Fate

by Zhou HaoHui

  ‘What do you mean?’ he asked, giving Pei a blank look.

  Pei narrowed his eyes at the feigned confusion that the young man wore like a mask. With a bitter smile, he said, ‘I have to give you credit for one thing. You put on an extremely convincing act. Even after I realised who you really were, it was still hard to believe you were the same person who’d been terrorising us for the last two months.’

  ‘I don’t understand,’ he said.

  ‘I’ve been watching you for the past ten days, since December the first, when the April 18th Task Force was disbanded. Do you really want to keep this charade going?’ Pei sighed. ‘We’re having an honest, naked discussion. There’s no one else around. You can stop pretending.’

  An intense silence followed. The man stared out into the swirling vapour. When he finally looked back at Pei, the captain felt like he was seeing a different person. The mask had dropped. He was no longer Du Mingqiang. The arrogant, narcissistic reporter was gone and in his place was a cold, calculating killer. He stared into Pei’s eyes as if he was boring deep into his mind.

  Pei had never met anyone who could juggle two identities so skilfully. Not even Yuan.

  ‘What gave me away?’

  ‘Our breakthrough in the January 12th Bagman Killing,’ Pei said. ‘You hadn’t stolen the archive files for that case, but you still analysed it very accurately. So I knew that you had a source inside the police. Once I realised that, I began to suspect you. I was sure that no one in the task force was a mole. Maybe they were being used by someone else without their knowledge, but that was unlikely. And at that point there was only one outsider the task force was in frequent contact with. You.’

  ‘I was impatient,’ Wen Chengyu said, his voice tinged with regret. ‘I should have played it cool.’

  ‘Since I couldn’t figure out exactly how you were getting this information, my only option was to dissolve the task force. Doing that would cut off your inside access and would also avoid arousing your suspicions.’

  ‘The day you took me in, I used Ms Mu’s phone. When I switched out the SIM card, I installed a listening device inside her phone casing.’

  Pei couldn’t help but smile at the terrible irony. Ms Mu had been present at all of the task force’s discussions on the January 12th Bagman case. Eumenides had listened in on every meeting, like a fly on the wall.

  ‘I didn’t have any other options,’ he explained. ‘I was anxious to find out the truth behind my father’s death and your team was keeping a tight grip on every potential lead. That’s why I decided to piggyback off your efforts for my own investigation.’

  ‘When we brought Huang to the internet café,’ Pei said, ‘I intentionally mentioned the reporter “Zhen Rufeng”. But you killed that reporter and took his place. When we tried to bring Zhen Rufeng in, we actually gave you an opportunity to infiltrate our headquarters.’

  ‘Oh?’ Wen Chengyu raised his eyebrows. ‘You know I killed the reporter?’

  ‘The way “Zhen Rufeng” questioned Teacher Wu was nothing like your usual style. You couldn’t have been the one who made that recording. Also, Eumenides would never issue a death notice that he couldn’t carry out. After I realised those things, I spent a lot of time thinking about the ink blotting out the date on Du’s death notice. It was meant to be November the first, wasn’t it? You played mind games with us in order to conceal the truth. When we found the notice, we immediately stepped up our safeguarding efforts for the rest of the month. But we failed to realise that you had already made good on your notice several hours before we found it.’

  Wen Chengyu gave Pei an approving look. ‘Spot on.’

  ‘No murders were recorded on November the first,’ Pei went on, ‘so I checked the police records for any accidental deaths that day. I discovered that a man named Tong Mulin had been found in the Jin River early that morning. According to the report, he was intoxicated and fell in by accident. After digging into his financial records, I was positive that he was the unscrupulous online reporter who called himself Zhen Rufeng. I made sure to carry out that investigation through a separate branch of the criminal police. Not even your listening device would have helped you there.’

  ‘You’re so careful, Captain. I was sloppy when I killed Tong Mulin. You were doing all you could to track him down, so I needed to take his place as quickly as I could. I didn’t have time to take care of all the details surrounding Tong, so I just took a few key pieces of information and used them to disguise myself.’

