Inspector Ji had waited a few days for the murderer to strike again and all he got was me. Even though Han Shaoqing had literally died from poisoning right in front of my eyes, the poisoned bottle of mineral water didn’t have my fingerprints at all, so there was no evidence to prove that I was the one who had added poison to the water. This really frustrated Inspector Ji.

Inside the interrogation room, Inspector Ji sighed. “Why is it you again? Why do you keep appearing whenever your colleagues get killed?”

I was just as frustrated. “I’m just unlucky, I guess.”

“When Han Shaoqing died from poisoning on the rooftop, why were you there as well?”

“She asked to meet me there.”

Inspector Ji had watched Infernal Affairs before too, so he knew that two parties chose to meet on the rooftop because they wanted to come clean with one another. He asked, “Did she have something important to talk to you about?”

I was very careful with my words and asked him another question in return to stall for time to think, “What aspect are you referring to?”

He noticed that I wasn’t just shaking my head in response to his questions like the last time and even seemed to be very cooperative. A look of glee covered his face as he quickly made his question more specific, “About Guo Jiangyin’s death. Did Han Shaoqing know something about that?”

“Too bad, she didn’t say anything about that.” After being interrogated once, I was very cautious about what I said, especially with the way I expressed myself. It wasn’t a simple “I don’t know” but that Han Shaoqing hadn’t said anything to me.

But Inspector Ji didn’t stop there. He broadened the scope and asked, “Then what did she say to you?”

“When we met at the rooftop, Han Shaoqing said that she had something important to talk to me about.”

Inspector Ji looked a little excited and asked, “Then?”

“Then? Then…then nothing.”

He blinked. “What do you mean?”

I sighed and shook my head sadly. “Immediately after she said that, the poison acted up and she died.” My language ability really shone when I was able to say a whole bunch of things that didn’t actually mean anything in the end.

Inspector Ji was just as dramatic as he sighed loudly. “If only she died just a bit later! Just one minute later would have been better!”

I pretended to be upset and said, “I know, right?”

Inspector Ji pulled himself together and tried to encourage himself as he said, “Actually, it’s not as if the police really don’t have any clues at all.”

I quickly perked up to listen attentively and he went on, “After Guo Jiangyin’s death, we checked her bank account and found that a large amount of cash had been transferred to Han Shaoqing’s account. I checked with your superior about this and we confirmed that Guo Jiangyin couldn’t possibly have saved up this much money with the income she was drawing from the company, so the source of this cash was probably illegal. She had transferred money to Han Shaoqing again and again, possibly because Han Shaoqing was blackmailing her. So one can conclude that the two ladies got into a fight over the blackmailing and Han Shaoqing eventually killed Guo Jiangyin in the process. The police was already prepared to arrest Han Shaoqing and question her further, only for her to end up getting poisoned to death first.”

But while Inspector Ji’s later findings helped him to draw conclusions that were nearer and nearer to the truth, I was getting more and more worried. I was afraid that if the police continued investigating further, they would eventually find out that I was involved in the sale of company secrets. Once that was exposed, not only would I lose my job, but I would also be arrested for killing Han Shaoqing, since Guo Jiangyin and I did plan to kill her in the first place.

While I was still worrying about this, Inspector Ji started thinking further. “Han Shaoqing was poisoned to death, and even though Guo Jiangyin was strangled to death, we found several bottles of mineral water with poison in them. It looks like the murderer is someone else. He had prepared so many bottles of poisoned mineral water because he intended to kill both Han Shaoqing and Guo Jiangyin this way! This murderer is so vicious! I’m sure it has something to do with the blackmailing that’s going on between Han Shaoqing and Guo Jiangyin.”

He then turned to look intently at me and said in a slow voice, “Ma Ke, what do you think?”

Honestly, no matter which way I looked at it, I still felt that I was still the biggest suspect in this case. But confessing without putting up a fight wasn’t my style of doing things. Besides, I really hadn’t killed either of them.

I fell into deep thought for a while, then said, “Guo Jiangyin and I were lovers and even though her death really agonizes me, I still feel that there are certain aspects that don’t sound quite right.”

Inspector Ji realized that I must have discovered some important clues and started hurrying me to tell him more.

I contemplated on how to say this, then said, “I think the one who poisoned Han Shaoqing was Guo Jiangyin.”

“Who?”

“Guo Jiangyin.”

“But she’s already dead.”

“She’s already dead, but before dying, she already had a plan to poison Han Shaoqing and mixed in a poisoned bottle of water with the rest of the bottles that Han Shaoqing already had. So the only thing that would decide when Han Shaoqing died would be when she actually drank from that poisoned bottle of water.”

Inspector Ji asked, “Then who killed Guo Jiangyin?”

I said, “Han Shaoqing. Just like how you analyzed earlier, Han Shaoqing knew some secret of Guo Jiangyin’s and kept blackmailing her, so the two ladies fought and Han Shaoqing eventually ended up killing Guo Jiangyin in the process.”

Inspector Ji was stunned for a moment. “So you’re saying that Han Shaoqing strangled Guo Jiangyin, then Guo Jiangyin poisoned Han Shaoqing?”

I nodded and continued lying through my teeth, “Perhaps the whole thing about Han Shaoqing blackmailing Guo Jiangyin was only between the two of them and didn’t involve a third person, so their murders also did not involve another person.”

I paused for a moment and summarized this whole case, “Actually, the real murderer died before she managed to kill anyone. But the person whom the murderer planned to kill ended up being the same person who killed the murderer.”

Inspector Ji agreed with my logic, but the thought of how the perp of the case he had spent so much time and energy on these past few days turned out to be a dead person really made him feel depressed.

I, on the other hand, was pretty pleased with this result. All this time, I had been worried that any investigation into Han Shaoqing blackmailing Guo Jiangyin would eventually expose my part as the middleman. If that were exposed, I wouldn’t just lost my job but I would also be thrown into jail for leaking company secrets. That was why I had to agree to become Guo Jiangyin’s accomplice in killing Han Shaoqing. At the same time, I knew well that no matter which one of them died, the fact that I had helped to find a buyer to buy our company’s secrets illegally would never come to light.

And now, both women were dead. I continued to hide my part as the middleman and told the police the so called “truth” of what happened. Now, my nightmare could finally come to an end.