Chapter Text
1
It was another thirteen-hour shift for the Public Security Bureau, and Lang Qiao had had enough of it.
She had spent the last three hours calling up every address listed under the family name ‘Fan’ because Captain Luo had told the team that the suspect in the armed robbery case was most likely to belong to one of them, according to the new evidence which had turned up at the scene. It was impossible to personally interview all of them, so Lang Qiao had been tasked with the thankless job of calling up the numbers and shortlisting them for interview the next day. It hadn’t even been a week since the dust had settled on the Wang Honglian case, which had led to them pulling ten-hour shifts for the last couple of months.
She was tired, aching, and on the verge of dropping off at her desk when the phone rang.
“Xiao Qiao, I’ve forwarded a list of new addresses for you to call once you’re done with this…”
Captain Luo’s dulcet tones were never this unwelcome.
“Xiao Qiao, are you listening? Get your ass on it unless you want to skip on breakfast tomorrow…” Captain Luo said on the phone before hanging up.
Lang Qiao made a face at the receiver and slammed it down.
As if Captain Luo was going to treat them to a seafood buffet the next morning just because the bureau had worked through the weekend. It was going to be jianbing as usual, unless Captain Luo was feeling generous and added an extra egg to her order.
Yawning her head off, she grabbed the empty coffee mug from her desk and stood up like the undead, scraping her chair on the floor with a grating sound. Xiao Haiyang looked up, caught the look on her face, and promptly busied himself in front of the computer screen, scrolling away at the speed of sound. There were two other officers on duty that night, and both of them had been transferred recently, and for some reason, seemed unreasonably timid in front of Lang Qiao. So, when she walked purposefully through the narrow space behind their tables, there was a sudden flurry of action at their desks as they rapidly cleared away what looked like a majhong deck, making one tile fly off and land right in front of Lang Qiao’s feet with a clatter.
Lang Qiao’s temper, which was already fraying at the edges, snapped without notice.
“Aren’t you a little too young to be playing majhong? Do you want to end up like those grandpas next to the parks, squirrelling away savings to bet against each other every evening?”
The two officers mumbled something in response, making Lang Qiao even angrier.
“Xiao Qiao-jie,” one of them started saying, making Lang Qiao snap her eyes at him.
“Yes?” she replied tersely.
“Tao Ran-ge asked us…”
At the mention of Deputy Tao, Lang Qiao’s incandescent anger quickly evaporated.
“…for an investigation,” the officer explained, still not catching Lang Qiao’s eyes.
She nodded, too tired to follow up on her duty of upbraiding all the new recruits until they could handle Captain Luo’s harangue every morning.
She stumbled her way to the break room, and set down her mug on the counter. There was still some coffee left in the decanter, so she poured it into her mug, swirling it to release some of the stale coffee smell so that she didn’t fall asleep on the spot.
On her way back, she glanced at Captain Luo’s office as usual, while taking a sip out of her mug at the same time.
What she saw almost made her spit out her coffee, and it was only due to her long-standing habit of slowing down whenever she was faced with a problem, that she managed not to spray it all over the file cabinets on her side.
There was a man sitting on top of Captain Luo’s desk, his long legs hanging off of the edge, with the crisp lines of his tailored trousers set off only by the gleam of a pale ankle above dark, patent leather moccasins. He had his back to the door and was leaning forward, and Lang Qiao could tell from the expensive cut of his jacket and the shoulder skimming hair as to who this interloper was.
It was none other than President Fei, who was rumored to be the figurehead CEO of one of the largest conglomerates in the city, and who seemed to have some sort of history with Deputy Tao and Captain Luo – and she had just about ferreted out the details from Deputy Tao regarding him a while ago. According to Deputy Tao, President Fei – then the middle schooler Fei Du – had been the first important case that had been assigned to Deputy Tao and Captain Luo after they’d been inducted into the police force. It was regarding the death of Fei Du’s mother, and Lang Qiao had listened to the way Deputy Tao’s voice had caught while describing how they found Fei Du that day, alone with his mother inside that large mansion.
Lang Qiao was a smart woman. She had seen the way President Fei looked at Deputy Tao, and then noticed his expression the day he’d followed them right up to the bureau, just to invite Deputy Tao out to lunch at one of the most expensive restaurants in town. Lang Qiao’s stomach had almost betrayed her by rumbling at the mention of that restaurant, but she had been too focused on tracking the byplay happening between Deputy Tao, President Fei, and Captain Luo, who’d lingered in the background like a malevolent presence, to pay attention to her stomach.
“Tao Ran,” President Fei had implored in his smooth, low tone of voice which had set Lang Qiao’s teeth on edge the moment she’d heard it. “I was waiting for you. Come have lunch with me.”
Lang Qiao didn’t even have to look back to feel the daggers Captain Luo was shooting at this newcomer with his eyes. The meeting had ended at an impasse, with neither of them budging until Captain Luo nearly dragged the two of them into his car and drove them back to the bureau. It hadn’t ended there, obviously.
President Fei had followed them all the way to the bureau, deftly navigating the midday traffic and Captain Luo’s murderous driving, and had even persisted after being handed out a parking ticket!
Lang Qiao had later asked the traffic officer on duty and learned that President Fei had paid a thousand yuan, eight hundred yuan excess of the two hundred yuan parking ticket, just to stay there for the whole day!
Since then, Lang Qiao had known that President Fei harboured ill intentions towards Deputy Tao.
But she had reasons to suspect – since Lang Qiao never gave up a case once she saw one – that maybe the affections weren’t one-sided. She had seen Deputy Tao get into President Fei’s car on more than one occasion, and she had noticed that while Deputy Tao sometimes screened calls during work, he never ignored President Fei’s. He answered them no matter how busy he was, and his tone was gentle and soft – even more so than usual – when he talked to President Fei.
And then she had connected the dots about the flowers landing up on Deputy Tao’s desk.
At first, she had assumed like everyone else that they had come from a secret admirer of Deputy Tao’s. Deputy Tao was gentle and unassuming, and never had a bad word for anybody, making him the bureau favorite, at least among the lower ranked officers. Who knew what the management thought of Deputy Tao or even Captain Luo, who never seemed to be able to report on time in the mornings? But Deputy Tao was unanimously liked everywhere else; even victims’ families got attached to him and kept calling him long after a case had been resolved.
The bunch of striking red carnations was hard to miss on Deputy Tao’s table that day, with how Captain Luo was parading the fact around the office.
Lang Qiao only had had a moment to glance at the card that came with the flowers, signed only with the name, ‘Fei.’
It was only much later, when she’d seen the way President Fei waited around to pick up Deputy Tao after work, that she had made the connection between the two.
The mysterious admirer ‘Fei’ and the domineering and suave President Fei were one and the same person!
Now, she knew for a fact that Captain Luo was interested in men – he made no secret of the fact. But Deputy Tao was always a different kettle of fish. Lang Qiao had never seen him show interest in any woman within a ten kilometer radius unless she was part of the investigation, and even then, it was a strictly professional interest, which never seemed to breach the bounds of propriety. In fact, Deputy Tao was so proper as to appear completely bloodless. Lang Qiao had signed him up as one of those perennial workaholics she shuddered to think of, and which she definitely wouldn’t be – her perennial overtimes notwithstanding.
The day she figured out the nature of Deputy Tao’s relationship with President Fei, she was on her way to pay a visit to a family whose daughter had ran away leaving only a hastily scribbled note behind. She had no idea why she was still doing the work typically assigned to grunts after so many months of work at the bureau, and was half inclined to call in Xiao Haiyang for the job - just to inflict it on someone else. Then she remembered that Xiao Haiyang couldn’t talk to strangers to save his life, and with an especially sensitive case such as this, where the parents would be anxious and worried out of their minds, any throwaway comment could become the fuse to an even bigger problem. So, she gnashed her teeth and paddled Captain Luo’s bicycle which he had lent for use among the bureau workers, keeping an eye out for the street where she would have to make a turning.
It was quite by chance that she had noticed President Fei’s flashy new sports car which was parked beside the curb.
There really wasn’t a way to miss it. It was bright red, but not the sort of red that seared your eyeballs the moment you set your eyes on it. If Lang Qiao had to describe it, she would say that it resembled the colour of dried blood, which she’d seen enough times for it be branded permanently on her brain.
Now, normally she would pass the car by without further notice, since President Fei was everywhere, it seemed – he really had all the time on his hands to go drinking and partying at all hours of the day. But ever since she had started suspecting that President Fei might have a connection to her beloved Deputy Tao, she had been on high alert for any signs of suspicious activity.
