by Song Ying
“Please go ahead.”
“I made a mistake in my analysis of the primary crime scene in Lesser Meisha. I overlooked something.”
“What was that?”
“That Ding Lan drives a white Citroën.”
“A white Citroën?” Chief Wu repeated.
“Yes,” Nie said politely but confidently. “So the crime scene had to be within five to seven minutes by car. I did a quick calculation: It takes roughly five minutes to walk from the barbecue ground to the sapling garden east of the beach and climb over the fence behind the Lesser Meisha Hotel. Ten minutes for a round trip. If it took five minutes to dispose of Hu’s body, the remaining ten of the twenty-five minutes could have been used for transportation by car. But if the killer climbed the slope from Lover’s Lane and crawled under the chain-link fence behind the hotel, that would only take three to four minutes, or about six minutes both ways. He’d still need five minutes to dispose of Hu’s body, which would have left him with fourteen minutes, a seven-minute trip each way.”
“Five to seven minutes by car. That would mean that the primary crime scene could have been farther than we’d thought.”
“Right. And that larger area would then cover a place I’d overlooked before—”
“Greater Meisha!” Chief Wu blurted out.
“Yes, it was Greater Meisha.”
“Thank you so much, Mr. Nie.” Chief Wu slapped his hand on his desk and got up.
Time to focus in on Greater Meisha.
* * *
Chief Wu personally took charge of the second, larger-scale search.
A gentle slope, Qitou Ridge, separated Greater and Lesser Meisha, which were six to seven kilometers apart. The whole eastern part of Greater Meisha fell within the search area, which was anywhere inside an arc that could be reached within five to seven minutes by car from Lesser Meisha; that included most of the beach at the Greater Meisha Resort, the Pearl Garden Hotel, the Meisha Hotel, a clinic, and Meisha Market, as well as two residential districts—Shangping Villa and Chengkeng Villa, where only a few dozens families lived.
Cui and his officers began a systematic search, assisted by police dogs. To be safe, they extended their search area beyond the original arc. The local police station also sent all the policemen they could spare to aid in the search.
Two rows of small duplexes with ceramic tile walls and low fences, so typical of Guangdong houses, stood in the shadow of towering white apartment buildings near the Pearl Garden Hotel. The team entered the area and discovered a small family shrine next to a tall banyan tree. A round stone table surrounded by eight stone stools had been set up under the tree. The shrine had yellow tiles and glazed roof tiles; one inside wall of a tiny courtyard was decorated with a colorful drawing depicting “luck/wealth/longevity/happiness,” the other with a mosaic painting of “five good fortunes of longevity”
A half dozen dilapidated houses stood behind the shrine, with peaked tiled roofs, old wooden doors, and peeling whitewashed walls. No house numbers, probably because they were too old, but with an occasional number painted in red. The last three buildings on the right were all quite similar. When Cui and his officers reached them, he sensed something: the place looked abandoned and overgrown with weeds, the perfect crime scene.
They searched the first two houses, but found the last one locked. A local cop fetched the owner, a kindly, graying woman in her sixties.
“Is this your house?” Cui asked.
“Yes.” She nodded.
He asked her to unlock the door. It was pitch-black inside; even the floor had turned dark and dirty. A small space was created with red bricks covered in lime, possibly a makeshift shower room. Further back a brick stove was topped by an old stove connected to a liquid gas tank. Odds and ends, including some plastic buckets, were piled next to the door.
A water faucet next to the stone steps outside the door was connected to a hose; moss covered the damp ground. A paved open space some three or four meters wide in front of the row of old houses was wide enough to park a car.
“Did someone rent this house last month?” Cui asked the woman.
“Yes, a woman.”
“What was her name?”
“Wu Li, looked to be in her forties.”
Xiaochuan showed her several photographs.
“That’s her, Wu Li, the woman who rented this house.” The owner picked out Ding Lan from a stack of college photos.
“Wu Li? Did you check her ID?”
“These are temporary rentals, we never check IDs,” the old woman admitted openly.
