"A car crash?" Luo Wenzhou asked in astonishment. "Why do you need me for a car crash? Send the traffic police next door to deal with it."
Lu Youliang said, "Have you heard of Zhou Junmao?"
"Which Zhou Junmao?" Luo Wenzhou gave a start, feeling the radiant afternoon light become turbulent. "Not that Zhou Junmao?"
Next to him, Fei Du paused. He silently raised his head.
Zhou Junmao was a famous overseas Chinese national, seventy-three years old this year. He had been born in the East Daogou District on the outskirts of Yan City and sojourned overseas when he was young. Starting from nothing, he had worked hard dealing in building materials, and had later built the Zhou Clan Conglomerate, an enormous multinational enterprise. In recent years, as he'd gotten older, he had perhaps begun to think of returning to his roots; the core of the Zhou Clan's investments had begun trending back to China.
Zhou Junmao wasn't an ordinary celebrity. He was low-key and lived simply. He was very public-spirited; he had in particular made outstanding contributions towards building up the infrastructure of his hometown. He was responsible for half of all the prosperity in the East Daogou District; there was a road there called "Junmao Road," the only road in the whole Yan City area named for a living person.
Half an hour ago, Zhou Junmao had been en route from the airport to his Yan City residence when his car had met with a tailgating truck. The rear of the car had been smashed in, and the old man sitting in the backseat had died on the spot. The driver and the bodyguard in the passenger's seat had been seriously injured and were receiving emergency care at the hospital.
This was a very bitter traffic accident; it could be imagined that there would be a dramatic impact on the Zhou Clan's stock once the news got out.
And now, the Zhou family's younger son, who happened to be in Yan City, was maintaining that his father had been murdered and insisting that the police handle it.
"Director Ceng has already gone over with the medical examiners. We'll go to the scene to have a look, say a word to the traffic police team, then go to the Zhou house." Luo Wenzhou was heading towards the airport highway, taking along Lang Qiao, who'd been on duty, Xiao Haiyang, who hadn't felt comfortable leaving early on his first day at work, and an extraneous Fei Du. "Relax, it won't be another month of working overtime. We don't even know what's happened yet. Even if the car crash was deliberate, I figure the economic crimes division will take the lead, and we'll be assisting them at most."
Lang Qiao stretched out her head curiously. "President Fei, you know so many rich people. Have you met Zhou Junmao?"
"I've met him, though I couldn't really speak to him." Fei Du, seeming to have become a model student, still maintained his studious attitude sitting in a car headed out to the field. "I'm more familiar with his younger son—the same one who insisted on calling the police."
Lang Qiao looked down and started researching online. "Zhou Junmao has two sons. The eldest is Zhou Huaijin… Oh, a youthful talent. Went to all the famous schools, started helping manage his family's assets very young, stays abroad most of the year. The second son is Zhou Huaixin. He's a painter? Hey, President Fei, is this the one you mean? How do you two know each other? Is it because you both like art?"
"Oh, no," Fei Du answered, "it's because we're both wastrels who don't do any honest work."
Lang Qiao: "…"
There was no traffic heading out of the city on the airport highway, and it wasn't yet fully dark. They soon arrived at the scene.
Fei Du was about to get out of the car when Luo Wenzhou pushed him back inside. First he started, and then he came around. His lips moved slightly. He looked at Luo Wenzhou's receding back like a weasel that had been soothed by a chicken thigh; he didn't display happiness, only calmly sat waiting in the car.
Luo Wenzhou walked around the scene and found that the dead and wounded had already been taken away and the scene had basically been cleaned up. As long as you didn't look very closely at the spot circled by yellow tape, you could hardly find any traces of blood. Only then did he beckon, letting Fei Du out of the car.
Fei Du followed him and said lightly into his ear, "Captain Luo, I'm overwhelmed by the favor."
"Overwhelmed just like that?" Luo Wenzhou glanced at him steadfastly. "Your mental landscape must be very thrilling.—Lao Qiu, where are you looking? Over here!"
The traffic policeman responsible for handling this accident was surnamed Qiu; he was another acquaintance of Luo Wenzhou's—the world was full of Captain Luo's acquaintances, covering all walks of life.
