Chapter Twenty-Three: Borrowing a Small Sum

Chapter Twenty-Three: Borrowing Small Change

Qian Yuling, brimming with excitement, described in vivid detail how she had painstakingly gathered evidence over the past few days. She even let her imagination run wild, painting a dramatic picture of how Xia Ying might have poisoned Fang Wan. In the end, of course, she demanded that Qin Ruonan and An Changpu arrest Xia Ying at once and bring her to justice, so that she could honestly confess to the crimes she had committed.

Whether Xia Ying had truly given Fang Wan anything at all, be it a laxative or the poison Qian Yuling imagined, Qin Ruonan and An Changpu certainly could not reach a conclusion based on a few copies and certificates of uncertain authenticity. More importantly, the person accusing Xia Ying was Qian Yuling herself. As Fang Wan's mother and Fang Da's ex-wife, her words were divided in almost equal measure between truth and slander when it came to Fang Da's young, beautiful present wife, the stepmother of her child.

Whether out of a genuine desire to uncover the real culprit who might have harmed her son, or simply seizing the chance to frame the woman she had always regarded as the other woman, Qian Yuling had ample motive.

That night, after much persuasion, they finally managed to calm Qian Yuling's agitated emotions. At first, when they told her that the matter still needed further verification, she immediately burst into tears, crying as though all the suffering she had accumulated over the years had been waiting for this moment to erupt.

Qin Ruonan comforted her for a long while and repeatedly assured her that they were not doubting her; they would take the leads she had provided seriously and begin investigating at once. It took quite some time before they finally got her to settle down. Only after her emotions had stabilized did the two of them leave with the evidence Qian Yuling had collected.

That very night, following the address Qian Yuling had given them, they found the large pharmacy where Xia Ying worked. It was part of a chain, only one of many branches in City C. It was not far from Fang Da's home, probably no more than a two-minute walk, but the surrounding area was not especially busy. The pharmacy itself was not small and stayed open twenty-four hours a day. After winter set in, the streets grew noticeably emptier once dinner was over. From outside the entrance, they could see the bright lights within, but aside from a few bored employees lounging or standing behind the counter, chatting idly, there were no customers to be seen.

Pushing the door open, they were greeted by a middle-aged clerk at the traditional medicine counter near the entrance. Drawn back from her daze by the sound of the door, she glanced at them listlessly and asked, "What medicine are you buying?"

"We're not here to buy medicine. We're here to find someone," Qin Ruonan said, choosing a name from one of the certificates. "Excuse me, is Dong Qin here?"

"No, she's off and already gone home."

"Then is Zhao Lihong here?"

"She's off too. What do you want?" The middle-aged clerk finally grew somewhat suspicious and began to doubt An Changpu and Qin Ruonan's purpose.

Qin Ruonan did not answer her question, but continued, "What about Zhang Bo?"

"I am, I am!" As soon as the question was out, a tall woman in her thirties inside spoke up on her own. It seemed that ever since they had entered and started looking for someone, she had been listening with pricked ears to the conversation by the door.

After responding, Zhang Bo hurried over and pulled Qin Ruonan inside, calling back to the middle-aged clerk at the entrance as she went, "Sister Li, we're going to stay in the back for a while!"

Just like that, Qin Ruonan and An Changpu were hurriedly led, half-dragged, to a small storeroom behind the pharmacy. As soon as they entered, Zhang Bo shut the door and smiled at them, though the smile looked a little awkward.

"You're police from the local station, aren't you?" she asked cautiously.

She had not expected them to be recognized before she had even introduced herself. Qin Ruonan and the others were somewhat surprised, but they nodded and admitted it.

"I figured you two would probably come by in the past couple of days. You're here about the missing child, right? A few days ago the child's biological mother came to us, crying and begging. We felt so sorry for her that we wrote a statement for her. Even today, the two of us were still talking about it, worried that she'd be nervous because she'd never dealt with the police before. When you first came in just now, you weren't in uniform, so I didn't realize it at all." Once Zhang Bo saw that she had guessed right, she poured out the reason in one breath.

"You can tell Sister Zhang has a straightforward personality. Could you tell us about Xia Ying and the missing medicine?" An Changpu promptly flattered her a little.

Who would have thought that his praise would make Zhang Bo shy instead? She hesitated for a while before saying, "I can tell you about it, honestly and openly, with nothing hidden. But I need to make one thing clear first: the three of us wrote that statement for the child's mother because, first, we all have children of our own and felt she was pitiful, and second, the statement we wrote only proves that there had been occasions when medicine went missing while Xia Ying was on duty. As for whether it had anything to do with that child, we can't prove that!"

"We understand that!" An Changpu hurriedly nodded.

Seeing that they were so understanding, Zhang Bo finally relaxed a little and told them about Xia Ying.

