Fei Du was as nice in front of Director Lu as he was rotten in front of Luo Wenzhou.
His clothes resembled a student's, but he hadn't paid a student's prices for them. Grandpa didn't understand these costly details, anyway; Lu Youliang thought this young person seemed unusually tidy and unusually spirited. Coming through the door, he smiled at him, and the whole office became a little brighter.
Of course, if the young fellow could have gotten a neat crew-cut, the impression would have been even more perfect.
Lu Youliang passed him the list of documents that had been requested by Yan Security Uni. "I've had a rough look. There aren't any big problems. There are a few that may not be possible; I've ticked those off. You can revise it a little and print another copy, and then everything will go smoothly."
Fei Du very properly thanked him and accepted the list edited by Director Lu. He scanned it quickly. Before he could ask any questions, Lu Youliang was already explaining to him, "These cases are all rather old. They were selected for study during the original Picture Album Project. Their referential value isn't great. I was afraid you'd be doing duplicative work.—If your Teacher Pan asks about it, tell him what I told you. He'll understand."
However idle a leader was, he still wouldn't personally sift through lists to save others from "duplicative work." Fei Du wasn't deaf; of course he could hear that this was an excuse. Thereupon he obligingly bit back his questions.
Having finished with proper business, Lu Youliang very kindly took an interest in Fei Du's personal circumstances. He'd just moved on from his studies to the middle-aged-and-elderly's favorite subject of a "significant other" when the phone on his desk rang.
Director Lu gestured at Fei Du and picked up. After a couple of sentences, he began to frown.
Fei Du calmly observed his expression, hearing Lu Youliang meticulously explaining: "…it must be objective and even-handed. Mind your diction very carefully. When you've finished writing it, bring it over here for me to have a look… Fine. This is the thing we have to keep a firm grasp on.—Garbage like rich people fighting over inheritances will make a lot of noise for a few days and everyone will lose their heads, but it still won't have any impact on your next meal. The children are what really matters to the common people."
Fei Du waited for him to hang up, then asked, "That was about the kidnappings, right?"
"Ah, yes. It's already been handed over to the Procuratorate. There's nothing we can change about how it turns out now." At this point, Lu Youliang paused and, deliberately or not, studied Fei Du's expression, then lamented, "That's how it is sometimes in this profession of ours. The victims are abjectly waiting for you to get them justice, and you clearly know who did it, but the outcome often can't be everything you could wish. Your luck may be bad; you may not be able to gather the critical evidence. Or it could be that the evidence is solid, but the outcome is that the law can't hold him."
Fei Du nodded as he spoke. "Rules and procedures are a rigid framework. There will always be some exceptional circumstances that they can't deal with."
The corner of Lu Youliang's eye twitched lightly, expecting his next words to be out of line.
He didn't expect Fei Du to play it safe, adding, "But it's a framework that's undergone endless refining to be able to take into account the interests of the greatest number of people. It's Pareto efficiency. Without it, there would be even greater inequality. So sometimes, even though we know it may hurt some people, we still have to uphold that framework."
Director Lu stared. "Wh…what sort of efficiency?"
"Simply put, it's the most optimal choice from the standpoint of everyone's overall benefit." Fei Du smiled. "My family does a little business. Being around my elders, I've picked up some of their theories."
Director Lu slowly shook his head. Looking at Fei Du's calm and easy expression, he seemed to relax. "It's good for young people to learn a bit of something. It has the effect of smoothing out their mental states.—Your Teacher Pan was an angry young man back in the day. That's why he changed professions and went to teach."
Fei Du displayed a timely trace of curiosity.
But Director Lu was unwilling to continue. He only waved a hand at him. "Enough, you must be busy."
Fei Du stood up at this. At the same time, his gaze swept Director Lu's desk from above.
There was a picture frame on the corner of Lu Youliang's desk with a group photograph inside it. The hair of the men in the photograph was still thick, and their waistlines were still "inverted." Only the lines of their features still gave some impression; looking closely, you could just recognize them—from left to right were Director Lu, old Director Zhang, Fei Du's academic advisor Pan Yunteng, who he'd been at some pains to arrange to study under, and Luo Wenzhou's late shifu, Yang Zhengfeng.
