Fei Du stood in the basement's narrow stairwell. This place made him feel rather unhappy, but it was still within the bounds of endurance, so he didn't disclose it. He only frowned, pondering for a moment. "That driver just said that Lu Guosheng often used his car privately. So was going to the Longyun Center before also a private operation? Minor figures like them, while they have tracking devices on them, wouldn't normally be looked after very strictly. After all, they're the ones with nowhere else to go. They're the ones who need the 'organization' to shelter them.—But why did they react so promptly when he was only delayed slightly today? Do those people know that we're on Lu Guosheng's tracks?"
Luo Wenzhou was silent for a long time, his heart starting to sink, suspecting that this time they would receive another corpse, leaving them without any evidence.
Just then, his phone made a sound, receiving a message from Xiao Haiyang—
Xiao Haiyang was sitting in a corner of the conference room at the City Bureau, euphemistically as "police force reception personnel," actually as a voice machine repeating "we have rules" every three sentences, listening to neither the good nor the bad, getting a crowd of irate parents so angry their faces turned red and their necks swelled. If they hadn't had scruples about this being the City Bureau, they would have come to blows long ago.
But in fact Little Glasses only had one true assignment: keeping a close watch on Wei Zhanhong.
In the instant Wei Zhanhong picked up his phone and his expression suddenly changed, Xiao Haiyang instinctively felt something was wrong. He didn't think about it carefully. He came to a rapid decision, putting his hand in the desk and turning on a miniature signal blocking device.
The instant Wei Zhanhong pressed "send", his phone signal was suddenly interrupted, and the message got stuck, anxiously looped around, then displayed that it had failed to send.
Wei Zhanhong's expression grew grave. He subconsciously looked all around, but there was nothing unusual in any direction. There were only impatient parents surrounding the hard-pressed young person in charge.—Oh, there was also a four-eyed little police officer in the corner.—Wei Zhanhong looked at Xiao Haiyang, not taking him seriously.
Like a kid who'd mistakenly put on a grown-up's clothes and had just shown up to buy soy sauce, Little Glasses was sitting there cautiously holding his notebook, giving off an air of inept schoolboy clumsiness.
Wei Zhanhong felt he was being paranoid. It was normal for the signal to be bad inside a building. He took a deep breath, focused, and calmly went out the door of the conference room.
Upon seeing this, the duty officer at the door blocked him. "Where are you going, sir? Could we help…"
"I'm just going to the bathroom," Wei Zhanhong interrupted him with a fake smile. "What, are you worried I'll run? You're holding my son here, where am I going to go? Or are you saying that now we're here, we even need someone to accompany us to the toilet? Then I advise you to simply get out your handcuffs and arrest us."
He deliberately raised his voice for the last sentence. Many of the surrounding parents heard it and at once became even more enraged.
While the duty officer stared, Wei Zhanhong drew back his fake smile, coldly looked askance at him, and strode over to the bathroom at the other end of the hall.
The City Bureau's corridor was narrow, and the windows were hard to open. It had an oppressive look. Wei Zhanhong felt that the sealed doors and windows kept both the light and the signal outside. With a grave expression, he walked into the bathroom holding his phone, looking all around. Only when he approached a window did a weak signal appear.
Wei Zhanhong hastily pressed close to the window and was about to try sending again when, suddenly, out of the corner of his eye, he saw a dark figure reflected in the glass. Wei Zhanhong was startled and swiftly twisted his head. Unexpectedly, someone heavily chopped at the other side of his neck with the side of their hand—
Xiao Haiyang, holding a garbage can over his head: "…"
Lang Qiao, who'd just knocked Wei Zhanhong unconscious with one chop: "…"
Lang Qiao came around first, opening her already large cow's eyes wide and lowering her voice, asking, "Xiao Haiyang, what are you doing?"
The signal blocking device was one of the toys Luo Wenzhou had given him before leaving. When Xiao Haiyang had turned it on, it had just been subconscious behavior. Then, watching Wei Zhanhong hastily leave the conference room, purposefully going somewhere with no people around, he'd determined that perhaps he really did want to contact his accomplices.
Luo Wenzhou and Fei Du weren't there, and Tao Ran was tied up. Xiao Haiyang was alone and unsupported. He'd panicked and lost track of consequences—seeing that Wei Zhanhong seemed to have found a signal, Xiao Haiyang had picked up a metal trash can, wanting to knock him out on the spot.
