Chapter 10: A Glimmer of Rapport

The invitation arrived simultaneously with the news of the patrolman’s death… the timing seemed almost perfectly orchestrated. Clearly, this was no coincidence.

The invitation card itself had a gilt edge on the back. The message simply read: Sunday Evening, 9:00 PM, The Platinum Club. The heavy cardstock was flecked with gold dust, and it released a faint perfume when moved.

Jian Ruochen flipped the envelope over and shook it. A Platinum Club VIP card slid out.

His face grew grim. Was the sender’s “GIFT” the news about the murdered patrolman, or this VIP card?

Guan Yingjun approached the waiter who had brought the envelope. “Did you get a look at the person who delivered this?” His gaze was razor-sharp, almost menacing.

The waiter visibly flinched, hunching his shoulders as he answered softly, “It was just one of our restaurant’s delivery runners.”

In the 90s, long before delivery apps, takeaway was typically ordered by phone, a service mainly offered by mid-range and upscale restaurants. These establishments employed their own quick, skilled delivery drivers. Royal Gourmet was one such place.

“Where is he now?” Guan Yingjun demanded, flashing his badge. “West Kowloon CID. We need your cooperation.”

The waiter nodded frantically. “I’ll go fetch him for you immediately!”

He’d encountered police before, but Guan Yingjun’s stare practically felt lethal; it practically turned the waiter’s legs to jelly. He banged into the doorframe rushing out, sucking in a breath against the pain, but didn’t dare hesitate, stumbling away to find the runner.

Once the waiter had hurried off, Jian Ruochen held the invitation up, angling it towards the light. He noticed faint, thin grey guidelines drawn beneath each of the four pasted character squares.

The bold print characters also seemed slightly raised, as if glued onto the paper squares. The characters themselves varied in size, yet each was mounted perfectly centered on its small square of paper.

Furthermore, all four paper squares were cut to precisely the same size, with perfectly sharp right angles, as if measured meticulously with a ruler. However, the character ‘件’ (jiàn, meaning item/piece) was noticeably smaller than the other three.

Considering typical newspaper layouts, cutting it out cleanly without snipping adjacent characters would have been difficult. Yet this ‘件’ was excised with perfect neatness.

Having observed these details, Jian Ruochen showed the invitation to Professor Li. “Professor,” he ventured, “could the sender possibly have some kind of mental illness?”

He felt somewhat uncertain. His own specialization within criminal psychology focused on micro-expressions and interrogation techniques; Professor Li’s years of broader field experience surely surpassed his own in other areas.

Professor Li donned his reading glasses and studied the card intently before asking encouragingly, “What makes you suspect that?”

“When most perpetrators use newspaper cutouts to mask their identity,” Jian Ruochen explained, “they don’t typically bother cutting characters of varying sizes into precisely uniform squares.”

He presented his deduction: “It suggests these characters were meticulously carved out, stroke by stroke, from the source material, mounted centrally onto identical paper squares, and then applied as a unit to the invitation.”

He continued, “That level of unnecessary effort isn’t typical. And see here? They even drew a faint pencil line as a guide for alignment. This kind of near-obsessive perfectionism regarding neatness suggests they might have an OCD-spectrum anxiety disorder.”

The condition is more commonly known as Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder, or OCD.

Professor Li beamed with satisfaction. “Excellent analysis, young man. Broad knowledge, quite accurate… Anything further?”

Jian Ruochen felt a familiar tingle, like being unexpectedly cold-called in class. Why’s he asking? Did I overlook something crucial? He mentally reviewed his observations carefully before replying, “No, nothing further.”

Professor Li clapped his hands lightly. “And you’re absolutely right, there isn’t!”

Jian Ruochen paused. Was Professor Li… messing with him? Jian Ruochen unconsciously touched the mole on his ear cartilage and turned to Guan Yingjun. “Sir Guan, do you want to examine it?”

“Mm.” Guan Yingjun leaned in, bending slightly at the waist, adopting a wide, stable stance almost like a martial artist’s horse stance as he lowered his head to inspect the card Jian Ruochen held out.

With the proximity, a unique fragrance reached Guan Yingjun – something coolly sweet, reminiscent of yuzu citrus, but faintly overlaid with a cloying, almost suffocating perfume tang.

He narrowed his eyes, tilting his head slightly. As he did, the tip of his nose inadvertently brushed against the ends of Jian Ruochen’s hair near his neck, a fleeting contact with something soft and warm.

