Chapter Four

1

4:58pm，June 1，2010. Thirteen hours and 58 minutes after I have come to the conclusion that it is murder, Meng Yu shows up at the exit of the Metro Line 1 to the Printemps Department Store.

Usually at this time of the day, he has just finished a day’s work. Taking off his white uniform and getting changed into his own clothes, he sits down to input the effective data of the day to the file archive on the computer, with the experiment logbook wide open to his right on the desk.

However, this afternoon Meng Yu leaves the laboratory earlier than usual. Getting back to his office, he washes his hands clean, gets changed and leaves the office right away. Considering it is not easy to find parking on Huaihai Road, he takes the Metro instead.

So, by the time Meng Yu shows up at the gate of the Printemps’, the assistants at the Paro who see his office door closed and his car in the park, thinks he must be still in his 40-sqm Director’s Office, busy logging data in front of his computer.

The Paro Biomedical Research Co Ltd is located in the Zhangjiang Hi-Tech Park in the Pudong New Area. It takes about three-quarters of an hour for Meng Yu to get to Huaihai Road in Puxi.

Walking out of the Metro station, he shields his eyes against the dazzling declining sun. There is a Starbucks by the street on his left next to the gate of the Printemps’. He quickens his pace and walks in.

The ground floor is almost packed with people, leaving very little room to move about. Outside the shop, three tables have been laid out and taken by those who prefer to get a quick tan under the sun with a fresh cup of coffee.

Meng Yu frowns as he stands at the counter ordering himself a Short Hot Mocha. Holding the coffee, he hesitates whether to go up to the second floor, but then changes his mind at the stairway. He returns to the counter and asks the waiter to squeeze a chair for him in the corner looking to the window.

Meng Yu is tall and spare of build. At 42, he actually looks younger than his age. Perhaps he has spent too much time working in the lab, which not only isolates him from the society but also delays his normal aging process.

He’s got a pale complexion, a direct result for lack of sunshine, and side parted hair with sideburns long enough to reach the earlobes, which looks as if he is always in need of a proper trim. He prefers blue and white. Most of the time he dons the casual white cotton shirt and pants like when he is in the lab. If he goes out, he will put on a light blue flannel jacket. It’s his way to wear one more piece of clothes than necessary in all weather conditions.

Today, the blue jacket he wears is a bit oversized, with sleeves extending to cover half of his slender hands. Holding the coffee cup with both of his hands, he looks out in a trance.

No need to check the time again. He is always as accurate as a clock, so he doesn’t have to worry about what shall be missing. Besides, Jinran has the habit of turning up ten to twenty minutes late. After seven years, he doesn't know if she is still like that.

The cell phone rings. He picks it up without checking who it is.

“Eh, fish is OK. We had pork yesterday and the day before,” he answers the phone absentmindedly, his eyes skimming over the tables, “No need lah, just a normal dinner as usual is fine. Don’t you think I am too old to celebrate my birthday?”

The call is cut off. On a dark screen he sees it comes in at 5:12pm.

Just at this moment, Meng Yu recalled later, he sees vaguely from the corner of his eyes a slender figure of a woman passing by. Ankle length expansion dress, tight black top with dark red shawl, curly hair down to her waist — he can’t be sure if it is Jinran, though he knew that is the way she used to dress up best.

However, when he puts away the phone, stands up from his chair and looks back, he see no one but a blonde couple talking frantically to each other at the stairway, each holding a coffee in hand.

Meng Yu sits down and waits for another 48 minutes. At about 6pm, his wife calls again, asking if he is on his way home as she is about to cook the dishes. Perhaps his habit of being punctual has also influenced his wife. The two calls she makes every day are as prompt as the alarm clock and mostly on the same thing.

Taking a last look around, Meng Yu stands up. He puts the magazine back to the shelf, walks out of the Starbucks and goes down to the Metro platform.

He lives near the Xujiahui Station along the Metro, just four stops away. So, when he arrives home, it is 6:30pm, which is exactly the same time as when he is off work at 5:30pm during the week days and drives home from the Zhangjiang Hi-Tech Park. No more, no less.