Fei Du, looking on from the sidelines, thought that a person like Luo Wenzhou must have grown up in very relaxed and open-minded surroundings. After the experiences he had weathered and the viciousness of the human heart he had known, becoming even more astute and sensitive than his profession required, only through having been doted on and cared for unreservedly in his youth could he have maintained that bone-deep readiness to take the whole world into his embrace.
Sometimes when you stood looking out into the street, watching the people pass by, men and women, young and old, you'd feel that they were all about the same. You're wearing a button-down and pants, and I'm also wearing a button-down and pants; you looked down and saw that the old people jogging by the street and the golden-haired, green-eyed foreigners were wearing the same brand of sneakers, almost giving you an illusion that the whole world was one.
The people living in the sun couldn't imagine the inescapable and customary torment that the smiling and chatting buddy next to them suffered, while a person deep in depression couldn't understand that the human figures rushing past them really weren't forcing themselves to smile.
Just like now, with him and Luo Wenzhou standing together; at first glance, it seemed like they were from the same country.
The body often hid the truth so firmly that not a drop leaked out.
"If you want to know whether there's some inside story to this, you'll have to investigate it. If you ask me, anyway, it looks like an accident that the vehicle driving in back was completely responsible for." The traffic policeman Lao Qiu called them over to look at the surveillance cameras. "This Bentley is Zhou Junmao's car. It left the airport and drove along normally. The chauffeur's driving was pretty law-abiding, there were no problems. The truck responsible for the accident came on from the Beiyuan Bridge. We started numbering from the camera at the Beiyuan exit. That's Number One."
Lao Qiu numbered and arranged the densely-packed cameras on the highway, letting them see one after another. "There weren't many cars going in this direction on the airport highway. Starting at Camera Number Four, the truck was driving in the same lane as the Bentley. There were some other cars between the two vehicles that each passed on ahead. By Camera Number 16, there was nothing between the truck and the Bentley ahead of it, but the distance between them was still pretty safe. Then, you see—"
While passing the eighteenth camera, the distance between the truck and the Bentley ahead of it decreased noticeably. Looking closely, you could see it very slowly gaining speed, as if the driver had forgotten to stop applying pressure to the gas pedal.
Passing Camera Number 20, the speed camera showed the truck's speed approaching 140 kph, clearly over the limit. Then, as if the truck driver had gone blind, at this speed the truck fiercely approached the rear of the car ahead. The twenty-first camera had completely caught the course of the collision. The crash was so savage that, even having made mental preparations, seeing it still made your heart give a thump.
"What about the driver of the responsible vehicle?" said Luo Wenzhou.
"Dead before he reached the hospital," said LaoQiu. "The driving history showed he'd been driving that truck for ten hours already. A clear case of an exhausted driver. If not for the deceased's relative kicking up a fuss saying it was murder, after watching this, my personal feeling would be that this was in fact pretty simple. The exhausted driver of the responsible vehicle fell asleep with his foot on the gas pedal, so the vehicle kept accelerating, then bang!—it was all over."
"What kind of person was the driver?" asked Luo Wenzhou. "Did he have a record?"
"The driver was called Dong Qian, forty-nine years old. He was a long-distance truck driver. The person who just came to identify the body was from his fleet. He said this Dong Qian was pretty well-behaved and had been driving on this road close to ten years. He'd never had an accident. Where do you get all these offenders with records running around all over the place from? Anyway, he hardly looks like the kind of person who'd have anything to do with a Bentley. He'd just about measure up to a Xiali (2)."Lao Qiu accepted a cigarette from Luo Wenzhou. "Captain Luo, do you think this family member is reliable of not? It's not just some rich people trying to get into the spotlight and on the news?"
Luo Wenzhou didn't issue any rash conclusions, though when he saw Zhou Huaixin with his own eyes, he found that the person who had reported the case really didn't seem very reliable.
Having seen Zhang Donglai and Zhou Huaixin, Luo Wenzhou was forced to admit that among Yan City's locally manufactured wastrels, Fei Du's style was comparatively normal.
