Chen Zheng stopped in his tracks. “Four people missing? Which four?”
Huo Yewei’s villa was both the crime scene and the police’s temporary base of operations. Police vehicles were parked outside, and equipment had been brought in. A work tent had been set up in the courtyard. A group of people dressed as tourists sat or stood inside, looking rather nervous.
Chen Zheng had hurried up the mountain so quickly that he was a little out of breath. He stopped Li Shu. “Captain Li, where’s Ming Han?”
Li Shu looked close to tearing his hair out. “Teacher Chen, you’ve come at just the right time! I thought we wouldn’t find anything by screening the tourists, but four people have actually vanished. Their companions can’t explain what happened either. It’s too strange! I’m worried there might be other cases involved.”
“Ming Han told me.” Chen Zheng noticed that the tourists in the tent were separated into two distinct groups. On one side were young people in their twenties, all with lowered heads and preoccupied expressions. On the other were people in their fifties and sixties. Though hardly young, they were far more energetic than the younger group, loudly demanding to know how much longer the police intended to keep them there.
Chen Zheng spotted Ming Han, surrounded by the older tourists. As he approached, a woman with permed curls pointed at him and shouted, “Another police officer! Let me ask you something. Are you planning to throw us in prison? We don’t even know that young fellow. We came here to celebrate the New Year, and now we’re being interrogated? It’s freezing here! Who’s responsible if we fall ill?”
Ming Han quickly stepped in front of Chen Zheng and addressed the woman. “Sister Zhou, two people from your group are missing, aren’t they? If you help us find them, we can account for everyone and report back properly. Doesn’t that make sense?”
The woman was Zhou Xia. She thought his argument made no sense at all. “I’ve already told you I don’t know where they’ve gone! How else am I supposed to help?”
Chen Zheng gently moved Ming Han back. “Sister Zhou, how about this? You can return to your accommodations and rest for now. The wind blows straight through this place. You really could catch a chill.”
Zhou Xia still refused. “Isn’t going back just another kind of prison? I want to go down the mountain!”
Chen Zheng’s expression turned serious. “That won’t do. If you absolutely won’t go back to your accommodations, you can spend a couple of days at the bureau instead.”
Ming Han couldn’t help looking at Chen Zheng. Zhou Xia’s group had not been ordered by the police to sit out here in the cold. Two members of their older tour group had gone missing, so police had asked the rest to stay at their guesthouse. They had come here themselves to demand an explanation and refused to leave. Yet Chen Zheng had persuaded them to go back in just a few sentences.
Zhou Xia plainly did not want to go to a police station. Perhaps people of her generation regarded being taken to one as deeply disgraceful. She left the tent with two companions, grumbling all the while. Li Shu promptly assigned officers to accompany them.
Chen Zheng glanced toward the younger group and was about to question them when Ming Han caught his arm. “Bro, come over here. I’ll explain.”
Inside the villa, Ming Han brought up footage from the earlier screening. “The four missing people include Dong Jing, the one with the ponytail. He’s twenty-six, from Nanshan City, my hometown. Then there’s Zhu Xiaodi, the one with the buzz cut, the same age, from Luocheng. They both came to Junan City for a former colleague’s wedding. These are their other colleagues. The blonde is Si Wei. She was remarkably active at Huo Yewei’s concert yesterday afternoon. I thought she was a little too active.”
Chen Zheng turned to look at Si Wei in the tent. Her profile was turned toward them, and it was impossible to tell what she was thinking.
Ming Han continued. “The long-haired woman is Du Ying. The bespectacled man is Zhang Pin, and the last one is Li Ren. Like Si Wei and the missing Dong Jing and Zhu Xiaodi, they studied law and interned for a while at Yongshen Law Firm in Junan City after graduating. Not one of them stayed. Si Wei returned to Tongzhou City and now works in marketing planning. Du Ying works as in-house legal counsel for a food company, so she’s at least still using her degree. Li Ren sells decorating materials online. Zhang Pin is a real-estate agent. Apart from Zhang Pin, none of them lives in Junan anymore, and the others aren’t even in the same city.”
Before Ming Han finished the basic rundown, Chen Zheng sensed something wrong. “Six interns, not one stayed at the firm. Only one is still doing legal work. If they were twenty-two during their internship, it’s been four years. They’re in different cities and industries now. Could a few months interning together really have made them close enough to attend a former colleague’s wedding and then go away together for New Year?”
Ming Han nodded. “When I first noticed Si Wei, I thought I might be imagining things. But now Dong Jing and Zhu Xiaodi have vanished, this whole group seems even stranger.”
