Apricot's Revenge

by Song Ying

  “That’s from Rodin,” the officer said with a hint of admiration. “And it makes sense.”

  “Which academy did you attend?”

  “Southwest Advanced Police University. I graduated two years ago and was hired at Shenzhen.”

  “Southwest Advanced?” A look of familiarity appeared in Nie’s eyes.

  “You’ve been on our campus?”

  “Not just been on. I know the place like the back of my hand. I spent my teenage years in the Southwest compound. The boxy buildings, the firing range, the police gym, I’ve been to all of them.”

  “Did you live in the compound?”

  Ponytail walked up with a cup of steaming coffee.

  “Here’s your coffee, sir.”

  “Thank you.” Xiaochuan gestured for her to put it down, without taking his eyes off Nie.

  Ponytail laid down the cup and gave Nie another fetching look before walking away.

  “You guessed it. But then I was admitted to the Journalism School at C University and left the compound,” Nie said. “After college, I did all sorts of work, interviewing and editing, reporting, freelancing, but nothing to make a name for myself. Now ten years have gone by.”

  “Now I remember.” Xiaochuan’s eyes lit up, as if discovering a new frontier. “No wonder I thought you looked familiar. Do you know … President Nie Donghai?”

  “I do.” Nie nodded, then continued calmly, “A stubborn old fellow. He’s my father.”

  Xiaochuan jumped to his feet and snapped off a military salute.

  “Please give President Nie my best.”

  That drew a curious look from people at the next table.

  Nie looked around and laughed. “Please sit down. I’m not my father.”

  “You’re right, of course.” Xiaochuan sat down with an embarrassed look.

  “I want to make this clear. My father and I are two different people. And you can’t tell anyone.”

  “I won’t, of course.” Xiaochuan nodded. Nie Donghai, President of Southwest Advanced Police University, was a renowned administrative expert, holder of Police Commissioner First Rank, and a man who enjoyed high prestige among professionals and students.

  The distance vanished between the two men, who now felt a special bond, almost as if they shared a birthplace and experiences at the Police Academy.

  “That’s great, good brother Nie. Just tell me what you want to know.”

  “I know you police have rules, and I don’t expect you to share confidential information. I want to find the truth, which is a journalist’s mandate. No matter how you look at it, Hu’s death was too sudden.”

  “I think so, too,” Xiaochuan agreed.

  “You’ve just come from a meeting about the case, haven’t you?” Nie picked up his cup and signaled Xiaochuan to drink his coffee. “If Hu was murdered,” he said after taking a sip, “there must be three suspects—Zhou Zhengxing, Zhu Mei-feng, and Hong Yiming, am I right?”

  “How did you know?” Xiaochuan was so shocked his hand paused in midair.

  “Drink your coffee.” Nie nodded. “Elementary, as they say. They’re the three major beneficiaries. Zhou is deputy CEO and the second largest shareholder at Landmark. My research shows that Hu owned fifty-four percent of the stock and Zhou thirty-six percent, with the remaining ten percent in the hands of Landmark Management. When Landmark formed in Shenzhen, Hu Guohao invested thirty-six million yuan while Zhou only contributed a piece of land. The business flourished because of Hu’s guts and his willingness to take risks, but also because of Zhou’s local connections. Low key by nature, Zhou wasn’t entirely comfortable with Hu’s bravado and domineering attitude. He particularly disliked Hu’s tendency to take risks, so problems arose between them, to the point where they could no longer get along.”

  “How do you know all this?” Xiaochuan was impressed.

  “It’s nothing. Prior to the interview, I did some background research on Landmark.” Nie winked at Xiaochuan. “A good journalist has to have a bloodhound’s nose.”

  “So does a good police officer,” Xiaochuan said to himself.

  “Why did you rank Zhu Mei-feng your number two suspect?”

  “Did I? I didn’t say she was number two.” Nie flashed an artful smile. “With Hu’s death, his shares will go to her, so she must be considered the number one beneficiary. I learned from Landmark employees that they were married six years ago. Before then, she’d worked at Shenzhen’s largest karaoke bar. With her voice and good looks, she’d had a long line of rich fans, but she protected her reputation by never being involved with any of the customers. After she married Hu, he opened a beauty salon for her. She kept her distance from Hu’s business and rarely came to the office. She probably has no idea how much her husband was worth.”

