Apricot's Revenge

by Song Ying

  The youngsters felt their blood surge as they spotted their mortal enemies. When Hu was almost upon them, they leaped out of their hiding place. Dark Boy swung his club and hit Hu in the calf. Hu stumbled and grabbed for the club, knocking it out of the hand of the seventeen-year-old. Panicky, Zhong Tao held onto Hu with all his might, keeping him from pulling out his pistol. In the meantime, Qiangzi kept swinging his club, hitting Hu on the head and on the body. Hu yelled and struggled. It was too dark to see his face and both young men’s faces were a blur.

  The three of them were in a tangled mess, like a pair of young wolves battling a panther. Red Fox circled them but was unable to help his company commander. But Hu was, however, a seasoned, battle-tested soldier, and with a shout, he struggled out of Zhong’s grip and whipped out his pistol. At that critical moment, Qiangzi, with incredible speed, took out a rubber-slitting knife he carried on his leg as protection. The knife was eight millimeters in length with a narrow, razor-sharp blade with a slightly upturned tip.

  When Hu released the safety on his pistol, Qiangzi thrust with his knife; Hu turned his face as a reflex, but a warm sensation erupted on his neck. He reached up to touch it and realized that Qiangzi had cut him on the chin, a wound that would leave a permanent scar. The frightened Dark Boy took advantage of Hu’s pause to knock the pistol out of his hand.

  At that moment, Hong Yiming grabbed Qiangzi by the waist before he could charge Hu again.

  “So, it’s you, Qiangzi.” Hong was surprised. But Qiangzi ignored him and struggled out of his grip.

  “Stop that madman, hurry!” Hu shouted.

  Hong hesitated, but then shoved Qiangzi from behind.

  “Ah—”

  Qiangzi stumbled in the dark, lost his footing, and fell over the cliff, trailed by a scream that slowly faded into silence in the abyss. To Dark Boy the scream was swallowed up by Hell.

  With his hand on his bleeding chin, Hu staggered out of the grove with Hong’s help.

  It turned deadly quiet.

  “Qiangzi—Qiangzi—” Zhong screamed. His heartrending shout echoed off the cliff.

  The fire broke out the following evening.

  No one noticed that Qiangzi was missing until after the fire. They did not find his body in the charred remains of the huts. They searched for him for three days but found nothing. Anyone who fell into the black hole beyond the cliff was lost forever, according to the locals.

  A rumor made the rounds that Qiangzi had slipped across the border to Burma to become a guerrilla. The zhiqing weren’t sure what to believe.

  Only three people in the company knew the truth about Qiangzi’s death—Zhong Tao, Grinning Tyrant, and the political director, and none of them would tell the truth.

  Hu called Dark Boy to his office on the slope the day after the incident.

  “Dark Boy, you know why Qiangzi is missing, right?” Hu fixed his beady eyes on Zhong.

  “No, I don’t,” Zhong said expressionlessly.

  “Heh-heh.” Hu laughed. “He’s your buddy, how could you not know?”

  Of course Zhong knew, but he also knew that Hu was testing him, to see if Zhong was the second person who had ambushed him.

  “You’re the company commander, and if you don’t know, how do you expect me to know?” Dark Boy turned his head and played along.

  Not knowing what else to say, Hu grinned and said: “Anyone who tries to mess with me will be sorry.”

  Every zhiqing knew what Hu was like: arrogant with an evil smile. Not very tall, he had a broad face and a bulbous nose and was dark-skinned; his voice was hoarse, but that did not stop him from cursing the zhiqing whenever he felt like it, though he always did it with a grin, a dry laugh that sent chills down your spine. Although he was given to squinting when he looked at you, the fierceness of that beady-eyed gaze could scare a person witless. He held the fate of the zhiqing in his hands, having turned the 2nd Company into his own little fiefdom, a primitive tribe where he was the overlord, a lawless individual who did what he wanted with no repercussions. The zhiqing began by calling him Commander Tyrant, changed that to Commander Grinning Tyrant, and then shortened that to Grinning Tyrant.