Cui cast a glance at the local cop, who looked embarrassed. Obviously they weren’t enforcing rental regulations. The landlords cared only about the rent, and neither checked renters’ IDs, nor notified the precinct station.
“When did she come?”
“Early last month, I think, on a weekend. Let me see. It was the first or the second of June. She said she was renting the place for a couple of workers from her hometown. She paid me three hundred yuan for the month.”
“Did anyone else show up after that?”
“I don’t know.”
“So you collected the rent and said to hell with everything else.” The local policeman reprimanded her with a look.
“We try to stay out of our renters’ business.”
“When did this Wu Li end the lease?”
“End of June.”
“Anyone staying here now?”
“No. No one has rented it since.”
The police secured the scene and began a search. Several filthy towels were draped over a bamboo pole set up as a rack opposite the door. A wooden staircase with no handrails stood against the left wall; it swayed when they climbed it into a small room with walls formed from waterproofing tiles. It was a dark room with cheap furnishings, but clean enough, with a bed, a table, and two chairs. A common plastic washbasin rested on the floor. Xiaochuan pulled back the bedsheet and found a white plastic bucket with the capacity of about twenty-five liters, half filled with a murky, brackish liquid that had a fishy smell.
Cui summoned a pair of uniformed technicians with a phone call.
“Let’s see what we have here,” he told them.
One of the gloved technicians took pictures from all angles, while his partner, also gloved, removed a small tube of dusting powder from his metal case and brushed it on the door handle, the edges of the table, and the plastic bucket for fingerprints. In the meantime, the other searchers combed the area around the rental unit. Behind a window they found a balled-up strip of yellow duct tape on which the technician retrieved half a thumbprint. The prints and bucket were taken back to the station as evidence.
The technicians found a match the following morning. The prints from the door handle and table were too smudged to be of any use, but they got two clear prints from the bucket, an index finger and a thumb, which matched a partial print from the yellow tape. They matched Zhong Tao’s prints, which they’d earlier retrieved from a drinking glass.
Everyone on the team was too excited for words. After a month of groping in the dark, they were finally zeroing in on their target. The backslapping and high fives ended, however, when they received the test results of the bucket’s contents: nothing but concentrated seawater, with no trace of algae, evidence that could have solved the first murder.
Xiaochuan and Yao Li were sent to Guangzhou with the liquid for further testing at the Nanhai Environmental Monitoring Center. Under a high-powered microscope the sample was murky and specked with shreds of something.
They quickly learned the reason from the director, who told them that algae has a very short life span. A new generation is normally produced every few hours, which is why it is termed explosive growth. At best it can survive a day or two, but in an oxygen-deprived bucket with dim lighting, it probably died very quickly. In liquid form, it can be seen under a high-powered microscope a couple of days after it dies, but after that, the cells disintegrate and are impossibl
e to detect under any microscope.
The two officers left disappointed. Cui was naturally unhappy with the result, since they had hoped to use it to make their case. Now they could end up with nothing but wasted effort.
Only by finding Nan’ao algae in the water could they prove that the rental unit was where Hu was murdered. They found a lip print on the yellow tape, most likely from Hu when they sealed his lips, but his body had been cremated, so they would never learn if it was his. In addition, they found no trace of Hu in the rental unit—no cell phone, no clothing, and no fingerprints. Zhong Tao and Ding Lan could easily say they were secretly carrying on in the rental, which amounted to nothing, except perhaps unsavory personal behavior.
Chief Wu decided to put Zhong Tao and Ding Lan under round-the-clock surveillance.
— 5 —
The Sanxingdui Museum in Guanghan. In the luxurious exhibit hall, a group of visitors, looking quite scholarly, were standing in front of a glass case displaying a giant bronze mask, as an exuberant female docent cheerfully explained:
“This is the world-famous bronze mask known as the Zhuyang Mask. At one point thirty-eight millimeters wide and sixty-five millimeters high, it is generally considered to be the largest in the world. Please take a close look at the bulging eyes, which are symbols for ancient Sichuan. As some of you know, the pictograph for Sichuan on the oracle bones has a large eye on top.”
