Chapter 69

"Master Fei." Zhou Huaixin rather stiffly turned his head and forced a smile. "What did you say?"

Fei Du looked back. People were chaotically going back and forth all over the place, and no one was looking their way, so he closed the bathroom door. The lights in the bathroom were dim, deepening the lines of his eyes and brow, making him look like a sharp ink painting.

"Don't pretend. I didn't just meet you yesterday." Fei Du leaned against the door, very relaxed, looking at Zhou Huaixin with an almost smile. "You only saw your dad a few times a year, and you never cared at all about your family's property or any legitimate or illegitimate sons. From yesterday up to now, I think the only true words that came out of your mouth were what you said when you snatched President Hu's phone."

Zhou Huaixin turned and backed up against the sink, his expression grim, looking at him silently.

"Even if Yang Bo really was your dad's illegitimate son, he wouldn't need to put on such a production to be acknowledged. With your old man calmly lying in the morgue, he could easily have come back to this country and requested a judicial appraisal of paternity. What's he getting at with all this kidnapping and murder? Does he have nothing better to do?"

"Could he get a judicial appraisal just because he wanted to? Are you acting like me and my brother are dead? We'd burn the old man and not give him a single hair." Zhou Huaixin sneered. "Wasn't he doing it to get money? For someone from such a humble background, he's pretty quick."

"Those three funds being revealed online is enough to land your company in the thick of it. Even if it's false, an investigation will still hurt you deeply. If he was really after your family's money, he wouldn't harm others without benefiting himself like this."

"I already said that I'm only a painter. I don't understand you businessmen and your business." Zhou Huaixin spread his hands impatiently. Skinny as he was, he tried to squeeze past Fei Du to open the door and go out.

Fei Du grabbed his wrist as he reached for the door handle. Zhou Huaixin gave a start, feeling that Fei Du's ice-cold fingers were like a snake, tightly clamped onto his pulse, beating wildly beneath his unmoved appearance. While Fei Du was rather of the "idle of limb, unable to tell grains apart" type, he still had enough strength to use against a sesame stalk like Zhou Huaixin. With a light shove, he pressed him against a nearby cabinet.

Zhou Huaixin said, "You…"

"Shh—" Fei Du raised a finger, interrupting him. "Quiet, the police are outside.—As soon as that unfortunate chauffeur opened his mouth, I knew it wasn't Yang Bo. You and I both know how these things work. When you buy someone to act as a scapegoat, you don't leave evidence. A few years on, you give him more money than he'd earn in his life, and when he gets out, he'll still have his job. It isn't a death sentence; it's about the same as being sent out on assignment to an inhospitable location for a few years. No scapegoat is going to give up his master. We don't have any special system to protect implicated witnesses in our country. Even if he gives up his master, he won't necessarily escape criminal responsibility. Never mind sitting in jail for no reason, his family members will be impacted, too. This isn't established practice."

Zhou Huaixin squeezed out a few words with difficulty. "I don't know about your established practices."

"Don't play dumb." Fei Du shook his head. "When we'd just guessed that your brother might be in a truck, the kidnappers immediately abandoned caution and stopped keeping the camera close to hide where they were. Was that because they thought the police were too stupid? They were afraid we wouldn't find the traitor, and suspicion wouldn't fall on Yang Bo?"

Zhou Huaixin laughed coldly. "You mean someone framed Yang Bo. Kidnap my big brother, and at the same time get rid of the illegitimate son—I understand. However you look at it, I'm the only one who would benefit. So I'm a suspect now? Then why don't you tell the police?"

Fei Du loosened the hand holding him and looked at him calmly.

"Go on." While Zhou Huaixin's voice was very low, his face had recovered its deranged carelessness. He laughed flippantly at Fei Du. "Lakes of wine and forests of meat don't breed any kind of feeling. I don't blame you. If I go to prison because of you, I'll have plenty to boast about when I get out. It's a whole grand game, and I'm a mighty performance artist!"

Fei Du sighed gently.

Grinning, Zhou Huaixin asked, "What are you sighing about? Regretting you haven't slept with me yet?"

Fei Du said, "I couldn't stomach you."

"Naturally." Even in these circumstances, Zhou Huaixin still had leisure to be self-satisfied. "Your out-of-date aesthetic sensibilities certainly couldn't stomach my type of avant-garde…"

"I couldn't stomach your type of thinking so highly of yourself, playing the fool while being a real idiot," Fei Du flatly interrupted him. "Zhou-xiong, is your big brother really Zhou Junmao's own son? How good is your relationship with him?"