But before he'd had time to determine the right place to strike and a suitable angle, Lang Qiao had popped out of nowhere and knocked Wei Zhanhong down.
"What are you doing?" Xiao Haiyang blurted out in response. "This is a men's bathroom!"
Lang Qiao: "…"
Lang Qiao, in accordance with Tao Ran's request, had just questioned some of the students from Wei Wenchuan's class to find out who had gone to Wei Wenchuan's birthday party. She'd been about to report to Tao Ran when she saw Xiao Haiyang going into the bathroom.
Xiao Haiyang's movements had been too tense and overbearing, as though he were about to carry out a vendetta against someone. Lang Qiao had thought it was very strange and couldn't resist running the risk of taking a needle to the eye, peeking in as she passed by. She'd glimpsed the scene of him raising the trash can, about to bring it down on someone's head.
The two of them looked at each other helplessly for a moment, then looked down together at the unconscious Wei Zhanhong.
Lang Qiao whispered, "Isn't this that little bastard's father?"
Xiao Haiyang had no attention to spare for her. Before the screen could lock, he hastily picked up Wei Zhanhong's phone.
He saw a message from an unlisted number: "There was a rat at the young master's birthday party. When and where was it?"
The message Wei Zhanhong had failed to send at the critical moment was: "11/6, Longyun Center."
Xiao Haiyang's thoughts instantly whirled, his brain almost overloading—
Judging from Wei Zhanhong's response, "the young master" must mean Wei Wenchuan, but what did "there was a rat" mean?
Was Lu Guosheng the rat?
If so, then from this manner of speaking, however you thought about it… Wei Zhanhong and the others hadn't known before about Lu Guosheng and Wei Wenchuan meeting privately at the Longyun Center!
Yes, he thought, that made sense.
When Lu Guosheng had taken care to cover up his tracks that day and told his accomplice to avoid the security camera, he hadn't been worried about the police—the cameras at the Longyun Center weren't part of the surveillance network. It was Wei Zhanhong's territory. How could Wei Zhanhong obediently hand the footage over to the police? He would be much more likely to erase it right away.
If he'd been worried about the police, he could have contacted Wei Zhanhong to cover up for him. So it was likely that, for some reason, Lu Guosheng had gone out privately to see some person and hadn't wanted the organization to know. He'd found an accomplice to pick him up. Wei Zhanhong would have recognized the accomplice's car. While Wei wouldn't have gone around looking through security camera footage for fun, for the sake of caution, Lu Guosheng still hadn't left behind the license plate number.
What "measures to counteract police surveillance"?—After all this time, it turned out they'd just been flattering themselves.
But…
The beginning of November hadn't been just yesterday, and they hadn't known up to now that Lu Guosheng had had private contact with Wei Wenchuan. So why did they know now, at this critical juncture?
Xiao Haiyang subconsciously bit his lip until it bled.
The wanted criminal Lu Guosheng's photograph and identity hadn't been made public. The police had only, at the very outset of investigating Feng Bin's murder, given the children who'd run away with Feng Bin a photograph to look at.
But apart from the victim Feng Bin, the other children like Wang Xiao and Zhang Yifan hadn't qualified to receive Wei Wenchuan's invitation, so they hadn't been at the Longyun Center that day. Now, however, those who had gone to the Longyun Center before the crime had occurred were basically all at the City Bureau waiting to be interrogated, and the police force's focus was on the schoolyard bullying; they hadn't asked them about Lu Guosheng.
In other words, unless Wei Wenchuan had gone blabbing to the whole world that he was acquainted with a wanted criminal who was guilty of heinous crimes, the only person who, by coincidence, could connect that birthday party to Feng Bin's murder was Wang Xiao.
Fei Du and Xiao Haiyang had only accidentally hit on this piece of information yesterday afternoon. From yesterday to today, if no one had been overheard or accidentally revealed the secret, then only the four of them should know.
So where had the slip-up been?
Did the other side already know everything? Then would they toss out Lu Guosheng's body like a gecko's tail, once again breaking off a limb to save themselves, leaving them without any evidence?
For a time Xiao Haiyang's mind was in a tangle; the more anxious he got, the less he could smooth out his thoughts.