  Hu was the convergence of all desires: a powerful sexual urge and a desire for power, coupled with the need to conquer and to possess. Few of the female zhiqing under his charge escaped his clutches. And Dark Boy knew all too well how much they loathed him, though they could do nothing about it. So he clammed up, fixing his gaze on the bandage covering the knife wound on the man’s chin.

  If the knife had continued down another two millimeters, it would have taken the evildoer’s life. “Qiangzi, you died for nothing,” Dark Boy thought silently.

  “You can go now.” Grinning Tyrant had finally stopped grinning.

  Dark Boy turned around, a tear rolling down his dark face. It was all he could do to hold back his loathing and fury as he walked out of the office.

  The sunset painted the edge of the sky red as blood. Dark Boy felt his own blood seethe as a chilling voice echoed deep inside: “You mother-fucking, dog-screwing asshole. Just you wait. I am going to lop off your evil head one day.” On that day, he vowed to kill Grinning Tyrant, to avenge Apricot, Yuhong, and Qiangzi, and eliminate Hu’s evil from society; he would then be willing to die.

  * * *

  Zhong sprinkled a bottle of spirits over Shizi Cliff, his face bathed in tears.

  “Qiangzi,” he mumbled, “I’ve finally exacted revenge for you, Yuhong, and Apricot.”

  After emptying the bottle, he tossed it into the air with a savage force. It arced across the cloudy sky before falling soundlessly into the abyss below. Then he took out his cell phone and dialed Ding Lan’s number.

  “Xiao Lan, it’s me, Zhong Tao. I’m here offering a libation to your brother.”

  “Really?” Ding’s voice had an emotional tremor.

  “Do you want to say something to your brother?” Zhong asked, like a big brother, in a tender but sad tone. She remained silent.

  “Hello? Are you still there, Ding Lan?” Zhong asked anxiously. Then he heard her sob on the other end.

  “Okay,” she said, “I’ll say something.”

  Zhong took the phone from his ear and raised it up high in the air.

  “Dear Brother, Grinning Tyrant is dead. He died a terrible death.” Ding was choking up; her voice seemed to fill the sky of Yunnan. “Red Fox is dead, too. They both deserved to die. Dear Brother, can you hear me? Mom and I are doing well, so don’t worry about us. It’s been twenty-eight years. Now you can finally rest in peace.”

  — 2 —

  Xiaochuan and Yao Li found another important clue when they checked out buses running through Lesser Meisha.

  Buses Nos. 103, 360, 364, and 380 all originated in Shenzhen and stopped at Lesser Meisha before continuing on to other cities, No. 360 going to Nan’ao and No. 364 to Dapeng. The last one usually stopped around ten at night, but on holidays additional runs were scheduled and the buses ran until three or four in the morning.

  They located the driver of an air-conditioned bus on the 380 line, a fifty-year-old man named Xie who had many years of experience. He had worked an extra shift on the night of June twenty-fourth, driving till three thirty the following morning. On his last run to Lesser Meisha, he spotted a white car parked on a curve under Qitou Ridge. The windows were closed and the lights off, and there was no sign of the owner. Thinking that the car was having engine trouble, the driver paid little attention and drove on by, not taking note of the license plate. But he was sure it was a Citroën.

  The car was gone half an hour later, on his return from Lesser Meisha.

  The driver took them to the place and pointed out the spot where the car was parked. They noticed a break in the chain-link fence, big enough for an adult to crawl under; a dozen steps down the leaf-covered stone stairs led to Lovers’ Lane. Shielded by tall mugwort, the opening was not easy to see, but they collected several pieces of red fiber from the fence; a test la
ter showed that they matched one of Hu Guohao’s Lacoste swimsuits.

  It was finally clear why there had been a tear in Hu’s swimsuit; it was likely made when the heavy body was being carried through the opening.

  Xiaochuan called Nie Feng to share the news.

  “That’s it,” Nie said, informing Xiaochuan about the cries of the egrets, which took place after three in the morning. Everything fit.

  “You should look into Ding Lan’s Citroën, and you’ll probably need to make another trip to Nan’ao to check out Zhong Tao,” Nie said.

