NOS Chapter 40
by VolareThere was a man and a woman in the photo. The woman was clearly a younger Jiang Min. The man had well-defined features, with sharp eyebrows and eyes, possessing a certain air of charisma and authority.
The two of them stood on a high ground, with a vast wilderness behind them, through which a long river flowed. In the distance, a towering bridge spanned the river. Although it was a black and white photograph, one could still see the clear sky, refreshing air, and light clouds.
“July 19th, Sunken Plain,” Guan Yao read softly.
This was a line of small characters written below the photo, which had become somewhat difficult to recognize. However, based on his judgment of the environment and geographical location, Guan Yao realized that the photo was likely taken in what is now the wetland behind Fish Cliff Island in the Wu Na River in Songlan. The local farmers called that place “Sunken Plain.”
“This was taken in Songlan?” Guan Yao looked up and asked Jiang Min.
Jiang Min didn’t answer, her gaze seemingly drifting towards Yu Chunming.
Yu Chunming stared intently at the man in the photo, his expression somewhat grim.
“No way, look at him… doesn’t he look a bit like our Deputy Director Yu?” Guan Yao asked again.
Yu Chunming withdrew his gaze and replied indifferently, “No, he doesn’t.”
“Doesn’t?” Guan Yao was surprised.
Nowadays, in the Za Mu Er police system, who didn’t know about the relationship between Yu Chunming and Yu Zhenshan? So many people were gossiping behind their backs. If Yu Chunming wasn’t Yu Zhenshan’s son, someone would have come out to clarify it long ago. But until today, everyone was still talking about it with relish.
That meant that Yu Chunming was indeed Yu Zhenshan’s son. But since the son said they didn’t look alike, what reason did Guan Yao have to continue insisting that they did?
“He’s my ex-husband,” Jiang Min suddenly said at this moment.
“Ex-husband?” Guan Yao was taken aback. Could this be the ex-husband that Auntie Wang and his grandmother were always secretly whispering about?
Jiang Min took a puff of her cigarette and said in a flat tone, “He’s not a beast.”
Whether he was a beast or not wasn’t important. The key was, who exactly was this person?
“What’s his name?” Guan Yao asked.
Jiang Min still had the same expression. She raised her eyelids and replied coldly, “Forgot.”
“Forgot?” Guan Yao found it hard to believe. Since he was her ex-husband, how could she forget his name?
But Jiang Min clearly didn’t intend to continue this topic. Yu Chunming also seemed uninterested in the man in the photo. He opened a letter from the interlayer of the photo album and said, “This was written by Ai Hua.”
“Ai Hua?” Guan Yao’s attention was immediately drawn in. He turned to look at the letter.
There was nothing of value in the letter. It was nothing more than Ai Hua’s confession and admiration for Jiang Min. He had copied a large number of poems and composed some romantic tunes himself, saying that he would compose them into songs, send them to the cultural troupe, and have Jiang Min sing them for him to listen to.
After Guan Yao finished reading, he felt a twinge of revulsion. “This Ai Hua is still a literary youth.”
Jiang Min chuckled a couple of times, but didn’t respond to this.
Yu Chunming said, “Look at the date this letter was written, September 22nd, and the year. Isn’t that exactly thirty-three years ago? The fire broke out the day after Ai Hua sent this letter.”
“It was the day after,” Jiang Min chimed in from the side. “I remember, that beast gave me the letter on the night of the 23rd.”
“Auntie Jiang, you remember that clearly?” Guan Yao couldn’t help but ask, “So at that time, did Ai Hua come to deliver the letter to you alone, or with Qian Guowei and Xu Wen?”
Jiang Min held her cigarette and thought for a moment before answering, “With Qian Guowei. Not Xu Wen. But after they delivered the letter, they went to find Xu Wen for a drink.”
“After delivering the letter, they went to find Xu Wen for a drink…” After Guan Yao watched Yu Chunming write down this sentence, he continued to ask, “What about the next day? The fire broke out in the evening of the next day. Before that, did you see Qian Guowei?”