There were too few clues to draw conclusions. Chen Zheng asked, “What about the other two?”
“Gong Xiaoyang and Lu Feng. They, along with Zhou Xia, whom you just saw, are former workers at Huyun Tea Factory. They’ve known one another for decades and arranged to celebrate New Year together.” Ming Han paused. “Both groups are staying at the same guesthouse, Shanshui House.”
“Huyun Tea Factory?” Chen Zheng found the name familiar. Then it came back to him. “Didn’t Hu Changquan once work at Huyun Tea Factory?”
In the explosion at Canyang Nursing Home in Nanshan City, the director, Hu Changquan, had been killed. When the police investigated his background, they learned he had worked at Huyun Tea Factory. His only child went missing, his wife died, and he left the place that held such painful memories to begin a new life. Instead, Zhao Zhi, secretary to the tycoon Luo Yingqiang, had exploited him and installed him as a puppet director.
The police had also learned that Hu Changquan’s child was not the only one to go missing from Huyun Tea Factory during that period. But his son’s disappearance happened in Junan City. Once Nanshan investigators established that it was unrelated to several serious local cases, they had not pursued it further.
At Chen Zheng’s mention of it, Ming Han remembered too. “I’ll ask them about the old disappearances in more detail later.”
Quite a few police officers stood outside Shanshui House. Tourists staying at other guesthouses had gathered to watch. In no time at all, word spread that four guests from here had vanished, and speculation flew.
“Could those two missing young men be the killers? I heard they even took pictures outside that celebrity’s house!”
“Then why are two old men missing as well?”
“Maybe the old men discovered something and were killed to keep them quiet?”
“Hey, don’t underestimate old men! They’re only in their sixties, not eighty. A man that age still has plenty of strength to kill someone!”
Zhou Xia and the others were escorted back to Shanshui House. The proprietor’s face was crumpled like a dishcloth as he stopped Li Shu. “What on earth is going on?”
Li Shu glanced back and ushered him toward the front desk. “Pull up all the surveillance footage from the last several days. Every bit of it.”
The proprietor complied, muttering, “You don’t think I’ve actually been hosting criminals, do you? They all looked like perfectly ordinary tourists to me.”
In Li Shu’s field of vision, Zhou Xia, Wang Wanjian, and Zeng Hong sat with their backs to him on the lobby sofas. Zhou Xia and Zeng Hong whispered to each other. Wang Wanjian sat motionless as a statue.
Li Shu also thought they looked like ordinary tourists. If Huo Yewei had not been murdered, there would have been no reason to investigate them this thoroughly. Unlike Dong Jing’s group, they did not even know who Huo Yewei was, whereas Dong Jing, Zhang Pin, Si Wei, and Du Ying had all visited his house.
Pointing at the surveillance screen, the proprietor said, “Look. Sister Zhou’s group arrived on the sixteenth. They were noisy and boisterous, always making a racket, and seemed to get along wonderfully. They only spent a little while upstairs before coming down and taking over the lobby. Some younger guests had been playing cards here, but they got driven away by the noise.”
Li Shu could see that the missing Gong Xiaoyang was the most carefully dressed of the older group. He wore a checked suit and a hat. While everyone else made a racket, he stood to one side watching with a smile. Lu Feng was his opposite, short, fat, unkempt, and as loud as Zhou Xia, resembling a walking lump of grease.
The five went everywhere together. On the night of the sixteenth, after coming back from sightseeing, they even drank with the proprietor in the lobby.
On the afternoon of the seventeenth, Si Wei and her five companions arrived to check in. Zhou Xia’s group was playing cards and making such a din that Si Wei covered her ears.
The guesthouse’s surveillance was limited, with plenty of blind spots. Although a camera covered the courtyard gate, guests did not have to use the main entrance to come and go.
As Li Shu advanced the footage, Dong Jing, Zhu Xiaodi, Si Wei, Du Ying, and Zhang Pin came downstairs. After Si Wei asked the front desk for directions to Huo Yewei’s villa, Zhu Xiaodi stayed to watch people play cards and the other four left. Li Ren remained upstairs until evening.
Nothing seemed unusual on the seventeenth. On the eighteenth, however, neither Gong Xiaoyang nor Lu Feng appeared again on camera. Beginning around noon, Zhu Xiaodi, Li Ren, Dong Jing, Zhang Pin, Du Ying, and Si Wei left the guesthouse separately. When the others returned that evening, Dong Jing and Zhu Xiaodi were not among them.
