52 A White Wedding

 

“There was another person inside Gao Rui’s home?”

I nodded and elaborated. “Yes, you can see that from the bottle of red wine. From the sign around the cork, the bottle was opened for the first time today, but only 2/3 of the alcohol remained. Based on the size of the wineglass at the crime scene, even if Gao Rui downed the entire glass, it wouldn’t have drained as much as 1/3 of the bottle.”

Guan Zhenglin’s expression turned from confusion to shock. “So there was someone drinking with Gao Rui. Gao Rui wasn’t drinking alone!” I snapped my fingers. “Bingo. Gao Rui died after drinking with this mysterious person, so this must be someone Gao Rui was extremely familiar with. After all, you wouldn’t drink with a stranger. By the way,” I turned to Gu Chen. “Did we find anything from the cameras outside Zhang Mingliang’s house?”

Gu Chen shrugged, “Someone has vandalized them. Our friends from the local station couldn’t get any usable footage from them.” I frowned, this case was probably not as simple as we thought. Guan Zhenglin circled around the chair and she said, “But if this is a homicide, why would Gao Rui let this other person inject him with cyanide? I didn’t find any narcoleptic drug in his system and the amount of red wine he drank wasn’t enough to knock him unconscious.” She stopped and announced, “So from the evidence so far, I still think this is a suicide.”

I pulled at my hair with my fingers. Personally I also believed this was a suicide but since someone had been to Gao Rui’s place around his time of death, could that someone had forced Gao Rui to commit suicide? Through threats or coercion? That was not impossible.

“In any case, we should investigate all of Gao Rui’s friends.” I looked at the other two. “Gao Rui would have lost his job due to him harbouring a criminal and contaminating the crime scenes from Zhang Mingliang’s case. If that was the case, he won’t have access to the school labs, then where did he get the cyanide?”

We arrived at Yu Cai High School to resolve this problem around dusk. To be honest, Gao Rui was quite a popular character at school. After all, he was both handsome and talented, but no matter how popular one was, it would be strange to ask someone to get cyanide for him. Cyanide was a highly dangerous and toxic chemical, to retrieve one from the labs, one had to log in the record, unless of course someone stole it. Our interviews came up with nothing. No one had heard such a strange request from Gao Rui, in fact, they had not seen Gao Rui after his dismissal. We looked through the chemistry lab’s record book and saw that no one had requested to use cyanide in the past 3 months. Furthermore, the stock of cyanide at the lab was correct. So that eliminated the possibility of Gao Rui sourcing his cyanide from the school… or at least this part of the school.

I looked at the building across from the high school’s chemistry lab and asked the accompanying teacher. “Is that the building the school’s junior department?” The teacher nodded. “You think the cyanide might have come from there?”

At Yu Cai High School’s junior department.

“Someone has indeed stolen the cyanide from this lab.” The young female teacher who overlooked the lab said nervously. A small piece of pure cyanide could kill an adult in a short amount of time, the amount which was stolen could kill more than 10 adults.

“Check the surveillance.” I ordered.

“We have no surveillance.” The female teacher admitted in shame.

“Why is it so easy to steal poison? This makes no sense.” Gu Chen complained.

“We’ve been around for more than decades already and this has never happened before. Why is it the moment I got this post…” Then the female teacher melted into a blubbering mess. Guan Zhenglin hurried to console her. If it was not Gao Rui who stole the cyanide, then it would still be someone from Cu Yai High School, someone who knew that there wasn’t any surveillance camera at the school’s junior department. Technically speaking, it was easiest for the fox to steal from the henhouse. I studied the weeping young female teacher and wondered could this be another Wu Jiajia?

“We’ll have to conduct interviews then.” I shook my head weakly, “Get statements from everyone.” For this kind of case with no lead, we had to follow protocol, which was to check cameras and take witness statements. Just as we were about to start, Xiao Liu gave me a call. “Hello, Wu Meng, where are you guys?”

“We’re investigating the case, what’s wrong?”

“There’s another suicide case. I hear it’s similar to Gao Rui’s staged suicide.” Xiao Liu said, “The address is at Yang Hao Street, it’s impossible to miss it with the police cars around. I’m preparing to head there now.” Hearing that, I quickly stopped him, “Xiao Liu, I need you to come to Yu Cai High School’s junior department to investigate the theft of the cyanide. This is a big mission and only someone as good as you can do it!”

“I know what you’re doing! You keep on tossing these boring and tedious jobs to me. Last time…” before Xiao Liu finished, I said hurriedly, “What? The signal here is not good? What did you say?” Then I ended the call, turned to Gu Chen and Guan Zhenglin. “Come on, we have another suicide case!”

