Lang Qiao charged into the City Bureau building carrying a folding umbrella, leaving a string of sopping wet footprints.
She slipped on her way up the stairs and nearly fell on her face; desperately grabbing the railing, she looked up just in time to see Luo Wenzhou coming down from the floor Director Zhang's office was on.
Luo Wenzhou met her eyes, his face unusually grave.
Lang Qiao twisted her wet bangs off her forehead. "Chief, what is the matter? When you look so serious, I start getting nervous."
"Today, following a lead given to them by He Zhongyi's roommate, Tao Ran and the sub-bureau's Little Glasses deduced that He Zhongyi may have encountered a mysterious individual before his death," Luo Wenzhou said quietly. "For certain reasons, this individual apparently had a slight conflict with He Zhongyi while he was working. Afterwards, as a formal apology, this person gave him that cell phone."
Luo Wenzhou was tall and long-legged; he walked very quickly. Lang Qiao had to trot to keep up with him. Hearing his words, she felt her brains were about to evaporate along with the water in her hair. Somewhat hazily, she repeated, "A slight conflict? And…a phone for that? I have conflicts with people on the subway every day, how come no one's ever given me a phone?"
For once Luo Wenzhou didn't pick up her joke. "Tao Ran and Xiao Haiyang went back to the distribution center the victim worked at to investigate. They made inquiries along his delivery route and finally found an eye-witness in the shopfront of one of the chain coffee shops. The witness said that some time back, when He Zhongyi had finished making his deliveries and was getting ready to leave, he really did get into a fight with someone not far from the shop's door. The shop's security camera happened to catch the person's license plate number."
As they spoke, the two of them had arrived outside an interrogation room. Through the one-way glass, they could see Tao Ran sitting across from a young man.
He was around twenty, with hair dyed the color of flax, dressed in luxury brand name clothes. He was clearly desperately trying to force down his anger; fury was nearly steaming out of the seven apertures of his face.
"Yes, I may have beat up this loser, so what? I've beat up a lot of people. But this really has nothing to do with me. If you don't believe me, ask Fei Du. Didn't we go together that night? Officer Tao, let me tell you, if it weren't for Master Fei's sake, you guys arresting me like this, I fucking…I'd already…"
Lang Qiao looked blankly at the aggressive young man in the interrogation room. "This is the second suspect? Why have you brought him to the City Bureau?"
"On the night he died, the victim had said he was going to a place called Chengguang Mansion. That person in there was at Chengguang Mansion that day." Luo Wenzhou sighed. "His name is Zhang Donglai. He's the son of a rather prestigious local businessman."
"Oh. A rich kid." Lang Qiao blinked. "So?"
"He's also Director Zhang's nephew," said Luo Wenzhou.
Lang Qiao stared.
Before she could restart her blue-screened brain, a civil policeman on duty ran over and quietly said to Luo Wenzhou, "Captain Luo, there's a Mr. Fei here, says he wants to see Deputy Tao."
Fei Du politely thanked the duty officer who had poured him a drink. He took it and drank a mouthful, then put it aside—the coffee they had poured him was instant, and it had a peculiar flavor of sesame oil.
He looked around at the décor inside the City Bureau; he felt that it was all in poor taste, and badly made to boot. There were flecks of paint on the corner of the table; it had probably just been painted. There was still a faint smell.
When Luo Wenzhou came in, he saw Fei Du earnestly scrutinizing the grain of their table. He was frowning, his expression deeply gloomy. If he hadn't been able to see under the table, Luo Wenzhou would almost have thought there was a body hidden there.
Fei Du looked up at him. He didn't seem at all surprised. He nodded simply and said, "Do sit down."
Luo Wenzhou: "…"
The brat took this for his own house!
Fei Du stirred his sesame-flavored coffee with a plastic spoon. "Where's Tao Ran?" he asked.
"He's busy." Luo Wenzhou pulled out a pen and spread out his notebook. Without any useless small talk, he got right to the point. "On the night of the twentieth, the day before yesterday, were you with Zhang Donglai? Think before you answer."
Fei Du leaned back in his chair, slightly raised his head, and untidily crossed his long legs. While his posture couldn't be called unseemly, it still gave the impression that this place couldn't quite contain him.
He looked at Luo Wenzhou with a smile that wasn't quite a smile and asked in turn, "Captain Luo, am I a suspect?"
Luo Wenzhou looked at him coldly.
Fei Du spread his hands indifferently. "Then you had better be a little more polite to me. If I'm not a suspect, a summons for questioning isn't compulsory. I can leave whenever I want if I'm unhappy."
"Oh." Luo Wenzhou put down his pen. "I have to make you happy first? All right, why don't you tell me how I should do that? Should I sing you a song, or go out and buy you a bag of candy?"
Fei Du, who had been turned down with some milk candies by Officer Tao the night before, had nothing to say.
The storm outside beat against the window so hard it rattled. The two people in the room, each finding the other displeasing to the eye, sat across from each other in silence.
After a while, perhaps thinking he was being childish, Luo Wenzhou laughed derisively, got out a pack of cigarettes, tapped it lightly against the table, and was about to light up.
"I do mind," Fei Du said without having been asked. "I've had a touch of pharyngitis recently."
"If you lost your voice," Luo Wenzhou said with a false smile, "we wouldn't be far from world peace."
But all the same he put down his lighter and twirled the unlit cigarette in his hand several times. "Zhang Donglai says that he met you at the door of Chengguang Mansion around eight the night before last. From then until midnight, when you left, you can vouch for his whereabouts."
