Chapter Eight: Clouds of the Past (1/3)

Ever since Ren Jie had been locked up in the detention center, he had begun spending whole days in a daze. Except during interrogations, he barely spoke a word the rest of the time. Life in the detention center was hard to endure—the police came to check the cell every ten minutes, and the cramped, narrow cell left him unable to eat or sleep. The police had already notified Ren Jie's uncle of his detention, and one could well imagine what things were like at his uncle's house. But to him, it all felt distant and muted. What truly broke him down was the barrage-like interrogation by the police.

At night, Ren Jie was once again thrown violently into his cell by two prison guards. He turned to look at them with hatred, and one of the guards said contemptuously, "These days, there are just too damn many college students committing sex crimes. Let's see how long you can keep talking tough."

"I didn't do it!" he nearly shouted.

"Go ahead and shout. See if you can keep it up all night."

The two guards turned and strutted off. He sighed, crawled onto the narrow bed, and lay down.

The guard on duty passed by—his gaunt face covered in fine wrinkles, yet within those wrinkles was a pair of sharp, deep-set eyes. He glanced at the cold, untouched food in front of Ren Jie's bed and asked, "Ren Jie, how many meals is this now? Why do you still refuse to eat anything?"

"I can't eat," he said, cradling his head in both hands, too exhausted even for an expression.

"You should eat something. Do you think starving yourself will make them believe you're innocent? I used to be a criminal investigator myself, before I got old and became a prison guard. I've seen all sorts of suspects. My experience tells me—whatever a suspect says in his own defense, you can't trust it."

He gave a mute, dry laugh, rolled over, and kept lying there.

The guard went on, "Is there anything you'd like to eat? I could bring you something. Even if you're wrongly accused, a hunger strike isn't the way to prove it. Watch out—you might starve to death before the day your name gets cleared."

Ren Jie turned his head to look at the old guard, at a loss for words for a moment, then finally said, "Old sir, I really didn't rape and kill anyone."

"Whether you did or not, my job is to see that you're properly looked after."

"Looked after, and then sent off to take a bullet? For rape and murder, the sentence is bound to be death."

"Don't worry. If you're wrongly accused, there won't be a death sentence—you'll be acquitted outright. Even if you really did do such a thing, the judge would take mitigating factors into account. At the very least, you'd get twenty years."

"Twenty years? A person only gets so many twenty-years in a lifetime."

"Still better than being dead, isn't it? Have you seen *The Shawshank Redemption*?"

"I have."

"Then you should remember the protagonist, Andy, who was sentenced to life imprisonment and spent twenty years escaping."

"Yeah. Andy was wrongly accused too."

The guard nodded. "You might think about Andy—how he handled it, and how you're handling things now. Actually, this isn't really the kind of story a police officer should be telling an inmate. I rarely bring it up with prisoners. It's just that, going by my instincts, I don't think you're the type to commit rape and murder. If you're interested, I can lend you the novel to read. What do you say?"

"Why would you do this for me?"

"Just think of it as letting you see someone else's story. Besides, none of Andy's escape tricks would work in a detention center like ours anyway."

"All right." Ren Jie nodded in agreement.

The guard added, "There's still some leftover food in the cafeteria. It should still be warm at this hour. If you want to eat, I'll bring it to you."

"I... I am a little hungry," Ren Jie said, instinctively lowering his eyes, then forcing out a faint smile. "Thank you for the trouble. I appreciate it."

Late that night, Ren Jie fell asleep with *The Shawshank Redemption* as his pillow. His sleep was shallow, and before long he was gradually roused by the sound of two people talking. He said nothing, just kept lying motionless, listening. He could tell that one of the voices belonged to that guard.

The guard's name was Wu Jianye. A few years ago, he had still been a criminal investigator. Now he was speaking with his protégé, He Shaobin.

"Master, how's Ren Jie been these past couple of days?"

"Very resistant. Doesn't like to talk. Barely eats. Doesn't keep shouting that he's innocent either—just lies on the bed, doing nothing."

"Based on his statements, can you tell if there's anything fishy going on?"

"All I can tell is that he seems very conflicted, as if he's under some kind of threat. There's one thing, though—he said his father was Ren Jiahua. Wasn't that the former president of Jiangzhu University?"

"The young woman who's cooperating with us on the case confirmed it. She also said he and his younger sister are full siblings, born of the same mother. I've already arranged for a paternity/kinship test for the two of them tomorrow."

"Ren Jiahua's been dead for so many years now. His wife died in a car accident right after his funeral. They did have two children, but both went missing around that time—we assumed back then that they'd been trafficked. But... if those children are still alive, they'd be about this age by now."

"I remember—Master, wasn't the case of Ren Jiahua's suicide fifteen years ago one you investigated? How much do you still remember?"

"It's been over ten years. I don't remember much anymore. All I recall is finding a suicide note in his office while he was still alive—well, before he died—along with a few threatening letters, and two property transfer agreements that had already been signed and stamped."

"A suicide note? What did it say?"

"Nothing particularly special. Just something about feeling life was too exhausting, too oppressive, living day to day in constant anxious struggle, with nothing to look forward to, wanting to find a quiet place to say goodbye to the world. He said Jiangzhu University should be entrusted to Dong Lixin, said he was sorry to his family, and asked Dong Lixin to take good care of them."

"Did he have depression?"

"No. Neither his medical history nor his premarital health check mentioned any psychological illness."

"Then the suicide note is quite strange. If a person was mentally sound, how could he suddenly kill himself right when things were going so well for him?"

"It's probably connected to those threatening letters."

"Right, the threatening letters—what did they say?"

"They looked like they were sent by someone in the same industry. Besides heaping a pile of filthy abuse on him, they also threatened to kill his whole family. Several letters more or less said the same thing. I don't remember much of the details anymore."

"Someone in the same industry? Was he affecting a competitor's business?"

"Yes. Jiangzhu University welcomed its first batch of students in September 2004, and that first batch was quite large—larger even than the enrollment numbers of public universities. Back then I even saw his recruitment ad in the newspaper, something about tailoring education to each student's aptitude, turning your interests into your strengths, making you into an irreplaceable treasure. And the tuition was stated outright too—based on the college entrance exam scores, tuition for government-funded students started at 800 yuan a year, capped at 2,500."

"Capped at 2,500?" He Shaobin couldn't help exclaiming in astonishment. "Even over ten years ago, that's an incredibly low tuition. If university tuition is only that much, isn't that basically running a charity?"

"That's exactly what I saw. That's why he had so many students."

"So that's what stirred up other people's jealousy—threatening him, intimidating him, until they drove him to suicide?"

"As for it being suicide, I never quite believed it. A man bold enough to take unconventional risks and innovate like that would have to have a strong psychological constitution. Would he really kill himself over threats like that? There was no substantial harm done at all. At the time, everyone on the special task force found the case suspicious. But... but for some reason, the chief handed down an order to close the case as a suicide. We were all baffled—there were so many suspicious points, how could they just call it a suicide?"

"Right, it's far more likely to have been murder. Whoever's interests he damaged would have had a motive to kill him. Did anyone object at the time?"

"Of course there was objection. But the chief paid no attention to any of it. He simply ordered us to close the case as a suicide—very firm about it—and told us it was the wish of higher-ups, that there was no need to investigate further."

"So... after that, you really just stopped investigating?"

"Yeah. We had no choice but to follow orders. Sigh—"

Both officers fell silent. Ren Jie kept paying close attention to their movements the whole time. Later, judging by the sound of footsteps, He Shaobin left.