Yuan Yue stood up. “I’m here to chat with a friend.”
“Why not take your friend’s statement while you’re at it?” Huo Ranyin said, a faint smile playing on his lips. “It would save everyone some time.”
A trace of confusion crossed Yuan Yue’s brow. Before he could speak, Ji Xun let out a yawn, not very politely. “I’ve been waiting here for half an hour. How much longer? Can we just get the statement done so I can go home?”
Yuan Yue left, and Huo Ranyin sat down where Yuan Yue had been, sizing up Ji Xun.
There it was again. That feeling of being pricked by needles from behind.
Ji Xun frowned unconsciously. He was now starting to feel that his meeting with Huo Ranyin yesterday was too much of a coincidence, as if he were the fish Huo Ranyin was trying to catch, and this fish had foolishly taken the bait.
“A woman’s intuition is truly terrifying,” Huo Ranyin finally spoke. “This morning I thought she was talking nonsense, but I didn’t expect that even without any evidence, she had a good grasp of the situation.”
“She may have a grasp, but you might not.”
“Oh?”
“Being this gossipy, may I be so bold as to ask your age?” Ji Xun sneered.
Huo Ranyin tapped his fingers on the table twice, then turned the page on that topic. He picked up the evening’s on-site record. The record was simple, just a factual description of three to five lines.
“You overreacted, dislocating a non-professional’s arm. Do you have a phobia of knives?”
“…”
“When I went to your place, I didn’t see any kitchen knives. The cabinets, tables, and chairs in the room all had their corners rounded and polished. I looked in the drawers, and even the paper cutter had a round casing…”
Huo Ranyin flipped his hand, and a mini utility knife shaped like a snail shell, no bigger than his palm, appeared on the desk.
With a push of his finger, the blade popped out. It was a very short section, and you wouldn’t even notice the sharp tip if you weren’t paying attention.
Ji Xun’s gaze shifted away instinctively. His Adam’s apple bobbed; an invisible rope was quietly wrapping around his neck. Then, he heard the sound of the spring releasing and Huo Ranyin’s knowing voice.
“Aichmophobia”.
“Inspector Huo, you’re a police officer. Tell me, does this count as breaking and entering and theft?”
“I’m sure I don’t need to elaborate on the legal interpretation of breaking and entering versus the standards for filing a common theft case.”
“What about the rule that public servants don’t take a single needle or thread from the masses?”
“I’m accustomed to speaking with evidence, and this is exhibit A,” Huo Ranyin said. He then pushed the utility knife towards Ji Xun, bringing this round of sharp confrontation to a close. “Now that the evidence has served its purpose, it is returned to its rightful owner. Not a single needle or thread was taken from the masses.”
Ji Xun lowered his eyes and looked at the utility knife for a while, then suddenly smiled.
The corners of his upturned eyes were full of insolence, yet the slight curve was itself a thing of beauty. The smile on his lips was filled with sarcasm, yet within that sarcasm was a hint of politeness. His face was etched with genuine weariness, but that face, that person, when combined with the darkness, was also tinged with the charm of darkness.
It was a deep, dark charm that made people want to get closer and embrace him, even knowing they were moths flying into a flame.
“Inspector, you really care about me. Given that we’ve never met before, and I don’t have amnesia like some clichéd soap opera plot, I can only assume… we may have met in a public setting with more than ten people in the past. There, I left a very deep impression or shadow on you, to the point that you find me disagreeable no matter how you look at me, and you’ve been unable to forget me until now, when our paths have finally crossed as fated enemies.”
“But take a piece of advice from me. Who doesn’t have some sadness in their life? You just get used to it,” Ji Xun said nonchalantly, then added jokingly, “By the way, I don’t care much for evidence when I talk. If I guess wrong—then I guess wrong. I suggest, right or wrong, you don’t need to continue. We can just stick with the ‘I know that you know that I know what you want to say’ trope, and that’ll be fine.”