And almost as if to mock her, Lang Qiao could see the figures of two people in the front, their heads drawn together.
She walked Captain Luo’s bicycle to the other side, taking cover behind a strategic row of bushes.
There was a pair of compact binoculars that the bureau handed out to their officers, and Lang Qiao always carried it around. She pulled it out of her backpack, adjusting the focus knobs by sheer experience - because she knew that the car was only a few hundred metres away from where she was standing.
She peered through the viewfinder and adjusted the dials one last time as the interiors of President Fei’s car slowly came into focus.
President Fei was leaning back on the seat, his head thrown back in a remarkable display of ease that he never showed anywhere else. He was pressing down on the bridge of his nose, his eyes closed, and lips turned up slightly at the corners.
Then Lang Qiao slowly adjusted her line of vision until she could see who was with him in the car. She almost dropped her binoculars when Deputy Tao’s profile came into view. He seemed to be looking out, while saying something to President Fei, who was listening intently, now leaning slightly forward.
Lang Qiao didn’t realize that she was holding her breath until he saw Deputy Tao move in President Fei’s direction, and from the way his shoulder moved, Lang Qiao was sure that he was holding President Fei’s hand.
President Fei was also looking at Deputy Tao with a slightly slack-jawed expression which, again, was something Lang Qiao had never expected to see on that man’s face. While she might not be a criminal profiler, Lang Qiao had reasonable experience in reading people’s intentions on their faces. Most people betrayed something at some point, whether it was intentional or accidental. Disgust, attraction, shock, pain – something that was difficult to hide. In all the times that Lang Qiao had the opportunity to observe President Fei, it had seemed like he was a statue carved out of jade. Yes, he laughed, smiled, flirted and complimented according to his purpose, but Lang Qiao had never seen a sincere display of emotion on his face. She had chalked it up to the fact that rich parents rarely cared about their children beyond providing them with a steady and unimaginable income, and that things that normal people grew up learning were completely absent in the rich kids she had seen.
President Fei fit that description to a T. It was sometimes so perfect that Lang Qiao wondered whether it could be real.
But seeing him in the car with Deputy Tao, Lang Qiao was forced to make a revision in her evaluation of President Fei.
He was definitely affected by Deputy Tao, and what he had said to him while grabbing his hand.
While it was just something as innocent as holding hands, which most young couples in the city openly did despite other people’s watching eyes, Lang Qiao felt that she had been burned.
She pulled away the binoculars from her eyes for a moment, not sure why her heart was beating so fast, or why her face felt so hot.
By the time she had looked through the binoculars again, Deputy Tao was unlocking the passenger door and stepping out. He looked back one last time, waved at President Fei, who still seemed to look at him with a strange and unreadable expression, and then started walking down the road.
Lang Qiao had immediately left, not wishing to be discovered by Deputy Tao under such circumstances.
From then on, she had regarded the secret romance as something entirely normal, since if Deputy Tao could like someone and be happy with them, Lang Qiao saw no problem with that. And President Fei stopped by the bureau pretty often – he visited Deputy Tao and then sniped at Captain Luo for a while which always devolved into a game of barbs until Deputy Tao gently pried them apart, like separating two hissing cats, and walked President Fei out of the office.
She could see why Captain Luo was always irritated with President Fei, especially since President Fei was nothing like them – he came from money, and he was wrapped in money from head to foot, judging by the clothes he usually wore. There was always a faint trace of musk in the room after he had left, and which Lang Qiao had shamelessly sniffed at for a while, because it was so earthy yet refined, and smelled very expensive. And Captain Luo must have known that Deputy Tao was going out with President Fei, since it always looked like a fishbone got stuck in his throat every time President Fei came to invite Deputy Tao out for lunch. If Lang Qiao was in Captain Luo’s position, she would have hated President Fei’s guts, too. Because after all, Captain Luo and Deputy Tao had been partners for a long time, and it must rankle to see a youngster, hardly of legal marriageable age, to start dating Deputy Tao out of the blue.
And someone they’d practically watched grow up right in front of their eyes.
It was all… backwards, as far as Lang Qiao was concerned.
But as she tentatively took a step back now, surveying the scene in front of her eyes, Lang Qiao didn’t know whether she was awake or already asleep and dreaming.
Captain Luo was sitting in his chair, but he was almost completely hidden from view by President Fei sitting on the table in front of him. Lang Qiao could only see the toes of his boots peek out from beneath the table. As she watched, President Fei leaned forward, one of his hands moving to hold Captain Luo’s face as it suddenly appeared into view. President Fei’s long, pale fingers could be seen grasping the edge of Captain Luo’s jaw, caressing slowly as if he couldn’t bear to stop touching him.
Lang Qiao’s heart was beating double time, but she bravely veered to the side to get a better look at what was happening.
Then, with the same unthinkable gentleness, President Fei’s thumb brushed over Captain Luo’s bottom lip, and it was then that Lang Qiao sucked in a breath, inadvertently taking a step closer to the doorway.
Captain Luo’s eyes were closed; he was likely asleep. His hair looked tousled and wind-blown, lifted up from his forehead by some superhuman force, and the lines that were there on his forehead when he was awake were smoothed over in sleep.
President Fei continued to map the ridges of Captain Luo’s lips, his thumb brushing over the upper lip as well, and then he leaned forward suddenly, as if he was going to kiss Captain Luo.
Lang Qiao was feeling faintly dizzy, the coffee mug an unbearable weight in her hand, and she scrambled for a hold on the file cabinets lining the wall, only to dislodge a folder and making it fall face down on the shelf with a loud bang.
President Fei looked back immediately, and Lang Qiao’s heart leapt to her throat.
She would have expected President Fei to look guilty, shocked, chastised – but for the life of her, she hadn’t expected him to look like that.
President Fei’s eyes, upturned into two seemingly harmless half-moons, was looking at her through the gleam of his glasses. His lips were not really curved up, but it carried the illusion of a smile which was anything but a smile. Instead of reassuring, it looked cold and menacing. Lang Qiao had the impression that there was a many-headed beast with many teeth which was crowding her vision. She tentatively took a step back, not knowing why the hammering in her chest wouldn’t die down at all.
Still looking at her, President Fei drew his long index finger in front of his lips, drawing Lang Qiao’s attention to how red and glossy it was, like the sheen on a candied apple.
Lang Qiao had no idea what the gesture even meant – whether it was for her to keep quiet now, or whether it was for her to hold her tongue regarding what she saw.
She did the only reasonable thing and turned on the balls of her feet and almost ran back to her desk.
2
The next time Lang Qiao had Deputy Tao all to herself, she had tried to delicately broach the subject.
Because, no matter what, she wasn’t a coward. She wasn’t afraid of that President Fei with his expensive suits and even more expensive sports cars. She knew what she had seen, and she knew she had to let Deputy Tao know what was going on behind his back.
“Deputy Tao?” Lang Qiao called out, when she found him alone in the office. Most of the others had left for lunch. For some reason, she couldn’t call him ‘Tao Ran-ge’ like the other policemen in the office. It seemed too… personal.
Deputy Tao was intently studying the computer screen in front of him, and jotting down something in his journal from time to time. He didn’t even look up at Lang Qiao, but gave her a helpless smile which set her at ease immediately.
But Lang Qiao’s words were still stuck in her throat.
“Is there something you need, Xiao Qiao?” Deputy Tao enquired, still making a note of what looked like case details in his journal.
“I… wanted to talk to you about something,” Lang Qiao began, almost on the brink of abandoning her task and running away.
“Go on,” Deputy Tao told her.
“It’s about President Fei.”
Deputy Tao looked up then, a hint of a question in his kind, brown eyes. It made Lang Qiao want to curl into a ball and never come back to the subject at hand. “Xiao Fei? Is there something wrong?”
The address made Lang Qiao almost drop her resolve right then.
“No, I mean, nothing’s wrong…”
Deputy Tao’s forehead creased suddenly. “Has something happened to him?” he asked, the worry apparent in his voice.
Lang Qiao wanted to kick herself for even dreaming of broaching this topic with Deputy Tao. What could she even say? That she had seen Deputy Tao’s boyfriend try to kiss his long-time work partner, and head of the Criminal Investigation Team, Captain Luo?
“I… haven’t seen him stop by very often,” Lang Qiao stammered out, blushing furiously, because damnit, that wasn’t what she’d wanted to say!
