39 Chapter 38

The guests had left, and Tao Ran had presumably already slept his way to an alternate dimension.

A faint aroma of wine floated through the brightly sunlit living room, sour-sweet and clinging. Fei Du turned off the air-conditioning and opened a window. He used the newly arrived coffeemaker to make a cup of espresso; the thick fragrance steamed up from the corner of the table.

The summer day's warm breeze met Luo Wenzhou head-on. For a moment he was silent. Then he shook the water droplets off his hands and pressed the heel of his ice-cold palm to his forehead, sighing in utter helplessness. "Youngster, can you be a little more tactful? The red neckerchief teaches us from the time we're little that we shouldn't leave our names when doing good deeds. Where's the beauty in you bringing it up like this, huh?"

Fei Du didn't respond. He seemed to have frozen, his "false propriety" nearly becoming the truth.

Luo Wenzhou looked at him and suddenly realized that he wasn't alone in being embarrassed—considering President Fei's precise memory, he definitely recalled the scene of himself parading around at the City Bureau playing games, attacking Luo Wenzhou with frigid wit and scorching irony.

Luo Wenzhou earnestly imagined what it would be like to be in Fei Du's shoes now; imagining such a scene, he felt his hair standing up in alarm.

As soon as he thought of this, his vision took on an awkwardness filter; when he looked at Fei Du again, he thought that his flatly pursed lips, his fingers held unnaturally at his sides, and the evasive gaze behind his lenses all made him look incomparably uncomfortable.

When he was uncomfortable himself, it would often go from bad to worse; the more he spoke, the more he would babble. But if he noticed that the other person was also uncomfortable, then the symptoms would instantly heal on their own.

Luo Wenzhou suddenly smiled and slowly stuck his hands in his pockets.

He lowered his head and put a cigarette in his mouth, dropping and then raising his eyelids, looking Fei Du over from bottom to top. Because his mouth was occupied, the voice coming from between his teeth was a touch nasal. "What? You've finally discovered that the Uncle Dongbin (9) you've bitten all these years is a good person? It's all right, darling, you don't have to be so nervous. We living Lei Fengs (10) don't ask for single-minded devotion from just anyone."

Fei Du's features were like a painted mask, impenetrable as a fortress. Especially when he was agitated, his control over his own expression and body language was nearly perfect, not a trace of emotion leaking out.

Compared to him, the lie-spouting Zhao Haochang and his ilk could simply be considered ingenuous.

Fei Du didn't answer Luo Wenzhou's half-joking words. He muttered silently to himself for a moment, turned and picked up the cup of freshly-ground coffee. A thin layer of oil floated on top, forming small ripples as he moved. Fei Du didn't add a grain of sugar; as if he had lost his sense of taste, he silently drank over half the cup.

Fei Du had drunk a few glasses of wine earlier, and he hadn't eaten properly at all; his stomach was half empty now. The unhealthy assembly of alcohol and highly concentrated coffee immediately formed into a "blood pressure supercharger," luring his heart into pumping great quantities of blood into his veins. His disordered and suddenly accelerated heart rate made him feel a little unwell; cold sweat formed in the palms of his hands.

Luo Wenzhou frowned. "Don't drink any more of that…"

Fei Du curved his palms around the warmth of the bone china cup, and the corner of his mouth twitched. He interrupted him with a false smile. "Actually, it's very rare for someone like me, who would casually hire a contract killer to do away with my own dad, to be able to preserve my current position so long without going astray. Captain Luo's long years of care are a contribution that can't go unnoticed."

Luo Wenzhou felt a certain indescribable tension in these words, but before he could carefully sample it, Fei Du had drained the rest of the coffee in one gulp. It must have been too bitter; he frowned, his raised chin and neck forming a sharply curving arc.

Then he put the cup down, nodded, and turned to leave. "I'll be going, then. Say a word to Tao Ran for me."

"Hey," Luo Wenzhou subconsciously ordered, "don't drive after drinking."

Fei Du ignored him.

"Did you hear me?" said Luo Wenzhou.

With an indifferent look, Fei Du put his hand on the doorknob, seeming not to have heard.

Luo Wenzhou saw that speaking had twice failed; he had to act. He grabbed Fei Du's arm and skillfully pulled it backwards. Using the grip he normally used to arrest criminals, he twisted Fei Du's hand behind his back and pulled him away from the door.

Fei Du: "…"

"You weren't listening." Under Fei Du's shocked gaze, one hand pressed to the back of his neck, one hand trapping his arm, Luo Wenzhou "escorted" him to an armchair three steps away. "Sit down and wait. I'll call you a driver."

