scélérat

Chapitre 16

I could see the imposing gates of Shanghai Tilanqiao Prison in the distance. This was my second time visiting this place.

Last summer, I visited an empty cell here and found the key to solving a bizarre case from twenty-five years ago. Today, I hope to find another key here.

Unraveling this complex mystery I'm caught in requires many keys, and this may not be the most crucial one, but it's very important to me.

The person I'm looking for today is a murder suspect sentenced to death with a two-year reprieve, named Ouyang Cheng.

Once someone has been convicted by the court, they are no longer a suspect, but a confirmed criminal. But to me, Ouyang Hai is a suspect; perhaps he has been wrongly accused.

There are many people in this world who have suffered injustice, and I will not care about one of them for no reason.

Yesterday, I showed my press pass to the head of the Magic and Acrobatics Troupe. Luckily, he believed me because of my respectable appearance and innocent look, and didn't call the Morning Star newspaper to verify. Otherwise, just imagine the consequences if the person who answered the phone told him, "That guy used to be our reporter, but we heard he killed someone and has been brought to justice by the police."

The middle-aged troupe leader rummaged through drawers and found an old poster. The poster boasted about how wonderful their magic show was, and it featured a picture of magician Kou Feng wearing a tuxedo, looking very dashing.

I turned to ask Kou Yun if this was her brother, but seeing her expression, I knew there was no need to ask.

She stared blankly at Kou Feng's photo, her eyes already red.

The reason this is considered an old poster is that the two magicians depicted on it are no longer with the Magic and Circus Troupe.

The other protagonist on the poster, magician Ouyang Cheng, murdered Kou Feng's female assistant, and Kou Feng also left the Fantasy Magic Acrobatics Troupe because of this incident.

This happened a year and a half ago. Since then, Kou Feng no longer uses his original phone number, and he's mostly no longer in the city. No one in the troupe still keeps in touch with him. For Kou Yun, all she found were traces of her brother's past, nothing more.

Kou Yun and I stood at the large iron gate of Tilanqiao Prison, waiting for the person we had arranged to meet to come out and pick us up.

Accompanied by a piercing siren, a prison van drove through the prison gates in front of me.

A sense of absurdity welled up inside me. I, a fugitive, was standing here, brazenly preparing to visit a prisoner. It was truly dark humor.

Guo Dong introduced me to this person; he used to be Guo Dong's colleague and has just been promoted to deputy warden of this prison.

I didn't have to wait long before a slightly overweight police officer who looked to be under forty years old strode towards me.

"You must be Na Duo. Hello, I'm Xu Hong." He shook hands with me.

"I'm Kou Yun." Kou Yun also stepped forward to shake his hand. She must have thought that shaking hands with a police officer as a fugitive was an exciting and fun thing.

Warden Xu shook hands with Kou Yun, but instead of leading us inside, he stood there with a hint of embarrassment on his face.

"Uh, I'm really sorry." He smiled apologetically at me and said, "I haven't been here long. Lao Guo told me about the prisoner you were looking for, and I checked on the computer. He's from our prison, so I agreed. But just now, when I was arranging the meeting, I asked someone and found out..."

"Has he been transferred to another prison?" I asked, seeing his hesitation.

"Strictly speaking, he's still part of our prison. But he's not with us right now. This prisoner has developed mental health issues and has been transferred to the city's mental health center. We're really sorry to have made you come all this way for nothing."

Speaking of Kou Feng, Zhang, the leader of the Illusionary Colors Troupe, looked regretful.

When the young man first came to the troupe to apply for a job, Commander Zhang didn't pay much attention. But then Kou Feng performed a magic trick on the spot, seemingly retrieving something from a distance. He handed one of his pens to Commander Zhang to hide, then with a fancy gesture, casually pulled the pen out of his suit jacket.

This move stunned everyone present. Commander Zhang wasn't a magician, but he had been involved in the industry for decades and understood the basic principles. He just hadn't put in the hard work to practice. Yet this time, he couldn't figure out what trick Kou Feng had used to make the pen that he had personally put in his pocket revert back to its original state.

Another magician present, Ouyang Cheng, also couldn't tell.

So from that time on, the magicians of the Iridescent Troupe became two.

Ouyang Cheng's specialty was card magic. Before this, he was the only magician in the troupe, so he held a pivotal position. However, the situation changed drastically after Kou Feng arrived.