The specialists listened with interest and knowing smiles. The mask was the size of a millstone, with a large mouth, bulging eyes, a towering nose, and fully expanded ears like the crescent-shaped tips of ancient spears. With its unusual shape and eerie features, its inherent mystery elicited wondrous sighs from the visitors.
With a conference attendee badge around his neck, Nie Feng trailed the team of scholars, listening absentmindedly and frequently checking his watch. His mind was a thousand miles away in Shenzhen, where the police ought to be tightening the net around the murderers. Finally his cell rang at four fifteen; it was from Xiaochuan. Nie answered while racing out of the exhibit hall.
“Good news, Nie Feng!” Xiaochuan’s excitement was palpable. “Based on what you told us, we found the spot where Zhong and Ding stayed; it was a rental unit in Greater Meisha and may very well be the place where Hu Guohao was murdered.”
“Really!” Nie could hardly surpress his own jubilation.
“Yes. We’re chasing down all leads. You’re amazing.” Xiaochuan went on to tell him about the crime scene investigation. The discovery of the bucket with seawater did not surprise Nie, but he wondered why Zhong would leave his print on the bucket. The case showed that he was a mastermind who had meticulously planned every step. Was the print a careless mistake, did he not have time to remove all traces, or was there another reason?
“Did you find any of Hu Guohao’s prints at the scene?” Nie asked.
“No, but we found a strip of used yellow tape with Zhong’s print. There was another print but we have no way of knowing whose it is.”
“Any sign of Hu’s clothes?”
“No, nothing.”
“They did a thorough job of cleaning up,” Nie muttered.
He completed his interview that afternoon and, after gathering additional material, returned to Chengdu that night. The trip took half an hour. Sitting in the back of a taxi, Nie closed his eyes, feeling quite elated. Yellow and green fields broke up the dark night as they raced along the highway, while a montage of scenes flashed through his mind. Zhong’s carefully planned and executed murder scheme slowly took shape in Nie’s mind.
On June twenty-fourth, from 11:05 to 11:30, Zhong Tao and Ding Lan carried out their plan. At 11:10, they climbed over the low fence on the eastern shore, found their way to the parking lot of the Lesser Meisha Hotel, and climbed into her white Citroën. Five minutes later, at 11:15, they arrived at the Greater Meisha rental unit.
Within five minutes, Ding helped Zhong “execute” Hu Guohao, whom they had drugged with sleeping pills.
11:25, they drove back to the parking lot at Lesser Meisha and retraced their steps.
They were back on the barbecue ground at 11:30.
At around three o’clock that morning, Zhong sneaked out of his cabin, climbed over the fence, and drove the Citroën to the rental unit in Greater Meisha, where he loaded Hu’s body into the trunk. Then he drove to the highway near Lovers’ Lane, parked and turned off the headlights. He took Hu’s body out of the trunk and carried it over his shoulder, crawling under the chain-link fence, and startling the egrets perched in the banyan tree. He walked down the stone steps to the beach at Lesser Meisha, where he dumped the body.
He had to have driven to Nan’ao beforehand to get the seawater.
But why kill Hu Guohao? What was his motive? This was the key.
Feeling he had to make a trip to Yunnan, Nie Feng called the editor at home.
“Mr. Wu?” Nie said from the taxi. “I’ve finished the Sanxingdui interview.”
“That was fast.” Wu sounded pleased.
“I’d like three days off.” Nie paused. “For a trip to Yunnan.”
“Yunnan? To Shangri-la?”
“I wish.”
“Or, maybe you’re going to Lugu Lake for a little hanky-panky,” the editor joked.
“It has something to do with the Hu Guohao case.” Nie ignored the joke.
“New developments?” The editor turned serious.
“Don’t know yet. That’s what I want to find out.” Nie added, “But I have a hunch that the key to solving the case is in Yunnan.”
“When do you plan to leave?”
