Jiang Ting, former captain of the second division of the Gongzhou Anti-Drug Corps, first-level police inspector. Three years ago, he died in the explosion and became the number one black policeman in the upper levels of the system. He was also suspected of murdering Yue Guangping, the former deputy mayor of Gongzhou and chief of the public security bureau.
And last night, on a rainy, cold winter night, his ghost appeared around the lakeside community in Jianning City.
"I originally wanted to go to Yan Xie, the vice-captain of our city bureau, but when I walked near the community, I spotted some suspicious people; they seemed to be spying on the building. I immediately hid and waited for an opportunity to secretly follow and found out that the culprit turned out to be Jiang Ting, who was suspected of killing my old comrade-in-arms Yue Guangping three years ago and had been identified as a 'sacrificed' by Gongzhou! Moreover, he also had people with him! I was about to call for help, but he found out and stabbed me in a hurry…"
In the single ward, the windows were bright and clean. The leaders of the Public Security Department of S Province were sitting around the bed, and several people were taking notes with their heads bowed.
Chief Lu leaned weakly on the head of the bed and said hoarsely: "Fortunately, I was wearing thick winter clothes and my body is fat, so some vital parts didn't get stabbed, and I just passed out at that time. Alas! I am old and useless!"
His hair had turned much greyer overnight, and his chubby face was out of shape—after all, he was a 60-year-old man who struggled in a coma for several hours on a rainy night, and just being able to save his life was a god's blessing.
"What are you saying, Chief Lu? Who doesn't know about your wisdom and courage?" The commissioner, who came from the provincial department, quickly comforted him: "The other party is a murderous and cunning police scum who colluded with drug dealers. It's up to us to bring him to justice and avenge you!"
Chief Lu sighed and closed his old eyes in exhaustion.
The commissioner stood up quickly and wisely: "Then let's stop here today, and don't disturb the leader's rest. Chief Lu, if you think of more clues, just ask someone to call, we'll be here right away!"
Chief Lu sighed and nodded to indicate that he knew, then beckoned and ordered, "Old Yu, send them off."
Yu Zhu personally sent the people from the provincial office away and talked to them all the way to the gate of the hospital. Seeing that they all got into the car and left, she turned back to the ward and gave Deputy Chief Wei, who was sitting in the nurse's station, a look.
Wei Yao hurriedly stood up and followed her into the ward.
Chief Lu leaned on the pillow; his face was yellow as if it was bloodless, and even his lips were a bit gray: "What's your plan?"
"We're going to set up a task force, cooperate with Gongzhou, and issue a nationwide notice of assistance to arrest Jiang Ting." Yu Zhu sat in the armchair beside the hospital bed, then coughed and cleared her throat, her voice showing her anxiety: "Old Lu, what's going on? I don't believe what you said to the people of the provincial government, there are way too many loopholes!"
Chief Lu stopped talking and looked at Wei Yao.
Wei Yao understood and nodded at both Chief Lu and Yu Zhu.
"I've been working with you for twenty or thirty years, and I'm not going to hide anything from you, so I'll just say it directly." Chief Lu sighed under the intense gaze of his two colleagues and said, "I didn't meet Jiang Ting near Yan Xie's house. Rather, I knew that he was at Yan Xie's house, so I went to visit him specifically, trying to incite him."
As soon as the words landed, Wei Yao and Yu Zhu both changed their tones and blurted out at the same time, "What did you say?"
"Incite him?!"
Chief Lu raised his hand, signaling them to keep their voices down. With a wry smile in his eyes, he said: "Don't worry, you two, listen to me. I've been thinking about turning Jiang Ting to our side for a long time, but I didn't discuss it with you because of confidentiality. Jiang Ting has been secretly involved in the cases of our Jianning Municipal Bureau for some time. To be honest, if it wasn't for him, Qin Chuan wouldn't have been exposed so easily."
Yu Zhu asked suspiciously, "Qin Chuan?"
"Yes," Chief Lu paused, briefly recounted the process before and after the investigation of the poisoning incident, and confessed what happened at Qin Chuan's house on the night when the arrest was carried out. Hearing all this, Deputy Chief Wei was stunned. Yu Zhu was not much better than him, and she couldn't help making obvious breathing sounds.
