Chapter Twenty-Two: The Reasoning of Her Birth Mother

Chapter Twenty-Two: The Biological Mother’s Reasoning

“Take it slowly. Don’t get worked up,” Qin Ruonan said as she heard Qian Yuling’s voice rise higher and higher over the phone, hurrying to signal for her to calm down. “Where are you now? If it’s convenient, we can meet right away.”

“I don’t want to go to the police station. Come to my place,” Qian Yuling insisted over the phone. “Can you come alone?”

Qin Ruonan frowned. “I’m afraid not. If you have enough evidence and want to accuse Xia Ying, then by procedure our coming to your home already counts as a special exception. I really can’t meet any further demands.”

Qian Yuling was silent for a moment, and in the end she gave in and told Qin Ruonan her home address.

After hanging up, the two of them wasted no time and set off at once for Qian Yuling’s place. Compared with Fang Da’s home, her living conditions were truly worlds apart. Unlike Fang Da and Xia Ying’s residence, Qian Yuling lived in a very old open-style residential compound. The six-story buildings, hemmed in by taller structures all around, looked low and small. Three lonely little apartment blocks and a large bicycle shed stood there, like a thin layer of cream in the middle of a sandwich cookie, squeezed between large housing complexes front and back. It looked forlorn, as if neither grandmother nor uncle cared for it.

In the early winter season, daylight had already been squeezed short by the night. By the time they reached Qian Yuling’s place, the lamps had just begun to glow and the sky was not yet fully dark. There was no light in the stairwell, and An Changpu and Qin Ruonan groped their way upstairs, using the light from their phone screens. When they found the doorbell button at Qian Yuling’s apartment, they pressed it several times but heard nothing, and had no choice but to knock.

They knocked for a long while before they finally heard slippered footsteps inside. Then the door suddenly slammed from within with a tremendous bang, startling both An Changpu and Qin Ruonan. At the same moment, the dim sensor light in the corridor snapped on.

“It’s you two!” The door creaked open, and Qian Yuling poked her head out, while pushing the door wider and hurriedly taking their slippers. “This building’s old. The corridor motion sensor isn’t sensitive. If you make too little noise, it won’t light up! Come in, come in!”

Qian Yuling’s apartment was very small, probably just over fifty square meters. It was full of things, which made the already aged home feel even more cramped.

“Sit down, sit down! Let me pour you some hot water! It’s dark now, and cold outside, isn’t it? Have some warm water to warm yourselves up!” Qian Yuling greeted them warmly, her whole body radiating a baffling excitement.

Qin Ruonan and An Changpu exchanged glances, both feeling that Qian Yuling’s condition was highly abnormal. She was obviously much thinner than when she had first gone to the police to report the crime, and the rapid weight loss had made the skin on her face look loose. Her eyes were covered in red veins. Just from this state alone, if Qin Ruonan and An Changpu had not already done a rough review of Qian Yuling’s background, they might well have mistaken her for an addict.

Not long after, Qian Yuling emerged from the kitchen with two cups of steaming hot water. Her hands were shaking so badly that water kept sloshing over the rims and spilling onto her skin, but she did not seem to notice the heat. By the time she set the cups down in front of them, nearly a quarter of the water had been spilled away.

“Sit, sit! Drink up! Don’t go thinking my place is shabby or anything! This was a secondhand place I bought when Fang Da and I got married. Back then we were both poor. Now I’m the only one left being poor!” Qian Yuling continued to bustle around them in high spirits. She glanced around the cramped little living room and pointed up at a bare nail in the wall. “There! Our wedding photo used to hang right there! Such a huge one! Now the wedding photo has been smashed to pieces long ago, and all that’s left is a nail!”

An Changpu looked at Qin Ruonan. Faced with Qian Yuling’s clearly off-kilter state, he no longer knew how to respond. Qin Ruonan was somewhat at a loss as well, and could only reach for the cup, intending to take a sip of water and change the subject. Unexpectedly, the moment her hand touched the glass, the searing heat inside burned her fingers and nearly made her spill it.

Qian Yuling had carried it all the way here and not even felt that it was hot! Qin Ruonan looked at Qian Yuling, and her heart grew somewhat heavy.

“Qian Yuling, let’s talk about why we came here today. On the phone, you said you wanted to report Xia Ying for trying to harm Fang Wan. What exactly did you mean by that?” She gave up on the scalding water, rubbing her stinging fingers as she asked.

Qian Yuling froze. It was as though she had forgotten the purpose of the two detectives’ visit until Qin Ruonan’s question suddenly brought it back to her. She sprang to her feet and hurried into the bedroom with a thud-thud-thud of slippers. Soon, the sound of rummaging spread from inside. After a short while, Qian Yuling came out of the bedroom carrying a small handbag. From it she took out a few photographs and several sheets of paper.