"I arrived a little before eight and left at ten past midnight," Fei Du said coolly. "I did in fact speak to him at both of those times. The events arranged by the owner were rather 'abundant.' If I said he was in my line of sight the whole time, that would be illogical, and you wouldn't believe me, anyway."
Luo Wenzhou's hands were busily tearing at the cigarette paper. "Why? Weren't you two raising hell together the whole time?"
Fei Du rested his elbows on the table and leaned forward slightly. The smell of cologne mixed with rain wafted over like threads of silk. "Because I don't like sharing partners with other men.—Captain Luo, if you ask me such a boring and disingenuous question again, I'll have to say goodbye."
"I hadn't noticed you were so picky." Luo Wenzhou delivered this strictly business-like taunt without looking up, then said, "In other words, you can't testify that Zhang Donglai didn't kill anyone at Chengguang Mansion that day."
"I can't, but there are people who can. I can have everyone who came in contact with him that night over here within two hours. A handbag per person should cover their travel expenses."
Luo Wenzhou's pen jabbed at the table. "Are you hinting that you're planning to use your wealth to falsify evidence?"
"What, a few fashion models perjure themselves, you're worried the cream of the police force won't be able to get the truth out of them?" Fei Du shook his head. "No, I'm telling you why Zhang Donglai can't be the murderer."
Fei Du leaned back in his chair again, widening the distance between him and Luo Wenzhou. Drawing his voice out in the indolent tone peculiar to him, he said, "If it was Zhang Donglai, doing it himself would clearly be unwise. It's entirely in his power to have the victim kidnapped, then illegally detained or killed in secret. Either way, the population of the West District is transient; dozens of people leave without saying goodbye every day. If one person goes missing, no one will notice. Even if someone reported it to the police, there would still be no one to take heed."
Hearing this speech that entirely discounted the law and the state, Luo Wenzhou's hands itched uncontrollably; he wanted to give this scum Fei a good beating. With a great effort, he resisted. The tip of his pen ripped through the paper, leaving an angry hole. "Killers often aren't 'wise' when they kill."
"Oh, you're talking about a crime of passion." Fei Du paused. "Aside from the injury that knocked the victim unconscious, was there any other blunt force trauma?"
"Are you questioning me, or am I questioning you?" said Luo Wenzhou.
"Sounds like the answer is 'no,'" said Fei Du in a rather calm voice. "In a crime of passion murder, the murderer's emotions erupt, his rage instantly reaching its zenith; it will usually vent itself like an eruption as well. With a victim unconscious on the ground with no power to resist, you would expect to see his head crushed like a watermelon.—He was strangled?"
He leaned his elbows on the chair's armrests, his fingertips propping up his chin. He smiled. "Strangling is a lengthy and enjoyable means of killing; sometimes it even has 'that kind' of flavor to it. Would a person dying of thirst be willing to sit down and 'sip tea?' Personally, I think that sequence doesn't seem very natural."
Luo Wenzhou's expression was severe. "You think killing someone is 'sipping tea?'"
"It's only a metaphor." Fei Du shrugged, focusing on the minor issue while avoiding the larger one. "Zhang Donglai wouldn't kill someone. Even if he killed someone, he wouldn't dump the body. Even if he dumped the body, he still wouldn't dump it in an alley in the West District, where he doesn't know his way around. That's my analysis from the rational point of view. From the intuitive angle—Zhang Donglai is a hopeless coward. When he gets angry, at most he'll curse someone out in public. He doesn't have the guts to kill."
From the time Fei had sat down, these last sentences were the only ones he'd spoken that sounded something like human speech.
Zhang Donglai was Director Zhang's older brother's son. He was a late in life child, and his family was well-off; he was spoiled rotten, delicate and useless. Luo Wenzhou had seen him a few times; he really didn't think he had either the courage or the psychological quality.
The rest would have to rely on the police force's investigation. He wouldn't get anything out of Fei Du. Luo Wenzhou closed his notebook and stood up to leave.
"Hey." Behind him, Fei Du suddenly called him to a stop.
Luo Wenzhou looked back; a small object came hurtling towards him. He automatically reached out and grabbed it, then found that Fei Du had tossed him a USB drive.
Fei Du said, "In a criminal case, there are several circumstances that can easily attract public notice. First, the scale is large; for example, a terrorist attack; that's news. Second, the method is especially abnormal and brutal; for example, something like a serial killer that turns into colorful urban legend; that's a novelty. Third, the victim belongs to a low-risk group; for example, students and wage-earners who live well-regulated lives, the law-abiding middle class; that excites group panic out of identification with the victim. Fourth, something that strikes at the heart of a deep-seated and long-standing social conflict; for example, matters touching public rights, privilege, the moral deficiencies of the social elite; that's a topic.—Your case here doesn't touch on any of these, but from the start it has received an unusual degree of notice."
The dull thunder, just about to lay down its arms, crackled indistinctly somewhere very remote, giving his words a lengthy reverberation.
"Once the temporary unusual notice had passed, according to reason, people would soon have lost interest. But now Zhang Donglai has been implicated, too." Fei Du stood and went up to Luo Wenzhou; brushing past him, he softly said, "Is that a coincidence, or is someone playing you?"
Luo Wenzhou's expression hardened.
"No need to thank me. I'm doing it for Tao Ran." Fei Du picked up his umbrella and left without another look at him.
"Fei Du," Luo Wenzhou suddenly said, "it's next week, right? Seven whole years. You ought to start afresh."
Fei Du ignored him. Maintaining his even steps, he walked away without a look back.