The smile on Zhou Huaixin's face stiffened at once. His hands tightened on the door of the cabinet behind him. "Strange, Master Fei. You just said I kidnapped my big brother and framed that son-of-a-bitch, killing two birds with one stone. So why have you switched to asking how good our relationship is? Babbling nonsensically like this… Are you swooning at my beauty?"

Fei Du didn't respond to his dried-up joke. He straightforwardly said, "When the kidnappers issued the first question and you snatched President Hu's phone, his phone was logged into your official website's back-end."

"That's right. Amazing, Hu Zhenyu was pretending to be so calm and steady, but actually he was already prepared to expose the matter of the illegitimate son." Zhou Huaixin clicked his tongue. "Of course I'd try to preempt him. The more real feeling I displayed, the more I'd avoid suspicion…"

"When I warned you to be careful about answering the kidnappers, you clearly listened to me." Fei Du ignored him entirely, continuing to declaim. "But in the blink of an eye, there you went. Why?"

Zhou Huaixin raised a slender brow. "You're asking me…"

"Because you'd seen Hu Zhenyu's movements," Fei Du said almost inaudibly. "Your company's management is standard. The official website must have someone specially responsible for it. There must be fixed procedures for posting any news. At any rate, it wouldn't be President Hu personally looking after it. The first time he personally logged into the back-end, it didn't accord with convention. This bit of unconventionality confirmed certain of your guesses…"

Zhou Huaixin's expression hung on his face like a mask, not moving a muscle.

Fei Du paused briefly. "Your brother wasn't kidnapped at all."

Zhou Huaixin's breath congealed. After a good while, he gave a sharp laugh and shrugged as hard as he could, nearly swinging his skinny neck off his shoulders. "President Fei, do you mean that all that bustle you and the police did just now was only going along with some play-acting?"

For a moment the two of them were silent. The screen of Fei Du's phone lit up, and the ringtone was about to play. He hung up without even looking. "Why would two kidnappers who knew how use business competition to stir up trouble, who knew how to manufacture public opinion online, turn into turtles without shells as soon as they lost contact with the Hengda Conglomerate and stop taking any precautions not to be traced?

"The Baisha River Valley is large and sparsely populated. After grabbing the hostage on the road from the airport, it makes sense to choose that place to swap vehicles, but why would they continue to linger there?

"The Baisha River is already within Yan City's jurisdiction. Entering the city from there, they wouldn't be investigated or have their cards checked, and the roadblocks were only put up after you called the police. There was an interval of at least two hours between your brother getting into the kidnappers' car and you calling the police. Why didn't the kidnappers drive into the city, find a place with enough privacy and space? Is the person behind the scenes who plotted this kidnapping so poor he rattles? Can't he afford to rent a house?

"Was the traitor planted for us to catch so that the kidnappers could get away in time, or to notify us to rescue your brother in time? Your brother, faced with a vicious kidnapper, didn't try to threaten him or bribe him. He carefully answered with everything he knew about the funds. Was that because he was afraid the Zhou Clan didn't have enough lawsuits on its hands?

"Two armed kidnappers hold a hostage entirely powerless to resist them, they're driving a truck in the wilderness, and the hostage doesn't manage to die and even gets smoothly rescued by the police?"

Zhou Huaixin, gone pale, made a futile effort to speak. "If you must say that…"

Fei Du interrupted him. "Of course, the kidnappers contacted the Hengda Conglomerate. Hengda took the lead in misleading the police and promoting this thing. The kidnappers themselves didn't understand anything. You could say that the kidnappers chose the Baisha River because they were familiar with the Baisha River Valley. Anyway, the way it looks now, we won't be able to catch the two of them to verify. You could also say that your brother saw that the kidnappers' goal was to ruin the Zhou Clan, and he carefully cooperated in order to save his life. And you could say that he didn't die in the end because of luck, his own good fortune—" Speaking one syllable at a time, he said, "But with so many coincidences all put together, adding in President Hu's suspicious behavior—forgive my limited imagination, Zhou-xiong, but this really is the only possibility I can think of."

Zhou Huaixin's expression fluctuated several times. After a long time, he said, "I was wrong, President Fei. Yours is the most impressive imagination. I concede defeat."

He put up a hand to stop Fei Du's words. "Is Yang Bo all that? According to what you've said, Zhou Huaijin kidnapped himself, endured the knife and endured drowning, didn't stint to discredit his own company, all for the sake of framing an illegitimate son? Master Fei, is he crazy, or are you crazy?"

"Zhou-xiong, do you really believe Yang Bo is your father's illegitimate son? Do you really believe that if there were such an 'undiscovered talent,' your father, for the sake of such immaterial things as his dead wife and his reputation, would endure the humiliation of keeping him by his side without daring to acknowledge him?"

