Chapter 2: 2

When I opened my eyes again, I realized I was lying on a bed in the hospital.

The doctor said that I had hurt my head and would suffer a mild concussion. I didn’t quite understand what he was talking about. My head hurt terribly and my mind was blank.

I only suddenly remembered something when the traffic police came to question me.

What did I suddenly recall?

I recalled a pair of eyes. A pair of eyes staring at me frostily from the darkness, filled with such hatred, it made my hair stand on end and sent chills down my spine.

Whose eyes were those? While I was still lost in my thoughts, the traffic police officer started speaking.

He said, “Do you still remember the traffic accident from last night?”

“Traffic accident?” Another scene flashed in my mind. A man covered with wounds was trying to crawl out of his car.

“The doctor said that a mild concussion would usually cause temporary memory loss, but I insisted on coming to see you once you regained consciousness. You’re the only one we rescued from the accident site, so your statement will be very important to our investigation process.”

His words made me feel like I had just woken up from a terrible dream. The accident, the tailgating – everything that happened the night before flashed through my mind in fast-forward mode, but my memories stopped at the hateful glare from the victim in the other car.

I thought, if I hadn’t purposely taken up space in the lane and driven slowly, that Peugeot 408 wouldn’t have had to go onto the opposing lane of traffic. If it hadn’t done that, it wouldn’t have collided into an oncoming truck and there would be no accident. At the end of the day, I was the real reason behind the accident.

Once I thought of that, a terrible sense of guilt filled my heart and I didn’t know what to do.

But the traffic police officer was really friendly and encouraged me, “Go ahead and just tell me whatever you remember. You don’t have to be afraid of anything. The police and the citizens are one family after all!”

I knew that many criminals had fallen prey to such seemingly friendly interrogation tactics. But I couldn’t just remain silent all the way either. I quickly decided to just clutch my brain and pretend that I had a headache in order to avoid having to answer any questions.

The doctor in my ward wasn’t very good in his practice, clearly. He was fooled by my acting and started protesting, “Inspector Ji, the patient is suffering from a concussion and really needs to rest!”

“I’ll be done in just a moment!” said the police officer with an earnest smile to the doctor, then he turned back to me and asked directly, “Do you know what happened last night?”

His direct questioning put me at a loss for words again. I continued to clutch my head as I wondered if I should pretend that I had lost my memory. But it turned out that he wasn’t really asking me for an answer. Without waiting for my response, he stuck out three fingers and answered his own question. “It was a three vehicle collision! What a terrible traffic accident!”

I pretended to be really surprised and nearly gasped.

The police officer was afraid of aggravating my condition, so he quickly tried to calm me down, “You’re the luckiest because you were only behind one of the cars. The Peugeot in front of you wasn’t so lucky. The car rammed straight into an oncoming vehicle and the entire car was smashed in. The other vehicle fled the scene, but based on the tire tracks and other broken pieces, we can safely conclude that the other vehicle was a box truck.”

I nodded quietly and didn’t dare to make any comment. I just waited for him to continue talking.

“The initial investigation report has already confirmed that the Peugeot had driven into the opposing lane of traffic in order to overtake your car, so he has to take responsibility for that.”

I breathed a sigh of relief inwardly but my expression did not change.

He went on, “The deceased had broken a very serious traffic law which resulted in this severe accident, but…”

I interrupted him halfway, “He’s dead?”

If that were so, why did I still remember that man climbing out of his own car?

He didn’t seem to understand why I looked so puzzled and asked with concern, “What’s wrong?”

I paused for a moment and asked, “The car owner of the Peugeot 408 seriously died?”

My question piqued his interest. “From what we observed at the scene of the accident, the driver did not die immediately after the accident. He attempted to climb out of his car to call for help, but his injuries were too severe and he ended up dying outside his car. An autopsy is being done on his body right now and the report isn’t out yet, but from our observations, his head had suffered from severe damage, causing bleeding from inside the head.”

He cleared his throat and asked me a question instead, “You actually remember that the deceased’s car was a Peugeot 408. Not bad, not bad. Do you remember anything else?”

That was when I realized that the policeman had only mentioned that the deceased drove a Peugeot, but never mentioned the model. I was dismayed by my own slip up, but I couldn’t take it back now. So, I continued with the same story, “I remember that the deceased was covered with blood as he crawled out to ask me for help.”

“Oh?” The policeman became unusually excited. “Did you save him?”

“Well…” I shut my eyes and did really want to say anymore, so I asked a completely different question, “Who was the driver?”

“Oh, the deceased was the district team leader of a courier company.” He then proceeded to throw me more hints. “By the way, when we found you, your car door was open.”

I quickly seized this chance to beef up my story. “So, I did really try to save the other guy!”

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But he put up a hand to stop me right there. “One part doesn’t make sense.”

“Which part?”

“When we found you, you were still wearing your seatbelt. Most people would unbuckle their seatbelt before opening the car door, but your situation was the other way round. Don’t you think that doesn’t sound logical? Moreover, your seatbelt was jammed into the buckle, so it was impossible to pull it out.”

His words made me feel a sense of déjà vu. In that moment, another image flashed in my mind. An image of myself desperately trying to remove my seatbelt.

Why was I in such a panic? I calmed myself down and tried to remember what happened, but my mind was still blank.

