Justice System: I Litigate for the Whole City

Chapter 81 : Three Ledgers

Shi Lei scraped his soles against the threshold at the foot of the stairs before he dared come up.

"Sis."

Shen Zhixia set down the form in her hands. Shi Lei had never been upstairs. He'd sat at the long table below for two days and never once set foot on the steps.

"You wrote it?"

"Wrote it." He pulled a sheet of paper from his pocket, folded in four, one edge ragged where it had been torn from a student's grid notebook. "Wrote it last night. Three lines."

Shen Zhixia smoothed the paper flat. Ballpoint pen, the characters uneven in size, two of them circled—the ones he wasn't sure about and had asked someone before writing down.

Line one: July 1st, 7:10 a.m., came in through the side gate, carrying a paper bag, about the size of an envelope.

Line two: July 2nd, 4:20 p.m., left through the main gate, a stack of papers in hand, held with a binder clip, a red stripe on the upper left.

Line three: July 3rd, 10 a.m., entered through the side gate, with someone wearing a blue badge, that person carrying a kraft envelope.

She read line by line, and when she finished, she pressed the paper flat again.

"These times. How do you know you remember them?"

"Copied from the delivery slips."

He turned his phone around. Three freight delivery slips, each printed with the arrival time. The July 1st run unloaded at 7 a.m. at a storefront being renovated across from the Chengdong Building Materials Market—turning the truck around, he passed right by that gate. The July 2nd 4 p.m. run went to the residential compound behind the branch; after unloading, with the truck bed empty, he sat in the cab gnawing on flatbread and watched the man come out. The July 3rd morning run was a tile delivery, the drop-off two streets from the side gate.

"Copy it over again," she said. "Sign it yourself. I keep the original. What goes to the court is a separate page—only the time, the place, what you saw with your own eyes."

"Do I write the three characters of the Zhou name or not?"

"There's no name on this page. Don't add one."

"What about the guy with the blue badge?"

"Don't guess at a name either. Write down what the badge looked like, how you saw it."

"Blue background, had a photo, the words were too small, I couldn't make them out."

"Then write exactly that."

He bent over the far end of the table and copied it a second time, slower than his first draft, the strokes pressed down harder. When he reached "binder clip," he asked how to write the character for "clip." Shen Zhixia reached over and wrote it on the edge of the paper for him.

[Thud. The times he remembers—they're in his phone too.]

She read the three lines again, pulled out a pencil, and made marks along the margin: beside the first line she wrote "side gate," beside the second "main gate," beside the third "badge." Then she set the pencil down and looked up at him.

"The side gate and the main gate. What's the difference?"

"The main gate has someone on it," he said. "First time I delivered over there last month, I went in to ask directions and the security guard made me sign in—name, phone number, who I was there to see. The side gate, nobody's on it. Just an iron door. Inside is a carport, two steps up, and you're in the corridor."

"The one with glasses. Which way does he go?"

"Always the side gate when he goes in. He goes through without looking back, and the guards don't stop him either."

Beneath the third line she added four small characters: side gate, no questions. After writing, her fingertip stopped on the second line—a stack of papers, held with a binder clip, a red stripe on the upper left.

She remembered those pages she'd photocopied from the files in the accounting archive room behind the Chengdong Branch. The upper left corner had a red stripe too, slanted across the page—left by a perforation seal. She'd sat by the wall inside that room, pencil tip against that red mark, counting pages.

"That stack of papers in his hand," she asked. "How thick?"

Shi Lei measured with his fingers, thumb and index finger spread not quite two inches apart.

"Printed, or handwritten?"

"Printed. I couldn't make out the words."

She filed that detail away and didn't push further. No answer to be had now—and even if she got one, it would only be her talking to herself.

"Sis," Shi Lei said after holding it in for a long while, "so who is he, really?"

"I don't know." She paused. "I only know this much—the insiders have badges and walk through the side gate without being questioned. The person who went in with him was wearing a badge."

"So he's not an insider."

"If he were an insider, would he need someone else to carry his paper bag for him?"

Shi Lei mulled that over, then nodded—though he didn't look entirely convinced. She told him to send the three slips as screenshots to Tang Guo. Don't switch phones, don't delete the slips, don't clear the photos. The three lines, she said, were three ledgers, and a ledger had to match one to one: the time you saw him against the time of your delivery; which gate you saw him at against the photo of that gate. Saying it, she remembered a courier's screenshot from a lane in the south of the city last year, and how it became a single line of text in the first-instance record. She didn't say it out loud.

"Is the banner still under the long table?" he asked as he was leaving.

"It is."

"I haven't touched it."

"Don't."

He went downstairs and ran straight into Tang Guo coming up with an armful of registration forms. Tang Guo turned sideways to let him pass, then shoved her phone in front of Shen Zhixia's face: Shi Lei's group had reported ninety-six households, Jiang Bo's group out west had grown to twenty-nine, and the number with all three documents came to fifty-nine households between the two.

"Someone asked in the group yesterday," Tang Guo said, "if the money does come back, who gets paid first? I didn't dare answer."

"You tell them the order is for the court to decide. Our job is just to get the papers filed."

"That's what I said. Then he asked, so what are we?"

Shen Zhixia didn't have an answer for that one. She carried the fifty-nine household forms into the inner room and clipped them together by building, stack after stack. By the fourth stack, a film of dust had settled on her arm.

* * *

At nine in the morning on July 8th, a China Post van pulled up at the mouth of the lane. A young man on an electric scooter handed a kraft envelope out the window and had her sign and press a fingerprint on the slip. In the lower right corner of the form were two printed characters: Civil.