Every time Kou Feng appeared, he could ignite the atmosphere in the audience to its peak. One of his acts involved taking out an object and letting the audience hide it. After they hid it, he would count to three, and the object would reappear in his hand. He repeated this many times, and Kou Feng, skilled at manipulating the crowd, could eventually drive them wild. After so many performances, many audience members, after seeing him perform once, would go home and rack their brains to figure out Kou Feng's tricks, preparing to come back a second time to expose him, but none of them succeeded.

Two incidents stand out as particularly memorable. On one occasion, a dozen or so audience members conspired beforehand: the first person to receive Kou Yun's belongings would secretly pass them to someone behind, making it appear as if someone in the front row had hidden them, when in reality, someone in the back had concealed them in their underwear. On another occasion, an audience member brought a safe and locked Kou Yun's items inside. Both times, the attempts were seemingly impossible, yet Kou Feng successfully retrieved the items. When the group of audience members recounted their methods, and when the safe was opened and found empty, the entire audience was stunned.

7. Who is the murderer? (2)

Afterwards, Ouyang Cheng privately told others that this must have been a stooge hired by Kou Feng, otherwise it would have been impossible for such a magic trick to be performed. As the rumors spread, Commander Zhang personally questioned Kou Feng, but Kou Feng only smiled and did not answer.

Unbeknownst to many, Kou Feng's status within the Illusionary Colors Troupe had completely surpassed Ouyang Cheng's. The relationship between the two, initially subtle, gradually transformed into an open conflict, with both undermining each other. Because Ouyang Cheng was handsome, had a commanding presence when performing card magic tricks, and was quite popular, although Troupe Leader Zhang valued Kou Feng more, he tried to suppress and reconcile the conflict between the two whenever possible, and had no intention of expelling either of them from the troupe.

But things eventually reached a point of no return.

All members of the Fantasy Troupe live in the troupe's dormitory. Important members have their own rooms, while less important members share rooms. Ouyang Cheng and Kou Feng, however, both live in separate rooms.

One early spring evening in 2005, Ouyang Cheng barged into Kou Feng's room carrying a fruit knife, but Kou Feng wasn't there. The person who opened the door for him was Kou Feng's beautiful female assistant, Huang Yun. Huang Yun's presence in Kou Feng's room wasn't surprising; everyone in the troupe knew about their relationship.

That day, Kou Feng invited Commander Zhang and two other members of the regiment to play mahjong all night. When he realized it was almost time, he went downstairs to the supermarket to buy a few packs of instant noodles. When he returned to his dormitory, he found the door wide open.

He pushed open the door, only to see Huang Yun lying in a pool of blood in the living room. Ouyang Cheng, sitting on the floor beside her, was covered in blood, a blood-dripping knife still clutched in his hand.

Kou Feng was so frightened that he took a step back and bumped into Commander Zhang, who was walking in.

"Murder!" the two men shouted, alarming the other group members. Soon, terrified screams of women rang out.

Ouyang Cheng stabbed Huang Yun in the heart. The girl went into shock due to excessive blood loss and died on the hospital's emergency table.

Ouyang Cheng sat on the ground in a daze for a few minutes. When he came to his senses and looked up, everyone had already surrounded him.

He threw down the knife, yelling "It wasn't me, it wasn't me!" and tried to escape, but the police sirens were already approaching the door.

Ouyang Cheng was caught on the spot, and there were no problems with the determination of the entire murder case. Although he denied it to the death, he was quickly sentenced to death with a two-year reprieve.

This incident greatly affected Kou Feng, and soon after, despite the troupe leader's desperate attempts to retain him, he left the Huancai Magic and Acrobatics Troupe and disappeared without a trace. Having lost two of their most popular performers, even though Director Zhang quickly brought in another magician, the troupe's box office still plummeted, turning from a period of booming success and profitability into a struggle for survival.

What finally made me decide to go find Ouyang Cheng was a piece of gossip that Commander Zhang told me, which he only learned about afterward.

It's common for magicians to have affairs with their beautiful female assistants, and Kou Feng didn't shy away from his relationship with Huang Yun; the two were often seen together. However, several of Huang Yun's close female friends said that some time before the incident, her relationship with Kou Feng seemed to have run into trouble. Instead, they saw Huang Yun with Ouyang Cheng on several occasions, and judging from their expressions, it was more than just ambiguous. Before they could even find an opportunity to ask Huang Yun privately, the incident happened.

If Huang Yun dumped Kou Feng and turned to Ouyang Cheng, Kou Feng should have been furious, not Ouyang Cheng killing his lover.

