by Zhou HaoHui
Her voice cracked. She turned and stared at a portrait of Mayor Deng on the mantelpiece. Tears welled in her eyes.
‘Mayor Deng once held my life in his hands,’ Brother Hua said with quiet sincerity. ‘For his family, I’m willing to live with the consequences, whatever they may be.’
As she looked into his eyes, he realised that she understood. She wiped her tears away and said, ‘Give me your hand.’
Brother Hua stiffened but then yielded and extended his right hand.
She removed the Buddhist prayer beads she wore around her wrist and gently slid the bracelet over Hua’s hand until it came to rest on his own wrist.
‘Remember what I said.’
*
7 November, 1:37 a.m.
Brother Hua’s personal suite
Brother Hua was taking a shower in his en-suite bathroom. He needed to wash the grime from his body and his soul. But though the water rinsed the dirt from his skin, it would not wash away the memories that continued to flood his mind.
When Mayor Deng’s widow had given him those prayer beads, he’d completely understood her pain and desperation. But it could not change the resolve in his heart. In this business, he told himself, one seldom acted of one’s own volition.
As the water streamed, his thoughts whirred.
As soon as Lin and Meng’s plan to embezzle the Longyu Corporation’s assets had come to his attention, Brother Hua knew there was no looking back. The two vice presidents had already begun plotting their fatal blow against the company. Measures had to be taken.
But Hua had been stunned to learn that Meng also had his own selfish interests in mind. He’d approached Hua one morning and talked disparagingly about Lin, whom he believed was overstepping his authority. Meng hinted very clearly that he wished to work with Hua in order to get rid of his rival. ‘If only something were to happen to him…’ he said.
Hua agreed and had gone on to share his own plan with Meng. He would prepare two replicas of Eumenides’ infamous death notices – one for Vice President Lin and one for Vice President Meng. It would give them the perfect excuse to confine the two men within Mayor Deng’s former office. They would put on a show for the security cameras, and with the help of some props, Meng could pretend to be Eumenides and kill Lin.
Meng was very interested in Hua’s plan. But there were details that he was unsure about. ‘I’m not young any more. If Lin fights back, I might not be able to kill him.’
‘I’ll make sure that you’re both given sleeping medication. Yours will be a placebo, of course. By the time you get out of bed, Lin will be sleeping like a dead man. And better still, you won’t need to worry about the police questioning you – you can just say, “I was asleep.”’
‘But if both Lin and I receive death notices and only Lin is found dead, how will we explain that?’
‘You’ve already been to jail. You reformed. Eumenides shouldn’t have put your name on the notice to begin with. Before you go back to bed, put those things we talked about next to you. That way, when Eumenides sees them, he’ll decide to spare you. At least, that’s what everyone will assume.’
Brother Hua had his doubts about Vice President Meng before that fateful night. Namely, whether he was planning to double-cross him. As a safeguard, he installed listening devices inside Meng’s villa and assigned two subordinates to keep watch outside. If anything happened, they’d be able to take appropriate action before the police arrived.
Something did happen, but much later than Hua had expected. Yesterday morning, Vice President Meng’s widow received a special delivery. Inside was a tape, which held a recording of the incriminating conversation between Brother Hua and Vice President Meng.
When Hua heard about that, he knew that Han Hao was behind it. Han must have set another plan of his own in motion, so that if he died as a result of Hua’s scheme at the stadium, this evidence would arrive at Vice President Meng’s home the next day.
That tape had then been stolen. Hua had an idea as to the identity of the thief, but he couldn’t work out what his motive was. Regardless, knowing that the tape was out there was like sleeping on pins and needles.
Brother Hua emerged from his bathroom fifteen minutes later, put on a dressing gown and decided to make himself a mug of tea in the living room. As he stepped out of the bedroom, his muscles tensed. Someone was sitting on his couch.
The figure turned and looked at him. ‘Tea’s ready. Sit down and have a cup.’