Deputy Tao’s expression clouded for a moment and then cleared up suddenly, as if he’d finally seen the light. He looked up at Lang Qiao biting her lips bloody and pulling her hair away from her face, which she did whenever she was stressed, and then gave her a soft, knowing smile.
“I see,” he said, setting his pen down on the desk.
Lang Qiao had no idea what he even saw. Definitely not what he should’ve seen.
“I mean, President Fei and Captain Luo…” Lang Qiao began again in earnest, because she wasn’t going to give up like this!
“Oh, Lao Luo? What has he done now?” Deputy Tao asked, leaning on his arms and stretching his neck and shoulders. “Xiao Fei told me he was going to drop off something today, so he should have been here already. Did you see him?”
Lang Qiao didn’t know how to respond to that.
“Did you know about President Fei and Captain Luo?” Lang Qiao blurted out finally, not being able to stick to her prepared script. It was all Captain Luo’s bad influence, as far as Lang Qiao was concerned. Spending a year at the bureau had turned her thoughts and speech as coarse as the captain’s.
“Know what?” Deputy Tao said, looking up at Lang Qiao from his desk. “Has anything happened? Have they fought again?”
Lang Qiao thought that the term ‘fought again’ made them sound like a pair of errant schoolboys, and Deputy Tao, their tired school teacher.
Throwing all caution to the winds, Lang Qiao charged ahead. “Did you know President Fei is interested in Captain Luo?”
Deputy Tao straightened up in his seat, knocking over an ash tray that was on his desk. It wasn’t even his ash tray - it was for Captain Luo, for when he stopped by Deputy Tao’s desk, and it was mainly there to stop him from dropping cigarette ash all over the table.
“Why would you say that?” Deputy Tao said, something of the policeman in him showing through, Lang Qian thought. It was a very calm reaction to something so explosive in nature.
“No, I mean, I’ve seen them…”
And Lang Qiao outlined what she’d seen in cold-blooded detail, treating it as part of a case and not something that involved her at any point.
By the end of it, Deputy Tao’s face bore a strange expression, which Lang Qiao had difficulty reading. She wanted to say something in consolation, but she had evidently exhausted her supply of pleasantries. Deputy Tao wasn’t a suspect she had to lie to. She just couldn’t do it.
“Xiao Qiao,” Deputy Tao began, and Lang Qiao almost jumped. “Don’t mention this to anyone else right now, okay?”
Lang Qiao smarted as soon as she heard that. “Of course!” she said, and nodded, almost on the verge of making a salute to mark the end of this issue.
She would take Deputy Tao’s secret to her grave. No questions asked.
3
There were two other things that were bothering her, but Lang Qiao forgot both of them when she received Deputy Tao’s housewarming invitation in the middle of an especially dry spell.
It was towards the end of the month, which meant that her meagre resources had all but ran out. Whatever remained after paying rent, paying bills and unwillingly donating to the local housing society, Lang Qiao had already squandered on buying set meals for the rest of the month.
Deputy Tao’s sudden decision to shift houses came with the promise of good food, and good alcohol, and the biggest miracle of all… an early leave from the office. Lang Qiao had forgotten how it was to walk through the city streets in broad daylight. It seemed as if Captain Luo’s main purpose in life was to imprison young spirits like her in the gloom of the bureau office and work them to the bone, until they could no longer even dream of leaving.
She had got Deputy Tao a painting to hang on the wall.
It wasn’t anything very fancy – just a pleasing landscape of the seaside which Lang Qiao had got in an unexpected bargain from the weekly second-hand market. She had set aside a day to spray paint over the frame and then allowed it to dry before applying a second coat until the whole thing looked as good as new. Or, who was she kidding? It definitely looked better now than it ever did in its prime.
With the painting wrapped in brown paper, tucked under her arm, she went over to Deputy Tao’s new apartment building only to find out that the elevators were out of order – both of them at the same time. Cursing up a storm over sloppy maintenance and making up her mind to ask Deputy Tao whether or not he had already paid this month’s deposit towards building repairs, Lang Qiao climbed all the way up to Deputy Tao’s new apartment in her only pair of heels.
She was greeted with the smell of something incredible, which made her mouth water, temporarily driving all thoughts out of her head. Captain Luo was in the kitchen, and whipping up dishes that smelled like nothing she had ever smelled outside of the night markets, which she hadn't been in for a while. She followed her nose to the kitchen, intending to sacrifice herself as the official food tester before the meal could commence, but was shooed out of the room by Captain Luo, who proved himself to be as inflexible as ever even when it came to something as trivial as tasting dishes ahead of time.
So, Lang Qiao resigned herself to looking around and couldn’t help remarking to Deputy Tao that his apartment looked a little sparse. Maybe it could benefit from a few more paintings, a large clock, some armchairs, and maybe a few plants. She was so immersed in her analysis that it took her a while to notice that they were still waiting for someone else.
“When is Fei Du coming over?” Captain Luo demanded, sauntering out of the kitchen, ladle in hand.
Lang Qiao tore her eyes away from the unattended pot on the stove which was bubbling away and filling the entire space with the smell of slow cooked pork ribs, to focus on Deputy Tao’s reaction.
“Is President Fei coming over?” Xiao Haiyang demanded out of the blue.
Everyone turned to look at him, and Xiao Haiyang averted his gaze, his hands gathered behind him.
“Why are you all asking me?” Deputy Tao remarked good naturedly, but Lang Qiao looked up, thinking that she could discern a hint of petulance in his tone.
Lang Qiao then looked over at Xiao Haiyang, who was acting out of character by asking about President Fei. Just what else was going on behind her back?
Before Xiao Haiyang could respond, Deputy Tao's phone rang, and Captain Luo leaned over his shoulder to peer at the screen.
"It's the man of the moment," Deputy Tao weakly announced to everyone else before receiving it.
Lang Qiao noticed how Captain Luo immediately left the room with the weak excuse of checking on the pork ribs, which, by the way, smelled maddeningly good already. Lang Qiao didn't know whether she could hold back from risking another trip to the kitchen to try her luck with Captain Luo.
"He's here downstairs, should take him a couple more minutes now," Deputy Tao informed them, and Lang Qiao sprang up from her seat and took on the job of setting the table.
President Fei did not take only a couple more minutes.
They had been sitting at the table, which had been laid out with at least a dozen dishes not including the pork ribs which were still simmering away in the kitchen. The glazed fish was practically taunting her by gleaming right in front of her plate - flanked by the shredded peppers and chilis. If she wasn't careful, Lang Qiao knew that she ran the risk of doing something untoward in front of Deputy Tao, so she meekly took out her phone and started checking her Wechat messages.
"Has President Fei sprouted roots and started growing in your lobby?" Captain Luo demanded, his temper always the first to flare up. Lang Qiao knew that Captain Luo only called him President Fei when he was especially annoyed with him.
Deputy Tao looked apologetic and then got up from the table. "I'll check on him, maybe he got stuck somewhere."
Before Deputy Tao could grab his jacket from the wall, Captain Luo had pushed back his seat and stood up somewhat stiffly.
"No need, I'll go," Captain Luo said gruffly, walking towards the door. "I needed to get rock sugar for the pork ribs anyway."
Deputy Tao followed him for a little bit, pausing in front of the door. Then, carefully, so as not to be overheard, Deputy Tao spoke to Captain Luo.
"You seem to be getting closer to Xiao Fei recently," Deputy Tao said, and Lang Qiao almost dropped her phone on the table.
She couldn't hear Captain Luo's response, and nor could she turn back and look at his expression like an ingrate, so she set her phone down on the table and took a deep breath.
Things seemed to be getting out of hand.
What happened next was even more shocking.
Captain Luo came back with President Fei and two other uninvited guests - both of them female. Deputy Tao followed, looking strangely abashed.
At some point while Captain Luo had left, Deputy Tao had mumbled something about going to check on them and had left the apartment. For a while, it was only Lang Qiao and the glazed fish, locked in a gaze full of unspoken longing. Well, there was Xiao Haiyang and Xiao Wu too, who saw to it that Lang Qiao didn't accidentally do something like pick off some of the flesh near the tail with her chopsticks, where no one would notice.
"What do you think is taking all of them this long?" Xiao Wu had asked, leaning forward on the table.
Lang Qiao had a good idea as to what might be happening, but she wisely held her tongue. After all, she had promised Deputy Tao that she wouldn't breathe a word of it to anyone outside.
"Don't you think Deputy Tao and Captain Luo both treat President Fei very differently?" Xiao Wu had added conspiratorially. Oh, so now it wasn't just her, other people had noticed it as well.
