CH 18

As he had hurt his hand, Joshua Dale’s life was greatly inconvenienced. Perhaps if he was by himself then he could have dealt with it alone. But he had a sister, Rosie Dale, whose health had yet to recover, thereby overstretching his capacity.

In order to prevent the human tragedy of both siblings starving to death in that old house, they were temporarily set up for the next couple of days at the hotel where Yan Suizhi and Gu Yan were staying. 

Joshua Dale was subject to many restrictions during the bail period, such as not being able to leave the city of residence however he pleased, and not being able to meet with victims and witnesses to prevent acting in collusion.

Even relatives of the victim, Mdm Kity Bell, such as the youth who had flung boiling water at them that day, were not allowed to meet with him without authorisation.

However, the time that he could have with his lawyer was unrestricted.

Bang, bang, bang— 

Yan Suizhi’s room door shuddered.

With such a boorish way of knocking, it could only be Joshua Dale behind the door.

Yan Suizhi sat on the armchair by the window, resting his injured leg. His chin was propped against a hand, his expression composed as he flipped through the case file.

He didn’t even look up at the sound, and he said, “Come in.”

His behaviour was now an exact replica of the way he used to act in the dean’s office.

Seated across from him, Gu Yan was answering an email. His eyes flicked over when he heard this.

Yan Suizhi turned another page before noticing the look in Gu Yan’s eyes. “Is anything the matter?”

And right after saying this, he realised it himself. He laughed drily, picked up the remote control on the desk, and pressed the open button. He added a sentence of explanation, “I thought I was still in De Carma. I forgot that the hotel rooms here aren’t voice-controlled.” 

Gu Yan coolly took his gaze off him and continued replying to the emails on hand.

Professor Yan secretly rejoiced that he was able to come up with a reasonable explanation.

“Why did you call me over?” Joshua Dale began to complain as soon as he stepped through the door, clutching his hair and saying angrily, “Are you going to ask me about what happened that night again?”

He didn’t have high-tech gadgets like smart devices. Fortunately, there was an internal communication system between the hotel rooms, so Yan Suizhi could summon him for an ‘interrogation’ with a mere lift of his finger. 

“What do you think? If not that, then what else could I ask you?” Yan Suizhi put down the holographic page he was holding.

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Asking Joshua about the incident and his movements at that time was what Gu Yan had been doing throughout the last two days. 

According to the legal code in the alliance, there must be a third party present when a criminal defence lawyer meets his client. There were no restrictions on the identity of this third party—it could be an assistant, an intern, or even a solicitor. The main intention behind this was to prevent some lawyers from using unscrupulous means to win the case.

Although, naturally, this was even more useless than toilet paper in reality.

It wasn’t too convenient for Yan Suizhi to move around due to his injured leg. Gu Yan also wasn’t willing to get cataracts from supporting him here and there at turtle-pace until old age. So, the location of the meeting with Joshua was directly set to be in Yan Suizhi’s room.

Gu Yan briskly replied to three work emails, then raised his gaze to stare at Joshua. He said, “Even if I’ve already asked you eight hundred times, I still need you to assure me that everything you tell me is the truth.” 

Joshua snorted, rolling his eyes and raising his hand. “Of course I’m telling the truth. Why the hell would I lie to you? I didn’t rob anyone. I already said I wasn’t the one who did it; that means I wasn’t the one who did it.”

After thinking about it, Yan Suizhi added, “I’d like to remind you that according to the ethical duties of the profession, lawyers have the duty of confidentiality. We are obligated to keep confidential everything you tell us.”

How far did this confidentiality extend? For example, if the client was accused of intentional homicide and the police were unable to find the murder weapon, even if the client confessed to his lawyer how he had disposed of the murder weapon, the lawyer couldn’t tell the police this.

This flimsy line sounded utterly callous, and all the worse in the eyes of ordinary people. 

Some people could carry out this expressly stated responsibility without any difficulty, while some people would always struggle with uneasiness.

Yan Suizhi had once joked to others that this was the devil’s law. It was black, dark, and contrary to the most basic of morality. It disgusted people. But the reality was that it was only under this legal framework that devils would tell the truth.

Yan Suizhi fed Joshua Dale reassurance for the eight hundredth time, and said slowly, “So—”

“So, you hope that I won’t have any misgivings and tell you the entirety of it. No matter how contemptible the contents are, they will still be kept in confidence.” Joshua recited monotonously, finishing his words for him. He muttered, “I got it, I’ve heard it so many times that calluses are growing in my ears; I can even say it for you already.” 

Yan Suizhi and Gu Yan were each calmer than the next. They were long accustomed to this brand of impatience.