  “I see.” Xiaochuan was mulling this all over.

  “As for Big East’s Hong Yiming,” Nie continued, ‘I’m sure the police know that his company is Landmark’s strongest competitor and that he was the last person to see Hu alive. So it’s natural and logical to suspect him.”

  “Logical?” Xiaochuan seemed puzzled.

  “Right.” Nie nodded to Xiaochuan as a sort of hint. “I think the last dinner at Greater Meisha and what the two men talked about may be a very important clue.”

  “Thanks for the tip.” Xiaochuan scratched his head and reproached himself as the significance of Nie’s words set in. Nie knew just about everything about the case, and he, a case officer, had missed so many details.

  “Say, your coffee’s getting cold.” To change the subject, Nie asked with a smile, “What’s your Chief Cui like?”

  “He’s a great police officer. He worked his way up from precinct stations and solved some major cases along the way. The only problem is, he’s got a temper.”

  “He likes to lecture people, I suppose,” Nie said. “And may be a bit overweening.”

  “He’s actually a good guy. It’s just—”

  “You don’t have to defend him. I’m just having a bit of fun. Will you deliver a message for me? Tell him I’d like to tag along and report on the investigation.”

  “Sure, I can do that.”

  “One more thing. Will you do me a favor?”

  “Anything. Just say it.”

  “I’d like to take a look at Hu Guohao’s body, but Cui mustn’t know about it.”

  “That’s no problem. It’s at the Danzhutou Funeral Home.”

  “Is it far from here?”

  “Quite far, actually. But I have a car and I can take you there tonight. We have to act fast, because they may be sending the body to the Public Security Hospital for an autopsy soon.”

  “Perfect.” Nie nodded.

  Xiaochuan wasn’t sure whether Nie meant the trip to the funeral home or the autopsy.

  They chatted about other things for a while. Nie pointed at the Ming Tien logo on the oval coaster.

  “Interesting logo.”

  “Really?” Xiaochuan moved the coaster over to take a closer look.

  “A green oval around a pair of green, slightly curved vertical lines to the left of a small green oval with little gaps at the top and bottom.

  “The green lines on the left must symbolize tea leaves and the oval next to them a coffee bean.”

  “Excellent,” Nie said, with a sparkle in his eye as he looked at the officer. “Now look again.”

  Xiaochuan frowned as he concentrated, like a schoolkid taking an IQ test.

  “See it?”

  “No.” The young officer shook his head.

  “It’s 110,” Nie Feng said, calling attention to the emergency number for the police.

  “You’re right, it is!” Xiaochuan clapped his hands.

  “You guys in the criminal division work too hard. This is a good place to unwind. You could turn it into a police officers’ club.”

  “Hmm.” Xiaochuan looked around. “The place does have a homey feel about it.”

  Nie waved to the waitress, who was standing nex
t to a post. “Check please, Miss.”

  Ponytail quickly went over to the cashier.

  “Oh, there’s one more person.” Nie rapped his fingers on the tabletop as he was reminded of something. “Someone you need to look into.”

  “Who’s that?”

  Ponytail came over with a smile and the check.

  Nie glanced at the check and took out his wallet. Sixty yuan for two coffees: forty for the Blue Mountain and twenty for the Ming Tien coffee. Typical for Shenzhen.

  They got up and were seen out with a bow from the waitress, who said, “Please come again.”

  “Hu Guohao’s assistant, Zhong Tao,” Nie said as they walked down the stairs. “He seemed all right to me, but he was at Lesser Meisha on the day Hu died.”

  “Really? Why didn’t we know about that?” Xiaochuan was surprised by the revelation.

  “Zhong Tao told me himself. On the afternoon of the twenty-fourth he rode with Hu to the Seaview Hotel, where Hu got out. The driver then dropped Zhong off at Lesser Meisha before returning to the city. Zhong and seven college buddies who worked in Shenzhen got together for a reunion at Ocean Barbecue and partied all night.”

