Chapter 55

"You want me to search… inside the box of ashes." Luo Wenzhou didn't know what expression to mobilize in response to Fei Du. He could only give him a teeth-gritting smile. "Are you sure Xu Wenchao is as abnormal as you?"

"I think you 'normal' people have a very interesting outlook." Fei Du gave him the box of Su Xiaolan's ashes. "On the one hand, you think this is a symbol of an ordinary person; on the other hand, you endow it with extraordinary significance, make it holy, unlucky, not to be profaned, untouchable…no matter what kind of person she was in life."

The tiny box wasn't light. After accepting it, Luo Wenzhou took several breaths. "The feeling of ritual and taboo reflect the awe we should feel for life and death.—I'm telling you, Fei Du, if I open this and there's nothing but ashes inside, I'm sticking you in there."

Then he put the little box on the ground, lifted off the lid, and pulled out the fragmentary damp-absorber inside. Flesh crawling, he opened up the cloth bag containing the ashes, braced himself, and rummaged around inside a few times.

Suddenly, Luo Wenzhou paused. He exchanged a look with Fei Du, then carefully pulled a sealed plastic bag from the heap of ashes.

Fei Du smiled. "Looks like I don't have to go in?"

With gloved hands, Luo Wenzhou carefully brushed the ash off the outside of the plastic bag. Inside he found a very pocket-sized old notebook, a little bigger than 64mo (17). It had a pink plastic cover, very characteristic of its era.

Su Xiaolan's characters were actually written rather well, some running strokes having the ease of an adult's writing. The pages were scribbled full of wild embellishments—skulls drawn in ballpoint, bloodstains drawn in red fountain pen, and so on. It looked very gloomy. There were incomplete sentences and exclamation marks everywhere.

X/X/19XX The slut let that fatty mess with me and took money at the door. I'm going to kill her! Rip out her tongue!! Brake her head in with a wine botle!!!

As soon as Luo Wenzhou opened the notebook, his eye was struck by this entry. He calmly sucked in a breath, his brow furrowing into a knot.

X/X/19XX Deng Ying came! It rained suddently, she didn't have her umbrella, she'd been to my house before and ran over to get out of the rain. There was someone here, he was drunk! (After this was a whole page messily blacked out.) The slut helped the drunk drag her into the room, she's a goner!

X/X/19XX The police came to school. They're looking for Deng Ying, asked a lot of people, but they didn't ask me, because I'd asked for the day off. Deng Ying is in the bathroom at home. The slut says, if we don't deal with her, we're finished.

X/X/19XX The slut put Deng Ying into an icebox and took it away. She told people she was going to sell wholesale lollipops. It stinks like hell in the icebox. I threw up. The slut hit me again.

"Who is Deng Ying?" asked Fei Du.

"I don't know." Luo Wenzhou's thick, heavy brows were like two tense bowstrings. Lowering his voice, he said, "Su Xiaolan was only in fourth grade when this was written. We didn't find any victims fitting the criteria during this period and excluded it—if this was the first murdered child, she must have gotten in by mistake, so she wouldn't display the later characteristics."

A midsummer evening twenty-four years earlier.

The fourth-grader Deng Ying got out of school and headed home. Suddenly the heavens opened and unleashed a rainstorm. She ran a few steps, found she was in a truly awkward situation, then remembered that she had a good friend in class whose house was nearby. She could go there to get out of the rain. And that good friend was supposed to be sick and staying at home that day. She could go and visit with her—

A torrent of scholar tree flowers was knocked loose by the rain and blown by the wind, their soft subtle fragrance sinking amidst the wet earth.

The girl had no cellphone and no way to tell anyone where she was going. She made a last-minute decision, then rushed headlong onto a forking path where she would be lost forever.

And perhaps that forking path hadn't been hers alone.

Luo Wenzhou said, "So from then on, Su Xiaolan's mother discovered her daughter's other use."

President Fei wasn't willing to squat on the ground like a monkey. To look at the little book pulled from the box of ashes with him, he simply sat down beside him, lifted one leg and propped his injured arm on it, leaning back against the wall of remains as if all taboos were off.

He sank into thought, half his mind focused on this matter, the other half focused on Luo Wenzhou. He thought this person was rather magical, and so couldn't resist asking, "What's going to happen to Su Luozhan?"

"Su Luozhan?" With his chain of thought suddenly interrupted, Luo Wenzhou gave Fei Du a strange look. "What do you mean what's going to happen?"

"I said she wouldn't be sentenced to prison."

"Oh, right, taken into care.—Given the extent of what she's done, it should be three years." Luo Wenzhou turned a page in the notebook and dully said, "We'll see in another three years when she gets out. I'll let the jurisdiction's local police station know to keep an eye out."

"Three years." Fei Du raised his brows. "It's not enough time to get an undergraduate degree. I thought when she said 'it was fun' that someone would charge in and throttle her."