"W-what do you mean?" It was Xiao Haiyang who spoke, making Lang Qiao narrow her eyes at him.
"Well, for starters, have you ever seen Deputy Tao wait this long and then personally go to escort someone? Even Captain Luo, who is hard on everyone else, seems to be strangely lenient towards that President Fei..." Xiao Wu's skills of observation had clearly reached a peak.
The wine glasses next to the plates were empty, so Lang Qiao had poured out plain water into hers, taking a sip in order not to blurt out anything inadvertently.
"I have a feeling there's something going on between the three of them," Xiao Wu concluded, in the manner of summarizing a report. "Deputy Tao, President Fei, and Captain Luo."
Lang Qiao had almost sprayed water all over her shirt front, but was saved from responding by the sound of the door clicking open, and the sound of voices outside.
Then, next thing she knew, Deputy Tao was scrambling to add more seats to the table, and Lang Qiao found herself sitting face to face with a young woman who seemed to be around her age, accompanied by a young girl who didn't seem to want to make eye contact with anyone at the table except for President Fei. Truly, President Fei's charms knew no bounds.
She later learned that the woman was called Chang Ning, and the young girl was Chenchen, her niece, who was visiting her because her parents were out of town. They were both living in the same building as Deputy Tao at the moment.
"So, you two knew each other from high school and then later met up at a blind date?" Lang Qiao exclaimed, picking up on all the relevant details at once. "You must really be fated to be with each other!"
Now, this was all news to Lang Qiao. She had no idea that Deputy Tao was going on blind dates while being in a relationship with President Fei, or maybe, that explained all the sneaking around the both of them did. Deputy Tao looked like the kind of person who wouldn't be able to disclose his choices in marriage partners to his parents, and they were probably the ones who had set up the dates. It was all fairly common, and Lang Qiao had seen it all.
But that didn't mean she couldn't use that piece of information to torment President Fei when she had the upper hand for once!
"Deputy Tao is an outstanding member of the Criminal Investigation Team," Lang Qiao began, in the manner of opening a legal intervention. "He is truly the backbone of the team, even though he looks gentle on the outside. He's also the good cop to our Captain Luo's bad cop," she said, smiling and averting her eyes from Captain Luo's piercing gaze on her side. "Everyone likes him at the City Bureau," she added, making Deputy Tao choke on the mouthful of wine he was gulping ever since Lang Qiao had begun her insidious campaign. "But I'm curious about one thing, how was he like back when you were in high school? Was he so popular that his desk got flooded with flowers no matter the season?"
There was an awkward silence where she was sure that Captain Luo was debating pouring salt into her wine glass. She saw him fiddle with the salt shaker for a while, look at her pointedly, and then put it down with a menacing clink against her glass.
Lang Qiao knew she was playing with fire here, she didn't need any reminders.
Chang Ning smiled widely, then turned to look at Deputy Tao. Even Chenchen had looked up at this point. "He was always very nice to everyone, all the teachers liked him, but I never expected him to land up in the Criminal Investigation Team!"
At this unexpected diversion, Lang Qiao felt that she needed to steer the conversation back to its proper direction. But Xiao Wu might have had too many glasses of wine and was already swaying forward on the table.
"Deputy Tao might not look it, but he is our major off-field support, with him on the team, we don't have to worry about anything else! He always has our back!"
Xiao Wu's impassioned declaration seemed to have created a ripple effect around the table. Soon, even Xiao Haiyang piped up, adding something about Deputy Tao being 'an incredible asset' which made Deputy Tao's eyebrows climb into his hairline. Captain Luo was openly sniggering next to Lang Qiao.
Just when Lang Qiao was thinking that her well orchestrated plan of turning the heat on President Fei had gone awry, the devil himself spoke up.
"Tao-ge is a very patient man," President Fei began in his slow, unhurried tone of voice, which pulled everyone's eyes towards him.
Deputy Tao promptly choked on his wine, spluttering into his glass when he'd seemed to have weathered the worst of the storm.
"Jiejie," President Fei said, turning towards Chang Ning, and pulling her wine glass out of her grip, and placing it on front of him. "If he ever has children, I can assure you that he will be a truly wonderful parent. He looked after me when I was young," he added, pouring more wine into her glass and handing it back to her. Chang Ning seemed to have forgotten to use words completely. "I lost my mother when I was young, and my father didn't care much about me, so I stayed mostly with Tao-ge. Now, I was already a teenager by then, and wouldn't have starved on my own, but it was Tao-ge who gave me a purpose for living."
Lang Qiao swallowed loudly, her eyes swivelling towards Deputy Tao.
Never before had Lang Qiao heard a clearer confession of romantic interest than this one. Her head was buzzing with all sorts of questions and theories as to what was happening between these two, when Deputy Tao, who had finally regained his composure, started speaking.
"I wasn't the only one looking after Xiao Fei!" he exclaimed, looking at Captain Luo for confirmation. "Lao Luo and I both looked after him together. Now, he doesn't look like it, but Lao Luo actually deeply cares about you. Remember the gaming console you got? That was actually from..."
There was a resounding sound of something hitting Deputy Tao under the table and then, already off balance from the wine, Deputy Tao promptly fell over on his side onto a pile of unopened boxes.
Lang Qiao snuck a look at President Fei's face at that moment and had to pinch herself, because for a second, it really looked as if someone had struck him across the face.
Captain Luo busied himself in picking Deputy Tao up and mumbling thinly veiled threats, and the moment was soon broken.
Lang Qiao, with her elbows on the table, slowly recalculated her approach to the situation.
4
It wasn’t until the day the schoolgirl Qu Tong disappeared that Lang Qiao again remembered her hastily made promise to Deputy Tao.
The kidnappers who had hijacked the school bus along with the children were already apprehended, although one had to be carried out in a body bag. It was an absolute mess. The location where they had found the bus was teeming with the people from the forensics team, the local police, the crowd of anguished parents on standby, and… President Fei and his group of rich kids who looked like they had driven up for a joy ride in the midst of a tragedy.
She was radioing the rest of the team who had split into groups for the search, when she noticed Captain Luo emerge out of the woods and make a beeline towards the sports car on which President Fei was sprawled out like he was inside a private room in Chengguang Mansion, and not in plain view of everyone present. He was leaning back on the polished red hood of his car, laughing and pulling a woman towards him in order to whisper something into her ear. The woman leaned into him, and then suddenly pulled away, a practiced blush spreading over her face at his words.
Lang Qiao had never seen anything quite like it.
She saw Captain Luo walk up to President Fei, make a comment on his state of attire – which, holy hell, even made Lang Qiao blush and she thought she’d seen everything – and President Fei laughingly reciprocated, then started slowly buttoning up his shirt was open all the way down to his belly.
Even from a distance, Lang Qiao could make out all that pale, gleaming skin and the glint of what seemed like a chain around his neck, as President Fei did up the buttons in a painstakingly slow fashion, and Lang Qiao had to avert her eyes, because it was infinitely more suggestive than if he was actually taking off his clothes right then. Just what the hell was wrong with that guy?!
She saw Captain Luo say something to him again, making President Fei look back and rally his gang of rich kids who came running at his call. Lang Qiao didn’t know what was being said, but she could make a guess from the way the rich kids scattered and slammed the doors on their luxury cars and took off in the direction of the school bus. It seemed like President Fei and his band of pleasure-seekers had joined the search.
Lang Qiao watched with narrowed eyes as Captain Luo walked over to the passenger door of President Fei’s car and got in without another word. Then President Fei smiled and got off the hood of his car and made his way into the driver’s seat.
There was definitely something wrong here, and she could feel it.
Lang Qiao suddenly looked back, feeling someone standing close behind, and saw Deputy Tao, whose eyes seemed to be focused on the same gleaming red sports car.
She wanted to say something, then thought better of it, because it wasn’t like it was any of her business.
Later, the night Chenchen disappeared - and Lang Qiao shuddered even thinking of it - President Fei and Captain Luo had turned up together, with President Fei's arm in a sling. Deputy Tao was normally never this frazzled, but maybe because this case concerned his old classmate Chang Ning, or because it seemed to be connected to the Lotus Hill murders, the moment he arrived on the scene, he took one look at President Fei's arm and Captain Luo gently supporting him from behind, and promptly forgot what he was about to say.
It was a very busy time for all of them, but Lang Qiao couldn't help wondering just what the extent of the relationship was between all three of these men. Just where did Chang Ning fit into this, if at all?
