Although the criminal police brigade of the Lu County Police Bureau was not directly subordinate to the municipal criminal investigation detachment, Hu Xing was, after all, someone sent by the municipal bureau, and she drove one of its cars. Reluctant though the county criminal police were, they still gave her a warm reception on the surface.
"The intermediate court's verdict should be coming down soon. As long as the suspect doesn't appeal, this case is closed," Deputy Captain Gao, who was receiving them, said, holding a teacup. "I hear the municipal bureau cracked another big case recently. I'll have to complain to your Captain Shi about that. You can't feast on the meat without leaving us even a little broth, can you?"
Qingmu could tell that the people in Lu County did not want the municipal bureau interfering, especially when it had sent just one female officer. If a female officer and a nonprofessional overturned a case they had already classified, they would lose face.
But Hu Xing was not so easily brushed off.
"Yang Baoguo never confessed at any point, and he kept protesting his innocence in court. Do you really think he won't appeal? You aren't planning to use extraordinary measures to pressure him, are you? That would be a serious mistake!" she warned sternly.
Deputy Captain Gao looked displeased, but he could hardly lose his temper. All he could do was force a smile uglier than a grimace. "Well... how could we possibly do that? We go by the evidence! Even if the killer appeals, it won't matter. It'll just drag things out a little. DNA is irrefutable evidence. How could he possibly overturn it?"
At Hu Xing's insistence, Deputy Captain Gao very reluctantly took them to the detention center. Qingmu met the suspect, a very tall but very thin man. His cheekbones jutted out, his cheeks had almost no flesh on them, and his eyes lay deep within dark circles. From a distance, he looked like a ghost.
Perhaps because he had given up hope of overturning the verdict, Yang Baoguo was dispirited and already looked like a dying man.
Deputy Captain Gao explained, "He has a history of drug abuse. He went through compulsory rehabilitation, but this is the state his body's in. We haven't been mistreating him."
Hu Xing nodded in understanding.
From the very first moment she saw Yang Baoguo, all her sympathy for a suspect who might have been wronged suddenly vanished. A wretch like this, neither human nor ghost, did not deserve pity at all. Hu Xing felt she had been wrong to come. The man before her was a murderer who deserved punishment.
She sighed weakly and looked at Qingmu. "Let's go back."
Qingmu stared steadily at Yang Baoguo for a long time before answering Hu Xing. "Oh, then let's go back."
Deputy Captain Gao's expression shifted uncertainly. He probably felt he had been made a fool of: a minor figure from the municipal detachment had kept him busy for ages, only to do nothing at all. Still, this was exactly what he wanted, and that was worth celebrating.
After they left the detention center, Hu Xing was ready to return to the city. Smiling, Deputy Captain Gao invited them to pick up two tins of local tea before leaving.
But Qingmu suddenly said, "He's not the killer."
"What?"
Hu Xing had probably guessed what had happened, but she still found it unbelievable. Deputy Captain Gao, meanwhile, looked at Qingmu as though he were an idiot.
"Young man, you can't just say things like that." Deputy Captain Gao assumed the air of a veteran detective. "Everything has to be based on evidence. Until we have conclusive evidence, we can't say someone is the killer or that someone isn't. That's what makes a qualified officer of the people's police."
As he spoke, he slapped his forehead. "Oh dear, I almost forgot you aren't a police officer yet!"
Hu Xing felt uncomfortable hearing that. On the surface, Deputy Captain Gao was lecturing Qingmu, but wasn't he really taking a jab at her? Qingmu wasn't a police officer, so he could be excused for not knowing, but she, Hu Xing, was! Yet he wasn't wrong, so it was hard to argue.
Seething, Hu Xing turned to look at Qingmu, only to find him gazing lazily at the sky with both hands in his trouser pockets, as though there were something interesting up there.
Then she heard Qingmu say, "Oh, you forgot? Your memory really isn't very good."
"..." Deputy Captain Gao felt as though he had punched a pile of shit. The damage was simply...
Hu Xing did not know whether this was a clever counterattack from Qingmu or whether he really was stupid. Either way, her pent-up frustration vanished in an instant.
Seeing that nothing got through to Qingmu, and that Hu Xing seemed to be taking her lead from him, Deputy Captain Gao grew uncertain. "What exactly makes you say he isn't the killer?"
But Qingmu no longer answered his questions. He only said, "Take us to see the crime scene."
Now it was Deputy Captain Gao's turn to feel frustrated and angry. What gives you the right to order me around? If he had not been afraid of offending Shi Dazhuang, he would have liked nothing better than to stop accommodating them right then.
Fine, we'll go. It's been two months already. What the hell could still be at the scene? Let's see what you can find. If you can't find anything, I'll file a report when I get back, saying you abused police resources and even let a non-police individual participate in a major criminal case.
Naturally, Hu Xing knew nothing of Deputy Captain Gao's little schemes. She cheerfully drove her own car with Qingmu in the passenger seat, following the county criminal police's vehicle.
"What exactly did you discover?" Hu Xing asked Qingmu in the car.
Qingmu said, "He isn't the killer. The female corpse reconstructed in his dream looked different from the one in Ma Fuqing's."
Although Hu Xing had already guessed as much, she was still astonished. "You hypnotized him in that little time? And entered his dream? How did you do it? I never saw him fall asleep, or saw you do anything!"
"Dreaming doesn't take much time. Sometimes you can have a very, very long dream in just a few seconds," Qingmu said. "I didn't hypnotize him. This man didn't need to be hypnotized at all. His mental power is extremely weak, and he has already given up resisting on a conscious level. In fact, most drug users are much the same. Their conscious entities, which you could also understand as what you commonly call souls, are extremely weak, just like those of people on the verge of death."
Hu Xing nodded in understanding, then asked, "If he isn't the killer, how did you get him to reconstruct a corpse in his dream?"
Qingmu asked, "Did he admit to murder at one point in his statement?"
"Yes, but his statement was very confused, so I suspected they tortured him during interrogation," Hu Xing said.
Qingmu shook his head. "Not necessarily. When someone's mind is damaged by drugs, illness, or external stimuli, their awareness of self weakens along with their willpower. This man has completely given up. At one point, he even constructed a scenario of himself committing murder in his subconscious, to give himself an excuse for giving up and giving in. Of course, he might have been coerced or led into it, but fundamentally, the problem still lies with his own mind."
"What was the scene in his dream like, then?"
"The female corpse in his dream had a completely different figure from the one Ma Fuqing dreamed about, and there was no mole on her left breast. Most importantly, that woman had a head. In his dream, her appearance kept changing, and he used at least three different methods to kill her. But he clearly had no experience of cutting off someone's head, so those methods seemed extremely clumsy and impossible to carry out."
"How do you know? Have you killed someone?" Hu Xing looked at Qingmu and asked seriously.