As if worried that we wouldn’t believe him, Cheng Yimin added, “These few days Zhang Bin has been acting really strange. We used to sleep until noon but these days, he disappeared around noon. One time, I asked him where he was going, and he told me proudly that since Fang Xiao Qi and Du Zigui have been dealt with, it was time for him to go after Wang An and Zhao Xiaoli.”
“Both of us thought this has become an unhealthy obsession.” Zheng Shuai concurred, “All these just because we were sent into the detention centre? It was not like we had been sent there for the first time anyway. Honestly, I don’t get what is so different this time.” Both of them were silent and then Cheng Yimin concluded, “That’s all we know.”
I frowned. Zhang Bin told us that Zheng Shuai and Cheng Yimin would be able to prove his innocence, but their testimonies were clearly not good for him. So was Zhang Bin lying or were these two lying?
To verify that, I had Gu Chen contact the boss of the restaurant where they had that dinner. The boss had a lasting impression of this group of youths because they were extremely rowdy. The boss also confirmed that there was one of them who were coaxing the other young man to go and rape his own sister. At the time, there were other customers at the shop and they were clearly made uncomfortable by this. Therefore, the boss had to go and tell him to pipe down. According to the boss, the man was indeed drunk. Whether the man was joking or not, the boss couldn’t tell.
So what was the truth?
I shrugged and told the duo, “Regardless, you’re coming back to the station with us. Hopefully, this will be a lesson for you. I hear that your group can at least steal a phone a day, that will nab you at least 200 RMB. But look at yourself, you have to live at a place like this, where exactly did you waste the money?”
Zheng Shuai spat and groused, “What money? Zhang Bin has taken most of the sales and we only got around 10 RMB for each job done. Honestly, I have no idea where that Zhang Bin spent the rest of the money. He told us that the money went into rent, but I don’t believe him. He probably hid it from us.” I shook my head. Zhang Bin didn’t look like a rich person either.
We were about to leave when Mary suddenly called me. “You have to come back now. There is a video that is going viral online. We have already taken down the original but the video has already been downloaded by god knows how many people.”
“What video is it?” Mary sounded worried, which was not common.
“A murder video.” Mary said.
We hurried back to the station as quickly as possible. Captain Zhao and Mary were there. This was the first time they appeared at the station since we had been demoted to Elm Town. This could only mean that things had gotten very serious. But for now we had no idea what the video was about and whether it had to do with our current case or not.
When Captain Zhao saw us, he said, “You’ll have to solve the case as soon as possible. Mary, play the video.”
The video was dark and a man sat before the camera. The dimness blurred the man’s face but we could tell that this was none other than Du Zigui. Du Zigui’s face was much thinner than the one in his picture. His eyes sunk into his face, it looked like he was heavily sleep-deprived. His voice was low and Mary had to raise the volume for us to hear him.
“I’ve fixed it so that this video will be uploaded automatically. When you see this video, I’ll be dead already. And my killer’s name is Zhang Bin. The reason I can be so confident is because I’ve discovered his secret. I realized he has been keeping a woman captive but I don’t know who she is.” Then there were some noises from outside and Du Zigui looked to the side. Du Zigui continued, “I decide I will risk my life to help her. I’ll die or he’ll die. The reason I have to kill him is because he has done something unforgivable to me. Under his plotting, I was made a drug addict. When I was high, he forced me to rape my own little sister.
“I know this is my fault and I will pay for it. However,” Du Zigui was angry but his tears also kept falling, “I will make Zhang Bin pay too. I raped my sister and she killed herself because of it. I hate myself for my failure to resist the drug, but I hate Zhang Bin even more.
“I don’t dare to go home to face my family. My other sister, Zhao Xiaoli, and my younger brother, Wang An, are also in danger. As long as Zhang Bin is still alive, the world will never be safe. I will have to kill him or he’ll have to kill me.” Then Du Zigui picked up the camera, “I’ve given this much thought, I can’t let him harm more people. If I don’t come back after 5 days, it means that I’m dead. Tell my younger siblings that I’m sorry and that I love them.”
