You're My Belated Happiness - Chapter 43 Part 2

Translated by Team DHH at http://dhh-workshop.blogspot.com.

You’re My Belated Happiness

Chapter 43 Part 2

Xu Huaisong and Ruan Yu arrived at the conference room. Liu Mao, Chen Hui and a female lawyer were waiting inside. After they greeted each other, an assistant came in to deliver coffee for everyone.

Ruan Yu saw the coffee and tried to say something, but stopped herself and gave Xu Huaisong a glance.

Xu Huaisong’s hand that was reaching out to take the coffee paused in mid-air when he noticed Ruan Yu’s glance. He waved his hand, refusing the coffee and said: “Bring me some water.”

Liu Mao took a look at Ruan Yu then turned to Xu Huaisong: “You finally know you should take care of your stomach.”

Xu Huaisong gave him a sharp look: “What are you, a civil lawyer, doing here?”

“What? Then what are you, someone who hasn’t even passed the Bar Exam, here……”

Xu Huaisong’s face grew dark. Liu Mao instantly stopped talking so as not to annoy him.

Ruan Yu pursed her lips and looked up at the ceiling to stop herself from laughing out loud.

After the assistant brought over a glass of water for Xu Huaisong, all the people inside the room started to discuss the case.

Zhang Ling, the lead criminal lawyer for the case, looked a little over 40 years old and seemed quite capable.

Ruan Yu heard Chen Hui address her as “Zhang Jie” and recalled that she must be the lawyer who had encountered trouble at a construction site the day when Xu Huaisong came back to China for the second time and Chen Hui had to leave in a hurry to help her instead of taking her and Xu Huaisong to the law firm.

Zhang Ling handed over a stack of documents and said: “These are the documents I’ve compiled after talking with the client. Take a look first.” She then turned to Chen Hui: “Xiao Chen, tell us the details.”

Chen Hui walked over to the whiteboard, picked up a marker, and spoke as he wrote down key information on the board: “According to the client, he wasn’t present when the victim was killed. About 20 minutes before the incident, he had a verbal argument with the victim while he was driving. He then parked the car at the roadside and got out of the car to get some fresh air.”

“What's the reason for the argument?” Xu Huaisong asked.

“The victim was looking over the client’s cell phone in the car and discovered several suspicious messages. She believed that it was proof that he was having an affair.”

“Was there really an affair?”

“There was.” Chen Hui nodded: “The client said that it happened about a month ago when he was drunk after he had a fierce fight with the victim. But he didn’t have any further contact with the person. It was just a one night stand. However, that person would still send him messages from time to time.”

Xu Huaisong nodded: “Continue.”

“The client said that after he had gotten out of the car, the victim followed him out of the car. The verbal fight escalated to a physical scuffle. The piece of flesh found under the victim’s fingernail was from his arm at that time.”

“After that, the victim harshly said ‘I’ll make sure you’ll regret this’ before she went back to the car and drove away.”

“50 minutes later, the client, who had been left at the roadside, received a call from the victim’s father. The father received a call from his daughter crying for help but couldn’t get in touch with her afterwards. The father had called the police and got the client’s phone number after contacting many of his daughter’s friends.”

“The victim’s father was very emotional and demanded to know what the client had done to his daughter. Through the conversation with her father, the client realized that about half an hour earlier the victim had called her father and said on the phone ‘Zhou Jun, let me go.’ The client’s first thought was what she had said before she took off: ‘I’ll make sure you’ll regret this’ and mistakenly thought this was how she was trying to get even with him.”

“The client then called the victim on her cell phone. A police officer who had already arrived at the scene answered the call. The client heard the sirens and figured that something must have happened to the victim. It was also through this phone call that he heard people on the other end talking about things like ‘the chip in the dashcam is missing; a claw hammer was found.’”

“The client hastily hung up the phone. Based on the information he had at the time, he suspected that the victim had killed herself as a way to get revenge on him and she had planned to use the flesh in her fingernail, the fingerprints on the claw hammer, and the phone call to her father to frame him. So he went into hiding and at midnight borrowed the cell phone from the owner of a stall at the night market to call Song Ge and Ms. Ruan.”

Xu Huaisong frowned: “Why would he believe so firmly that this was all a way for the victim to get revenge? He couldn’t possibly come to that conclusion from just a threatening sentence.”

“Correct. That’s the key to this case.” Chen Hui nodded: “According to the client, the reason why he thought this way was because the victim had done something similar before.”

“During their fight about a month ago, before they parted on bad terms, the victim made a similar threat to the client and indeed posted a picture of her cutting her wrist in her friend circle afterwards. Later, it turned out to be just a prank to scare him, but it nevertheless left a lasting impression in his mind.”

“That’s favorable evidence for the client. Is the post still there?” Xu Huaisong asked immediately.

“Deleted. But there may be other eyewitnesses or there’s a chance we can recover it.”

“What about the progress on the police side?”

“So far the police haven’t found a second suspect. The police are more inclined to suspect that the suspect hasn’t told the whole true story. They think the victim driving away would actually be a relatively safer option for her and it’s more than likely that she was killed during that physical confrontation described by the suspect.”

Ruan Yu frowned when she heard this.

Translated by Team DHH at http://dhh-workshop.blogspot.com.