Ren Qin’s basic background was not so different from Yang Zhenzhen, whom they’d encountered at the bar, or from Xue Mei, who had been found naked inside the freezer. As Ren Qin spoke, the three young faces gradually overlapped in Chi Qing’s mind.
Ren Qin continued: “I first found a hotel near my workplace and stayed there. The company gave me half a month’s housing allowance, so I had to find a place within two weeks. There weren’t many options available in such a short time, and the choices were very limited. The Anjia agent took me to view apartments in Yangyuan and Tianrui, saying that because of what had happened there, the rent had dropped significantly and it was a very good deal.”
One month ago. Inside a building at Yangyuan Residential Complex.
“Miss Ren, you see — at current market rates, this price would normally only get you a one-bedroom. Right now you can rent a fully furnished two-bedroom. It’s an incredible deal.”
The agent had talked himself dry, his only goal to get the listing off his hands. “The complex is under close police supervision right now, so it’s very safe. It’s only a matter of time before the case is solved, and the killer would definitely be too stupid to come back, right? There are so many officers around — they’d be caught in no time.”
Ren Qin was timid by nature. Horror movies were enough to keep her awake at night. The mere thought of living in the very complex where it happened made her scalp prickle. “I think I’ll pass. Are there no other options in a different complex?”
“Ah, given your requirements — somewhere close to your workplace, with convenient transportation… this is really the most suitable option. A little further out, and the only place that fits your criteria would be Yuting Residential Complex. The rent is a bit higher there, but there just happens to be one listing available — originally prepared by the landlord as a wedding home for his son, being rented out for the first time. Would you like to go take a look?”
From here, the rest of the apartment-viewing story was exactly as Chi Qing had overheard from upstairs at the time.
Ren Qin had indeed complained about the high rent, and had wondered aloud whether “he” would like it — noisy enough to give him a headache.
“So I ended up renting this place after all. Figured a bit more expensive was fine…”
Ji Mingrui frowned. He couldn’t detect anything off yet but pressed carefully: “What was the name of the agent who showed you the apartment?”
Ren Qin: “His surname was Wang. I don’t remember his full name, but I have chat records with him on the Anjia app. I remember he was thin and short, only a few years out of school.”
Thin and short — a body type clearly inconsistent with the suspect.
“The landlord added me on WeChat when I left after viewing the place,” Ren Qin said. “I eventually couldn’t find any other suitable listings, so I signed the lease directly with the landlord.”
Ji Mingrui thought this was a perfectly ordinary apartment-hunting story with no obvious points of suspicion — but the next second he heard Xie Lin and Chi Qing speak up at the same time.
“Something’s off.”
“There’s a problem.”
Ji Mingrui: “…Hm?”
He really did frequently find himself unable to keep up with these two consultants’ trains of thought.
In certain respects, Chi Qing and Xie Lin had an almost uncanny synchronicity. The same lines from the case files flashed through both their minds simultaneously.
Xue Mei’s landlord had said: “We signed the contract directly, no third party involved, even though I had listed it before… A young woman out there working on her own has it hard enough, if she can save on the agency fee, why not.”
Yang Zhenzhen’s landlord had said: “No, we signed it directly.”
And now Ren Qin had just said: “…signed the lease with the landlord.”
Chi Qing’s black-gloved hands rested folded in his lap. “The agent took you to view so many apartments. Why did you end up signing directly with the landlord?”
“Admittedly, it’s not uncommon in the market for people to bypass agents and handle transactions privately to save on fees — after all, half a month’s agency commission is no small sum, and both parties save an unnecessary expense,” Xie Lin’s attention had homed in on the same detail. “But you, Yang Zhenzhen, Xue Mei — all three of you had clearly used an agent, and in each case the agent was even the one who brought you to view the property. Yet all three of you ended up signing the lease directly with the landlord.”
“One or two cases could be considered normal, but three in a row — doesn’t that seem like too much of a coincidence?” Xie Lin said. “It almost looks as if someone deliberately cut the agent out of the picture, as if someone wanted to eliminate the agent from the whole chain of events.”
An agent who didn’t want their commission? Bringing clients to view properties for nothing?
This hadn’t occurred to Ren Qin either. “That… I’m not really sure.”
“What exactly did the landlord say to you?”
“She just said she’d sign directly with me and told me not to contact that agent anymore.”
Xie Lin thought for a moment. “If it’s not too much trouble, could you give your landlord a call?”
The landlord picked up in the middle of a mahjong game, getting more and more into it as the night went on. She was still calling out “I won!” as she answered, then said: “…What was that, did anyone tell me anything? No one told me anything. I figured it out myself — you save a bit, I save a bit, works out nicely for everyone, doesn’t it? Right, I can’t talk now, I’m in the middle of something.”
Ren Qin looked at them helplessly.
Chi Qing said without expression: “Tell her to try hanging up and see what happens.”
Ren Qin: “…”
Ji Mingrui: “…” Unbelievable. Truly remarkable social skills.
“If you said that to anyone other than me, they wouldn’t just hang up on you,” Xie Lin said, taking the phone from Ren Qin’s hand and lowering his voice. “They’d block your number on the spot and keep you blocked until they were ninety.”
“…”
“Give it to me.”
Asking this sort of question, at this time of night, the other person wouldn’t have much patience for it. The only way to get their attention was to make it about their own interests. Xie Lin launched straight into a story: “The situation is this — by signing the lease privately with Miss Ren, you’ve actually caused a certain degree of financial loss to Anjia, given that Miss Ren was brought in as a viewing client under their agent’s care. Anjia appears to be considering looking into the matter.”
