Chapter 11: The Red Umbrella, The Ultimate Secret Tool (1/2)

Not long after, Wang Dali arrived with a red umbrella. He ran to me, almost breathlessly and handed me the umbrella.

“It’s this one, right?”

“Yes!” I said. Then I turned to the coroner and asked, “Can I get some rubber gloves from you, old man?”

The coroner was sitting on a little stool on the floor, holding a cigarette between his fingers. He indicated the direction of his toolbox with a raised chin and said, “Everything’s in the toolbox. Take whatever you want.”

I took a pair of rubber gloves out from the toolbox, gave a pair to Dali and don a pair on myself.

“Why are you giving me this, dude?” asked Dali, his face getting pale.

“You don’t want to leave fingerprints on the body now, do you?” I answered.

“You want me to — to handle the corpse?” he asked.

“Who’s going to help me if you don’t?” I replied. “Come on, stop wasting time! Let’s get to work!”

Dali looked like he was about to cry.

“Don’t drag me down into the mud with you, dude!” he said.

“I’ll buy you lunch, okay?”

There were quite a number of police officers around us at the time who were closely observing us, so in truth, Dali didn’t have much of a choice besides going along with me. I told him to lift up the upper half of the dead body, then I took a pair of scissors from the toolbox and began to cut the deceased’s coat. Dr. Qin’s gaze followed my every movement but he didn’t say anything. I used the scissors to cut away the clothes because if we tried to take the clothes off by pulling it up through the head, the tongue that was sticking out of the deceased’s mouth would be damaged.

Once I was done with the coat, I began to cut the shirt underneath. The face of a dead person, especially one who died by hanging, was always quite frightening. Dali kept his eyes closed during the whole process, but he accidentally opened his eyes once and almost jumped out of his skin with fright.

“Holy shit, dude,” he exclaimed. “Aren’t you scared at all?”

“What’s so scary about a dead body?” I said. “It’s just an inanimate object—like a table. You’re not scared of a table, are you?”

“But it’s still… a corpse… dude...” muttered Dali confusedly while staring at me as if I was an alien creature.

In my mind, there was absolutely no difference between a dead body and another lifeless object like a table. This was probably due to the way Grandpa trained me on how to examine human bones by sending me to graveyards quite often. And we usually spent the whole night at places like that, so it wasn’t surprising that I was completely desensitized to the sight of a dead body.

There was quite a crowd around us at the time, so I thought it was best not to take off the deceased’s pants. So I went ahead and told Dali to lift the dead body up.

Dali took a deep breath and hoisted the body up.

I slowly opened the umbrella, a heady herbal smell began to spread through the air from it.

“Ugh, where did you get that umbrella?” asked the policewoman while covering her nose. “It stinks!”

“Sorry about that!” I said with an apologetic smile.

I got the umbrella while I was shopping one day. There were mentions of a method of examining dead bodies using an umbrella even in Collected Cases of Injustices Rectified. The fact was that the ancients knew of how exposure to ultraviolet light would make marks and scars on the skin to appear. The great Song Ci himself made some modifications to the oil-paper umbrella by treating it with a concoction of medicinal herbs, thereby creating an ‘autopsy umbrella’ which can be used to make different kinds of marks on the skin to appear. I’d made myself this very same ‘autopsy umbrella’ using the instructions I found in the book.

I opened my umbrella and slowly rotated it. The chest area of the dead body became covered in a red shadow. To other people, the shadow might only seem red, but to me, I could see that it consisted of different shades of red.

Just as I was focused on examining every inch of the skin on the deceased’s chest, I saw that Dali was growing uneasy again.

“Dude, can you just start examining the dead body now?” he asked. “It’s not that sunny today. I don’t need the umbrella’s shade!”

“I’m examining the body right now!” I said.

“What?” Dali asked, completely befuddled. “With that old umbrella?”

“What old umbrella?” I said. “Do you know how much of my allowance I spent on medicinal herbs to prepare this special umbrella? I wouldn’t give it up even for a girlfriend!”

“I wouldn’t trade a certain girl for anything in this world,” murmured Dali, staring dreamily at the policewoman.

“Where did you learn this strange method of examining the body, kid?” said the coroner. “Why don’t you just use a Ouija board and ask the ghost of the deceased what happened instead?”

I ignored the man and thought to myself, this is your last chance to mock me, so go ahead and knock yourself out. You’ll be speechless soon.

I turned the red umbrella three times, and suddenly marks of half a palm appeared on the deceased’s shoulders. Every there was stunned. Even Dr. Qin himself had dropped his jaw – the cigarette butt in his mouth had fallen onto the ground and he didn’t even notice it!

“That’s… That’s impossible!” shouted the coroner who was now standing up.

“Dali,” I said, “flip the body over!”

“Roger!”

Even Wang Dali got excited now. He flipped the body over and used his hands to support it by the shoulders.

I continued to turn the red umbrella, and wherever the red shadow of the umbrella passed, it looked just like an infrared scan, and soon there were three complete palm prints on the deceased’s back which were much clearer than the ones on the shoulders. These palm prints were small, they looked like they were left by a woman.

“Stop!” ordered the policewoman. She then called for one of her police officers. “Xiaowang, get me a camera!”