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Deep, rugged breaths came from the mouth of a next victim, laying on her stomach in a pool consisting of a mixture of her own blood and mud. The decrepit back alleys of Shanghai were a perfect location for them to strike, because of a lack of police and other locals getting in the way. The womans' back was marked by three separate stab wounds, each deep enough to kill on its' own. Together, they ensured that the woman's' chance of survival were nihil. For six months Shanghai had been tormented by these killings - they appeared random and while initially believed to be a serial murder targeting poor and disconnected women, that theory was soon proven wrong when the next murder occurred in the house of the local chief of police - his wife and son were both murdered in cold blood. Their throats had been cut open by a sharp blade followed by the three individual stabs in their backs. Upon further investigation it turned out that through the hole in her throat, the murderers had taken a piece of the police chiefs' wifes vocal chord, and through the hole in his back, the murderers had taken his sons' liver, or pieces of it. Police investigation had turned up empty - well, it had turned up that the two were murdered and that the weapon was a knife of sorts. Police soon gave up investigation into a solo serial-killer style murderer and instead focused their efforts on organized crime, anticipating an investigation into organ trafficking and theft to show them more results.
Empty. That's what the outcome of the investigation was.
Laying there, the woman coughed, pulling an arm up next to her face and pushing onto the ground, rolling herself over. Blood gushed from her wounds whenever she moved, but she needed to do this. Looking up at the sky, she felt the cold rain pouring down on her face. Was this it? A lifetime in squalor and poverty, only to die when things were going to change? A faint smile was forced onto her lips, her eyes closing and enjoying the rain for one last time.
Footsteps then approached rapidly from the direction she'd attempted to escape - she knew who it was, as there was only one person that would have followed the bloody footsteps from her house. But he was too late. Whatever these people had stolen from her, she was not going to survive the theft.
“Liling, LILING!” his voice shouted, stumbling on his hurried approach, slipping in the mud as he approached, and crawling the last few meters on all fours. His hand reached out to her head, lifting it up to support her as he looked at her face. “Liling, it's okay, I'm here now! I'll get you to the hospital, get up!”
There was no reply, not even when the man pulled on her shoulder, trying to lift her up over his shoulder. It wouldn't work. Liling opened her mouth but could not produce enough sound to call the man to attention. Only when she opened her eyes and stared into the eyes of her own brother did he stop shaking her. “Don't do this,” he told her with a shaky voice. “It's too soon. Please. PLEASE LILING!”
“It's okay, gēgē. It's not your fault.”
The man was silent for a minute, pulling his sister closer to him and resting her head on his knees. The expression on his face changed with every second, going from sadness to grief to anger. “Who did this? Tell me who did this, and I'll make them pay. I'll make the wrath of the eternal heavens come down upon them, I swear it,” he finally hissed, looking up from his sister and into the sky. From the corner of his eye he saw the blinds of one of the windows shift.
“Móguǐ,” his sister whispered. “A devil did this.”
Sirens were approaching rapidly then, and Liling knew her brother could not stay. He would surely be seen as the murderer, given his allegiances to the underworld of Shanghai, and it would be all too easy to write off the murders onto his name. She would not let the family name be soiled like that. “Go now,” she whispered, “run.”
The sirens did not phase him, nor the rapidly approaching footsteps. Rather, it was a desire for vengeance and justice for his sister that made him get up, and run away through the nearby alleyways. He was a local to these streets, and managed to find his way away from the crime scene despite the tears in his eyes and the anger in his heart. The fading voices of approaching policemen and constabularies told him he was in the clear.
That night, under the watchful eye of the police, Liling passed away as the result of an extreme and vicious attack in the night. While the investigation was ongoing, her brother found himself in a seedy speakeasy, where snazzy jazz music was being played. Most unfitting for the moment, but it was the only place he knew to go to - a place controlled by his triad brothers.
“What can I do you for, Jiao?” the bartender asked him. In his one hand the bartender held a glass, while the other obsessively rubbed a cloth on it, cleaning out whatever was in there. The mans head was shaven, exposing the various scars running over his head, with one very large one running directly over and through his right eyebrow, over his scalp all the way to the back of his head. He was a very ugly man, but one that Jiao had gotten to trust over the years.
“I need to track someone down,” Jiao answered, his head in his hands. It was an unusual request, and Jiao knew it. Usually the triads didn't need any outsider help for these things, but this was a special case. “A devil.”
The bartender seemed unimpressed, continuing to clean the glass without moving. “A devil? Have you been hitting the drugs? I told you, don't mess with the opium..”
“No. Just tell me, who is willing to track down a devil?”
“Well, there is one person...”
And so it was arranged. Jiao went home after a few more hours of collecting his thoughts. After he arrived at his home - a seedy apartment in an equally seedy street, decrepit and run-down - he received a visit from the police to inform him about the death of his sister. He remained remarkably calm, near emotionless. He only thanked them for the information and closed the door, remaining stoic. He'd already known about her death, and his path was clear now. The loss of his sister could not be undone, but the loss of further lives could be prevented.