Judging from the usual stature of grown men, Zhou Huaixin was excessively "slender," a veritable walking sesame stalk. His cheeks were sunken in, making the alert criminal policemen almost suspect he took drugs.
He was wearing a t-shirt with something or other scribbled on it, with a Western-style vest over it that went down to his knees. The vest was slit up to the waist, as if he had two curtains on his front and back. There were seven or eight piercings along his right ear, hung full of metal rings. He'd been wearing thick eyeliner that he'd already cried off, leaving terrifying dark circles around his eyes.
On the wall behind Zhou Huaixin hung one of his own paintings. It was an oil painting, fully three meters long, the colors very dismal.
Luo Wenzhou had very little sensitivity towards the arts. His level of appreciation for works of fine art stopped at "the more realistic it is the better." Even so, on seeing this painting he had a sort of unbearable sense of asphyxiation. The colors were gloomy and the lines frenzied. At first glance it looked like an ordinary painting of a storm, but looking closer you would find that there was a sun at the top left corner of the canvas, and the rust-like dark red lines didn't represent the wind and rain; they were sunbeams.
Painted under the bloody sunbeams was a wide swath of reeds. All the plants were drooping their heads left and right with a deathly aura. A few human skeletons appeared among the reeds, looking out of the canvas.
Staring at this painting too long would simply turn your stomach.
"I don't quite follow your trends," Luo Wenzhou said to Fei Du, lowering his voice. "What thoughts and feelings is little Young Master Zhou's work meant to represent?"
Fei Du looked at it a couple of times. The color of the sunbeams must have been too much like blood; he looked away a little uncomfortably. "If I recall correctly, this painting was completed at a seaside villa. Some famous fashion models sprawled on the beach to model for him."
Luo Wenzhou: "…"
It turned out that the subject of this painting was "beautiful faces cover bones, all lust is empty."
"His style really isn't very charming. I'm not sure about others, but I only bought some of his paintings on his dad's account." When he'd finished speaking quietly, Fei Du saw Zhou Huaixin coming down the stairs like a sack of bones, wiping away tears as he walked.
Fei Du, calling attention to himself, greeted, "Zhou-xiong, are you all right?"
Seeing a familiar face, all the grievance in Zhou Huaixin's heart nearly came pouring out of his eye sockets. He falteringly called, "Master Fei," then, like an enormous swallow returning to the forest, he threw himself into Fei Du's arms.
A scent that greatly resembled talcum powder assaulted the senses, winding thickly into a person's nasal cavities, so choking that Luo Wenzhou turned his head away and sneezed.
Charged at by Zhou Huaixin, Fei Du took half a step back and let him lean on his tidy shoulder, but his hands hung at his sides, not making any voluntary contact, simply displaying a trace of "gentlemanly" grace. He said a few low words of consolation to Zhou Huaixin, then let him lean on his arm, slowly leading Zhou Huaixin aside to sit down.
Amid his sobs, Zhou Huaixin asked, "Why are you here?"
The whole story behind Fei Du's presence here wasn't very convenient to explain. He simplified it, saying, "I'm getting a degree, with a training program at the City Bureau."
It was only then that Zhou Huaixin noticed that there were strangers present. He bent and picked up a handful of tissues from a table. He blew his nose and said, "Are you…the police? Master Fei, your h-hobbies really are niche… No, this won't do, my heart hurts, I have to rest…"
Saying so, like a boneless mollusk, he very rudely rested in Fei Du's arms. Luo Wenzhou, smelling the "talcum powder scent," oddly thought that Zhou Huaixin was displeasing to the eye. He spoke in a businesslike manner. "I hear that you insist on believing that Mr. Zhou's car crash wasn't an accident. Could I ask what basis you have to think that?"
Zhou Huaixin struggled to raise his swollen eyelids. "My dad exercises every day. He just ran a marathon in spring. He couldn't just die like that, someone must have wanted to hurt him!"
