Chapter 27.1: Paper and Ink
Inside the Third Investigation Squad’s office, Trace Examiner Li removed his glasses and rubbed his aching, strained eyes with a helpless sigh.
“Both of these contracts were written by the same person. They weren’t forged by someone else. If we try to prove our case through handwriting analysis, not only will we lose the lawsuit, we’ll actually be handing the foreign company ammunition by proving that the contract is genuine!”
One of the Third Squad officers immediately objected.
“That can’t be right. Just because the handwriting matches doesn’t mean the contract wasn’t tampered with.”
Someone else spoke up quietly.
“True. All it proves is that there’s an insider at the Daily Chemical Factory.”
After all, the contract had been drafted by the factory. The representative sent by the foreign company had only been responsible for signing and stamping it.
The entire Third Squad office fell silent.
Economic crime cases had always been notoriously complicated.
“You can’t put it that way.”
Captain Feng Zhengming of the Third Squad recalled what his superiors had told him. Looking at the current findings, he felt his temples throbbing.
“If we’re going to make assumptions like that, then I could just as easily argue that the Daily Chemical Factory thought the original contract terms were too harsh, so they deliberately forged a page afterward to extort the foreign company.”
He paused before stressing again,
“This case involves foreign investment. We have to rely on evidence. We can’t just make baseless guesses.”
“Then what do we do?”
The officer sounded exasperated.
“If even handwriting analysis can’t tell them apart, how are we supposed to determine which version of the contract is real and which is fake?”
“Sigh…”
Hearing the discussion inside, Jiang Xia’s curiosity was piqued. She reached out, pushed open the door, and greeted them.
“Teacher Li, busy at work?”
“Jiang Xia?”
Trace Examiner Li opened his eyes and looked toward the doorway.
“What brings you here?”
“Nothing in particular. I just heard you talking about authenticating a contract and got curious, so I came over to take a look.”
As she spoke, Jiang Xia walked into the office. She swept her gaze around the room and quickly found the captain of the Third Squad.
The man was quite young, only about thirty-five or thirty-six. Unlike the captains of the First and Second Squads, however, although he was also tall and broad-shouldered, there was little of the hardened edge common to veteran detectives. Instead, he carried himself with the air of a refined scholar.
Jiang Xia asked, “You’re Captain Feng?”
Portrait artists could be useful to any squad sooner or later. Even though Feng Zhengming still had a headache over the case, he pulled himself together and greeted her politely.
“I am. And you must be Jiang Xia. I’ve heard a lot about you.”
“You’re too kind.”
Walking over to the desk, Jiang Xia looked at the stacks of contracts laid out before her. She casually picked one up and skimmed it, then switched to another. Finally, she took the two differing pages and compared the clauses line by line.
Trace Examiner Li asked curiously, “Jiang Xia, you know how to read contracts?”
“Not really.”
She shook her head. She had never dealt with contracts in either this life or her previous one. Still, thanks to the knowledge she’d accumulated in her former life, she could understand the gist just by reading them.
There was only a single discrepancy between the two pages. It concerned the pricing of the products.
The version held by the Daily Chemical Factory stipulated that the products would be sold to the foreign investor at 70% of the normal factory price, and that ownership of the production line’s machinery would transfer to the factory after five years.
The substituted page, however, changed those terms. It required the products to be supplied at cost, while the machinery would transfer to the factory after only four years.
Given the circumstances of the time, local factories often made enormous concessions to attract foreign capital and technology. Producing at cost for four years in exchange for obtaining an entire production line afterward was the sort of deal many factories would genuinely accept.
But if those terms had truly been reasonable, the Daily Chemical Factory wouldn’t have reported the matter to the police.
After thinking for a moment, Jiang Xia asked,
“Captain Feng, is there something wrong with the machinery the foreign company provided?”
“You got it exactly right.”
Feng Zhengming shot Jiang Xia a surprised look before explaining,
“I heard from the Daily Chemical Factory that the machinery on that production line had already been phased out overseas. They had experts evaluate it, and at best it could keep running for another four or five years. After that, it would need a complete overhaul, and the refurbishment costs would be enormous.”
“In other words, if the contract provided by the foreign company is the genuine one, then the Daily Chemical Factory would basically be working for them for free for four years, only to end up with a pile of scrap metal.”
“Hiss…”
Jiang Xia couldn’t help drawing in a sharp breath.
Good grief. Corporate warfare really is ruthless. It kills without spilling blood.
After all, the contract said nothing about the condition of the machinery. At first glance, an outsider would see nothing wrong with the foreign company’s version.
