by Zhou HaoHui
‘An unidentified man gained access to our PSB archives yesterday afternoon while masquerading as an officer. He made copies of thirteen files, but this was the one he wanted. From his behaviour and his signature, I’m confident that this man is Eumenides.’
Commissioner Song’s eyebrows quivered at the mention of Eumenides.
‘My team spent the whole of last night combing through these documents,’ Pei continued, ‘but we still haven’t found any direct links between the hostage case and the April 18th murders.’
‘I see,’ the commissioner said, rubbing his bony chin. ‘This case was a few years before my time. Tell me what you know about it.’
‘To put it simply, it was a hostage situation that went wrong. The victim, a forty-five-year-old male named Chen Tianqiao, had borrowed ten thousand yuan from a thirty-two-year-old man named Wen Hongbing. Wen requested on multiple occasions that Chen pay him back, but to no avail. On the thirtieth of January 1984, three days before the New Year Festival, Wen knocked on Chen’s door and demanded his money. This time, when Chen wouldn’t cough up, Wen refused to take no for an answer. He was younger and stronger than Chen and was able to overpower him and take him hostage, whereupon he revealed that he was wearing an improvised explosive device around his waist.
‘Wen threatened to detonate the bomb and kill both of them unless Chen repaid him by the end of the day. Chen finally agreed. He wrote his wife, now ex-wife, a note instructing her to borrow the money off friends, but when he passed her the note he gave her hand a deliberate squeeze. This was a signal the two of them had established in case he was ever forced to speak to her under duress. She immediately called the police.
‘Wen took Chen back to his apartment. Thanks to the wife, the police quickly arrived on the scene. It became a hostage situation, but Wen wouldn’t release Chen. In order to prevent Wen from detonating the bomb and killing everyone else in the building, an SPU marksman shot him through one of the apartment windows.’
Commissioner Song had listened to Pei’s concise summary in silence. Now he shook his head in confusion. ‘Why would Eumenides be interested in this case? Is he looking to punish Chen?’
‘We can’t rule that out. But it’s from eighteen years ago. It’s ancient history. Why focus on it now?’
The commissioner had nothing to contribute.
‘Whatever his reasons,’ Pei said, ‘we can’t let this lead go unexplored, no matter how tenuous. I’ve already ordered my people to look into Chen Tianqiao.’
‘And…?’
‘He was born in 1939. He’s registered as a Chengdu resident and as far as we can tell he hasn’t done an honest day’s work in his life. He’s knee deep in debt, but it’s seemingly very hard to pin a legal case on him. Whenever he defaults on a loan, his creditors come to us, but often there’s little the police can do because it’s generally a civil rather than a criminal matter. Most of his creditors give up, although occasionally someone pushes back. Like Wen Hongbing.
‘Eventually, Chen got sloppy. In 1991 he was arrested and locked up for seven years. Prison didn’t change him one bit and he went back to his old racket as soon as he got out. As far as we know, he’s spent the last two years outside the country, dodging creditors. He’s rumoured to be in Thailand or Vietnam.’
‘Carry on searching for him. We can’t afford to ignore this lead.’
‘Yes, sir. But there’s another lead that might be more worthy of our attention right now.’
‘And what’s that?’
‘Yuan Zhibang’s name is in the files for the January 30th case.’
‘Oh?’ The commissioner flipped to the last page, which listed the officers involved in the investigation. Yuan’s name was indeed there. ‘How is that possible?’ he asked, perplexed. ‘Yuan hadn’t even graduated from the police academy at that point. He wasn’t qualified to take part in any investigation.’
Pei nodded. ‘That’s exactly what I’ve been trying to get my head around. I want to know what role Yuan played. It may help us find a connection to the April 18th murders. But the official account of the showdown at Wen’s apartment is unusually brief, and it doesn’t mention what Yuan was doing there either. Which makes me wonder whether the department was deliberately trying to hide something.’
