It was no coincidence that he could remember this particular detail.
During the investigation, that old colleague had suspected this woman might be engaged in prostitution, and had planned to tip off the vice squad so they could look into it — which was why the impression had stayed with him.
After receiving this information, the vice squad had indeed sent people to investigate.
But by the time they arrived, the woman had already moved out long ago, without leaving behind even a single photograph. On top of that, the landlord had never signed a proper rental agreement when leasing the place, and without a contract, it was very difficult for the police to trace the woman’s real identity.
As for the twins — the landlord had only caught a glimpse of that detail when he came to read the utility meters, noticing a photograph sitting on the living room table.
In the photograph were two identical little boys.
There was no substantive evidence whatsoever. The only sources of information were the one-sided accounts of the landlord and the neighbors.
In the end, the vice squad had no choice but to let the matter drop.
And now, Wang Pengzhe was relaying this lead to Jiang Hansheng and Zhou Jin. It was like clouds parting to reveal sunlight — as though every question that had lingered before this moment finally had an answer, yet at the same time, it seemed as though even more mysteries were waiting to be unraveled.
Twenty-five years had passed since the Huaisha serial murder case. Throughout those twenty-five years, Qi Yan’s family background had always been the missing piece of the puzzle.
Zhou Jin had a faint, instinctive feeling: if they could just fill in that missing piece, perhaps the truth of the entire matter would become clear.
But where should they even begin?
Zhou Jin thought it over, then said to Wang Pengzhe: “I’ll make another trip to the sub-bureau tomorrow. I’ll have them look up the birth certificates.”
If they really were twins, the scope of the search shouldn’t be too large.
Wang Pengzhe sighed. “I had someone look into that before I came. Nothing matched the criminal profile.”
Jiang Hansheng was silent for a long moment, then asked: “Do you have the address where that woman rented?”
Wang Pengzhe: “I do.”
Jiang Hansheng said: “If we can’t find the child, we start from the mother.”
…
The hotel. From the bathroom came the sound of running water.
The wound on Zhou Jin’s shoulder hadn’t had its stitches removed yet — she couldn’t shower, and even washing her hair required Jiang Hansheng’s help.
At this moment, Zhou Jin was bent over with her head lowered toward the sink. Jiang Hansheng stood beside her, pulling the shower head over and testing the water temperature with his hand.
He splashed a little water through her hair, and asked quietly: “Is the temperature all right?”
Zhou Jin made a soft sound of assent, closed her eyes, and let herself feel the sensation of Jiang Hansheng’s long fingers threading through her hair, working in gentle circles.
Head still bowed, she thought about how Jiang Hansheng had asked for that woman’s rental address. Assuming he meant to go back to the landlord, she raised a question: “Would that landlord be any use? Didn’t Teacher Wang say the vice squad never managed to find out that woman’s real identity back then?”
Jiang Hansheng replied: “We’re not going to the landlord. We’re going to look for the pimps who operated in that area.”
“Oh!” Zhou Jin understood at once.
The so-called “red-light districts” hidden within a city each had their own territory to avoid conflicts between competitors, and generally stayed out of one another’s affairs.
If that woman had indeed been involved in prostitution, then even if she didn’t need a middleman, the pimps in that area would have quickly found out who had been taking their business.
If Zhou Jin could get her hands on a pimp, she might be able to pry something out of them.
Having worked out this line of investigation, Zhou Jin said with a hint of satisfaction: “That’s right in my wheelhouse. Though it’s too late tonight — tomorrow, after dinner, you head back to the hotel and I’ll go patrol that area on my own.”
In other respects Zhou Jin wouldn’t dare boast, but when it came to vice surveillance and stakeouts, she had plenty of experience. Places like KTVs and nightclubs — send her in for a stroll and she could sniff out whether there was any illicit business going on.
“…”
Jiang Hansheng let out a quiet sigh.
The moment the investigation came up, Zhou Jin truly had boundless energy. Her shoulder wound hadn’t even fully healed, yet here she was, ready to go patrol that area alone.
