The car pulled smoothly away and continued toward the Shangyue Hotel.
Zhou Jin sat in the passenger seat, sorting through her thoughts — working out how best to conduct her inquiries so as to identify the victim as quickly as possible.
Jiang Hansheng caught her in his peripheral vision, head down and writing in her notebook, and said, “Still trying to confirm the victim’s identity?”
“Yes.” Zhou Jin nodded.
“How are you thinking about it?”
It had the easy cadence of idle conversation, though Jiang Hansheng’s voice carried its usual cool undertone. The question gave Zhou Jin the brief, disorienting impression that she was being questioned by a form teacher.
She organised her thoughts and said, “The autopsy report indicates the victim was a young woman, around 22 years of age. The Shangyue Hotel is in a fairly out-of-the-way location — foot traffic wouldn’t be high. On top of that, she never returned after leaving on the 23rd, so there would be no check-out record. Taking all of that together, we should be able to pull her up quickly from the electronic records.”
Jiang Hansheng nodded in agreement.
Zhou Jin considered a moment longer. “And she was very attractive. The hotel staff might have a reasonably clear memory of her — worth asking around. Once we’ve confirmed her identity, the follow-up work should fall into place much more easily…”
“How so?”
Zhou Jin answered: “On the night she was killed, she took a taxi from the Shangyue Hotel to the area near the Tonghe riverbank. For a woman to agree to go out to the outskirts in the dead of night to meet someone — the killer was almost certainly someone she knew. Once we map out her personal connections, tracking him down is just a matter of time.”
Even the thought of it made Zhou Jin restless with anticipation. Catching the killer would let them follow the thread back to the source — and that meant finding out where the service weapon had come from.
Jiang Hansheng allowed himself a mild smile. Her thinking, at least, was clear.
“It seems Team Leader Tan has taught you well.”
Zhou Jin nodded.
Tan Shiming and Zhou Jin’s father had been colleagues together in the same public security brigade. The two went back a long way, and after Zhou Jin joined the Major Crimes Unit, though Tan Shiming held her to exacting standards, he had genuinely taught her everything he knew.
Zhou Jin tilted her head and studied Jiang Hansheng’s expression with narrowed eyes. “So, Professor Jiang — is there anything you’d like to add?”
She had the air of a diligent student waiting for her teacher’s commentary and approval.
Jiang Hansheng’s smile deepened. His phoenix eyes curved slightly, and when he smiled, there was a quality to his refined features that was different from usual — more openly pleasant.
“The direction of the investigation is correct. However…”
Jiang Hansheng turned the steering wheel, tapped the brakes, checked the rear-view mirror, and manoeuvred the car cleanly into a parking space.
Zhou Jin looked across the street at the gilt lettering of the “Shangyue Hotel” sign — its lavish, ornate façade somehow out of place in this sparsely populated area.
Jiang Hansheng looked over at Zhou Jin. “The premise of checking electronic records is that she registered under her own identification.”
“…”
Shangyue Hotel. Front desk.
Zhou Jin produced her credentials and requested the staff member’s cooperation with the investigation.
Jiang Hansheng stood a short distance behind Zhou Jin, his gaze moving with quiet attentiveness over the people she spoke with.
The front desk receptionist was a very young woman. When Zhou Jin asked her surname, she answered honestly — Xu — her expression guarded and nervous, clearly uncertain of herself.
Zhou Jin looked into the guest room records, directing the receptionist to filter step by step according to her specifications. The final result: nothing.
No one matching the criteria.
Zhou Jin raised her phone and held it out toward the receptionist. “Have you seen this woman?”
The young woman glanced at the photograph quickly and immediately shook her head. “I don’t know her — I’m new here, I don’t really have an impression of her.”
Jiang Hansheng’s brow tightened — she was lying.
Zhou Jin asked her to look more carefully. She received the same answer. Zhou Jin pressed her lips together and quietly scanned the lobby. She noticed the security camera mounted in the corner — its indicator light appeared to be off.
“Where is the monitoring room?” she asked.
If the victim had been coming and going from this hotel, the interior cameras in the lobby would presumably have captured something.
The receptionist’s expression grew visibly uneasy. “Um — why don’t I check with the manager first and have him come speak with you…”
Zhou Jin gave her a measured look and nodded. “Fine.”
The receptionist placed an internal call, gave a brief summary of the situation to whoever answered, and within two or three minutes, a heavyset man came stepping briskly out of the elevator.
The manager spotted Zhou Jin and came forward with a practiced, warm smile, extending his hand, assuring her of his full cooperation with the police.
When Zhou Jin asked about the lobby security camera, he replied in a tone of considerable regret: “I’m terribly sorry, Officer — that camera has been broken for over a month. We simply haven’t gotten around to fixing it. Today — today I’ll get someone in to repair it.”
Zhou Jin smiled. “What a coincidence.”
Before joining the Major Crimes Unit, Zhou Jin had worked in the Vice Suppression Unit of the Public Security Brigade. She had spent more time staking out hotels than she had sitting at her own desk. She had heard this kind of smooth deflection far too many times to be impressed by it.
At that moment, Jiang Hansheng, who had been standing to one side in silence, spoke: “Do you recognise her?”
The manager started. “I don’t.”
Zhou Jin said, “You haven’t even looked at the photograph yet. How can you be so certain?”