‘What are you doing here?’ Hua shrank back instinctively.
The man smiled. ‘Haven’t you been looking for me?’
Hua gasped. ‘It’s you!’
Even when seated, the man looked tall, with broad shoulders and a sturdy frame. Brother Hua was very familiar with his physique, having studied it over countless hours of stolen security footage while preparing Vice President Meng’s styrofoam disguise. Now he was finally seeing the man in the flesh.
His eyes blazed. He raised his fists ready to fight. ‘I must be an idiot not to have—’
‘There’s no need to get all worked up,’ the man interrupted. He sipped placidly from a mug of steaming tea.
Hua took several long breaths to steady his nerves. He lowered his fists. As his hammering heartbeat gradually slowed, he stepped into the living room and took a seat on the chair opposite the couch. The two men studied one another.
‘Why are you here?’
‘I want to make a deal.’
‘A deal?’ Brother Hua clenched his jaw. ‘How about this deal – I’ll kill you right here in this room.’
‘I thought death threats were my domain,’ the man said, offering a friendly smile. He pulled an object from his pocket and set it on the table. ‘This is my bargaining chip.’
Hua’s pupils contracted as he gazed at the cassette tape. ‘Name your price,’ he growled.
‘I want you to look after someone for me,’ the man said. He turned his hand over to reveal a photograph resting in his palm. It was of a beautiful, delicate young woman.
Hua thought she looked familiar, but it took him a moment to place the face. He’d seen her at the restaurant when he’d been investigating Sheng’s death.
‘Why do you want me to look after her?’
‘Because you’re a bodyguard by trade. And because I believe that no other bodyguard in the world is more dedicated to his work than you.’
Brother Hua was, to say the least, conflicted. On the one hand he hated this man with every fibre of his being. On the other hand he couldn’t argue with a compliment like that. He spread his lips in a weary smile. ‘You can’t look after her yourself?’
‘I’ve lost control of my fate.’ The man set the photo on the table and his gaze lingered on it for another moment. His voice grew distant. ‘I have no choice but to provoke a fearsome foe and I can’t guarantee what the outcome will be. For that reason I need to make sure that proper arrangements are in place.’
Brother Hua nodded cautiously. He reached out and picked up the photograph. ‘How exactly do you want me to take care of her?’
‘She’s blind. I want you to send her to America for an operation. That won’t be too difficult for you, will it?’
‘It’s a reasonable demand, considering your bargaining chip,’ Hua said as he picked up the cassette. ‘Is there a copy of this tape?’
The man chuckled. ‘All transactions should be based on trust, shouldn’t they?’
After a moment, Brother Hua nodded decisively. ‘It’s a deal.’
‘Thank you.’
‘We’re even now,’ Hua said with finality.
‘I know.’ The man was no longer smiling. ‘The next time we meet, only one of us will walk away.’
‘I’m pleased to hear that.’ Hua lifted the mug to take a sip of tea. ‘Out of interest, who is this foe you mentioned?’
‘Why do you ask?’
‘You owe me a life. I don’t want you to die too early.’
The man calmly licked his li
ps. He appeared to be mentally preparing himself to say the name. After what felt like minutes, he finally spoke it.
‘Captain Ding Ke.’
18
PORTRAIT OF A SUSPECT
7:36 a.m.
Conference room, criminal police headquarters
The April 18th Task Force was once again assembled around the conference table. But this time the fifth seat was occupied not by SPU Captain Liu but by Huang Jieyuan, former officer of the Chengdu criminal police and current owner of the Black Magic Bar.
‘My apologies for calling you all here so early,’ Captain Pei said by way of a polite introduction before quickly switching to a sterner tone, ‘but this is extremely urgent. Lieutenant Yin, you can begin.’
Lieutenant Yin turned on the projector next to him. Familiar-looking lines of text gradually took form on the screen.