Li Shu asked, “How long did they book their rooms for?”
The proprietor found the reservations. “Dong Jing’s group is due to check out today, the nineteenth. The older folks have more free time. They’re staying until tomorrow.”
“Officer Ming, when can we go home? My holiday’s over. I have work!” Si Wei was anxious. “We’re all working stiffs. We’ll be in trouble if we can’t get back.”
Chen Zheng asked, “When exactly did Dong Jing and Zhu Xiaodi disappear?”
“Well…” Si Wei looked toward Du Ying, who gave a slight shake of her head.
“Who shared rooms with them?” Chen Zheng asked.
Zhang Pin and Li Ren exchanged looks. Li Ren said, “I shared a suite with Dong Jing. Zhang Pin was with Zhu Xiaodi.”
Chen Zheng first visited Dong Jing and Li Ren’s suite. It had two bedrooms and a sitting room. Each man had a bedroom, with Dong Jing’s farther from the entrance.
Li Ren said they had been excited after arriving on the seventeenth, and the incident involving the celebrity being hit with a bottle kept them up late. It was past two in the morning on the eighteenth before he closed his bedroom door, and Dong Jing stayed up even later. When Li Ren woke that morning, Dong Jing’s door was still shut. Assuming he was asleep, Li Ren got ready and went downstairs alone, played cards with other guests for a while, got bored, then wandered through the shopping street on his own. At almost five, he went down the mountain to watch the fireworks by the lake.
Chen Zheng moved to Zhang Pin and Zhu Xiaodi’s suite. This one was spacious, with three bedrooms, a living room, and a balcony suitable for barbecues or parties. Zhang Pin hurried to explain that his room was nearest the balcony and Zhu Xiaodi’s was next to the entrance. He had played video games until after four in the morning on the eighteenth with headphones on, so he heard nothing outside. When he left at noon, he had not seen Zhu Xiaodi either.
Chen Zheng walked around. “You booked this place for a party, didn’t you? Why is there no sign you held one?”
The sofas and coffee table were spotless. There were no signs of barbecued meat, beer, or even snacks.
“Well…” Zhang Pin scratched his head and looked at the others. “That was the original plan. But maybe we’re getting older. We can’t party like we used to. We traveled a long way to get here, and we were pretty tired, so… everyone just rested.”
Si Wei said, “The guesthouse held a whole-roasted-lamb banquet in the courtyard, so we hung out there instead. By the time we went back to our rooms, everyone was about ready for bed.”
Zhang Pin added that the sun had been bright at noon on the eighteenth. He used ingredients he had brought to make himself a bowl of noodles, stayed in his room a while, then noticed something strange when he went downstairs.
“What was strange?” Chen Zheng asked.
Zhang Pin scratched his head. “The lobby was quiet for once. That group of older guests is normally unbelievably noisy.”
“They weren’t in the lobby?”
“Only that old fellow surnamed Wang, watching someone else play chess. I didn’t see the women.”
Li Ren raised an eyebrow. “They were all there when I came downstairs.”
Zhang Pin went on. He hadn’t thought much of it and followed the other tourists down the mountain. After spending the day by the lake until dark, he ran into Si Wei and Du Ying and they went to eat lamb hotpot and grilled fish together.
Li Ren added that he and Zhang Pin had met up by the lake sometime after six.
Chen Zheng turned to Si Wei. There was no need to ask about her movements that afternoon. Surveillance had recorded them clearly. Si Wei tugged Du Ying’s clothes. “Dudu, when did you leave? I was sleeping so deeply I didn’t even know.”
Du Ying brushed her hair aside and looked earnestly at Chen Zheng. “A little after ten, I think. I couldn’t sleep anymore, so I went out for a walk. When I came back, Weiwei was still asleep, and then I went down the mountain.”
Zhang Pin was getting anxious. “Officer Chen, I have to get back to work too. When can you let us leave? If it’s really impossible, I’d better request leave now.”
Their accounts left Chen Zheng with more questions. Ming Han had already told him their backgrounds. The six had all left Yongshen Law Firm yet agreed to spend New Year together, which was strange enough. More peculiar still, they had arranged to spend the afternoon of the eighteenth together and then eat lamb hotpot and grilled fish and watch the fireworks that evening, yet they had all gone off on their own that afternoon.
Si Wei had a plausible reason. Anyone might change plans if a favorite celebrity unexpectedly put on a concert. But what about Du Ying, Zhang Pin, and Li Ren?