Commissioner Song rummaged through the documents in the folder. The account was indeed brief – just a single paragraph, in fact:
Officers arrived outside the building and began negotiating with Wen Hongbing through his window. Wen grew increasingly agitated. He demanded that Chen Tianqiao pay him back immediately. When Chen indicated that he lacked the wherewithal to do so, Wen threatened to detonate the bomb on his person. In order to prevent the loss of life, the lead investigating officer ordered that Wen be shot. Wen was shot in the head by an SPU marksman’s bullet. He died immediately. Officers then rushed into Wen’s apartment, neutralised the explosive and secured Chen Tianqiao.
Song banged his fist down on the page. ‘How the hell was this report able to pass evaluation?’
Pei’s response was halfway between a wince and a grin. ‘Wasn’t Xue Dalin vice commissioner back then?’
Commissioner Song tensed. Pei was right. The hostage case happened just a few weeks before the notorious drugs bust that came to be known as the March 16th Narcotics Case.
‘My theory,’ Pei continued, ‘is that Vice Commissioner Xue and the rest of the department were so preoccupied with the events leading up to the March 16th bust that none of them bothered to read this report very closely.’
Commissioner Song nodded and gently closed the folder. ‘What do you plan to do now?’ he asked.
‘I can’t help wondering if there’s some secret behind this case. And if there’s one person who could enlighten us and tell us what role Yuan played in all this, it would have to be the lead investigating officer. The same person who typed up this report—’
‘You want to talk to Captain Ding Ke?’ the commissioner interrupted, gaping at the last page in the file. ‘Tell me you’re joking.’
Captain Ding Ke was a legend in law-enforcement circles. Not just within the province of Sichuan but right across the country.
‘I know he won’t give up this information easily, but I have to try.’
The commissioner shrugged. ‘You don’t know, do you?’
‘Know what?’
‘Captain Ding has been missing for years. None of our attempts to locate him have succeeded.’
Pei’s face fell. ‘And I thought I was so close to finding out the truth behind this case,’ he said, shaking his head.
‘I’m curious – did you know Captain Ding Ke personally?’ the commissioner asked.
‘He taught a few classes at the academy. He was also the captain of the criminal police at the time, with two decades of experience already under his belt. But in April 1984, just weeks before I graduated, he stopped teaching. I later heard that he’d fallen ill due to overwork. And then he retired, before he’d even had the chance to recover.’
The commissioner nodded. ‘Captain Ding Ke was a legend for one key reason: he successfully closed every investigation he took on. That’s a 100-per-cent success rate – something no other officer ever achieved. He fell ill right before the April 18th murders, Eumenides’ debut appearance’ – Song sighed – ‘and I can’t help but think that if he hadn’t retired, the Eumenides case would have been solved a long time ago.’
Pei leant forward, his curiosity piqued. ‘Where did Captain Ding go after he left?’
‘He moved out to the countryside. But even though he was retired, he was still in touch with the force. Whenever an investigation hit an impasse, one of his former subordinates would look him up. We usually had to push him to get any assistance, but over the next few years he helped us crack quite a few cases.
‘Whenever we thanked him, he’d always say the same thing: “If you come back here again, I’ll go somewhere nobody can find me.” Everyone assumed he was joking.’ The commissioner
shook his head ruefully. ‘That was back in 1992. A decade ago, come to think of it. A particularly brutal crime shook Chengdu that year. I’m sure you know the one I’m talking about.’
Pei lit up. ‘The Bag— I mean, the January 12th case?’
‘There’s no need to censor yourself,’ Song said. ‘You can call it by the same name everyone else uses. The Bagman Killing.’
The captain forced a nod. He still remembered the pictures that had circulated around the province after the first body parts were discovered.
‘The details of that case were so brutal, they proved too much for some members of the team,’ Commissioner Song said, dropping his voice. ‘Two officers asked to be taken off the case. I had only just been transferred to Chengdu from out at Guangyuan. The entire Chengdu police force was mobilised for that investigation. We scoured the whole city, but we couldn’t find a single trace of the suspect. When we’d exhausted all other options, we tried to contact Captain Ding. This time he was nowhere to be found. Both his wife and son told us that he’d vanished as soon as news of the crime had gone public. Naturally, he’d anticipated that we’d come looking for him. Not even the man’s own family knew where he’d gone.’
