Chapter 006: Yunqing, the Old Madam

I told Chen Fan there was no need to ask so many questions and that I would let him know once I had figured everything out. My patience was wearing thin; I grabbed the fruit knife from the room and tapped it twice against Chen Fan’s face, urging him to make his final decision. Gritting his teeth, he finally agreed.

After we got ourselves together, we headed to the police station, where Luo Feng was waiting nearby. At first, the officers seemed annoyed to see Chen Fan and ignored him. But when Chen Fan, following my instructions, mentioned he had found some clues, the team leader in charge of the Ghost Banquet Case immediately pressed him for details.

At Chen Fan’s request, the crime scene photos were laid out on the table. After flipping through them, he picked up one—a panoramic shot of the crime scene. Chen Fan asserted that, based on the position of the mahjong table and the old lightbulb, it would have been impossible for the shadows of four people to fall on the curtain.

The team leader slapped his forehead, exclaiming in a thick local accent that he’d overlooked that detail. An hour later, the eyewitness was brought back to the station. Chen Fan and the team leader questioned him together, but as I wasn’t a police officer, I couldn’t go into the interrogation room.

After a long wait, Chen Fan and the team leader emerged. The team leader’s attitude had clearly changed; he handed Chen Fan more case files and even gave him a private office to study the case. Taking advantage of their distraction, I slipped into the office as well.

I asked Chen Fan about the results of the questioning. He said they hadn’t managed to get anything useful. The witness, a middle-aged man, had seen the four shadows because his apartment faced the crime scene, and he watered his plants on the windowsill every evening. He’d seen the shadows twice during those days and insisted he hadn’t lied. The police investigation supported his alibi—he had no motive or suspicion of involvement. The possibility of the witness lying was basically ruled out.

It seemed the hidden hand behind all this had created yet another illusion. Still, the questioning wasn’t fruitless; at the very least, the police’s trust in Chen Fan had grown, giving him more reason to get involved in the case. Chen Fan asked what he should do next. I thought for a moment and told him to get permission to speak with the other eyewitnesses—I wanted to interview them myself.

Chen Fan agreed and quickly went to the team leader. The leader, eager for any new lead and seeing that Chen Fan had some ability, readily consented. With the addresses of the witnesses in hand, we left the station. Luo Feng had been waiting for us a long time.

He was deep in conversation with his men but, seeing me, came over at once to report that his people had dug up everything about Yun Qing. Yun Qing was both her given name and her Taoist title. I was a little surprised. Luo Feng explained that Yun Qing’s family was originally from the mainland but had moved to the city when she was very young.

Yun Qing was in her twenties, around my age. After spending a few years in school, she dropped out due to rebelliousness—rumor was she’d offended the teachers. Her family sent her to a Taoist temple, perhaps hoping to curb her fiery temper.

Her name, Yun Qing, had an ethereal, Taoist air, and as a secular disciple, she kept it as her title. Yet within a year, she was expelled from the temple as well. She hadn’t lived with her family for years, and they basically had no control over her. In these past years, Yun Qing had kept a low profile.

She’d held various jobs—waitressing in bars, greeting guests in hotels—but everywhere she went, her bad temper got her fired. She made little money, and her parents didn’t support her, yet she still frequented nightclubs every night. Drinking, smoking, all the things ordinary people consider unseemly for a woman—Yun Qing had done them all. Luo Feng told me that several of his brothers on the street knew her; some had even tried to get close to her because of her looks, but Yun Qing never had contact with men.

People started saying she was just pretending to be aloof, and gradually, they lost interest in her.

It wasn’t until after the Ghost Banquet case that Yun Qing’s reputation began to spread across the New Territories. She performed a ritual for the owner of Chaoyang Restaurant, and soon, crowds sought her out for her services—at steep prices. Despite this, her reputation remained unscathed. According to the superstitious, her spiritual powers were exceptional.

Due to history, the city has always had a colorful mix of religious beliefs, and Taoism is widely followed.

Luo Feng said she looked like a fraud to him.

I said, “A fraud, perhaps, but I’m afraid she really does know a thing or two.” I told Luo Feng to keep digging into Yun Qing, to see if he could find out more.