“No,” Jiang Min replied immediately without thinking. “I wasn’t at the factory on the 24th, nor was I in the cultural troupe.”
“I see…” Guan Yao nodded. “On the night of the 23rd, Qian Guowei and Xu Wen, Ai Hua were together, drinking. According to Ai Hua’s mother, Ai Hua hadn’t been home for a long time before the fire broke out. In other words, it’s likely that Qian Guowei and Xu Wen didn’t go home that night either. They were together.”
“They were indeed together,” Jiang Min immediately confirmed Guan Yao’s idea. “Those three hung out together every day. That night, they spent the night in the factory.”
“What about before that?” Guan Yao wanted to ask for more information. “In the days before that, did Qian Guowei do anything unusual?”
“No. Or maybe he did, I don’t know,” Jiang Min tossed her hair and replied, “I used to take a detour whenever I saw him. That guy harassed a lot of young girls.”
This was the second time Jiang Min had mentioned Qian Guowei’s “lifestyle issues.” Yu Chunming quickly grasped the key point. He immediately asked, “Did this person do anything to you…”
“Yes,” Jiang Min answered before Yu Chunming could finish his question.
Guan Yao’s expression changed slightly. He nudged the person next to him with his elbow, signaling him to ask fewer of these things.
That’s right, Jiang Min’s emotional experiences didn’t seem to be the focus of this case. They were here to inquire about Qian Guowei. Other unrelated matters, it was best to ask less about, especially these kinds of sensitive topics.
Yu Chunming tactfully closed his mouth. Guan Yao took over the conversation and asked, “Did Qian Guowei have a girlfriend?”
Jiang Min shook her head. “Not sure.”
“Then who did he pursue?”
“He pursued a lot of people. He liked anyone who was good-looking,” Jiang Min said with a disdainful tone.
“Didn’t anyone in the unit manage him?” Guan Yao asked again.
“Manage him? Who would dare to manage him?” Jiang Min replied coldly, “Qian Guowei’s leader, Miao Xiaoyun, the chief of the security section of the No. 2 Timber Factory, was his biggest lover. The two of them were in cahoots. No one could control him.”
“Miao Xiaoyun,” Yu Chunming wrote down this name.
“And his father was a former comrade-in-arms of our Linchang Deputy Secretary back then. They fought in the same trench. Qian Guowei was considered his foster son. Who in the factory would dare to touch the Deputy Secretary’s foster son?” Jiang Min flicked her cigarette ash and said with a look of disdain, “That’s why the No. 2 Timber Factory collapsed. It’s all because of these things. It’s bound to collapse sooner or later.”
Guan Yao frowned tightly, searching for several former Linchang Deputy Secretaries from his memory. He asked, puzzled, “Auntie Jiang, which one are you talking about…?”
“The one who died in the fire,” Jiang Min raised her eyebrows. “He happened to be down for inspection that day, and happened to be sitting in the duty room of the factory area to rest, and then he happened to be burned to death. Those damn bastards, they really got off easy. They all died in the fire.”
Yu Chunming and Guan Yao were speechless. Neither of them knew how to respond to Jiang Min’s words.
Unexpectedly, at this moment, Jiang Min spoke on her own. She said, “So Li Ying’s fire was really well set.”
Rumors about Li Ying had been endless for more than a decade, of all kinds. Guan Yao had heard no less than ten versions. Some said that Li Ying and Zhang Nan had conflicts due to uneven distribution of spoils. Some said that Li Ying learned that Zhang Nan’s cousin was going to replace his job and force him to step down. Some said that when Zhang Nan was still a doctor at the workers’ hospital, he wouldn’t treat Li Ying’s daughter. There were even rumors that Li Ying was fighting with Zhang Nan over a woman.
Tracing back to the source, these rumors were mostly nonsense, but some of them did have some traces that were hard to ignore.