“Tomorrow, if possible.”
“Sure.” Nie had not expected his editor to be so quick to agree. “I’ll give you four days. But with one condition—give me a report on the Western Flower Show.”
So that was what the old fellow had in mind, turning Nie into a reporting machine!
“Then I’ll have to charge my expenses to the magazine.”
“No problem. You’re on!”
ELEVEN
Melodious Harmonica
— 1 —
July twenty-fourth, Monday, Zhong Tao returned from his business trip. Exactly a month had passed since Hu Guohao had been found dead.
The soaring glass curtain wall on the Landmark Building continued to reflect a blue sky with puffy white clouds. Stepping out of the elevator on the twenty-fourth floor, he sensed something different in the air. Dressed in a short-sleeved shirt and a date-red tie, he showed the wear and tear of travel on his darkened skin. As he neared his office, he was surprised to see the secretary’s office deserted, while the chairman’s office door was sealed with official tape stamped with red seals.
He had spoken with Zhou Zhengxing on the phone when he was off traveling in the southwest, and had learned of Feng Xueying’s death. He was quiet for a long time when he heard the news. “Are you still there?” Zhou asked.
“She died for nothing!” was Zhong’s response.
All the employees he passed in the hallway gave him strange looks.
“Mr. Zhong, you’re back,” some greeted him with a nod.
“Hmm.” He’d been away only a week but it felt as if it had been a lifetime ago.
He went into the CEO’s office, where he briefed Zhou on the Chongqing real estate conference. Zhou looked tired. He asked a few questions about the conference before turning to the subject of Landmark’s recent troubles.
“What do they know about Ah-ying’s death?” Zhong asked.
“The police think it was deliberate.” Zhou intentionally avoided the word “murder.”
“Why is Chairwoman Zhu’s office sealed?”
“We haven’t heard from her for a week, so the police decided to secure the scene, to be safe.”
“I see.” A pensive look appeared on Zhong’s face.
In fact, the police had issued a warrant for her arrest.
After Feng Xueying’s death, the police retrieved Zhu’s cell phone record and fo
und that half an hour before Feng was killed, Zhu had made several calls to a cell with an unknown number, and that five minutes after the car hit Feng, Zhu received another call from that number, which lasted only four seconds. After that, Zhu shut down her cell. The police requested the subscriber of the unknown number; it belonged to a parolee nicknamed “Big Beard,” whom they arrested in a foot massage place three days later. The thumb print on his left hand matched one they found on the car handle of the black VW, forcing him to confess that Zhu had paid him two hundred thousand yuan to kill Feng Xueying. She’d given him a hundred thousand up front and another hundred thousand when he finished the job.
But it was unclear whether Zhou knew all this.
The new boss at Landmark pulled himself together and told Zhong that recent events were damaging the company’s image and credibility. The media had stormed the building, and all Shenzhen was enjoying the spectacle. Some of the city’s Realtors showed sympathy over their plight, others were licking their chops.
“What’s most important now is for us to stand firm and make sure the business runs as usual. We have to minimize damage to the company.” Zhou stressed that they were all in it together. “Oh, and the police have been asking about you, too.”
“Me? Really?” Zhong said, impassively.
* * *
That night, at the Jiujiulong Mongolian Barbecue, the largest self-serve hot-pot restaurant in Shenzhen, Ding Lan and Zhong Tao met for dinner; it was her treat, as a way to welcome him back.
Jiujiulong, with enough seats for hundreds, charged 38 yuan per person, with free soft drinks. The food was cheap and good, so it was full just about every night. A dazzling display of food was placed neatly in the middle of the rectangular room, with clearly divided sections for barbecue pieces, hot-pot ingredients, precooked dishes, and salads and fruit. The variety of food was impressive: all sorts of seafood, crab, fatty beef, mutton, fish heads, and vegetables; there were even dozens of varieties of ice cream and desserts.
They sat across from each other at a small hardwood table, with a bubbling, steaming hot pot between them enveloping them in a rich, mouthwatering aroma.