Skinner's Box (Fang Mu (Eastern Crimes)) (26 page)

Mr. J lifts his tear-stained face and addresses Mr. Z: "Until you came to find me."

Time seemed to speed up to normal in the room.

Mr. Z only gave a slight nod. None of the others said a word. This stage, called the warm-up stage by Mr. Z, was, in truth, incomparably cruel. Listening to another person's painful experiences was not at all pleasant. But they had no choice; they had made the decision to help each other, and so they had to keep on going until the end.

Mr. J had regained his composure and was wiping his face with a tissue. Gauging his mood, Mr. Z spoke slowly. "Based on the angle of this photograph, we determined that it was taken from the roof of the building opposite yours. We staked it out a few times, but no one showed up. So, as for finding the culprit, I'm afraid we're out of options. However we did find
him
." He placed a handful of photographs on the table in front of Mr. J.

The scenes in the photos were all different, but in each one the subject was the same: a shabbily dressed old man, perhaps in his early 60s. Mr. J spread the photos in an arc and scrutinized them. A few minutes later he exhaled in surprise.

"It's him!" A murderous look flickered across Mr. J's eyes. "And his daughter?"

"That wasn't his daughter." Mr. Z shook his head. "Back then she was just a child prostitute. She died six years ago of tertiary syphilis."

He handed a folder to Mr. J. After leafing through its contents a while, Mr. J seemed a little lost.

Mr. Z read the expression on his face and chuckled. "As far as our plans are concerned, it's enough that we've located him." He pointed at the old man in the photos and his eyes hardened. "Believe you me, very soon you will be able to win back your wife and daughter."

Mr. J stared at the photos. When he glanced up at Mr. Z again, his face was set with determination.

"Well, then what are we waiting for?"

CHAPTER
23
He and "She"

F
ang Mu asked Bian Ping for a day off. He did not say where he was going, and Bian Ping did not ask. He simply barked an order into his cell phone and the vacation was granted.

Two hours later, Fang Mu was driving his jeep onto Jiangbin University campus.

After more than half a year of not having visited the place, the changes to the school were quite noticeable. Several new buildings loomed overhead, making the campus feel more like a cold, heartless construction zone than a quiet shelter for the ivory towers of academia and leisure.

Fang Mu reduced his speed and cruised aimlessly around the campus in his jeep. He drove past the athletics fields, past the dining hall, past the swimming pools. Finally, he parked in front of the South Commons No. 5 Dormitory.

Still sitting in the vehicle, Fang Mu stared out the window at the building in front of him, his eyes moving upward to take in each of its seven stories in turn. It still looked the same as it had; the only differences seemed to lie in the faces of the students entering and exiting. Some of them gawked curiously at the parked jeep; some of them completely ignored it and walked on, heads held high. Perhaps there were those among them who had heard stories about what happened there. For them it might provide their dull, everyday lives with a moment's thrill or a novelty conversation piece. For the people involved, however, it was a memory they would try in vain to forget for the rest of their lives.

The faces of many people from the past suddenly leaped into Fang Mu's mind. He thought of the Du Yu, the Zou Tuanjie, and Liu Jianjun; he thought of Chen Yao, of Meng Fanzhe. Some of them were happily living elsewhere; some of them, however, Fang Mu would rather believe had already returned to the cycle of life and had been reincarnated as fetuses growing in their joyful expecting mothers, or opening innocent eyes to the warmth of infancy.

Whatever you do, please, all of you, forget everything. If any of us absolutely must remember, then let that person be me.

Fang Mu started the engine and drove toward the northeast corner of campus.

The lawn near the basement was overgrown with weeds. Fang Mu remembered how lush the place was in spring and summer; it was probably the largest green area in the entire campus. For whatever reason, whether the university had been unwilling to renovate or just plain afraid to, nothing had changed. The building and grounds still appeared exactly the same as they had when Fang Mu, with Tai Wei leaning on his arm, had walked out that day. Even the withered, flat-lying grass crowding around the entrance was still there. Fang Mu strolled over to the double iron doors, touched their wrought iron mesh screen. His fingers came away icy cold and stained with rust.