"After this incident, considering Jiang Ting's position and behavior, I felt that I could take a risk, so I deliberately went to find him last night and proposed a very bold idea to him…" The self-depreciation in Chief Lu's words was getting stronger and stronger: "I hoped he could completely surrender to the police and at the same time pretend to be a black policeman and become a nail for us to drive into the King of Spades criminal group."
More than ten hours ago—
"Sowing discord?" Jiang Ting put his hands in his trouser pockets and leaned his left shoulder against the wall of the living room as if he had heard a particularly ridiculous joke: "You're telling me to pretend to surrender to the King of Spades, go deep into the drug cartel, and risk my life to cooperate with the police?"
The gurgling sound of boiling soup in the kitchen continued, the steam filled the room, and a large cloud of white mist formed on the floor-to-ceiling windows. Sitting on the big milky white leather sofa in the living room, Chief Lu stared sharply at the handsome but aggressive young man in front of him from behind the reading glasses: "Yes, it's true that you have to risk your life, but it's the best way out for you."
Jiang Ting rubbed his brows, put his hands in his trouser pockets, and asked with a smile: "——but why should I work for the police?"
"Because you're still alive, and more than one or two people already know the secret of your existence. If you worked for the police, there's at least a chance to save your life. What if the police catch you? More than a dozen anti-drug police officers who died in the plastic factory explosion, and your various actions are enough to sentence you to death, right?"
Jiang Ting's eyes instantly sank.
Contrary to his shard attitude, Chief Lu was like a cotton wall, quietly absorbing and defusing all attacks, unmoved by any force or persuasion, making people helpless.
"Do you still want to show up in the sun someday? Or do you want to bear the name of a dead person and live in a sewer for the rest of your life? Jiang Ting, Yan Xie is not in Jianning now; I just need to make a phone call, and you won't even be able to get out of this community today."
"Think clearly about it yourself." Chief Lu snorted softly and said, "If the police catch you, I guarantee that no matter how many explosions the King of Spades makes, he won't be able to rob you out of the detention center!"
The living room fell into silence. Jiang Ting was silent for a long time, and the stalemate turned every inch of air into ice. After several minutes, he finally opened his mouth slowly: "…I can't agree with you."
Chief Lu didn't expect him to refuse, so his face twitched immediately.
"There are two reasons. First, the King of Spades knows what kind of person I am, and he will never believe that I am willing to surrender to him… As for the second."
Jiang Ting's voice paused slightly, and the bright lights of the living room were reflected in the depths of his pupils. He just stared straight at Chief Lu, and a weird smile gradually appeared on the corners of his lips.
"——and what?" Deputy Chief Wei couldn't help asking.
There was silence in the ward. Deputy Chief Wei and Yu Zhu seemed to be immersed in shock, and after a long while, Chief Lu let out a heavy sigh:
"If the first reason was just a subjective factor that can still be denied, the second point was something I really never expected, and I would never have thought of it. The moment he said that, I realized what a foolish decision I had made by trying to turn him against the King of Spades. He really cannot cooperate with the police and will never be on the same side as the police."
Yu Zhu unconsciously leaned forward: "Then the second reason was…"
Outside the gate of the hospital, in a car parked on a hidden street corner, a clerk who had just appeared in the ward with the provincial government leader in charge of taking notes was wearing headphones, and the monitor in front of him flashed blue light.
No one knew what Chief Lu said in the earphone, but he suddenly gasped, his heart started beating violently, and he looked around hurriedly.
Cars were coming and going on the road, pedestrians were walking side by side in the distance, and no one noticed this ordinary-looking car with a single-sided window film.
The eavesdropper unplugged his earphones furtively, stepped on the gas pedal, and headed straight in the opposite direction from the provincial department.
...…
Eighty kilometers away from Tongshan County, Yongkang Village.
After following the bumpy mountain road for two full hours, Qi Sihao felt that not only his bones, but even the frame of the car were about to break apart. Through the windows of the car, even the dilapidated rural brick houses on the side of the fields gradually disappeared, replaced by large areas of wasteland and dead trees. The gray-white hillsides in winter were endless, and the dry grass was scattered on the rough road.
The sun had already passed the middle of the sky, and Qi Sihao was so hungry that his stomach was almost touching his back, but seeing Yan Xie's gloomy face beside him, he swallowed and didn't dare to say anything.
How could the son of a rich family personally go to the countryside to donate to help the poor?
Where were the warm welcomes and warm hospitality from the counties, towns, and villages that had been agreed upon?