According to the security guards, Ren Jinran did go out of the building at 4:30pm on June 1, but they couldn’t recall whether she was wearing the tight black dress or a dark red shawl. They agreed most of the times when they saw her, she was in black, but as to the style of the dress, they really couldn’t tell.

Jinran lived in an apartment of a half new building on Jiangning Road, just a stone’s throw away from her office in Plaza 66 on Nanjing Road W. Two weeks ago, she asked for sick leave from work. After June 1, there was no record of her leaving the building.

Between June 2 and 10, no one should have knocked door of Room 2204, either. Because those were not days when property management staff had to go door-to-door to collect the parking fees, the property management fees or any other fees. The meter reader would only come and check your meter every three months. There was no complaint of wrongly delivered food to Room 2204. Nor were there calls from a persistent salesperson. Furthermore, nobody chanced to scratch Jinran’s car at the car park during one of those days.

The neighbors on the 22nd floor once complained about the odd smell in the corridor. To put them off, the property manager just sent someone to clear the trash behind the Exit door on several occasions.

By noon on June 11, at about 12:45pm, the woman living in Room 2304 called the maintenance for a clogged sewer. The maintenance technician opened the vent and tried to clean it out there, but nothing worked. He suggested she send for a professional plumber, whose number he just had had. If she needed them to come immediately, it would be a little more expensive than the set price on the card, about 200 yuan once. The woman agreed.

Soon, two workers in orange uniform came with a machine. They tried different ways and it wasn’t until 3:15pm that there came a loud bump. The water main was somewhere broken, flooding the entire Room 2304 with slippers floating everywhere.

The maintenance technician was called for again over the emergency. He came to turn off the water in Room 2304, but the bubbling sound of water could still be heard, only it was directed, downstairs, to Room 2204.

He rang the bell several times, but no one came to answer the door.

At first, the property manager didn’t want to send for a locksmith, because if the owner wasn’t home who should then bear the responsibility if he or she claimed to have things gone missing later? However, seeing the water gushing out from under the door by the minute, tenants living on the same floor urged him to take quick actions in case it should flood all rooms on the entire floor.

Meanwhile, they brought all their old towels and rugs to create a dam around the door of Room 2204. Weighing the risks of the situation, the manager called 110 for help. By the time the door was finally opened under police supervision, it was already five in the evening when rays of a setting sun fell aslant the corridor.

The water gushed out from the door, flapping dirty waves of mosquito and fly larvae. Floating on the surface, there were the ladies stockings, a mouse pad, some coffee cups and several high-heel shoes, plus a disgusting smell of dead corpse. As if seeing the end of the world, all the people gathering for fun at the moment were too taken aback to respond.

What could be more scary than this: a razor blade, an open slash on the left side of the neck, and dry blood stains becoming wet again in the water, smearing onto everything in the room!

Ren Jinran was lying in bed with a blue full-length silk robe. The death scene was quite similar to that of Su Ya, except that the light in her room was on. A birthday cake, tied with a satin ribbon, was placed on the bedside table, unwrapped. As the water was up to the bedding, other evidences in the room were most likely destroyed.

In the closet, the color palate was mostly dark, which corroborated the fact that Jinran really loved dark colors. She also had several shawls for the season. At first glance, they were all dark. But if you looked to the details, you saw blurry floral prints in faded red, blue or purple. You couldn’t help but admire Meng Yu’s sharp observation. With just a passing glance, he could tell it a dark red shawl without seeing clearly the face of the person who had been wearing it.

If Meng Yu has told the truth about what happened on June 1, according to my speculation, before he arrived at the Starbucks, Jinran must have been there already, waiting for him somewhere nearby. According to the security guard on when Ren Jinran left the building during the day and the time she needed to get there from Jiangning Rd to Huaihai Rd, it should have been so, too.

There is a seat near the window facing the street on the second floor of the Starbucks. I guess she must have been sitting there on that day, so that she could see Meng Yu walking in from the street through the door downstairs. She knew he liked to be punctual, so she didn’t need to be there too early. The birthday cake that was unwrapped was bought for him of course. Only that she couldn’t be sure, after seven years, if he still had some feelings for her. I guess that’s why she decided to meet him at the Starbucks.