Death Notice
THE ACCUSED: The Bagman
CRIME: Homicide
DATE OF PUNISHMENT: 7 November
EXECUTIONER: Eumenides
‘This notice appeared in the mailbox of the reception office just one hour ago,’ he explained. ‘Captain Pei immediately contacted me and told me to put this meeting together so that we can discuss our strategy.’
‘That’s today’s date,’ TSO Zeng said. ‘Did Eumenides forget to set his alarm yesterday?’
Ms Mu scowled. ‘Given that the Bagman Killer was never found, what exactly does Eumenides expect us to do about this?’
‘That’s the first question we need to answer. And we have less than seventeen hours to do so.’
‘So we have seventeen hours – or not even that – to solve a cold case from a decade ago, find the Bagman Killer and come up with a plan to stop Eumenides.’ TSO Zeng forced a tired grin. ‘Well, this task force has had a good run, huh?’
‘Eumenides has issued his challenge. We have no choice but to put every effort into meeting it,’ Pei said.
‘Captain Pei is right,’ Yin said. ‘If Eumenides can find the Bagman, what’s stopping us from finding him too? We have at least as much information as he has, don’t we?’
‘Eumenides…’ Huang said, looking down and shaking his head. ‘Are you really so sure he’ll be able to find the Bagman?’
Pei understood why Huang was dubious. He decided to be as diplomatic as possible. ‘Eumenides has followed through with every one of his death notices. Each of you in this room knows that. Eumenides isn’t one to make idle threats.’
Huang scanned the faces around the table. Everyone nodded in quiet agreement. He slumped back in his chair.
‘That bastard,’ Zeng said, rubbing his forehead. ‘I’ve been wondering why he’s been silent for the last few days. And now we find out that he’s been busy investigating the Bagman Killing. But why’s he interested in that old case all of a sudden? Is he trying to distract us or is he trying to show off and make the police look useless?’
‘Eumenides is only interested in one thing right now,’ Ms Mu said, ‘and that’s finding out where he came from. If he’s searching for the Bagman Killer, that must have something to do with learning the truth about his father’s death. I think there can only one be reason – he wants to find Captain Ding Ke.’
Pei cleared his throat. ‘We have one task. We need to find the Bagman Killer as soon as possible. I’ve made copies of the files for the January 12th Bagman Killing investigation, one for each of you. You have thirty minutes to read through these documents, after which we’ll continue our discussion.’
A tense hush fell over the room, punctuated only by the rustling of paper on paper.
*
Thirty minutes later
‘Huang, since you’re the one who’s most familiar with this case, I’d like you to speak first,’ Captain Pei said.
The former police lieutenant nodded. Taking a deep breath, he organised his thoughts. As the rest of the team listened, he began to tell them about the investigations conducted by his original January 12th Task Force, its failures, his thwarted attempts at contacting Captain Ding Ke and his motivation for establishing the Black Magic Bar as bait for the killer.
‘So our killer is the kind of guy who likes to pour himself a glass of red wine and chill out to some Celtic Frost?’ TSO Zeng asked, waggling his eyebrows.
Ms Mu, who was sitting next to Zeng, shot him a sharp look. His grin faded.
‘And in all these years,’ Zeng said, ‘you still haven’t found a single match for the Bagman Killer’s profile?’
Huang exhaled, the breath whooshing out of him like the air from a deflating balloon. ‘Not one. For a start, the way the murder was carried out – chopping the body into a hundred pieces – isn’t exactly something that the average person is capable of. That’s why I’ve included a secret knife-skills test inside my bar, to narrow down the pool of suspects. Only a few people have successfully completed that test, and those who did…’ Huang’s voice trailed off and he shrugged. ‘They were either too young, weren’t living in Chengdu at the time, or weren’t—’
‘Wait a second,’ Zeng interrupted. ‘There’s something fishy here. Why are you looking for a knife expert? Couldn’t they have just used a machine to get cuts that precise?’
‘Using a meat slicer wouldn’t fit the killer’s psychological profile,’ Ms Mu said. ‘All the evidence suggests that he savours killing. He wouldn’t have used a machine – he’d definitely want to cut up the body by hand.’