Lang Qiao, taking notes, speechlessly put down her little notebook and couldn't resist putting in a word. "Young Mr. Zhou, I know you may not be able to accept the facts for a time, but old Mr. Zhou died in a traffic accident. Never mind a marathon, even an Iron Man Triathlon can't prevent against a car crash."
Zhou Huaixin gave a choking sob as though he were dying, as if Lang Qiao were a big-eyed witch persecuting a little princess.
Fei Du waved a hand at her, lowered his head and quietly said, "Zhou-xiong, that can't be taken as evidence."
Zhou Huaixin howled and cried again. "You don't believe me either? My intuition is very accurate. When Dad goes out, he usually takes that big car with the bulletproof glass, and today he happened to take this one and something happened. Is that a coincidence? He just had his seventy-third birthday last week. At the birthday dinner he said he was planning to retire, he wanted to write his will, and to give part of his shares to me and my big brother, and this week, he just came back and then…"
At this point, Zhou Huaixin seemed to notice he'd let something slip. He suddenly shut his mouth, buried his head against Fei Du like an invalid, clutching his own chest and not making a sound.
"Old Mr. Zhou only has two sons. Even if he doesn't write a will, in the future, his assets will belong to you and your brother." Luo Wenzhou's gaze poked Zhou Huaixin like a flash of lightning. "Why do you think this would be a reason for someone to kill him? Young Mr. Zhou, I know you're upset, but since you've reported the case, please treat it seriously. Can you sit up and talk?"
"I don't know, I'm only concerned about painting, I don't understand these things at home. You have to go talk to my big brother. I called him, anyway, and he'll be here first thing tomorrow." Zhou Huaixin covered his face, avoiding Luo Wenzhou's gaze. "A car is a such a big murder weapon, much deadlier than a knife or a gun. The streets are full of people legally carrying murder weapons, and if they kill someone, can they just cover it up with 'I didn't mean it, it was an accident?' Don't you people do your jobs?"
His words seemed unintentional, but those who heard them had their own interpretations. Fei Du's expression became duller on the spot.
Luo Wenzhou simply lifted Zhou Huaixin, pulling him off Fei Du. "The driver of the responsible vehicle is already dead, young Mr. Zhou. Are you hinting to us that someone wouldn't stint to give up his own life to kill your father?"
Zhou Huaixin looked at him gloomily through his dark eye circles. "Officer, don't you believe that money can buy a life?"
Luo Wenzhou and the others spent nearly an hour tangled up with Zhou Huaixin without knowing whether he was really a moron or whether he was deliberately acting helpless. Sometimes it was clear that there was something he was holding himself back from saying, as if he knew something but couldn't tell others. Only when they were about to leave did Zhou Huaixin stop Fei Du and say indistinctly, "Have you heard the rumors?"
Fei Du gave Luo Wenzhou a look, then patted Zhou Huaixin's shoulder. "Don't think about it."
Zhou Huaixin was unwilling to let go. He quietly asked, "Can you stay with me to wait for my big brother to come?"
Before Fei Du could answer, Luo Wenzhou was already answering for him. "Don't dawdle. You still need to write up a report tonight—'trainee.'"
Fei Du made a gesture towards Zhou Huaixin showing it was out of his power to help, and was then pushed out the door by Luo Wenzhou. "Hurry up."
Fei Du stumbled a little, but he didn't mind at all. Instead, he looked down and laughed as Luo Wenzhou pushed and pulled him back to the work car.
Lang Qiao, opening her big eyes wide, quietly asked, "President Fei, is that snake demon Zhou-whatever interested in you?"
"He isn't," Fei Du answered just as quietly. "He's just cold and lonely."
With bitter hatred, Lang Qiao said, "You're all rotten!"
Luo Wenzhou slammed the car door and separated the two of them. He pointed to Lang Qiao and said, "If you had as much estrogen as that one, you'd be able to get married.—Fei Du, what was it that Zhou Huaixin kept dancing around?"
"The word on the street," said Fei Du, carelessly sitting up straight, "is that the noble and prestigious Mr. Zhou has an illegitimate son."
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Author's note
(2) Refers to a line of hatchbacks and sedans produced by the Chinese car company Tiajin FAW. Cheap and common, is the implication.