Hearing him sigh, Zhou Jin was puzzled. “What’s wrong?”
Jiang Hansheng decided to take a more indirect approach, and asked: “If you go, who will protect me?”
Zhou Jin was caught somewhere between laughter and exasperation. “…Are you serious?”
She turned her head to look at Jiang Hansheng’s expression. He lightly pressed a hand to the back of her neck, avoiding her gaze, and said with perfect composure, neither blushing nor flinching: “Serious.”
Zhou Jin quickly settled down and let him continue working the lather through her hair.
She said: “Well then — what if you come with me?”
“All right.”
When the hair-washing was done, Jiang Hansheng carefully dried her hair for her, and the final step was gently blotting the water droplets from Zhou Jin’s earlobes with a towel.
“It tickles.” Zhou Jin tucked in her neck and shifted away from the towel, not letting Jiang Hansheng continue.
She stood up, scrubbing her clean, dry short hair with her hands in a haphazard way, and let out a satisfied breath. Catching Jiang Hansheng’s gaze in the mirror, Zhou Jin’s eyes curved into a smile. “Thank you.”
She turned around — and the sudden, pressing closeness made her take a step back. Jiang Hansheng’s tall figure loomed over her, and the distance between them collapsed in an instant, leaving them nearly pressed together.
He had his sleeves rolled up, his long and well-proportioned arms braced against the edge of the sink, caging Zhou Jin against him.
“Wh— what is it?”
Too close.
An inexplicable heat crept up Zhou Jin’s face.
She and Jiang Hansheng had gone well beyond kissing — they had been as intimate as two people could be — yet right now, seeing his dark eyes and faintly flushed lips up close like this, his black bathrobe making his face look all the more pale and striking—
Zhou Jin’s heart was picking up speed, beat by beat.
She knew that even such a fine set of features was, when it came to Jiang Hansheng, one of his more unremarkable qualities. It was his gentleness, his intelligence, that were the most captivating — and often the most impossible to resist.
She wanted to kiss him.
The thought had barely surfaced before even Zhou Jin herself was a little startled by it. The words “what are you letting yourself get carried away thinking about” hadn’t even finished their loop in her mind when, right in front of her, Jiang Hansheng tilted his face ever so slightly to the side.
With perfect composure, he closed his eyes, and said: “That’s not enough. I want a kiss too.”
What a remarkable coincidence.
Without a second thought, Zhou Jin wrapped her arms around his shoulders and, on instinct, pressed her lips to Jiang Hansheng’s cheek.
When the two of them had kissed before, it had always edged endlessly toward desire — but this was different. This kiss was so ambiguous, so light, so delicate that it left room for only one thing to be expressed:
Pure affection.
After just that one kiss, Zhou Jin pulled back. Her eyes were bright and clear, curved like crescents of a moon.
She said with a teasing lilt: “Thank you, Teacher Jiang. I’d like to buy a membership card — I’ll come find you to wash my hair again next time.”
Jiang Hansheng couldn’t help but laugh. He leaned down and gathered Zhou Jin into his arms, closed his eyes, and pressed a kiss to her hair.
“Come back anytime.”
…
The following evening, Zhou Jin rented a car and drove Jiang Hansheng around the lower districts of the city.
The sky grew darker by degrees. Huaisha had passed through its stifling hot season, and the night air was clean and cool, drifting across Zhou Jin’s face, lifting the ends of her hair.
The car moved slowly. In the passenger seat, Jiang Hansheng was characteristically quiet and still, and not a single sound stirred inside the vehicle.
Zhou Jin’s thoughts drifted. She realized it had been a long time since she’d done street-level patrol work.
Back in her early days at the grassroots police station, her job had been to patrol and maintain order across the jurisdiction. Beyond the endless work and the bone-deep exhaustion of a schedule turned upside down, there wasn’t much that had left a deep impression on her.
If anything, it was further back — many, many years ago — that she remembered something like “patrolling.” It was when she was studying at Jingzhou Police University, and she’d had an experience of a similar kind.
