27 - The water has finally receded and the rocks have appeared

27. The water has finally receded and the rocks have appeared 1

It was 10:30PM.

The trouble caused by the passengers was even more grave than Wu Fengrong had imagined. Outside the conductor’s office stood four or five women with yellow-faces and big feet. The attendant sat opposite, crying and red eyed, and not saying a word. Afraid of disturbing the other passengers’ rest, Wu Fengrong invited them inside to talk but these women insisted on standing outside the doorway for this confrontation. Shrill, the abuse they shouted filled the sky 2 .

The transit police arrived and surrounded them. Unmoved, the women continued making a racket, screeching, crying bitterly and shouting, when suddenly, after a brief remark, they began to fight. The spectacle got out of control and, in no time, countless arms flailed in the air, punching and slapping, pulling hair, grabbing clothes, and gripping ears….and then Wu Fengrong was slapped. Zhao Xintao angrily pushed them away, and the transit police got in-between and restrained people. The attendant panicked and fled. Standing outside of the surrounding crowd, an old man crouched down and picked up all the change that fell, putting it into his own pocket.

Finally, they managed to haggle over the price of the return ticket so that everyone not only received a full refund but also received 120 yuan as compensation. For the 120 yuan, Wu Fengrong had to fight for another half an hour on a phone call with his superior. It was only in the wee hours of the morning that he finally finished working. Dizzily he made his way out of the conductor’s seat and only then remembered that he still hadn’t eaten dinner.

The kitchen was already closed and wouldn’t open until 5AM. Not wanting to trouble the chef, Wu Fengrong instead went to ask a young attendant for some snacks. With one hand, he munched on a bag of potato chips, with the other he looked at his phone. He had received a text message from Zhou Yanling.

–Made fried rice. I’m here with Zhou Chi. Come over to eat when you’re finished.

The corner of Wu Fengrong’s mouth curled upwards, elated and overjoyed that he was invited to eat fried rice. The food had been microwaved twice and was kept in an insulated cover, but the tea was freshly brewed and steamed with heat. Zhou Yanling with single-hearted devotion 3 was clicking away at a laptop he was holding. Zhou Chi had managed to get a hold of a network card adapter from somewhere and, with great difficulty, images were loading. At the same time, Zhou Yanling had six or seven web pages open. Wu Fengrong saw that some were even in English. Curious, he sat next to them and leaned over to take a look.

From the food, his nose was stained with grease left by the spoon. Zhou Yanling could smell the fragrance of the oil and kissed the tip of his nose. Zhou Chi let out a cry and covered her face: “Zhou da-ge, are you a mouse? You only know how to pilfer and eat oil.”

Zhou Yanling chuckled with a smile. Wu Fengrong said unhappily: “What are you looking at? If he’s a mouse, then are you a cat? It’s not like he’s eating your family’s oil 4 .” He dug in, took two bites, then elbowed Zhou Yanling and asked: “What are you doing?”

Zhou Yanling replied: “We’re investigating the Hé family’s business. It’s a pretty large construction company involved in everything from indoor and outdoor design to city planning to electromechanical engineering. Their projects included residential, commercial, office, mixed-use and even medical contracts. 12 years ago, they won the commission to design Tongzhou’s downtown museum’s roof-top garden. The company hasn’t been listed, and they employ over 2000 people…..”

“Does a construction company need as many as 2000 employees?”

“In order for the numbers to look good, they’re actually outsourcing as well 5 . If the customer service, construction, and maintenance personnel were included, that number would be much larger. I once saw a small communication company which claimed to have tens of thousands of employees, but most were workers who climbed the poles to inspect and make repairs. The real number of service contracts 6 in that company didn’t exceed 2000.”

“It’s enough. If this family business has 2000 employees and they’ve all bought insurance from you, that’s still a large account.”

Zhou Yanling thought: “Our company should have their account. But since I’m not managing it, I’ll have to check.”

Wu Fengrong teased: “Can you still do that? Haven’t you already been fired?”