Fei Du only then recovered, immediately struggling out of his grip. He spoke rather quickly. "Captain Luo, could you evolve a little from the basic Homo sapiens condition towards the level of civilized people?"

Luo Wenzhou ignored him, the fingers laying on the back of Fei Du's neck inching slightly over to his pulse. "I think you aren't feeling well. As I was saying, I seem to remember reading somewhere that you shouldn't drink coffee and wine together."

Fei Du: "…"

He was so "shocked" by Luo Wenzhou's belated advice that his ears hurt.

Luo Wenzhou looked at him. "I didn't think it over that much.—Not being nice to you won't do, being nice to you won't do either. You're harder to satisfy than Her Holiness the Empress Dowager Cixi."

Fei Du said, "…Excuse my lack of manners, I didn't know your surname was actually Li."

Luo Wenzhou tapped on the side of his neck, then picked up his phone and went to call a driver.

Tao Ran, the master of the house, knew nothing of this quarrel full of surging undercurrents. He had been knocked down by a few glasses of red wine and lay until the setting sun had suffused the surface of the earth. Only then did he get up, his mouth parched.

Unsurprisingly, the guests had all left; before leaving, they had neatly tidied his disorderly apartment.

In his new residence, Tao Ran washed his face and looked at the two notes stuck to the refrigerator. One had been left by Luo Wenzhou, telling him that the uneaten food was all in the refrigerator and he should heat it up himself when he got up. The other note had been left by Fei Du; it was comparatively long. Tao Ran rubbed his eyes for an age before he could clearly read what was written on it.

Fei Du said that when he had taken Chenchen out to buy a notebook, he'd had the feeling that they were being followed. He wasn't sure that it had been aimed at Chenchen; he could have been being oversensitive. But just in case, he asked Tao Ran, if he had time in the evening, to go to apartment 1101 in his building to pay a visit to Chenchen's parents and remind then to be careful of their child's safety during the summer vacation. He also told Tao Ran not to forget to bring something to thank the great beauty for "honoring his humble abode with her presence" that day.

The busybody. He'd even gotten the apartment number.

Tao Ran laughed in spite of himself.

Then, his smile gradually congealed. He read over Fei Du's description of the suspected stalker again and subconsciously looked out the window—the vegetation on the old estate was plentiful, the dense conifers and shrubs crowding together; looking down from upstairs there was nothing to see.

It was quiet and still.

Tao Ran went over to the small cabinet and one again opened the old criminal policeman's notes.

On the title page there was a tiny old photograph, taken of the notebook's previous owner during his youth, crewcut, square-faced, soberly facing the camera. His name was written next to the photograph in flourishing cursive—Yang Zhengfeng.

The pages concerning the "Lotus Mountain Serial Child Kidnapping Case" had been circled in red by the Venerable Yang. Tao Ran knew that this indicated that in shifu's mind, the case hadn't been solved. In these pages was a record of the old criminal policeman's notes on his illegal surveillance of Wu Guangchuan, spanning half a month; each day it amounted to "nothing abnormal."

There were also a few lines of small writing: "According to Wu Guangchuan's colleagues, while recruiting students at Lotus Mountain, he stayed in the hospital two days due to a severe cold; this just happened to be the time the victim Guo Fei went missing. I have confirmed the pertinent circumstances with the hospital; Wu Guangchuan's opportunity to commit the crime is an open question."

Tao Ran poured himself a cup of warm water and slowly combed his chaotic thoughts into order—Wu Guangchuan was supposed to be over 1.7 meters in height, a tall man; a little girl would have had to lift her head to look at his face. Adolescent children had already begun to develop and could distinguish gender, and they were beginning to be sensitive; a strange adult man, even if he was a teacher, would need several meetings or a long period of contact to gain a girl's trust.

Would the hospitalized Wu Guangchuan have had the time and opportunity?

While Tao Ran was lost in thought, his fingers loosened, and the notebook fell and shut, revealing a strip of paper stuck among the last pages. It was in Tao Ran's own handwriting; an FM radio frequency was written on it, followed by the note "midnight, Zero Hour Reading."

Yang Zhengfeng had died three years earlier, knifed by a wanted criminal.

He'd been gradually getting older and his rank gradually higher; several years ago he had been moved from the front lines of criminal policing to a management position. Luo Wenzhou had heard a hint then that said he would soon be promoted to Deputy Director, and they had been eagerly looking forward to eating a meal at his expense.

