by Zhou HaoHui
Ms Mu looked at the other team members. ‘We can try analysing the killer by imagining ourselves as the victim. Like I said earlier, she was emotionally sensitive and more mature than other young women her age. It would have been difficult for her to find someone to confide in. I believe that the killer would need to have been at least five years older than her to meet with her acceptance.’
‘She was just shy of twenty when she was murdered. So the killer would have been at least twenty-five. Should I write that down?’ Lieutenant Yin asked.
‘In that case, write “twenty-eight”. I was talking about psychological maturity. Generally speaking, women in their twenties and thirties tend to be around three years ahead of their male peers in that regard. Taking that into account, the killer would have been at least eight years older than the victim.’
‘You don’t think it’s possible the killer was female?’ Zeng asked. ‘Equal opportunities extend to murderers too.’
‘But with a female victim? A mutilated corpse? Nearly every murder of that sort that we know of was done by a man. It’s not sexist to presume that the killer was male. It’s Occam’s razor,’ Ms Mu said.
‘Who’s shaving what now?’ Zeng asked, bewildered.
‘Occam’s razor,’ Lieutenant Yin said. ‘In other words, you shouldn’t make things any more complicated than necessary when the simplest explanation is most likely to be true.’ He turned his attention to his notepad, where he jotted down another detail.
2. Male, at least 28 at the time of the murder.
‘The victim was a university student,’ Ms Mu continued. ‘Sensitive, introverted and with quite a high opinion of herself. For someone to get close to her and gain her trust, he would have to impress her with his knowledge and character, among other things. That’s why I recommend that we narrow down the profile of this killer even further: he was good-looking, well educated and of relatively high social standing.’
‘Are you sure about that?’ Yin asked, setting down his pen. ‘The victim was at a vocational university. Her grades were unremarkable. And to be quite blunt, she seems average-looking to me. Why would she have such inflated expectations for someone else?’
Ms Mu smiled sympathetically. ‘People like her tend to hold others to higher standards than they expect of themselves. She may have been emotionally mature, but she was average in most other respects. People like that tend to have an inferiority complex that’s linked to their vanity. So she would have looked down on the people around her who were otherwise her equals and focused instead on mixing with those of a higher standing – her way of raising her own status and compensating for her sense of inferiority. By contrast, someone who’s already in a socially superior position can be pretty indifferent to the things around them, because they don’t need to prove themselves.’
Yin considered this argument and added a third point to his notes.
3. Educated, high social status, attractive.
‘Anything else?’ he asked.
‘That’s all I can think of from the victim’s perspective,’ Ms Mu said. ‘Next we should look at things from the killer’s perspective. As I already mentioned, the killer would have been superior to the victim in many regards. But given that he was willing to associate with the victim, I believe he himself suffered from what’s known as a hidden inferiority complex.’
‘Meaning?’ Pei asked.
‘Some people with superior external conditions actually harbour feelings of inferiority that they find hard to express to others. In psychology this is known as a hidden inferiority complex. For example, if you observe the people around you, you’ll notice some individuals whose personal strengths far surpass the humble environment they find themselves in. By “environment” I’m referring to things such as their spouses, careers or social circles. Most people assume that these individuals lack goals or ambition, but they’re often victims of a hidden inferiority complex. They feel flawed, but the people around them don’t see their flaws. The way that other people treat them makes them afraid to expose their flaws. So they conceal them. And they feel compelled to operate at a lower level, in environments that are beneath their potential. It’s how they feel safe.’
‘The killer was just looking for someone to murder, not someone to make friends with,’ Huang said, making a fist.
‘It doesn’t matter whether the killer wanted to get close to the victim. You can’t change someone’s instincts,’ Ms Mu said. ‘Murders like this are often sexually motivated. Even if the killer did intend to harm his victim, he would have chosen a woman who excited him sexually. Hurting and killing her would give him a much bigger thrill. But he chose someone who appeared average to most people, which means he lacked self-confidence, do you see? He thought he could only control a girl from much lower down the social scale. Otherwise he’d feel insecure.’
