Luo Wenzhou got out his pack of cigarettes and looked down, finding that he'd just given Lu Guosheng the last one. There was only a withered, empty box left in his hand.
He sat in the interrogation room that everyone's gazes were fixed on, the too-hot heating burning his back, but he seemed to be situated in a burial mound in the wilderness, digging up a rotting old coffin with his own hands.
It was a ghastly sight. He could hardly sit still without letting out a long breath.
Luo Wenzhou picked up a teacup and drank the cool water in it in one gulp.
"You say you burned The Louvre yourselves," Luo Wenzhou said heavily after clearing his throat, "then blamed it on a police officer? What was the police officer's name? When did this happen?"
"Must be over a decade ago… Fourteen, nearly fifteen years." Lu Guosheng scratched his forehead with a finger, lightly curling his lips. "You're asking me what the police officer's name was? How could I know?"
Luo Wenzhou slowly twisted the empty cigarette pack into a ball, rolled it around in his palm a few times, then turned his head and looked into the security camera, seeming to meet the eyes of the dumbstruck listeners through the small device. Then he expressionlessly restrained his slovenly posture and slowly pushed open the rotting lid of the "coffin."
"Fourteen years ago, there was a criminal police officer at the City Bureau named Gu Zhao. He was one of the main people in charge of the 327 case. He was always troubled by the fact that they hadn't been able to catch you. One day, he unwittingly found out that a print matching your fingerprints in the database had been found at the scene of a mass brawl. He began to follow this trail, and in the end his gaze locked on The Louvre."
The observation room was filled with chaos. Someone blurted out, "What is this? Lao Lu, did this happen?"
"Wait a minute, Gu Zhao… I remember he seems to have…"
"What's going on?"
"How does he know?"
Lu Youliang didn't say a word. He was like a stocky statue.
Luo Wenzhou said, "But while his investigation reached that point, it later came to nothing. Gu Zhao died in the fire at The Louvre, suspected of murder, extortion, and receiving bribes. The so-called 'wanted criminal's fingerprint' was only a prop for his extortion, all made up. This turned into a huge scandal that's been covered up to this day."
Lu Guosheng recalled for a moment, then nodded in agreement. "Just about. It went something like that."
"So you did once use The Louvre as a stronghold, and Gu Zhao suffered an unredressed injustice," Luo Wenzhou said. "How did you do it?"
Lu Guosheng rather ruminatively repeated the words "unredressed injustice" twice, then shrugged at him. "Captain Luo, I'm only a little person. You're asking me, but who can I go ask? If that police officer hadn't been there to use as a shield, we'd have been through. I'm still frightened."
Xiao Haiyang was occupying a small corner of the observation room. He seemed to have had a bowl of boiling hot white paint poured into his head; his mind was empty, his consciousness burning away.
All the people around him, their voices, and the whole world, rolled together into a pot of porridge. When he came around after a while, he found that Fei Du was firmly pressing him into the corner.
Fei Du was holding his shoulder with one hand and covering his mouth with the other; there seemed to be a layer of icy frost between his brows.
Looking at his eyes, very close by, Xiao Haiyang felt that they were like two indifferent pieces of glass, reflecting the light; Xiao Haiyang saw his own desperate and twisted face in them.
For a moment he couldn't remember where he was, couldn't remember whether he should be glad or angry. The switch on his intellect seemed to have temporarily tripped; there was only confusion.
A burning and anxious confusion.
A long time passed before Fei Du released his hold on him. The lights in the observation room were dim, and everyone was shaken by Lu Guosheng's words, wanting nothing better than to put his mouth on fast-forward. No one noticed the grief and hatred, sufficient to drown a person, flooding the little corner.
The string that had been pulled tight in Xiao Haiyang's mind without warning snapped, and the turbulent memories and anguish came surging up, making him want to gasp for breath, want to cry and wail.
But he couldn't.
The moment was wrong, the occasion was wrong, everything was wrong.
In front of him, Fei Du seemed to be a human-shaped seal, dragging back his tottering intellect, returning his soul, which was about to escape, to its shell.