After dinner, we headed to the address provided by the police. Night had already fallen after a long day. The person we were looking for lived next door to the crime scene and was the one who had reported hearing the sound of mahjong tiles clacking late at night. According to the file, she was over seventy—a frail old woman.

After the police discovered the bodies, she was so frightened she moved. Her new home was two blocks away from the old-style apartment.

Her new residence was just as run-down, and the front was dimly lit. Chen Fan accidentally kicked something—a brazier, now cold, with nothing inside but ashes, the remains of burnt paper. Clearly, it had been used for burning offerings to the dead. Chen Fan quickly set the brazier upright, muttering about bad luck.

I knocked on the door, and after three full minutes, the old woman finally opened it. The room was dim, and she looked as though she had already gone to bed—her face deeply lined, her hair a tangled mess. She asked who we were. Chen Fan showed his badge and said we were with the police.

She asked why we’d come again. I smiled, explaining there were still some things we needed to confirm.

She let us in. The air inside reeked of incense. A quick look around revealed a plate of pickled vegetables and a bowl of thin porridge on the simple dining table—both already moldy, who knows how long she’d been eating them.

After we sat down, I asked if someone in her family had passed away. She shook her head, so I asked about the brazier outside. Sighing, she said, “That was Master Yun Qing’s idea. She told me to burn paper for the spirits, said it was the only way to escape disaster.”

Yun Qing again—her connection to this case was inescapable.

I asked if Yun Qing had told her anything else. The old woman replied that Yun Qing had instructed her to burn incense and paper money every day, but little more than that. She’d spent all her savings hiring Yun Qing. Luo Feng cursed under his breath. Though a triad leader, Luo Feng had never bullied the weak, and Yun Qing cheating even an old woman clearly angered him.

I quickly asked the old woman about the night she’d heard the sound of mahjong tiles. She confirmed that for several nights, she’d heard the distinctive clacking. She’d already told the police everything, and they had verified that the nights she heard the sounds matched the days the restaurant delivered food to the rental unit.

Seeing her age, Chen Fan asked if she might have misheard.

She shook her head immediately. Though her legs were failing, her hearing was still sharp. She’d just come out of her bedroom to open the door for us, nearly asleep when I knocked. There was some distance between her bedroom and the door, and my knock hadn’t been loud. Her hearing was indeed good.

The old apartment building had poor soundproofing; perhaps she’d misheard once, but not three nights in a row.

“Besides the sound of mahjong, did you hear anything else?” I asked.

She thought for a moment, then shook her head. I persisted, asking if she’d heard any strange noises in the days before the bodies were found. Through our questioning, we learned that her husband had died long ago, her children worked elsewhere, and she rarely left her flat. She was the most likely person to have overheard anything suspicious.

“Did you hear anything that particularly annoyed you?” I tried a different angle.

Elderly people are sensitive to noise; certain sounds could easily disturb her. At first, she said no, but under my gentle prompting, she finally revealed something the police hadn’t discovered. She mentioned hearing the sound of furniture being dragged, and at one point, the television in the neighboring flat was extremely loud.

Luo Feng smugly gave Chen Fan a light smack on the back of the head. “Learn from this—your police questioning methods won’t get you anywhere.”

At the mention of “ghosts,” the old woman shuddered. I made a mental note of her statements; she couldn’t remember exactly when she’d heard those two sounds, but it was probably a day or two before the mahjong noises. We got nothing more from her and prepared to leave.

She shuffled to the door with us. When she saw the overturned brazier, she suddenly burst into tears, clutching at us and wailing that she was doomed. Moved by pity, Luo Feng slipped her some money, telling her to use it to hire Yun Qing again for another ritual. Changing her superstitious beliefs would be difficult—this was all Luo Feng could do.

We had already walked some distance when Chen Fan finally asked what powers Yun Qing could possibly possess to make people believe her so completely in just a few days.

I licked my lips. “No matter what Yun Qing is capable of, tomorrow you should bring her up to the police. Have them check where she was and what she was doing at the time of the crime.”