The two used to be truly-madly-deeply in love with each other. It was their first meet, after seven years of separation, at 5pm on the day of Meng Yu’s 42nd birthday. If they had meant to celebrate the birthday, it would be all natural for them to find an elegant restaurant for dinner, after which he could blow out the candles, cut the cake, and share it with her. Even if they had agreed to meet for a chat, then go back to each other’s home before supper, they would at least find a quiet café for some intimacy, rather than this loud and crammed one along the busy street.

I guess it was Jinran who had arranged the meeting with Meng Yu, and neither of them mentioned whether they should do supper or not.

The Starbucks is a great place to swing by and meet friends. If Meng Yu had been prepared, they could go out to dinner somewhere nicer for there were plenty of chic restaurants near the Printemps Department Store. If he had no intention to stay, they might just nod to each other, say “hello,” sip the coffee on their own and pass on. In that way nobody would feel awkward.

Thus on that day afternoon, Ren Jinran sat on the second floor and watched Meng Yu coming in through the door. However, he didn’t come upstairs after a long while. If he’d rather get squeezed by the window downstairs and wouldn’t even bother to come upstairs for a check, did that mean he had meant it for a brief chat? Her heart sank and she didn’t know what to do next.

On second thought, he probably chose to sit downstairs just because he might have taken it for granted that she would be late. So it could be that he was actually waiting for her on the ground floor, couldn’t it?

Thus thinking, she stood up and walked quietly down the steps, with the box of birthday cake in one hand. At the moment, Meng Yu’s mobile rang. She saw him pick up the phone without having to find out who it was. The habit of familiarity made her feel jealous.

When she overheard him discussing whether to have fish or pork for the birthday, she knew for sure it must have been from his wife. It seemed he had already decided to go home for dinner, whether he was to meet her or not. As he was talking on the phone, he raised his eyes and gave a quick sweep of the crowd. Just as his eyes were about to meet with hers, she turned around and ran upstairs as quickly as she could.

Torn between the ideas whether to meet him or not, she might have tried to slip down once or twice. She hesitated, when she saw him taking his time to read the magazines, looking the least worried or anxious at all. She hesitated again, when she chanced upon him answering another phone call from him wife.

She might as well have sat upstairs all the while, expecting that he would call her or he would just come upstairs to check on her, in case she had arrived earlier.

Forty-eight minutes later, she saw through the window on the second floor that he finally walked out of the Starbucks, light-footed as if he was so relieved to have left. She probably sat miserably for another while and finally, the reality set in.

With nothing to wish for and nobody to count on, her heart was as cold as dead ashes. She drove home alone, didn’t even forget to bring the birthday cake she bought for Meng Yu back with her and eventually put it on the bedside table in her bedroom. Then she showered, changed into her pajamas, lay flat on her back in the bed and thrust a razor blade across the left common carotid artery.

Had it been a murder, it would have been completely different scenario.

2

1:35pm on June 1, 2010, when Meng Yu is still in the lab of his Zhangjiang office, deciding whether to go on the date with Jinran later. A Mitsubishi SUV has been waiting for me downstairs at the park of the Paro Medicines.

He Ying knows I can’t bear to stay in a space that was small and cramped, so every time we need to go out on business she will apply for this company SUV. Yet, I still need to pull the door open and wind down the windows first before I get in.

When He Ying helps to wind down the car-door windows on the other side, she talks to Lu Tianlan as if joking: “Have you heard of claustrophobia, Tianlan? Yo-Yo is a claustrophobic. How come, I’d say, the disease these young people have got is so advanced and fashionable.”

For a complete five seconds, I am totally stunned while waiting for her words to sink in. I feel myself turning into a wooden puppet who didn’t know how to move my hands. Nor my lips know how to make the sound.

Tianlan is standing some five steps away under the shade of a roadside tree. Today she is wearing a beige cashmere vest over a pointed-collar white shirt, coffee black ankle-length wool pants, and high-heel short boots. Her back is straight, her chin held high, and her hair wrapped into a bun to the nape of the neck. From her left elbow, there hangs a Hermes medium handbag.

