"What's your name?"
"Qingmu."
"What's your surname? Give me your full name."
"It's just Qingmu. Qing as in youth, mu as in wood. Here's my ID."
The policeman took the ID suspiciously and looked him up and down again. "Here to file a petition? Turn left outside for the petitions office."
Uh...
"Professor Mei from Three Wu University sent me. I'm looking for a captain here. I think his surname is Shit... er... Death... Shi... something like that."
The policeman discreetly wiped the sweat from his forehead, picked up the phone, and dialed a number. "Someone outside is looking for Death... Captain Shi. Says some university professor sent him... yes... Qingmu... yes... all right."
After hanging up, the policeman returned Qingmu's ID and told him to wait on a bench in the reception room.
Before long, a slender beauty in police uniform came over, looked around, and asked, "Where's Teacher Qingmu?"
The policeman from earlier pointed at Qingmu. "That's him."
The beautiful policewoman first gaped in surprise, then burst out laughing.
Perhaps realizing how rude she was being, she quickly stopped smiling and held out her hand. "Hello. Hu Xing, criminal investigation."
"Hello, I'm Qingmu." Qingmu shook her hand and found it very soft, nothing like a police officer's hand.
"Come with me." Hu Xing led Qingmu upstairs in the police station, saying as they walked, "A man's body was found on Garbage Street. Captain Shi went to the scene and asked me to receive you first."
"Oh, Garbage Street?" Qingmu said with feigned casualness. "Does your captain have to go in person for every little case?"
"Not really. It's just that we've had a lot of related cases lately. Captain Shi was concerned, so he went to take a look himself." After explaining, Hu Xing tilted her head to look at him. "Are you Professor Mei's... student?"
"Friend."
Hu Xing looked surprised. "Professor Mei is an authority on criminal psychology. A friend of his must be an expert too, then?"
Qingmu could tell that the policewoman before him did not quite trust him.
He smiled. "Professor Mei and I are purely personal friends. We have no academic connection."
Hu Xing took him into an office, poured him some tea, and asked, "Then what's your specialty?"
"Dream interpretation," Qingmu said, sipping his tea. "This is good tea."
"Dream interpretation?" Hu Xing thought he was joking. "We don't need a Duke Zhou!"
"Oh, I'm also pretty good at fortune-telling, face-reading, character divination, casting hexagrams, choosing names, that sort of thing." Qingmu took a crumpled business card from his trouser pocket and handed it to Hu Xing. "I also take jobs like catching ghosts, exorcising evil, and private detective work, though those cost a little more."
Hu Xing took the card in a daze, practically sweating waterfalls...
"Uh... well, have a seat. I'll step out for a moment."
Qingmu saw Hu Xing take out her phone as she left and make a call. She seemed to be saying to someone, "Could there have been a mistake? He's not a fraud, is he?"
After waiting twenty minutes or so, Qingmu grew thoroughly bored. He strolled into the corridor, leaned against a window, put a Paramount cigarette in his mouth, and struck a match...
Before the match's long hiss had faded, before its flame could touch the tip of the cigarette, a sudden little gust blew it out.
Whoosh-
Breath as fresh as orchids swept into his face, carrying a hint of hormones, and slipped into Qingmu's nose and collar, making his whole body feel a little allergic.
"No smoking in the office area!" With her hands on her hips, Hu Xing blew out a breath, snatched away the cigarette and matches, and tossed them into the trash, not forgetting to mutter, "What century is this? Still using matches, you old fossil!"
"Yes, Officer Hu!"
Qingmu struck a pose at attention, flung his long coat back, stamped hard in his slippers, and raised one hand over his head in a Young Pioneers salute above his bird's-nest hair.
His hopelessly mismatched outfit, coupled with that incongruous gesture, instantly made Hu Xing laugh.
"Oh, I can't..." Hu Xing doubled over laughing and waved her hands repeatedly. "Captain Shi's back. He's in the interrogation room. He wants you to come over."
When Qingmu entered the interrogation observation room, he picked out the criminal investigation captain, Shi Dazhuang, from the many police officers at a glance.
The man had eyes like an eagle's. His straight, muscular frame and stern face radiated righteousness; no matter how dark a place he was in, he could give people a sense of safety.
"This is Captain Shi. This is Mr. Qingmu," Hu Xing introduced them.
"Hello, I'm Shi Dazhuang."
"Qingmu."
Shi Dazhuang's hand was covered in calluses from years of handling guns. Qingmu's hand, by contrast, was fair and slender, like a born pianist's.