‘So he just disappeared? You’ve not seen him since?’
‘As I said, it’s been a decade. We’ve put feelers out across the city, left messages on online forums – we’ve tried everything. But all to no end. Either Captain Ding Ke is dead or he doesn’t want to be found. Trust me on that.’
‘But, sir, why would he do that? Just because he was sick?’
‘His illness wasn’t physical, Pei. He was tired of police work. Tired of the relentless stress, the never-ending stream of cases, one after the other. Most of us find ways of dealing with it, but I suppose it was different for him. After all, he had the pressure of a perfect record to live up to.’
‘So finding him won’t be easy. But presumably it won’t be quite so hard to track down the others.’ Pei thumbed through the file as he spoke, coming to a stop at the last page with the full list of officers.
The commissioner grunted. ‘I’ll have my people give you more information on them. A lot of men have come and gone over the past decade and many of those officers aren’t in our main database any more. I’ll send you our findings as soon as they’re ready.’
‘Excellent. Thank you, sir.’ Pei stood up and saluted, and Commissioner Song reciprocated.
Pei raced down the hallway at speed and nearly collided with TSO Zeng.
‘Captain Pei!’ the TSO shouted.
‘What’s the situation, Zeng?’
‘I’ve found out why Eumenides is so interested in this case. And I know who he is!’
Pei’s eyes widened. Before TSO Zeng could utter another word, Pei gripped him by the shoulder. ‘Notify the rest of the team. Tell them to meet me in the conference room immediately!’
*
A low-resolution image of a black-and-white photograph was projected above them. The photograph, blurry and yellowed around the edges, showed a group of young boys and girls who appeared to be between about four and thirteen years old.
‘This picture was taken in 1986, at an orphanage here in Chengdu,’ TSO Zeng explained. ‘Why am I showing you this particular photo, you might ask? Well, one of these children disappeared a year after it was taken.’
His face broke into a wide grin.
‘Get on with it,’ said Ms Mu.
‘Thanks to the records I accessed, as well as the subsequent visit I paid to the orphanage, I’ve confirmed the identity of the orphan who went missing. His name was Wen Chengyu. His father was Wen Hongbing, the man killed in the standoff with the police in the January 30th hostage case in 1984.
‘And here we are eighteen years on from the death of Wen Hongbing and just days after the death of Yuan Zhibang. Yuan’s protégé, Eumenides, pulled the files from the archive. This is no coincidence.’
The room was so quiet that the only thing each person could hear was their own heartbeat. Everyone was thinking the exact same thing: somewhere in that picture was a young Eumenides.
‘Wen Chengyu…’ Pei said, slowly sounding out each syllable. ‘Which of these children is him?’
TSO Zeng aimed his laser pointer at the screen and the red dot rested on a boy at the far left end of the front row. He was one of the younger children in the group, probably about eight years old. His features were not especially striking, but there was something odd about the way he held himself. Whereas the other children were smiling or yawning, he was standing very straight and to attention, with an unusually serious expression on his face for someone of that age.
Ms Mu’s training kicked in. She began to imagine how different things might have been if the boy had grown up in better circumstances. He might have become a fine young man, perhaps the head of his class, or the sort of older brother who looked out for his siblings.
But the other members of the team were looking at the boy through the tainted lens of what fate had in store for him – a future as a cruel murderer who would give them the biggest challenge they had ever faced.
The room went still and the officers’ hearts grew heavier.
Ms Mu broke the silence. ‘In order to bring down a killer,’ she said, ‘one needs to understand what they were like before they turned into a murderous monster. It’s a person’s experiences that determine what they become. Perhaps you can tell us more about what kind of person Wen Chengyu became, Captain Pei.’
‘Me?’ said Pei, taken aback. ‘What would I know?’