Xiao Haiyang seemed to hear the sound of his skin tearing bit by bit; he felt it was too painful.
This made him glare ruthlessly at Fei Du; there was a moment where he almost began to hate him.
But Fei Du's eyes didn't flicker; like two inescapable nails, ignoring all Xiao Haiyang's emotions, they firmly nailed him in place, confining him.
Fei Du silently stuck up an index finger and gently shook his head towards Xiao Haiyang. He moved his lips, mouthing the words, "Endure it."
Luo Wenzhou, not batting an eyelash, let out a heavy breath and continued the questioning. "Sun Jiaxing—the swindler who changed his name to Sun Xin when he got out of prison and who works at the Beehive driving customer cars—he explained in his confession that you frequently used his car in private?"
"Yeah." Lu Guosheng nodded. "He's timid, and he's a good talker. He knew who I was and was rather scared of me at first. Then one time he mentioned that he had a sick child at home, and that's why he was in this profession. We're both fathers, so I talked to him about children a few times, and we gradually got friendly. He needed money, and I gave him quite a bit of it and made him drive for me privately. I went to look at my daughter. I left when I'd seen her. I didn't let her know."
Luo Wenzhou asked, "Where does your money come from?"
Lu Guosheng unhurriedly tapped out his cigarette ash. "I'm an 'electrician' at the Beehive. They pay me monthly. Not too much. I figure it's about the same as your income with the police. Although I didn't have anywhere to spend it, so there was also no need to save."
"The Beehive was paying you to do nothing?"
"Not to do nothing," Lu Guosheng said. "We're different from those pilfering little bandits. We handle urgent business. We're their real moneymakers."
"What urgent business? Who do you make money off of?"
"The true customers. There's usually two types of work. One type is a living assignment, the other type is a death assignment. You normally don't come back from the death assignments. Only people who have reached the end of the line will take them, the sort of thing like those suicide attacks that get on the news—although the kind where you strap bombs onto yourself is to make everyone know about it, while our work is done so no one knows. For example, man-made car crashes. The person who hits and the person who gets hit don't know each other, both of them die, and it looks like an accident. It goes to the traffic police and gets resolved. No one will investigate.
"The living assignments are a little more complicated. First off, the person who takes the job has to be well-known. A nameless nobody won't do.—Take me, for example. Going back ten years, there were hardly any locals who didn't know about National Road 327." Having said this much, Lu Guosheng displayed some indescribable self-satisfaction. "Next, when you do the job, you have to deliberately expose yourself, make it so the police know it was you as soon as they show up. You get it, right?"
"Why?" said Luo Wenzhou.
"To protect the commissioner," Lu Guosheng said. "When someone dies, you police will look into the interested parties right away. When we're through, the next day the newspapers will say something like, 'A certain escaped criminal is on the run in the area and committed a murder for money.' Of course the customer won't have trouble, and you guys won't catch us, anyway. This type of work has to be done smoothly. Before we act, someone plans it out specially. If the police begin to suspect the customer, then we're useless. We have to be sent out to act as scapegoat. No matter how much money you have, you can't spend it. That's called life and death being ruled by fate. Pretty stimulating, don't you think?"
Hitting Zhou Junmao must have been Zheng Kaifeng's "death assignment," while Lu Guosheng killing Feng Bin must have been a "living assignment"—provided that Wei Wenchuan followed "proper procedure" when hiring him for the murder.
Luo Wenzhou asked heavily, "Who are these so-called customers?"
Lu Guosheng shook his head. "I don't know. They're all big bosses. They wouldn't have direct contact with people like us."
Apparently when Fei Chengyu had been in power, while he'd clearly been a shrewd person with a sinister gaze, he'd joined in quite a few businesses "without steady earnings," as though he'd been hoodwinked. In addition, there had been the contributions, the use of his position in the name of a collaboration, the false contracts, the enormous overseas money-laundering operations… They'd used these means to support the monsters hibernating in the darkness, not touching upon the surface-level flow of funds, countless times more secret than low-grade assassins.
