Good and Evil, Chapter 87: Interrogating Cai Hongzhe and the Impostor Pretending to Be Du Ke'er

You never know how dark the human heart can truly be until you go looking.

After Xu Lang and the others arrived at the villa under Zhou Boming’s name in the Modern City Villas, Zhao Hua went to ring the doorbell.

The chime sounded, and soon the door opened. A very young woman answered, a sleeping child cradled in her arms. Seeing Xu Lang and the others, she looked at them in confusion and asked, “Who are you looking for?”

Her appearance made Xu Lang’s group light up. It was not that she was especially beautiful; she looked to be barely in her early twenties, with ordinary features, neither striking nor ugly. The reason for their reaction was that this woman was the false Du Ke’er.

Zhao Hua did not beat around the bush. He asked directly, “Is Cai Hongzhe here?”

At the name Cai Hongzhe, the woman’s puzzled expression flickered for an instant. Very quickly, however, she regained her composure and looked blankly at Zhao Hua. “Who is Cai Hongzhe?”

The change in her expression naturally did not escape Xu Lang and the others. There was no need to mention Xu Lang himself; even among the members of Criminal Investigation Team Two, anyone who could become a detective rather than an ordinary patrol officer had his own strengths. Unlike community police, who dealt mostly with civil matters day after day, detectives had to face all manner of ever-changing criminals. Without real ability, one could hardly stay in the detective unit for long.

“Cai Hongzhe is—”

Just as Zhao Hua was about to say that Zhou Boming was Cai Hongzhe, a familiar voice came from inside.

“Ke’er, who is it outside?”

Hearing that voice, Zhao Hua did not continue, because he knew it very well. When they had been investigating the identity of Zhou Boming’s body, the second team had already found this man. He was Cai Hongzhe, and also Zhou Boming’s best friend in life.

Zhao Hua and Xu Lang pushed past the woman and walked straight into the villa, where they saw Cai Hongzhe standing there with his mouth agape, staring blankly.

Seeing Zhao Hua and the others in police uniforms, Cai Hongzhe’s expression changed wonderfully—shock, confusion, and panic all flashed across his face. Yet those emotions were only fleeting. In the blink of an eye, he had recovered his calm and put on a genial smile. Looking at Zhao Hua, he asked with a laugh, “Officer Zhao, what brings you here?”

Zhao Hua looked at him darkly and said slowly, “Should I call you Cai Hongzhe, or should I call you Zhou Boming?”

The moment those words fell, Cai Hongzhe, who had already stepped forward with one hand extended, froze midair. He could neither keep reaching out nor withdraw his hand; it just hung there stiffly. The smile on his face also froze. He stared at Zhao Hua in shock, unable to say a word.

Seeing this, Xu Lang frowned, narrowed his eyes, and said to Zhao Hua, “Take him back.”

With that, Xu Lang walked out of the villa. Cai Hongzhe and the woman holding the child were then escorted into the police car by Zhao Hua and the others.

The siren wailed as the patrol car sped away from the Modern City Villas and returned to the Public Security Bureau.

Back at the bureau, Cai Hongzhe and the woman were taken into separate interrogation rooms. Ning Yanran and Zhang Lei handled the woman, while Li Lei and Zhao Hua interrogated Cai Hongzhe.

Xu Lang stood outside the first interrogation room, watching the scene inside as Cai Hongzhe was questioned.

After being brought into the interrogation room, Cai Hongzhe had remained silent, refusing to utter a single word. No matter what Zhao Hua asked, he would not speak. Ning Yanran’s side was much the same. After several hours of deadlock, they had gained nothing, which left Ning Yanran and the others, who had originally been full of confidence, somewhat disheartened.

Xu Lang was not surprised by this result.

Although the police had now confirmed that Cai Hongzhe and the woman had been impersonating the deceased Zhou Boming and Du Ke’er, that meant very little. In Ye Xuefei’s autopsy report on Zhou Boming’s body, she had made it very clear that the deceased had died of drowning, and that suicide was highly likely. But whether Zhou Boming had truly killed himself, and whether Cai Hongzhe had anything to do with his death, there was no evidence to prove any connection. Without direct evidence, the police could not declare a person guilty. At present, Cai Hongzhe and the woman were only suspects, so they had not been handcuffed during questioning.

Xu Lang had already read the autopsy report Ye Xuefei provided. There was no doubt that Zhou Boming had died by drowning. Xu Lang had never questioned that conclusion; it was largely a matter of Ye Xuefei’s professional skill. What drew Xu Lang’s attention was the three-centimeter Y-shaped wound on the back of Zhou Boming’s head. Although it was not fatal, its appearance was highly strange.