“—That’s going to be rather troublesome for you, isn’t it? So perhaps you could think carefully about whether any Anjia employee may have mentioned to you the option of bypassing the agency and signing privately. That way, if Anjia does come asking, we’d have something to go on.”
At the mention of possible trouble, the sound of tiles clicking in the background gradually came to a stop.
“All over a private signing? They need to investigate that?”
Xie Lin kept his answer deliberately vague. “I can only say there’s a possibility at this stage.”
Regardless of the outcome or whether any compensation to Anjia would be required, the mere prospect of being looked into was a headache. Getting tangled up in it would waste time and kill the mood.
The landlord had spoken carelessly before without thinking it through. Now she stood up from the mahjong table and stepped out onto the balcony with her phone. “Hold on, let me think.”
She said: “No one told me directly, but I think I overheard someone say something once…”
A month ago, she had listed the property on Anjia and handed over the access card, keypad key, and other materials for Anjia to hold in the meantime.
After Ren Qin came to view the place, the landlord had been satisfied with this young woman, felt she was genuinely interested in renting, and had added her on WeChat for convenience. But at the time, she hadn’t actually considered bypassing the agent to sign with her directly. Who was it who had offhandedly mentioned it in passing?
The landlord thought and thought, and dredged up an extremely vague figure. Then it clicked. “I remember now — it was the day this girl came to view the apartment, on her way out. I happened to also need to go to Anjia that day — the access card had auto-demagnetized after two years. On my way out, I ran into someone in the elevator lobby who was on a phone call, and he was saying ‘there are a lot of clients these days who sign directly and bypass the agency, and we understand even if there’s not much we can do about it — everyone’s out here working hard and trying to save money.'”
Because the comment hadn’t been addressed to her directly, she’d never paid it much thought. But the words had unmistakably planted a suggestion in her mind, like a nudge: Why not sign with this girl directly? She only balked at the price — if the agency fee is saved, I could even give her a little discount.
“Do you remember what he looked like?”
“Not really — just a very ordinary-looking person. I didn’t look at his face closely.”
“His build, then? Tall or short, heavy or lean — you must remember something.” Ji Mingrui cut in.
“I really don’t remember. He was just unremarkable. Nothing stood out.”
The implication: not particularly tall or short, not heavy or lean. Just generic.
Ji Mingrui, having spent an entire day being tormented by surveillance footage, recognized this description all too well. He had sat in that monitoring room repeatedly filtering for people who fit exactly this “unremarkable” profile. “Isn’t that the same as Xue Mei’s boyfriend?!”
Once their thinking was redirected toward the Anjia agency — a lead they had previously ruled out — many things began to fall naturally into place.
Xie Lin turned the ring on his finger as he spoke. “As long as a property is listed on Anjia, the agent has direct access to the keys for any listing they handle. That’s how he could know every crime scene complex like the back of his hand, and enter the victims’ homes without leaving a trace — making everyone assume it was someone close to them. It also explains the geographical range and movement patterns of the crimes, and gives us a way to narrow down the suspect: ordinary build, currently handling rental listings in this area, and previously worked in a neighboring city.”
There were many agents, but not many who simultaneously fit all three criteria.
Ji Mingrui had barely caught up with Xie Lin’s line of reasoning when he heard Chi Qing add from the side: “If it’s an agent, the missing slipper is also easy to explain.”
Ji Mingrui: “…How so?”
He’d nearly forgotten about that mysteriously vanished slipper. It could be explained?
“He most likely brought clients to view a property here today,” Chi Qing said, calmly laying out the hypothesis. “When viewing a property, landlords typically ask agents to bring shoe covers, and won’t allow anyone to walk around in their shoes — but he didn’t bring any, or came up one pair short.”
Deep in the night, somewhere in the building, a vacant apartment whose listing had just gone up on Anjia sat in complete darkness. The owner had purchased a new place, and everything had been moved out of this one — only the basic fixtures remained. A worn brown leather sofa sat against one wall. On the right side of the living room stood an old red mahogany dining set. The rooms were bare and empty. In the entryway, a single pair of used disposable slippers sat alone.
…
Chi Qing thought back to that long street, the one that avoided all the surveillance cameras. Among the rows of shops lining it, there had been one entirely unremarkable chain real estate office with a sign above the door that read: Anjia.
And there was what Ren Qin had mentioned casually over dinner:
— “I posted on Anjia looking for a roommate, but haven’t heard anything yet.”
With that, all the scattered details began drawing together like a net closing in.
Chi Qing turned suddenly to Ren Qin. “Your roommate listing — is it that no one has responded, or that the agent deliberately never passed the inquiries on to you?”
And Ren Qin, sitting across from them, felt the blood drain from her face and found herself unable to speak. “…”
She’d only heard this Officer Ji mention in the elevator that they were consultants. But the title of Criminal Investigation Division consultant had been too remote and abstract for her to fully grasp. Only at this moment did it land with complete, undeniable weight.
Ji Mingrui, unable to stay seated any longer: “I’m going right now to cross-reference agents who cover this district, previously worked in a neighboring city, and brought clients here to view properties today.”
But Xie Lin said: “You might be too late.”
The hand reaching for Ji Mingrui’s car keys stopped.
“Because today is the 29th,” Xie Lin looked at the clock on the wall, the hour hand resting steadily on the 11, and delivered the most alarming conclusion in a tone that sounded almost casual. He spoke aloud the same deduction Chi Qing had worked through alone in the night: “If the pattern connecting Yang Zhenzhen and Xue Mei is real and holds, then he is very likely killing one person per month. And right now, there is exactly one hour left until the last day of this month.”