It was the wee hours of the morning when Lang Qiao stumbled back to the bureau, finally catching her breath after Chenchen was rescued from the old Su house, and the first thing she did was stop by the 24-h canteen on the ground floor of the building. Officers usually had their meals here while they were working on a case, and couldn't go back home, and while it was usually empty at this hour, today there were a few of the office staff lingering in the seats close to the gate.
Lang Qiao scanned the menu for the least expensive meal and placed the order, then looked around for a place to sit.
Since it was nearly dawn, most of the lights were switched off, leaving only a few overhead lamps on, which flickered eerily in the space. Lang Qiao was almost about to sit down at a table when she thought she saw two familiar figures at the other end of the canteen. She craned her neck and could tell from the arm sling and the shoulder length hair as to who one of them was. But what was more surprising was that Captain Luo was sitting opposite him, intently shelling the red prawns that came with the meal, and then placing them with his chopsticks onto President Fei's tray. There was also what looked like a slice of cake next to the trays on the table, a tiny candle wedged on top.
Lang Qiao looked away immediately, not knowing why the scene felt so intimate. It wasn't even like the time she had spied on them almost kissing in the office!
She busied herself with eating once her food arrived, but couldn't help sneaking glances at them once in a while.
They both left when Lang Qiao wasn't looking and she glumly went back to the office: Captain Luo had said there would be no breaks in the forseeable future, and she could see why, too. This heinous case of kidnapping young girls just needed to stop, even if that meant risking a few wrinkles and eye bags which lasted for days.
The last thing she expected was to walk into the office filled with the smells of cooking that far surpassed Captain Luo's jianbing breakfasts, or their usual noodle place. This... this smelled like something cooked in a five-star restaurant, and judging by the crowd in Captain Luo's office, he must have been the one who had ordered it for them!
Forgiving all of Captain Luo's sins in a hurry, Lang Qiao trooped over to the table around which the officers were gathered, trying to catch a peek of what was on offer.
What she saw was beyond her wildest imagination.
There were all sorts of containers on the table, and none of of those cheap plastic takeaway ones - these were moulded out of some kind of dark, recyclable material and some of them were in hot cases, while others were nestled in a box of ice gel packs, containing who knew what. Lang Qiao's mind had already started wandering, trying to see where the others had dumped the bags the food had arrived in. No one else seemed to care - too busy opening up the boxes and digging in. Lang Qiao had just had a meal, she wasn't hungry, but she wasn't immune to this spread, either. However, her keen policewoman's instincts came to the fore, something niggling at the back of her mind.
"Captain Luo, what's the catch?" she asked in a straightforward fashion.
If she wasn't mistaken, Captain Luo looked a little off balance himself - as if he couldn't believe that he had actually ordered so much at once.
"Hmm?" Captain Luo responded, not taking his eyes off of the food containers on the table.
"Do you want us to pledge our bodies and souls to the bureau hereafter? In that case, I have news for you, Captain Luo. It has already happened, you needn't have bled yourself dry for this," Lang Qiao continued, enjoying Captain Luo's brief moment of tongue-tiedness.
Captain Luo's eyes flickered suddenly, making their way towards Lang Qiao. "What bleeding?" he remarked, uncharacteristically slow on the uptake, making Lang Qiao's suspicions deepen regarding the whole affair.
"Captain Luo," someone else exclaimed through a mouthful of food, making Lang Qiao turn around and glare at him. "Did you get a girlfriend?"
Captain Luo, a true veteran to veiled remarks on his private life, didn't even roll his eyes at the comment.
"Shut up!" someone else said from the sidelines, and Lang Qiao glanced at the seafood piled onto his plate, alongside what looked like muffins, and cheese slices. "Captain Luo isn't interested in girls!"
The whisper was loud enough to get around the entire bureau, and Lang Qiao looked over nervously to check Captain Luo's reaction.
The man in question was simply standing in the middle of the office, hands on his waist, his eyes vacant and strangely devoid of retributive anger.
Just at that moment, Deputy Tao walked in, attracted by the noise and confusion, and made his way towards Captain Luo.
"What's all this?" he remarked to Captain Luo, gesturing towards the overflowing food on the table. "Lao Luo, are you quite all right?"
Captain Luo finally looked up, groaned, and then sat back down on the desk - his legs dangling to the side, reminding Lang Qiao of quite a different scene right here in this office.
"Hey, isn't this the new boutique hotel that just opened up a few blocks away? I remember passing it on my way to the office," an officer was chattering away excitedly, pointing to the tasteful gold logo embossed on one of the containers.
"Let me see," Lang Qiao remarked, pushing aside a whole host of people just to get to the container as if it was the primary evidence in a case.
"It's that weird little place that no one with any sense ever stops by," Xiao Wu added, spooning lasagna right out of the box and onto his plate.
"It's anything but weird and little, you just have no taste," Lang Qiao snapped, because she knew just how expensive that place was, and how it looked like it could feature on any of the international interior design magazines.
"It's a five star hotel, and it got accredited by CNTA just a month ago. There are no advertisments because the establishment likes to remain low-key, in keeping with their ultra-rich clientele," Xiao Haiyang rattled off, pushing the bridge of his spectacles over his nose.
"All of you just shut up," Lang Qiao remarked finally. "I need to think. Just stuff your faces and don't make a sound."
A five star boutique hotel. An all-you-can-eat buffet on a takeaway order. Captain Luo's strange lack of ceremony at ordering something which must have cost him a month and a half's worth of salary.
It all seemed to point in one inevitable direction...
"Lao Luo, did you send Xiao Fei back? I forgot to ask him about his arm," Deputy Tao was heard saying in the background.
Xiao Fei. President Fei. Extravagant bouquets of flowers. An even more unbelievable spread of five-star quality food, enough to feed a small army.
First, Deputy Tao, now Captain Luo.
Did the man have no shame?
5
Things came to a head, quite literally, just a few weeks from then.
President Fei had stopped coming to the bureau.
It wasn't like Lang Qiao was keeping tabs on him or anything, but she might have been on the lookout for the infuriating figure of the fashionably dressed President Fei, just so that she could make her plans in advance. She was like a hyena trained on the scent of blood - and there was blood on President Fei, Lang Qiao was sure of it. All she needed was one last piece of damning evidence to finally resolve matters.
She was walking out of Captain Luo's office after submitting the phone records from the last case, when she saw Deputy Tao enter in a hurry.
He looked out of breath and even more unkempt than usual, as if he hadn't had the time to shave or look at himself in the mirror that morning.
Lang Qiao slowed down, absentmindedly pulling out a folder from the cabinet, lingering in the doorway.
"Lao Luo," Deputy Tao almost breathed out. "Is Xiao Fei coming over to the bureau today?"
Captain Luo looked up from his files with a practiced sneer on his face. "How on earth would I know where that wastrel is debauching himself now? Why don't you call up his best bud, Zhang Donglai? We should still have his number from when he was arrested. Maybe he could tell you what kind of hole that Fei Du has crawled into..."
Even given their usual explosive relationship, Lang Qiao could tell that this current diatribe against President Fei sounded a tad too personal. It smacked of wounded feelings and a deep-seated concern regarding the whereabouts of President Fei.
Lang Qiao frowned.
Deputy Tao, too, seemed taken aback by Captain Tao's sudden outburst. "Didn't Xiao Fei..." he began to say, but was cut off rudely by Captain Luo suddenly getting up and marching towards the window behind his desk.
"That bastard hasn't shown his face in two weeks," Captain Luo remarked grimly, his back turned to Deputy Tao.
Deputy Tao hesitated, as if he was about to say something, and then he pulled a hand through his already messy hair, making the strands stick up on top of his head.
"What has he done now?" Captain Luo demanded, with the air of an executioner.
Even Lang Qiao shivered at his tone.
"Nothing," Deputy Tao was quick to respond. He set down a stack of files on top of Captain Luo's desk. "If you see him around, just let me know." Then he turned around and left, and the air in the room seemed to have turned a few degrees cooler.
It was around lunch that Lang Qiao decided to treat herself for once and walked over to the stall selling youtiao on the street behind the bureau and had stuffed herself with a few more illegal sesame balls which the stall-owner was frying up. She knew she was treading a fine line here - if she lost her fight against carbs, she would have to pay a heavy price later on. Luckily, Captain Luo never seemed to like to see her sitting anywhere, and would always make sure that she completed 6000 steps before lunchtime every day.