She makes no respond on He Ying’s jokes as she watches the old elevator man dozing off at the stairwell with great interest. Perhaps she isn’t listening at all. God bless me!

As is planned, He Ying and I are going to the Rui’an Hospital to collect patients information this afternoon. Tianlan happens to be free and she says she wants to come along to check out the situation. Needless to say, I am the driver.

Sitting down onto the driver seat, I step on the brake with one foot, take out the eye drops from my shoulder bag and squeezed the bottle for a few drops into my eyes. I blink my eyes and toss the bottle over the dashboard before I finally start the engine. The car makes a turn into the main street.

Across the back seat, He Ying asks: “Yo-Yo, what’s the matter with you? Is there anything wrong with your eyes, again?”

“Yeh, dry eyes for staring at the computer screen for too long,” I reply. No need to confess to staying up till three this morning, of course.

When the car stops at a red light before we go onto the highway. I quickly grab my eye drops and apply a few more. The wind blowing outside has made my eyes even drier than looking at the computer screen for hours.

I took this bottle of Tears Naturale from the Ophthalmology Medicine Department on the sixth floor last week. They had various free samples from different eye drops companies. And I am intended to ask for another bottle of a different brand from them some time next week.

I wish I didn’t have so many eccentricities. I know other people may consider those unusual habits of mine strange and irritating. I do feel ashamed of myself, but how can I help? Ever since Lemon was gone, those eccentricities started coming to me one after another as if to make up for the emptiness he had left behind. I think, I’ve taken to all these, not to raise other people’s attention but to keep reminding myself: Hey, you still exist!

Xu Chen, 58, is director of the Clinical Pharmacology Center of Rui’an Hospital. He is also director of the Pharmacy Department of the hospital, a bribery target that drug company sales representatives shall compete to win his favor so as to push certain drugs.

Xu Chen looks haggard and quite older than his actual age. A significant amount of hair has already turned white though he is lucky to retain a good hair density. He has an uneven skin tone of yellow and grey, ashy dark on both cheeks, like two patches of dirt that are yet to be wiped clean. His voice is hoarse and his back bent. He wears a beige cotton shirt under the white uniform and a pair of creased black pants. His wife had stomach cancer five years ago and eventually passed away the year before last. It is said he therefore aged a lot overnight.

The new building of the Rui’an Hospital looks as grand as a space station in one of the Hollywood blockbusters. With a main corridor leading to all possible directions, the 29-floor building is divided into two departments — the In-patient Department and the Out-patient Department. The office section under Xu Chen’s administration is right opposite the Ophthalmology Center on the 17th floor of the Out-patient Department, taking up almost half of the entire floor space.

“We selected patients with mild depression for fear there might be any grave incident. How could we have anticipated everything?” Xu says, shaking his head while searching for something around the room.

His office, at least 20 sqm, isn’t a small one compared to other directors in the hospital. However it looks more of a cramped grocery warehouse with piled-high boxes cramming the four corners. It is hard to walk in the room without tripping over something or squeezing between the boxes.

There are boxes of waxberries, apples and Korla pears in one corner; cartons of Iced Black Tea, Oolong Tea, and 7-Ups in another; and cases of assorted dry foods and native products everywhere. A mass of leather bags, about five to six still sealed in its original packaging, are stacked against the door while his desk is cluttered with gift pen sets. Well, I feel I had come to a wholesale market. There must be more pricy gifts that had been carefully put away by him, of course.

Finally, he came to us two bottles of 7-Ups and places them on the desk in front of He Ying and me. Then, he takes out a plastic cup, rips open a new box of Lipton Tea, pulls out a tea bag and puts it into the cup. He pours in some hot water and places it in front of Tianlan.

I suddenly come to realize that Xu Chen and Lu Tianlan must know each other for years. In fact, they are such familiar friends that Xu Chen even knows Lu Tianan drinks no other drinks but tea only. There is also a homely atmosphere when he offers her the tea and she says no “Thank you” in return for the courtesy.

