Justice System: I Litigate for the Whole City

Chapter 119 : Older Than the Testimony

She only got the bank column numbers to balance on the third pass.

One hundred twenty-eight transfers. The court received twenty-three. Eleven of those had full account names attached; the other twelve showed only the last four digits. She filled the numbers into the bank grid row by row, drew a horizontal line after "Approving Signatory," and wrote a zero beneath it.

He Xiufen came in carrying a bowl of noodles and glanced at the zero. "A zero's still a number."

"Looks bad written down."

"Bad or not, it goes down." He Xiufen set the bowl by her hand. "I'm taking it to the window Thursday. What you calculate is for your own eyes. What I take is for other people's."

The Thursday square on the desk calendar was still blank. She picked up a pen and wrote three characters in it: Bank, numbers.

Tuesday's square had already gained a note. That afternoon the Enforcement Bureau had transferred in a second payment from Anyu's account: seventy-two thousand. The refund window had processed three more households on Monday and Tuesday, and she'd been filling in the "Received" boxes on the schedule one by one, down to the edge of the page. Justice Points had settled at fifty-eight percent on the tenth this month, then crept upward these past two days, hovering around sixty without budging.

[Thud. Sixty percent is still money. But sixty percent isn't justice.]

She knew where the big sum sat. Four million two hundred thousand was frozen in Hongyi's account, freeze period running to next March. Between that money and this enforcement case stretched a criminal line, and the last piece of what the tenants were owed was growing in that account.

Someone shouted from downstairs, and footsteps came up the stairs. Ma Jianjun leaned half into the room, helmet still hooked on his handlebars, hair blown upright by the wind.

"Lawyer Shen, two things," he said. "One: the group chat's asking when the second batch lands. I did what you said—only reciting numbers, no unit numbers. Two: there's frost on the roads today, and your window frame's leaking air. I stuck a sealing strip in for you."

"When the numbers aren't all there yet, reciting them is still pressing people."

"I know." He held the strip up against the door frame. "So I'll say the money's on the way."

He headed back downstairs. He Xiufen swept the garlic skins to the corner of the table. "What about Zhou Yu?"

"I combined the three items into one statement and gave it to him Tuesday," she said. "He's filed the request to pull the originals from that small bank in Chengdong. He told me not to reach for anything myself."

"He's right." He Xiufen said. "Those three things in your hands—two are on your eyes, one is drawn in your own hand. To get it through a window, you need something pulled out by someone else's hand."

"I'm meeting him this evening."

"Go." He Xiufen said. "Keep your words few. Ask him ten questions, he won't answer one. Set one thing down, he'll recognize it himself."

She finished the noodles, cleared the table, and took out her phone, scrolling to that number. The last message was still his "Six thirty" from October, nothing beneath it. She typed a few characters, deleted them, retyped, and finally sent seven.

"Six tonight. Wenchang Road 412."

One character came back: "Good."

The roll-up shutter at Wanshun Building was pulled all the way down. The "Notice of Suspended Leasing" taped to the middle had faded to a pale pink, its lower right corner curling up, fluttering with every gust.

She'd arrived early and stood on the step below the landing. Water sat pooled on the top step; she set two sheets of paper just beyond the wet patch, anchoring one corner with her phone.

At three minutes to six, he crossed from the far side of the crosswalk and stopped a pace in front of her, looking down at the papers. The top one was the stub from the archive retrieval slip—the perforated copy the window had kept, with the case number, her name, and the date: November 20. The one below was her handwritten copy of the borrowing register from the inside back cover: four rows, the last three all the same name—thin strokes, horizontal strokes perfectly level, final strokes curling back.

His coat collar stood up, ears red from the cold, hands never going into his pockets. She noticed a small gray-black graphite smudge on the side of his right index finger—the kind that survives several washings.

"I copied it," she said.

"The register on the inside back cover can't be photocopied."

"How do you know there's a register there?"

He lifted his eyes from the paper but didn't answer.

"What are you digging through?"

"An old account, from a long time ago."

"What year?"

"Earlier than the case number in your hand."

The wind rattled the notice. She waited for him to go on. He didn't.

"On the afternoon of September thirtieth, you were sitting in that file reading room at Chengnan District Court," she said.

"That afternoon, eighty-three thousand entered your special account," he said. "I went over the schedule."

She put her hand in her coat pocket and pinched the edge of a paper folded inside.

"Old Wei brought me a message from you." she said. "He said what you owe, you'll pay back yourself. Told me not to wait."

"That was what I said."

"Whether I wait is for me to decide."

He looked at her and gave a single nod, light as a fingerprint pressed onto a register.

"When you crossed your name off the list, what were you trading it for?"

"For not signing that complaint."

"Take you off the roster and you still get to go into that room. Just a few more times."

"Each time I get, I take."

"Qingyuan Testing—have you been inside?"

"I have."

"When?"

"Earlier than you."

