Chapter 5

My heart lurched when I heard that.

But I immediately realized that his words contradicted themselves.

If he couldn’t even tell whether I was hiding something, how could he conclude that I was lying?

So I threw the question back at him. “I’m not hiding anything. What do you mean, other people moved away, too?”

Perhaps he hadn’t expected me to be so calm.

After a pause, he said, “Another family moved away around the same time. The people at the committee now don’t know what really happened. The old village head who was in charge back then has died… No, wait. If we include the six months afterward, and the Yang family, it was three families altogether.”

As he drove, he kept stealing glances at me.

Then I understood. “Yes, about six months later, my dad took me to the city to go to school. Mainly because he wanted to find work away from home, too… That was a good time to make money working elsewhere. And I only had one parent. My mother had died long before. You can check all of that. I haven’t been hiding it, have I?”

He nodded and asked no more questions.

I knew he suspected me.

But I had been so young. I really hadn’t known that Niannian’s family wasn’t the only one to leave.

Who was that other family? What had happened to them?

Officer Li soon found out.

Their surname was Zhang. They had come to the village to acquire land and set up a small factory.

In those days, a family capable of starting a business like that was already quite well off.

Officer Li contacted them at once.

That call gave the case a significant push forward—

The family said they had been unable to reach their daughter for three days!

Yes, the recently murdered woman found near my house…

Could well be the Zhang family’s elder daughter, Zhang Lingwei.

There were three people in the family: the father, Zhang Jianjun; the elder daughter, Zhang Lingwei; and the younger son, Zhang Lingzhi.

After Officer Li contacted them, Zhang Jianjun and Zhang Lingzhi were rushing over.

The reason I knew so much…

Was that after hanging up, Officer Li came to the room he had arranged for me and asked whether I remembered the family.

I told him the truth. I had no memory of them at all.

“What about the remains in the temple? Have you found out who they belonged to?”

I asked Officer Li with a show of calm, as though I were just being nosy.

“Not yet. But there’s something in the autopsy results worth noting…”

He paused before going on:

“The body was most likely buried sixteen years ago, the year you all moved away.”

As I had thought.

Everything still pointed to that year.

I asked, “What exactly happened back then?”

Officer Li shook his head. He didn’t know.

But he added:

“When the Zhang family gets here tomorrow, we should be able to find out.”

Then he lifted his head and looked me in the eye again.

As if he were warning me that the truth would come out tomorrow, and I still had a chance to confess.

Of course, I shook my head and said I knew nothing.

Officer Li said no more and quietly left the room.

I lay on the bed, thinking about my childhood again.

Now I was certain.

That last day we played rock, scissors, cloth—the day we went up the mountain…

Something terrible must have happened to Niannian.

And it very likely had something to do with the Zhang family.