According to Zhang Bo, Xia Ying was not well liked in the pharmacy. She had not originally been assigned to this branch, and rumor had it that there had been some conflict at the other location. The manager had been unable to handle it, so they had requested that she be transferred elsewhere. Even after coming here, Xia Ying remained as haughty as ever and did not much care to speak with people.

As for the claim that medicine had gone missing, there had been several times when, after Xia Ying had finished her shift, one or two boxes of medication would be found missing. The items were not expensive, and the pharmacy was busy during the day with many people handling things, so now and then medicine would be left out on the counter while someone fetched something else, only to be taken away by someone before it was put back. Because of that, no one had paid it much attention. People only muttered in private about how strange it was that so many of the missing medicines were discovered after Xia Ying got off work.

At first, everyone only dared whisper about it behind her back. After all, there was no evidence, and there was nowhere to take the matter. But one day, when Xia Ying was finishing her shift and preparing to go home, she was accidentally bumped by a customer rushing in to buy medicine. She nearly fell flat on her back, and her shoulder bag dropped to the floor, spilling two medicine bottles out of it.

According to Zhang Bo, Xia Ying looked terribly embarrassed at the time and hurriedly picked them up before leaving. The next morning, when she came in for work, she took the initiative to go to the payment counter and say that she had bought medicine for a friend the day before, but had left in a hurry and had not had time to pay. She had come to make up the money now.

From that point on, the earlier incidents of missing medicine were naturally all counted against Xia Ying. The items that had gone missing ranged from ordinary cold medicine to cheap anti-inflammatory drugs, most of them inexpensive, though there were also laxatives among them.

After getting Zhang Bo's confirmation, Qin Ruonan and An Changpu asked for the contact information of the other two people and reached them separately. Their statements were essentially the same as Zhang Bo's. There were no obvious contradictions in the main details, only varying degrees of subjective feeling about Xia Ying that each of them had added on their own.

When asked whether they were afraid of offending Xia Ying by issuing such statements, Zhang Bo and Dong Qin, the other woman who had signed one of the certificates, both became evasive, their attitudes somewhat ambiguous. They still seemed to have reservations. The remaining clerk, Zhao Lihong, by contrast, was unfazed. She said that Xia Ying would not be working at the shop much longer anyway. Xia Ying had already said she planned to go home and become a full-time housewife so her husband could support her, so there was no need to worry about offending her.

After Qian Yuling's three "statements" were verified as genuine and not something she had forged herself, An Changpu and Qin Ruonan went early the next morning to the hospital that had issued the school certificate at the time. They found the doctor who had signed it, confirmed the authenticity of the document, and asked about Fang Wan's condition then.

Several months had passed, and the doctor could not remember much at first. Only after checking the medical records did he confirm that he had indeed treated a little patient named Fang Wan.

According to the doctor, when Fang Wan was brought to the hospital, he was very weak. His condition was exactly as diagnosed: he was already showing moderate dehydration, along with an electrolyte imbalance. If he had not been discovered in time, the consequences of progressing to severe dehydration could have been serious. The chief culprit behind this condition was the laxative.

"Maybe the child was naughty and took medicine on his own," the doctor recalled roughly. "I spoke with the father. He said the child did not normally have constipation, and no one at home had ever given him laxatives."

After thanking the doctor, An Changpu drove Qin Ruonan straight to the private elementary school Fang Wan attended, where they found Chen, the homeroom teacher, just after class.

Teacher Chen knew nothing about Fang Wan's biological mother having once come to the school to look for the infirmary. But after hearing Qin Ruonan and An Changpu explain the sequence of events, he could not help but grow uneasy. A student in the class had once mentioned that Fang Wan said his stepmother wanted to harm him. Everyone had assumed it was just a child's idle talk, but now several clues made it impossible not to investigate further.

So he accompanied the two detectives to the school infirmary and confirmed that the copies in Qian Yuling's possession had indeed been obtained from there.

"Besides the classmate who mentioned it, have you ever heard the details of this matter from Fang Wan himself?" Qin Ruonan asked.

Teacher Chen adjusted the glasses on the bridge of his nose with a finger, frowned, and shook his head. "To be honest, this child is a little afraid of me. Maybe because I criticized him quite a bit before for always 'borrowing small change' from his classmates. So whenever he sees me, he runs."

"What do you mean by 'borrowing small change'?" An Changpu did not understand what he meant.

"Well, I only found out about it later from what the children in the class told me. Fang Wan would often ask other kids in the class to lend him money. I say lend, but the amounts were usually one yuan or fifty cents, just small change like that. You know how it is: most of the children's families here are doing fairly well, so no one ever bothered to ask Fang Wan to pay it back. He borrowed without ever returning it, and he did this every few days. Think about it: one yuan is not much, but if he went around asking everyone in the class, two or three times a week, the total was not exactly small. No one knew what he wanted the money for. He would not say when asked. But later he behaved much better," Teacher Chen explained.