She was just walking back to the office through the parking lot entrance, when she saw a dark SUV pull up into the lot. She didn't pay it any heed and was halfway through the glass doors at the entrance when someone almost barrelled into her from the other direction.
She twisted her body away from the impact, slamming into the glass door. Fortunately, she wasn't carrying her expensive phone with her which could have flown out of her hand and suffered a terrible fate on the tiled floors of the foyer.
Lang Qiao whipped around, flipped her hair back, and prepared to dish out her choicest abuses at the human bulldozer when she stopped abruptly.
The human bulldozer was none other than Deputy Tao!
"Deputy Tao?" Lang Qiao blurted out before she could think of what she was saying.
Deputy Tao looked equally flabbergasted for a moment, before taking a step back and pulling his hands behind him.
"Are you all right, Xiao Qiao? I'm so sorry, I wasn't looking where I was going..."
Lang Qiao forgave him even before Deputy Tao could finish his apology. Deputy Tao was a busy man, and of course, he had pressing matters to attend to, that was a given. It was Lang Qiao's fault for not looking up while walking in. There was no need for apologies, really.
"It's okay, I was just on my way back to the office," she said, nodding in the direction of the elevators. "Have you eaten, Deputy Tao? Do you want some sesame balls?" Lang Qiao improvised, swinging the bag of illegal snacks in front of Deputy Tao. "Freshly made, I saw them being fried in the stall behind..."
Deputy Tao looked down at the bag of snacks and then suddenly looked behind her, as if he was waiting for somebody else.
Lang Qiao looked behind her on instinct, and saw the elegant and put together President Fei, leaning against the door of the dark SUV at the entrance.
Today, he had ditched his usual director's garb of tailored suit and patent leather shoes, and was wearing a white shirt with its sleeves rolled up, and the buttons left open near his neck which showed a wide expanse of his collarbones. The shirt collar was hanging so low on his lean frame that Lang Qiao could even see a cluster of dark lines on his skin, right above his chest, and which must have been a tattoo. He was wearing dark blue jeans and laced up leather shoes that made his legs look even longer than usual. Lang Qiao slowly looked up to his face, and saw that his regular metal-rimmed glasses were missing. His hair was pulled away from his face, and looked dark and wet, the strands sticking to the side of his neck.
All in all, it was a transformation that could only have come out of the pages of an utterly unimaginative danmei novel.
"I'll be right back, Xiao Qiao," Deputy Tao murmured, before moving past her and towards this embodiment of youthful charm.
Lang Qiao didn't even pretend to look away as she saw Deputy Tao speed up his steps to reach President Fei in front of his car.
On the pretext of checking on Captain Luo's bicycle, she moved closer to the car, and dropped her gaze on the handlebars, hooking the bag of snacks onto it.
"...must have got mixed up," Deputy Tao was saying, leaning into President Fei, whose eyes seemed unusually bright. Then he pulled a small paper bag from behind him and handed it over to President Fei. "You left this last night."
Lang Qiao's grip tightened on the old bicycle's handlebars. She turned around slowly, forgetting to be discreet.
She saw President Fei look up in surprise, his lips curling slightly as he took the bag from Deputy Tao. Then he stuck his hand into the bag and pulled out what looked like a slightly wrinkled silk tie. A very President Fei brand of silk tie.
"Oh," President Fei said, his voice dropping a few registers. "Ge, you shouldn't have brought this back," he said, his tone smooth and ambiguous. "You would look good in this tie," he added, dragging his eyes down Deputy Tao's chest.
Deputy Tao just laughed and hit President Fei on his shoulder, then shook his head at him. "Save your lines for the next time," he said, still laughing.
President Fei's eyes crinkled at the corners, and he mouthed something at Deputy Tao, which made him hit President Fei again.
"Go home now, don't make trouble," Deputy Tao said, and then looked at his watch. "I must be getting back now, there's a meeting in five minutes."
Lang Qiao turned around instantly, her heart beating so loudly that she couldn't even hear anything else.
She made her way back to the office in a daze, and only when she had sat down at her desk did she remember her bag of illegal sesame balls, left hanging on Captain Luo's bicycle.
Well, His Imperial Majesty could have it as tribute.
Then, two days after that, Captain Luo and President Fei came to the bureau together. President Fei was driving, and Captain Luo was in the passenger seat next to him.
Lang Qiao saw them while waving her ID at the gate, and her feet automatically skidded to a halt.
Captain Luo and President Fei were walking in together, talking about something.
Lang Qiao saw President Fei glance at something on Captain Luo's hand, and point at it. "What's that?" Lang Qiao heard President Fei say.
Captain Luo made an exasperated sound, then pulled up the sleeve of his jacket to look. Even Lang Qiao could make out the angry red scratches on the back of his hand, and to her trained eyes, they looked very fresh. Possibly made this morning.
"Your little brother did that," Captain Luo remarked with feigned annoyance. "You two should compare notes on how to harass a poor hard-working policeman."
President Fei looked momentarily lost for words. Then Lang Qiao saw the beginnings of a smile on his lips.
"Maybe the policeman did something wrong in the first place," President Fei added, something suggestive in his tone.
Even Captain Luo noticed that. Lang Qiao saw something briefly flash through his eyes, and then he bumped against President Fei, startling him.
"Put that mouth of yours to good use, young man."
Lang Qiao almost choked, and she grabbed her bag to her chest to get over the feeling.
"Don't spout nonsense and come back with hard evidence, got it? Otherwise, you and your brother can kiss your free meals goodbye."
Captain Luo always had a wicked tongue on him. Lang Qiao knew that very well, on account of being on the Criminal Investigation Team for so long. But to hear it being employed so... openly, and in such flagrant terms was making her ears bleed.
She hastily moved past the terminals and ran to squeeze inside the elevator that was going up.
From what she had gathered so far, this problem was even more complicated than she had imagined.
Just what on earth was even going on? Were President Fei and Deputy Tao going out? Then what was happening here with Captain Luo? Did the two of them even know that President Fei was toying around with the both of them?
And... judging by Deputy Tao's response the other day, it was clear that he had concealed the fact of President Fei staying over with him the previous night. If he was truly going out with President Fei, why would he need to hide it from Captain Luo?
Also, now that she thought about it, Lang Qiao was starting to suspect a third and infinitely more bizarre option.
What if all of them were in it together?
6
After long consideration, Lang Qiao decided to take matters into her own hands. This concerned the fate of the Public Security Bureau, after all! Things couldn't be left unattended like this anymore. She could see a storm brewing. Any day now, it could sweep away the cordial relations that existed between the Captain and the Deputy - and if they were at odds, what would happen to the Criminal Investigation Team?
So, Lang Qiao tried to go to the very root of the problem.
President Fei.
He even had the gall to turn up at the bureau as part of the Yan Public Security University programme, setting up camp inside Captain Luo's office. He also brought his own coffee machine - an expensive drip coffee setup which had its own grinder which ground the beans prior to brewing - and a mini-fridge which was always stocked with the most delectable of beverages... No, Lang Qiao had never helped herself to any of them. She was a woman of principle. She might have asked Xiao Wu to pick up an extra can of caramel flavoured soda which was seemingly out of stock everywhere else, but that was entirely on Xiao Wu - she herself had never been seen loitering in front of President Fei's evil mini-fridge.
Ever since President Fei had joined the bureau, Lang Qiao had noticed the general atmosphere gently shift towards something she wasn't really sure she was in favour of.
For instance, there were always people coming in and out of Captain Luo's office - a glaring breach of security - because President Fei was apparently as free with his money as he was with his charms. The mini-fridge never ran out of drinks. Every day, at noon, a fresh batch would be delivered at the ground-floor lobby, which the two security guards would then have to haul upstairs to their office. But, strangely enough, those two guards who grumbled and complained at the drop of a hat - whether it was because of the officers working overtime, or whether it was because there were too many visitors - didn't say a word at this mistreatment.
Secondly, there would always be a few officers from the next department - and quite a few women among them - who would come throng their break room during lunch because they were ostensibly trying to catch a glimpse of the elusive President Fei.
Word had spread fast through the departments, and every day, the numbers seemed to be increasing.
One day, Lang Qiao had had enough and slammed the door in the faces of yet more new faces, citing internal problems, and mentally resolved to ask Captain Luo to issue a notice that no one, other than the Criminal Investigation Team, was allowed to use their break room. It was a security issue, and they should nip these kind of problems in the bud.
Normally, Lang Qiao would be sure that Captain Luo would hear her out on this issue, and maybe even sign off on it, but now, she wasn't entirely certain.
