Chapter 197: Why Bother?

Chapter 197: Why Bother?

Wu Chen stopped short of turning the key, glanced back down the stairwell, and kept his face untroubled.

He could not be certain who was coming up. If it was Old Dao — well, Old Dao could not beat him, and at that range he could not run either.

Wu Chen watched.

The heavy, uneven footsteps came closer, and a burly middle-aged man reeled onto the half-landing between the fourth and fifth floors. His clothes were plain and faintly greasy, his hair a mess, his build a little heavy.

He was clearly drunk, hauling himself up by the railing, swaying with every step.

Wu Chen looked away, turned back, and unlocked the door.

Not Old Dao, of course. Just a drunk renting a room in the building.

Wu Chen pushed the door open and stepped into Apartment 501.

The place was not large — a standard two-bedroom, sixty or seventy square meters, every ordinary household furnishing in place. It was clean, too, almost homey. Someone came by to clean it on a schedule, and the nominal “owner” even stayed over for a night or two now and then.

Ding Ruilong had never sent anyone working a job to use this apartment, and that was exactly why it had to look lived in. A place that sat empty for years, and then one day someone turned up in it — that would draw the eye.

Wu Chen shut the door and moved farther in, taking in the living room, his gaze sweeping over it.

For the next few minutes he worked through the apartment, looking into every room, observing. He even opened the bedroom wardrobe.

He was searching for something.

Because the place had never been used, there was no precedent to draw on. Wu Chen had no way of knowing where anything stored here would be hidden.

But after a thousand years in the loop, there was almost nothing Wu Chen had not studied.

If it was here, he would find it, and it would not take long.

Having circled the apartment, he came back to the living room.

He sat down on the sofa, thought a moment, then rose and went around behind it. Fabric sofa, cover removable for washing, a zipper running along the back.

Wu Chen paused at the zipper, then reached up and drew it open.

Sideways first, then down, opening a triangular flap.

He looked inside and smiled, because he had found something. Part of the backrest had been hollowed out, and a silver-gray metal case sat in the cavity.

Something was here. Old Dao would come.

Wu Chen lifted the case out, carried it around to the front of the sofa, sat down, and set it on the coffee table.

It was heavy, and it had a combination lock.

He thought again. Jiang Chuan had handled all of this personally from beginning to end; he might well have placed the case here himself. And people had habits. They reused the same passcodes, especially for things they did not consider important.

The case itself was important.

The code was not.

Because if an outsider ever got their hands on it, what difference would a combination lock make? A brick would open it.

Wu Chen turned the dials.

Then he flicked the latch.

Click. Open.

He raised the lid fully and went through the contents. Emergency trauma supplies of every kind — gauze, sutures, disinfectant, and the rest. None of that mattered.

The documents mattered.

A forged ID card. A forged driver’s license. A forged passport.

Every photograph was Old Dao’s.

There was also fifty thousand yuan in cash, three bank cards, a SIM card, a phone, and the other things a man needed to run and stay in contact.

Two handguns as well, and a box of ammunition.

Old Dao would come here. No question.

Wu Chen finished his inspection without moving anything and latched the case shut.

Then he went out, returned the key to its place behind the electrical meter box, stepped back inside, and closed the door. He dragged a chair onto the balcony, sat with one leg crossed over the other, took out his phone, and began scrolling, keeping the view outside in the corner of his eye.

The apartment did not run north to south.

Its windows faced west, giving a slanted line of sight to the western mouth of the alley.

The reason Wu Chen had shed his jacket and put on the baseball cap was that he had allowed for arriving at the same moment as Old Dao and running into him in the alley. Spotted from a distance, Old Dao could still have run. With the cap on, part of his face fell into shadow. From far off, Old Dao would not be able to recognize him.

Ten minutes and more passed.

Still scrolling, Wu Chen suddenly turned his head toward the sliver of alley mouth just visible through the window. A taxi had pulled up on the main road beyond it, and a man was getting out, drawing a hundred-yuan note from a pink wallet to pay.

Baseball cap, mask, black overcoat. The man looked bulky, though not in the way of a fat man.

Old Dao.

Wu Chen could not see his face, but he was certain.

Height and habitual gait do not lie.

And the rest of it was plain enough. He was hiding his face. He looked bulky because he was wearing layers — his wound had very likely split open, and he was afraid the blood would show through, so he had put on more than one coat. Then there was the wallet, that conspicuous pink.

When Old Dao fled the hospital, he should have had nothing but a hospital gown.

The wallet was stolen, obviously.

The taxi driver might have noticed something off, a grown man using a woman’s wallet. But nobody meddles in someone else’s business.

Old Dao took a few steps into the alley, then stumbled. His hand went to his chest, pressed there a moment, and he forced himself on for several more paces before straightening and smoothing his stride back to normal.

After that the angle cut him off.

Wu Chen stood and dialed quickly.

“Hello, Brother-in-law! You found him?!” Li Ruotai picked up at once.

Not long after his call with his sister, Li Ruobing had rung him back to say that Brother-in-law Wu Chen knew where the man was and had gone after him. Li Ruotai had been startled and thrilled at once, and had told her he would call Wu Chen immediately to ask what was happening.

Li Ruobing had chewed him out for it.

Wait for the call, she said. Stop making trouble.

So Li Ruotai had been sitting on his hands ever since.

“Have the hospital send an ambulance to the west side of the city—” Wu Chen gave him the exact address and hung up.

The ambulance was for Old Dao, of course. Roughly thirty minutes out. Thirty minutes was more than enough for Wu Chen to settle everything.

He had promised to let Li Ruotai sit in. But Li Ruotai had brought this on himself, and the chance was gone.

A few minutes later.

Click. Click-clack.

Someone worked the key of 501 in the lock.

The door swung open immediately.

The masked man in the baseball cap staggered in, slammed the door behind him, tore the mask off, and cursed on a ragged breath.

“Fuck!”

It was the pain. He had not dared make a sound the whole way here.

A few steps into the living room, Old Dao knew something was wrong.

Jiang Chuan had told him long ago that the case was hidden inside the sofa.

The case was on the coffee table.

And there was a chair out on the balcony. It jarred against the trim, orderly living room, as though someone had been here recently, sat out on the balcony, and left without putting it back.

“Why bother?” A man’s voice, from behind him and to one side.

Old Dao spun.

As he turned, he pulled a sharp knife from inside his coat — an ordinary-looking kitchen knife, the kind anyone could buy.

The movement was fast and savage. Severely wounded, he showed almost no hitch in it at all. He turned, stepped in, and swung the blade at Wu Chen’s throat.