The notebook, originally in Huo Ranyin’s hand, was now tossed onto the table.
His imperturbable composure, maintained since he appeared at the police station, was broken. He was now staring at Ji Xun with a displeased face. Ji Xun was surprised to see a hint of last night’s alluring, fiery spark in Huo Ranyin at this moment.
What a pity.
It was a little too spicy for his taste.
Ji Xun left. Huo Ranyin still had to work overtime in the office. The first hours after a homicide were always exceptionally busy; the golden window for solving the case was 72 hours, and every bit of extra work counted.
Not long after, Tan Mingjiu walked in, yawning. “We’ve contacted the deceased’s family to identify the body. The family is in a nearby rural area and said they’ll come as soon as possible. It’s just her parents and a younger brother. They don’t seem well off. When I called to inform them, the father who answered the phone sounded like his world had collapsed… Hey, where’s Ji Xun? Did he leave?”
“Yes.”
“Seeing how involved he is in this case, I thought he had decided to come back. It’s been three years. Captain Yuan should try to persuade him. People have to move on…” Tan Mingjiu mumbled, his spirits visibly low. The night always made people feel down.
“Are Captain Yuan and Ji Xun very close?” Huo Ranyin asked as if it were a casual question.
“Very close. It’s a bond forged by working hand-in-hand and back-to-back.” Tan Mingjiu was happy to share some harmless gossip with his new superior. “When Ji Xun first joined the force, Captain Yuan was his mentor. He was born for this line of work, learned incredibly fast. Besides his regular duties, he loved to dig into old, cold cases. Those cases were ten or twenty years old, evidence either already found or long gone, but he could always manage to find something new.”
“If he was so capable, why did he leave? If he had stayed, he would probably be a captain by now, right?” Huo Ranyin posed a new question.
“Anyway, I guess he had his own considerations.” Tan Mingjiu’s words suddenly became vague. “He’s doing well now, he’s a famous author. A quiet life with few troubles and good money. That’s my dream life.”
“Hmm,” Huo Ranyin said. “Do you think he preferred his past life or his current one?”
Tan Mingjiu scratched his shiny head, hesitating. “How would I know? But maybe… the past. He was so spirited back then.”
“Captain Huo.”
A detective wearing glasses rushed in.
“There’s a new discovery in the case!”
The idle chat in the office came to an end. Huo Ranyin checked the new clue. The detective sent to the mobile service provider had returned with a list of text messages and calls from Xi Lei’s phone number. The list was thick, far thicker than what normal communication would produce. And many of the calls were hung up after only two or three seconds.
Huo Ranyin frowned slightly.
“Harassment texts, ‘call bombing’?”
“Definitely,” the detective added. “This is usually used for soft debt collection.”
But this clearly didn’t fit their diagnosis of the crime scene, nor did it align with Xi Lei’s current financial situation. Xi Lei had a fixed deposit of around 400,000 yuan under her name, not on the card Zeng Peng had taken. It was a separate card from the Agricultural Bank, and the transaction history showed she had been continuously depositing money into it since she started working, indicating a healthy financial state.
“What’s the duration?”
“The duration isn’t long,” the detective glanced at the list. “Only three days in total. The dates are January 5th, 6th, and 7th.”
Just then, the detective checking the surveillance footage also had a new discovery. During roughly the same time frame, for three consecutive days, as Xi Lei left her residential community for work, the gate’s camera captured a BMW parked in a corner.
The BMW was parked quietly in the corner, appearing before Xi Lei showed up and leaving after she left.
And aside from those few days, the car was nowhere to be seen, neither before nor after.
The car’s shell concealed the driver completely, but the camera had clearly captured the car’s license plate number.
A not-so-peaceful night passed. When Ji Xun woke up, it was only seven o’clock. His head throbbed with a dull ache, and he didn’t know if it was a side effect of the sleeping pills or the result of a series of nightmares.
Last night, he had contacted a home renovation company to find a “Master Lu”—carpenters were usually closely associated with decoration and home furnishing.