"If he's not an illegitimate son, how could a stupid cunt like Yang Bo get to his present position?" Zhou Huaixin suddenly raised his voice. "Prostituting himself? What bad taste the old man had."

"I also want to know," said Fei Du, "whether that paternity report was really identifying Yang Bo. You don't know, right? Your brother showed it to you."

"You're saying that under my dad and the Venerable Zheng's treacherous noses, he made up an illegitimate son out of whole cloth." Zhou Huaixin laughed and shook his head. He put a hand on Fei Du's shoulder. "Forget it, you're better off saying I kidnapped my big brother. It's very kind of you, but you don't need to exonerate me. I'm not going to give myself up. If the police are clever enough, then they can come and investigate. If you want to report me, then go ahead. I don't care.—Ah, gaining promotion and wealth at your dad's death really is one of the three great joys of human life."

Having said this, Zhou Huaixin shook Fei Du off, pulled open the bathroom door, and swaggered out, not looking in the least like a schemer who had just been exposed. He announced with deep self-satisfaction to the police looking all over for him, "You want me to cooperate with the investigation, right? Fine, I'll go back to the bureau with you in a bit. What's the rush, let me take off my makeup first!"

Fei Du slowly walked out of the corner bathroom, looking thoughtfully at Zhou Huaixin's sinuous back.

Just then, a hand patted his left shoulder. As soon as Fei Du turned his head, the hand grabbed his shoulder, pulling him so he stumbled.

"Having secret talks alone in the bathroom with a person involved in the case?" Luo Wenzhou said, staring fixedly into his eyes. "You'd better give me a written explanation.—Also, why didn't you pick up when I called you just now?"

Fei Du smiled, avoiding the larger issue. "Catching me cheating, Captain Luo?"

"Fei Du." Luo Wenzhou sighed, suddenly reaching out and taking Fei Du by the chin, very quietly saying into his ear, "Do you know you're very annoying like this?"

Somewhat astonished, Fei Du raised his eyebrows.

"When you're holding a chicken leg and aren't planning on splitting it, don't go around smacking your lips in front of people. It's one of the most basic rules of behavior. Didn't an adult ever teach you?" As he spoke, Luo Wenzhou's hand slid down towards Fei Du's waist. It seemed that he touched him, but at the same time it seemed that he only gestured, not making contact at all. The word "adult" was spoken very quietly, a light breath brushing Fei Du's ear, seeming to carry a trace of huskiness. It struck Fei Du's eardrum, the lingering sound reverberating ceaselessly.

"Come and do some real work if you can," Luo Wenzhou released him. "Carelessly fooling around makes you particularly dull.—Let's go. Time to get off work."

Fei Du involuntarily tugged at his own collar. Then, as if nothing had happened, he asked, "If Yang Bo refuses to acknowledge it, I suppose the chauffeur's confession alone can't be taken as evidence?"

"It can't," said Luo Wenzhou. "Our next step is to thoroughly investigate all of the chauffeur's communications and financial circumstances, then go right through Yang Bo. We'll get Zhou Huaijin to give a statement, draw portraits of the kidnappers and release wanted notices. Whether we can get to the bottom of this case may even depend on how great our colleagues next door investigating the Zhou Clan are. Perhaps we'll be able to, and perhaps it'll come to nothing."

Fei Du put his hands in his pockets. "That doesn't sound like something the person in charge of the Main Criminal Investigation Team should say."

"Then what should I say? I'll absolutely bring all crimes to justice?" Luo Wenzhou stopped and waved a hand. "I'm not Black Cat Detective. I couldn't back up that kind of boast. Like this case. Perhaps in the end, when you've gotten everything you can from it, you'll find that the way the circumstances stand, you don't have enough evidence to throw anyone in jail for a few years. Isn't that right?"

Fei Du smiled in tacit understanding.

"Of course, there are still some things that make me pretty angry when I think about them." Luo Wenzhou's gaze fell on him. "If you can tell me something useful, for the moment I won't look too closely into what you were doing behind closed doors with Zhou Huaixin."

"All right, then. I advise you to first keep everyone involved in the country, especially Zheng Kaifeng," said Fei Du. "Then check on Zhou Huaijin and Yang Bo's blood relationships with Zhou Junmao."

Luo Wenzhou snapped his fingers and quickly walked off.

Fei Du took out his phone—he hadn't had time to look before. The internet was roiling with waves from the stone Zhou Huaijin had dropped. There were sandbanks hidden under the great waves, and countless hands were fishing around for anything they could get.

As he read, he sank into thought, staring blankly for a while. Then he made a call. Lowering his voice, he said to the person on the phone, "Investigate Yang Bo for me, especially his family background. The more minute the better."