Technically these suicide cases didn’t belong to our jurisdiction because our task force’s main goal was to capture Zhao Mingkun, but since this case involved Gao Rui, I couldn’t just ignore it. Even though I only knew Gao Rui for a short time, people had become friends in a shorter time.

Yang Yao Street was in the old city of Dong Xing City, it still had the architectural style from the previous century. Needless to say there were no surveillance cameras here either. The 2 suicide cases were just 1 day apart and according to Xiao Liu, that were more than a few suspicious similarities. Xiao Liu wouldn’t have called us for nothing. When we arrived, the sky was already dark. The voice-activated lights at the old building had all malfunctioned. If not for the warning, Gu Chen would have stomped until the tiles cracked.

As we moved upstairs, the officers from the local station filled us in. The victim’s name was Wang Yiman, 32 years old, female. Wang Yiman’s husband died in a car accident 5 years ago. Their 4-year-old daughter also perished in the same accident. After their deaths, Wang Yiman rarely communicated with others and retreated into herself. She was just discovered dead in her own home. She died from hanging. But from the looks of it, she had been dead for quite some time already. No one would have discovered her if not for the smell. It was the police who first discovered the body. They received a civilian call around 7 pm, complaining about a horrible smell coming from Wang Yiman’s home. Her neighbours came to knock on her door but no one answered so they called the police. The officers thought this was a simple civil dispute case but when they opened the door, they saw the body.

The door to Wang Yiman’s house was left open and her body was revealed before us. Wang Yiman was dressed in a wedding dress, the train of her dress dragging on the ground.

“Get moving!” I snapped my fingers. I stood under the body and looked into Wang Yiman’s face. The body was radiating a horrible smell of decomposition but in terms of appearance, there wasn’t any serious decay. In fact, the victim looked more presentable than I expected. She had applied make up on her face before hanging herself. I knew Guan Zhenglin would call me a pervert as I lifted up her long train and looked around her crotch. To my knowledge, hanging was the most common suicide method to cause incontinence.

After the human body died, due to relaxing of muscles, specifically the sphincter muscles at the anus and urinary tract, the dead body would discharge urine and faeces. On top of that, the hanging body had to deal with the additional pull of gravity. It was why hanging bodies were often found contaminated by human refuse.

If the victim was male, there might even be post-mortem ejaculation. Similarly, this was due to gravity. The human blood flow would slow down after death, due to gravity, they would pool at the lower body. For males, that would sometimes squeeze out semen from the penis. So a word of the wise for the male readers, if you did not want to make a scene after death, rub one out before going for the rope.

Wang Yiman’s lower body was perfectly clean. This meant that Wang Yiman was well prepared before her death. She had cleansed her body of urine and faeces, to give herself a presentable death. This should be a woman who loved beauty.

The height of the stool was about between the ground and Wang Yiman’s feet. In crime novels, the murderers left behind a stool which was unnecessarily tall to disguise the homicide. But evidently, that was not the case here.

“Put down the body, slowly…” I told the officers. They moved to lower the body down. Guan Zhenglin went forward to examine the body.

“The windows are locked.” Gu Chen observed, “Was the front door locked when you guys arrived?”

One of the officers answered, “Yes it was. We had to break the door down to come in. We looked around after discovering the body. All the windows and doors were locked, plus the windows have iron grilles. If there was a killer, then they had to know magic to escape from this place.”

“There is a clear strangulation mark.” Guan Zhenglin announced as she looked at the body. “There is only one ligature mark and the applied force comes evenly from above. Therefore, that rules out human strangulation. Based on lividity and rigor mortis, the time of death is about 2 days ago. And based on the distance between the victim’s feet to the ground and the distance between the noose and the ground, this should be a short drop hanging.”

“What?” I enquired. “Shor whatt?”

Guan Zhenglin rolled her eyes at me. “Basically she stood on the stool for support and then kicked the stool away. That is short drop hanging, it was why her neck didn’t break. Furthermore, from the ligature marks around her neck, she seemed to have tied the noose at a specific angle before she kicked the stool away. That is highly unusual.”

A specific angle?

Guan Zhenglin continued, “I know this looks like a simple hanging but there is a lot of science behind hanging. Death is the result but hanging is not the direct cause, instead the causes might vary depending on the circumstances. For example, it could be brain death due to suppression of blood vessels, a broken neck, asphyxiation due to constriction of the trachea, or instantaneous death due to damage to the nervus vagus. Therefore, I will have to return to the morgue before I can give you the real cause of death of this poor woman.”