Luo Wenzhou's ears seemed to be moonlighting as eyes; without needing to turn his head, he noticed something was off about Fei Du's expression. "What's wrong?"
"Thirteen years ago." Fei Du's voice was so faint it seemed to disappear as soon as it reached his lips. He whispered, "The first Picture Album Project was also thirteen years ago…"
Zhou Huaijin and Luo Wenzhou, one not knowing what he was talking about, and the other, while he did know, not understanding, questioned him simultaneously.
The always well-disposed Fei Du, with an answer for every question, for once ignored them. With his hands propping his chin, he was silently lost in thought for a long time, as though sinking into some remote memory.
Meanwhile, at the Second Hospital—
Xiao Haiyang blocked the door, watching the nurse's aide squeezing the nurse's neck as though he were lifting a chick.
"You can't get away." Little Glasses' lungs, nearly exploding, expelled breath very unsteadily, but his tone was firm. "Our people have this place surrounded. Even if you take a hostage and manage to get out of here, you still can't get away."
The male nurse's aide's gaze spun around very unsteadily. There was sweat on his forehead. "Go get me a car!"
"The Second Hospital isn't far from the city center. The streets are full of surveillance cameras. What's the point of a car? You won't make it out of the city before you're stopped." As Xiao Haiyang spoke, he got up his courage and went forward a step.
"Get away, or I'll kill her!"
Lang Qiao came over and saw that Xiao Haiyang's legs were still shaking. She hastily grabbed the back of his jacket and pulled him behind her.
Lang Qiao said, "If you kill her, you still won't get away. Use your brain and think—if you behave and get out here right now, your crime is only an attempt. There'll be room to deliberate. But if you dare to touch her, you'll be a carved-in-stone murderer. Think about it!"
As she spoke, she glanced at her colleague behind her. At the same time, she very skillfully plastered herself to the foot of the wall and went into the hospital room, heading directly towards the criminal.
The male "nurse's aide" subconsciously adjusted his position according to her movements, violently yelling to her, "Stop! If you come any closer I'll…"
"You've seen what state Yin Ping is in," Xiao Haiyang interrupted him from the doorway. "Even if I don't tell you, you have eyes of your own. You can see it. His surgery wasn't very successful. They don't know whether he'll live, and if he does, he may become a vegetable. And even if his luck is unusually good and he does wake up in the end, he still won't escape dementia and paralysis. Do you think he'll be able to accuse anyone? For the rest of his life, his mouth won't be good for anything but drooling—if he even has a rest of his life."
The criminal's attention was drawn to him in spite of himself.
Lang Qiao said, "Put down the knife."
Xiao Haiyang said, "Heavens, do you still not understand? Who told you that Yin Ping was going to make a full recovery soon? Clearly they lied to you."
Lang Qiao only learned of this detail when she heard Xiao Haiyang's words. She broke out in a cold sweat of fright. "Is that true?"
"It is." Xiao Haiyang's gaze didn't leave the criminal. "Would a living corpse be worth taking the risk otherwise?"
The two of them stood one on each side, their words tightly joined; sometimes what they said was completely unrelated, and sometimes it was a dialogue; it produced the effect of a babble of voices, leaving the criminal forming the third corner of the triangle hesitating about which to defend against first; his gaze vacillated back and forth, his attention dodging left and right. "Shut up! Shut up!"
Xiao Haiyang quickly took another step forward. At the same time, a few colleagues who'd come over as soon as they'd heard the news came in after him, pressing in on the "nurse's aide" with their momentum.
In his panic, the criminal instinctively turned in the direction where there were the most people and retreated, holding onto the nurse. He howled, "Get out!"
"No," Xiao Haiyang said, looking at his hand holding the knife. With his eyes fixed on that fiercely shaking hand, he said, "It's clear now that someone tricked you into throwing yourself into the net. This business is so simple. Won't you give up the liar and drag him under? Are you still planning to kidnap and kill for him?"
The criminal's hand shook more and more fiercely—he'd listened to what had been said, acknowledged that what Xiao Haiyang had said was the truth.
Xiao Haiyang looked into his eyes with a naturally played sneer. "Are you mentally handicapped?"
The "nurse's aide" stiffened. Just then, the little nurse he was holding, who perhaps had experience dealing with aggrieved patients and relatives, took advantage of his divided attention, biting the webbing between his fingers with the boldness of consummate skill; she had chosen the most opportune moment.
Faced on one side with Yin Ping, whose condition didn't agree with rumor, and on the other with Xiao Haiyang's continuous verbal attack, the criminal's mind was in turmoil; encountering a skilled bite without warning, he cried out loudly and instinctively shook her off.