The video was dated, it was recorded in the morning 4 days ago. The same day Zhang Bin went to the hospital to change his bandage. That was weird because if things went as Du Zigui said on the video, then he would have found Zhang Bin easily at the hospital because he had been there with Zhang Bin before. However, Zhang Bin didn’t mention this altercation at all during interrogation. Was he purposely hiding this information from us?
“Looks like Du Zigui is really dead.” Guan Zhenglin said.
I frowned, “That might not be true. What we saw from the video was merely Du Zigui proclaiming he would go for a life or death duel with Zhang Bin. It was unclear whether the duel was accepted or not.”
Gu Chen countered, “But the fact that this video has been released meant that Du Zigui is dead. That slimeball probably hid Du Zigui’s body at a place that we wouldn’t find so easily.”
I shrugged and said nothing.
Captain Zhao ordered, “Elm Town is a small town, this video will soon travel through everyone’s phone. If we don’t solve this case soon, it’ll soon reach the ears of our superior. We have already been moved out from Dong Xing City, if we fail to solve the case in a small town, we probably won’t be returning to Dong Xing City in our lifetime.”
At that moment, Mary said, “Guys, there’s an update.” Then she showed us her facebook page. Auntie Lee had sent her a post. This Auntie Lee was the chairwoman of our neighbourhood watch. Auntie Lee was kind and passionate, her favorite hobby was to sit by the roadside to gossip about others. The post Auntie Lee shared was entitled, ‘The Truth behind the Murder Video.”
The post was heavily exaggerated and after reading it, all of our brows were locked.
The post described Zhang Bin’s short 20 years of life from a first person perspective. The poster claimed that they were Zhang Bin’s classmates. They said Zhang Bin was a bad student since he was young. He liked to pull down girls’ pants, demand protection money from the neighbourhood kids and spit into the teacher’s mugs. When he was 7, he stole money from his parents; and when he was 12, he made a girl pregnant. Now that he was an adult, he was involved in drug, murder, rape, arson and so on. He even had his own underground gang and ruled Elm Town’s underground world.
I saw not Zhang Bin but an exaggerated version of the man from the post. Zhang Bin described in the post was Evil Incarnate. The post was also heavily descriptive like the poster had experienced these things alongside Zhang Bin. The post also came attached with pictures of Elm Town and pictures of a boy. Honestly, the boy could have been anyone, but the message was that it was Zhang Bin. After reading the post, I sighed, “If this post is real, then Zhang Bin would have been beaten to death when he was in primary school.”
Mary sighed, “Such is the nature of our current internet culture. The truth doesn’t matter as long as it can go viral. The post is clearly highly manufactured. I’ll check the poster’s ID. The post has been shared over 500 times, we can charge the poster with libel already.” I nodded.
Captain Zhao said, “That is not the important thing now, we can put that aside first. Mainly, we need to figure out who was the one who uploaded that video and where is that man now. If he’s still alive, bring him here; if he’s dead, bring his body here.”
We nodded.
Right that moment, a call came in from the neighbouring district’s station. They said a body had been found inside an ice hole and the body looked just like the man on the video.
“The body has been found?” I frowned, “The moment the video is released, the body is found?”
The office said, “You better get over here now. Someone has spread the news about the body and now the riverbank is filled with people. They are all waiting for the dead body to be salvaged. Other than that, we also have plenty of reporters here. That video is now great news. It’s all over social media.”
After hanging up, I told the rest, “Let’s go, the body has been found.”
“This is such a coincidence.” Gu Chen commented.
I shook my head. “Too much of a coincidence. I refuse to believe there is no one behind this. Sister Mary, please help me check why the video gained such huge popularity so soon. This murder video is not really a murder video, but a man’s soliloquy about how he’s going to risk his life to take revenge but somehow, someone has made it into a murder video.”
Mary nodded. “There’s probably a hired 50 cent army at work but who hired them, I’ll have to dig deeper.”
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