When that awful woman saw Huang Yiyi had fallen, she walked out happily, feeling that for once she had got the better of her. She didn’t know that Huang Yiyi was dying, that life was slipping away into the darkness. She also didn’t know she had just signed her own death warrant, though thanks to delays it was not actually served until three years later. She had to pay a heavy price for that: Zhang Guoqing went to prison as an accessory after the fact, as a result of which their little boy was left effectively orphaned and homeless.

Everyone agreed that if she had confessed straight away she might well not have been sentenced to death, and Zhang Guoqing certainly wouldn’t have been dragged in. That way their boy would at the very least have had his father to look after him. But that’s all supposition; the fact is she only told the truth three years later, and during that time the knowledge of what she had done tormented Zhang Guoqing into a shadow of his former self. Her evidence cleared him of any actual involvement in the crime, but the fact that he had helped cover it up was quite enough to send him to prison.

I feel sorry for Zhang Guoqing.

You might say that Zhang Guoqing’s wife was also a victim, but I can’t find it in my heart to feel sorry for her.

30

Finally, I would like to say something that has nothing to do with Huang Yiyi. Originally I hadn’t planned to speak about it here, but since I have already mentioned Xiaoyu, it seems appropriate to explain what happened to her. People in my line of work, regardless of what terrible tragedies overtake them, can only suffer in silence. It is a horrible feeling, having to keep these things bottled up, and I have already been made wretched for decades about what happened to Xiaoyu. Now I want to use this opportunity to bring it all out into the open, for a kind of release.

It must have been fate that not long after Huang Yiyi died, Director Tie suddenly rang me up and told me to come to Beijing immediately to see him. Why? He didn’t tell me on the phone, and I didn’t ask. It was one of our rules, and I was used to it: if your superiors don’t tell you, it’s best for you not to ask. When I got to headquarters he put a black wooden box down in front of me. What could it be? How right you are: it was a casket of ashes.

But what you won’t have guessed is that it really did contain Xiaoyu’s ashes.