The little nurse stamped on his instep. Lang Qiao called to her, "Duck!"
The nurse bent her knees in response; almost at the same time, a tray crashed down from above, knocking away the nurse's aide's knife. The nurse was scared into a scream by the loud noise passing over her head. A few criminal policemen came up together—
Fei Du's unusual-looking deep thoughtfulness was interrupted by the phone ringing. Luo Wenzhou picked up the phone on the car. Over a very unsteady signal, Lang Qiao briefly and succinctly reported how the suspect had already been taken into custody. "I'm sorry, boss. It was my slip-up. Yin Ping's condition is very unstable, they're doing rescue work again for some reason. The doctors are all saying the outlook isn't good. There are lots of people going in and out, like they're fighting for his life, we didn't…"
"Didn't I say that Yin Ping was an important witness? As soon as I slink off, you all cook this up for me." Luo Wenzhou ground his teeth when he'd heard. "Just fucking great. I guess you aren't even thinking of your bonuses anymore? How come you're all so good at saving the state money?"
Lang Qiao didn't dare to defend herself. She obediently closed her mouth and took the lecture.
"Bring him in," Luo Wenzhou said coldly. "Don't think that I can't keep an eye on you while the old men are away. I see that all of you haven't written enough self-examinations!"
When he'd said this, Luo Wenzhou hung up uncompromisingly and spun the steering wheel, irritably shifting to the turn lane.
Fei Du didn't respond. He untied his scarf, his fingers subconsciously rubbing back and forth over his neck, his frown deepening.
As one of the important witnesses, Zhou Huaijin of course needed someone to receive him. At the City Bureau, Luo Wenzhou first found someone to lead him in, then familiarly returned the car to its parking space. When he'd cut the engine, he didn't rush to get out of the car. In the remaining warmth, he turned and pulled away Fei Du's hand, which was about to break the skin. "Tell me what you're thinking."
"I'm the key figure who framed Gu Zhao fourteen years ago," Fei Du opened in a frightening manner. "First, with Gu Zhao entirely unwary, I grasped which way his investigation was trending, then started in on his informers. Informers live in the grey areas on the edges and are doomed not to stay there long; they have their own plans. Whether they were threatened or enticed, they could all be put to good use—but the risk in this process was great. What if among them was one idiot who didn't know what was good for him and told Gu Zhao about this? As soon as Gu Zhao heard, he'd know who I was."
Luo Wenzhou gave a "wow."
"So what should I do?" Fei Du asked quietly. His fingers flitted over his upper lip. While there was no expression on his face, there seemed to be a smile in the tail-end of his words, as though he really was that monster hiding in the shadows, turning everyone over in the palm of his hand. "I need to make my target betray Gu Zhao before I reveal myself."
Luo Wenzhou thought about it. "For example, something like making the target informer think that you were a villain from The Louvre and Gu Zhao's investigation had alerted the enemy, then forcing the informer to reveal Gu Zhao's plans?"
"Yes. I'm Gu Zhao's secret partner. Of course I know Gu Zhao's plans. It would be very easy to know whether they were telling the truth, and very easy to screen for traitors," Fei Du said gently. "As a police officer, of course I'm familiar with the informers closely related to the City Bureau. While Yin Chao and Yin Ping are identical twins, they're far apart in disposition, so…if Yin Ping was impersonating Old Cinder, why didn't I notice?"
"Because he likely didn't have direct contact with Yin Ping at first, and his subordinates wouldn't necessarily be familiar with Old Cinder." Luo Wenzhou's eyes turned, and he quickly said, "As for afterwards, because 'Old Cinder' became his partner in perjury and framing, even if the mole noticed that his performance was peculiar, he wouldn't think much of it."
"Afterwards, to make this thing seamless, I'd quietly take care of the witnesses, send them to other countries to lie low or simply kill them on the way… It's all possible. Only the fake Old Cinder was the fish who slipped out of the net. In other words, it's likely that Yin Ping realized the danger. When he had done the business, he wasn't greedy. He immediately broke contact, faked Yin Chao's disappearance, and went back to being a sooty-faced boiler attendant himself." Fei Du looked up. "So the question arises, why would I allow Yin Chao to 'disappear' without going to investigate his family?"
Luo Wenzhou froze. "You mean to say it's likely that the chief culprit behind framing Gu Zhao may have thought that Old Cinder didn't have any material evidence pointing to him!"