They were supposed to be a small, close-knit group, yet they left the guesthouse at different times and had not contacted one another before evening. No one could actually corroborate where they claimed to have been or what they were doing.
Chen Zheng imagined taking a trip with the criminal-investigation squad. If someone failed to appear at the agreed time, that person’s phone would certainly be ringing nonstop.
He studied the four again. Si Wei and Zhang Pin were fretting about missing work, while Du Ying and Li Ren remained composed and gave little away. Suddenly, he sensed danger. The disappearances of Dong Jing and Zhu Xiaodi might be linked to Huo Yewei, or they might involve an even more mysterious case.
“You had planned to tour the lake together on the eighteenth,” Chen Zheng asked. “Why did you all end up going separately?”
Si Wei answered at once. “I already told you. I went to see Lord Huo.”
“And you?” Chen Zheng asked Du Ying.
“I knew Weiwei would go to the concert. With her gone, it felt a little awkward for me to spend time alone with the men. It was my first time at Junan Lake, so I was happy enough to wander around by myself.”
Chen Zheng seemed to accept that explanation and turned to the two men. “And you?”
“I…” Zhang Pin said. “Well, I didn’t think that much about it. There were crowds by the lake and the signal was poor. I couldn’t be bothered taking my phone out.”
Li Ren’s answer was unexpected. “We’re not really friends. I only came because I didn’t know how to refuse. Given the choice, I’d rather be by myself.”
Si Wei looked stunned. “Brother Ren, you…”
Li Ren said, “Sorry, but the police are investigating a case. Huo Yewei was killed. You and Dong Jing went to see him, and you’re a fan of his. Now Dong Jing and Zhu Xiaodi have disappeared as well. I don’t want to get involved in your affairs. I just want Officer Chen to know I’m not particularly close to any of you, and I never went to see Huo Yewei.”
Zhang Pin was so furious he grabbed Li Ren by the collar. “What do you mean? Do you think we killed Huo Yewei? Is that why you’re trying to distance yourself from us?”
Li Ren shoved him away, his expression cold. “I don’t know whether you did anything. I only know that if you hadn’t invited me here, the police wouldn’t be questioning me and I wouldn’t be missing work.”
“Fuck!” Zhang Pin snapped. “So that’s the kind of person you really are!”
Si Wei was on the verge of tears. “Stop fighting. Brother Ren, I never knew you thought of us that way.”
“Think whatever you want,” Li Ren said.
Du Ying spoke. “Li Ren isn’t entirely wrong. We… really don’t need to force a friendship to continue.”
Si Wei’s voice trembled. “How did it come to this? Is everything my fault? Is it my fault Dong Jing and Zhu Xiaodi disappeared too? If you didn’t want to come, why didn’t you just say no? If you’d refused, could I have tied you up and dragged you here?”
Chen Zheng stepped back to stand beside Ming Han. The group in front of him seemed to be playing a game of friendship. But now that members had gone missing and everyone had become tangled in a murder investigation, the game could no longer go on.
They argued a little longer, then gradually realized how far they had lost their composure and fell silent.
“Let’s speak separately,” Chen Zheng suggested. His gaze passed over all four faces. Du Ying appeared the calmest. After a few seconds, he said, “Li Ren, shall we start with you?”
Li Ren followed Chen Zheng inside the villa and hesitated at the threshold. Chen Zheng asked, “Afraid?”
Li Ren shook his head. Chen Zheng glanced toward the stairs. “The body has already been removed. There are recording devices here to make sure the questioning is conducted properly. Have a seat.”
No sooner had Li Ren sat down than Chen Zheng asked, “You work in e-commerce now? Your own business or for someone else?”
Li Ren paused. “I run it with a friend, so I suppose it’s our own business. Why are you asking?”
Chen Zheng picked up a form from the officer taking notes and showed it to him. “I need to understand some basic facts about the person I’m questioning, don’t I? You studied law and interned at Yongshen. How did you end up selling things online?”
“Law is a tough business. Small firms have no money. Big firms are all about connections, and there’s plenty of liability. Why bother?”
“How long did you intern at Yongshen?”
Li Ren was silent a moment. “Nearly six months.”
“That’s not a short time. Did you already think you couldn’t make a career of it?”
Li Ren looked away. “Something like that. I was young and inexperienced. You have to put up with hardship for years, and I didn’t want to.”
Chen Zheng changed the subject. “Which of the others did you know first?”
“Dong Jing. We even rented a place together back then.”
“I see. You must have been pretty close. How did you get to know Si Wei and the rest?”