It was ironic, really ironic, to Jiao. He, a triad member, who had indirectly contributed to the death of tens, if not hundreds of people through the drug trade and the wars with rival triad groups, was now on a mission to track own whoever or whatever had killed his own sister, Liling. It gave him a rather morbid feeling, as if he finally understood the concept of losing someone close to you. Perhaps he was now not only moving out of vengeance but also out of a feeling of guilt to all those people, he wasn't really sure about himself anymore, and for all his feelings, he could not help but feel like giving up on this whole quest. It seemed like madness.
Never the less, he called the number that had been given to him by the bartender. After lighting up a cigarette and breathing in the smoke, he went outside into the rain and walked over to the nearby phone booth, pushing some money into the machine. On the receiving end, the phone would ring, and Jiao patiently waited for the phone to be answered.
“Hello, this is Jiao Shuwai,” he calmly stated, staring blankly into the distance, which by now had been covered by the darkness of the night. It was quiet in the street, the only thing audible being his own voice. “I am calling about the murder of tonight. Liling Shuwai, that's right. I would like to meet with the private detective.” Patiently he tapped the ash off of his cigarette against the cold metal of the phone booth, waiting for the assistant on the phone to finish talking. “Yes, that's right. I would like to meet her. Tomorrow, at 6. In the Cotton Club, yes.”
While the assistant rattled off again about writing down some details, Jiao put the cigarette to his lips again and inhaled deeply, before lowering his hand. “Xièxiè,” he concluded the phone call and hung the phone back into its' metal casing.
The meeting itself was poorly planned. Only having been on the receiving end of an investigation, and not the other side, Jiao had no idea what information was required. He figured that would be the detectives job, not his. He arrived early to smoke a cigarette before the meeting, his hands nervously shaking now. It was clear his sisters death had hit him rather hard, although he wouldn't show it as any other would. Or maybe he was trying his best to hide it, to stay strong. His body betrayed him though, since he felt like throwing up every waking moment of his day.
When the detective arrived, she would find Jiao himself sitting at the bar, one elbow on the bar while the other held onto another cigarette. From the amount of fresh cigarettes in the ash tray, the one he held would have been his third or fourth. When Jiao noticed the detective as well, not paying as much attention as he perhaps should have, he quickly pushed the cigarette into the ash tray, putting it out, and then standing up. He extended a hand towards the detective, which pulled his sleeve up a little bit, exposing the otherwise relatively hidden tattoos.
They clearly gave him away as a triad, which was a warning sign for what was to come for the detective, paired with the 2 'x's' tattooed onto his knuckles, each of which marking a five year period of service to the triads. Since Jiao looked young - at a maximum of 26, 27 at a push, that meant he must've joined the triads at an early age, which was not uncommon. Few would've lasted as long as him, though.
Dressed in simple clothing - a white button up shirt, with some dress pants and leather black shoes - it was not hard to see that he was somewhere in the middle in terms of wealth. Although you wouldn't have known it from his appearances, he'd been poor for most of his life until recently, when the triads began using him for bigger hauls and he began earning more earning the trust of the bosses and his fellow brothers. But now he was jeopardizing all of that by meeting with a private eye, who was perhaps not as threatening as the police or constabularies, but certainly was seen as an extension of the law.
His hands were coarse, a reminder of his days as a poor man - despite affiliations to the triads, he had to work in a local factory to earn a keep big enough for him, his sister, and still have something left to send back home to the country side. If she could not tell his background from his clothing then perhaps his hands.
“Thank you for meeting me on such short notice. Jiao Shuwai,” he stated rather forwardly, without much play in his intonation. He wanted to get down to business right away. He let go of her hand and sat back down, putting an arm on the bar and resting the other on his leg. “As you have heard by now, my sister Liling Shuwai was murdered last night. I was there when she passed,” he continued - already showing an inconsistency in the story with the police, who had reported that there were no witnesses to the woman's death. Jiao would not have been aware of that, but perhaps the detective was.
“She was stabbed to death, three times in the back. I don't know why. The police is still investigating, but I have no faith they can solve it now. It will be swept under the rug - that's why you are here. I need you to find the murderers. In fact, I need you specifically.” He glanced down at the bar for a moment before looking back up, wondering how to word it. He figured the best way was to just say it. “She said the one who murdered her was the devil.”
After she had a chance to ask her questions, and he could answer them, he would stand back up again and put a piece of paper on the table. It listed his name, telephone number and where to find him otherwise. Then he stepped away, to the door. “I don't care how much this will cost me. I will take out a mortgage if I have to. Just find the killers. Call me when you get news from the police and figure out more. I'll do what I can as well.”
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