“The handwriting is identical…” Jiang Xia murmured thoughtfully as she carefully examined the two handwritten contract pages. “The Daily Chemical Factory drafted the contract, right?”
“That’s right.”
One of the officers blurted out,
“Which is why I said there had to be an insider!”
No page seals had been stamped when the contract was first prepared, and now there were two handwritten versions produced by the same person. If this hadn’t been a carefully laid trap from the very beginning, he’d write his name backward.
“Then this contract really is suspicious.”
Jiang Xia repeatedly compared the two pages in her hands.
How could they determine which page had been forged?
The handwriting belonged to the same person.
What about everything else?
Before the contract was signed, no one knew its final contents. That meant the forged page must have been produced after the contract had already been executed. The time and place would have been different, so the ink and paper were very likely from different batches.
If they could distinguish the documents based on those two factors, they would be able to identify the forged page.
But how could they prove the ink and paper weren’t from the same batch?
If this were the twenty-first century, they could simply use forensic instruments to analyze the ink and paper and determine whether they matched.
But at the moment, those instruments probably hadn’t even been invented yet.
Watching Jiang Xia sink into thought, Trace Examiner Li suddenly had a feeling she might be onto something. He took the initiative and asked,
“Jiang Xia, do you have an idea?”
Still frowning, Jiang Xia replied,
“I have… a rough thought. Let me think it through.”
In the twenty-first century, forensic document examination could estimate when a document had been written. Ink changes over time according to predictable patterns, making it possible to infer the approximate date of writing.
Ballpoint pen ink was the most obvious example. Writing made with a ballpoint pen gradually faded over time, and prolonged exposure to sunlight could make much of it disappear almost instantly.
Precisely because of that, government agencies and formal contracts in this era typically used inks designed for long-term preservation, such as blue-black ink or carbon ink.
Both contracts were written entirely in black, so they had clearly been drafted with carbon ink.
The main component of carbon ink was carbon, which was chemically stable and didn’t readily react with other substances. As a result, it resisted fading even over long periods.
However, carbon ink also had a drawback.
It dried easily, clogging fountain pens. Consequently, most people used dip pens instead. But dip pens had to be dipped into the ink repeatedly, and many people simply left their ink bottles uncapped while writing, causing the ink to dry out even faster.
When that happened, some people diluted it by adding fresh ink or water.
Others simply kept using the thickened ink as it was.
Could the ink on the altered contract have been affected by something like that?
Jiang Xia’s mind raced.
Holding the contracts, she walked over to the window without another word. Using the blazing afternoon sun as illumination, she examined the pages over and over again.
Seeing her carry the contracts so far away, one of the officers instinctively started to stop her.
Trace Examiner Li noticed at once and immediately held him back.
He raised a finger to his lips, signaling everyone to keep quiet.
It was obvious that Jiang Xia had caught hold of a thread of inspiration but hadn’t fully grasped it yet. Whether she’d ultimately figure it out was another matter—but if anyone interrupted her now, she’d almost certainly lose the thought.
Jiang Xia remained absorbed in the contracts.
Under the sunlight, many details became clearer. Her enhanced eyesight quickly picked up on a subtle difference.
Compared with the authentic contract page, the page produced by the foreign company had noticeably thicker handwriting, and some of the strokes even had a slightly grainy texture at the turns.
Could the difference in the ink really be that obvious?
Or am I just imagining it?
Jiang Xia returned to the table, picked up both sets of documents again, and compared them once more.
She was right.
The ink on all the other pages flowed smoothly. Only this one page had that granular texture—it had been written with ink that had partially dried and thickened.
The ink is different. What about the paper?
She held the sheets up to the sunlight again, carefully examining the internal structure of the paper.
The sunlight shone through the pages, illuminating them brilliantly. What had looked like plain white paper now revealed its evenly distributed pulp fibers, along with tiny impurities embedded within.
Jiang Xia compared the sheets one by one.
Sure enough.
They weren’t from the same batch of paper either.
“The ink is different. The paper is different too.”
Setting the contracts down, Jiang Xia turned to the officers watching her and declared decisively,
“The page produced by the foreign company is the forged one.”
Feng Zhengming looked at her, finding it difficult to believe what she’d said.
The difference in the ink wasn’t obvious to him. As for the paper, they had already compared it. It was the same type of paper, with no visible difference in color.
So how could she be certain it wasn’t from the same production batch?
Although skeptical, he didn’t contradict her outright. Instead, he asked,
“What’s your evidence? We have to base our investigations on evidence.”