Guan Yingjun’s eyes flickered down, landing on the small, distinct red mole marking the cartilage of Jian Ruochen’s ear, now just inches away. Suddenly acutely aware of their proximity, that familiar awkwardness surged through him, even more intensely than it had on the sofa.

Guan Yingjun took a quick step back, then retrieved a handkerchief from his pocket, unfolding it across his palm. “Put the invitation on this,” he instructed. “Let me take a look.”

“Oh.” Jian Ruochen carefully placed the invitation onto the offered handkerchief.

Using the handkerchief to hold a corner, Guan Yingjun brought the card briefly towards his nose, only to be immediately overwhelmed by the scent, letting out a sharp sneeze.

“Lancome Tresor,” he identified the perfume. He cautiously sniffed again, triggering a double sneeze this time.

“Tresor line,” he confirmed between sniffles. “This specific flanker is called ‘Cherished Love’.”

The invitation smelled as if it had been marinated in the stuff; the fumes were strong enough to make one dizzy.

Guan Yingjun thought back to the yuzu scent he’d detected earlier. If the heavy perfume was from the card… did that mean the cool citrus fragrance originated from Jian Ruochen himself?

“You can tell the exact perfume just from that?” Jian Ruochen asked doubtfully, leaning in to sniff the card himself.

The fragrance wasn’t particularly offensive; smelled like generic perfume, really. Certainly not as potent as the tea-and-tobacco scent emanating from Guan Yingjun. Why all the sneezing?

He quickly sniffed his own sleeve – nothing. Does Guan Yingjun have the nose of a tracking dog? Leaning forward eagerly, Jian Ruochen prompted, “Anything else?”

Guan Yingjun glanced over, met by a pair of bright eyes practically shimmering with anticipation. He seemed to freeze for a split second, then produced several cotton swabs from another pocket and carefully rubbed the tip of each one against the pasted characters on the card.

Swabbing the first two characters (‘一’ and ‘件’) left the swab tips only faintly smudged with grey. But when he swabbed the third character, ‘礼’ (li), the cotton instantly blackened.

Jian Ruochen’s eyes widened in understanding. “The ink for ‘礼物’ (gift) is fresh! Must be from a very recent newspaper.”

Guan Yingjun hummed in assent, then flicked the sturdy cardstock again. The stiff paper rustled, releasing another wave of overpowering perfume. His eyes watering slightly from the scent, Guan Yingjun commented, “Heavy cardstock. Gold foil, heat embossing… This wasn’t inexpensive.”

Jian Ruochen nodded in comprehension. “Ah. So you’re saying this card likely came from a particular upscale stationery or gift boutique. With so many such shops in the city, how will you narrow it down?”

Holding the invitation pinched in the handkerchief, Guan Yingjun felt a peculiar sensation stir within him.

Jian Ruochen is following my deductive leaps perfectly? I merely state the observation, and he immediately grasps the implication?

He realized the youth had moved closer beside him again at some point. That cool, sweet citrus scent drifted nearer, mercifully cutting through the cloying perfume and soothing the prickling itch in his sinuses. Guan Yingjun took an unobtrusive breath.

When Guan Yingjun didn’t respond immediately, Jian Ruochen’s curiosity piqued further. He nudged Guan Yingjun lightly with his elbow. “So, how do you find it?”

In the nineties, malls lacked widespread CCTV. Tracking the source of a single invitation card would be extremely challenging. Surely they weren’t planning to canvas every single stationery shop in the city?

Guan Yingjun refocused. “Entrust it to informants. Legwork like this is what they’re for.”

Checking his watch again, he started towards the door. Once clear of the immediate proximity of the yuzu fragrance, his shoulders seemed to relax fractionally. “What’s taking that waiter so long to find the delivery runner?”

Professor Li remarked mildly, “Why the rush, Yingjun? Always so impatient when a case breaks. You ought to drink more cooling tea; might help that temper.”

The mere mention of liang cha made Jian Ruochen’s head ache. Before attending university in his past life, he’d grown up in Guangdong. Every summer, the cooks at the military base mess hall would brew enormous vats of the stuff. They drank so much of it, he felt like he was going to turn into herbal tea himself. It was, without a doubt, his least favorite drink in the world.

Jian Ruochen murmured under his breath, “Sugary drinks beat cooling tea any day. If you’re stressed, ice-cold Coke or sweet liqueur is the way to go.”