"Then I'll ask something you do know about." Luo Wenzhou knocked on the table, signaling to the clerk next to him, who'd gone blank from listening, to concentrate his energies. "Lu Guosheng, the day that the teenage boy Feng Bin was killed in the Drum Tower Scenic Area, the security cameras on the scene caught your face. The body was dealt with exactly the same as that of Lu Yu, the third victim in the 327 case. Your fingerprint was also found at the scene. Do you have anything to say?"
"No," Lu Guosheng answered without any hesitation, "I did it."
"Did you know Feng Bin?"
"No."
"Then why would you kill him? Who made you do it?"
"Since I've been arrested by you and I'm already here like this, there's nothing to conceal," Lu Guosheng said. "It was a rich kid named Wei Wenchuan. His family has some shares in the Beehive. He'd been to the Beehive and gotten his eye on me when I was taking a car there… That kid's a piece of work. He recognized me."
Luo Wenzhou's expression flickered. "Wei Wenchuan recognized you?"
"He stopped me in the employee passage one day and said to me, 'I know what you did. That day you were following my schoolmate around near the school, I recognized the Beehive's car.'"
Luo Wenzhou frowned—this was too much of a coincidence.
"My first instinct was to kill him." Lu Guosheng's lip curled. "But he got out his phone and said that he'd sent a recording and my photograph to some place… I don't understand these kids' new toys.—He said it was his dad's money paying for our upkeep and told me not to act rashly, or else everyone would immediately know my secret."
Luo Wenzhou said, "What did he want you to do?"
"At first he didn't make me do anything, just pestered me occasionally to tell him about the people I'd killed and ask probing questions, ask how I felt when I killed them. He said he thought it was very interesting… These idle little whelps. I was trying to think of a way to get free of him, but one day, the kid brought a paternity test result and said to me, 'So Liang Youjing isn't Trustee Liang's biological daughter. She's your spawn.'" Lu Guosheng had been weary and calm all along. Only at this point was there a stirring in his gaze.
"I couldn't let anyone know about this. Not even Sun Xin knew. He thought I had a grievance against Liang and was stalking his daughter because I was planning to retaliate," Lu Guosheng said. "These people aren't supporting us for nothing. Your wife and children, anyone with any connection to you is in their line of sight. Never mind us, even little bandits like Sun Xin are the same.—I couldn't let them get their eyes on her. I don't mind telling you, it's not that I haven't found other women these last few years, trying to get them to give me a child, but the sort of women who have one-night stands are all demons. They all take drugs or something. They aren't willing to give birth to children for you. But if you tried to keep a girlfriend, before she got pregnant they'd get their eyes on her. There's no one left in our Lu family. This is the family's true motive. Without her, won't our family line end?"
However worldly and experienced Luo Wenzhou was, he was still struck dumb in spite of himself.
This person had killed and robbed. He was cruel and ruthless. He made no distinction between a human life and a dog's life—they were both a joke to him.
Towards parents or siblings, relatives or friends, he was without exception unfeeling, without exception indifferent. He only cared about Liang Youjing, this daughter he'd never met—because in his eyes, she wasn't a person; she was a "family line," a family treasure of the sort that was very precious, even if you didn't know what use it had.
This thought was so deep-rooted, Lu Guosheng was so firmly convinced of it, that it was the same way he was firmly convinced about the eyes of the dead preserving the last image they saw.
Luo Wenzhou said, "Wei Wenchuan coerced you into killing someone for him."
Lu Guosheng nodded. "He said someone wanted to hurt him, and he got out a recording of some gossip to show me—I didn't really understand it. These little whelps can really stir things up while they're at school. It was all kids' stuff. Though that kid said that if I did this for him, he'd help me privately get to know my daughter."
Luo Wenzhou didn't quite understand. "It's been so many years and you haven't thought of a way to get to know her, so why would you risk your life for the sake of getting to know her now and take a private job to kill someone? Weren't you afraid that your 'company' would find out, and you and your daughter would both die without intact corpses?"