Zeng slapped the table. ‘Come on! Isn’t it enough to chop up a body? What difference would it make if he did it by hand or machine?’
‘Actually, we don’t need to use psychological data to eliminate the possibility of a meat slicer,’ Huang said. ‘If the killer had used a machine, all the pieces would have been of equal size. That’s not what we found. Some are wafer-thin and others are several centimetres thick. It’s obvious just from looking at them that they were cut by hand.’
‘Is that so?’ Zeng muttered. He flipped through the documents until he came to a photograph showing a pile of chunks of human flesh. He held it up close until his nose was nearly touching it. Ms Mu, who was watching him intently, suddenly looked away.
‘I guess you’re right,’ he said, setting the photo back on top of the pile. ‘But what if he used a machine to cut up part of the body and then cut the rest by hand? If he mixed the pieces together, they’d appear to be different sizes.’
Huang’s heavy eyebrows dipped low. ‘But why would he do that? Everything about this case indicates that the killer was focused. If he wanted to be efficient, he’d use a machine to cut up the body. If he wanted to savour the process, he’d cut it by hand. Combining the two methods just doesn’t make sense.’
‘Are you sure about that?’ Pei asked, scrutinising his own copy of the photograph. ‘If you look closely, you’ll see that only a small portion of the flesh is thinly sliced. The rest is in thick chunks. They look machine-cut to me.’
‘You’re right that most of the chunks are thick.’ Unlike the other members of the task force, Huang did not need to look at the pictures. The details came to his mind readily enough. ‘But I think you’re underestimating our killer here. Hell, even my own mother could cut pieces of pork that size.’
‘The size of those smaller pieces could have been intentional, to make the police think that the killer was skilled with a knife, thus falsely skewing our profile of the suspect,’ Pei said. ‘We can’t eliminate the possibility that after an initial venting of his suppressed urges, the killer used a meat slicer on the rest of the body in order to mislead the police.’
Huang stayed silent for nearly half a minute. Finally he asked the question that had been dogging him for years. ‘Could I have been wrong all along?’
‘I can’t say for certain. But for the time being we need to expand our profile of the suspect. We need to look at people other than just doctors, butchers, chefs or those with good knife skills.’ Pei paused and glanced at the others around the table. ‘Does anyone have any s
uggestions regarding the killer’s profile?’
Ms Mu, who’d stayed quiet while the gruesome details were being discussed, pondered this for a moment before responding. ‘I agree with Huang’s decision to use underground metal music to narrow his search for the suspect. Non-mainstream music could very well be the thing that tied the killer to the victim. And given the genre’s preoccupation with death and violence, what could be more fitting?
‘By combining this observation with the accounts we have of the victim, we can sketch a rough portrait of the victim before she was killed. She was probably a sensitive girl with a mind more developed than those of her peers. That would have put her at odds with her fellow students. She’d have felt that she had little, if anything, in common with them. So her social life would have happened off campus, which was how she came into contact with the killer.’
‘Hold on, Ms Mu.’ Zeng interrupted again. ‘Are you sure you’re not reading a bit too much into this? What if this twisted killer met the victim by chance? In which case, this theory about a “heavy metal bond” between them is not simply wild speculation but an impediment to our investigation.’
‘They couldn’t have met by chance. The precise, meticulous way in which the killer dissected the victim’s body could only have been done in a confined, private space. A shy, introverted girl like the victim wouldn’t go into that kind of place with a stranger. Before the murder occurred, the killer must have got into the girl’s head and somehow gained her trust.’
‘I agree,’ Pei said. ‘And if you’re right, it means that the killer had a home equipped with everything he used to carry out the murder. Lieutenant Yin, write that down.’
Lieutenant Yin scrawled a couple of lines onto his notepad:
Bagman Profile:
1. Lived alone in an isolated place. Home equipped with everything he needed to dissect the body.