  ‘And then you were right in the heart of enemy territory. You even wrote about the fake Eumenides killings at the Longyu Building, knowing all along that they were a setup! You have guts – that’s for sure. Did you even consider the possibility that we might see through your ruse? It could have been all over the second we found Tong.’

  ‘Yes,’ Wen Chengyu said calmly, ‘but I knew you wouldn’t try to find him. If I hadn’t got anxious when I was forcing Captain Ding to reveal himself, you wouldn’t have suspected me at all, would you?’

  Pei made no attempt to refute that. ‘You had me fooled. I wouldn’t have seen the complete picture if it hadn’t been for someone else’s input.’

  ‘Whose?’ His face lit up with sudden comprehension. ‘Ah. It was Captain Ding, wasn’t it?’

  Pei nodded.

  Wen Chengyu chuckled. ‘Provoking him was far from wise, but what other choice did I have? There were things I needed to clear up.’ He somehow sounded both resigned and relieved at the same time.

  ‘There are still two things I don’t entirely understand,’ Pei said.

  Wen Chengyu stared at him in silence.

  ‘Firstly, why did you voluntarily restrict your own movements? When you turned yourself over to the police, you knew we’d be obligated to watch you around the clock. Were you prepared to stay cooped up for an entire month?’

  ‘My situation wasn’t as absolute as you think. I made sure to leave myself a way out if I needed one. You’d understand what I mean if you’d checked the bedroom.’

  ‘A hidden passageway?’

  He nodded. ‘I rented the adjacent apartment as well. There’s a ventilation shaft in the bedroom that connects to the other apartment. Whenever I needed to leave, I just waited until SPU Captain Liu was fast asleep, then disguised myself and slipped out for a while.’

  ‘I suppose I should have thought of that,’ Pei said. ‘But there’s something else I haven’t been able to work out – how did you fake your identity? We both know that your real name isn’t Du Mingqiang, but no matter how many times I checked your credentials, I couldn’t find a single problem. How did you pull that off?’

  Wen Chengyu was silent for a moment. ‘I didn’t fake those credentials,’ he finally said. ‘They’re real.’

  ‘But your name is Wen Chengyu,’ Pei said, giving him a suspicious look.

  ‘My name is Wen Chengyu, and it’s also Du Mingqiang. I have a lot of names,’ he said with a hint of pride. ‘Legally speaking, every one of my IDs is completely valid.’

  Every nerve in Pei’s body tensed.

  ‘It began when I was fourteen years old. My mentor took me to every province in the country. We scoured the streets for young men of around eighteen years of age who’d run away from home. If we found someone who fitted our requirements, we discreetly took care of them. Once I had their ID, I went to their home and stole their residence book. I then had a new ID card made with my photograph. That’s how I started accumulating new identities, all of them technically legal. I’ve got more than a dozen in all. They originate from all over China, from the countryside and from major cities, and they’re for a range of ages in the twenties and thirties. I have identities ready to deploy in every conceivable situation.’

  Despite the scalding water he was immersed in, Pei shivered. Yuan Zhibang and Wen Chengyu had killed those young men. They’d killed more than a dozen people simply to further their own criminal ends.

  ‘What do you mean when you say they fitted
your requirements?’ he asked in a near whisper.

  ‘They had to have no criminal record, and the more estranged they were from their family, the better. Ideally, they were orphans. Take Du Mingqiang, for instance. Even if you knew that I wasn’t really him, you’d have no way to prove it.’ Wen Chengyu seemed to notice Pei’s horrified expression and he turned away slightly. ‘They might have been young, but every one of them had committed a lot of despicable acts. If we’d let them live, they would only have wreaked more havoc on society.’

  Pei took a deep breath. Wen Chengyu had gone too far. Pei realised there was a truly unbridgeable gulf between them. Another thought came to him. ‘So that explains why we never found any records of your training. You have so many different legal identities.’

  ‘That’s right. I trained in different places, using different identities. You’ll never be able to track down someone who matches my background. In a way, I’m made up of almost twenty different selves. Individually, there’s nothing special about any one of them.’

  ‘You spent eighteen years preparing,’ Pei whispered.

  ‘Yuan made sure we were ready for anything – financially, logistically and psychologically.’