Jiang Cheng was three years her senior and had graduated early. After graduating, Jiang Cheng had gone to work at a grassroots police station in Jingzhou, and was run ragged from the very first day. The two of them barely had time to go on dates, let alone call each other.
Jiang Cheng was frequently on night patrol, and whenever Zhou Jin had a free moment, she’d make the long journey across mountains and rivers just to keep him company during his shift.
It was, of course, against the rules, and Zhou Jin wouldn’t disrupt things for too long — she’d board the patrol at whatever stretch of road Jiang Cheng was responsible for, bringing him a late-night snack, along with one for his colleague.
His colleague would tease Jiang Cheng mercilessly each time, then very tactfully step out of the vehicle, which was how Zhou Jin and Jiang Cheng would steal their ten-odd minutes of couple’s time.
This kind of life had gone on for two years before it ended. Looking back on it now, Zhou Jin couldn’t quite fathom how she’d had that much energy in her.
She had loved Jiang Cheng with everything she had, and Jiang Cheng had poured everything he had into work.
As she grew older, Zhou Jin gradually came to understand what lay beneath Jiang Cheng’s relentless drive — a deep longing for the future. He had wanted desperately to live well on his own terms, without depending on anyone else’s charity, without owing anyone anything.
He was proud. He was determined. He kept a mental record of every debt he owed to the Zhou Family, down to the last line.
And so he needed money — a great deal of money — but a police officer’s salary could never satisfy that hunger.
Was that why he had fallen in with He Wu, Qi Yan, and that crowd? Even to the point of being willing to pull the trigger on Yao Weihai and “Hidden Edge”?
She didn’t believe it.
Yet in the face of the evidence, her disbelief felt more like an excuse she had made up to console herself.
“Zhou Jin?”
Zhou Jin snapped back to herself and instinctively hit the brakes. The tires screamed against the pavement.
Zhou Jin gripped the steering wheel, her eyes flying to Jiang Hansheng in the passenger seat. “Are you all right?”
Jiang Hansheng looked somewhat startled. “Did I frighten you?”
Zhou Jin’s chest flooded with guilt. She knocked her forehead lightly against the steering wheel and said with a groan of self-reproach: “I’m sorry — I got distracted just now.”
Jiang Hansheng patted her on the back, and said with a mild smile: “Let me drive.”
Zhou Jin shook her head. “No, it’s fine. Let’s get out and walk for a bit.”
Jiang Hansheng said: “All right.”
In the time Zhou Jin had been lost in thought, her eyes had still been wandering here and there, and she seemed to have spotted something. She drove the car back and pulled up along the side of the road.
Here stretched a long street — not quite deserted, not quite bustling. Looking down it, you could see small stalls dotted along the roadside here and there: some selling toys, some selling street food. On both sides, storefronts hung glowing neon signs in every color, and not far off stood a hair salon, a red-blue-white barber’s pole rotating slowly in the doorway.
Jiang Hansheng stopped in front of a small pushcart stall. The cart had a rack from which hung all manner of toys, and tied to the front of the cart were hydrogen balloons in cartoon shapes.
The stall-keeper was a kindly-looking elderly man, currently twisting a balloon animal into the shape of a small dog.
Jiang Hansheng was extraordinarily handsome, with a personality that ran cool and detached — somewhat otherworldly, in a sense — and with his tailored suit, standing in a place like this, he looked rather out of place.
Yet he was watching the old man twist the balloon dog with complete and genuine interest.
Zhou Jin found it a little funny. She nudged him: “Do you want to buy one?”
To her surprise, Jiang Hansheng didn’t refuse. He said straightforwardly: “Sure.”
Zhou Jin paid, then asked what color he wanted. Jiang Hansheng pointed at the half-finished “little dog” in the old man’s hands. “That one will do.”
The old man smiled as he worked, and asked: “Is this for a child at home, or for yourself?”
Jiang Hansheng: “…”
He glanced sideways at Zhou Jin beside him.
Zhou Jin pressed a hand to her lips and gave a small cough, her face going a little red. She said hastily: “I saw a convenience store over there — I’m going to grab some water.”
Jiang Hansheng said: “All right.”