For example, Jiang Min said –
“I saw him arguing with Zhang Nan, on the night of the 23rd, when I got off the night shift from the cultural troupe. Li Ying happened to be walking towards the office building. I glanced back at him and saw the hammer he was carrying in his hand.”
“Hammer?” Guan Yao was a little puzzled. “Auntie Jiang, are you sure he was carrying a hammer to find Zhang Nan?”
After all, so much time had passed. No one could guarantee that people’s memories wouldn’t go wrong.
But Jiang Min was certain, “I’m sure. I won’t forget anything that happened in the days before the fire broke out. At that time, he carried the hammer upstairs. Not long after, Zhang Nan ran out from inside, shouting ‘Li Ying is crazy!'”
“I see…” Guan Yao nodded. Yu Chunming wrote two more strokes in his notebook.
On this day, following Jiang Min’s memory, the two of them went through the relevant personnel and events in the days before the 9.24 fire. They confirmed that Li Ying and Zhang Nan, the director of the No. 2 Timber Factory, had a conflict, and also confirmed that Qian Guowei and others had spent the night in the factory the night before the fire.
But whether it was their movements or interpersonal relationships, they didn’t find any connection between Qian Guowei and the fire, or between Qian Guowei and Li Ying.
These two people seemed to have no intersection. Li Ying was a worker in charge of the warehouse, and Qian Guowei was a well-known second-generation rich kid in the factory. One focused on making a living, and the other focused on hooking up with the young girls in the cultural troupe. As for the fire, Qian Guowei unfortunately died, and Li Ying luckily escaped. Even the ending was not the same.
However, the two of them were not completely without discovery. At least, they now knew what Xu Wen, who had close ties with Qian Guowei, looked like, as well as Qian Guowei’s own physical characteristics.
Back at Guan Yao’s house, sitting at the dining table, the two of them re-organized the collected information.
Yu Chunming looked at the clues in his notebook and the photos in Guan Yao’s phone, his brow furrowed slightly. “It’s strange. There are so many photos, but there isn’t a single one with Qian Guowei in them.”
Guan Yao also found it strange. “Photos of Ai Hua and Xu Wen, and even Zhang Nan and Li Ying, can be found in Auntie Jiang’s photo album. She was an actress in the cultural troupe back then, and she had many opportunities to take photos. There were souvenirs from the cultural performances of the entire factory. Why isn’t there Qian Guowei in them?”
Yu Chunming thought for a moment and gave a possible answer, “Could it be… that all the photos with Qian Guowei have been destroyed? In those photo albums, I saw a lot of empty spaces. Some of the bottoms of those empty spaces even had notes, which didn’t seem like just unused plastic film.”
Guan Yao was stunned. “Are you saying that Auntie Jiang destroyed all of Qian Guowei’s photos?”
Yu Chunming pinched the center of his brows and replied, “It’s possible.”
“Then why didn’t she say so just now?” Guan Yao asked, puzzled.
“She won’t tell you everything honestly. She’s definitely hiding something,” Yu Chunming said casually.
“That’s right,” Guan Yao nodded immediately. “For example, Auntie Jiang didn’t tell the truth about her ex-husband.”
This made Yu Chunming’s hand holding the pen pause briefly.
Guan Yao was still pondering who the man who looked so much like Yu Zhenshan was. He asked Yu Chunming again, “Do you really think they don’t look alike?”
Yu Chunming raised his eyebrows and didn’t answer.
“A square face, straight eyebrows, and that hump nose,” Guan Yao explained, “I’m not saying that he must be Deputy Director Yu. I’m saying that maybe he’s related to Deputy Director Yu?”
“Deputy Director Yu doesn’t have any brothers,” Yu Chunming replied with a normal expression.
Guan Yao hesitated.
Yu Chunming continued, “You can also take that photo and ask Deputy Director Yu in person. Maybe he knows himself.”
Guan Yao “tsk”d. “You’re just making fun of me.”