Xu Chen pulls open a drawer of his desk and takes out a folder. After fumbling across the desk for his reading glasses, he puts them on his nose and starts to read to us through the data.

All together, 60 patients have participated in the clinical trials of Ai-De-Kang. They are randomly divided into two groups. One group of 30 takes the placebo and other group takes the trial medicine. So far, it is the third week into the trials. The placebo group has recorded an improvement rate of 67 percent while the target group who gets the real drug shows a minor of 63 percent. He Ying takes out the pen and pad from her handbag and jots down a few notes quickly and quietly.

“Lanlan, I think we’d better halt the trials immediately,” Xu Chen says, referring to Tianlan by her maiden name.

He takes off his eye glasses and continues: “The improvement rate in the target group is no better than the placebo group, and now someone has died. If we continue with the trial, not to say it might damage your company reputation, uh, I don’t know how to handle it properly should there be another incident in future.”

Over the desk, Tianlan has opened a gift pen set on her own. She takes out the pen and starts spinning it between the fingers. Suddenly she taps the pen down on the desk and asks him: “Which group does Su Ya belong, the placebo group or the target group?”

Slowly Xu Chen puts his glasses back on and reopens the files. He searches the lines with his index finger pointing across the text, stops at a spot in the page and says affirmatively, “The target.”

At this moment, if I were Lu Tianlan, I would probably blurt out: “Gosh, did Meng Yu know this?”

Then I would shout to Zhou You: “Go and make a call to Meng Yu right now. Ask him to come to my office before he is off work today!”

But who is Lu Tianlan! That’s why I adore her, because she would never act like me.

“This is normal,” she comments, carrying a light smile on her face, “Most anti-depressants need to be taken for at least two weeks before changes begin to occur. Drug effectiveness only reaches a relatively stable level after a month or three. It is far too early to compare the data now.”

Xu Chen takes off his reading glasses and slaps them down on the desk. Mouse in hand, he clicks the Stock ticker on the desktop of his computer. All the affability and patience have disappeared as he turns his back on us, a snub that is clearly intentional.

With his eyes fixed on the green figures on the screen, he says as if to himself: “I think the time to bring the new drug to the market hasn’t quite arrived yet. Whether it is effective or ineffective, the data has something to say. Besides, one is already dead. One more death, and I’d be sent back home in disgrace.”

Though he grumbles as if to himself, every word is spat out with such a force that we all hear him clearly. Anyone can tell Xu Chen is as stubborn as Tianlan. Like two stones, neither will budge an inch on this issue.

Tianlan ignores what he has said as if she weren’t listening. Without a change of expression, she continues: “Besides, you can’t blame the drugs for Su Ya’s suicide. The bad thing is we happened to have her on the list.”

To emphasize her last point, she raises her voice. On hear this, Sister He and I exchange looks without a word.

“If you don’t want to halt the trial, can you promise there won’t be a second or a third Su Ya?” Xu Chen asks, while his eyes are still staring the constantly changing figures of the stock index.

The Paro Pharmaceuticals must have given him a large sum of money in return for his approval of the experiment, so he can’t decide whether to halt it one-sidedly.

“Is there a second or third Su Ya from your list?” Tianlan retorts, still keeping that polite smile of her on the face.

What a game of tit for tat! But being polite is not only professional but also necessary. Which pharmaceuticals can afford to lose the support of the Department of Pharmacy at the Rui’an Hospital, which is a leading tertiary Grade-A hospital in the city?

Suddenly Xu Chen turns around to face Tianlan. Tilting his head in her direction, he says: “Lanlan, I’m telling you this for your benefit.”

He keeps his voice low pitched, like a loving father whispering in his daughter’s ear. Only that there is some added emphasis when he calls her “Lanlan”, as if to remind her that compared to him, she is still a green hand in handling such things.

“Look, it doesn’t matter if you don’t want to listen to me. I’m here to make a bet with you…hum…on the next Su Ya. According to my experience, her death is just the beginning. One suicide often leads to another. Suicide among the same group people is contagious, trust me or not?”

I almost get choked before I get another sip of 7-Ups to my lips. Why these last few words sound so familiar to me?

“If you don’t want to listen to these.”

