Chapter 117

Fei Du perhaps bore the burden of being an unknown urban legend—his child abduction skills were consummate; with a few words, he'd duped Xiao Haiyang into his car, and on the way he even unhurriedly got out and bought incense to hang in the car, sticking the dreadful solid air freshener into a roadside trash can.

Starting from when he got out of the car, Xiao Haiyang was thinking, "Haven't I told him the address? Can't he use the GPS? Why do I need to act as his human GPS device like this?"

When Fei Du finished his finicky "urgent business," Little Glasses still hadn't worked out what was going on; he hadn't even unbuckled his seatbelt.

"This is much better, right?" The scent of berries dispersed from the white porcelain-wrapped incense like a refreshing wind, washing the air inside the car clean. Fei Du sighed. "I've been driving his car for a few days, and the smell was about to give me a concussion."

Xiao Haiyang wasn't in the mood to discuss these trifling matters of taste with him. He quickly pushed at his glasses and hesitantly put a hand on the door. "You…you should know how to get there now. Could you put me down at the nearest subway entrance?"

Fei Du looked at him in astonishment. "Don't you want to come with me?"

Xiao Haiyang's voice was somewhat dry. "I've been suspended from duty."

"Isn't that just perfect?" Fei Du smiled. "You've been suspended from duty, and I'm not on duty at all. The two of us are both ordinary citizens, privately going to pay a visit to a little girl. It isn't an official police questioning, and we don't need to notify her guardians."

Xiao Haiyang didn't make a sound.

Fei Du shrugged and indeed pulled the car over, stopping at a subway entrance, very carelessly saying, "All right, if you don't want to come, then get out of the car. Sorry to bother you."

People came and went at the subway entrance. A tiny news stand was lying on its back, propping up a stall. A pot of rice for sale was cooking next to it. Xiao Haiyang opened the door a crack, and the winter wind at once sealed his glasses with white mist. Fei Du didn't urge him to stay. He turned on the car radio. The crisp-voiced presenter was just focusing on hot social topics.

"So, right now, 'schoolyard bullying' has once again become a popular subject. I don't know whether any of you experienced unknown grief at school? A friend whose phone number ends in 0039 says, 'This was when I was attending elementary school forty years ago. Once some kids in my class stopped me, called me a son-of-a-bitch, and threw me into the river. There was a thin layer of frost on the river. It was bone-chillingly cold. My leg hasn't been right ever since.'—Wow, it seems that this warmly-felt letter comes from a rather aged friend. His schoolmates really went overboard. Forty years later and he still can't let it go…"

Xiao Haiyang drew back the foot he'd put outside and silently closed the car door. Pulling a long face, he sat upright and attentive in the passenger's seat.

Fei Du observed him and noticed something rather interesting—Xiao Haiyang's center of gravity was always placed forward, his shoulders and back were always tensed, and the gaze behind his lenses was full of vigilance, as though he was prepared to charge out any time and blow up a pillbox or something.

A trace of a smile came into the corners of Fei Du's eyes. He put the car back in gear and stepped on the gas pedal.

"You may not have heard yesterday that Xia Xiaonan gave up some details about the schoolyard bullying." Fei Du didn't seem at all concerned about divulging confidences to him. He glanced out of the corner of his eye at Xiao Haiyang, who was very focused, not daring to let a single word slip by. He continued, "We now suspect that there was sexual assault occurring at Yufen Middle School, but the people involved—both the rapists and the victim—won't acknowledge it."

Xiao Haiyang's eyes widened slightly.

But Fei Du didn't go on. He changed the subject. "If not for that, Wang Xiao would only be an ordinary student who took part in running away. You only dropped by her house once, and yet you can instantly repeat her address accurately. You really do have an eidetic memory."

In fact, even a person with a true eidetic memory, suddenly asked for a completely unimportant minor detail, would still need some time to recall and react. To be able to blurt it out, he not only needed to have a good memory; it also had to be something he was very familiar with.

This was Xiao Haiyang's habit. Each time he received a new case, he'd spend time putting the jumble of information in order, regardless of importance, then thinking it over repeatedly; only then could he fulfill the function of a point-and-speak device, answering whenever someone else asked.

Now, however, Xiao Haiyang only lowered his head somewhat uncomfortably. He didn't explain.

"Truthfully, the average person, if he didn't want to go, would at most have told me the address. He wouldn't have gotten into the car as soon as I said to. So in your heart, you did want to go, isn't that right? You keep saying unpleasant things, but actually you're still concerned about this case, or else you wouldn't have come running the day after being suspended to hand in a self-examination—did you stay up all night writing?"

There were huge dark circles under Xiao Haiyang's eyes. He spoke at last: "Writing the self-examination may not have done any good."

His attempt to leak information had been unsuccessful. This matter could be big or small; it could all come to nothing, or he could be discharged from public employment. It would all depend on how the person responsible handled it. Xiao Haiyang spat out a breath, looking at the steamed-up window, and grinned in self-mockery—even if Luo Wenzhou had originally planned to deal gently with him after the initial harshness, Xiao Haiyang's unpleasant words had probably rendered him beside himself with rage.

