Chapter 93: The Terrible Truth (2/2)
One day, when we were just hanging out, I asked Dali in a roundabout way, “Dude, I watched a movie two days ago. The protagonist got together with a policewoman at the end. Do you think he’d be happy?”
“Well, that varies from person to person. If the protagonist is also a police officer, then they’d probably get along fine. But if he’s a criminal, then that’s not such a good idea, is it?”
“What about civilians like us?” I asked.
“Hmm, I don’t know, dude. A police officer must be really busy all the time. Why don’t you ask Xiaotao-jiejie? She must know about this.”
Well, that’s the one thing that I absolutely couldn’t do.
About a week later, Huang Xiaotao called and told me that they were going to question Shopkeeper Tang today, so I rushed to the police station. He was still covered in bandages when I saw him in the interrogation room, and he looked very defeated. Two police officers were interrogating him, and there was a clerk next to him taking down the transcription of their conversation. Xiaotao and I went to the room next door and we watched his every move through the surveillance camera.
Shopkeeper Tang insisted that he knew nothing about the whole incident. He showed signs of panic and confusion.
“Please, officers, I didn’t kill anyone and I know nothing about all this! It’s definitely that bastard Ma Jinhuo! He did everything! He threw the bodies into my shop, so I just threw them away!”
No matter what the police asked him, these were all what he said. Everyone was losing patience, until suddenly, the expressions on Shopkeeper Tang’s face changed. The officer interrogating him noticed it and yelled, “Ma Jinhuo?”
“What are you yelling for, bastard?” Shopkeeper Tang sneered. “Why didn’t that little shit who hurt me come and interrogate me himself? Is he too scared of me?”
No matter what the police asked, he folded his arms and refused to cooperate. He insisted that he would only talk to me.
I exchanged a look with Xiaotao. She picked up the internal telephone and told the people inside to get out of the room. Then she told me, “Let's go!”
“You’re not traumatized by what happened, are you?” I asked.
“Don’t be silly. How can a police officer be afraid of a criminal?” Xiaotao denied while rubbing her nose.
“Okay, let’s go in there, then.”
We entered the interrogation room. When Shopkeeper Tang looked up, he asked me if I had any cigarettes. I said no.
“Ma Jinhuo,” said Xiaotao. “There’s a mountain of evidence against you. You can’t escape the death sentence now. This questioning is just for proper procedure, so come clean! Don’t waste everyone’s time!”
Shopkeeper Tang smiled contemptuously and turned to me. “I’m happy to finally meet you again, so I’ll tell you my story.”
It turned out that Ma Jinhuo owed Shopkeeper Tang 100,000 yuan three years ago. At that time, he really had no money to pay Shopkeeper Tang, so he would deliver meat out of the slaughterhouse he worked at to Shopkeeper Tang. Since they were both from the same village, they trusted each other enough not to put everything on paper.
After three years, Ma Jinhuo had lost track of how much pork he’d given to Shopkeeper Tang, but he thought his debt must’ve been paid off long ago by now. To his surprise, though, about three months ago, Shopkeeper Tang’s family urgently needed 100,000 yuan, so he refused to accept the meat as payment and insisted on being paid back in cash.
The two then got into a fight and it turned violent. Shopkeeper Tang threatened to expose Ma Jinhuo’s ugly past, triggering Ma Jinhuo to attack Shopkeeper Tang. But Shopkeeper Tang turned out to be physically much stronger than him, so in the end, he was overpowered and killed.
When his senses returned to him, Shopkeeper Tang panicked at the fact that he had murdered somebody. He knew he’d be thrown into jail if the body was found, so he decided to deal with it the same way he saw in the movie The Untold Truth—he turned Ma Jinhuo’s meat into the filling of his buns.
Of course, there was a difference in taste between human flesh and pork. Shopkeeper Tang was afraid that the customers might notice, so he added a lot of spices. Once the buns were cooked, he tasted them to check the quality, but after a while, he realized that he had unknowingly eaten half of the buns that he made!
Just like Ma Jinhuo in the past, he had become addicted to the taste of human flesh. Also, something else happened to him. Every evening at about 8.00 p.m., which was the time Ma Jinhuo was killed, Shopkeeper Tang’s temperament changed, and he would start to devour the meat buns made with Ma Jinhuo’s flesh with gusto. Sometimes he would be so obsessed with the taste that he’d stuff his mouth with the raw flesh left over from making the meat buns.
As he was eating, a curious smile would appear on his face and he would be inexplicably happy.
Gradually, another soul appeared in his body, and this soul belonged to the dead Ma Jinhuo!
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