“If you don’t hear these words.”

“It doesn’t matter.”

“It doesn’t matter. Her blood will make you hear.”

“I am still here.”

“I am here to make a bet with you…on the next Su Ya. Her death is just the beginning.”

“All that happened is just the beginning.”

Aren’t those words in the forum post uploaded by “Su Ya,” the Ghost, at 11:42pm ten days after she was found dead in her apartment? The post is like a devil’s curse. And the manifesto of killing has made my hair stood on end.

Lost in my own thoughts with a horrible choking cough, I fail to hear how Lu Tianlan dealt with him in this round. Later, Xu Chen takes a look at the plastic cup in front of Tianlan and says: “My eyes! You have finished the tea. Let me pour some more water for you.” Thus saying, he simply sits there watching her. Getting the hint, Tianlan checks her watch and says: “Well, it’s time. I have got something else to do this afternoon.” With these words, she stands up immediately.

Twelve days and 18 hours after the first encounter between Xu Chen and Tianlan, Xu Chen’s prophecies came true.

3

9:05am, Monday, June 14. A notice from the Clinical Pharmacology Center of Rui’an Hospital comes to The Paro Pharmaceuticals again, saying its No.35 patient taking part in the Ai-De-Kang Phrase III trial is dead. The patient is a female, 30, project manager of Bosi Decoration Materials Co Ltd, a Sino-US joint venture based in Shanghai. Her name is Ren Jinran. This is the second death so far during the drug trial.

When I get the message, I feel a big part of my heart is bitten off by some strong feeling of guilt. I should have told Xiaoshan my speculations about Su Ya’s death on June 1. Had I showed him the second post by “Su Ya”, the Ghost, I should at least have convinced him Su Ya was murdered. Because you couldn’t send a post to the forum after death, could you?

If this premise is true, it only proves her previous death note was untrue, which led to an even more suspicious statement: Who wrote the note? Who was there before Su Ya’s parents — Su Huaiyuan and Qi Xiuzhen — arrived to find out their daughter’s death, whereas didn’t call the police? Who viciously and deliberately exposed Su Ya’s motivation for suicide? Who on earth was the second mystery witness at the scene of the accident?

Had I done so, had Su Ya’s case been officially re-investigated as a case of murder by the police, the killer wouldn’t have acted so wantonly, and then Ren Jinran wouldn’t have died.

It is possible to stop the killing with early actions, I think.

Jinran returned to her apartment at 7:30pm on June 1. It was the last time people saw her alive. She might have died at anytime on the same day night or any other night on June 2 or 3, some 17, 41 or 65 hours after I dug out the ghost post online.

As the corpse is highly decayed and soaked in the water for several days, it is vaguely estimated that was the range of time when she died.

Mid-day at 12:20pm, June 14. I feel like vomiting and my head is going to explode. The crime scene photos that have just been transmitted to me keep playing in my head over and over again, and are eventually converged with each other to become a shrill screaming at the time of Jinran’s death.

He Ying covers the lid of the lunch-box in front of me, touches my grass-like disorderly hair and says: “Uh, two deaths in a row in two months are really unbearable, enough to make anyone a basket case. Yo-Yo, listen, you go home and take a rest now. Why not go to see a doctor if you don’t feel well? I will go to the police for you this afternoon.”

I hail a taxi home on Maoming Road. In a trance, I walk into the 7-Eleven by the corner of the alleyway and takes a sandwich and a bottle of grape juice off the shelves. I return to my nest in Room 301, take a new pack of Saridon on the table, rip it open, and pull out the two full strips of painkillers. Standing in my dining room empty of dining chairs, I swallow the solid pills with the grape juice, saving the trouble of pouring myself a glass of water. I head for the bedroom, find my bed, push the keyboard and mouse aside and hit the sack, pressing my face into the pillow.

What was I busy doing before 9:05am on the morning of June 14? I had wanted to find out the killer on my own and exposed him, together with my perfect deduction, right in front of Inspector Wang Xiaoshan.