However, Ouyang Cheng was caught red-handed at the scene of the crime, and the murder weapon was a fruit knife from his own home, providing irrefutable evidence. Even as he was being taken away by the police, he kept shouting that he was innocent, that the fruit knife had been stolen the day before, and that Kou Feng was the real murderer. But all of this was to no avail. More than a dozen people present saw the knife in his hand, and Huang Yun's blood splattered all over him.

As Commander Zhang recounted these events, I felt a chill run through my body, yet my heart pounded fiercely.

This looks so familiar!

"Please sit down," Ouyang Cheng said calmly to us.

He was wearing a blue and white striped hospital gown and was very thin. He looked a lot like the movie star Takeshi Kaneshiro, with a scruffy beard, deep-set eyes, and bright, piercing eyes.

"Sit down, sit wherever you like," he said with a smile once again.

Kou Yun and I exchanged a glance; it seemed that communicating with him would be difficult.

“We are already seated, Mr. Ouyang Cheng,” I said.

"Have you ever seen a magic trick?" he asked with a smile, unconcerned about his earlier slip of the tongue.

I noticed that his fingers had been trembling ever since we came in, and as soon as he finished speaking, a deck of cards suddenly appeared in his right hand.

He twirled his fingers, and the cards formed a fan shape with their backs to us. He also raised his left hand, where there was another fan-shaped card.

He gathered the two hands together, faced them, made a few classic card-pulling motions, and then placed the cards on the table, casually arranging them into a long string.

"Please pick one, but don't let me see it," he said politely.

Kou Yun reached out to pull it away, but I stopped her.

"I'll go." I said, randomly drawing a card.

Seven of Diamonds.

"Now please put this card back in."

I put the cards back in the slot, and Ouyang Cheng put away the long run of cards, slicing them many times in a dazzling display, before saying to me, "You slice them once."

I cut the cards at one-third of the way down, just as he instructed.

He smiled, unfolded the cut cards into a long string again, and then gently picked up a card from the middle and turned it over.

Seven of Diamonds.

"Is this the one?"

Kou Yun was about to exclaim in surprise when I bumped into him, silencing him.

"No," I said firmly.

"No?" Ouyang Cheng looked at me, his eyes seeming to hold something more.

He looked down at the cards, this time appearing somewhat hesitant.

He drew another card.

Plum Blossom Eight.

“This one isn’t either,” I said with a smile.

7. Who is the murderer? (3)

Before we entered the ward, Ouyang Cheng's attending physician said something to us.

“Ouyang Cheng is very withdrawn now. He lives entirely in his own world, so you probably won’t be able to get what you want out of him.”

Ouyang Cheng is indeed very withdrawn. From the moment we entered until now, he has ignored us, or rather, in his eyes we are merely props. He seems to still be the head magician of the Magic and Circus Troupe, performing magic for the audience. If I were to tell the truth that I drew the seven of diamonds, he would definitely continue his performance and pull off the next magic trick.

Although a magician performed for the two of us, that wasn't why we came.

By not letting him perform as he pleased, and by not letting him obediently act as a completely cooperative prop, that's how I broke his autism.

I think that in a formal performance, if a magician encountered a difficult audience member like me, a qualified magician would definitely have a way to handle it. But now, Ouyang Cheng is a mental patient. His self-absorbed performance was disrupted, and his subconscious thought process suddenly hit a wall, leaving him clearly at a loss.

"Shall I perform a magic trick for you?" I said to him.

"You?" Ouyang Cheng frowned, seemingly finding it hard to accept such a turn of events.

I pulled a deck of cards out of my pocket, placed it on the table, and said, "This is a magic deck of cards. Every time you draw a card, it will tell me something about you."

"My business?"

"Yes, how about it, interested in playing?"

The playing cards that were originally on the table had been put away by Ouyang Cheng. At this moment, his hands were empty, and it was unknown where he had hidden the cards inside his loose hospital gown.

He neither said yes nor no. I placed the cards on the table, casually sliced them a few times, and said to him, "Draw a card."

Ouyang Cheng slowly extended his hand.

His expression and movements were somewhat wooden, unlike the ease he displayed during the magic performance. This was a good start, because his previous ease stemmed from everything unfolding according to his planned script; in his world, everything flowed smoothly. But now I had broken a small hole in his world, and the outside world felt somewhat unfamiliar and frightening to him, hence his hesitation.

He finally drew a card.