Just then, Lang Qiao looked over at the page on the cell phone. "Birthday party? Wei Wenchuan's birthday party? So that's where it was."
Xiao Haiyang turned and looked at her in astonishment.
"Tao Ran just sent me to deal with that crowd of troubled young people and ask them who'd gone to Wei Wenchuan's birthday party," Lang Qiao said. "I just finished asking them and was going over to tell him."
Xiao Haiyang stared. After a moment, he thought of something, and his pupils contracted. "Where did you ask them? How did you ask?"
"An interrogation room, Room 203," Lang Qiao said. "I just…casually brought it up when I was finishing up questioning each one.—Deputy Tao didn't tell me why he wanted to know."
"You asked each of them?" Xiao Haiyang asked urgently. "Did you mention the time and place? Did the students who answered you mention them?"
"I asked all of them except Wei Wenchuan." Lang Qiao stuck her chin out towards the contents of the message on the phone's screen. "No one mentioned the time and place. I just saw that here.—What is going on?"
Xiao Haiyang sucked in a breath. So that was where the slip-up was!
If one among the four of them had slipped up, or if, a little more definitely, yesterday evening, someone had come along after he and Fei Du had left, gone to Wang Xiao's house, and learned this information from her, then the time and place, as well as the fact of Lu Guosheng's appearance, would have been obvious; they wouldn't need to ask Wei Zhanhong!
So it was Lang Qiao's brainless question that had attracted suspicion; someone had been listening in on her interrogation!
Xiao Haiyang's heart beat wildly; his mind was blank for three seconds. Then he bit down fiercely on his tongue and pulled himself together—no, it wasn't time to panic. The other side had only heard Lang Qiao asking about an irrelevant birthday party and gotten suspicious. They didn't seem to know the truth about Lu Guosheng and Wei Wenchuan's private contact; the words "there was a rat" may have been used in general to mean "there was a leak," or "there was something unusual."
He mentally recited "calm down" at himself three times. Then, holding up Wei Zhanhong's phone, he carefully deleted the words "Longyun Center," hesitated, and changed the address to "Fengqi Center."
The Fengqi Center was in Nancheng. It was also Wei Zhanhong's property. It and the Longyun Center, one in the north and one in the south, drew a large diagonal line between them, representing the dragon and the phoenix bringing prosperity8. Xiao Haiyang hadn't been able to sleep the night before and had searched online for information about Wei Zhanhong; these were some details he remembered.
At this time, Xiao Haiyang didn't know that the sudden disappearance of the Beehive's driver had touched a tense nerve on the other side. He just wanted to get out some false information, since it was better than nothing. Though the other side could find out by investigating that Wei Wenchuan hadn't gone to the Fengqi Center, at least it could mislead them for a while.
At any rate, they could only hope that Luo Wenzhou would act fast enough.
Seeing the message display as successfully sent, Xiao Haiyang sighed. Then he got out his own phone and sent Luo Wenzhou a message: "On 11/6, Wei Wenchuan invited some schoolmates to the Fengqi Center to eat."
If Luo Wenzhou received this message, he should be able to deduce a great deal information from it. If his phone had been bugged, the other side wouldn't see anything the matter with this.
Lang Qiao was bewildered. "Are you in contact with the boss? What's going on there? Where did the boss go today?"
Xiao Haiyang looked at her and didn't answer. After he'd sent the message, he put away Wei Zhanhong's phone and was planning to push him into a stall. But while Wei looked bony, he wasn't actually light. Tossed around by Xiao Haiyang like this, he seemed to be waking up; fortunately, Lang Qiao came up and gave him another blow.
Xiao Haiyang looked at her with a complicated expression. "You don't know anything. Why are you helping me?"
"If I didn't help you," Lang Qiao said, "could you manage it?"
Xiao Haiyang: "…"
Lang Qiao rolled her eyes at him, snorted, and thought, "Good-for-nothing."
Then she bent down and grabbed Wei Zhanhong's legs, carried him into a stall along with Xiao Haiyang, then tied him up.
"If you don't want to tell me about it, then forget it." This wasn't Lang Qiao's first day at work. She knew that some investigations may have to be kept secret for a certain period of time and within a certain scope, though she was very unhappy to have been left out. She pointed to Xiao Haiyang. "Of course I trust a colleague I've worked with before more than I trust a suspect. But if you've made me trust the wrong person, then you'd better watch out. I'll kill you."