Guan Yingjun let out a dismissive chuckle. Nineteen years old. Still a child. Didn’t understand that for a man, dealing with stress often just meant having a couple of cigarettes, or maybe just getting under the covers and sleeping it off.

Guan Yingjun fished out another cigarette, placed it between his lips, and had just lit it and taken the first drag when the waiter finally reappeared, sweating profusely and dragging another man behind him, arriving quite late.

The man being pulled along wore a sapphire-blue, padded, waterproof jacket; his nose and cheeks were flushed bright red from the cold.

Clutching protectively at his pocket, his eyes darting warily, the man blurted out, “Someone else paid me to deliver that letter! They said the money was mine! Sir, you’re not gonna take it back, right?”

“That depends on your cooperation,” Guan Yingjun replied, cigarette clamped between his teeth, as he displayed his credentials again. “Was it cash he gave you? What did the person look like?”

The delivery runner, terrified of losing his payment, cooperated instantly, pulling the wad of cash from his pocket. “It looked like this!”

Jian Ruochen suppressed a sigh somewhere between amusement and exasperation. “He means, what did the person who paid you look like?”

“Oh… right, right.” The man scratched his head, looking foolish, and hastily stuffed the cash back into his pocket. “Didn’t really see his face clearly, but…”

He gestured vaguely. “About my height. Wasn’t wearing anything fancy, clothes looked kinda old. Seemed averagely well-off, maybe? Felt pretty young.”

He paused, thinking hard for another moment, then confirmed, “That’s really all I noticed.”

Guan Yingjun scribbled furiously in his pocket notebook, his pen flying across the page as he recorded the runner’s description. Snapping the notebook shut, he held out his hand to the man. “The money. Hand it over.”

The runner immediately covered his pocket again. “Come on, Sir! I cooperated, didn’t I? You can’t break your promise!”

“Not keeping yours,” Guan Yingjun clarified impatiently. “Quick.”

Grumbling under his breath, the man reluctantly produced the cash again. When he saw Guan Yingjun carefully place the bills into a clear evidence bag, his face went pale with dismay.

Jian Ruochen started to speak, but stopped as he saw Guan Yingjun pull out a worn leather wallet. Guan Yingjun quickly counted out an equivalent amount in fresh notes and placed it in the runner’s hand.

“Your original bills might hold forensic evidence,” he explained curtly, “so I need to retain them. But I’m not confiscating your payment. This is an exchange.”

The runner’s face instantly lit up. Licking his thumb, he eagerly counted the crisp new notes. “Thank you, Officer! Wow, brand new, sequential numbers even! Sir, you’re really generous!”

He snapped a mock salute towards Guan Yingjun. “Call me anytime you need help again, Sir!”

Jian Ruochen watched this exchange thoughtfully, unconsciously rubbing the mole on his ear. So, it’s not that sir Guan lacks people skills, he mused. He just usually doesn’t see the need. When he actually wants to win someone over, he does a pretty decent job.

Checking his watch yet again, Guan Yingjun scooped up the restaurant bill from the table. He pulled a hundred-dollar note from his wallet and pressed it into Professor Li’s hand. “Time’s pressing,” he said briskly. “I have to get back to West Kowloon headquarters immediately. Uncle Li, perhaps you and Jian Ruochen could share a taxi back to campus?”

Jian Ruochen interjected quietly, “Sir Guan… drinking and driving is illegal.”

Guan Yingjun stopped short, his eyes darting involuntarily to the empty wine bottle sitting on the dining table.

Jian Ruochen deftly retrieved the hundred-dollar note from the professor’s grasp, dashed out the door, and hailed the delivery runner who hadn’t yet disappeared. “Hey! Hundred bucks if you drive this car for us!”

Slinging a companionable arm around the runner’s shoulders, Jian Ruochen steered him back into the room. “Ever chauffeured a police inspector before, mate?” he asked conspiratorially. “Sir Guan’s got an urgent case, needs to get somewhere fast. You know how to put the pedal to the metal?”

The runner’s eyes gleamed with excitement. Like those chase scenes in the movies! Is this really happening? He rubbed his hands together eagerly. “Yeah! Yeah, I can drive fast!”

Guan Yingjun tossed his keys to the clearly enthused (and money-motivated) runner. Then he turned to Jian Ruochen. “Since we have a driver, you’re coming back to headquarters with me.”

He then addressed the professor, “Uncle Li? Are you coming?”