Because things had started happening which she had no idea about. One was concerning Captain Luo lending out his car to officers at the bureau more often than usual. This was fairly common practice, and Captain Luo was known to be a benevolent despot who ruled with an iron ruler but wore a velvet glove while dispensing with rewards. Most of the members of the Criminal Investigation Team had no social lives outside of the bureau. From time to time, emergencies arose in the form of unplanned blind dates, visiting friends, parents dropping by unannounced... and Captain Luo took care of all of that by lending out his car keys, to be used as seen fit. But the normal frequency of these imperial generosities was limited to a maximum of twice a month. The Criminal Investigation Team wasn't very large, and not everyone working had the heart to ask for an early leave in the middle of working cases.
But, all of a sudden - and Lang Qiao couldn't put a finger on when it had started - Captain Luo started handing out his car keys for any common errand which the officers ran for the team, and on one occasion, she had even overheard Captain Luo - yes, the Captain Luo known to be the Jailer of Personal Freedom - coax an officer to step out on a perfectly busy workday, and park his car at such and such avenue for the rest of the day.
Lang Qiao's suspicions were confirmed when, after work one day, she noticed President Fei leave first, leaving behind a trail of his expensive cologne, and Captain Luo following not long afterwards.
She hurried to find the window overlooking the parking lot, and saw President Fei walk towards his dark coloured SUV, which had replaced his flashy red sports car, and get inside after unlocking the door. How on earth President Fei had even obtained a parking permit for his car inside the Public Security parking lot was a problem that Lang Qiao would have to ponder on later. For the moment, the dark car stayed in place, seemingly lying in wait for something, or... someone.
That particular someone was Captain Luo, who threw a few furtive glances around the other cars parked in the lot, pulled up the collar of his jacket and adopted a swagger which suggested that he was trying to throw people off the scent.
Lang Qiao saw him walk over to the driver's side of the car, knock on the glass and then the window rolled down and President Fei's face came into view. Some words were exchanged, and Lang Qiao noticed Captain Luo make a gesture towards President Fei's arm, which was hooked on top of the window almost carelessly. Then a truce was reached, and President Fei withdrew his arm, and Captain Luo walked over to the passenger side - the door being already unlocked - stepping in and vanishing from view.
The two of them drove off immediately.
This had started happening with alarming frequency.
On one of these occasions, Deputy Tao had rushed out of the office on an emergency, only to come back to find Captain Luo's office empty.
"Has Lao Luo left?" Deputy Tao asked her while walking past her desk.
Lang Qiao who had ascertained with her own eyes that not only Captain Luo had left for the day, but that he had left with someone else, looked up with as much blankness as she could muster.
"I think so, yes," she responded, taking a look at Captain Luo's office. "He seemed to be in a hurry. President Fei was with him."
Deputy Tao's expression didn't change, he just took out his phone and dialed a contact. "Lao Luo, there are some files I need you to look at, could you come back to the office for a short while? No, no, it isn't very urgent, just a few odds and ends which I think should get wrapped up by today. Oh, you're already at the intersection?" Deputy Tao moved away, still on call, and Lang Qiao fixed her eyes on his retreating back.
A storm was brewing, after all.
When Deputy Tao's phone rang again, Lang Qiao noticed immediately.
"Oh, you're here?" Deputy Tao remarked, while walking towards the corridor. "I'll be down in a minute, just need to grab the files."
Lang Qiao slowly got up from her desk, stretched, and moved towards the windows. She poured herself some water from the water cooler, cradling the cup in her hands.
The Criminal Investigation office was just a floor above the ground floor lobby, and theirs was the first office on the right when someone used the elevator to get there. The parking lot was just below, and Lang Qiao could see a now-familiar dark SUV drive up to the parking entrance and stop there. As she looked on, Lang Qiao saw Deputy Tao's head appear under the portico, and then walk in the direction of the car. There was a large bag in his hand, but for some reason, it didn't look like the kind of bags they used to transport documents.
As Deputy Tao neared the car, the driver's window rolled down and President Fei's head could be seen indistinctly, his glasses gleaming in the dying light.
Lang Qiao couldn't hear what was being said, but she could take a guess. Deputy Tao seemed pleased to have seen President Fei, and Lang Qiao caught him smiling. Then the passenger door suddenly opened and Captain Luo stepped out, walking up to Deputy Tao. They both spoke for a while, then Deputy Tao handed him the bag, and turned around in the direction of the building.
Lang Qiao scrambled to get back to her desk, and she had just about settled in, when Deputy Tao came back into the office.
If Lang Qiao wasn't imagining things, it seemed like there was a frown on Deputy Tao's face. He walked up to the row of desks, leaned on one of them, then straightened up suddenly, as if he wasn't really aware of what he was doing. Then he passed right in front of Lang Qiao's desk and she distinctly heard him say, "...must be hallucinating."
"Deputy Tao?" she asked, making the man halt in his tracks. He was normally a good looking man, but with his unkempt hair and wrinkled shirt collars and the slouch he adopted whenever he was on a case, made him look like someone you wouldn't notice in a crowd. But Lang Qiao always noticed him. There was something inexplicably gentle about Deputy Tao, but which was only the tip of the iceberg - look down far enough, and you would find the mind of steel, something that always eluded notice at first glance. Only people who worked closely enough with him had ever witnessed it, and thus, Lang Qiao couldn't accept the fact that something so flagrantly obvious to a casual onlooker such as her, should be impenetrable for someone like Deputy Tao.
"Xiao Qiao?" Deputy Tao asked in return, his eyes focused on something else.
"Did you manage to find Captain Luo?" Lang Qiao said smoothly, trying not to alert the other man too much. "If not, I can be your messenger and stay behind in the office until he gets back."
Deputy Tao finally looked at her, his brows knitting together briefly. "No need, that was him just now." Then he was almost about to walk away when he again stopped and looked back at Lang Qiao. "Does Xiao Fei always leave around the same time as Lao Luo?"
Lang Qiao froze. She could pretend ignorance and tell him she didn't know, but she also, desperately, wanted to let him know.
"Captain Luo finishes up work around the same time as President Fei, yes," she remarked diplomatically.
"How long has this been going on?"
Lang Qiao felt absolutely helpless. On the one hand, she wanted to blurt out everything she knew at once, and on the other, she knew that she was always toeing the delicate balance of professional cordiality and friendship with Deputy Tao. One wrong move, and all of that would be gone.
Maybe she had hesitated too long, or maybe Deputy Tao had sensed that something was wrong with his line of enquiry, but he immediately dropped the subject and asked her about the report on the new assasination case that had been assigned to them that morning.
But that question had been weighing on Lang Qiao's mind ever since.
"How long has this been going on?"
Finally, the opportunity presented itself to her quite by chance.
It was the middle of a workday, and Captain Luo had gone out to interview a family involved in the assasination case. President Fei had uncharacteristically stayed back, typing out a report in Captain Luo's office. Even rich kids with sham degrees needed to be accountable sometimes.
Lang Qiao finished looking through the residence's surveillance footage and then headed back to her desk, catching a glimpse of a starched white shirt almost gleaming in the open light from the windows in Captain Luo's office. She grabbed her phone - the personal, expensive one which she had scrounged out of her monthly salary - and then stood up very straight before heading towards Captain Luo's office.
She walked in purposefully, and stopped in front of President Fei's desk which had been crammed into the small space next to Captain Luo's. The desk was spotlessly clean, in contrast to Captain Luo's, which was a mess of files, folders, books, two overflowing ash trays, a line of coffee cups, and a rusted table lamp which had evidently seen better days.
President Fei was working on his laptop - his long, shapely fingers almost flying across the keyboard as if he was under an obligation to write two hundred words per minute.
Lang Qiao cleared her throat, waiting for the man to notice her. But President Fei kept typing - the clatter of the keys starting to get on Lang Qiao's nerves. She cleared her throat a second time, and then, unable to wait any longer, she knocked on the desk right next to him, hoping that he got the message.
At that, President Fei finally looked up, pulling out an ear bud from one ear and staring at her through his thin-rimmed glasses.
"Xiao Qiao-jie!" he said, lips stretching into a perfectly hospitable smile. "Did you want anything?" Then, the bastard took a look around his coffee machine and the mini-fridge at the corner, before looking back at Lang Qiao. "Everything in this room is on offer."
Everything?
Just what kind of phrasing was that?
Biting back a sharp retort, Lang Qiao spoke. "I needed to talk to you about something, President Fei."