“So, what were you doing from the afternoon to the evening of the 21st?” Yan Suizhi asked to compare against the existing information in the case file.

“I got into a scuffle at work that day and hurt my cheekbone. I received 100 xi in compensation, and even got to leave work ahead of time, pretty much getting a half-day holiday…”

His face was swollen, and he had money clenched in his fist. He was in a delicate mood. He couldn’t tell if he was more dejected, more irritable, or more surprised by the extra cash. 

Or perhaps it was this sort of conflicting feelings that in of itself made him feel depressed.

He touched his cheekbone and licked the tang of blood in his mouth. He went home for a short nap, then took to the street with the money in hand. He went into a wholesale jewellery store in the alley to buy a pair of pearl earrings for 68 xi.

Following which, he brought the cheap but pretty pearl earrings to Kitty Bell’s yard wall.

“Why did you spend 68 xi to buy that pair of earrings?” Gu Yan asked. 

Although this question had already been answered many times before, every time before Joshua answered, he would still fall silent for a few seconds.

“…Because I dreamt of my grandma during my afternoon nap,” Joshua said.

“Why did you dream of your grandmother?”

“…Who knows.” 

Maybe because his swollen cheekbone suddenly hurt more than any previous injury, or maybe because that 100 xi compensation suddenly made him feel wronged and insipid.

In this short nap, Joshua dreamt of his grandmother who had passed away many years back.

He dreamt that he was standing in the narrow kitchen, stewing vegetable porridge for his sister. Rain poured heavily outside, and the water dripping from the eaves streamed down into a curtain.

His grandmother stood under the eaves outside the kitchen window to take shelter from the rain, looking at him kindly. 

He pushed the window open and said to his grandmother, “The rain outside is too big. The eaves can’t block it, why are you still standing out there? Hurry up and come in.”

The grandmother touched the wet hems of her clothes and looked inside the house again. She said with a warm smile, “I won’t be coming in. I only wanted to see you.”

Joshua was worried. “Come in, hurry up and come in. The rain’s falling on you already.”

Yet his grandmother kept smiling, and never entered the door. 

In his dream, he didn’t know why he was so anxious for his grandmother to enter the house, nor did he know what he was so sad about.

And so he woke up in that thick haze of sadness. He lay on the bed with red-rimmed eyes for a long time, and all of a sudden wanted to buy a pair of pearl earrings.

For many years ago, before passing away, his grandmother once said that she had always wanted a pair.

“Why did you climb over the yard wall around Kitty Bell’s house?” It was again a question that Yan Suizhi and Gu Yan had been taking turns to ask. 

“Because when she sits in that armchair and knits a scarf against the light, she really looks like my grandma…” Joshua said. “Her reading glasses are very similar, her actions are very similar, from the side, from head to toe, she looks very similar.”

Sometimes when he suddenly missed his grandmother, he would crouch on the wall and watch her silently for a while under the cover of night through the condensation on the window.

That day, after buying the pearl earrings on impulse, he walked back to his door and realised that he no longer had a grandmother to give this pair of earrings to.

So, he took advantage of the night to climb the wall to Kitty Bell’s house. This time, he didn’t only watch, but he quietly jumped into the yard. And he hung a small black velvet bag with pearl earrings in it by the door. 

Little did he know that there would happen to be a burglary at Kitty Bell’s house that night, and little did he know that the velvet pouch with earrings that he hung by the door would be blown to the ground by the wind.

In the absence of any other conclusive identifying evidence, the velvet pouch just happened to become a central piece of evidence proving guilt. The alley was cluttered and old; there weren’t any cameras that could be checked. But the police tracked down the store where the pearl earrings were sold and pulled up the store’s surveillance—in it, Joshua had clearly bought the earrings.

And then, from the traces of mud stuck to the soles of Joshua’s shoes, it was determined that he had gone into Kitty Bell’s house…

In short, all evidence pointed towards Joshua. 

“Let me confirm this another time. What time did you leave the yard?” Gu Yan said.

Joshua, “Before 7:30 p.m.”

The burglary occurred between 7:50 p.m. to 8:10 p.m. It would be good enough to prove this mismatch in timings.

This would also be their best breakthrough point. As long as they could prove Joshua left the house before that. 

However, the trouble lay in that there were no surveillance cameras installed in that alley, and no one had passed through at that time; similarly, no one was able to give Joshua Dale an alibi for that time frame.

“If only there was surveillance,” Yan Suizi tapped his index on his loosely clasped fingers in slight regret. “Unfortunately…”

Joshua’s face was despairing. “So even after asking eight hundred times, you still have no way of helping me?”