  “That’s exactly what Chief Wu told us to do.”

  “Great. Oh, be sure to look at the area outside the school wall.”

  “Why?”

  “I went there before leaving Shenzhen, and was told that Hu’s briefcase was found by the wall, which separated the school from a street. You might want to ask around to see if anyone had seen a white Citroën parked there.”

  “Got it.”

  * * *

  Without notifying the owner, Xiaochuan and Yao Li conducted an investigation of Ding Lan’s Citroën, and found sand on the tires and the undercarriage, but test results produced nothing noteworthy. Then they scraped soil samples from the inside of the fender, a rare red soil with trace elements that proved to be the same as those found in a Xichong sandlot south of Nan’ao. The Citroën had been to Xichong; Zhong Tao could have gotten the seawater there.

  They drove to Nan’ao and checked out the school first.

  Hu’s briefcase had been found in a corner of the athletic field, less than two meters from the enclosure wall, which was nearly two meters high and had a see-through top. Few pedestrians were out on the street beyond the wall. They knocked on the doors of all the houses on the slight rise across the street. When they reached the one on top, they found a young girl with a gimp leg whose parents were out. She told them she was on the balcony one evening over a month ago and saw a white car parked on the street right by the school’s wall. A man got out and leaned against the wall as if looking for something, then quickly got back inside and drove away. It was too far to see the license number, though the description she gave of the man resembled Zhong Tao. She couldn’t remember the exact date, except that she had gone to the local clinic for physical therapy the day before. They waited till her parents returned and learned that her girl’s therapy was on June twenty-ninth. That was four days after Hu’s death and the day before the little boy found Hu’s briefcase in the grass on the field. This was no coincidence.

  Wasting no time, they drove to Xichong, on the southernmost tip of the peninsula. It was a fishing village that faced the ocean to the south, possessing a beach that had turned it into a famous resort. The water there was deeper and bluer than either Lesser or Greater Meisha, and the beach, the thatched huts, and the palm trees more closely resembled natural surroundings. No one at the resort recalled seeing Zhong Tao or Ding Lan.

  So what was Ding’s car doing here?

  “Maybe she had a change of heart before getting this far,” Yao Li said as she gazed out at the ocean.

  “There has to be a reason,” Xiaochuan said.

  “A reason, hmm.” Yao mulled this over. “Maybe the red tide moved north and the water here was no longer what they wanted. Or it could be a false lead planted by the murderer.”

  “Say, that’s good,” Xiaochuan said, making a U-turn and speeding down the road the way they’d come from, raising a column of red dust.

  They returned to Nan’ao.

  As many as a hundred motorboats were rocking amid the waves at Nan’ao Bay. They were all painted blue or green and looked to be made of wood, but a fisherman told them they were actually fiberglass. Xiaochuan and Yao Li stood on the shore to look around; discarded plastic bags, paper waste, and twigs floated on the murky surface of the water. This could not have been the water Zhong had taken, and he’d have attracted too much attention to himself if he’d tried.

  Xiaochuan asked a fisherwoman in a flowery blouse and a bamboo hat: “Granny, how much to rent one of those?”

  “A hundred if you stay close to shore.”

  “What about going out farther?”

  “A hundred fifty.”

  “What’s that over there?” He pointed at a finger of land across the bay.

  “Oh, that’s Ping Chau, part of Hong Kong. You can’t take a motorboat there.”

  Xiaochuan signaled for Yao Li to take out Zhong’s and Dings’ photos.

  “Granny, did these two rent a boat last month?”

  The woman examined the pictures and shook her head.

  “How about the others around here?”

  The woman handed the pictures to the other fishermen, who passed the photos around, but no one recalled seeing them. Disappointing.

  “You can go ask the border police.” She pointed to a two-story brown building nearby.

  They thanked her and went to talk to a border police officer, a young man in a green uniform with a face rounder even than Xiaochuan’s. After checking their IDs, he gave friendly, helpful answers to their questions. Renting a boat required a valid ID and a nod from the police, which meant that the border police checked everyone’s ID. This was good news. The young officer went inside and returned with an older colleague, both of them certain that neither Zhong nor Ding had rented a motorboat after viewing their photographs.