There should have been a fifth person in the photograph. Yang Zhengfeng was pulling someone's elbow with his right arm, but the person's face was hidden under the picture frame; only a bit of skin showed.
Fei Du's gaze glanced off the picture frame. As if nothing had happened, he took the list of case materials permitted to be requested, as edited by Director Lu, and walked towards the Criminal Investigation Team.
Silently, one step at a time, he was following up the hardly visible threads; he pondered as he walked, the drooping ends of his peach blossom eyes long and fine, seeming to have a sort of absent-minded indifference—until he heard Luo Wenzhou's "bitterly resentful" voice.
"Eating one person's food while serving another!" Luo Wenzhou was denouncing someone in the office; it was audible some steps from the door. "It really is the textbook definition of eating one person's food while serving another!"
Fei Du looked up at once and saw Luo Wenzhou, hands in his pockets, swaggering out of the office with his back to him. As he backed up, he pointed at the crowd of ingrates in the office. "You aren't my real children…"
He hadn't finished when he bumped into Fei Du, who hadn't dodged at all.
"Oh, sorry." Luo Wenzhou didn't know who he'd bumped into and was about to turn around when an arm came around from behind him, half embracing him as it helped him keep his balance.
Fei Du leaned forward lightly and quietly said, "No problem."
Luo Wenzhou: "…"
Instead of walking through the rest of the wide hallway, Fei Du just had to turn and squeeze through the narrow gap next to Luo Wenzhou, shoulders faintly brushing against him, hands deftly reaching out to measure the width of Luo Wenzhou's waist. Then he said, preening odiously, "Director Lu told me to pass along to you that if you're late again he'll deduct your wages."
Lang Qiao, wanting nothing but to see the world in chaos, said, "President Fei, the boss just asked where you'd gone to fool around."
"Oh," said Fei Du, smiling brightly, "you shouldn't carelessly besmirch the reputation of a man of Director Lu's age."
"Have you eaten?" Tao Ran gestured at a table next to him, laid out with breakfast. "Take whatever you like. I don't know what dietary restrictions you have."
Naturally Fei Du, who could put himself together first thing in the morning, wouldn't have lacked for time to eat a leisurely breakfast. So he waved a hand at Tao Ran. "No, I…"
The words "I've already eaten" were on the tip of his tongue.
Tao Ran added, "Wenzhou bought it. No need to be polite with him."
"…eat everything, no dietary restrictions." Fei Du wrenched his words around 180 degrees and casually picked up a red bean cake. "Thank you, shixiong."
Absolutely shameless!
Having witnessed the international standard in lying through one's teeth, Luo Wenzhou was simply speechless.
Xiao Haiyang sat at a desk in a corner, hearing the others' wholly unrestrained talk and laughter, not knowing how to blend in with them. He could only look on from the sidelines, feeling ill at ease.
Tao Ran aimlessly looked around and happened to see his predicament. Catching his gaze, Xiao Haiyang pushed at his glasses subconsciously, lowering his head as though looking for a sense of security, putting on a look of concentrating on his work to make his incompatibility with the group less awkward.
Tao Ran noticed his unnatural gestures. A moment later, when he was pouring himself some water, he strolled past Xiao Haiyang with his teacup in his hand. "Xiao Xiao—"
Xiao Haiyang subconsciously straightened his back in haste. "Deputy-Captain."
"No need to be so reserved." Tao Ran patted his shoulder and leaned casually on his desk. "This isn't Wang Hongliang's territory. Relax a little."
Xiao Haiyang had absolutely no intention of relaxing. He sat there like a coffin board, nervously listening to his admonition.
Tao Ran sighed soundlessly. His gaze swept over the two autopsy reports on Xiao Haiyang's desk—they were Zhou Junmao's and Dong Qian's. The two of them had plainly died in the car crash; on neither had either suspicious injuries or drugs been detected. On this subject, there was no question at all.
"We've already questioned Zhou Huaijin." In order to get Xiao Haiyang to relax, Tao Ran deliberately used work as a buffer, opening a subject of conversation.
"He said that he got into a taxi driven by one of the kidnappers, and while they were driving though a fairly desolate patch, another man flagged them down, asking to carpool—that was the second kidnapper. Zhou Huaijin didn't think it was suitable and refused him, but he wasn't especially on his guard. The kidnapper who was pretending to flag a taxi used that as an excuse to keep pestering them, and with his accomplice's cooperation took Zhou Huaijin unawares… Hey, Xiao Xiao, you don't need to take notes. This isn't a formal meeting, I'm just chatting."
