My childhood best friend Wong died, and I rushed to the scene of the murder with my colleague Feng.
The scene of the murder is an abandoned construction site, with a 5 meter deep crater, very prominent. I stood at the edge of the pit and looked in. The bottom of the concrete pit was full of blood. The smell of fish rose and made my stomach turn.
There was a body bag bulging at the edge of the pit.
I unzipped the body bag and was momentarily stung by even more blood.
Then I saw Wong.
His eyes were slightly open, his pupils had dilated, and his clothes were so tattered, all stained with blood, that he could hardly see the primary color.
I lifted his shirt, and there were four penetrating wounds in his chest and abdomen, and the broken skin was rolling outward.
In order not to damage the original appearance of the body, the steel bars could not be removed from Wong's body, but had to be sawed off from the base of the pit.
The rebar that went through the body had bits of human internal tissue hanging from the top.
I slowed my breathing, but the strong smell of blood and the odor of my digestive tract, combined with the stench of post-mortem bowel movements, still made me sick.
I examined the wound carefully and pulled up the body bag.
The technical team colleagues judged that Wong fell into it like a slip, it rained overnight last night, and the scene did not leave any useful traces, and the specific cause of death still needs to be further identified by the medical examiner.
I called Lu and asked him what was wrong with Wong. Lu said he returned home last night after seeing Wong's lights turned off and did not know how Wong died at the construction site.
I was about to ask Lu to go to the police brigade when Zhao suddenly arrived at the scene and asked me to leave.
With a straight face, Zhao asked me why I came to the scene.
I am a detective of the South City Brigade, Wong's case happened in the "Tangshan" area, I really should not come.
I explained to him, but Zhao asked me to hand over the Wong case and Lu's information.
"You have been suspended on suspicion of a disciplinary matter," Zhao said.
Before I could figure it out, he gave me a "long vacation."
I was not convinced, Zhao threw an envelope in my face, and I opened it to see that Wong had reported me.
Here I stopped.
"And then what? The female prosecutor asked.
"Then," I said with a sneer, "we'll meet, and 'then' it's up to you to do with me."
The female prosecutor leafed through her work notes and asked no further questions.
Liu returned to the office. He looked over the transcript and said he was done for the day.
I was relieved not to be taken down by the procuratorate on the spot, and asked Zhao, when can I resume my work?
He was silent for a while and said you'd better go home on leave and wait for notice.
I don't get it. I didn't kill him. I don't get it.
Zhao said, do not kill, bribe this article is enough for you to drink a pot, or go home to think about how to explain the bank card to the procuratorate.
I don't understand, said the card is "godmother" to me, the procuratorate to ask not to know.
"If it's that simple, why bother?" Zhao said helplessly, "Wong's mother is in a coma now, it is still a question whether she can wake up."
I'm suspended. Ten years as a cop, first time I've taken that much time off.
After a two day break, I called Feng and asked him how things were going.
Feng said forensics found drug components in Wong's body and suspected that he was under the influence of drugs when he ran to the construction site and fell to his death. The bureau set up a task force, and he and Zheng were pulled in.
As for me, Feng said, Wong's mother is still in a coma, I'm afraid you'll have to stay at home.
"What if she still doesn't wake up after her vacation?"
Feng gave a dramatic sigh and said that the leader meant to send you to be a cook in the police officers' canteen.
"Fuck you..."
Feng laughed out a pig's cry and said, "Don't worry, the brothers all trust you, and now they are working hard to help you check."
I hung up the phone, I was a little touched, and fortunately these brothers gave me support.
Two days later, I was wandering the streets. My mother called out of the blue, saying that we had guests at home, and told me to go home quickly.
I thought it was the prosecutor's office again, but after returning home, I found that it was a middle-aged man.
The man is Wu, the original casting machinery factory public security Department three section chief, later the factory did not, went to the field.
My dad said he had a case from the past that might help me.
I looked at Dad and Wu and wondered what they were up to.
Wu shook hands with me and said straight to the point, "I heard that Wong died, and you were suspended because of him. I know something about Wong's past.
In October 1995, Wong's parents suddenly quit their good jobs at the mechanical foundry, and the family moved out of the family home.
Why did they quit?
After dinner, there were always people who expressed their views, and various conspiracy speculation was the hottest topic in the mechanical foundry at that time.
At that time, my father and Wu were well acquainted, and when the topic came up during a drink, Wu quietly told my father the real reason why the Wong family moved away.