She handed the photos to Qin Ruonan, her face brimming with uncontrollable delight, so much so that her cheeks had gone red. The hand she extended was trembling slightly. When Qin Ruonan took the photos and slips of paper from her, she noticed that Qian Yuling’s palm was sweaty, and the papers had been made damp by her touch.

“Look! Take a good look! This is the evidence I’ve painstakingly gathered these past days!” Qian Yuling said excitedly, pacing back and forth in front of Qin Ruonan and An Changpu. The muscles in her cheeks twitched faintly from time to time, whether from tension or excitement, and her hands were clasped together. After saying this, she seemed afraid of offending the two detectives and hurriedly added, “I’m not saying I don’t trust the police to solve cases. It’s just that I thought you must be swamped with work and couldn’t keep up, and my situation is special, as you know. Xia Ying was the homewrecker between Fang Da and me. If I say she wants to hurt my son, you’re bound to think I’m biased!”

Qin Ruonan did not pay attention to the accusatory undertone of her later words. Her attention had fallen on the photographs in her hands.

It had to be said that the photos were taken in a terribly amateur fashion. At a glance, it was obvious they had been shot by a nonprofessional using a nonprofessional camera, and in a great hurry. Most of the photos were taken at night, and whether the camera’s night mode was poor, or it had been used improperly, or the person taking them had simply been too rushed, all the streetlights and human figures in the pictures were trailed by blurred afterimages. Apart from giving the photos an eerie and ghostly quality, they revealed almost nothing at all.

Only one daytime photo was legible. Though the distance was great and the person in the image appeared small, one could still make out that it was Xia Ying. From her posture, it looked as though she was walking out of a large pharmacy.

“You know Xia Ying works at a pharmacy, right?” Qian Yuling said in a shrill voice, pointing to the daytime photo Qin Ruonan had just handed to An Changpu. “I spent ages following her secretly before I managed to take these pictures!”

“What was your purpose in taking these photos?” Qin Ruonan frowned, looking at her in some confusion.

“Of course it was to make you see clearly what kind of woman she is, this human-faced beast, this poisonous serpent!” Qian Yuling snatched the slips of paper in front of Qin Ruonan and spread them out one by one. There were three in all, each headed with the word Certification. The handwriting on the three slips was different, the pens used were different, and the ink color differed as well. They were signed with three different names.

Qin Ruonan quickly read through the three certifications and found that they had all been issued by staff at the pharmacy, stating that while Xia Ying was on duty, they often discovered shortages of medication in the store after closing.

“What do you want to prove to us with this?” Qin Ruonan still could not see any necessary connection in all this.

Seeing that she still did not get it, Qian Yuling grew anxious. She grabbed the other two sheets and spread them out for Qin Ruonan to see. “Then look at this! If you look at this, you should understand, right? I had to beg and plead, and even kneel and kowtow to people, before I got this from Fang Wan’s school nurse!”

One of the two papers was larger, dated to early summer. Only after reading the heading beneath did one understand that it was a photocopy of the permanent record from the infirmary at the private school.

Perhaps because it was a private school, and in order to give parents an explanation and avoid unnecessary trouble, the record form was obviously much more formal and conscientious than those of many schools. The form recorded some of Fang Wan’s personal information, and below that the reason he had been sent to the infirmary: collapse during physical education class.

Yet the symptom description beneath was written in only four simple words: Hospital observation.

Qin Ruonan then looked at the other slip, a photocopy of a hospital certificate stating that when Fang Wan was sent to the hospital, his body was already moderately dehydrated, accompanied by severe diarrhea, and that lab tests had shown signs of taking a large dose of laxatives.

This certificate seemed to have been issued by the hospital at the school’s request to establish responsibility. Fang Wan was not a boarding student, and by the time the school discovered something was wrong, he was already moderately dehydrated. Clearly, this could not be blamed on poor school management.

Qin Ruonan handed the two photocopies to An Changpu and gathered the photographs together before returning them to Qian Yuling. Seeing that Qian Yuling had not taken out anything else besides the little empty handbag, she asked, “So the evidence you’re saying Xia Ying hurt Fang Wan with is only this?”

“What do you mean, only this? You cops, aren’t you supposed to be called detectives abroad? Shouldn’t you be good at reasoning?” Qian Yuling had not expected Qin Ruonan to think the evidence she had produced was insufficient, and her voice shot upward before she could control it. “Xia Ying works at a pharmacy, she steals medicine from the pharmacy, and my son suddenly had diarrhea and there were laxative ingredients in his body. That has to be her doing! Since she can put laxatives in to dehydrate my son, she’ll definitely use poison to kill my poor boy!”

After reading the chapter comment by that one reader with the numbers 9676 today, I felt like the comment section, which had been lonely for so long, suddenly came to life again! If you’re reading, leave a comment too sometimes, so Little Mo won’t have to stand guard over the comments section all alone, empty and lonely and cold~ meow~