After Xu Lang joined the investigation, and after Ning Yanran and the others had examined Zhou Boming’s relationships in life, everything seemed to point toward a suicide brought on by the double blow of love and career. But further investigation revealed that Zhou Boming’s close friend Cai Hongzhe behaved very strangely in this case. As the inquiry deepened, it turned out that Cai Hongzhe was actually impersonating the deceased Zhou Boming, and the case that had originally been headed for closure as a suicide was reopened.

Now Cai Hongzhe had been found, along with the woman pretending to be Zhou Boming’s ex-girlfriend Du Ke’er, who was supposedly far away in the United States. Yet after being brought back to the bureau, the two of them had remained utterly silent, and the investigation had once again hit a dead end.

While Zhao Hua and the others were questioning Cai Hongzhe and the woman to no avail, Xu Lang returned to the Criminal Investigation Team Two office area and found the autopsy report and the photographs of Zhou Boming’s body. Looking at the materials, frowning deeply, he thought about how to break through the impasse with the two suspects. Then suddenly, he remembered something.

During the examination of the scene where the body had been found, when Li Lei had questioned the fisherman father and son, Sun Hongda had once mentioned something.

When Zhou Boming’s body had been hauled up in a fishing net, along with the corpse and some fish, they had also recovered another object: an anchor.

S City was built on the coast. In the villages along the sea, most of the residents were fishermen. In the early days, before the economy had developed, these seaside villagers had lived by fishing. Over the years, as society advanced and the economy grew, many people who had relied on fishing for generations had given up the trade and turned to other occupations. But some still made their living from the sea, and Sun Hongda and his son were among them.

Thinking of the anchor, Xu Lang found its photograph among a pile of case materials. Most people were familiar with anchors; even those who had never seen one in person had likely seen one in film and television. An anchor resembles the hoe-like tool used for digging in the countryside, with an iron shaft in the middle, two curved hooks at the upper end, and a ring at the other end, through which the chain passes. Anchors are used to hold a vessel in place. Though not large, they are heavy. By rights, one should not have been able to haul up an anchor from the place where the body was found, because once an anchor sinks into the sea, it normally rests on the seabed. How could it have been so easily snagged by a fishing net?

At that thought, Xu Lang carefully examined both the recovered anchor and the wound on the back of the deceased’s head. No matter how he looked at it, the wound seemed to have been caused by a strike from that anchor.

At the same time, he remembered something else: after Zhang Lei had raised those doubts and tried contacting Cai Hongzhe again, he found that Cai Hongzhe was unreachable. He then went to the Modern City Villas, where, according to an elderly neighbor of Cai Hongzhe’s, Cai Hongzhe had a yacht moored by the sea, and that yacht was also not far from where Zhou Boming’s body had been discovered.

The more Xu Lang thought about it, the more certain he became that the real Zhou Boming’s death was not simple. All of this must have something to do with Zhou Boming’s best friend in life, Cai Hongzhe.

Of course, all of this was still only Xu Lang’s speculation. There was still no evidence proving any link between Cai Hongzhe and Zhou Boming’s death. If he wanted to determine whether Cai Hongzhe had anything to do with it, he only needed to compare the anchor recovered with the body and the wound on the back of the deceased’s head. If the two matched, then that could become the breakthrough point for discovering whether Zhou Boming’s death was connected to Cai Hongzhe.

So Xu Lang first went to the evidence room, retrieved the anchor, and took it to the forensic laboratory to find Ye Xuefei, asking her to determine whether the wound on the back of the deceased’s head matched the anchor. During this time, Ning Yanran was still deadlocked with Cai Hongzhe and the woman.

The comparison results came back quickly. The wound on the back of Zhou Boming’s head had indeed been caused by the anchor. During the second autopsy, besides identifying the weapon that struck the back of the head, Ye Xuefei also told Xu Lang that the wound had been inflicted before the victim died.

With this clue in hand, Xu Lang immediately found Zhao Hua and asked him to take people to the yacht that had originally belonged to Zhou Boming but was now registered under Cai Hongzhe’s name, to see whether they could find anything on board.

Now, in addition to determining whether Cai Hongzhe had anything to do with Zhou Boming’s death, there was another question to solve: why had Cai Hongzhe impersonated Zhou Boming? And what was going on with that woman? Why had she pretended to be Du Ke’er, the deceased Zhou Boming’s ex-girlfriend? Were they playing roles? The idea suddenly flashed through Xu Lang’s mind, but as soon as it appeared, he dismissed it.

This was the twenty-first century, an age of rapid scientific development. It was not the ancient world. Everything was far more convenient now. Impersonating someone was difficult, but not impossible. If they were merely impersonating a dead man in order to defraud others of his property, that might barely make sense. But according to the earlier investigation, Zhou Boming was now a pauper, no longer a promising wealthy man. So why had Cai Hongzhe chosen to impersonate him? Was he not afraid the real Zhou Boming would find out?