This last point piqued Pei’s interest. ‘What kind of factors might cause these feelings of inferiority?’
‘He might have grown up in a broken home or he may have been abused by a family member during his childhood. Those factors are pertinent in up to 90 per cent of people with hidden inferiority complexes.’
Huang rubbed his temples and let out an exasperated sigh. ‘Ms Mu, I appreciate your attempt to reduce all of our questions to percentages and textbook definitions, but—’
‘Why haven’t you considered the possibility that the Bagman Killer was just, you know, crazy?’ Zeng asked.
Ms Mu took a deep breath. She had encountered scepticism like this before. ‘Psychology is the science of analysing a person’s future, past and present based on their history. It’s evolved out of countless investigations which prove the reliability of these sorts of discussions. I’ll say it as clearly as I can: there’s a 95 per cent chance that the Bagman Killer had a traumatic childhood.’
‘How much research has really been done on killers like the Bagman?’ Zeng asked dismissively.
‘As a matter of fact, I can think of one right off the top off my head,’ Ms Mu answered quickly. ‘The American FBI recorded a very similar case in the state of Ohio in 1989. The victim was a woman cut up into nearly a hundred pieces. The ensuing investigation confirmed that the killer had been sexually abused by his father as a boy and that this abuse had caused him to be sexually impotent. In his mind, he could only achieve sexual stimulation by killing a woman and cutting her up.’
‘Geez, who signed us up for the psych seminar?’ Zeng mumbled under his breath.
Lieutenant Yin added another point to the growing list on his notepad.
4. Suffers from a ‘hidden inferiority complex’. Traumatic childhood, frustrated sexuality in adulthood.
Pei glanced at Yin’s notes and passed the pad to Ms Mu. ‘Have a look,’ he said. ‘Is this an accurate summary or is there anything we should change or add?’
Ms Mu pointed to the second item on the list. ‘We can narrow the age down a little further. The killer would have been around thirty.’
‘What makes you say that?’
‘Another statistic. Research shows that most killers with these sorts of mental illnesses commit their first act of homicide at the age of thirty. They may begin by torturing animals at a younger age then work their way up. It’s usually when they’re around thirty that they reach the point when their urge to kill can only be sated with a human victim.’
Pei handed the notepad back to Lieutenant Yin. ‘We’ll amend the age then. And we’ll add a fifth detail: he’s a registered resident of Chengdu.’
‘Why?’ Huang asked in surprise. ‘We specifically focused our investigation on people who weren’t local residents.’
‘If a thirty-year-old came to Chengdu, he’d most likely have to rent an apartment. You must have searched the records of rented apartments as part of your investigation, right? The fact that you didn’t find any traces of this person shows that he’s a local who’s been able to stay hidden.’
A flicker of movement caught Pei’s eye. Ms Mu was gently s
haking her head. ‘You object, Ms Mu?’
‘There’s a problem with the logic of that assumption. If the killer is local, it’s possible he’d have a better chance of evading the police. But on the other hand his neighbours, family or acquaintances would likely have been aware of his previous criminal record.’
‘How can you be sure that he had a criminal record?’
‘Psychological disorders don’t just take hold overnight. Before he chopped up Feng Chunling, the Bagman Killer would have satisfied his criminal urges in a variety of more minor ways – with violence, theft or, as I mentioned, by harming small animals. The FBI studies can testify to all that. The killer would have appeared warm and kind to most people, but he would have found it much harder to conceal his abnormal behaviour from those closer to him. So if he is from Chengdu, the police would have come across reports of that sort of behaviour during their extensive investigations.’
Pei grimaced. ‘On second thoughts,’ he said to Lieutenant Yin, ‘leave that last part out for the time being.’
‘Actually, what worries me more,’ Ms Mu said, her eyes narrowing, ‘is that the killer might have left Chengdu after the murder and never come back.’
‘What makes you think he might have done that?’