"I sent the more impulsive ones out to investigate the case. They weren't in the observation room."

"What about you?" Fei Du asked, not letting him off the hook. "You all worked through the night investigating, got dragged in circles by a horde of victims' family members, one person crying after another. You had to put yourselves in their shoes to keep investigating this case without complaint, right? Now after all your hard work, you've caught the criminals, and not only will they not obediently confess, the main culprit doesn't show a sign of repentance and objectively speaking can't bear criminal responsibility. You aren't getting any ideas?"

Luo Wenzhou looked him over and dismissively said, "When I started out with the police, you were still at home watching cartoons, 'trainee.'"

"I didn't watch cartoons," said Fei Du. "I only sometimes played games."

Luo Wenzhou: "…"

He gave a dry cough and avoided the subject. "Su Xiaolan's diary doesn't say how Su Hui dealt with the body. What ideas do you have?"

For a while Fei Du fixed a look full of "unfathomable intentions" on Luo Wenzhou, until Luo Wenzhou was on edge and wishing to find a needle to sew his eyelids together; then he finally let him off for the moment, cooperatively going along with the subject. "Me? First I'd dismember the body, since I had a car and there was no way to test DNA back then. I'd mince up the pieces a little, buy some bags of pork chops, mix the body parts with the animal flesh and bone, then scatter them all across the suburban wastes. Even if my luck was bad and a body part was unexpectedly recognized for what it was, it would still be very hard for the police to find out who it belonged to."

"If it had been dismemberment, Su Xiaolan's diary ought to have mentioned it." Luo Wenzhou overlooked his spirited tone and said as objectively as possible, "Anyway, an alcoholic woman and a little girl wouldn't necessarily have the strength to chop up a body."

"Then I'd have to find a way to bury it. The best thing would be an absolutely safe place that would belong to me forever, that no one would go digging up before my death—if we were abroad, I could just bury it in my yard, but that's hard to do in this country with our special policy on land ownership. Burying a body is like burying a landmine that could go off any day. There's no insurance," Fei Du said "So I'd have to settle for second best. Choose a place where a body wouldn't easily be dug up, and even if it was dug up, no one would think it was strange—for example, some wild graveyard out in the country, or a place with thick water weeds that's often flooded.

"There are still some rural areas that haven't entirely adopted cremation. There are always graves heaped up with wreathes at the edges of fields. I'd look for a fresh grave, or a place that had been dug up for renovation, and bury another person in it. The turned earth wouldn't attract suspicion, and the place wouldn't be dug up again in the near future. Although that requires a killer who's very familiar with disposing of bodies." Fei Du paused, then said, "It's more convenient to tie a stone to the person's ankles and sink the body. After a time, the ropes will rot along with the flesh, the heavy object will separate from the body, and the skeleton will be tangled up in the water weeds. There's great potential for it turning into a water ghoul story. Everything that happens in this world leaves a mark; if you plan for a thousand contingencies, you'll still miss one. Rather than engaging in a battle of wits with the whole public security system, it's better to obey a criminal's general principle—"

Luo Wenzhou was looking at him silently.

"Don't let the body be found. If there's a risk the body will be found, don't let the people who might stumble on it think there's a need to call the police."

Having heard this theory, Luo Wenzhou nodded. "Very insightful, though there are problems putting it into practice—for example, you get sick at the sight of blood. On that subject, why does blood make you sick?"

The corners of Fei Du's mouth subtly stiffened, as if this question had choked him. After a while, he somewhat rigidly said, "If I knew the reason, I wouldn't be sick."

Then he didn't make another sound.

Having succeeded in turning this criminal theorist into a vase with a single sentence, Luo Wenzhou let him sit there looking pretty and, having removed the interference, calmly continued reading Su Xiaolan's diary.

"Disposing of the body somewhere with thick water weeds that's often flooded is a possibility," Luo Wenzhou said quietly. "Su Hui's hometown is in Pinghai County. Pinghai has always been Yan City's reservoir. It's full of streams.—She could have…huh?"

Luo Wenzhou had been skimming Su XIaolan's diary, quickly skipping over the vast majority of irrelevant daily details. Suddenly, he stopped turning the pages.

These pages were about school. Su Xiaolan's hatred was intense. This one was a slut, that one was a slut. It felt like she was living on the planet of sluts; all around there was no other species. But what had attracted Luo Wenzhou's notice was a photograph stuck among the pages. It must have been from a school performance. Six girls were standing on a stage together for a curtain call, a row of long, slender legs showing under short floral-patterned dresses.

The five other girls' faces had been scratched out with ballpoint pen. Su Xiaolan was in the very center, chin slightly raised as she looked into the camera.

Floral-patterned dresses—yes, her diary hadn't mentioned floral-patterned dresses yet.

Luo Wenzhou hurriedly flipped back a few pages.