At 5:30pm, on the evening of June 1, I was off work on time. I bought a lunch box of Egg Fried Rice and a bottle of apple juice from the 7-Eleven by the street corner on my way home. I also asked the shop assistant to get me a box of Saridon from the medicine cabinet.

As soon as I returned to my apartment 301, I went to bed immediately. By the time I woke up, it was late at night at 10:30pm, a time when Bill would be off work and home by then. Five minutes after I turned on my computer, I saw Bill’s username blinked green on my MSN list.

The two posts by “Su Ya” were my only clues to the case. Bill was a master at network technology, so I decided to recruit him as my detective partner. Sherlock Holmes was paired with Dr Watson, a master of medical science, wasn’t he?

As was expected, Bill was more than honored to assume his new duty. He quickly typed down his suggestions in the message dialogue box: First, we should look into this IP address of “Su Ya.”

“Good idea. Do it for me now!” I replied.

“But I can’t,” he blurted out the three words.

“Why?”

“Because we are ordinary users at the forum. We don’t have the right to do so.”

“Are U kidding me? Tut-tut, don’t try to make a dupe of me, I tell you. Be ware of the serious consequences.”

For two seconds, Bill didn’t reply.

“How dare you stand me up!”

Just as I was about to hit my keyboard to vent out my anger, a full box of dialogue popped up: “Ha-ha, easy does it. How Watson dared to fool Miss Holmes! I have just sent a message to “Summer”, our forum Admin Head, to see if he can add me to the Admin Group. Once I am promoted as an Admin, I will then have the privilege to look into every ID’s IP address within the group.”

I woke up three times for the rest of the night, first at 3am, again at 5am, and then again at 7am. Every time I woke up, I asked Bill if there was any news. Desperate for a reply from Summer, I urged Bill to send over another short notice by dawn. During the lunch time at 11:15am, I left my lunch box on the office desk and sneaked downstairs to find Bill in the Glamour Hair Salon on the ground floor.

“Has he replied?” I walked straight in, pulled him over and asked.

Bill was at work. Scissors in one hand and comb in the other, he made a sequence of fencing-like movements without a break. Under the bits of hair that were falling out like silver lines of rain, I saw a young lady sitting there with a head full of pegs. She raised her eyes and gave me a hard stare, as if to say “he has no time for you now!”

So I had to search him on the spot. Out from Bill’s large pocket jeans, I took his notepad, turned it on and typed in his ID name and password. Then, Miss Holmes looked up to Watson and reported: “You have received a new forum message.

“Summer asked Ostrich: ‘How come you suddenly think of being an admin?’”

“And you know my reply, don’t you Miss Holmes?” Wearing a mischievous look on his face, Bill threw the question back at me as he sprayed some water over the girl’s head, combed to realign the hair and picked up a lock from either side of the neck to compare the length.

The same day night, to win support from the Admin Head so as to nab the Ghost at the forum, I decided to let out the clues pertaining to the case. In a message I addressed to Summer, I filled up the whole screen with my reasoning, trying my best not to exceed the 150-word limit. For three whole days he went silent on me. It wasn’t what I expected and I felt like I was going crazy.

At 11:05pm, midday on June 5, I received an incoming call alert on my mobile phone before I made my way downstairs. It was Bill.

“Hello, is that Miss Zhou You speaking?” Bill seldom called me. So it sounded quite unnatural every time he called, especially the way he addressed me, as if he was calling a public phone. Making sure that it’s Miss Whimsy, he briefed that his “right to access has been approved.”

At 1:55am, wee hours on June 6, Bill declared the IP address of “Su Ya” the Ghost was found.

“Do you want the good news or the bad news first?” he kept me in suspense on MSN. “The good news is the 6:32pm post sent on May 15 came from a different IP address that was used by ‘Hard Candy’ to send her previous posts at the forum, but it came from the same IP address as the 11:42pm post was sent on May 25. That is to say, the death note from ‘Su Ya’ was definitely not sent by Su Ya, or Hard Candy, herself.”

“However, the bad news is both posts from ‘Su Ya’ the Ghost were transmitted through a foreign IP address connected to a server overseas. The suspect is very good at hiding his identity. Otherwise, we should at least know which district he lives in Shanghai through his IP address.”