"Want to go in and take a look?"

Fang Mu turned at the words.

It was Tai Wei.

The pair of them locked eyes in silence for a while, studying each other, neither showing a hint of surprise. It was as if they had planned for some time to meet there like this.

Tai Wei kicked at the dry grass as he walked over. He leaned his face close to the doors and peered inside through the iron screen.

"Too dark to see anything." He turned his head and looked at Fang Mu. "If you want to go inside and take a look around, I can go get the building manager."

Fang Mu shook his head. "No need."

"I knew you would come back." Tai Wei glanced pensively around the overgrown lawn for a moment. "Whenever I get too stressed out with work, I, too, come back to see this place." He shrugged. "I come here and sit for a while and it relaxes me. I think to myself, if I could survive such evil, witness such brutality as I did back then, well, then what do my worries over these petty vermin amount to by comparison?"

He motioned for Fang Mu to take a seat next to him on a slightly raised piece of turf and lit them each a cigarette.

Tai Wei had not changed any more than the place around them had. If there was anything different about him, perhaps a few more lines etched his face now. But they did nothing to impede Fang Mu's crystal clear memory of the expression that had been on Tai Wei's face, what he had done, what he had said.

"You know, I actually envy you quite a bit."

"Envy me?" Tai Wei raised his eyebrows. "Envy me why, exactly?"

"It's not just anyone who can maintain a normal state of mind after having encountered such a thing."

Tai Wei chuckled, appearing pleased with himself. "Are you saying I'm strong-willed?"

"No." Fang Mu laughed. "I call it being cold and heartless."

Tai Wei gave Fang Mu's shoulder a playful punch, nearly knocking him off balance.

The gesture seemed to have broken through a wall of some kind, and Tai Wei was chuckling as he put Fang Mu in a good-natured headlock. "How'd a puny little twerp like you get to be a police officer anyways? Tell me that."

"I can't help it," Fang Mu said, breaking free and rubbing his sore shoulder. "I was born like this."

Tai Wei fell silent and looked Fang Mu up and down, the smile on his face gradually draining away. "I never told you something. Before you graduated, I was given a couple of very tough cases, and even Zhao Yonggui tried to get me to ask for your help on them. But I never did."

"Why not?"

"Because I didn't want to make you get involved with any more of this sort of business." Tai Wei's tone grew earnest. "I was hoping you'd become a university professor, or a pencil-pusher for the government, or even a lawyer or something. I didn't want you to become a cop."

Fang Mu barked a brisk laugh, then hung his head and stared at the grass near his shoes.

"Maybe what you said a moment ago shows how you and I differ from each other." Tai Wei continued on, as if to himself. "But if you absolutely must pursue this line of work, I'll give you a word of advice: do your best, but watch your back."

After a long time, Fang Mu finally whispered, "I will."

Tai Wei broke into another loud laugh, and using Fang Mu's shoulder for support, pushed himself to his feet. "Let's go. I'll take you."

"Take me where?"

"Do you really need to ask? Surely you didn't come here just to see this place?"

Tai Wei brought his white jeep over, and after a moment's consideration, Fang Mu decided to leave his own vehicle on campus. Grabbing the bouquet he had prepared from the passenger seat on his jeep, he locked the doors and hopped into Tai Wei's vehicle.

Sitting there next to Tai Wei as the cop gripped the steering wheel in his large hands, Fang Mu suddenly felt as if he had traveled back in time. It felt as if they were on their way to investigate some aspect of Ma Kai's case together, or on their way back from Meng Fanzhe's place of residence.

Forget? How could he forget?

Rest Park was Jiangbin City’s only public cemetery. In the past it only accommodated cremation urns, but ever since the funeral industry had been privatized, it had opened up a large area for graves. Seen from afar, headstones of various sizes lined the base of the hill in densely packed rows that wound around in patterns like pebbles in a tranquil Zen garden.