X/X/19XX The dance teacher's a miserable slut, she's scared people will say she's taking money (crossed out), making us buy our own performance clothes, we can't participate if we don't have them. The slut heard and hit my back with a wine bottle. Why won't the slut die! Why won't the teacher die!!

X/X/19XX Dress rehearsal tomorrow. I had no dress. I met that disgusting fatty wandering around the school. I went with him, and he bought me the dress.

"The first time Su Xiaolan voluntarily sold herself, it was for the sake of a floral-patterned dress." Luo Wenzhou flipped through a certain year in the diary. "Twenty-two years ago is the first year we found cases of the same kind among the data. From being forced to take part in the crimes, she changed to taking the lead.—Why didn't she ask for help before… What are you laughing about?"

"Men, women, children her own age, who could she choose?—Men were disgusting 'clients,' women were 'sluts' who compelled and abused her, and as for children, after Deng Ying died, she was extremely afraid, instinctively avoided starting close relationships with children her own age… A depressed and unsocial little girl, developing early, and unluckily rather good-looking—would she be welcomed by her classmates? Children have even more tricks than adults when it comes to bullying. And then, she envied and hated those girls so much for their easily-come-by dresses."

In the last few pages of Su Xiaolan's notebook, the furious scrawls gradually disappeared, because of the appearance of a certain person.

The precocious girl showed an evident liking for him, especially when she unexpectedly found that he was her teacher. Though Wu Guangchuan was also a "client," his disposition was elegant and refined. On the one hand, he was a teacher; on the other, he had undesirable lusts. He was like a plant that had grown in the shade, having a malnourished melancholy. He was infatuated with young girls, cared for and petted Su Xiaolan like a lover.

X/X/19XX Went to his house today. I don't tell the slut about going to his house, and I don't take his money. He comes to my house twice a week, so the slut doesn't make me do any other work.

X/X/19XX I love him. He's my knight.

X/X/19XX He says he wants to adopt me. He's going to think of a way to get me away from the slut.

…

X/X/19XX The slut says he's been coming for half a year, so he's a trusted older customer, and she can give him a "sheep." I bought rat poison. I'm going to kill her!

X/X/19XX The slut really did give him a "sheep," and he actually wanted it! He actually wanted it!! I hate him!!!

X/X/19XX I secretly followed him to Lotus Mountain.

X/X/19XX He's looking at someone else. The little slut was wearing a floral-patterned dress.

X/X/19XX He was in the hospital. I tricked the little slut into coming to his hotel, tied her up into a sheep, and waited for him.

Afterwards came big black blotches of ink and several pages torn right through, the word "hate" appearing messily several times among the smears. The diary was quickly coming to an end. There was no more coherent content.

Among these ink stains was the serial kidnapping case that had shaken the city, the deranged screaming phone calls, and the floral-patterned dresses cut into strips.

The performance clothes she couldn't obtain had branded a floral-patterned dress onto her soul. It hadn't been to satisfy the clients' obsessions; it had only been a girl in a mire, once and again, over and over, repeating the downfall of her soul.

Wu Guangchuan had given her a hand, only to stamp her down into an even more hopeless abyss. Guo Fei's floral-patterned dress, polluted by unlucky coincidence, had become an iron cage around Su Xiaolan's flesh and blood, neither rusting nor breaking over twenty years, shaking off life and death to pass on to the next generation.

The last page of the diary was glued to the plastic cover. Luo Wenzhou felt that there was something else behind it and lightly pulled—a stack of photographs came toppling out onto the ground.

These photographs were both old and new. They must have been taken in secret, in a very small room, the four walls covered with soundproofing, the thick window curtains eternally drawn, the light dim. Each photograph contained a different girl with a different man; the beasts clothed in human skin had been photographed head-on, very easy to identity.

But Fei Du picked up the only blurry photograph.

It was an old photograph, poorly lit; though the photographer's skill level was high, only outlines had been captured. A distant low building appeared in the night, edges merging with the surrounding darkness. The camera lens looked loftily down, focusing on a flowerbed below. A china rose planted there had withered, leaving a small gap, enough for a spying gaze to invade.

A skinny girl was pressed against the glass, both hands helplessly laid on the window, her face a blur. Behind her was the shadow of a man—

"Did Xu Wenchao secretly take this of Wu Guangchuan and Su Xiaolan when he was renting a room at the Sunward Estate?"

At the same time, Tao Ran and a group of colleagues opened the door of Apartment 201, Unit 3, Building 8 in the Sunward Estate.

An indescribable smell came rolling out of the empty room.

The thick curtains were drawn. Tao Ran tore them open and saw that the window that had once faced Wu Guangchuan's house had been plastered over with an enormous photograph—

It was a night twenty years ago.

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Author's note:

(17) Printing term, 1/64 of folio size or approximately 2" x 3."