‘If Wen Chengyu is Eumenides, when he first met Yuan Zhibang he would have been a highly impressionable child, a blank slate. His eventual psychological, moral and social character would have been formed entirely under Yuan’s conscious manipulation. You knew Yuan better than any of us, Captain, so you may also have an insight into how he would have educated and trained this boy. I’ve read your personal file. Out of everyone here, you are the most experienced in investigating violent criminals. You are best placed to provide us with the most accurate description of the kind of monster Yuan created.’
Pei rubbed his cheek thoughtfully. ‘I suppose you’re right. If I were in Yuan’s place, I would create a killer. Someone to work in the shadows, someone with a razor-sharp intellect, a cool head and a thirst for continual improvement. Stimulation and challenge would excite him. He would have to be strong and persistent. He’d have to adhere to a strict code of behaviour, no questions asked. And most important of all, once given an objective, he would stop at nothing to achieve it.’
‘Good,’ Ms Mu said.
‘Fat lot of help that is,’ TSO Zeng said. ‘It’s all theoretical BS.’
‘Actually,’ Ms Mu said, unperturbed, ‘the captain’s description will enable me to work backwards and draw up a personality profile of Eumenides. Let’s start with his social life. We can infer from Captain Pei’s insights that Eumenides has lived a solitary existence, but that doesn’t mean he lacks social skills. When approaching strangers, including his victims, he would have to be charismatic. He may well have multiple legal identities, but if Yuan did establish a code of behaviour for him, as Captain Pei suggests, that would certainly have prohibited luxuries like friendships or romantic attachments. To compensate, Eumenides may have fostered a love of music, the arts or perhaps fine cuisine. And notwithstanding his mentor’s edicts, he may still have developed feelings for someone – feelings that he cannot express openly.’ She glanced around the room and noted the sceptical looks. ‘Any questions?’
‘A few,’ SPU Captain Liu said. ‘First off, how did you get all that from what Captain Pei said?’
‘The captain described Eumenides as being intelligent, sensitive and hungry for knowledge. That sort of personality tends to be fascinated by perfection, particularly with regards to beauty. There’s clearly no place for that in his day-to-day activities, so he’ll only be able to indulge this fascination in private and intermittently. His life is stressful and
lonely, but as a human being he needs some way of relaxing, and in my view he may well find that through food or music. I would even go so far as to say that if I’d been in Yuan’s place, I would have consciously cultivated Eumenides’ interest in such things in order to provide him with a safe way of relieving his stress.’
‘You also said that he might develop feelings for someone,’ Pei pointed out.
‘All human beings have emotional needs. Not even someone like Eumenides can fully repress everything. In fact, he’ll get more and more desperate to meet those needs as time goes on. You can imagine how strong the emotional bond between Eumenides and Yuan was after all those years. Essentially, Yuan assumed the role of Eumenides’ father. But now Yuan is dead and he has no one. This is very new to him and not necessarily something he’s ready for. We can be all but certain that he’s going to look for someone else to fulfil those roles in his life.’
‘But Yuan would have warned him against getting attached to anyone,’ Pei said.
‘Emotions embody our most primitive instincts. You can’t simply force them to disappear just because someone commands it.’
‘What kind of person would he choose then?’
‘Well, there’s a very high probability that it’s a woman.’
‘How can you be sure?’
‘It’s simple statistics. Firstly, an estimated 90 per cent of the population is heterosexual. Secondly, he’s propelled by another subconscious motivation – the need for a mother. His father figure may have just died, but Eumenides hasn’t had a female figure in his life for almost twenty years. Wen Chengyu’s records state that his mother succumbed to a terminal illness about six months after his father was killed. Eumenides might look for a woman in a similarly frail state, subconsciously hoping that he will somehow be able to heal her. He may also be looking for someone who, like him, has just been bereaved. Someone he can empathise with.’
Pei folded his arms across his chest. ‘Excellent work, Ms Mu,’ he said.
The psychologist responded with a reserved smile.
Pei turned to TSO Zeng. ‘Tell us what else you’ve found.’