By the time Ma Jianjun carried the envelope upstairs, He Xiufen had just come back from outside, her enamel mug still steeping the same pinch of tea leaves from that morning.

Three documents inside.

The first was the Notice Permitting Addition of Defendant, printed line by line with perfect clarity: the plaintiff's application was granted; Jiangzhou Bank Chengdong Branch was added as a defendant in this case; the matters would be heard jointly.

The second was the evidence submission deadline. August 10th.

[Thud. Evidence deadline: August 10th.]

The third ran two and a half pages, headed with the words Civil Defense Statement.

Shen Zhixia flipped to the end first.

Respondent: Jiangzhou Bank Chengdong Branch. A blank line, then: Authorized Agent: Lu Jibai. Below that, the firm's seal, dated July 6th.

She read from the beginning. Three neatly arranged arguments, lined up in perfect order:

One: The plaintiffs and Youyu Apartments are in a housing lease relationship, while the bank's relationship with the plaintiffs is one of financial borrowing. The two are separate legal relationships and should not be heard jointly.

Two: The bank, in accordance with the entrusted payment method specified in the contract, paid the funds to the account specified in the contract. It has fulfilled its duty of review as agreed and bears no fault.

Three: The losses claimed by the plaintiffs were caused by the business failure of a company outside this case. The claim should be directed at the leasing company and the relevant responsible parties, and has nothing to do with the bank.

Attached at the end was an evidence list, three lines: loan contract, disbursement voucher, business license photocopy. All three she already had in hand. The one thing it didn't produce was exactly what she'd been asking after from June into July.

She copied the three arguments into her notebook first, writing slowly. When she finished, on the line for "Defendant," she left half a line blank and added: Authorized Agent: Lu Jibai.

It was the first time she'd written his name into the opposing column of her own case. She set the pen down when done, and did not trace over it a second time.

He Xiufen set her mug on the corner of the table, picked up the defense statement, and turned from the first page to the last—slower than she had.

"Look how neatly they've arranged their arguments," she said. "First one: they want to split it. Housing goes to housing, borrowing goes to borrowing. And once it's split, the first thing the judge asks you is: what exactly are you suing for? You hesitate one beat, and the two cases split apart. Split, and your fifty-nine households have to go after Youyu first—go after the name with 31.46 yuan left in its account."

"Second argument." She flipped back and pressed her fingertip on the words "has fulfilled its duty of review as agreed." "This one is hard. They don't say they got it wrong. They say they followed the rules."

"They followed the account number written in the contract," Shen Zhixia said.

"Then make them turn 'followed the rules' into paper." He Xiufen set the defense statement down. "A duty has to be worked out of your hands, not talked out of your mouth. They wrote the word 'review' themselves, so they have to hand over the review materials: which transaction was checked, who checked it, what day it was checked. A bank always has this set of documents."

"And the third argument?"

"The third one kicks the ball into your court." She tapped the edge of her mug against the table corner. "Plainly speaking: you signed the contract yourself. You should have read it yourself."

Shen Zhixia spun the pen in her hand one full turn. She remembered that day at the mouth of the lane, when Lu Jibai had pushed those five sheets of paper apart one by one, and in the end would only leave her with half a sentence—"the bank isn't the last pocket either." The day before at the bank, when He Xiufen asked him what the fourth item was, he'd said, you can file another application.

Now, on the last page of this paper, he'd written: "has fulfilled its duty of review as agreed."

She turned to the final page. The last paragraph began with a single character: "Additionally."

Additionally, regarding the use of the entrusted payment funds, the bank has fulfilled its duty of review as agreed. Relevant records are retained on file for reference.

He Xiufen leaned over to read it, then straightened and took a sip from her mug.

"You see that?" she said. "He left us a line on the last page."

"He had to write that line himself." Shen Zhixia laid the paper flat. "The first two pages only stand up if the last page has this sentence."

"Same difference." He Xiufen put the mug down. "It's his signature, but it's their side talking. Keep those two things separate in your head—don't tangle them together. And don't treat him as the man on the other side just because he's appearing for them."

"I'm not doing that."

"It wouldn't matter if you did." She pushed the defense statement back across the table. "What matters is that this paper says 'fulfilled its duty of review.' By writing that, it owes us a set of records. The evidence deadline is August 10th. If they can't produce them that day, that sentence just hangs empty on the page."

[Thud. A "duty fulfilled" on paper has to be held up by records.]

Shen Zhixia pulled out a blank application form and wrote: Since the defendant claims to have fulfilled its duty of review for the entrusted payment as agreed, the plaintiff requests the court to order the defendant to submit the fund-use verification records and handling and approval procedures relevant to this case. Three lines. Not one more.

She held it up for He Xiufen to see. He Xiufen carried it to the window and scanned it against the light. "No rush. Make a clean copy first."

She cut a strip of paper two fingers wide and copied that half-sentence onto it: The bank has fulfilled its duty of review as agreed. Relevant records are retained on file for reference.

She carried the strip into the inner room and pressed it under the glass desk pad, right beside "the bank isn't the last pocket either." Two pieces of paper written by the same hand—one said there were more pockets out there, the other said its own handling was spotless. She stepped back half a pace and looked for two seconds, then added a line at the very bottom: August 10th.

"How are you planning to ask?" He Xiufen called up from the foot of the stairs.

Shen Zhixia lifted her hand off the half-sentence.

"First question: who does the contract say collects the rent. Second: who did you send the 24,000 to. Third: after you sent it, did you verify."

"He'll say you have no right to ask."

"He wrote 'fulfilled its duty of review as agreed' on the paper." She paused. "So I'll ask according to those nine characters."