Fei Du suddenly asked, "What kind of person was Officer Gu?"

Xiao Haiyang hadn't expected this question from him. He hesitated a moment, racking his brains, but all that came out his mouth was a dry sentence: "…He was a good person, a very good person."

Fei Du didn't interrupt him.

"I don't know what he was after. He was quite grown-up, and he didn't look worse than anyone else, but he didn't have a family. He only lived by himself in a run-down little apartment, and he didn't have any desire to move up. When he got his wages or a bonus, he'd send some to his mother, then scatter the rest to subsidize all kinds of people who had nothing to do with him. He hardly spent any money himself. Sometimes I saw his friends come to visit, tell him off for letting all kinds of informers come over all the time and sponge off him. And he looked after them, too, as though he could cover all of Yan City… but in fact he had nothing himself. He had to ride a bicycle to work."

Books said that great knights worked for the country and the people. But what kind of knight was Gu Zhao?

A poor knight? A scholarly knight? A bachelor knight? Or a knight on a clanking bicycle?

Xiao Haiyang suddenly stopped talking; at the end of his endurance, he covered half his face with his hand. "I wasn't doing it at anyone, I just felt…"

"Felt that you couldn't do anything," Fei Du unhurriedly finished for him. "When you needed him, he boldly stood up, but when he needed you, you were powerless."

These words somehow forced their way into Xiao Haiyang's heart. His shoulders curled up, and the "grown-up" shell he'd rigidly maintained for years suddenly collapsed, revealing the little boy who'd peeked through a crack in the door fourteen years ago.

"I'm sorry…"

"What are you apologizing for?" Fei Du didn't respond to his fluctuating emotions. His cool words knocked Xiao Haiyang back into the present. "Do you really not know what it means that Captain Luo covered up what you did?"

Xiao Haiyang first looked at him blankly. A moment later, he suddenly came around and nearly leapt out of his seat. "He… Oh… Well…"

Fei Du's eyes curved. He parked the car steadily. "We're here. Wang Xiao's home must be here?"

Wang Xiao's home was in an old neighborhood. The building had been a workplace dormitory before; apparently the property rights hadn't been handed over to this day. At the gates was a paralyzed old lady, sunning herself in a wheelchair. The domestic waste, not cleared away in a timely manner, was piled up high beside her.

Anyone with any means, even if it required a loan, had moved away; those remaining were all the frail and elderly. The building and the people both gave off a feeling of deathly constraint. There was a long corridor leading into the small, dormitory-like building. It was poorly lit, dimming people's eyes as soon as they came in. Both sides were lined with little cage-like apartments, with twenty or more to a floor, so densely crowded they made you think of a grid of chicken coops.

Fei Du carefully avoided a puddle of unknown liquid. "I don't think the family can be so badly off that they'd need to live here?"

Xiao Haiyang answered reflexively. "Wang Xiao's parents both have regular work. They work at a public transportation company, and their income is actually all right. They're not idle after work, either. They have part-time jobs to earn some extra spending money. But in order for her to be able to study abroad in the future, they haven't spent any money in all these years."

Fei Du carelessly asked, "Why does she absolutely have to go abroad?"

"Apparently she wasn't keeping up very well in junior middle, and the teachers advised her parents to let her abandon an ordinary senior middle school and go to a vocational college to learn a trade. The parents couldn't stand hearing this. They couldn't accept that their child would follow in their footsteps. They insisted madly that she get higher education. They made a fuss with the teachers. Then they heard about Yufen's international program somewhere and spent the money they'd been accumulating for a down payment on a house to enroll her in it."

Fei Du looked at him.

Xiao Haiyang uneasily avoided his line of sight. "Background investigation I did before we interrogated that female teacher from Yufen.—204. Wang Xiao lives here."

As Xiao Haiyang had said, Wang Xiao's parents were unwilling to waste any time. After leaving the City Bureau, they had probably each gone to their respective part-time job. Her parents were like two donkeys, struggling forward daily with their heads down, regardless of day and night, while the child was like a marionette tied to the donkeys' tails, indifferently dragged along by them towards great expectations.

Fei Du knocked on the door.

After a while, the peephole in the door darkened; there must have been someone standing at the door, carefully looking out, but there was no movement.

"Wang Xiao?" Fei Du spoke very naturally, as though what he was facing wasn't a door but a living girl. "We've come from the City Bureau. You must remember Officer Xiao here?"

There was absolutely no movement inside, but there was still a shadow at the peephole. The girl must still have been standing there.

"We'd like to talk to you for a bit. Is that all right?" Fei Du said.

Wang Xiao still didn't make a sound.

Xiao Haiyang really didn't know how to handle these situations. He looked at Fei Du rather anxiously.

But Fei Du wasn't at all taken aback. "I know there's something you want to say."

They waited a while and heard the door creak open.

But when the door was only open a crack, Fei Du grabbed the handle from the outside and closed the door again, dumbfounding Xiao Haiyang.