  Xiaochuan recalled how Cui had only told him to go see if the deceased was indeed Hu Guohao, and no one even thought of asking whether there might have been someone else in the car with Hu that day.

  “Did he tell you the names of the other guys?”

  “That’s police business. It won’t be hard to find them.”

  “I’ll have to tell our Team Leader when I get back.”

  “Just don’t tell him where you heard it.”

  “I won’t.”

  Xiaochuan opened the door of his Jetta and they climbed in.

  He started the car and headed off to the east.

  * * *

  Danzhutou was located in Buji, a town north of Shenzhen with a low mountain range behind it. It was nearly dusk when they arrived at the funeral home.

  Xiaochuan drove through the gate, skirted a cement road, and stopped in front of the office, where he showed his police ID to a bespectacled, middle-aged staff member.

  “This man’s a journalist. We’d like to take another look at Hu Guohao’s body; that’s number twelve.”

  “But we’re not open for visitations at night.” The man looked at Nie from behind his glasses.

  “I’m returning to Sichuan tomorrow. Won’t the old gentleman kindly let us in?” Nie bowed and smiled.

  “Do I look old to you?” The man laughed in spite of himself. He wasn’t even in his forties.

  “Come on, that’s just a term of respect,” Xiaochuan said in a conciliatory tone.

  “All right. Follow me.”

  The employee led them through a shady grove of pines and cypresses to a large building with white walls and a green tiled roof.

  He opened the door with a key, releasing a cold blast of air from the refrigerated holding room for bodies, a vast, empty space. Metal-handled drawers lining one wall emitted a subtle icy glint under fluorescent lights. There was no sign of life in here.

  The man stopped by no. 12, put on a pair of canvas gloves, pulled out a long metal tray, and folded back the white sheet.

  Hu Guohao’s naked body materialized before their eyes, accompanied by cold air.

  “It’s him.”

  Though he was prepared, Nie still felt a shudder run through him.

  Lying on the cold metal tray was the once-powerful real estate tycoon who, only a few days before, had been holding forth in his luxuriously appointed office on the twenty-fourth floor of the Landmark Building. He had looked arrogant, and yet undeniably impressive.

  And now, he lay naked on a cold metal slab, an empty shell.

  At that moment lines from a poem by Shelley flashed through Nie Feng’s mind.

  I met a traveler from an antique land

  Who said: “Two vast and trunkless legs of stone

  Stand in the desert. Near them on the sand,

  Half sunk, a shattered visage lies, whose frown,

  And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command,

  Tell that its sculptor well those passions read …

  “Mr. Nie, what’s on your mind?” Xiaochuan asked, sensing something unusual in Nie’s gaze.

  “Oh, it’s nothing.” Nie recovered and looked down at Hu’s body.

  The skin was a grayish white, likely because of the cold storage and the length of time since his death; his broad face looked puffy, but the large leonine nose retained an aggressive appearance. His beady eyes, which had once shone with clever, ambitious light, were closed for all time.

  Nie’s gaze move slowly from the top of the head down to the face and paused at the left cheek, followed by a brief stop at the spot on his left chest, where below his nipple were a few noticeable cuts. Looking closely, he thought the lines formed the character for mountain, “山,” but could not say for sure. There was no blood around the wounds, just a slight purple discoloration under the skin, which was probably because the body had been in the water so long.

  Nie was lost in thought as he stared at the wound.

  “This looks unusual,” he muttered.

  “Could that have been caused by jellyfish?” Xiaochuan wondered aloud.

  “Is that what it would look like?” Nie had not had the fortune of being kissed by jellyfish.

  “I’m not sure.”

  Swimmers at Dapeng Bay sometimes encountered jellyfish, those transparent, boneless creatures that came and went like ghosts, their stings like needle pricks. But the traces on Hu’s body did not look like jellyfish stings, which would have produced a row of blisters; Hu’s wound looked to have been made by something solid.

