Chapter Six: The Bathtub

Taking advantage of the comings and goings inside the restroom, Ning Shuyi cast a quick glance at the scene within. At first, she had imagined one of those ceramic or acrylic bathtubs installed in bathrooms, but one look made it clear that this so-called tub was more accurately described as a bathing pool.

It had been built of brick and cement directly on the bathroom floor, then tiled by hand, making it both large and deep, much wider than an ordinary bathtub.

More importantly, a pool built this way could not be moved. That meant the body sealed inside was firmly fused to the bathing pool by the cement, making the work arduous and terribly inconvenient.

Since there was nothing here at the scene that they could help with, and they would only be getting in the way, Ning Shuyi decided to speak first with the person who reported the case.

The reporter was giving his statement in the corridor, unwilling to step even one pace into the building for fear of the murder scene.

Of course, the scene was already in such chaos that no one wanted him to go in anyway. They went up half a floor in the corridor, found a relatively quieter spot, and briefly asked him about how he had discovered something was wrong.

By the time Ning Shuyi and Huo Yan arrived, the statement was already more or less complete. From what they learned, the reporter was a neighbor from the next building over. Because the bathroom and kitchen windows of the household in question were on the same side and close together, and because the windows of that apartment were open, he had noticed something.

These past few days the weather had turned warm, and with the windows open at home for ventilation, he kept catching a foul stench carried in on the breeze from outside.

At first, he had not thought much of it, assuming someone downstairs had urinated somewhere or that the smell came from trash being thrown about. But several days passed, and even after a rainstorm, the same putrid odor still drifted into the apartment whenever the wind blew.

That was no longer a matter of urine or garbage downstairs.

He had asked around among several neighbors, and found that some could vaguely smell it too, while others noticed nothing at all.

In the end, by comparing which building and which floor the neighbors who could smell it lived in, he determined that the odor was coming from the window of this very apartment. Because the smell was not especially strong, only those living very nearby could detect it.

The reporter had tried knocking on the door, but no one answered. Since there was no property management in this residential area, he had no choice but to call the police, hoping they could contact the occupants and deal with whatever was producing the odor inside.

He had never expected that the source of the smell might very well be the occupant who had already been missing for a long time.

By this time, perhaps because so many police cars were parked below, a crowd of onlookers had gathered one after another outside the crime scene.

The world has always been a place where courage comes in no fixed measure. Some people are timid; let alone seeing a crime scene, even hearing about one would frighten them into keeping as far away as possible.

Others are the opposite. Though a police cordon stretches across the entrance to the scene, and they do not dare cross the line, they still cannot suppress their fierce curiosity. They crane forward, stretch their necks, and try to see exactly what happened inside.

The corridor was narrow. The officers maintaining order at the entrance had no choice but to urge the onlookers to leave at once, not to block the passage or inconvenience the other residents, and to keep them farther from the cordon. But the effect was minimal.

After speaking with the reporter, Ning Shuyi turned and looked down toward the door of the apartment half a floor below. By then, the place was already swarming with people, and some were even standing on the staircase leading down, trying desperately to make out what was happening ahead.

“Has the homeowner information been confirmed?” Huo Yan asked the colleague who had just taken the statement.

The colleague nodded. “It’s been confirmed. The apartment is rented, and the landlord is on the way over. When we first arrived, it was still quiet here. I knocked on the door of the place opposite, and I couldn’t help noticing all those tiny ads plastered all over the door. I figured it must be vacant.

But now look at it—there are people everywhere! They’ve all come running to watch the excitement. There’s no way to ask around like this!”

“Then you should go handle your side first. We’ll go downstairs and wait for the landlord at the building entrance,” Ning Shuyi said after some thought. She felt there was no point in going into the apartment now. As the colleague had said, there were too many people at the entrance, and by the time the landlord arrived, even getting upstairs would be difficult, let alone asking questions.

The colleague had no objection to this arrangement. He turned and went down half a floor, parting the crowd as he entered the apartment where the incident had occurred.

Huo Yan looked at the cramped stairwell below, a little helpless, then turned to Ning Shuyi and pointed behind him. “Stay close to me.”

Ning Shuyi nodded and followed right behind him, not daring to drift even a step away. He was tall and broad-shouldered, and as he pushed through the crush of onlookers in front, she kept close behind him, following in his wake without being jostled at all. The crowd they parted would then close again behind her like a tide.

If she had been any slower and failed to keep tight to Huo Yan, she would likely have been trapped by the people again, and it would have taken some effort to squeeze back downstairs.

Once they reached the ground floor again, both of them breathed easier.

“I really can’t tell whether the pace of life now is fast or slow,” Ning Shuyi said as she crouched down to straighten the running shoe whose heel had nearly been stepped off moments earlier. “Sometimes it feels far too fast—every day, everyone seems to be rushing around, and there are so many things people can’t keep up with.

“But then at other times, look at this. It doesn’t seem so fast after all. So many people can stand around in broad daylight without working, with time to gather here and watch the excitement.”

The corner of Huo Yan’s mouth moved slightly, as though her teasing almost made him laugh, yet he held it back. His expression hardly changed at all.

After the two of them waited five or six minutes, a short middle-aged man hurried over. He looked anxious and flustered, walking so carelessly that when he crossed the road he nearly tripped over a small pothole in the middle.

“The landlord’s here,” Huo Yan said to Ning Shuyi.

Ning Shuyi saw him too, and the two of them went to meet the middle-aged man. As soon as the three came face to face, before she could even speak, the man asked first.

“You’re the police here to handle the situation?” he said, wiping sweat from his forehead as he spoke, looking deeply unsettled.

Ning Shuyi and Huo Yan showed him their identification. The middle-aged man hurriedly introduced himself as well. “You’ve worked hard! I’m the owner of that apartment. I got your call at work just now and was so frightened I immediately took a taxi over here.

“What on earth is going on? I only rent out one apartment—how did I end up running into something like this?”

The End