Shi Dazhuang called the municipal bureau leadership on the spot to report the situation and request permission to investigate the two cases together.
Qingmu went back with them to the municipal criminal investigation division building. By the time he finished giving his statement, it was already evening.
"We owe you a lot this time, Teacher Qingmu!"
Shi Dazhuang insisted on treating Qingmu to dinner. He was genuinely grateful to Qingmu. Without him, something disastrous would have happened that day.
Qingmu pointed at Hu Xing. "Officer Hu deserves all the credit this time."
Shi Dazhuang snorted. "I'd thank my lucky stars if she just stayed out of trouble."
"We cracked such a big case, and you're still saying I caused trouble?" Hu Xing protested.
"I haven't settled accounts with you over losing your gun yet!" Shi Dazhuang said.
"You can't put all the blame on me!" Hu Xing pouted and grumbled under her breath. "You could've helped cover for me a little."
"You used up every bullet in your gun. Who could cover that up?" Shi Dazhuang said. "Was I supposed to say you went shooting birds in the countryside for fun?"
Hu Xing knew she was in the wrong and said no more. Police firearms were all registered, and every bullet issued and every occasion on which a gun was fired had to be truthfully recorded. That madman had fired his gun more than a dozen times. No explanation she gave could conceal the fact that she had lost her gun.
If she had not earned merit, disciplinary action would have been inevitable this time. She might even have lost the right to wear her uniform.
They had dinner at a small restaurant nearby. Stir-fried pork, fish in clear broth, spicy chicken and books, salted duck, and a soup of greens, tofu, and egg drops-all ordinary home-style dishes.
Shi Dazhuang spared him any affected remarks about the food being nothing special or making do. He simply clinked his glass hard against Qingmu's, sending beer foam spilling all over the table.
He and Qingmu raised their glasses at the same time and gulped them down.
There was no need for words between men. Everything was said in that clink of glasses, which also knocked all their fellow feeling into the beer, to be drunk down together.
As the ice-cold beer hit their stomachs, a refreshing sensation spread through their bodies, leaving them comfortable all over. Both men burst into hearty laughter.
Hu Xing looked from one to the other, unable to understand how these two utterly different men, who barely knew each other, had suddenly become like old friends of twenty years. Even their drinking had taken on something of the bold camaraderie of kindred spirits in the jianghu.
After drinking with Qingmu, Shi Dazhuang finally raised his glass to Hu Xing. "You lost your gun, but at least nothing disastrous happened, and you solved a baffling case. You've done our division proud, so here's a toast to you. Be more careful next time you go out. Don't get yourself done in before you solve the case."
Hu Xing had long known that her captain had a sharp tongue but a soft heart. He actually cared a great deal about the members of his team!
Imitating a jianghu hero, she clinked glasses with Shi Dazhuang and declared boldly, "In the name of the people!" Then she drained a large glass of beer in one go.
"Well said! In the name of the people! We became police officers so ordinary people could live in peace, so there would be no filth or evil in this world." Shi Dazhuang recalled the ambitions he had yet to fulfill when he first graduated from the police academy.
But Hu Xing's expression suddenly darkened. "There's something I can't understand!"
"What can't you understand?" Shi Dazhuang asked.
"That Yang Baoguo from Lu County is an utterly vile man," Hu Xing said. "He takes drugs, gambles, visits prostitutes, and abandoned his wife and child. He forced his elderly parents to collect scrap for a living, and he's been to prison several times for theft. I wanted so badly for him to be the real killer. If he were sentenced to death, everyone would rejoice. But now the real killer has been caught, and in a few days he'll be cleared and released. I have this strange feeling that I'm the one who let that bastard go, that I'm the one sending him back to terrorize his community. Who knows how many people will suffer because of it!"
Shi Dazhuang paused after hearing her out. He lit a cigarette each for Qingmu and himself, then took a deep drag. "We have to act according to the law and seek justice for the victims."
"Justice? For whom?" Hu Xing gave a bitter smile. "Ma Fuqing's wife? I don't know what that woman looked like or what kind of person she was, but I know no one died more unjustly than she did! The case is solved, but how do we right the wrong done to her? Who's going to answer for her death?"
Silence. A long silence.
Even as she died, that woman had not known what role her husband played in her death. The old woman was already dead, and the murderer was a madman. In the end, apart from revealing the truth and adding a case worthy of criminologists' attention to the criminal archives, what meaning did this case have? No one would be sent to the chopping block. No one would answer for that woman's death.
"Will Ma Fuqing get a prison sentence?" Qingmu broke the silence.
"Hard to say," Shi Dazhuang said. "His younger brother is mentally ill and needs a guardian, and he's rendered meritorious service. Although the nature of this case was appalling and it nearly resulted in a wrongful conviction, it can't actually be classified as murder. Add Ma Fuqing's meritorious service to that, and I doubt he'll get a heavy sentence. Judges are usually at a loss when faced with family tragedies like this too. We'll have to see how it turns out!"
"Isn't there any other way? It still makes me angry just thinking about it!" Hu Xing was miserable.
"Another way..." Qingmu wanted to say something, but ultimately left it unsaid.
"Although there's never been any true fairness in this world, as police officers, we must believe in the power of justice!" Shi Dazhuang said. "We must never step outside the law and resort to crooked methods."
"Right!" Hu Xing nodded firmly, then shook her head, putting her unhappiness aside. She raised her glass to Qingmu. "Thank you for saving me today!"
"No need to thank me," Qingmu said. "I still need your help with something."
"What is it, exactly?" Hu Xing asked.
Qingmu told Hu Xing and Shi Dazhuang about Mo Yu's sleepwalking.
After hearing him out, Shi Dazhuang pondered for a long time. "It sounds premeditated. If someone really is using mind control to make people commit crimes, that would be troublesome."
"I can't be sure whether someone did it deliberately or it was a chance occurrence," Qingmu said.
"We can't open a case over this either," Shi Dazhuang said. "What do you need us to do?"
"If possible, help me look into this Situ's background." Qingmu kept feeling that there was something wrong with the Situ whom Mo Yu had mentioned.
Shi Dazhuang nodded. "All right. I'll also have the officers at the station covering the conservatory's district help check on those girls and see if there's anything unusual. Little Hu, you handle this."
"Okay," Hu Xing agreed, then said to Qingmu, "Why have I kept running into weird things ever since I met you? Were you born a magnet for weirdness?"
"This doesn't really count as weird, does it?" Qingmu said.
"It doesn't? You're a monster yourself," Hu Xing said.
"Then how about we form a duo?" Qingmu said.
"A detective duo?" Hu Xing thought of Holmes and Watson, then of the strange case they had solved that day, and grew a little excited. "What should we call ourselves?"
"The Monster Duo," Qingmu said.
"Huh? What kind of name is that?" Hu Xing thought it sounded awful. Only after carefully repeating it twice did she catch on, and she snapped, "Are you calling me a monster? You bastard!"
Her cursing had none of Bi Shenghua's commanding force. Qingmu chuckled, while the usually stern Shi Dazhuang was already grinning from ear to ear.