"Don't open the door." As he spoke, Fei Du got a pen out of his coat pocket and plucked off an advertising leaflet stuck onto the door. He wrote his phone number on it and put it through the crack under the door. "Haven't the adults taught you not to open the door to strangers when you're alone? It's not safe.—That's my number. Officer Xiao and I are going to your building's backyard to wait. You'll be able to see us out the window. If you want to talk, you can call that number. All right?"

Half of the leaflet with the phone number written on it was stuck under the door, and half was sticking out. After a moment, the paper was slowly pulled inside.

Then Fei Du gave Xiao Haiyang a look and walked out. Xiao Haiyang followed blankly. When they were outside, Xiao Haiyang couldn't resist quietly asking, "Why didn't you let her open the door?"

"When two men who are basically strangers knock on the door, the most generous little girl will hesitate to open up, never mind a girl like Wang Xiao. She would never have let us in. There must have been a chain on the door." The winter wind outside the building swept over Fei Du, and he shivered at once. He took the scarf hanging loosely around his neck and wrapped it around several times. "I figured she wanted to send us away through the crack in the door."

Xiao Haiyang still didn't understand—what was the difference between talking through the door crack and talking over the phone while looking through the window? At least it was warmer in the corridor.

"Sound carries in the hallway, and the neighbors are so closely packed. Who knows how many ears there are on the other side of the wall? Under that kind of nervous strain, Wang Xiao wouldn't say anything. If I give her my number, the initiative is hers.—Also, houses like hers usually have burglar-proof windows. Looking out of the apartment will add to her sense of security. The door people walk through every day doesn't have the same influence."

Xiao Haiyang nodded his head like an earnest elementary school student at Fei Du's every full stop. He'd entirely forgotten that when Fei Du had kept down the information he'd leaked with a single phone call, he'd inwardly cursed him for his shamelessness.

The two of them came to the empty backyard. When they were still approximately thirty or forty meters from the building, Fei Du stood still, not coming any closer. Sure enough, not long after he'd stopped, Fei Du's phone began to ring.

Fei Du looked up. There was a curtain over the back window of 204. There were some unnatural folds at one corner of the thick curtain; evidently there was someone hiding behind it, pulling the curtain aside a bit to peek out. He split the phone's earbuds with Xiao Haiyang and picked up.

"Hello…" The girl's somewhat hoarse voice came over the headphones. Though she was still tense, at any rate she was speaking voluntarily. "My parents already went to the City Bureau this morning."

"We saw them," Fei Du said, "but I still hoped we could speak to you a little."

"I…I don't have anything to say," Wang Xiao said quietly. "I've answered everything I should have. I don't know about anything else. If there's nothing else, you can leave."

Fei Du had said that the phone could relieve Wang Xiao's anxiety, but it was adding to Xiao Haiyang's. He was nearly forced into a phobia of the telephone, thinking that if he breathed wrong, she would hang up the phone, and he wouldn't even have a chance to be rebuked for it.

But Fei Du didn't directly ask her the main question. He only said, "You knew that Xia Xiaonan was chosen as this year's 'deer,' and that if she didn't run, she'd be bullied for a period of time in the future?"

"…I know. Feng Bin said so."

Fei Du said, "Were you on good terms with Feng Bin and Xia Xiaonan? Were you friends?"

"No," Wang Xiao said after a silence. "I'd just said a few words to Xia Xiaonan. We were acquaintances. I wasn't familiar with Feng Bin. I'm very unsociable at school. I'm not likable. I don't have friends."

Fei Du raised his head slightly, smiling towards the closed window of 204. "Since you were only acquaintances, why were you willing to run away with them? If Xia Xiaonan took your place, the people bullying you would have shifted their attention to her, and you'd have been doing much better. Why didn't you tell anyone when you found out they were running away?"

Wang Xiao was silent, but, contrary to Xiao Haiyang's expectations, she didn't hang up.

Fei Du breathed out white steam and slowly said, "Sometimes, a person's thoughts aren't free, because external forces are constantly trying to mould you. They force you to accept mainstream tastes, force you to listen to whoever has the loudest voice—even if it doesn't accord with your logic or your character, even if it's entirely against your interests."

Wang Xiao quietly sucked in a breath. She seemed to be crying.

"But as long as the real you still has one last gasp left in her, she'll always be trying to make a weak noise." Fei Du kept his eyes fixed on the curtain of 204, as though that was the girl's face. "Before, she told you to go with Feng Bin and the others, to try to rebel, to try to protect a schoolmate you actually didn't have any particularly good relationship with. And now? Doesn't she want to make the bad guys pay?

"Wang Xiao," Fei Du said quietly, "when those girls locked you out of the dormitory, were you forced to go to the boys' dormitory? Did someone hurt you?"

Xiao Haiyang's heart came up to his throat.

After a long time, the girl on the phone spoke weakly.

She said, "…no."

Xiao Haiyang's heart crashed down so hard it hurt, along with his lungs. Fei Du sighed soundlessly and lowered his eyes.

"I… I…" Wang Xiao was sobbing, unable to catch her breath. "No, but I did hear about that person…"

Fei Du froze at once, then he hastily followed up, "Which person?"

"The person who killed Feng Bin. That…murderer."