Enigma of China(66)

“Really! I didn’t send those. Do you know who else might have sent them?”

“No, I don’t. It looks like everybody is trying to blackmail or threaten me.”

“Everybody? Tell me about it.”

“The day I got these pictures, Jiang and his people came to talk to me, saying that the consequences would be too much for me if I didn’t cooperate. And then, that evening, Dang also called, telling me I would have to give up.”

“Give what up?”

“I don’t know what he meant. Tell Jiang’s people everything? Give them something that they believed Zhou had given to me? But the message I got was that if I didn’t do what they told me to do, then the pictures would come to light. That’s why I ran away.”

“Can you guess where I found the pictures?” Chen asked deliberately. “On Dang’s computer.”

“What?!”

“He’s after something, but what it is, I don’t know.”

“Zhou had already had his name dragged through the mud. I didn’t want that to happen again, not because of me. He told me he’d kept this property a secret, so I came here.”

“But you can’t hide out for long. What then?”

“I don’t know. I’ll be able to eke out an existence, I think, for two or three months on my savings. The storm may have blown over by then, and I’ll be able to turn a page somewhere else.”

So the pressure Dang and Jiang were putting on her wasn’t to get her to speak out against Zhou but for her to give them something they thought Zhou had entrusted to her.

Her story was so unlikely that Chen believed it was actually true, whether or not she was innocent. But what could Dang be after? For that matter, what could Jiang and his team want so desperately? This opened up totally new possibilities.

“Hidden treasure?” he murmured, almost to himself.

Zhou was said to have amassed a huge fortune, and what had been exposed on the Internet was merely the tip of the iceberg. Dang must believe that Fang knew about it.

Was that what Jiang was after, too? It wasn’t likely. It could be a huge amount but not so much that it would be worth such an effort on the part of the city government. If any more details about such corruption were to leak out, it wouldn’t do the city government any good.

“Those people are capable of anything,” she muttered, though not in response to Chen.

Jiang’s continuous presence at Moller Villa could possibly backfire on him now, with the Beijing team stationed at the same hotel. Even though Fang might not have told him everything, hemming and hawing as she had about details, her fear was genuine. If Zhou had been murdered for something—whatever that might be, Chen had no clue and too little knowledge to speculate—that something was still out there, and Fang wasn’t an unlikely next target on the list. That was the real reason she’d run away.

She hadn’t said that in so many words, but she didn’t have to.

Zhou might have hidden the something away—this crucially important “something”—but could it possibly be in her possession? From what Chen could see, while it might have been a matter of life and death to Zhou, it wasn’t to Fang. There was no point in her holding on to it, particularly at the expense of becoming a fugitive.

At the same time, it had to be something that was a fatal threat to Jiang and his people, and something Zhou believed would provide him protection. Nothing like that had come to the surface yet—not as far as Chen could see.

Then how could he help Fang? With others watching and plotting for reasons unknown—to him, and perhaps to one another—it’d be better not to reveal her whereabouts to any of them. Otherwise, before he was capable of making a move, she’d be snatched out of his hands.

He dipped a piece of stinking tofu in the hot sauce. It was slightly cold yet still crispy, but the hot sauce wasn’t spicy enough, just as Lu Xun had deplored in a story. It was probably titled “In the Tavern.”

Fang’s staying here wouldn’t harm anybody, he decided. Nor would it obstruct the investigation of Zhou’s death. Turning to Fang, he said, “Things are complicated. Because of Zhou’s position and because of his connections, you might as well stay here for a while, for your own safety. You’ll have to avoid contacting others. Do your parents have any idea where you are?”

“No, they don’t. They’re old-fashioned people. They would be upset that I have a villa given to me by Zhou, so I’ve never told them anything about it.”

“That’s good. Don’t contact them, either—not until I tell you it’s okay. It won’t be too long. Soon there may be a drastic change in the situation,” he said, not saying more than was necessary. “In the meantime, if you can think of anything that might have caused Zhou’s death, or about things he might have left behind—anything at all—let me know immediately. You have my cell number. But make sure that you call from a public pay phone, one that’s not near here. You’re right about one thing. Those people are capable of anything.”