Chapter 34.2: Clue
Chen Dong, who had clearly seen this sort of thing plenty of times, was remarkably practiced at handling it. He grabbed one of them with his left hand and ushered the other along with his right, heading straight for the restroom.
“Come on, come on. Let’s go have a cigarette and cool down.”
Before long, the other criminal investigators who had been catching some sleep in the second-floor offices were also called downstairs.
Three people hadn’t returned yet, so the group wasn’t complete, but there were enough of them to start the meeting.
The investigators gathered around the conference table with their notebooks in hand, but every one of them looked somewhat dazed.
Bang, bang, bang!
Seeing their state, Tan Bingyi grabbed a wooden rod and rapped it hard against the table several times. Raising his voice, he said, “Wake up, everyone! We’re having a meeting here!”
Everyone forced themselves to pay attention, and some of them habitually lit cigarettes.
Before long, the entire conference room was filled with swirling cigarette smoke.
Jiang Xia expertly pulled over a chair, chose the window farthest from the smokers, opened it as wide as it would go, and sat down beside it.
“Cough, cough!”
Tan Bingyi cleared his throat. Standing at the head of the table, he addressed everyone on either side of him.
“I won’t go over the crime scene again. Let’s just talk about the leads we found during today’s investigation.”
“The victim was a technician at the machinery factory. He graduated from university in 1981 and had been working at the machinery factory for almost exactly a year. He usually spent his time at the factory, was diligent at work, and had a regular routine. His main activity outside work was attending night school to study German.”
“So far, our inquiries indicate that the victim got along well with his coworkers at the factory and had no obvious conflicts with anyone. However, eight months ago, he privately pursued Guo Zhichang’s daughter, Guo Xiaohui. The two of them became intimate.”
“About two months ago, the factory director’s daughter, He Baozhu, began working in the Publicity Department. The victim broke things off with Guo Xiaohui and then pursued He Baozhu, but she rejected him. He then went back to Guo Xiaohui and asked to reconcile and marry her.”
“The Guo family refused to reconcile. They also secretly arranged for her to have an ab*rtion, then used a sprained ankle as an excuse for her absence from work.”
“That covers the machinery factory. As for the night school, the German teacher said the victim was quite hardworking and diligent. He had no conflicts with most of the students, but he did have an argument with someone named Xie Yujiang. The exact reason is unknown, but it seems to have involved their studies. It apparently got pretty ugly, and they nearly came to blows.”
“Also, most people knew that he was going back to his hometown to visit his sick parents, and that he had money on him.”
“That’s everything. Think about our investigative direction and speak freely.”
While everyone else was still thinking, Chen Dong pulled himself together and spoke up.
“Judging from the circumstances, I think we should still focus our search on people who knew the victim personally.”
“I agree.”
Zeng Jun nodded, but then changed tack.
“However, Guo Zhitang is still a suspect. After all, he could have changed the tires. And during the interrogation, he said the victim had been pestering him relentlessly these past few days, insisting that he wanted to get married. He said he was so furious that he wanted to chop the guy to pieces.”
Old Qin shook his head. “That was just something he said in anger. We can’t take it literally.”
Another criminal investigator agreed. “Right. Besides, you can’t just swap out a bicycle on a whim.”
“I heard you say earlier that Guo Xiaohui is quite good-looking and has quite a few admirers.”
Someone thought for a moment before suggesting another possibility. “Could it have been one of those admirers who did it instead of Guo Zhitang?”
“Hey, Old Zhao’s onto something. That’s a strong possibility!”
Another person offered a suggestion. “I think Xie Yujiang is a little suspicious too. His home address is also in the central district, and it’s relatively close to the railway station and Changxing Road.”
“The victim wasn’t exactly a saint when it came to women. Could he have pursued someone besides Guo Xiaohui?”
“We asked about his daily schedule. He was pretty busy. Would he really have had the time?”
“Not necessarily. Didn’t we have a case before where a guy was working a regular job while dating five women at the same time?”
“That’s true. We should still look into it…”
“Come to think of it, the victim wasn’t exactly young. Is it possible he had relationships back in university or during his time as a sent-down educated youth, and someone came after him for revenge?”
“That’s unlikely. When we made our inquiries, people said they hadn’t seen any strangers coming to look for him.”
“What about robbery? I’ve got a few families on my side who are short on money, and some have unemployed people at home. The neighbors say they’re a pretty rough bunch, so they could have had a motive to commit the crime.”
