for one reason or another while He Zhongyi was at work, then gave him that phone as an apology.”
When Lang Qiao heard his explanation, she could practically feel her brain steam through her damp hair. “They gave him…a whole phone? Over a fight? I fight with people on the subway every day. Why hasn’t that ever happened to me?”
Uncharacteristically, Luo Wenzhou didn’t banter back. “Tao Ran and Little Four-Eyes followed He Zhongyi’s delivery route and asked questions along the way. They found an eyewitness in a chain café. The witness said that, a few days ago, He Zhongyi was leaving after his delivery when he got into a physical altercation with someone near the café’s entrance. The café’s security camera caught the license plate of the other party’s car.”
As he spoke, they arrived at the interrogation room. On the other side of the one-way mirror, Tao Ran sat across from a man in his early twenties. The man’s hair was bleached a flaxen blond, and he was outfitted in an array of showy branded clothes. It was clear that he was as short-tempered as he was young, and he seemed to be suppressing his anger with great effort—Lang Qiao wouldn’t have been surprised if steam started spewing from his ears.