‘Chiefly because it’s been ten years since the murder and we’ve not seen a second one like it.’
‘That’s right,’ Pei said. ‘From what you’ve said, the Bagman exhibits all the signs of a serial killer. But he’s only killed once.’
‘Exactly. Which makes me suspect that he’s no longer in Chengdu and hasn’t been here for quite some time.’
Something about this explanation didn’t quite ring true to Pei. ‘But then he’d have committed a similar murder somewhere else – and news of a crime that appalling would definitely have made it back to the Chengdu police. As far as I know, nothing like that has happened anywhere over the past decade. How do you explain that?’
‘Are you sure you would have heard about it?’ Ms Mu asked sceptically. ‘China’s a big place.’
Before Pei could respond, TSO Zeng spoke up. ‘I don’t know about the captain, but I’m positive. I help sift through and reorganise the country’s criminal files every single year when we perform our annual systems update. The Bagman case is the only murder of its kind that’s happened in all of China over the last decade.’
Ms Mu shut her eyes and tapped her temples, like someone trying to fix a faulty appliance by hitting it. ‘I don’t understand it,’ she said, her features locked in a deep scowl.
‘How likely is it that this killer would have become addicted to murder? What if one was enough?’ Lieutenant Yin asked.
Ms Mu looked up. ‘It’s almost a certainty,’ she said. ‘This is a psychological disorder we’re talking about. Murder is like a drug to these people. They can’t get that kind of thrill from anything else. The urge sets in deeper with each life they take, like a vicious circle.’
‘So where is he then? Dead? Overseas? In jail for a different crime?’ TSO Zeng shrugged. ‘In which case, what’s the point of this discussion?’
Pei felt as if Zeng had just taken a swing at him. ‘He hasn’t gone anywhere,’ the captain said angrily. ‘He’s here in Chengdu! We know that because Eumenides has already tracked him down.’
The others around the table glanced wordlessly at one another. Pei noted several sceptical looks.
‘One of us has to be wrong. Either us or Eumenides,’ Huang said. He frowned and stared down at his files, as if the answer was hidden somewhere on the paper.
‘Let’s keep going,’ Pei ordered. ‘Huang, the victim’s skeleton was never found, right?’
Huang looked at the captain, surprised at the question. ‘Never,’ he said glumly.
‘How did you explain that at the time?’
‘We concluded that he’d either hidden the body extremely well or he’d kept it inside his own home.’ Huang avoided Pei’s gaze and began leafing through his copies of the files.
Ms Mu perked up at the mention of the latter hypothesis.
‘It’s unlikely that he kept the body at home. While it’s true that many psychopathic killers are in the habit of preserving cadavers, they typically choose to keep a symbolic part of the body, like the head, an internal organ or even the genitalia. There’s no documented case of a killer keeping only the skeleton and not the skull or any other parts. Holding onto a body part of that size would be more than just logistically inconvenient for the killer – it wouldn’t have any special significance either.’
Huang flapped his hands despairingly. ‘My team searched the whole city top to bottom. We practically dug up all of Chengdu. I have no idea where he could have hidden the rest of the body.’
‘What if he hid it inside his home – under the floorboards, say?’ Zeng asked, shifting anxiously in his seat. ‘It isn’t exactly easy to move a corpse. He could have hidden it at the murder scene – wouldn’t be the first time a killer has made that choice.’
Pei looked at him. ‘Two things about that theory don’t make sense. First, burying a body inside your home would be extremely risky in a metropolis like Chengdu. People would hear you. Sure, they might assume you were refurbishing, but if anyone got suspicious, you’d have nowhere to run. The body would be indisputable evidence.’
Lieutenant Yin grunted in agreement. ‘Last year we arrested a man who used bricks and cement to build a wall around his wife’s body out on the balcony of their home. It was the most idiotic way to hide a body I’ve ever heard of. If our killer was that stupid, he wouldn’t have made it ten days, let alone ten years.’