Li Ren recalled that in the first semester of his senior year, he passed Yongshen’s written test and interview. By the time he officially started as an intern, Du Ying was already helping lawyers with their cases. She was in the same graduating class as him, half a year younger, and had used connections to start interning during the summer. The senior lawyers thought highly of her, saying she learned quickly and could put anything they taught her into practice almost immediately.
They were all working in commercial law, and naturally competed with each other. Yongshen was one of the highest-ranked firms in all of Han Province. It hired many interns every year, but not everyone could stay.
Li Ren came from an ordinary family and was determined to secure a position at Yongshen. Without consciously meaning to, he began to see the talented Du Ying as a rival.
Had Si Wei and Zhang Pin not joined later, he might never have interacted with Du Ying outside work before leaving the firm.
Si Wei was incredibly lively. On her first day, she arrived with her hair dyed green. Human Resources gave her a dressing-down, and only then did she dye it black again. Li Ren wondered how she had managed to get hired. Was she the child of some senior figure? That possibility made him careful around her.
Si Wei thought that since they were all commercial-law interns of the same year, they ought to do things together. She constantly organized group activities and insisted on dragging people along for meals and after-work outings. Zhang Pin was not very bright or capable but loved eating, drinking, and having fun, so he enthusiastically answered her calls.
Li Ren had assumed Du Ying would look down on someone as noisy as Si Wei. Instead, Du Ying was surprisingly fond of her. If Si Wei called her to go to the restroom together, Du Ying would even put down her work to accompany her.
To Li Ren, it was simply incomprehensible.
Dong Jing was worse. He had fallen for Si Wei, and wherever Si Wei went, Dong Jing would follow. Yet the two never officially dated, preferring to maintain an ambiguous flirtation.
Everyone from their intake gravitated around Si Wei. If Li Ren failed to join them, he would stand out as antisocial. Deep down, he was proud and solitary, but he did not want to show it then. He knew he was only an insignificant intern. He might lose to Du Ying’s abilities and Si Wei’s supposed connections, but he could still compete with Zhang Pin and Dong Jing.
Only after getting to know them did he discover that Si Wei did not have any special connections. The girl who looked as though she might struggle even to pass an exam actually had excellent grades. She had also trained in martial arts since childhood and was a formidable fighter. In their line of work, the ability to protect oneself did not hurt, and her martial-arts skills became her greatest selling point.
Li Ren grew even more conscious of his precarious position. He had no special talents and was not particularly likable. Si Wei could have fun without repercussions, but if he followed her lead, she might drag him off course. Unfortunately, by then their friendship had become supposedly “solid,” and he could find no reason to escape it.
“Si Wei and Dong Jing had that sort of history?” Chen Zheng asked. “In that case, Si Wei had a good chance of staying at Yongshen. Why did she leave too?”
“Ask her. I don’t want to comment on other people’s decisions.”
Chen Zheng nodded. “I will ask all of them. If you were only there six months, you must have left before graduation?”
Li Ren explained that he and Dong Jing had discussed whether they had chosen the wrong direction in life. By then, Dong Jing was no longer flirting with Si Wei and spent more time with Li Ren. Whenever they discussed the future of the industry, the conversation grew increasingly bleak. Dong Jing came from a better-off family and said he wanted to take a six-month gap, either to study abroad or change careers. Li Ren was influenced by him to some extent. Once Dong Jing resigned and moved out, Li Ren stared at the empty rental apartment and gritted his teeth, deciding to leave the profession too.
Si Wei had left before either of them. Du Ying, Zhu Xiaodi, and Zhang Pin had all received offers to stay. Of those three, only Du Ying earned her place entirely on merit, and she remained longest. Zhang Pin was the least capable and merely benefited from vacancies. Perhaps knowing his limitations, he turned the position down. Zhu Xiaodi was a special case: he had connections and had been earmarked for a job long before. But his family was wealthy, and after staying for only a short time, he resigned later that year.
After Li Ren left Yongshen, he found another job quickly and paid little attention to what the others were doing. For the first year or two, they stayed in frequent contact. He talked to Dong Jing most, and learned Dong Jing had started studying painting, overturning his previous life plans completely. Only Du Ying still worked in a legal field, which perhaps suited her personality best. As the years passed, they grew apart. Even Si Wei, once the most enthusiastic of them all, rarely spoke in the group chat anymore.
“Whose wedding brought all of you back together?” Chen Zheng asked.
Li Ren paused. “Lawyer He. He Mei. She supervised us back then.”