Lu Guosheng stared blankly at this question, looking helplessly back at Luo Wenzhou, his skewed eyes a bit confused.
Luo Wenzhou instantly understood something. "So you didn't take the job privately—"
"Take the job privately? Are you crazy?" Lu Guosheng said. "The kid had the Beehive's 'black card.'—The Beehive's normal VIP cards are gold, silver, and diamond. Only our true customers have the black card. There's no money on them. The points are an accounting of their transactions with the company. They come to the Beehive with the black card, get someone to help them plan, then get us to carry it out for them. He came to me with a black card and a planning agent. It was a living assignment, and I'd get a large sum of money for doing it, and I could get to know my daughter. Why wouldn't I do it?"
Luo Wenzhou faintly grasped a lead. "So the time, place, and route you took there and back when you killed Feng Bin were all told to you by the planner? He was the one who told you to kill Feng Bin and leave Xia Xiaonan?"
"Xia Xiaonan?" Lu Guosheng looked slightly dubious. Then he came around. "You mean the little girl with the locator on her phone? The planner said she was one of ours. I don't know where they found her. She seemed pretty inexperienced. She was petrified. I was worried she'd slip up, so I took the tracking device on her away with me."
Luo Wenzhou immediately followed up, "Who was the planner?"
"Serial number A13," Lu Guosheng said. "I don't know his name."
Luo Wenzhou gestured at the security camera. In the observation room, Tao Ran immediately said to his colleagues, "Who did we bring back from the Beehive? Go arrange some materials and have them say which one is A13!"
Xiao Haiyang really couldn't stick it out any longer in the observation room. He took the order without saying a word, turned, and left.
"Why did you go to Beiyuan's Longyun Center on November sixth? To see Liang Youjing?"
"The planner said that when the business was done, they'd send me away to avoid the investigation. When we move, we may not come back for the next few years, so I went behind his back to deal privately with Wei Wenchuan, to see whether I could make him fulfill his promise beforehand. He agreed and had me come see her, not say anything to her, and wait for him to slowly explain things."
Luo Wenzhou quietly said, "The Longyun Center—weren't you afraid someone would recognize you, or that you'd be caught on the security cameras?"
"It's been fifteen years. Who would still recognize me?" Lu Guosheng smiled. "Wei Wenchuan is the Longyun Center's young master. He wouldn't leave behind evidence of our meeting at his own doorstep. The kid's crafty. He deleted the video long ago. Though I figure he was only concerned with the cameras inside the Longyun Center, the ones that have to do with him. He wouldn't necessarily have paid attention to the ones at the main doors and in the surroundings, so I was careful—what, was there a slip-up?"
Luo Wenzhou's expression didn't falter, but his mind was full of terrifying waves—if Wei Wenchuan had deleted the video of Lu Guosheng showing up at the revolving restaurant long ago, then why had Fei Du's people been able to get a complete recording?
So when those people had searched the Longyun Center's security camera records but didn't react at once, had it been because what was in front of them was the version initially abridged by Wei Wenchuan?
So the security camera records in the Longyun Center had been quietly changed twice!
Luo Wenzhou instantly stood up.
"Hey, Captain Luo," Lu Guosheng called him to a halt, "I'll probably be executed by firing squad, right?"
Luo Wenzhou paused.
Lu Guosheng spread his hands. "So that's my lifetime over with. Though my daughter hasn't broken the law—she should know whose child she is, whether she can accept it or not. Since we're reached this stage, you could have her come see me when she has time."
Luo Wenzhou was disinclined to attend to him. He turned and left.
The solar year was coming to an end. The citizens of Yan City, wrapped in a flurry of snow, were following the instincts of village tribes, beginning to have no mood for work. Students prepared to go on winter break, and adults prepared to change their solar calendars. Each and every profession languidly looked forward to year-end bonuses, but two big matters were keeping the city government and the public security system so busy they didn't even have time to write year-end reports.