Wong had a terrible accident outside, and the family hid away to avoid it. The factory is sealed off, and only a few case officers know the inside story.
I added water to Wu's cup and asked Wong what had happened.
"Wong and three children were playing with 'xiaoqinghe' when a girl named Ceci fell into the river, but Wong and the other two boys kept quiet and watched Ceci get swept away," Wu said.
That case went nowhere, and Ceci's body was never found.
Under the coordination of the mechanical foundry, the families of the three boys reached a private agreement with Ceci's parents, and the three families made a total of 50,000 pieces of compensation. Ceci parents get compensation, give up, left the provincial capital.
Wu's words blurred my childhood memories. Wong and I were in the same family home, but I knew nothing about this event, not even heard rumors.
I said to Dad, what's going on?
Dad tapped me on the shoulder and said it was normal for you to have never heard of it when you were young, and if you hadn't suspended you now because of Wong, I wouldn't have brought up the old story with Wu.
I asked Wu how parents could easily get involved in such a big thing as a missing child?
Wu said Ceci's parents are not regular workers, but vegetable vendors from out of town who supply food to the canteen and are considered temporary workers.
The parents of Wong's three boys are all cadres in the foundry. Wong's dad, in particular, has a lot of power in the factory.
Wu looked at the water cup, said Ceci's parents agreed to private, is not only powerless, you know, 50,000 yuan at that time, called "astronomical numbers."
After Ceci's parents left the provincial capital, the matter was gradually not mentioned.
I thanked Wu and weighed the clue in my mind.
Wong dies, leaving behind a series of mysteries.
He was in a car accident when he bought drugs, but the dealer died five years ago, and the driver seemed to disappear.
He was at home recovering, set on fire, and the next thing you know, he was dead in an abandoned construction site.
Wu told me about Wong's past.
Could these things be connected?
At 1 am, I called Feng to talk to him. Feng didn't sleep, and as soon as he answered the phone, he said he had some good news.
Feng said excitedly, "They have checked the bank card given to me by the godmother, and there is nothing in the card, not even a transaction record."
The "godmother" gave me a white card and Wong wrote to report me for soliciting bribes? I don't know what this mother and son are up to.
Now that Wong is dead, only the "godmother" is left who knows what's going on.
But she was lying in the ICU of a downtown hospital, shaken by the death of her son, and uncertain whether she would ever wake up.
Anyway, no money on the card, which is good news for me. So I asked Zhao to come back to work. Zhao said to coordinate with the prosecutor's office first.
Two days later he told me to come back to work.
But I'm not completely off the hook, and I'm only temporarily back on duty.
I asked Zhao, when will he get rid of it?
When your godmother wakes up, he said.
In the evening, I had an appointment with Feng for dinner.
As Feng stuffed oysters into his mouth, he told me about the investigation.
Nothing useful at Wong's death scene. Mr. Feng said he returned to the case of the arson attack on Mr. Wong's home.
As previously stated, on March 31, 2015, Wong's home was deliberately set on fire, and a suspicious middle-aged man was caught on camera.
Feng and the technicians, through the city's "sky Eye" system, tracked the middle-aged man all the way to Lianhua Road in the "Tangshan" district.
Later, Feng said, they used analysis software and deduced that the man, with a 70 percent certainty, was the middle-aged man who went to Wong's house to set fire to it.
I told Feng about Wong's past.
Feng was very interested and felt that the case could start from this matter.
The next day, I visited Wu and asked who the other two kids were.
The families, Chang and Bin, also moved away after the incident, Wu said, adding that the three families are usually close and the children are close.
After that, we had a long conversation and didn't get any more useful information.
Finally, Wu shook his head and said that he was too old to remember anything.
I had to get up and say goodbye.
Coming out of Wu's house, I called Feng. Feng was disappointed and said he could not find the case files of the mechanical foundry.
I asked him if there were any records in the archives of all the missing persons and unidentified bodies in the xiaoqinghe basin over the past 20 years.
Feng looked it up and said yes.
I asked him to copy all the data back, Feng hesitated and said yes.
At 7 p.m., in the office, Feng handed me a portable hard drive with details of more than 140 missing persons cases and more than 700 unidentified bodies.
I said why so much?
And that's just online, Mr Feng complains. If you count the old paper files, the amount would be overwhelming.
Early when I heard that "xiaoqinghe" often drowned people, I thought it was a rumor, but now it seems to be true.