President Fei's posture suddenly relaxed, and he moved back into the chair, looking at Lang Qiao with a studied gaze. "Is it about the project? Then I can probably call up Teacher Pan about it, if you want."
"No, it isn't about the project," Lang Qiao gritted out, her jaws aching from how tensed up they were. "It's something personal. Can we talk?"
President Fei pushed the bridge of his glasses over his nose, then leaned forward on the table. "Here? Or somewhere more private?"
Lang Qiao had already thought this out. Even though it went against her principles, she boldly said, "Private."
President Fei nodded, as if that was something that happened to him every day. And who knew, maybe it did happen to him every day.
Then President Fei closed his laptop, picked up his jacket from the chair, then moved over to Captain Luo's table, as if he was looking for something. He walked around Captain Luo's chair and then pushed aside a folder to reveal Captain Luo's house keys. And right in front of Lang Qiao's eyes, he picked up those keys, twirled them around his finger and gesturing towards Lang Qiao to follow him, left.
Lang Qiao had never seen a more brazen man in her life.
Fifteen minutes later, Lang Qiao was sitting in what was most likely Captain Luo's living room, with President Fei sprawled on the sofa opposite to her, and a fat, black cat - maybe this was the famous Luo Yiguo - trying to rub himself all over President Fei's expensive suit trousers.
"We don't have to worry about prying eyes here," President Fei said, crossing his legs on the sofa, making Lang Qiao notice the utterly incongruous pair of black fluffy slippers on his feet. "If there's anything you want to talk about, you can say it all here."
Lang Qiao wasn't a fool. She knew this was an open declaration of war. Why else would President Fei bring her back to Captain Luo's apartment instead of the million other hotels and buildings that he owned in the city?
"I think you already know what I'm about to say," Lang Qiao said tightly, sitting ramrod straight in her own armchair.
"Oh?" President Fei said smoothly, having the gall to look surprised. "I'm afraid I don't, Xiao Qiao-jie. Could you maybe tell me what's on your mind?"
Lang Qiao also knew this trick. She had not been in the surveillance room for countless interrogations for nothing. It was a way to make the other person start talking about what they felt was most important, thus, conversely, sounding out what they wanted to hide.
But Lang Qiao wasn't having any of that.
"I'm sorry, but I'm going to be direct with you, President Fei. What you're doing right now can't be allowed to go on any longer."
But President Fei was a consummate actor, or maybe he was already expecting this accusation. He leaned back, pulling his hands on top of his knees, and stared back at Lang Qiao with an amiable expression.
"And what have I been doing that cannot be allowed to go on any longer?"
Lang Qiao blinked, then focused on what she was going to say. "I know it's not within my rights to say this, but..." she said and then leaned forward, her hair swinging forward, and looked directly at President Fei's eyes. "What you're doing is hurting both Captain Luo and Deputy Tao!"
There was a flicker of interest in President Fei's eyes at the mention of the two people he was seeing at the same time.
"That still doesn't answer my question, Jiejie," President Fei remarked smoothly, an undercurrent of steel in his tone.
Lang Qiao stiffened. Just when did the interrogation turn back on her?
"If you want me to be unpleasant about this, fine. I'll be unpleasant, and tell you exactly what you're doing. You're carrying on with both Deputy Tao and Captain Luo, and it's something that cannot be allowed to go on! They are both people I look up to, and... they don't deserve this kind of treatment!" Lang Qiao blurted out everything at once, her breath coming out in short gasps after she had spoken.
"And, you have evidence of this?" President Fei responded, looking unbothered by the impassioned statement.
Lang Qiao opened her mouth to speak and then paused. The bastard was trying to goad her into revealing her hand!
"I have enough to go on," she remarked stiffly.
"Don't you know, Jiejie," President Fei said, looking at her through his thrice damned glasses, "assumptions made from circumstantial evidence don't hold in a court of law?"
Lang Qiao felt her teeth ache from how hard she was clenching down on her jaw.
"And even if what you're saying is true, I still don't see why you would come to see me personally about this," President Fei added, then pushed forward a wine glass on the table. "Wine?" he asked, his fingers around the opened bottle, as if he was entertaining a guest and not someone who was accusing him of cheating on two people!
Lang Qiao shook her head, not wanting to deign the offer with a response.
"Unless of course, you didn't want to go to Captain Luo or Deputy Tao about this," he continued, as if he was thinking aloud. He poured a little wine into his own glass and giving it a swirl, pulled it to his lips. "I must have appeared as the weakest link among the three of us, right?"
"Does Deputy Tao know that you have a crush on him?" President Fei remarked suddenly when Lang Qiao didn't respond.
Lang Qiao opened and closed her mouth in shocked acknowledgement. Was this no-good kid a mind-reader?
"It's actually not that hard to figure out," President Fei said with a smile. "You care about him, which is why you take notice of things around him. You saw us in the car that day, didn't you?" he asked smoothly, picking up the glass again. "A few months back, I was driving Tao-ge back to his place, and I noticed someone spying on us from the other side. Lenses have a way of catching light," he explained, and took a sip from his glass.
Lang Qiao was stunned into silence. She could either own up brazenly to her act of spying on Deputy Tao, or she could deny the whole thing completely.
"How did you know that was me?" Lang Qiao responded, thinking on her feet.
"I didn't," President Fei said, his lips turning up in a smile. "You told me, right now."
Fuck.
"Jiejie," he said, leaning forward, something softening in his face, making him look younger and more approachable suddenly. "Since you're the one asking, I'll tell you. There is something between me and Tao-ge, but not in the way you think. He is one of the closest people in my life," President Fei said, pulling his glasses off of his nose and setting it down on the table. The effect was immediate. He instantly looked like a rich kid out of college and no longer the cold and unapproachable director of a conglomerate.
Lang Qiao almost wanted to kick herself now that the adrenaline was fading.
"Of course, if Tao-ge was so inclined, it could have been something entirely different," President Fei added, with a cheeky glint in his eye.
And... there it was. Lang Qiao could never believe a word that came out of President Fei's mouth.
"And so... you and Captain Luo..." Lang Qiao remarked, looking around the apartment which President Fei was evidently taking as his own. He was pouring more wine into his glass and setting the bottle down on the table, and Luo Yiguo was curled up against his thigh, blissfully asleep, with the pink tip of his tongue peeking out. It was hard to level accusations against a man under such conditions.
"I'm helping him with a case," President Fei answered.
"And you're staying at his place?" Lang Qiao asked, pointedly looking at his fluffy slippers and the most definitely fluffy cat next to him on the sofa.
"I came to feed the cat, of course," President Fei told her, smiling.
"Of course," Lang Qiao echoed in a daze.
"There's no point in recording this, right?" President Fei remarked, looking at her with his upturned, smiling eyes.
Fuck, just when had he caught onto that?
Lang Qiao gripped her phone case instinctively and then picked it up from where it was lying face down on the table. The recording progress was shown in bright red numbers. With her hands shaking, she hit the 'STOP' button and then looked up at President Fei.
"I think I should better leave now," Lang Qiao said in a voice she could hardly recognize as her own.
President Fei rose from the sofa, ever the polite host.
"I'll see you out," he remarked smoothly.
As Lang Qiao hobbled into her sneakers, in too much hurry to actually loosen the shoelaces, President Fei looked at her with a considering glance while leaning against the doorway.
"I'm sure you know that Tao-ge is seeing someone at the moment," he said, and Lang Qiao whipped around at the mention.
"It's not me," President Fei said, the smile evident in his voice. "It's Chang Ning, and I think you've met her before. In fact," he said, turning back to catch sight of Luo Yiguo who had started yowling in displeasure after President Fei had rudely left him alone on the sofa. "You were the one who seemed to be especially keen on matchmaking them at the housewarming dinner."
Glaring daggers at President Fei, and puffed up with a sense of wounded pride, Lang Qiao looked back at him.
"I hope you'll keep what happened today strictly private, President Fei," she said stiffly.
"I'm a man of my word," President Fei remarked easily.
And Lang Qiao had thought everything had ended there.
"Xiao Qiao," Captain Luo said, the next day at the office. "Next time you two use my flat as a private hotel room, remember not to linger too much in the doorway. The neighbours talk," he said, looking up at Lang Qiao who had frozen on spot.
Whether or not he had wronged Deputy Tao or Captain Luo, Lang Qiao wanted to rip President Fei's tongue from his mouth and hang it up as a trophy in the office.
That goddamned liar.
Even if she had to go to jail, she would murder him.
And that was the last time Lang Qiao ever investigated a case on her own.
End