Since there was temporarily no breakthrough to be made with Cai Hongzhe, Xu Lang decided to focus on the woman. She looked very young, inexperienced in the ways of the world, and in both social experience and emotional control, she was no match for Cai Hongzhe. So Xu Lang went to the second interrogation room, where the young woman was being questioned.

He knocked on the door, called Zhang Lei out, and walked into the room himself. Sitting down behind the interrogation table, he looked at the young woman.

After entering, Xu Lang did not rush to ask questions. Instead, he kept observing her. Compared with Cai Hongzhe’s composure after being taken to the bureau, the young woman was clearly tense and flustered. Under Xu Lang’s sharp gaze, she grew even more nervous.

After watching her for a while, Xu Lang finally asked, “What’s your name?”

Hearing him, the young woman lifted her head and glanced at Xu Lang. The instant their eyes met, she quickly lowered her head again and said in a small voice, “Du... Du Ke’er.”

Xu Lang looked at her, narrowed his eyes, and asked slowly, with emphasis, “Are you sure your name is Du Ke’er?”

The woman said nothing. She just looked up at him once more before lowering her head again, neither admitting nor denying it. Clearly, she did not want to say.

Bang.

Xu Lang slammed his palm on the table and barked at her, “You are not Du Ke’er at all. The real Du Ke’er is not in S City right now; she is in the United States. Speak. Why are you impersonating Du Ke’er? What is your purpose? Did you kill Zhou Boming?”

At Xu Lang’s fierce slap and the rapid-fire barrage of questions, the woman’s body trembled. At last, she lifted her head again, looked at Xu Lang, bit her lip, thought for a moment, and then asked softly, “If I tell the truth, does that count as merit?”

“Of course it does.”

After hearing her, Ning Yanran, who had remained silent, was just about to agree when Xu Lang cut her off.

“That depends on whether what you say is the truth, and whether it has anything to do with this case.”

Hearing this, the woman fell silent for a moment. In the end, as though making up her mind, she slowly began to speak.

The woman’s name was not Du Ke’er at all. This much Xu Lang and the others had already confirmed. What they did not yet know was her real name.

Her true name was Cai Manli, and she was Cai Hongzhe’s wife. The two of them had moved into the Modern City villa where they now lived one year earlier. At that time, Zhou Boming had happened to be traveling in the United States with the real Du Ke’er. After moving into the villa, Cai Manli and Cai Hongzhe changed their names. Cai Hongzhe took the name Zhou Boming, while Cai Manli assumed the name Du Ke’er.

The Modern City villas had only recently been completed, and Zhou Boming had bought that place as a future wedding home. After purchasing it, he had hardly ever gone there, continuing instead to live in a property in the city center.

According to Cai Manli, the reason they moved into the Modern City villa was to swindle Zhou Boming’s assets. When Zhou Boming took Du Ke’er to the United States, he had told Cai Hongzhe that he planned to settle there. He and Du Ke’er intended to hold their wedding in the United States and then immigrate there.

Hearing this, Xu Lang understood. Over the years, as the economy had developed and people’s standard of living had gradually improved, many people who came into money liked to immigrate abroad and change their nationality, as if it had become some kind of trend. Zhou Boming’s desire to move to the United States did not seem strange to Xu Lang.

Once someone emigrated, they would naturally return to China far less often. Even if they did come back, they would not stay long. As long as Cai Hongzhe and Cai Manli kept up the disguise, they would not be exposed, and no one would discover the truth.

Before going to the United States, Zhou Boming had already begun preparing the various matters related to immigration. Since his company had always done business overseas, that sort of business was not doing very well domestically these days, but it was quite good in the United States and a number of other countries, so his desire to immigrate was not surprising either. Before leaving, he had not sold off many of his assets and properties in China. He had planned to deal with all that after going to the United States and marrying Du Ke’er. Cai Hongzhe and Cai Manli trying to take advantage of that opportunity to defraud him made sense. After all, Zhou Boming and Cai Hongzhe were close friends, and Cai Hongzhe knew many of Zhou Boming’s affairs.

But Cai Manli did not know much. In this fraud case, she was only following Cai Hongzhe’s instructions. All she had to do was change her name to Du Ke’er and play the role convincingly in front of outsiders. The rest was handled by Cai Hongzhe.

So, after Cai Manli finished her account, Xu Lang went to the first interrogation room and began questioning Cai Hongzhe.

At first, Cai Hongzhe still planned to continue practicing his silent meditation, but when he heard that Cai Manli had already started talking, after a long sigh he had no choice but to speak and confess.

Once Cai Hongzhe opened his mouth, he gave Xu Lang and the others a tremendous surprise, as well as a considerable shock. That was because what he described was so utterly contrary to ethics and morality that not only Xu Lang had never expected it, but none of the members of Criminal Investigation Team Two had ever imagined that there could be people in this world who, for the sake of money, would commit such beastly acts. It could truly be said that they had lost all conscience.

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