Zhou Yanling tapped on the portable hard drive next to the laptop with a smug expression: “Would you believe it if I were to tell you that selling what’s in here would net enough for both of us to not worry about food and drink for the rest of our lives? Don’t look down on an insurance claims investigator. How much wealth people are holding, whether or not they can save their lives at a critical junction…..found it!” The folder he dragged from the hard drive had more than 60 files, many of which were videos and pictures. Wu Fengrong took a cursory look and saw many bloody scenes. He looked down at the rice bowl in his hands and swallowed hard.

“Is it a large case?”

“Not very. It happened in 2012. Maybe I’ve forgotten because it was so long ago.”

“Tell us about it.”

“In 2012, Tongda Construction assigned a 17 person engineering team to a hotel project. Later during the project, two workers fell after their safety ropes accidentally broke as they were plastering a facade on the 16 th floor. They died after they were rescued. Because Tongda had bought occupational accident insurance, the two of them were compensated for 73,000 yuan. I was assigned to do an appraisal investigation for this case, and it was indeed an accident so the money was paid out. The family members signed the receipt of funds and the case was closed.”

“Was the issue that the engineering team was outsourced and wasn’t from Tongda?”

“Outsourcing also requires contracts, but Tongda can say that these workers aren’t part of their staff.”

Wu Fengrong laughed: “When producing propaganda you add people who are outside the family, but as soon as something bad happens, suddenly they’re not yours.”

Finished with the fried rice, not even a single grain remained inside the lunch box. Wu Fengrong burped, satiated, and happily went to pour tea. Even if Zhou Yanling was only a cook, it would be worthwhile just for this to spend the rest of his life with him. He attentively held the teacup to the edge of Zhou Yanling’s mouth, blew on it to cool it off, then handed it over to him, wanting to feed it to him directly. Zhou Yanling was humbled.

“You’re busy, you’re busy.” Wu Fengrong laughed happily and said: “Tomorrow morning, I’ll eat egg noodles.”

Zhou Yanling teased him: “Or perhaps I should feed you this meal again.” After saying this, he turned his attention to the computer screen and continued to explain: “It’s normal for accidents to occur at construction sites. Understand, each year there are at least several dozen construction projects occurring simultaneously and hundreds of workers that need to be managed. It’s hard to prevent one or two occasional accidents. It’s a legal obligation to buy occupational accident insurance 7 for the workers. It doesn’t cost much and it could be considered as spending money to avoid large troubles. If those two workers were found to be without occupational accident insurance, the company would be at a disadvantage. If the families had insisted on filing a complaint, the company would have needed to compensate for the loss and possibly may have ended up going bankrupt. In this respect, Tongda can be considered to be in lawful compliance and can’t be criticized.”

“Even if he’s honest in business, by framing you he’s not actually so.”

“That can be seen as a separate issue. I cannot say that, by framing me, he’s unscrupulous in business.” After saying that, Zhou Yanling stopped speaking, his brows furrowed together. His mouse hovered over the title of a web page before he clicked it open: “Wait a minute, this case is still open.”

“Uh-huh?”

Zhou Yanling skimmed while he spoke: “At the beginning of the year, one of the worker’s family members mentioned a lawsuit, accusing Tongda Construction and Engineering Corp of the intentional homicide of the two workers who fell to their death. When was this lawsuit filed? Why didn’t I know about it?” He continued reading, scrolling downwards: “The first case was dismissed but the plaintiff has submitted the case to be heard by the people’s court by a higher judge 8 . The relevant case hearing will be held at the end of the year. This case is the second time that Tongda Construction and Engineering Corp has been accused…..”

Zhou Chi interrupted: “What’s the definition of intentional homicide 9 ?”