When the business happened, it hadn't even been on his working time—in order to send his child off to attend university out of town, Yang Zhengfeng had taken two weeks of his annual leave. When the child had been sent off, he'd planned to use his last day of vacation to act as house husband, going to the market first thing in the morning. While going through an underpass, he'd seen a vagrant who looked on edge. The vagrant was fretful, glaring viciously at any passerby who looked at him too long. Yang Zhengfeng had acutely felt that this person's little gestures looked like the he was preparing to attack and therefore took careful note. Looking more closely, he recognized the vagrant as an A Level wanted criminal, who had brutally stabbed his four neighbors to death and then run off.

The suspect's mental state was evidently unstable. Yang Zhengfeng didn't dare to act rashly. He furtively contacted his colleagues, but all it took was a little push: an old lady walking a dog went by. Perhaps the little dog sensed danger; it started to bark wildly at the wanted criminal, provoking him at once. He yelled and pulled out a knife from somewhere, throwing himself at the old lady. Yang Zhengfeng had no choice but to put himself forward—

Yang Zhengfeng was stabbed a dozen times by the deranged killer.

Tao Ran had been on duty that day and was the earliest to arrive on the scene, coming just in time to see the Venerable Yang one last time.

But the strange thing was, Yang Zhengfeng's last words weren't to ask whether the criminal had been caught, nor to recommend his wife and child to Tao Ran's care. Gripping Tao Ran's hand, he'd repeatedly said, "88.6 FM…12:05…88.6…"

The 12:05 program on 88.6 FM was "Zero Hour Reading"; afterwards the program had stopped broadcasting and become a very non-mainstream phone app, every day mildly playing an audiobook, the contents exceedingly dull. Fei Du had happened to hear it once and had jokingly called it a weapon of hypnosis.

Working the night shift, turning your days and nights upside down, would sometimes cause trouble sleeping. At these times, Tao Ran would listen to the peculiar audiobooks for a while. He had always suspected that he'd failed to grasp shifu's last words, until one time when he'd heard the ID "The Reciter."

Tao Ran got out his phone, which was nearly out of battery, opened the "Zero Hour Reading" app, and went to the saved commentary on The Red and the Black, authored by The Reciter.

The first sentence of the article was: "'But with whom shall I have my meals?'—This question is all the character's fears."

And in an incomparable coincidence, Zhao Haochang, the killer in the '520' case, having used his connection to the Zhang family to take a colleague's place and obtain an excellent opportunity, had then relied on these resources to ascend to the rank of second level partner; in order to commemorate this, he had stolen the fountain pen of Fei Du, the head of the company that had collaborated on the project. He had put a commemorative label on it, which just happened to say, "With whom shall I have my meals?"

There was no way to explain this to others. If he'd said it, people would only think he had been immersed in the case too long, to the point of becoming a little neurotic, seeing something and feeling a sense of déjà vu. But the problem was that Tao Ran thought he'd had the same sense of déjà vu more than once, and each time it was the same ID.

When shifu had clutched his hand at the end, had he really said the name of a boring reading program?

Could he have heard wrong, and, under the self-suggestion that "there was something wrong with that program" had over time begun to see each bush as an enemy solider, suspecting every coincidence?

Tao Ran had been a criminal policeman for over seven years; he knew this kind of thing was very common. If a person was overly suspicious, their memory would trick them—how many eyewitnesses were there who had run into a violent crime but afterwards couldn't say clearly whether the suspect had been male or female, tall or short?

Over the years, he'd gone through the old criminal policeman's notebook from cover to cover countless time, attempting to find some trace in it, to understand what shifu's true last words had been after all. But though he had all the notes memorized, he still hadn't found any traces apart from that radio program.

Tao Ran took a deep breath and shook his head in self-mockery, feeling that perhaps he needed to go have a chat with the bureau's psychological counselor.

Just then, an update notice appeared in the app's top righthand corner. Tao Ran carelessly looked down at it, and his pupils contracted. The subject of the update was: "Wanderer, have you found your lost pearl?—rereading Lolita; contributor: The Reciter."

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Author's Note:

(9) Reference to Lu Dongbin, Tang scholar later deified in Taoism, known good person, part of a proverb that goes "the dog bites Lu Dongbin", meaning that kindness is repaid with malice.

(10) Lei Feng, soldier in the People's Liberation Army circa the 1960s, in propaganda portrayed as a model citizen after an early death.

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