Jiang Xia held up the contract in her hand and explained,
“The handwriting on the disputed page provided by the foreign company is slightly thicker, and the turns in the strokes have a grainy texture. The ink used to write this page was probably left sitting for a long time without being diluted with water, so it became more concentrated. That’s why the writing looks like this.”
“As for the paper, even if it’s the same brand or type, no manufactured product is completely identical from batch to batch. Variations in raw materials, humidity, machine conditions, and other production factors always create subtle differences. It’s like dyed fabric—there are often slight color variations between batches. Paper is no exception.”
“This page from the foreign company’s contract contains tiny particulate impurities within the paper fibers, while the other pages have none at all. That alone is enough to conclude that they did not come from the same batch of paper.”
“The two contracts are identical in every other respect. Why is this page the only one that’s different? It has to have been forged afterward.”
Her explanation was detailed and convincing.
Feng Zhengming found himself believing her more and more. He walked over, took the contract from Jiang Xia, and copied what she’d just done, holding the pages up to the sunlight for a careful inspection.
No matter how hard he looked, though, he couldn’t see any difference in the ink between the two contracts.
He held both pages against the light again and stared for quite a while before finally asking,
“Uh… Jiang Xia, where exactly are these grainy spots you mentioned?”
Is it really that hard to see?
Jiang Xia fell silent for a moment before pointing to a single character.
“Right here. This character has a tiny grainy spot.”
Only then did Feng Zhengming finally see it.
It was the character 营. At the bend in the lower stroke beneath the roof radical, there was a faint break in the ink flow accompanied by a tiny granular speck. Without someone pointing it out, it was practically impossible to notice.
“My goodness…”
Feng Zhengming put the contract down in a daze. He was so astonished that he slipped into his local dialect.
“Jiang Xia, what kind of eyes were you born with? You can actually spot something like that?”
The question alone made it clear—he was completely convinced.
Jiang Xia smiled faintly.
“I was born with them. I couldn’t tell you why.”
“That’s an excellent line of thinking!”
Trace Examiner Li was excited now as well. Putting his glasses back on, he walked over to the window.
“Come on, Captain Feng. Let me see where this ink is different.”
“Hey, let me have a look too!”
“Move over, my turn!”
“Me too! Don’t forget me!”
Jiang Xia had sounded so certain that everyone in the Third Squad had become curious. Seeing Trace Examiner Li step forward to examine the contracts, the other officers crowded around behind him, craning their necks and darting their eyes back and forth as they tried to make out the differences in the ink and the paper.
The details were simply too subtle. Very few people could distinguish them with the naked eye.
Fortunately, Trace Examiner Li had another trick up his sleeve.
He quickly moved over to the desk lamp and pulled out his secret weapon—a linen tester.
With the magnifier, details that had previously gone unnoticed immediately came into focus.
As Trace Examiner Li examined the contracts, he used a pencil to lightly circle each discrepancy he found. By the time he finished, he had marked more than a dozen subtle differences.
Setting down the linen tester, he removed his glasses again. He closed his eyes briefly, then reopened them after resting them for a moment before turning to Jiang Xia with a sigh of admiration.
“You young people really do think differently. It never even occurred to me to compare the ink itself—I was fixated on the handwriting. But Jiang Xia, your eyesight is something else. Those spots are so tiny that I completely missed them earlier. You actually saw them without a magnifier?”
Jiang Xia chuckled.
“I guess Heaven blessed me with good eyes.”
Smiling, she picked up the linen tester herself. Under magnification, several tiny flecks of ink that had splattered at the turns of the strokes—far too faint to notice with the naked eye—came clearly into view.
As expected. Everything’s much clearer under magnification.
“Ahem.”
Feng Zhengming cleared his throat softly before asking one last time,
“So, both of you are now certain that the ink and the paper are different?”
Jiang Xia nodded.
“Yes.”
“My specialty is handwriting examination. I don’t know nearly as much about ink.”
Trace Examiner Li remained more cautious. He prefaced his answer before continuing,
“That said, the handwriting on this contract page is noticeably stiffer. If you examine it carefully, you can tell it wasn’t written with the same ink.”
“That’s enough for me.”
The pressure of handling a case involving foreign investment had been weighing heavily on Feng Zhengming. Now that they had solid forensic evidence, his entire demeanor changed.
The scholarly air vanished in an instant, replaced by the sharp intensity of a veteran criminal investigator.
“Let’s go. We’re heading downstairs to make an arrest!”
Whoa.
Jiang Xia couldn’t help reacting inwardly.
I completely misjudged him. Beneath that scholarly appearance, he’s every bit a criminal detective.