Lang Qiao put the crispy fritter from her jianbing into her mouth, gnawing it like a squirrel, then put in a word. "I think there's a problem here. How could the kidnapper guarantee that Zhou Huaijin would get in his car?"
Tao Ran thought about it. "We reviewed the film from around the airport taxi stand. It was the small hours of the morning, and the attendant had already left. There weren't many passengers waiting for taxis, or many taxis looking for business. So there were no split lanes, only one line of passengers and one line of taxis. If the kidnapper had been waiting for an opportunity to cut in line, it shouldn't have been hard to pick up Zhou Huaijin."
"You really could do that, but it's still not fool-proof. What if some lowlife cut in line?" said Lang Qiao. "You know, yesterday we took it in turns questioning Yang Bo until he couldn't take it anymore. He burst out and kicked up a fuss about how Zhou Huaijin hadn't been kidnapped at all. He'd put it all on himself."
"That's impossible," another criminal policeman said. "What's the sense for a wealthy heir in getting beat up and nearly swept away in a flood? And he discredited his own company. It's all over the city now, and all the departments concerned have entered the investigation.—Why would he want to make life difficult for himself?"
Lang Qiao said, "And what if the Zhou Clan isn't his own company?"
Tao Ran put down his teacup. "Where did you hear that groundless rumor?"
"What groundless rumor? I've spent ages going through old newspapers. Just a few months after the Zhou Clan's founder—that Zhou Yahou—died, his widow quietly married Zhou Junmao. The older brother dies and the younger brother marries his sister-in-law, and the sister-in-law holds a great quantity of stock. Doesn't sound very nice, does it? In a foreign Chinese-language tabloid I found, they talk about Zhou Junmao and his wife as though they were Ximen Qing and Li Ping'er (4), and they say they'd definitely been sneaking around behind Zhou Yahou's back when he was alive." Lang Qiao knocked on the desk. "All right, friends, now comes the important part—I verified Zhou Yahou's date of death and Zhou Huaijin's date of birth, and found that they happened in the same year. That's very subtle."
"You mean that Zhou Junmao killed Zhou Yahou, then accidentally raised Zhou Yahou's son, and now Zhou Huaijin has found out the truth and taken revenge on him?" Tao Ran shook his head. "Come back and concentrate on the details of the case. Didn't I tell you to find potential witnesses from the airport taxi stand? You don't do any work. You only guess blindly."
"It's not me guessing blindly," said Lang Qiao. "When we got out of the Zhou house, the boss went to find Director Ceng to check on Zhou Junmao's blood relationship to his three supposed sons—right, boss? Great minds think alike!"
Declining to comment, Luo Wenzhou walked into his own office. "Get to work and stop staring at me. I don't have the results yet, anyway."
Hearing this, the silent Xiao Haiyang suddenly put in a word. "But there's absolutely no intersection between Dong Qian and Zhou Huaijin. If Zhou Junmao's car crash was deliberate, how could Zhou Huaijin have gotten Dong Qian to give up his life?"
"But there's also no intersection between Dong Qian and the other Zhou Clan people," said Lang Qiao. "We've analyzed it. Supposing Zhou Junmao was murdered, there's no doubt someone wanted to pass it off as an accident, while Zhou Huaijin's kidnapping was done with great fanfare, as if they were afraid others wouldn't know—those are clearly contradictory. So I've been thinking, could it be that Zhou Junmao's death really was an accident, and Zhou Huaijin used this opportunity to make a fuss and destroy Zhou Junmao's reputation?"
Xiao Haiyang's expression was grave and pensive.
"We need a real basis, not wild stories." Tao Ran waved a hand, interrupting everyone's boundlessly roaming imaginations. "Enough. When you're finished eating, get to work."
The portraits of the kidnappers drawn according to Zhou Huaijin's descriptions had been issued, but they'd sunk like stones into the sea; there had been no echoes.
Thus far they hadn't found any witnesses, and the truck that had driven into the Baisha River had been stolen. Neither on it nor on the snatched taxi had they found any useful traces.
