With the bearded man cuffed, Zhang Haiyang first went to the bathroom to examine the corpse.
Afterward, the two found a marriage certificate in the cabinet next to the TV stand. The man on the certificate was the bearded man—only without the beard—and the woman was the dead woman in the bathroom.
The bearded man was called Gu Youguo, forty-two years old this year, from Changshuihe Village, Songzhen, Ningjiang County; the woman was called Du Jiao, forty years old, also from Changshuihe Village, Ningjiang County. Judging by the registration information on the marriage certificate, the two had been married for twenty years.
Zhang Haiyang then called the police station.
"Chief Zhang is already on his way with people. Let's wait for him here." With that, Zhang Haiyang sat down on the chair across from Gu Youguo.
Luo Fei, meanwhile, took the opportunity to head to the balcony. He had just noticed that the door to the balcony had been kept closed, but back at Zhang Lan's house, he had clearly smelled the stench drifting from the direction of the balcony. He suspected there was something wrong there too.
Sure enough, the moment Luo Fei opened the balcony door, a stench even more foul than the bathroom's flooded his nose and mouth, and he immediately clamped a hand over his face.
The stench was coming from the flower trough on the balcony. It was about two meters long and one meter wide, planted with a large cluster of gardenias—white blossoms, exceptionally beautiful.
If nothing unexpected had happened, there should be another corpse beneath that flower trough.
Luo Fei noticed a small trowel beside the trough, picked it up, and gently dug away the soil on top. Before long, a rotting, hideous, terror-inducing face crawling with maggots was exposed.
Even with his mental preparation, Luo Fei was still startled.
Looking at the corpse, the face had decayed beyond recognition, but judging by the length of the hair, it should be a man.
"Master, come over here. There's another body over here." Luo Fei called toward the living room.
Hearing Luo Fei's shout, Zhang Haiyang hurried over.
"This should be a male corpse. One man, one woman—looks like there's more to this story." Zhang Haiyang gazed at the body in the flower trough, pondered a moment, then said to Luo Fei, "Don't touch the body. Wait for the criminal police squad to come handle it."
Luo Fei nodded at his words. He knew that murder cases like this were handed over to the criminal police squad—the local police station's level of authority wasn't sufficient.
The two returned to the living room.
Zhang Haiyang sat down again on the chair in front of Gu Youguo, then took out his cigarettes.
"Want a cigarette?" Zhang Haiyang pulled one out and asked, looking at Gu Youguo.
Gu Youguo didn't speak, only nodded.
And so Zhang Haiyang lit a cigarette for Gu Youguo.
Gu Youguo took a deep drag, then slowly exhaled the smoke from his mouth, the thick white smoke instantly enveloping his face.
Zhang Haiyang waited until Gu Youguo finished the cigarette before asking, "Go ahead. Talk."
Gu Youguo didn't answer right away. Instead, he took another fierce drag, exhaled, and only then began slowly, in a low voice: "You just saw the marriage certificate. That's right—the woman in the bathroom is my wife. The two of us were childhood sweethearts. We grew up together, went to school together, fell in love together, graduated from vocational school together, and were assigned to Ningjiang County together. I taught at a junior high school, and she taught at Songxi Middle School. We liked each other, loved each other deeply, and when we reached the right age for marriage, we naturally got married."
"Hahaha. Doesn't that sound just like a fairy-tale romance from a novel?"
"That's right. That was a real-life fairy-tale romance. Who knows how many people, once they learned our love story, envied us endlessly." As Gu Youguo spoke, he actually began to laugh—and then, laughing, he began to cry.
"I thought my love with Du Jiao would be like the fairy tales—beautiful and pure. Even though the two of us never had a child, it didn't affect our feelings. I never once doubted our love."
"Until this past Spring Festival, when a colleague of mine told me he had seen Du Jiao at the Songxin Town cinema watching a movie with a man. When I heard that, I didn't take it seriously at first. I believed in our love, and I didn't believe Du Jiao would betray me. I just assumed my colleague had seen wrong."
"I didn't dwell on the matter, but over the following months, I noticed things that weren't quite right. Du Jiao spent less and less time with me, stayed at school more and more often to grade students' homework, and she—who rarely used to wear makeup—started experimenting with it. Even so, I still didn't think much of it. I always believed in her."
"But on the tenth of last month, I came home from school and went into the study to prepare my teaching materials. I have a habit of smoking while I work, and that day was no exception. Just as I finished a cigarette and was about to drop the butt into the ashtray, I discovered a Chunghwa cigarette butt in the ashtray.
"I smoke myself, but I've never smoked Chunghwa. And other than me, no one ever came into that study."
"In that moment, my colleague's words suddenly surfaced in my mind, along with my wife's changes over recent months. I panicked. I loved my wife so much. I was terrified that it was true—terrified of losing her, of losing this family. I couldn't believe it, didn't want to believe it was real. But reason told me that Du Jiao really was with another man. My heart ached so badly, so badly. I simply could not imagine Du Jiao betraying me—betraying this love."
"That day at noon, I told Du Jiao I was going on a business trip to Linzhou City and wouldn't be back for two days. After calling her, I checked into a hotel room, did nothing, and just sat on the bed waiting until nightfall."
"At eleven that night, I left the hotel. On the way, I imagined all kinds of possibilities. I asked myself: if Du Jiao really was with another man, what should I do? What could I do? But when I quietly opened the door and saw those black leather shoes by the entrance, and heard the unspeakable sounds coming from the bedroom, I knew I had no choice left. I had no road left to take."
"I took the meat cleaver from the kitchen. When I pushed open the bedroom door, the man was lying on top of Du Jiao. In that moment my mind went blank. I thought of nothing. There was only one thought in my heart: hack this man and woman to death."
"I don't know how I killed them. I only remember wielding the knife, slashing wildly, blow after blow. By the time I came back to my senses, Du Jiao and that man were already dead, and my face and hands were covered in blood."
"I don't know how to describe how I felt then. No fear, no regret—only numbness. I knew I had killed someone and certainly couldn't escape. But I didn't want to escape anyway. Betrayed by the person I loved most, I felt my heart had died too. Living didn't really mean much anymore."
"At first I didn't intend to deal with the bodies, but I didn't know when you people would come knocking, and leaving two corpses in the bedroom was just too much to bear—especially that man's. And I still had to sleep. So after thinking it over, I dug up the gardenias in the flower trough and put the body inside. As for Du Jiao's body, I threw it in the bathtub."
With that, Gu Youguo slowly tipped his head back against the sofa. The cigarette in his hand had burned to nothing.
Neither Luo Fei nor Zhang Haiyang spoke. They didn't know how to.
The living room fell into a brief stillness.
"Wee-woo... wee-woo..."
The sound of sirens rose, shattering the silence.
PS: Longtime author, but this is my first time writing on Qidian, and I don't know if you all like this style of novel. If you do, I hope you'll give lots of support—add it to your collection, and if you've got votes, toss a few my way!