Then she walked out of the men's bathroom, looked around at the door, determined that no one was watching her, and was planning to slip away.
"Hey," Xiao Haiyang suddenly called to stop her. "Room 203… I think that last time when Captain Luo questioned Zhou Huaijin, it was in there. Speak carefully when you use that room."
The scene where the driver Sun Jiaxing had been abducted had been cleaned up. Fei Du's people opened all the car's doors and abandoned it under the overpass. The driver's uniform, and the tracking devices that had been on him, were all neatly arranged inside, and there was also a printed "letter of resignation" lying on them, as though he'd run away himself.
Not long after they'd retreated, another group of people arrived. A few men got out of a car and carefully examined Sun Jiaxing's black Buick.
Suddenly, one of them held down his earpiece. "The Fengqi Center? Copy."
Saying so, he quickly opened something on his phone, then shook his head a moment later, saying to the person speaking over the earpiece, "Sun Xin doesn't seem to have gone to Nancheng recently. There's a letter of resignation in the car. He may have run off himself. Should we continue investigating his whereabouts? …OK, got it. Yes, sir. We'll come back."
The man wearing the earpiece waved a hand, and the people around him left together in well-trained fashion, driving the cast-off black sedan away with them.
Fei Du looked at Luo Wenzhou's phone, frowning. "What does the good Xiao xiong mean?"
Luo Wenzhou gazed fixedly at the message Xiao Haiyang had sent him for a while. "I don't know. Not enough information, I can't judge… So where is Lu Guosheng hiding? Hurry up. We can try our luck somewhere. At any rate, we have to fight on."
"The place is definitely connected to the Beehive," Fei Du said quickly, "but it can't be nearby. They're so rich, they must have many hideouts. They couldn't be making do with one hole on a mountaintop."
Luo Wenzhou followed his line of thought at once. "So there must be some form of transportation going from the Beehive to the place where Lu Guosheng is hiding."
"But that transportation isn't the cars used for customers," Fei Du said. "If that driver Sun wasn't lying just now, they go to the Beehive from the place they're concealed, then go from the Beehive to other places. There are two threads, and there must be secrecy between them. Otherwise there's no point to the firewall. The drivers of the customer cars don't know where the hiding place is."
Giving each person a car would be too luxurious, and it was unrealistic; it would add a great deal to the possibility of a leak.
And wanted criminals who didn't even dare to leave their fingerprints behind couldn't be spending all day openly riding around on public transportation, so…
"What did the driver say just now? Lu Guosheng's false name is Lu Lin, and his false identity is an electrician at the Beehive—right?" Fei Du suddenly stood up straight. "An employee… Could it be an employee bus?"
Luo Wenzhou stared.
Fei Du didn't wait for him to answer. He got out his phone and dialed a number. "It's me. Are there any of you guys still left in the Beehive… There, I knew you wouldn't listen to me and obediently withdraw.—Then could you please do me a favor and sneak in to get the routes of the Beehive's employee buses?"
At the same time, at Nencheng's Fengqi Center, some stern-faced people barged into the security camera room. Seeing people from the head office, the manager didn't dare to ask for an explanation, only stood to one side, silent as a cicada in winter.
"We want the security camera footage for November sixth.—Which private room was Wei Wenchuan using then?"
"Wei, Wei Wenchuan?" As he hastily got people to help investigate the footage, the manager sent someone to look into the expense records for the private rooms.
"Hurry!"
A confused secretary, forehead covered in sweat, charged over. "Manager, Young Mr. Wei hasn't been here recently."
The manager said angrily, "I didn't tell you to search recently, I told you to search last month…"
"November sixth," the secretary said quietly. "I searched from October sixth to December. He wasn't here."
The manager's eyes sparked. He was about to say something, but the man who'd come to search through the security camera footage looked concerned and strode out.
A complete map of the routes of the employee buses arrived on Fei Du's phone. "I've got it. Leave—"
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Authors note:
(8) Longyun (龙韵) is Dragon's Charm, Fengqi (凤栖) is Phoenix's Perch. Nancheng (南城) literally means "the south of the city," but it's being used as a neighborhood name here. Beiyuan (北苑) similarly is "north park."