Tai Wei parked on the side of the street but chose to stay in the car, giving Fang Mu a chance to enter the cemetery on his own. Fang Mu understood his intention and felt grateful to him for the thought.

Professor Qiao's grave lay in the middle of the vast forest of stones, in a spot that appeared no different from any of the others. The plot had been purchased with funds raised by Professor Qiao's former students. At first they had wanted to buy him his own separate section, but his wife had protested, saying that while alive, Professor Qiao had hated waste with a passion. So they had arranged for him to be buried in a basic plot in the main section of the cemetery.

Professor Qiao's grave appeared very tidy, as if someone had kept it clean of dirt and weeds on a regular basis. Fang Mu leaned the bouquet of yellow chrysanthemums against the headstone, opened a pack of Furongwang cigarettes, lit one, and placed it on the little step at the base of the headstone. Then he stood as straight as he could, and bending at the waist, gave Professor Qiao's grave three deep bows.

He had not been able to attend Professor Qiao's memorial service, for at the time he had still been in the detention center. But it had been a closed-casket service, because the professor's mortal remains had been completely destroyed down in that basement. In fact, Fang Mu had been the last person to see Professor Qiao's body. He did not know whether he should feel glad or sorrowful about that.

Fang Mu stared at the tombstone's inlaid funerary photograph. The straight-backed, stern-faced old man in it seemed to be standing right in front of him. As Fang Mu reached a hand out to touch the photo, his vision blurred a little.

He sat down and leaned against the side of the tombstone. The sun was directly overhead and the heated marble stone felt warm against his back. The heat slowly spread from his shoulder blades to envelope his torso with a sense of peace and stability.

If Professor Qiao were still alive, Fang Mu would have someone with whom to troubleshoot his problems. The professor would tell him whether or not he was, after all, fit to be a cop. But on the other hand, if Professor Qiao had not been killed in such a horrible manner, would Fang Mu still have been so determined to join the police?

It was a question he had never given any serious thought. After graduating, he had become almost obsessed with passing the entrance exams to get into the Changhong City Municipal Public Security Bureau. If Bian Ping had not taken steps to "poach" him, it was likely that Fang Mu would now be working under Xing Zhisen as a member of the criminal police force. He did not know whether he had joined the police out of personal interest or for some other reason. If it had not been for the fact that Tai Wei, the last time they had seen each other, had told Fang Mu that the reason had everything to do with a subconscious desire to fulfill the final wishes of the departed professor, then it was quite possible that Fang Mu would never have thought to seek an answer to the question.

Perhaps it was not that he had never thought about it, but merely that he had always avoided the question.

Unconsciously, Fang Mu turned his head to glance out of the corner of his eye at Professor Qiao's photograph.
If you can hear me, then tell me…what should I do?

Just then his cell phone rang.

Tai Wei was sitting in the jeep looking bored out of his mind. He glanced up just in time to see Fang Mu race through the cemetery gate and leap into the passenger seat.

"Quick, take me back to my car!"

Traffic on the way back to Changhong City was much lighter than it had been going the other direction. Just over an hour after he left the university, Fang Mu's jeep was nearly flying into the courtyard of Changhong City No. 11 High School, sirens blaring.

The main entrance had been cordoned off with police tape. Outside a group of onlookers had gathered. Fang Mu ducked under the police tape and a criminal police officer led him straight to the crime scene.

Changhong City No. 11 High School had a fairly long history. First built at the end of the Cultural Revolution, the school had remained at the same location ever since. Many of the original old-fashioned buildings still stood, as did several ancient trees that towered above everything around. Not far away, in the shade of one of them, Zheng Lin stood sullenly smoking a cigarette.

He sent the cop that had accompanied Fang Mu off on an errand, and then led Fang Mu the rest of the way to the crime scene.