Zhou Junmao's car crash and Zhou Huaijin's kidnapping were both full of suspicious points, both hard to make headway on.
Aside from the Zhou family's driver, who'd been caught on the spot, everyone seemed very suspicious. But these suspicious individuals were unwilling to obediently confess; each time one opened his mouth it was to attack another. Allegations filled the air, and none of them were reliable.
So even Yang Bo, under heaviest suspicion from the police, had been gotten out by his lawyer the evening before.
Thus far, the Criminal Investigation Team seemed to have fallen into a bottleneck. They could only wait for the outcome of the financial investigation into the Zhou Clan, hoping to scoop up some motives and leads.
Luo Wenzhou read through all the suspects' statements.—Zhou Huaixin was like a mad dog, doing his utmost to bite Yang Bo; Hu Zhenyu, trying to gain the upper hand, said that Zhou Huaijin and Zheng Kaifeng had recently disagreed about the development of the company's strategy, and Zheng Kaifeng had gotten very close with Yang Bo in the last couple of years; Zheng Kaifeng meanwhile firmly denied that Yang Bo was Zhou Junmao's illegitimate son, always dodging, like a sly old fox…
Luo Wenzhou rubbed his chin. Just then, the phone on his desk vibrated.
Luo Wenzhou looked down; it was Fei Du, sitting across from him.
In this small place, where every breath and bowel movement could be heard, Mr. Fei, who was so close to him, didn't open his mouth when he had something to say; he had to use the office's WiFi to send him a WeChat message: "Shixiong, can I take you out tonight?"
Luo Wenzhou looked up at him. Fei Du seemed to be focused on the screen of his laptop; if not for the suspicious trace of a smile at the corners of his lips, he would have looked absolutely upright and proper.
The "upright and proper" Mr. Fei moved his fingers, and another WeChat message appeared in front of Luo Wenzhou's eyes.
He said: "I like your abs."
Luo Wenzhou turned his head and looked at the never closed door of his office; in the half-public space, people made phone calls, came and went, wholly unobstructed; people often came by to grab a drink, and the talkative would say a few words in passing to Fei Du. Each of their movements took place in front of everyone's staring eyes…
And in this sort of environment, there was someone covertly harassing him.
Luo Wenzhou's throat was a little tight. He shot Fei Du a look from behind his monitor that gradually acquired a slightly carnivorous air.
Just as he was about to pick up the phone and respond, a completely oblivious colleague charged in and loudly said, "Captain Luo, this must be urgent. Director Ceng told me to give it to you!"
Luo Wenzhou nearly knocked his phone onto the floor.
The above-mentioned colleague entirely failed to notice anything unusual about the atmosphere. He cheerfully handed over the folder and left as quickly as he had come.
Luo Wenzhou gave a dry cough, pulled in his legs, which had been stretch out under the desk, and absent-mindedly opened the folder.
A moment later, his gaze hardened.
The results of the DNA test were clear. The two Zhou brothers were both definitely Zhou Junmao's biological children, while Yang Bo had no blood relationship to Zhou Junmao.
"Is Zhou Huaijin still in the hospital?" Luo Wenzhou thought about it, picked up his jacket, and stood up. "I'm going to have a chat with him."
Fei Du said, "I'll come with you."
Luo Wenzhou looked at him.
Fei Du gently licked his lips, and his gaze swept faintly around the office. While he didn't open his mouth, he seemed to be silently saying, "It's a little crowded in here."
Luo Wenzhou paused. He didn't respond, silently letting him follow.
No sooner had they left than Xiao Haiyang suddenly received a text message from Dong Xiaoqing.
Xiao Haiyang hadn't expected Dong Xiaoqing to voluntarily contact him. He was very taken aback. He saw Dong Xiaoqing's message: "Officer Xiao, could you please come to my house? I want to give you something."
Xiao Haiyang immediately called her back, but Dong Xiaoqing's phone was already off. He had a sudden ominous premonition.
"Deputy-Captain Tao," Xiao Haiyang said, shooting to his feet, "I have to go out."
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Author's Note:
(4) Characters from the very racy Ming Dynasty novel of manners Jin Ping Mei/The Plum in the Golden Vase. Ximen Qing is a rampant social climber, and Li Ping'er is one of his concubines.