Zhou Yanling explained: “I haven’t seen the specific charges, but it’s probably because the family of the worker believes that the deaths weren’t accidents. For instance, that the rupture of the safety rope was purposeful and not a natural one, so they’re blaming the construction company and want them to take responsibility.” Wu Fengrong’s expression became solemn: “I’ve seen similar stories in the news. Construction companies and engineering companies, while carrying out construction, deliberately bring about workers’ deaths and pretend that it was because of an accident. After the event, they deceive family members to settle out of court for only several hundred yuan, and then the boss pockets the large payouts from the insurance companies. You must be familiar with this kind of thing, right? The insurance payout just for these two workers was worth hundreds of thousands, and Tongda has tens of thousands of workers which could practically be called an inexhaustible stream of revenue. It used to be that the mining companies did these sorts of things. I never would have expected that city people would begin to imitate those in the country.”

Zhou Yanling said: “There used to be a lot of cases like this, but it’s actually quite difficult to argue such in a lawsuit. First, the workers are outsourced and the safety gear that they use are their own. While Tongda is legally responsible for buying them occupational injury insurance, if problems arise with their own safety gear the business can plead that it wasn’t any fault of the business. Second, since so many years have passed, if they want to reopen this case, they’ll need to collect evidence. But the process of collecting this evidence can be extraordinarily difficult, mostly relying on old data and appraisal results. That snapped rope has long been thrown who-knows-where, so how can they possibly examine it? So in reality, for many of these cases, once the family members finally react and sue it’s already too late. The evidence is already long gone, the company has passed the buck, and there’s nothing that the family can do.”

“Once or twice is fine, but if accused numerous times wouldn’t that indicate that there was something fishy going on inside?”

“There’s nothing I can say in answer to this question.”

Wu Fengrong laughed: “Are you afraid to slap your own face 10 ? You handled this case. You approved their claim that they’d died from an accidental fall and then you had the money paid out. If the court finds the opposite, then your company paid out hundreds of thousands for nothing.”

Zhou Yanling was smiling: “What could I be afraid of? The police ruled it was an accident. In order to slap my face, the police’s face would need to be slapped first.”

If the cause and effect were connected beginning to end, Wu Fengrong thought of another possibility.

“Let’s talk about the worker’s cause of death as a separate issue. What we can be sure of is that Hé Da is in the middle of a big lawsuit over two human lives. This lawsuit is one that you dealt with, so he’ll need you to testify in court to show that the fall and death of the two workers was indeed an accident. If you aren’t present, no one would be there to testify, Hé Da risks losing the case, and the company’s future is uncertain. So, he put you on this train to prove your own innocence and rid yourself of the murder charge.”

Zhou Yanling did not speak.

Wu Fengrong straightened his spine, rearranging the narrative from the beginning: “Let’s examine this from beginning to end: On that evening when Shi Xiaoran committed murder, Hé Youan immediately called Hé Da to come to the scene of the crime and help. It just so happened that you and your old colleague were passing by, so Hé Da promptly decided to pin this murder on you. Afterwards, he bribed your old colleague to keep his mouth shut.

“The police lifted your fingerprints and, as soon as they issued a warrant for your arrest, this matter was considered to be closed. Hé Da had just put this matter to rest in his mind when suddenly his business was met with the misfortune that the lawsuit was going to continue. As he was dealing with that, he found out that you were the assigned 11 insurance investigator. Consequently, he changed his plan. He absolutely couldn’t have you be imprisoned because otherwise there would be no one who could help him fight the lawsuit.

“At the same time, Hé Youan is crazy about Shi Xiaoran, which his father is against 12 . Hé Da, already worried that he won’t win the lawsuit and also worried that his son will carry the pot 13 for his girlfriend, grits his teeth and has you board this train so you catch Shi Xiaoran. If you succeed, Hé Da kills two birds with one stone by getting you to testify on his behalf and also conveniently breaking up the sweethearts.”

Put like this everything immediately became smooth and coherent, and all the mysteries that had been left unsolved were suddenly settled.

Zhou Chi was very excited: “That’s the reason why he did two such contradictory actions! First he framed Zhou da-ge yet later sent Zhou da-ge off to prove his innocence. The water has finally receded and the rocks have appeared 14 !”

However, Zhou Yanling’s expression wasn’t that of someone who had just come to a wide clearing 15 . He only felt nauseous.