When their hands clasped, Shi Dazhuang habitually squeezed and felt the strength coming through the bones of Qingmu's fingers.
He instinctively sensed that if this hand held a knife, it would be very dangerous.
"Smoke?" Shi Dazhuang pulled a crumpled cigarette from an already flattened soft pack and offered it to him.
Qingmu took the cigarette, straightened it with his fingers, glanced at Hu Xing, and smiled. "Someone won't let me smoke!"
Hu Xing hurriedly explained, "There are rules in the upstairs office area."
Shi Dazhuang flicked his lighter on with a snap, cupped the flame in both hands, and held it out to Qingmu, then glared at Hu Xing. "What's with all these rules!"
Hu Xing pouted and muttered, "There are rules!"
With the cigarette between his lips, Qingmu tilted his head toward the flame, his face directly facing the coated one-way glass partitioning off the interrogation room. On the other side of the glass was where suspects were questioned.
"What's the case?"
"The theft and trafficking of human organs." Shi Dazhuang lit a cigarette for himself too. "Little Hu, fill Teacher Qingmu in on the case."
"Oh." Hu Xing acknowledged him, waving away the smoke before her face in distaste. "We've found three victims so far, all male... cough, cough..."
"Two of them were drugged unconscious when they went to hotel rooms to meet people they'd met online. When they woke up, they found themselves lying in bathtubs filled with ice water. There was a phone beside each bathtub, and a conspicuous line written in lipstick on the bathroom mirror:
Your kidneys will give out sooner or later anyway. Better to give them to someone who can put them to more use. Call 120. Don't try to stand up before the doctors arrive.
"Afterward, each was found to have a twenty-centimeter wound on his back, crudely stitched shut. The hospital confirmed that their left kidneys had been removed with highly professional skill."
"Well? Sound familiar?" Shi Dazhuang said with a bitter smile.
"This method of stealing kidneys came from an American screenplay. Later it became an urban legend, spreading especially convincingly on the internet and causing panic among internet users for a time. The United States Kidney Foundation, our country's Red Cross Society, and relevant personnel all debunked it."
"And those relevant personnel included-me!" Shi Dazhuang pointed at his own head.
"But now something like this has actually happened in my jurisdiction! Right under my nose, something I'd debunked actually happened. I feel like a fucking idiot!"
The more Shi Dazhuang spoke, the angrier he became. He viciously stubbed out his unfinished cigarette in the ashtray.
"That guy in there did it?" Qingmu asked, pointing through the glass.
A man sat in the interrogation chair behind the glass. He wore glasses and looked scholarly, listless but calm.
"The method's unusual, but it isn't clever. Hotels, ice cubes-this case shouldn't be hard to solve, should it?" Qingmu said.
Shi Dazhuang nodded. "His name is Zhao Pengcheng, a surgeon at City No. 1 Hospital. Based on the evidence we have so far, we can be certain he did it, but the bastard refuses to confess. He hasn't said a word since he came in. Our preliminary interrogation experts can't get anywhere with him, and the higher-ups are pressing us hard. That's why we thought of asking Professor Mei from Wuzhong University for help."
"Can't you make the case without a confession?"
"What good is arresting just him in a case this big? Unless we root out his buyers and the organ-trafficking chain, I can't even call this case solved!" Shi Dazhuang said angrily.
"At least no one's been killed!" Qingmu remarked.
Hu Xing coughed softly. "Ahem... Teacher Qingmu, there's still the third victim."
"He was a wealthy businessman who was hospitalized with encephalitis and later diagnosed as being in a vegetative state. His organs were removed in the hospital. He wasn't so lucky, though. Not only were both kidneys taken, but his liver and brain as well."
"Because the surgery was so skillfully done, and the victim was already in a vegetative state, his family didn't notice anything unusual at first. They just thought he'd died. If his daughter hadn't later returned from abroad and personally prepared his body for viewing, this case might never have been discovered."
What a bizarre case!
Qingmu gently patted Shi Dazhuang on the shoulder in sympathy. The details of this case had not yet been made public. Once they were, its impact on society could definitely be called dire.
In a case this heinous, without some meritorious contribution, he would certainly get the death penalty. Why wouldn't he identify his buyers?
How much money could selling a few organs bring in? What reason would a highly educated surgeon have to do something like this?
Qingmu kept feeling that something was wrong. Suddenly, he turned to Hu Xing and asked, "What did you just say? His brain? What did he take someone's brain for?"