“Then, what’s the next step?” I asked, refusing to resign.

“What what’s the next step???...” a number of question marks came bouncing into the dialogue box.

“You said, first we look into the IP address. So what’s the next?”

“Yet there isn’t a next in the first place.”

He was really driving me nuts.

“Look, Miss Whimsy, all you have here are the two posts from the forum, and I have done the IP checks on both of them. What else is left undone? Spare me, please.” With these words, Bill sent over a flash of Bowing Smiley to beg for forgiveness.

He was right. What could he do with two posts, fewer than 300 characters adding up all together? Even if Sherlock himself were here, what would he have guessed at, not to mention that he didn’t know a thing of the IP address?

Surely he could, couldn’t he? In the special way criminals could do.

If you looked at the posts side by side, they seemed uncoordinated to me.

If the Ghost killed Su Ya on May 15, forged the scene of suicide, and later sent the post at 6:32pm just to make people believe that Su wanted to kill herself, he actually made it. Everybody saw that she had given up and was dead, so there’s no need for further investigation.

At that moment, almost no one had questioned whether it was necessary to turn on the light at 6:32pm on that day. Nor there was someone who wanted to look up whether the‘Su Ya’ who sent the death note and ‘Hard Candy’ shared the same IP address.

Wasn’t it weird that he seemed to want more attention? He sent the second post at midnight on May 25. Granted that he was just bored again and wanted to send a post, why would he choose to use the ID of ‘Su Ya’? He could have used some other ID to send the post just to play safe, no? Besides, in the second post, he declared ostentatiously that “I’m still here,” “Her blood will make you hear.” Such phrases were fully deliberate and they sounded very consistent with the name of the forum: JUST WANT YOU TO KNOW.

Don’t you know it a murder? I just want YOU to know.

Don’t you know I am the killer? I just want YOU to know.

Say if, of the two posts, one was used to make false while the other self-exposure, it was obvious their intentions were contradictory. Whatever the details, one thing was clear: He is a psycho killer. Who was this YOU that he wanted to know all of these, the police or someone specific at the forum? He risked killing someone just to make YOU know that “I’m still here” or was there something else that was more important he wanted YOU to know?

“You, the little brain…you, the little brain…” It seemed those were the only words that Bill knew for the moment. I knew he would love to see me caught dead in a controversy, but never at the crucial moments. He wouldn’t have the heart to give me a hard knock especially when he knew I was almost at my wit’s end.

“You, the little brain…can actually work wonders,” he commented in the end.

Encouraged, I typed down a bunch of question to Bill: “Old Ostrich, what do you think he meant by saying ‘All that happened is just the beginning’ and ‘Her blood will make you hear’? Will he continue to kill? Who is this HER? Will she be the next target? Do I have to alert Officer Wang tomorrow?”

“Nothing at all should happen, kiddy,” Bill quickly relieved me.

To assure me, he also analyzed the possible outcomes for me. He said if I read the two posts carefully, I would realize the killer was always imitating the way Su Ya would have talked. In the death note, he, pretending to be Su Ya, condemned Zhang Yue and Xu Mingzhi with great severity and declared that she would take revenge on them with her own death. Ten days later, as if he wasn’t satisfied with Zhang Yue’s apathy since Su Ya’s death, he showed up again and vowed on behalf of Su Ya’s soul that she would use “HER blood” to make him hear her voice.

Isn’t this “HER” referring to Xu Mingzhi’s, unless Zhang Yue had a second girlfriend?

“As to Mingzhi’s safety,” Bill continued typing, “I don’t think you need to worry at all. No one knows her whereabouts now, not even the almighty forum. What’s more, you must still remember the gossips about the wedding pictures at wuya.com on May 29th, eh? The whole world has known Zhang and Xu broke up. There is no point in killing her anyway.”

When I got to see his final line, I felt so tired that I had no strength even to lift my eyelids. I threw a big Smiley face into the dialogue box as my reply and pressed the Enter key. Very much relieved, I fell asleep.

But who would have known “HER blood” turned out to be Ren Jinran’s blood!

*

(Translated from the Chinese by Xu Qin)