Because of Hé Da, his life was almost ruined. What type of person was this Hé Da? When he pictured President Hé, he imagined a wizened old man, his back slightly bent, standing with his hands clasped behind his back next to a bundle of black muslin curtains, and with gloomy and cold eyes that were narrowed into slits. His nose would be wide, with deeply etched nasolabial lines pulling, not only the corners of his mouth into a frown, but his entire face down as well. This wretched old man was holding Zhou Yanling in the palm of his hand, capable of flipping him over at a moment’s notice and making him suffer. Yet, the real person probably wouldn’t even be able to withstand Zhou Yanling’s fist.

Thinking about it like this, Zhou Yanling found it difficult to feel happy.

With one hand placed on the back of Zhou Yanling’s hand, Wu Fengrong said calmly: “Hé Da’s scheme was well calculated. He must think himself to be quite clever, but he’ll hoist his own petard. There’s no need to overestimate him. From what I’ve seen, he can’t compare with his son. At least the young man of the Hé family is capable of feeling some affection.”

Zhou Yanling sighed. Hé Da didn’t seem to do business with any conscience, murdering for money; and didn’t act like a father by teaching about right and wrong, only blindly spoiling his son; yet it was this kind of person who had produced Hé Youan, a son of great passion. How ironic.

“Thankfully,” Zhou Yanling said, “there’s Liu Qin who can testify. His and Hé Da’s text messages can be counted as evidence, so Hé Da won’t be able to escape this.”

Wu Fengrong showed a relaxed smile: “At least now, all riddles have been solved so there’s no need to worry anymore.”

“As long as we find Shi Xiaoran, all the loose ends will be tied.”

“They’re on board and can always be found. Two little kids have kept adults frantically running around in circles. The reporters will have something to write about yet again.”

“Hey, let them talk. There’s no need to care about that.”

Wu Fengrong wanted to go and wash out the lunchbox, but Zhou Yanling asked to let him do it. Because the case was solved, his footsteps were light and quick as he walked out the door and into the aisle. His field of vision was darkened, everyone was asleep, and the silent moonlight swept over everything. The inside of the window was shadowed while the opposite shone.

The door of the dining car was closed. Alone, Zhou Yanling pulled it open, carrying the lunchbox by himself. Suddenly, he tripped as the doorway swayed. He couldn’t keep his footing and instinctively went to steady himself on the doorframe. However, before he could touch it, a terrifyingly loud sound exploded next to his ear!

His hands shook. First, the lunchbox fell as it tumbled out of his grip. Then, his body was met with a strong blast of air and he was thrown to the floor.

—-

T/N: Boy would I hate to be traveling on this train.

水落石出: idiom for ‘the truth is revealed’ 漫天: was limitless 专心致志: with the utmost concentration seems to be a reference to a children’s story in which three hungry mice who are all siblings steal cooking oil from an old cat. The cat finds out and kills one of the mice, who leaves a note written in his own blood telling the other two to return the oil. The moral seems to be that if you want something, you should work to obtain it yourself instead of stealing from others. basically paying another company to perform certain jobs rather than having an in-house department handle them a contract between a company and a customer for service (for instance, between you and your internet provider) that details payment amounts, payment due dates, and termination fees information about occupational accident insurane and how it differs from workers compensation I’m not sure how it is in China, but in the USA, cases, such as claims court, can be dismissed either with prejudice or without prejudice. From my experience, most of the time dismissal without prejudice is because of technicalities that can be corrected: such as lack of jurisdiction (either subject matter or physical), because of venue (for instance, trying to file a housing matter in small claims court) or because of improper service; and then once these corrections are made, the petition can be heard again. With prejudice would occur when the petition itself is deemed as flawed, in which case ‘dismissal with prejudice’ is the court’s final ruling. here’s the definition of intentional homicide Basically doing or saying something that will come back and cause public humiliation later added for clarity 杠上了: literally, ‘on the bar’ take the blame 水落石出: idiom for ‘the truth is revealed’ 豁然开朗 : achieving sudden enlightenment.