“I think we should investigate that too…”
As the discussion got going, everyone gradually woke up, and their thoughts became more active. One after another, they speculated about all kinds of possibilities.
Jiang Xia twirled her pen as she listened to them.
There was nothing wrong with any of these lines of reasoning. If she had to pick a flaw, it was that they were somewhat conventional. They would require a huge amount of investigation and screening, making it difficult to get directly to the real killer.
But was there anything they could dig out of the existing clues that would lead them straight to the culprit?
She stopped twirling her pen. On the paper, she wrote the words killer, then added three phrases beneath them:
Body-transport method: bicycle.
Blunt-force trauma to the front of the head.
Body dumped in an alley.
Jiang Xia’s pen tip lingered over the words bicycle for a moment.
She still couldn’t figure out why the killer had chosen a bicycle to transport the body.
A bicycle’s rear seat was fine for carrying a living person, but a corpse was another matter. Not only would it be difficult to secure, there was nothing to conceal it with, making it extremely easy to attract attention.
If the killer could get hold of a bicycle, why not get a tricycle instead?
Unless he simply didn’t care about being seen.
Just like the body itself. It seemed… almost as though he’d deliberately dumped it there so that someone would find it.
Was it a provocation? But there wasn’t even anyone to provoke.
Then was it some kind of punishment or execution? But if he fancied himself a judge, surely he wouldn’t leave without a single word—not even a verdict.
Jiang Xia added revenge killing beneath her notes. After staring at it for three or four seconds, she realized she still had absolutely no clue.
She didn’t force herself to keep thinking about it. Instead, she switched to another person.
The victim.
He was hardworking and modest in his daily life and seemed like a decent person on the surface. But underneath, his character was actually quite poor. He was rather ambitious and eager to climb the social ladder, and he was also impatient for quick results. People like that could easily make serious enemies behind the scenes.
But he’d only been at the machinery factory for a year, which wasn’t very long. There couldn’t be too many people he’d had time to make enemies with.
They had already investigated today and confirmed that no one from his past had come looking for him. So they still had to examine his activities over the past year.
And from what they knew so far, the victim’s biggest problem was still Guo Xiaohui.
At that thought, Jiang Xia fell silent.
After going around in a circle, she’d ended up right back where she’d started.
Wasn’t this exactly what the other criminal investigators were thinking?
She took a deep breath, rested her elbow against the window frame, and pinched the bridge of her nose as she took another look at the victim.
His personality, his motives, his actions… again and again.
Suddenly, Jiang Xia noticed something that didn’t quite add up.
The victim seemed to have been repeatedly going to Guo Zhitang lately, demanding to reconcile with Guo Xiaohui?
At first glance, this behavior actually seemed quite reasonable for the victim. After all, immediately pursuing the factory director’s daughter after breaking up with Guo Xiaohui had probably offended quite a few people. There was a good chance he had realized that the reason his pursuit of He Baozhu had failed was because the Guo family had interfered.
Unable to find another wealthy and well-connected woman to marry into a powerful family, he had gone back to Guo Xiaohui. Marrying her and gaining the Guo family’s forgiveness would have been a decent solution.
Shameless, certainly, but people really did behave like that sometimes.
But that line of thinking depended on the Guo family being willing to go along with it.
And the Guo family’s response had been to tell him to get lost, warning that if he came again, Guo Zhitang would go to the deputy factory director and expose everything.
In other words, toward the end, the victim wasn’t politely begging them to reconcile. He was threatening them—threatening them to the point that Guo Zhitang had already realized the matter might become known to everyone.
How was marrying into the family supposed to resolve their grudge?
It was clearly only going to create an even bigger one!
That didn’t make sense.
Guo Zhitang was only a workshop supervisor and didn’t have much influence himself. The most he could do was quietly tip off He Baozhu and prevent the victim from continuing to curry favor with someone powerful. He couldn’t actually block the victim’s career advancement.
If the victim waited a little longer for the matter to blow over, he could simply try pursuing another wealthy woman at another factory. Why was he so determined to marry Guo Xiaohui when the Guo family clearly refused?
He was risking his entire future, betting that the other side wouldn’t decide to go all out against him!
If the Guo family really went all in, Zhou Jingyun would at the very least take a serious hit. What prospects for power or advancement would he have after that?
It was far too contradictory.