‘And secondly,’ Pei continued, ‘if he did manage to hide the body inside his home, why did he dispose of the victim’s head, organs, clothing and flesh?’
‘He was showing off, wasn’t he? It was a challenge to the authorities, just like what Eumenides does,’ Zeng insisted.
‘If that was his intention,’ Ms Mu said, ‘he wouldn’t have stopped after the first murder. I can say that with 100 per cent certainty.’
Pei rubbed the stubble on his chin. ‘If he was challenging the police, wouldn’t a single bag of chopped-up flesh be enough? Why did he send out three bags, plus the suitcase with the victim’s skull and organs? And her clothes as well. What would be the point of going through all that if he never intended to do it again?’
Zeng propped his elbows on the table and rested his head in his hands. ‘Knowing that won’t do jack squat for us if we can’t figure out where he hid the body,’ he muttered.
‘He hid it in a very particular place,’ Pei mused. ‘And what made that place so particular was that it had room for the victim’s torso but not her head, organs, flesh or clothing. That’s why the killer had to get rid of them.’
Ms Mu’s mouth widened in realisation. ‘We’ve been thinking of him as a serial killer this whole time. But what if that was merely what he wanted us to think?’
A hint of a smile came to Pei’s lips. He nodded encouragingly at Ms Mu.
After giving herself a moment to collect her thoughts, the psychologist continued. ‘The killer got rid of the victim’s skull and clothing, but he made no effort to conceal her identity. That means he wasn’t worried about the police investigating the victim’s background or social connections. From this we can conclude that the killer and the victim met by chance. No one else knew about it.’
‘Given the victim’s personality,’ Pei added eagerly, ‘anyone who wanted to get close to her within a short period of time would have to have been pretty charismatic. Which is why I agree with the rest of Ms Mu’s deductions about the killer’s age, personality type and so forth.’
‘Since we’re certain that the killer and his victim met by chance, we can focus on two possible theories,’ Ms Mu said. ‘The first of these is that the killer was a psychopath and his murder of Feng Chunling was premeditated. The Bagman’s goal in finding Feng was to kill her and to enjoy the process of killing her. Since it was premedi
tated, he prepared for each stage, including how to lure the victim to his home, how to kill her and how to dispose of the body. His plan was extremely thorough and he executed it perfectly, which is why we’ve failed to find him for the past ten years.
‘However, there are several things about this hypothesis that are impossible to explain. For instance, why didn’t he continue killing? And why did he dispose of the victim’s skull, organs, flesh and clothing in different places? Which leads us to the other possibility – that the killer never intended to murder the victim at all. He simply wanted to befriend her. But once she’d got to his home, something unexpected happened, and it was this that made him kill her.’
‘Even if he didn’t plan to kill her, it’s pretty hard to “accidentally” murder and dismember someone who comes to your home,’ Zeng said in disbelief. ‘He’s still a psycho, regardless of what his intentions might have been.’
Lieutenant Yin turned to Ms Mu. ‘So was it because of some kind of abuse he suffered when he was younger?’
‘I don’t think that’s very likely. About a year ago I participated in a study focusing on the psychological traits of rapists as well as victims of rape. Neither the killer nor the victim in this case fits those profiles. The circumstances of this case suggest that the male killer’s external conditions surpassed those of the female victim. That the victim felt able to accompany the killer home indicates that she identified with the killer a great deal. Of course we can’t eliminate the possibility that the two misunderstood one another’s intentions. The killer may even have faced strong resistance from the victim. Often a man stops in that situation because in his view the woman is not worth the effort. And as someone who saw himself as superior to the woman in nearly all regards, he wouldn’t have wanted to stoop to the level of a violent rapist.’
‘The girl’s undergarments were completely intact when they were discovered,’ Huang pointed out. ‘Which suggests she was not violently raped.’
‘So what was the killer’s motive for suddenly killing her?’ Lieutenant Yin asked, clicking the top of his retractable pen. ‘He didn’t have a grudge against her and he certainly wasn’t after her money. After all, you said that he was basically rich.’