The business of the well-known entrepreneur Wei Zhanhong and his son hiring assassins, using the Beehive and other entertainment institutions as fronts to support wanted criminals in hiding, was like an urban legend; it rolled over the front pages of all the mass media, giving the common folk in the streets something to revel about over their cups of tea.
Luo Wenzhou lived in the duty room for fully four days and four nights, losing all track of night and day.
When Tao Ran woke him, he'd just been asleep for five minutes, wrapped in someone's greatcoat.
"We've questioned all the people from the Beehive," Tao Ran said. "The A13 Lu Guosheng told you about isn't there."
Luo Wenzhou got a bottle of water out from under the camp bed, drank half of it, and poured the rest onto his face, waking up with a start.
"Wei Wenchuan confessed. He stole the black card from his dad," Tao Ran said. "A13 received him. He thought at the time that A13 could tell he'd stolen the card, but not only did he not say anything, he helped him with the business—isn't that strange? There's stranger. A few years ago, when he was specially discussing how to kill people on a forum for novelty-seekers, he made an online friend whose handle is 'go ask shatov'."
The corner of Luo Wenzhou's eye twitched.
"That so-called 'system' he set up at the school, half of it was stuff he'd learned from books and movies, and half of it was stuff he'd discussed with this person. This person gave him detailed materials about the 327 case, including the information that Lu Guosheng was hiding at the Beehive," Tao Ran said. "We tracked this person's location through his IP, but they'd already vacated the premises."
Luo Wenzhou closed his eyes. "What about the employees in the Longyun Center's security camera room?"
"I was just going to tell you," Tao Ran said. "One of them, a middle-aged man named Wang Jian, mysteriously disappeared after this happened. He worked at the Longyun Center for five years, and no one noticed that his ID was fake."
Luo Wenzhou heavily let out a breath and waved a hand at Tao Ran, mournfully calling out, "Go away. You don't have any good news."
"I do have good news." Tao Ran's eyes were bloodshot, but they glittered frighteningly. "The results of the DNA comparison on Liang Youjing and Lu Guosheng have come out. There's no relationship between them. Lu Guosheng's sperm count is very low. It would be very difficult for him to have descendants. And Wei Wenchuan confessed that the so-called 'paternity report' was a hoax he cooked up to accord with Lu Guosheng's delusion. There was no question of a father-daughter reunion. He didn't say anything to Liang Youjing, and A13 privately promised him that after he'd killed Feng Bin, Lu Guosheng would 'die a natural death' and be given to the police to close the case. Of these three people, each pair had a private agreement. Isn't that funny?—We're planning to draw lots to see who gets to tell Lu Guosheng the news. Do you want to try?"
After a pause, Luo Wenzhou was entertained. He waved a hand. "Settle down, let Xiao Haiyang go. Don't haggle over it with him."
"The second thing is that today our leaders went to have a meeting with the higher-ups. After the New Year, they'll formally reopen Gu Zhao's case." Tao Ran showed an uncontrollable smile.
Luo Wenzhou said, "Really?"
"Hurry up and get home to rest." Tao Ran pulled him up. "The third good thing is that your so-and-so is outside waiting to pick you up. An old bachelor like me can't stand the sight of you two. You've spent all these years using me as a pretext for your bickering, and then in the blink of an eye you've ended up together—what the hell, hurry up and take him away!"
Luo Wenzhou didn't say another word. He jumped up as though he'd been fully restored to life, taking a punch from Tao Ran without complaint.
"Hey, leave the public property behind, that coat is a duty room treasure, don't play dumb and leave wearing it!" As if he were joking, Tao Ran tugged at his clothing.
"Go on, I've just warmed up…" Luo Wenzhou hastily gathered up his collar. "Scoundrel! Taking liberties!"
Under the cover of playing around, Tao Ran quickly said something into his ear. Luo Wenzhou froze, and Tao Ran took the opportunity to pull off the decrepit coat, bundle it into his arms, and run.
Luo Wenzhou roared, "Tao Ran, are you staging a rebellion?!"
Tao Ran took to his heels. "Happy New Year to you, too!"