But after asking around, no one knew a carpenter with the surname “Lu.”
He let out a tired yawn and, in a state of being half-awake, washed up and went out. When he arrived at Sunshine Hospital and saw Xia Youqing, the woman was still a bit melancholic but had gotten out of her hospital bed and was sitting on a garden bench.
In her left hand, she held a bouquet of flowers with two small dolls tucked inside. Less than two seconds after Ji Xun saw it, the entire bouquet of vibrant flowers was thrown into the trash can.
On his way, he had seen almost identical bouquets in the arms of different people in the garden. They were obviously from Sunshine Hospital; private hospitals were always innovating in this area, and their services were quite popular with inpatients, but this time they had hit a wall.
Xia Youqing’s expression was indifferent. After throwing the bouquet away, she even took out a tissue to wipe her fingers.
This was Yuan Yue’s fault. When Yuan Yue had just started dating her, he had put in a lot of thought, even breaking the rules to seek outside help from a con man who had just been arrested for scamming eighteen women of their emotions and money. In the end, he gave Xia Youqing two scented candles with little ceramic figurines holding their hearts hidden inside.
The initial surprise was matched by her subsequent fury, and to this day, the woman had not recovered from her PTSD regarding male and female dolls.
These past events quietly slipped through his mind as he walked up to Xia Youqing.
“Did Zeng Peng just leave?” he asked, glancing at the box on Xia Youqing’s lap. “He brought you Xi Lei’s belongings.”
“Ji Xun, sometimes being with you makes one feel very insecure,” Xia Youqing said helplessly. “It seems like nothing can be hidden from your eyes. But that’s also what makes you trustworthy.”
“This is very basic reasoning. If you want—”
“No, don’t. I don’t want to,” Xia Youqing refused three times. “It’s enough for me to know you’re brilliant. I don’t want to know why you’re brilliant.”
“What did Xi Lei give you?” Ji Xun adeptly changed the subject.
Xia Youqing rubbed the box on her lap and opened it. Inside was a cross-stitch. On the fabric were two embroidered cartoon-style girls holding hands. From their faces, they were clearly Xi Lei and Xia Youqing.
A drop of water fell onto the embroidery fabric.
Ji Xun politely pretended not to see it. His gaze shifted to the side, and as it did, he saw a group of four people walking towards them.
The four were split into two groups. Huo Ranyin and another police officer walked in front, while a well-dressed, well-maintained man and woman walked behind them. The woman walking at the very back was—
Rao Fangjie, the vice president of Sunshine Hospital.
An image of the photo he had seen on the wall at Sunshine Hospital flashed through Ji Xun’s mind.
Rao Fangjie was a middle-aged woman, around forty or fifty. She had something in both hands. Her left hand held a small designer bag, and on the ring finger clutching the strap, there was a deep indentation from a ring. Her right hand carried a light, medium-sized red plastic bag. Ji Xun glanced at the bag; inside, he could see the faint shadows of overlapping thin objects, like many thin sheets of different sizes stacked together. The edges of these sheets were all right-angled, looking like… collected papers.
His gaze slid to the man in front of Rao Fangjie, dressed in a suit and walking with a relaxed gait, and he saw the ring on the man’s finger.
The ring matched the mark on Rao Fangjie’s hand. They were a married couple.
“Ji Xun,” Xia Youqing called to him. Her line of sight was the same as his, her gaze passing over Huo Ranyin and landing on Rao Fangjie and the man with deep suspicion. “Huo Ranyin is here. Are they related to Lei Lei’s case?”
“Rao Fangjie’s husband is Xi Lei’s lover,” Ji Xun told Xia Youqing softly.
Xia Youqing was startled, her words jumbled. “Lover? How could Lei Lei have a lover? Wait, how do you know who the lover is?”