The manager’s complexion went pale, the warmth draining from his professionally genial expression. “…No, what I meant was — I’m rarely out at the front desk, so I probably wouldn’t have seen her. That’s why I don’t recognise her.”
He reached up and nervously touched his nose.
Jiang Hansheng cut his hand short: “Before a person learns how to lie, they ought to learn how to control their body language.”
“…”
Jiang Hansheng’s face remained cold throughout, his voice soft and unhurried as he laid it out plainly: “That woman was a sex worker. So the question is — were you the one procuring clients for her? Or were you simply providing the premises?”
The manager’s breath caught. A fear he couldn’t name suddenly filled his chest to capacity.
……
Before entering the hotel, Jiang Hansheng had offered Zhou Jin a preliminary analysis: “Missing for over seven days, with no missing persons report filed — that tells us the victim had no close family or friends in Haizhou City. Even when she disappeared, no one thought to look for her.”
“No steady employment. No family to speak of. Yet here is a polished, well-presented young woman — what was her source of income?”
He smoothed his sleeves and fastened his cuffs, his gaze settling on the Shangyue Hotel across the street. “Given that she was staying at a hotel of this tier, it’s unlikely she had any inherited wealth to spend freely.”
Zhou Jin turned it over. Drawing on her experience in the Vice Suppression Unit, it was all too easy to arrive at one particular conclusion.
“Also…”
Jiang Hansheng looked toward her — and then, without any particular warning, thought of her short hair tucked behind her ear back in the Major Crimes Unit.
He reached out and lifted the strand of hair at her cheek, gently tucking it behind her ear.
Zhou Jin flinched back in surprise. The ear his fingers had brushed against went slightly numb. She rubbed at it, confused. “What was that for?”
Jiang Hansheng explained: “When the victim was waiting for the taxi, each time a stranger walked past her, she would unconsciously tuck her hair back — exactly as I just demonstrated. To a certain extent, that is a gesture of sexual signalling.”
His gaze was entirely composed, his expression as cool as ever, which lent the whole thing a certain detached, disciplined quality — so much so that his unannounced gesture a moment ago had felt less like anything personal and more like a research demonstration.
Zhou Jin, taking it at face value, simply pushed back: “It could also just be because it was hot.”
“Agreed.” Jiang Hansheng accepted the counter without any resistance. “Behavioural analysis only suggests a possibility. It would still need to be verified.”
But Zhou Jin had understood the implication well enough. “…You’re saying there’s a strong chance she was a sex worker?”
If that was the case, checking the check-in records would likely yield very little.
……
Now, in the face of Jiang Hansheng’s pointed questioning, the hotel manager had clearly lost his composure.
When extracting a statement, breaking through a person’s psychological defences was the most critical step.
Jiang Hansheng glanced at Zhou Jin in silence — a look that said everything. She understood immediately and prepared to play the final card.
“Actually,” Zhou Jin said, “we’re not especially concerned right now with who was soliciting or who was being solicited. What I’m here to tell you is this — the girl in that photograph…”
She held her phone screen up in front of the manager’s face.
“She’s dead.” Zhou Jin let the words fall slowly, heavily. “This is a matter of a human life. I’m going to ask you one more time. Do you, or do you not, recognise her?”
“She’s dead?!” The manager looked up with a jolt of genuine horror. “Guan Ling — she’s — she’s really dead? How could this have happened…”
Guan Ling.
August 3rd. The victim’s name confirmed: Guan Ling.
They might have had the nerve to be involved in solicitation, but the moment a death entered the picture, everyone panicked. Zhou Jin brought the manager back to the Major Crimes Unit for formal questioning, and the answers came quickly.
Guan Ling was from the countryside. She had dropped out of high school and come to Haizhou City alone to find work.
At first she had only worked front-desk service jobs. Later, because of her striking looks, she caught the eye of a procurer known as “Lai San’er,” who brought her into sex work.
“That day, Guan Ling wasn’t taking any clients — she’d been drinking and slept the whole afternoon. Before she left the hotel that evening, she told me she wasn’t coming back anymore. Said she was going home to her village…
I thought, that can’t possibly happen — Lai San’er treated her like a cash cow. He wasn’t going to let her go that easily. So I told her to be sensible, make good money, stop thinking about all this. But she wouldn’t listen. Said if she walked up to Lai San’er right now, he’d treat her like royalty…”
“I thought Guan Ling was still drunk, so I didn’t pay too much attention…” The manager wiped at the sweat on his brow. “We — we only provided the rooms. That’s all we were involved in. Officer, I only found out about Guan Ling’s death from you just now. I assumed she’d really gone back to her hometown…”
Zhou Jin and Xiao Yang came out of the interrogation room together. Zhou Jin had her laptop tucked under her arm. She raised an eyebrow at Tan Shiming. “He talked.”
Every pair of eyes in the Major Crimes Unit turned toward Zhou Jin.
“According to the Shangyue Hotel manager, Guan Ling was going to meet someone called Lai San’er that night. It’s very likely she had something on him — was using it as leverage to threaten him. That’s almost certainly what got her killed.”
Tan Shiming: “Lai San’er? Did you get a real name?”
Zhou Jin shook her head. “He only knows the alias. But Lai San’er had mentioned at some point that his cousin had just opened a new bar, and that he was going to be working there as a floor manager. Lai San’er is likely to turn up at the bar.”
She glanced at the calendar on the desk and confirmed the time: “Tonight at 8 o’clock. Phoenix Fire.”