  ‘I’m still curious as to how you and Yuan managed to accumulate enough funds to carry out this plan.’

  ‘Isn’t it obvious?’ Wen Chengyu said with a dark smirk. ‘Let me give you an example. If you hadn’t handcuffed me after I killed Chen Tianqiao, tomorrow I would have poured millions of yuan into one of my various bank accounts.’

  Of course, Pei thought. By Eumenides’ skewed logic, the property of any one of his victims was fair game.

  ‘I’ve already answered enough of your questions.’ Wen Chengyu looked Pei in the eye. ‘Now I’d like you to give me some honest answers.’

  Pei met his gaze and nodded.

  ‘If you’d already figured out who I was after Professor Ding killed himself, why didn’t you arrest me then?’

  ‘I didn’t have enough evidence. Like I said, I couldn’t find a way to discredit your ID. Interrogating you wouldn’t work either.’

  ‘So everything you did after that point was done to gather the evidence you wanted?’

  Pei hesitated. ‘What are you referring to?’

  ‘During our final meeting, you gave me that tape as well as the files for the January 30th hostage case. You also told your task force that you hoped to stop Eumenides from killing by using psychological methods, even if that meant forfeiting the chance to catch him.’

  ‘I was telling the truth. I did hope that those things would make you cast off the mantle of Eumenides,’ Pei said. ‘But I knew, of course, that the outcome of Du Mingqiang’s death notice wouldn’t tell me anything. I had to wait and see what happened to Chen Tianqiao. Our long wait through the rest of November was indeed a diversion. The real battle began on the first of December, when I started following you.’

  Wen Chengyu snickered dryly. ‘You’d make a good killer, you know. I had no idea that someone was following me.’

  Pei grinned. ‘So, if I may ask, what’s going on between you and that young woman?’

  ‘I like her music, nothing more,’ he answered sourly, staring up at the ceiling.

  ‘Oh, I know it’s much more than that. I saw the two of you together the other night, just hours after I began following you. She’s very fond of you and I’m sure you like more than just her music.’

  Wen Chengyu remained silent. He’d either been rendered speechless by that observation, Pei thought, or he simply couldn’t bring himself to deny it.

  ‘I honestly believed that you’d given up on being Eumenides,’ Pei said. ‘You’d found someone you wanted to be with.’

  Wen Chengyu shut his eyes.

  ‘The next day, I discovered that you’d begun to discreetly follow Chen. As you pursued him from Chengdu all the way here, to Haikou, I stayed right on your tail. It’s hard to say exactly how I felt while I was following you. I knew I was finally close to arresting Eumenides, but that wasn’t the result I truly wanted.’ Pei sighed. ‘Why? Why, after all this, did you still make the same choice?’

  Wen Chengyu didn’t open his eyes. ‘Why did you wipe the end of the recording from the tape?’

  ‘You’ve heard the end of that recording?’ Pei asked in surprise.

  ‘My mentor anticipated every eventuality,’ Wen Chengyu said with a sardonic grin. ‘When he realised that I’d fallen for the young woman, he knew what path I’d eventually take. Before he died, he entrusted her with a tape. She gave it to me on the night you saw us together.’

  Pei began to feel like he was suffocating. With all his planning, how could he have overlooked something so obvious? Eighteen years ago, Yuan had taken the tape and copied it. All these years later, he’d anticipated Pei’s ploy and he’d pre-empted it by divulging the tape’s entire contents to Wen Chengyu.

  Wen Chengyu finally opened his eyes and looked directly at Pei. ‘There’s no need for you to ask me why I’ve made the choice I have,’ he said softly. ‘The fact that you were faced with the truth but erased the end of the recording already tells me enough.’

  Pei pressed his lips together. Perhaps Wen Chengyu was right. He’d wiped the end of the recording, just as Captain Ding had recommended, for one simple reason: he thought the truth would be too much for Wen Chengyu to bear.

  ‘Did you get me a birthday cake, Daddy?’ a young voice had called out.

  A brief silence passed before Wen Hongbing answered. ‘I… I’ll buy it for you soon.’