Unless…
He no longer had much of a future to begin with.
At that thought, a news story she had come across in her previous life suddenly flashed through Jiang Xia’s mind. She jolted as though she’d been struck by electricity, and in an instant, every clue fell into place.
She had figured it out. Everything made sense now!
Jiang Xia slapped her notebook down on the table and interrupted everyone’s discussion without the slightest hesitation.
“I know! Captain Tan, I know who the killer is!”
What?
In an instant, every criminal investigator in the room turned to look at her.
Zeng Jun had been in the middle of discussing their investigative direction when Jiang Xia interrupted him. He wasn’t annoyed, though. Instead, remembering how accurately Jiang Xia had previously deduced the hiding places of the three robbers, he hurriedly urged her, “Who is it? Jiang Xia, come on, tell us!”
Under everyone’s expectant gaze, Jiang Xia stumbled for a moment.
“Uh… I don’t know exactly who yet.”
The moment she said that, one of the detectives immediately frowned.
What a fuss over nothing. She was a technical specialist. She should just stick to drawing her portraits. Why did she have to come over here and meddle in their investigation? And if she hadn’t even figured it out yet, why shout it out and disrupt everyone’s train of thought?
“You’ve got an idea, right?”
Tan Bingyi remained relatively calm. He looked at Jiang Xia and said, “Don’t rush. Take your time.”
“It’s like this. I noticed something suspicious.”
Jiang Xia calmed herself and organized her thoughts before starting from the beginning.
“The victim was someone who cared quite a lot about power and status. But after breaking up with Guo Xiaohui and offending the Guo family, he suddenly started demanding that they reconcile. After the Guo family explicitly refused, he even began threatening them. And he still didn’t stop even after the Guo family said they would report the matter to the factory leadership if he kept it up. That’s completely inconsistent with his behavior in the past.”
“Huh?”
Once Jiang Xia singled it out like that, one of the detectives immediately realized something was wrong. He looked toward Zeng Jun and Old Qin, who had conducted the interrogation.
“Deputy Captain Zeng, was that really what happened during the interrogation?”
Zeng Jun had focused most of his interrogation on Guo Zhitang’s activities during this period, so he hadn’t questioned the conflict with the victim in quite that much detail. But thinking back, it really had been exactly as Jiang Xia described.
He nodded.
“Yes.”
“Then that really doesn’t make sense.”
“He wasn’t trying to marry into the family. He was clearly making an enemy of them.”
“Not exactly. Listen to what Jiang Xia is saying. The Guo family told him they’d report him to the factory leadership if he kept causing trouble. Misleading a female employee about his feelings is a pretty serious matter. The factory would definitely discipline him, and it would have a major impact on both his future marriage prospects and his chances of promotion.”
“Then he wouldn’t gain anything by forcing them to reconcile, would he?”
“Exactly. So why would he keep doing it when there was nothing to gain?”
At that, Chen Dong slapped the table and said with absolute certainty, “That bastard must have run into trouble—trouble bigger than fooling around with women! That’s why he wanted to marry Guo Xiaohui as soon as possible, so she and the Guo family could take the heat for him!”
Jiang Xia fell silent for a moment.
That was basically what she meant, but somehow… didn’t it sound like he’d gone a little off track?
Old Qin folded his arms across his chest. “Then what kind of serious trouble could have forced him to do that?”
Someone remembered that Zhou Jingyun had said his parents were sick and that he’d borrowed quite a bit of money. He couldn’t help but frown.
“Could the victim have been in gambling debt? Damn, we haven’t even confirmed with his parents whether they’re actually sick!”
That really had been overlooked. At the time, everyone had been so focused on how they were going to explain the victim’s death to his parents that they had completely forgotten to ask whether his parents were actually ill.
“All right, don’t go off on tangents yet.”
Seeing everyone start speculating in other directions, Tan Bingyi quickly stopped them. He looked at Jiang Xia.
“Jiang Xia, do you already have an idea?”
Jiang Xia didn’t keep them in suspense. She got straight to the point.
“I suspect the trouble was with his future prospects. And the biggest thing his future prospects depended on was his status as a university graduate.
“Then what could possibly go wrong with his university degree? Unless he wasn’t actually a university graduate—or rather, unless he wasn’t the person who had genuinely earned that university admission in the first place!”
The moment she said this, the detectives erupted in an uproar. None of them could figure out how she had managed to make that connection.