Yu Chunming tugged at the corners of his mouth and pushed the notebook in front of Guan Yao. “You can look at it yourself. I have to re-copy my self-criticism. Otherwise, Chief Zhang will definitely find a way to kick me out before he retires.”
“Hey, wait…” Guan Yao wanted to say something else, but Yu Chunming ignored him and walked to the coffee table on his own, starting to write.
That afternoon, Guan Yao returned to the municipal branch bureau.
The case analysis meeting on the Mopan Mountain dismemberment case had already been held round after round, and the possible routes of the suspect had also been walked through again and again. All the speculations and evidence had been sorted out several times, and all the images and traces had been compared several times. In the end, it still fell back to Yu Chunming’s judgment of the murderer: Liu Bin’s employer and the suspect Yi Jun in the Songlan 6.13 dismemberment case were very likely the same person, and this person was indeed the man who appeared on train K5278 a few days ago.
Sitting in the office, Wang Zhen, who was flipping through the records, smiled and shook his head, sighing, “I have to say, Chunming’s intuition is still very strong.”
“But what Deputy Director Yu dislikes the most is handling cases based on intuition,” someone chimed in from the side.
Wang Zhen “ai”ed. “There’s nothing wrong with intuition. Intuition can provide clues. What Deputy Director Yu opposes is relying solely on intuition without looking at the evidence. Don’t generalize.”
Guan Yao couldn’t help but say, “Now that Deputy Director Yu has returned to Songlan, what about our case…”
Wang Zhen winked at Guan Yao, pulled him to his side, and lowered his voice to say, “Deputy Director Yu is gone, but Deputy Director Yu’s people haven’t left. Haven’t you ever thought about why the director of the provincial department knows everything that Chunming did and what mistakes he made in your Za Mu Er?”
Guan Yao was taken aback. “Who are Deputy Director Yu’s people?”
Wang Zhen was about to answer when Han Chen happened to walk in. He immediately stopped talking, smiled at Guan Yao, and asked, “Got it?”
Guan Yao’s forehead twitched. He wisely walked to the side.
Han Chen came to deliver materials, but he immediately saw Guan Yao, who was preparing to avoid him. He immediately called out, “Officer Guan, is Chunming feeling better these days?”
“Much better,” Guan Yao greeted politely. “He’s resting at my house.”
He didn’t know why he had to emphasize “at my house,” but the words just came out naturally.
“You guys are busy. I’ll go back and bring him food,” Guan Yao said with a smile.
Han Chen’s face was unfriendly. The words had reached the tip of his tongue, but he couldn’t spit them out. He watched helplessly as this person swaggered away.
Guan Yao, who had inexplicably angered Han Chen, was in a very good mood. He carried the lunch box and thermos bucket and strolled into the canteen of the municipal branch bureau.
It was lunchtime, and there were many people lining up in the canteen. Guan Yao picked a less crowded window and squeezed into the crowd. Coincidentally, the two people standing in front of him were also colleagues from the task force, but they had just come from Songlan and were not yet familiar with him.
Guan Yao was about to say hello, but the two of them were chatting so enthusiastically that no one noticed there was another person behind them.
He heard one of them say excitedly, “Have you heard? Deputy Director Yu wants to get his son out of the police force.”
“Get him out? Where to?” the other one asked curiously.
“Who knows? Anyway, he’s not letting him be a policeman anymore,” the person who started the topic continued. “But I’m also curious. After all, he’s his own son. Why make it so ugly?”
“He’s having an ugly fight with his ex-wife,” the other one chuckled. “I heard that Deputy Director Yu’s ex-wife is from Za Mu Er. She’s also involved in the arts. They divorced not long after they got married. It seems like she had a bad reputation.”
“Reputation?”
“Of course…”
Increasingly embarrassing words reached Guan Yao’s ears. He wanted to go up and punch them each, but just as he was about to take action, he suddenly realized something –
Deputy Director Yu’s ex-wife is also from Za Mu Er? And is involved in the arts?