Finally, before Qi Sihao could faint from hunger, the car stopped in a groggy state, and the driver sent by the county magistrate shouted, "We're here—"
Qi Sihao looked up as if he had been saved.
The iron door had already changed color in the wind and sun, and amidst the rustling of the wind, two gray, two-story concrete houses stood abruptly on the "playground" overgrown with weeds. A group of strange-shaped mud monkeys was lying behind the wooden railing on the second floor, staring straight at their car. From such a distance, they couldn't even tell it was a human child.
Yan Xie got out of the car, raised his head, and squinted his eyes in the wind and sand.
There were a few rusty characters at the gate of the Hongri Welfare Home, and each character was missing an arm and leg. The painting on the iron door that had long since faded was still recognizable. It was a semicircle that had faded to light red and was cut off by a horizontal line. Several radiating rays that symbolize the sun were intermittent, radiating outward from the center of the semicircle, forming a rather perfunctory sunrise scene.
——The pattern behind Teng Wenyan's corpse and Jiang Ting's yellowish, bloody T-shirt when he was a child, finally traveled through time and space at this moment and gradually overlapped.
Several men and women in suits stood outside the iron door and hurried forward with smiles on their faces.
The "warm welcome" that Qi Sihao had been waiting for for a long time finally arrived.
...…
"Yes, the county government should have notified you. It is a poverty alleviation project of our company in S Province, and each fund and task will be implemented in various regions. Of course, I will do a field trip before signing the contract…"
Yan Xie walked through the "playground" surrounded by the leaders of the orphanage, and the children with snot and dusty faces rushed past.
"It's not easy!" The dean, who was in his 40s, rubbed his hands, shook his head, and sighed: "Most of them are girls, and they were thrown away just after their birth. You can't blame the parents for being cruel. The country will fine you if you have too many children, but what can they do without a son? It's still considered kind to go to such lengths to throw them away! You can count the number of boys on one hand, and a few of them don't have good hands and feet. They are really sick, and their parents left them in the hospital. Then the hospital sent them to us—You can also see this environment, it is really difficult, and the state's finances are not good!…"
Qi Sihao was so hungry that he couldn't help it, so he followed the staff and went to eat something. The dean courteously invited Yan Xie into the office and served him tea and poured water with his own hands.
The dean's office was perhaps the best-decorated place in the entire orphanage. At least it had a tile floor and an air conditioner, which was much better than the cave-like dormitory. Yan Xie looked at the dusty wasteland and the dark dormitory outside through the glass window and seemed to see another scene in a trance:
A thin child, running happily in the afterglow of a midsummer evening, with short black hair blown up by the wind. He crossed the plain and the fields, and like a nimble deer cutting through the rice fields, he rushed to the end of the blue sky under the evening stars.
Don't go there, a desolate and weak voice sounded in Yan Xie's mind, and it became clearer and clearer: Don't go, come back——
But no one heard.
Basking in the light of dawn, the little boy rushed happily toward his only childhood friend.
"Mr. Yan, that…Mr. Yan?"
Yan Xie came back to his senses and saw the dean rubbing his cuffs; his eyes narrowed: "The donation…"
This was not difficult to do. Yan Xie had considered this problem before he came. He first approached the county government through his family's annual fixed poverty alleviation project. All the signing procedures were completed quickly, and the official document was sent to him on the same day. There was absolutely no part of the drama that was false.
"Just do it by the numbers approved by the county government, and I'll come back later…" Yan Xie paused, and added a sentence: "…add 50% more, and repair the dormitory before the end of the year, otherwise it'll be too cold."
The dean was overjoyed.
Yan Xie said: "I will send people to come check it at the end of the year."
The dean's heartfelt smile faded immediately, and then he reassured: "Of course! Of course!"
Yan Xie understood these kinds of things very well, and he didn't have the unrealistic idea that all the money could be used for real purposes, as long as a part of it could play a role. The dean also didn't expect it. He was very happy and enthusiastically took out documents such as the management charter and target plan of the orphanage to introduce them to him. Yan Xie patiently listened to him for about ten minutes before picking an appropriate opportunity to interrupt: "In an orphanage like yours, when children come in and out, there should be records, right?"
The dean said, "Yes, yes, that's definitely there. We have been the only orphanage in the area since the 1980s, so it has been decades…"
"Can you show me?"
The dean didn't expect him to have such a request, so he was taken aback: "Show you what?"
