The lighter clicked — such a small sound, yet in the silence it rang out sharply.
Jiang Cheng stared at the faint, flickering flame with a distant, contemplative look. After a moment he extinguished it, then pressed it down again.
The flame seemed to jump.
Jiang Cheng closed his hand around the lighter, tilted it at a slight downward angle in front of him, and softly mimed the sound: “Bang.”
He smiled. It was a strange smile — carrying the faint tremor of something barely held in check.
Footsteps approached from outside. Zhou Jin’s voice came through the door: “Jiang Cheng, are you still in there?”
Jiang Cheng took a few more deep drags of the cigarette, stubbed it out, and walked out.
Zhou Jin was waiting for him.
Seeing that her call had ended, Jiang Cheng remarked, “Jiang Hansheng calling to check up on you because he knows you’re with me? He really doesn’t seem very sure of himself.”
Zhou Jin’s tone gained a note of warning. “Be civil toward him, please.”
Jiang Cheng saw her face go stern and immediately raised his hands in surrender. “I didn’t do anything — why are you glaring at me like that?”
“Let’s go,” Zhou Jin said. “I’ll have someone take you back. Wait for my mentor’s next instructions.”
Jiang Cheng complied without argument. “Fine.”
---
Rain had come to Huaisha as well.
Jiang Hansheng stood before the window, watching the curtain of rain falling and swirling in every direction.
Word had reached the people at the research institute through Wang Pengzhe that Jiang Hansheng was there — without a second thought, they all finished work that day and showed up at the door carrying two crates of live crabs, gathered together and ready to make a proper lively meal of it.
They were busy in the kitchen — most of them recent graduates, at the age when energy and spirits run high, chattering nonstop with one another, bursts of laughter coming one after another.
Wang Pengzhe picked up a manila folder and walked over to where Jiang Hansheng stood, tapping him on the back with it. “What are you thinking about?”
“Nothing in particular.” Jiang Hansheng smiled faintly and took the folder from Wang Pengzhe’s hand. “Is this a new lead?”
Wang Pengzhe said, “Not exactly a new lead — this is the initial investigation report from the Huaiguang case.”
Jiang Hansheng understood immediately. “You mean Chen Li?”
The man who had turned himself in to the authorities and confessed to committing the serial murders — a fall-guy.
He had given a detailed account of the killings, including the process and his supposed motive, without a single inconsistency. The only thing that didn’t match was that his DNA was different from the DNA extracted from the semen found on the victims.
Then, after August 17th, the police had retrieved traces of blood from beneath the fingernails of the fallen special operations officer Li Jingbo. When tested and compared, they matched the DNA from that same semen sample exactly.
It was on the strength of that evidence that Jiang Hansheng had once staked his entire career on demanding a reinvestigation of the Huaiguang serial murder case — ultimately overturning Chen Li’s confession.
After that, the police had also made attempts to find a breakthrough through Chen Li himself, conducting a series of investigations around him in an effort to uncover why he had taken the blame for the real perpetrator.
But Chen Li had died of liver cancer while in detention. In life his social circle had been minimal — very few friends, and he had long since severed contact with his ex-wife and son. The police had never managed to find any leads of value, and that particular thread had been left to go cold.
Now, however, there had been a new development.
Wang Pengzhe said, “His ex-wife recently returned from abroad.”