  “You see bruises like that on bodies of drowning victims.” The funeral home man had seen it all. “It could have been caused by a rock when he struggled to save himself.”

  “Well, that’s very helpful. Thank you,” Nie complimented the man. Then, before the other man knew what was happening, he took out a Pentax 928 and quickly snapped two close-ups of the wound.

  “Say, you journalists have expensive cameras!”

  “It’s nothing special, actually.” Feigning modesty, Nie flashed a foolish smile. “Just one of those idiot boxes you don’t have to focus.”

  Xiaochuan covered a smile with his hand.

  “Are we done here, Xiaochuan?” Nie turned to ask.

  “Yes, we are.” Xiaochuan wiped the grin off his face.

  As the three men came out of the cold storage, Nie Feng asked the employee, “When will number twelve be cremated?”

  “It was originally set for July second, but for some reason that’s been changed.”

  “Was that a request from the family?”

  “No. I received a notice from your people, telling me to keep the body in good shape for a possible autopsy.”

  Nie and Xiaochuan exchanged a glance.

  “The man’s already dead, and now they want to open him up. Bad karma,” the man mumbled.

  In the dying evening light, a few old crows were cawing loudly on one of the cypresses.

  — 3 —

  The Mei-feng Beauty Salon. A red BMW quietly rolled to a stop.

  The door opened and out stepped Zhu Mei-feng, in a white trench coat and carrying a small purse.

  Xiaochuan and Officer Yao walked up to her.

  “Hello, Mrs. Hu,” Xiaochuan said. “We need to check something with you.”

  “We can talk inside,” Zhu said impassively.

  “Are you sure you want to do that?” Yao Li asked.

  “Yes.” She smiled faintly and told them to follow her in.

  “Good morning, Manager Zhu.” Two young women in pink uniforms looked up and greeted Zhu Mei-feng before returning to the facials they were giving clients.

  Zhu responded with a casual nod and showed the two officers into her office.

  The room was roughly ten square meters in size and, furnished with a mahogany desk and a European-style sof
a, was elegant in both color tone and décor.

  “Please, have a seat.” She gestured for them to take the sofa, while she sat behind the desk, which fronted a glass display case lined with two rows of imported cosmetic samples.

  “We’re here because”—Xiaochuan went straight to the point—“we want to know where you were from eleven o’clock on the night of the twenty-fourth to one o’clock the following morning.”

  “You’re checking my alibi, is that it?” she asked calmly.

  “It’s just routine police procedure. I hope you understand,” Yao Li said stiffly.

  A pink-uniformed, moon-faced girl entered with two cups of instant black tea. She set them down on the coffee table, then turned and left, closing the door behind her.

  “Lao Hu went to Greater Meisha that day alone. I didn’t go with him.”

  “Why didn’t you accompany him for a weekend stay at Greater Meisha Beach?” Yao Li asked.

  “It’s been a long time since I was at Greater Meisha. I’m not into swimming or surfing,” Zhu explained. “My mother had a flare-up of her arthritic rheumatism on the twenty-fourth. She called from Hong Kong and asked me to come see her.”

  Xiaochuan and Yao Li stared at each other.

  “So you went to Hong Kong?”

  “Yes, I did. I took the twelve-twenty Chinalink bus from Wenjindu to Kowloon. A little after eight the next morning, I received a call from Mr. Hu’s driver, who told me what had happened, so I took the first Chinalink bus back to Wenjindu.”

  “Which one?”

  “I think it was the ten-twenty bus.”

  “Can you prove it?”

  “Sure.”

  She opened her purse, took out her passport, and handed it to Xiaochuan, who removed a pair of bus tickets tucked inside the plastic cover. A quick glance told him they were for a round-trip between Wenjindu and Prince Edward Station in Kowloon. He handed them to his partner, who wrote down the dates and times on the tickets.

  Xiaochuan then opened the passport for a closer look; blue triangular stamps showed her departure and entry times. The officers exchanged a knowing look before he returned the passport to Zhu.

  “Thank you for the information.”

  “You’re welcome.”

  Wang and Yao stood up, walked out, and climbed into their Jetta.