"It's likely that Yin Ping hid himself because he sensed something, but if you want to say that he had some material evidence, I've just been thinking about the whole process carefully, and I think it would be very hard." Fei Du had switched over which person he was speaking in and had also returned to his ordinary tone of voice. "Then why is the person behind the scenes in such a rush to eliminate Yin Ping? First he exposed his contact, and then he sent another one of his people to the hospital to be caught by the police."
Luo Wenzhou's temples began to ache.
Fei Du slowly said, "If I haven't guessed wrong, then it's likely you'll be able to reach an important suspect today. This person is undoubtedly in a high, powerful position. As soon as something happens, it'll create a major scandal impacting the system's ability to win public trust."
Fei Du's words were a prophecy—
At this delicate moment when the gaze of the investigation team was firmly fixed on the City Bureau, the "nurse's aide" who had snuck into the hospital confessed.
"I did used to be a nurse's aide… I worked at the Second Hospital, so I was very familiar with it. I needed money desperately, there was really no other way… I was…I was possessed. At first they made me sneak into the Second Hospital to keep an eye on that Yin Ping… So today I heard someone remark that he was going to wake up, and they said he may have killed someone, so as soon as his condition stabilized a little the police would take him away. When I found out, I thought of a way to notify my employers, and they told me to…told me to…"
"For money?" Lang Qiao closed her notebook, looking at the man with a disbelieving expression. "Do you know what kind of crime murder is?"
The man lowered his head, stammering.
Xiao Haiyang said, "Who told you to keep an eye on Yin Ping? Who ordered you to kill him? Did you see this person?"
"Two guys came to my house with money. They said it was their boss. I…I saw a car stopped outside."
An investigator watching the interrogation over the security camera feed turned to Luo Wenzhou. "Captain Luo, please coordinate this as soon as possible. We want the security camera footage from around the suspect's house transferred over."
With matters at this stage, Luo Wenzhou could only follow instructions.—They turned up five million in cash at the "hospital killers"'s residence, and, at the same time, a surveillance camera nearby that had caught a luxury sedan appearing around the time and location the criminal had told them; with the criminal's identification, they determined that it was the car that had stopped outside his building then.
The high-definition surveillance camera had caught the driver turning his head to speak to someone sitting in the backseat. This person was leaning forward slightly, and his features were clearly distinguishable—it was the City Bureau's former director-general Zhang Chunjiu, who had transferred to an advisory post at the beginning of the year.
And the car he was sitting in, worth six million on the market, was a business vehicle registered in the name of his older brother Zhang Chunling's conglomerate.
Zhang Chunjiu and Gu Zhao had started work at the City Bureau at the same time. The two of them had always been very friendly. Zhang Chunjiu had been the backbone of the City Bureau's Criminal Investigation Team when Gu Zhao had come to grief; he would have had every opportunity to place the fingerprint mold and the cash without anyone being the wiser. After Gu Zhao died, Yang Zhengfeng had borne the principal responsibility as his superior and had been disciplined, and Zhang Chunjiu had taken over Yang Zhengfeng's position; he'd been the ultimate beneficiary of Gu Zhao's death. And the field work system that was suspected of having been leaked and the tampered-with security camera equipment had all been put in place during his term of office.
Most importantly, when they investigated his record, they found that the reason that an exception had been made to transfer Zhang Chunjiu to the City Bureau was that he had rendered a tremendous meritorious service in the jurisdiction he'd originally belonged to—he'd arrested a gang of robbers and murderers who'd fled through twenty provinces. The above-mentioned gang was very crafty; they'd been wanted throughout the country for half a year, and each time they'd slipped away. But by some coincidence, they'd fallen into the hands of Zhang Chunjiu, at that time a young nobody!
Had he really been so perceptive, his professional abilities so unsurpassed?
If he'd been so awesome when he was young, then why had he become more confused the older he got? During the period he was in office managing the City Bureau, the Flower Market District Sub-Bureau had nearly become a drug den, and he'd had no idea.
All of it could be explained; the investigation team was extremely excited. They sent two people to personally go with Luo Wenzhou and his people to "invite" old Director Zhang from his residence. And while you wouldn't know without looking, once you'd seen, you'd be astonished—old Director Zhang was living in a Yan City estate famous for its mansions. The two cars parked outside were worth over ten million. Even the teacups in the house were from some luxury brand, and there was a whole row of leather goods costing over a hundred thousand a piece in a cabinet. It was poles apart from the low-key and plain lifestyle he'd modeled at the City Bureau in former days.
What was all this "only wearing his uniform," "carrying his own water," "his private phone wasn't even a smartphone"… All of it now simply seemed like an over-the-top pompous joke.