Ji Xun never answered such obvious questions. Huo Ranyin’s presence proved that this man and woman were related to Xi Lei’s case. Furthermore, Rao Fangjie had recently taken off her ring, so obviously, it was like she had pasted a note on her face that read, “My husband had an affair, and the other woman is Xi Lei.”
“See the red plastic bag in Rao Fangjie’s hand?” Ji Xun said, referring to something Xia Youqing hadn’t noticed at all. “There are papers in there. Can you guess what kind of papers?”
“…Huh?”
“Ah… I know. They’re probably invoices, shopping receipts,” Ji Xun muttered to himself. “The man is walking briskly, his expression relaxed, which proves he has already been cleared of suspicion in Xi Lei’s case. He has produced solid evidence to prove he wasn’t at the scene. What kind of invoices and receipts can be collected in large quantities without arousing suspicion—for business trip reimbursements.”
He reached his conclusion and turned to look at Xia Youqing, seeing her blank expression.
Xia Youqing remained blank for a moment, then pulled herself together and tried to summarize, “So they aren’t suspects?”
“Hard to say.”
Xia Youqing looked at him, full of curiosity.
Ji Xun fumbled in his pocket. He didn’t feel tired when he was thinking; it was the stage of solving a nine-linked ring puzzle, turning a Rubik’s Cube, or completing a jigsaw. It’s hard to get tired when you’re playing a game. But once the game was over and he needed to recount the details step by step, the magic dissipated, and everything became dull and tedious, requiring something to eat to perk up.
But his pockets were empty. He hadn’t had to recount these things for a long time, so naturally, he hadn’t prepared any snacks to boost his energy.
Just then, a hand reached out from the side. Xia Youqing handed Ji Xun a preserved plum. “I can’t eat too much sugar during pregnancy, so I don’t have any candy or chocolate. Is this okay?”
Ji Xun took it and ate it.
Yuan Yue knew his little habits, and so did Xia Youqing. She had discovered them when they were taking care of Yuan Yue together, including his home address. When people get too close, it’s hard to keep secrets. But humans are social animals, so secrets can be understood as—things that will eventually be known.
He sucked on the plum, and the sourness gave him a jolt, making his sluggish brain cells jump. “…From a gut feeling, a prime suspect having a seemingly irrefutable alibi is highly suspicious. From a logical analysis, the fashion-conscious Rao Fangjie carried a small handbag that couldn’t hold anything, forcing this important evidence, the invoices, to be carried in a plastic bag. What does that tell us?”
“It means Rao Fangjie wasn’t prepared for this.” Xia Youqing finally caught up with his line of thought.
“The lover prepared the items. He prepared them very promptly and thoroughly,” Ji Xun said.
“He’s the one with the problem,” Xia Youqing blurted out.
“Good,” Ji Xun nodded matter-of-factly. “He has a problem. In any case, as far as novels go, a perfect alibi that appears at the beginning is always meant to be overturned later. A clichéd opening, but barely worth noting. Hmm… they’ve stopped. They’re talking.”
The group had stopped. It seemed Rao Fangjie had left first, leaving only Tang Jinglong, who was now talking to Huo Ranyin.
Ji Xun had once learned lip-reading for a while. He watched from a distance, trying to decipher what Tang Jinglong was saying.
“‘Lei Lei and I had a great relationship… Although Lei Lei wasn’t highly educated or beautiful, she was a very simple woman who just wanted to live a good life… At my age, I don’t care about looks. Doesn’t every man want a secure home? I gave Lei Lei a sum of money every month, just so she could stay at home peacefully and not have to work so hard… If Lei Lei hadn’t gotten involved with the wrong crowd, maybe…'”
A derisive, angry scoff came from beside him.
It was obviously from Xia Youqing. Ji Xun ignored it, still looking ahead. He took out his phone and snapped a picture of the object in the hand of the man who was already walking away. He felt the object looked somewhat familiar.
The man he photographed was completely unaware, but Huo Ranyin suddenly turned his head, his hawk-like gaze looking straight over.