"Albums, documents, children's files, etc., I only need the parts from the 1980s and 1990s." Yan Xie smiled at the surprised eyes of the dean and said lightly: "To be honest, my wife spent a few years in an orphanage in S province when he was a child and was later adopted. I planned these donations this time because I wanted to visit all of that year's orphanages and try to find clues about his biological parents from that year's adoption information so he could fulfill his long-held dream of tracing back to the origin."
The dean was suddenly enlightened: "Oh oh oh-"
Judging from his expression, the dean probably made up a series of bloody dramas in an instant, from the eight o'clock domestic dramas to the popular Korean dramas in the 1990s. Yan Xie was too lazy to explain anything and raised the corner of his mouth indifferently, only to hear the dean's enthusiastic voice immediately: "Okay, no problem, I'll go find it for you!"
The dean immediately went out to call for someone and took a few staff members to the archive room. The management of the orphanages in the rural villages here were obviously relatively backward. Going through the old files was not an easy job, and it took a long time for the dean to come back, "Hey!" Putting the bag full of files on the table, he felt relieved: "It's all here!"
Yan Xie was a little surprised in his heart—these materials from more than 20 years ago turned out to be more than he thought.
But thinking about it, there was no one collecting waste paper in this poor place. As long as there were no accidents such as fires and floods, paper materials were probably piled up in corners, and nothing would be lost.
The archives were stacked in chronological order. Yan Xie was very clear about the specific year, so it was not difficult to find. While dealing with the dean's pleasantries, who couldn't hide his love for gossip, he rummaged through documents from the year Jiang Ting was ten years old. Then suddenly, he turned to a yellow and gray leather notebook. He opened it to see that all the old photos were pasted inside.
In just an instant, Yan Xie's eyes were fixed on a certain corner of the album——
In a black-and-white group photo, a dozen or so gray children stand in a row from tall to short. The background was the dormitory of the orphanage, which was very new back then, and the painted sketch of the sunrise was clearly visible on the two iron gates.
The children were all sluggish and ignorant, wearing the same round-neck, short-sleeved undershirt, and looking around. They seemed to be clay dolls carved out of the same mold, except for the little boy who twisted his body slightly and opened his big eyes third from the left.
The camera recorded his curious and shy smile at that moment and then sealed it in the corner of time, smashing it in front of Yan Xie's eyes more than 20 years later.
"…this child," Yan Xie said, pointing to the photo, his voice strangely trembling: "There was such a big boy in the orphanage?"
"Ah, that's right." The dean came over to take a look and explained: "It might be that he had some congenital disease, so no one wanted to adopt him, or he might have just been sent here, and there was no time to go out. Everyone's living conditions were bad at the time, and it was difficult for older children with memories to find someone, but it was much easier if they were two, three, four, or five years old!"
Yan Xie's tongue was slightly sour, and he swallowed hard, pressing down the fiery pain in his chest.
"Then was he adopted later?"
"Hey, I only came here seven or eight years ago. I have to check this." The dean rolled up his sleeves and looked through the pile of archives for a long time. Finally, he found a work record and patted his forehead: "Got it, this is it!"
The dean shook the dust off the record: "This is the adoption registry for that year, but some are missing. At that time, management was not as standardized as it is now. We treat these children very attentively and caringly and resolutely implement the state's policy on supporting children's welfare…"
While chatting, he squinted to observe Yan Xie, obviously very curious about this unusual, young, and rich man.
Yan Xie's action of flipping through the pages stopped.
[On September 18, XX, the adopted child, Jiang Ting.]
A few lines of scribbled and faded pen writing recorded the most crucial moment when Jiang Ting's fate was reversed more than 20 years ago.
Yan Xie didn't waste time researching the adopter's seemingly fabricated information; his eyes fell on the picture pasted on that page. A gloomy, narrow-eyed man in his forties or fifties faced the camera sideways, standing in front of a black car at the gate of the orphanage. On his left was Jiang Ting, who was thin and shy back then, and on his right was another fair-faced and well-dressed little boy.
The boy was obviously one year younger than Jiang Ting, but he was significantly taller. Just like his father, he consciously avoided the camera, turned his face slightly, and looked at Jiang Ting with a smile.
At first glance, they were just two little playmates, but the darker and deeper meaning behind the smile instantly pierced Yan Xie's heart like a needle—
He already knew that Jiang Ting had seen the King of Spades more than 20 years ago.
But Jiang Ting didn't tell the complete truth.