I wasn’t pretending now. I really couldn’t remember this part. It was as if there was a veil covering these memories hidden at the back of my mind. They seemed to be there, but I couldn’t see them clearly.

In the end, I said very apologetically, “I really can’t recall.”

But the policeman wasn’t giving up just yet. “Actually, I have another hypothesis. Perhaps, it was someone else who opened your car door.”

I froze and listened to him continue with his explanation. “After the accident happened, one driver died and one was injured. But there was one more driver involved in this accident, and that’s the truck driver. Let’s say the truck driver noticed that you weren’t dead and opened the door in hope of helping you, but your seatbelt was stuck and he decided to give up in the end.”

He looked up and asked for my opinion, “Do you think my analysis sounds logical?”

I had thought that I was the hero who had tried to save another person. But when he analyzed the situation like this, it sounded like someone else had been the hero while trying to save me. It was seriously more frightening to owe someone a favor than to owe someone money these days, and I suddenly had a benefactor whom I didn’t even know about now. I wasn’t too happy to hear this but I couldn’t say this out loud, so I brushed it off by saying, “It’s hard to say.”

After he failed to gain my affirmation, he had to affirm himself. “Well, I think it sounds pretty logical.”

I didn’t agree. “What’s the point in speculating? Why don’t you just ask that truck driver about what happened?”

He sighed and said, “By the time we got there, the truck driver had already driven off.” He paused, then laughed and shook his head. “Actually, that truck driver really didn’t have to do that. The deceased was the one at fault. The truck driver was driving in the correct lane, so he wouldn’t have had to bear any responsibility for the accident. I don’t understand why he ran off.”

I thought to myself, anybody in such a situation would definitely run and hide if they could. Who on earth was going to think about whether they were responsible or not? If I hadn’t fainted from the collision, I would have run too.

Even though that was really what I thought, I went along with him. “Regardless of whose responsibility it is, every person needs to live an honest and upright life. Only then can we build a harmonious society. But seriously though, don’t we have a lot of surveillance cameras? Where could he possibly escape to?”

He sighed and told me honestly, “The surveillance cameras around that area happened to break down just two days ago. The city management office just got them fixed today.”

After he said that, he straightened himself up and said, “A traffic accident like this should have been very easy to resolve since the person responsible for the accident is obvious. But because we don’t have any camera footage from the surveillance cameras in the area and you’re not able to tell us exactly what happened, so we’re not able to really close this case.”

Then he looked intently at me and said quietly, “The traffic police is already watching several repair shops in hope of finding that driver, but I’m not very hopeful. I think, whether we can resolve this case or not will depend on you.”

“On me?”

“That’s right. As long as you remember what happened last night and you can tell us exactly how the accident happened, we can use your statement to proceed with this case.”

He said these words with much gravity and made me feel like I had a great responsibility on my shoulders. But even so, I still couldn’t remember anything.

It wasn’t appropriate for him to force me to remember anything, so he left his name and number on a piece of paper, then let out a big sigh. He asked me, “Do you know why the top brass wanted me to take on this particular traffic accident?”

I was stunned by that question and asked curiously, “Isn’t that part of your job as a traffic police officer?”

He snorted in disdain and said, “If it were just an ordinary road accident, some other traffic police officer could have dealt with it. Why did they have to ask me to do this?”

Judging from the way he had phrased these words, he made it sound as though he hailed from a more powerful background or history. I quickly looked down at the contact details he had written down for me, but I could only see that his surname was Ji. Since I didn’t know exactly who he was, it was best to treat him with respect so that I wouldn’t offend him unnecessarily. I made sure to look like I was all ears, only for Inspector Ji to say in a secretive manner, “I’ll tell you why. I used to be from the criminal investigation department!”

That confused me even more. “You were from the criminal investigation department? So why did you transfer to the traffic police department? You have to do patrolling and all those mundane things in this awful weather.”

My words had hit Inspector Ji where it hurt. He didn’t want to admit that he had been forcibly transferred to the traffic police department as his punishment after he had opened fire within the compound of a police station over a kidnapping case, so he quickly changed the topic, “I’ll be honest with you. The driver of the Peugeot 408 took out a life insurance policy half a year ago and the insurance company suspects there’s foul play here but they can’t prove that the deceased is trying to defraud the company. They know that I used to be in the crimes division and I’m good at solving cases, so they requested for me to start investigating this case as a traffic accident and sniff out any loopholes.”

What he said did make sense. Insurance companies were all like that these days. If nothing happened to their client, then all was well and good. But if even the slightest thing happened, they would go through a thorough investigation and do their best to avoid making any payouts. So I said to Inspector Ji, “I hit my head in this accident and I really can’t remember any of the things you’re asking me right now. Tell you what, I’ll try to recall and if I remember anything, I’ll contact you immediately!”

Since I had put it this way, Inspector Ji felt bad asking me more questions, so he just told me to take care and turned to leave.

But just as he was about to walk out of the ward, he suddenly stopped and turned back.

He said, “There’s one more thing I still don’t understand.”

He deliberately paused for a moment and stared at me with those alert eyes of his before continuing, “Just now, you said that the deceased tried to climb out of the car to ask you for help. So how did he end up dying and why did you end up unconscious?”

When he said these words, my heartrate immediately increased.

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