She pushed the handwritten page forward half an inch. "That volume's missing a page. Which page is missing?"

"I won't answer that."

"Just one sentence is enough."

"Answer one sentence, and that sentence will be all you have left."

She pulled her hand back, pressing a fingertip against the paper's edge.

"Then tell me where I should be going."

"Leave the money to Zhou Yu's hands," he said. "What you're missing is someone else's hand. He has it."

"There's four million two hundred thousand frozen in Hongyi's account. A big chunk of the tenants' money is sitting there. You're telling me not to touch it."

"Hongyi is the channel the money passed through. Once the money's through, the people scatter." He slowed his words. "The thing you're looking for isn't in the ledgers."

"Where is it?"

"On paper. A sheet that's been lying in a cabinet for nine years."

She looked up at him, saying nothing.

"Don't burn yourself out on Hongyi over the old case." he said. "Look in Qingyuan Testing's old archives. You've seen Cen Shouye's cabinet. You haven't seen the section's records."

She'd been in that Qingyuan Testing building twice. Once following He Xiufen up to the third floor to see the cabinet, and once on August fourteenth to inventory Cen Shouye's personal effects. She'd been in that third-floor archive room, but she'd only gone through Cen Shouye's one cabinet. What sat on the three rows of steel shelving she had no idea. That day the young man from the administrative section, white shirt tucked into his waistband, had held a ring of keys; they'd jangled at his hip as he locked the cabinet. She remembered the sound.

"The archive room's locked," she said.

"The key's with the man who keeps the locks," he said. "Who that is, you already know."

"Is it the sample receipt slip?"

"Things you're guessing at—don't write them down."

He pushed the two sheets back toward her. As he did, his thumb pressed on the paper, smoothing down the curled corner twice.

"One more thing," he said. "That photocopy in the main file—don't show it to outsiders."

"I made copies."

"I know. Don't show them to outsiders."

"And the testimony?" she said. "The words you owe my father."

He withdrew his hand from the paper.

"The testimony I owe your father—that I won't deny."

"You've been saying you owe it for a month and a half. I haven't heard a single word."

"Besides the testimony, there's something else." he said. "Older than the testimony."

She looked up. "What?"

He looked at her and shook his head. "If I say it now, you'll throw your life into it."

"Then when will you say it?"

"When its name stands up on paper by itself."

He turned and walked to the intersection. Red light. He stood in the front square of the crosswalk, hands finally going into his coat pockets. The light turned green. He crossed the street and vanished into the lane across the way.

[Thud. The missing page is still missing.]

[Thud. When the paper's in his hand, the paper belongs to someone else.]

She got back to the room above the noodle shop at a quarter to eight. He Xiufen sat at the far end of the long table shelling garlic, arranging the peeled cloves in neat rows on a saucer.

"You saw him."

"I saw him."

"What did he give you?"

"A direction."

He Xiufen swept the garlic skins into a pile. "The man who points the road doesn't have to walk it for you."

"He told me to go to Qingyuan Testing's old archives."

"You can get through that archive room's door, but you can't carry anything out." He Xiufen said. "What can't be carried out needs someone else to record a line for you. That one line weighs more than a hundred pages you copy yourself."

"I know." She sat at the table and pressed the handwritten page under the glass desk pad, beside the two cut paper strips. She'd added seven or eight items under that glass this year, every edge pressed flat. She pulled from the drawer the stub from the August inventory of personal effects and looked over the signature line again: Auntie Wang's fingerprint, Cen Hong's name, her own.

She took out her phone and found Master Cui's number—saved in August, with a two-character note she'd added after the digits: Building watch. It rang four times before he picked up.

"Master Cui, this is Shen Zhixia from Zhengping."

A grunt, then the clink of a key ring.

"I'd like to go up to the third floor. To see the archive room."

"The building's sealed," he said. "Entering requires registration, and going up means someone has to go with you."

"Someone with me is fine."

He paused. "Tomorrow afternoon, four o'clock, when my shift changes. Meet me at the family compound gate."

"What should I bring?"

"Bring a notebook. Look things over, then write down what you remember."

"Who has the key?"

"It's with the section." he said. "I'm just the building watch. I can't open that door for you. You come, I'll point out the person."

The call ended, and the room went quiet. She opened the drawer, took out the Unsettled Ledger, and turned to the last page. At the top were the five characters that had been there since June—"Baixi Village · Shen Qian." The faint indentation beneath them was still visible, the paper white and gleaming.

She stared at that blank space for a while.

A gavel struck once.

[Thud. Attachment — One Page, Missing.]

That line appeared beneath "Baixi Village · Shen Qian," stroke by stroke, slow. She counted. There was still a long stretch of empty space after it.

She slipped the archive retrieval stub into the front of the housing case notebook, walked over to the desk calendar, flipped to Thursday's square, and after "Bank, numbers" added three more characters: Qingyuan Testing. The pen tip landed on the last vertical stroke of the final character and paused.