A Good-for-Nothing

214. People’s Lives (II)

 

Translator: Dragon Rider

 

Wang Jian said, “A few weeks ago, Chen Xi was poached from me by Feng Ma. He told me that he made a phone call to me at around six o’clock in the afternoon on the fifteenth day of this month, that I answered it and talked with him on the phone, but I’d never received a single phone call from him since he left the agency I work for, and neither had there been any missed calls from him on my phone, and the list of dialed numbers on Chen Xi’s cellphone shows that the only call he made at that time was to Feng Ma.”

Luo Zhou paused, his eyebrows slightly raised. His previously calm face had grown serious, but he still managed to make himself sound collected as he spoke. “Could it be a lapse of memory? Or maybe the record of that phone call to Wang Jian was deleted?”

Then Luo Zhou added, “There are some circumstances in which people subconsciously modify their memories, so it’s possible that his memory isn’t serving him correctly.”

Chen Xi shook his head. In fact, he had a secret that he hadn’t confided to anybody yet.

“I’m telling the truth, officer. Even if my memory didn’t serve me well, tape recordings never lie, do they?” Chen Xi gave a self-deprecating smile. “Had I not met Brother Jian and talked to him about this matter, I wouldn’t have believed that this kind of psychic thing had actually happened to me.”

Wang Jian’s eyes and mouth both widened with amazement, and then his brow gradually corrugated in a frown. “Why did you record that phone call to me?”

Chen Xi’s face grew a trifle awkward. “Ahem, please don’t be angry with me, Brother Jian. I didn’t mean it. The reason why I came up with the idea of recording that call to you was because I was scared of being tricked once again. I mean, with a recording of the call, I wouldn’t have to worry about… about you going back on your word if you agreed to my request.”

Wang Jian flied into a temper. “I can’t believe you’re such an ungrateful son of a bitch!”

“Well, you guys will have your opportunity to sort that out later.” Luo Zhou put his pen aside and placed his hands onto the table, his fingers interlocked. “Chen Xi, play us the tape recording of that phone call. If what you said was true, maybe we’d be able to find a lead on the cause of Feng Ma’s death in it.”

Chen Xi hurriedly bobbed his head, fished out his cellphone and played the tape recording.

Chen Qianlin and all the others began to listen carefully to the recording in the knowledge that they couldn’t afford to take this matter lightly.

The recording started with a ringtone, and then Chen Xi’s voice was heard. He had indeed started the conversation with the form of address “Brother Jian”. Also, the voice that had made a reply to him was indeed Wang Jian’s.

Unsurprisingly, Wang Jian did recognize his own voice and when they had heard half of the recording, he exclaimed aloud in spite of himself, “This can’t be happening. I really didn’t receive any phone calls from him! You guys may check my phone record.”

“I see.” Luo Zhou turned his head back and exchanged looks with Zu Zhichong, who nodded at Luo Zhou almost unnoticeably.

Luo Zhou shifted his sitting position and said, “Here’s what we are going to do. You two may encrypt the private information in your cellphones that you don’t want anybody else to see. We just need the records of the calls you made on that day – my colleagues in the IT Department will restore them to see if we could find out what really happened.”

“But my cellphone…” Clearly Chen Xi didn’t like this idea very much.

He Zheng suddenly chipped in, “It was this morning that Feng Ma died.”

As though this remark jogged his memories of something terrifying, Chen Xi instantly lapsed into silence, locked the photo album and some social media apps on his smartphone and then handed it to Luo Zhou. Wang Jian did the same thing.

Wang Jian’s take on this matter had been rather vague all along, and now Chen Xi had got involved before Wang Jian could be cleared of suspicion of Feng Ma’s murder. The shroud of mystery that this case was cloaked in seemed to be getting thicker and thicker.

And then Luo Zhou did a short interview with Chen Xi, who related his conversation with “Wang Jian” during that phone call down to the smallest detail, not daring keep anything back from Luo Zhou.

Chen Qianlin, when hearing him mention the part about Jiang Shuanglin, couldn’t help but interrupt him, “You said that at regular intervals Feng Ma selected a relatively better performer from the trainees to receive secret training. Do you know where they were sent to?”

“He wouldn’t have called it ‘secret training’ if we were allowed to know the location.” Chen Xi shook his head. “But what Jiang Shuanglin told me was that it was not secret training at all, that Feng Ma sent them to someone’s bed in exchange for resources.”

Having never expected this, both He Zheng and Chen Qianlin knitted their brows, but they also knew that this kind of things were not really rare in the show business. These days people wouldn’t even be surprised to hear a rich guy had one or two B-list stars as his kept women, not to mention that these people were just trainees.

“What happened to that Jiang Shuanglin guy? You two haven’t been in touch?”

“No.”

Suddenly, Luo Zhou’s cellphone started ringing urgently. He picked it up and saw that the caller was one of his colleagues who had gone to Feng Ma’s dwelling to investigate. Luo Zhou answered the call immediately, massaging his eyebrows.

After he said “Hello?” a very anxious voice came from the other end of the phone. Luo Zhou’s face was etched with growing graveness as he listened.

After he hung up the phone, Zu Zhichong cocked an inquisitive eyebrow at him.

Luo Zhou’s eyelids briefly twitched and he slightly tightened his grip on his cellphone. In a low and deep voice, he replied, “Jiang Shuanglin’s body was found.”

On hearing this remark, Chen Xi, who had originally been thinking about something with his head down, jerked his head up to look at Luo Zhou in dismay.

Chen Qianlin and He Zheng exchanged glances. What Luo Zhou said was not “Jiang Shuanglin encountered some kind of danger” or a direct notification of Jiang Shuanglin’s death, but “Jiang Shuanglin’s body was found.”

This not only proved that Jiang Shuanglin was dead but also suggested that he’d been dead for some time.

“Shuang–Shuanglin died? How did Shuanglin come to die?! I remember very well he returned to his native place!” Chen Xi immediately exclaimed in disbelief.