  The officers thanked their colleagues and returned to their car, disappointed by their fruitless trip to Nan’ao.

  “Shall we call in our report to Chief Cui?” Yao Li asked.

  “Not just yet,” Xiaochuan replied as he dialed Nie Feng’s number.

  “Hey Nie Feng, it’s me, Xiaochuan. We’re in Nan’ao.”

  “Really? Find anything?”

  “Someone saw a white car parked outside the school wall on the evening of the twenty-ninth, and saw a man lean up against the wall.”

  “That’s terrific. “Nie sounded excited. “Congratulations!”

  “But,” Yao snatched the cell out of Xiaochuan’s hand, “we still don’t know where Zhong Tao got the water.”

  “Where have you checked so far?”

  “Nan’ao Bay, Xichong on the southernmost tip—”

  “Have you checked Shuitou Village?”

  “Shuitou Village? No. Why?”

  Xiaochuan snatched the cell back and held it to his ear.

  “It’s Zhou Zhengxing’s hometown,” he heard Nie say. “It’s five or six kilometers north of Nan’ao. I think it’s worth a look.”

  “Will do.”

  Five minutes later they parked in front of the beach near Shuitou Village, about a kilometer distant.

  As soon as they stepped foot on the beach, Xiaochuan had the feeling that this place was somehow different. From the embankment, they looked out into the bay, where the color of the water underwent a change—yellow near the shore (likely sandy), then green (glass-bottle green), dark blue farther out, and nearly black at the horizon. Waves lapping on the shore were a display of nature’s power.

  Motorboats rode the waves with ease.

  “Zhou Zhengxing’s hometown isn’t bad,” Yao exclaimed.

  “I’ve never seen such a spectacular view,” Xiaochuan echoed her sentiment.

  Quite a few tourists were resting under beach umbrellas, while some brave souls were frolicking in the water.

  The officers found someone on the beach staff and asked about Zhong and Ding. He, in turn, called over two lifeguards, one of whom recognized Zhong Tao and Ding Lan.

  “They’ve been here.”

  “Are you sure?” Xiaochuan was so excited his voice changed.

  “I’m sure.”

  “Do you remember which day?”

  “Not really. It was over a month ago, but I think it was around noon.”

  “Did you notice anything unusual about them?” Yao asked.

  “Nothing in particular.” The lifeguard thought for a moment. “Oh, now I remember. When they left, the man was carrying a plasti
c bucket.”

  “Really? A plastic bucket? Do you recall the color?”

  “White. You see them everywhere.” The lifeguard had no idea that he’d just handed the police a significant clue.

  Chief Wu and Captain Cui were elated when they heard the news, and everyone working on the special case could sense that victory was near.

  “Looks like we’re close to solving the case,” Chief Wu said when they were all together. “I’m as excited as you, but we mustn’t forget we need proof to nail it. We need evidence; solid, unassailable evidence.”

  “I agree with the chief,” Cui said. “For instance, we’re pretty sure that Zhong tossed the briefcase over the wall, but he can and will deny it. Likewise, the girl didn’t see the license plate and no one took a picture of a man leaning against the wall. The lifeguard at Shuitou Village is a critical witness and that’s good, but we need more substantial evidence.”

  “The algae traces in the bucket have been sent to the Public Security Bureau forensic lab, but they haven’t found anything usable. I was told that China lacks the technology,” Chief Wu said. “And, there’s another thing. We still haven’t figured out Zhong’s motive.”

  “Mr. Nie’s conclusion is that it was a series of revenge murders,” Xiaochuan said.

  “How can Western Sun be so sure?” Cui was doubtful. “We need evidence, not speculation, if we’re to solve a case.”

  “Where’s Mr. Nie now?” Chief Wu asked.

  “In Yunnan.”

  — 3 —

  On his way back to Kunming, Nie Feng looked up some information about the zhiqing in the archives while waiting for a seat to open up on a flight. The same bespectacled, short-haired woman was there; she gave him a form to fill out, after checking his press credentials and a letter of introduction.