  ‘Your dad’s lying to you, kid! He doesn’t have any money. He can’t afford to get you a cake,’ a shrill voice interrupted. ‘You’ll never get a cake for your birthday.’

  The child began to sob.

  ‘Give me back my money! I want my money!’

  ‘I keep telling you – I don’t have it.’

  ‘Stop right there and stay calm!’

  ‘You bastard! Liar! I’m going to kill you!’

  ‘Let him go!

  There were the sounds of a scuffle, and the shrill voice yelled out in pain. Then came the deafening crack of a gunshot.

  ‘Are you insane?’ Yuan shouted. ‘Why the hell did you provoke him? Did you not see the bomb he was wearing?’

  ‘What’s there to be afraid of?’ the shrill-voiced man asked slyly. ‘It’s not like it was going to go off!’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘The bomb was a fake!’ shrieked Chen Tianqiao gleefully.

  The noise of approaching voices had swelled as the police swarmed in, and the recording had ended.

  ‘It isn’t some complex web of cause and effect,’ Wen Chengyu said. ‘There’s no helplessness, no confusion. Everything is as clear as it could be. So clear that the thought of what happened still makes me shudder. I felt only one emotion after listening to that recording. Hatred. A hatred so pure that it forced me to take certain actions.’

  Pei shook his head disconsolately. He tried to think of a way he could have been more resourceful, but his mind was empty. How could he tell him that he was wrong? Perhaps Captain Ding’s theory of cause and effect really did have nothing to do with it. Yuan Zhibang, Wen Hongbing, even the young Wen Chengyu, who had simply wanted a birthday cake – none of them bore any responsibility for that day’s tragic outcome. All the facts pointed to a single catalyst: Chen Tianqiao.

  On that day, Chen had been victorious. His creditor was shot dead right in front of him, leaving him free to abscond with Wen Hongbing’s cash. Yuan had known the truth from the start but was unable to take any action against Chen. In the eyes of the law, Chen wasn’t guilty.

  A police officer’s firearm was supposed to be an adjunct in the administration of justice. But the bullet fired from Yuan’s gun had become part of something sinister. This shattered his faith in the institution of law enforcement. Never again would he trust in the law; he would trust only in himself. Pei understood why at that moment his old friend had vowed to use his abilities
to rid the world of evil.

  ‘After I finished listening to that tape, I had a revelation,’ Wen Chengyu said in the measured tone of a teacher instructing a student. ‘I no longer had any doubts. The tape was a guiding light leading me to the truth. I thank my mentor, for in the end he gave me Chen.’

  A feeling of utter helplessness pressed down on Pei. He’d once believed that he could win Wen Chengyu over to his side, but that was no longer a possibility. Pei had said all that he could. He stared down into the water. ‘Perhaps I should notify the local police.’

  ‘You didn’t bring your own people with you?’

  Pei shook his head. ‘Like I said, I dissolved the task force. I came here on my own. I feel more comfortable dealing with you myself, anyway.’

  ‘That was a wise move. If you’d joined forces with anyone else, I’d have noticed. But I’m still surprised you came on your own.’

  ‘We police may have a lot of resources at our disposal, but you’ve always had an advantage over us. You work in the shadows, whereas we work in the light. But once I found out who you really were, our roles were reversed, and that’s how I was able to catch you off guard.’

  Wen Chengyu gave a slight nod. ‘But you’re just one person. No wonder you didn’t try to confront me back at the restaurant.’

  ‘Exactly. I had to work alone in order to stay off your radar, but catching you wasn’t easy. I had to wait for the right opportunity. Like this one.’ Pei gestured at the bathing room with his free hand. ‘We’re naked and handcuffed together. It’s not exactly easy for you to try anything in a situation like this.’

  Wen Chengyu smirked sheepishly.

  On a whim, Pei decided to say one more thing. ‘Actually, there’s another reason why I acted alone.’

  ‘Oh?’

  ‘Something occurred to me after I listened to that tape. I understood how difficult it would be for Chen’s accused crime of homicide to stand up in court.’

  ‘Do you mean that you think it was right that he died? You actually agree with me?’ The corners of Wen Chengyu’s eyes crinkled.