I asked Feng to immediately arrange manpower to analyze these files, eliminate the unknown body whose bone age is more than 10 years old, and send someone to review the paper files.
Feng nodded, put the hard drive in his pocket, and asked, "What did you get?"
I gave him the names of the other two kids.
Cha what? Feng asked again.
I said Chang.
Feng did not speak, went straight to the computer, fiddled for a while, said Lam, come and see if it is this person.
On the screen was a picture of the person involved, and I stared at the picture for a moment and thought it looked familiar.
I clicked on his kinship page and saw that his parents worked at a mechanical foundry. Yes, he was Chang.
I looked further down and found another set of numbers below the date of birth - December 21, 2007.
I was stunned, and then I realized that this date was the time of cancellation of the ID card.
Which means Chang is dead.
But I'm even more curious about why Feng is so familiar, and I'll find out about Chang.
Feng said that his murder case was handled by me.
It's a case Feng will remember for the rest of his life, but he doesn't want to talk about it.
In 2007, Feng, who had just joined the police force, was sent from the municipal bureau to a small county and became a security officer at a township police station.
On the night of December 21, someone reported that a man's body had been found on the mountain. Feng was on duty that day and followed his colleagues up the mountain.
He was young and strong, and he got to the crime scene first.
And when he saw the body, he threw up.
For a guy who's just joined the police force, that body of a man is pretty scary.
The body was naked, tied to a tree, covered in bruises, probably beaten before death.
The body's neck had been broken, only a part of the flesh, barely connected to the head and torso, and the mountain wind blew, the head hanging on the chest shook, as if it was about to fall.
The body was wearing only one shoe, and the other shoe lay alone in the distance, in a mess of grass and trees.
The old police officer who arrived later leaned close to the body's head and observed carefully that the dead man's eyes were bulging, his lips were blue, and his tongue was half out.
The old detective preliminatively judged that the man had been strangled alive and had struggled violently before his death.
Feng University study of art, naked model has seen a lot, naked corpse is the first time to see, not to mention the death of such a terrible, he directly vomited in the dark.
The director asked him to take a picture of the body, and his hand was shaking like Parkinson's, and he couldn't hold the camera steady.
With a deep sigh, he let the old policeman take Feng to guard the body, and he went down the mountain to pick up the person.
The cold wind on the mountain did not stop, the two people waited for a long time, until they were cold and hungry, and the director had not come back. The old detective then discussed with Feng and went down the mountain to get something to eat and drink.
Feng didn't want to stay a second longer, but he was new, didn't know the way down the mountain, and it was dark, so it was easy to get lost. Finally, the old cop went down the mountain and Feng stayed behind.
To this day, Feng does not want to say what happened to him when he was left alone.
Anyway, when the director came with people, he found that there was a person in each of the two adjacent trees, and they thought that another one had died.
When they got closer, they saw that Feng was holding one of the big trees and passed out. A group of people pinch people to resuscitate, finally woke up Feng.
After Feng woke up, he hugged his thigh and kept crying: "That guy moved, that guy moved!"
The director lashed out at the old policeman and deducted his bonus for half a year. Feng this matter has become the laughing stock of the whole police station, spreading more and more widely, but also spreading more and more outrageous.
When it reached the county office, Feng was so frightened that he was incontinent, frozen in a tree by the cold wind, and passed out.
When it reached the municipal bureau, Feng said that he was bold and volunteered to stay on the mountain, and was scared out of consciousness. After waking up, he slapped himself and said, "I will not brag any more."
This matter became Feng's "forbidden zone", and anyone who mentioned him was anxious.
But today, Feng took the initiative to speak about the case, because the body that scared him "famous" was Chang.
I asked Feng, what happened to the case?
Feng said forensic scientists found human tissue from someone else under Chang's fingernails, suspecting Chang had scratched it off the suspect.
They're uploading it to a national database, trying to match it to people with criminal records.
At this point Feng suddenly stopped talking.
Thinking he was teasing me, I pulled out a cigarette and threw it at him.
But Feng took the cigarette and still did not say, I was a little worried, said Feng, you are looking for a fight.
Feng said mysteriously, Lam, the next thing will be weird, you will listen to ghost stories.
The uploaded DNA did match a man named Jack, a Shaanxi detainee.
"We contacted Shaanxi police immediately and they responded quickly, but the result was very strange," Feng said.
Shaanxi police said Jack had been released from prison and died of liver cancer two years ago.
I have a headache. I found another dead man.