Chapter 354: Opening the Port (21)

The upside of being magistrate in Fu County was never having to worry about going bald, and it was easy to make connections and build a network. The downside was that all sorts of matters were tangled and messy, every faction of the powerful was arrogant and imperious, and getting things done was no easy task.

Once the case broke and he received the preliminary incident report, Magistrate Lai realized the case was no simple matter, so he personally rode his sedan chair to the scene.

After looking over the scene from start to finish and hearing the case reports from the constable and coroner, Magistrate Lai then headed back to his yamen. Having served his first posting as magistrate in Fuzhou City, he knew perfectly well this was far from over. There was no need for him to draw conclusions now; better to first get to the bottom of all the entanglements surrounding this case, front to back.

Returning to the county yamen, the County Magistrate, accompanied by his criminal law advisor, first summoned the well-informed Constable Cao for a private audience. After the two sides had a detailed talk, Magistrate Lai finally got a clear picture of the whole story behind Squire Xie's murder.

After dismissing Constable Cao, the County Magistrate, who frequently handled all manner of robbery and theft cases and had long harbored a deep hatred for the Da Hang, slammed the table fiercely: "Those damned scoundrels again! This time Deng Hu will be severely punished!"

"My patron." The criminal law advisor beside him stroked his beard. "That Deng Hu is a crafty, slippery character. Whether to punish him severely or not — let's wait for more information first. If those complainants refuse to let the matter drop, then it won't be too late for my patron to borrow that momentum and strike."

The advisor's meaning was simple: do not act rashly.

Because Deng Hu was not so easy to deal with. This man had been committing evil for years; in the words of later generations, his capability for evading government crackdowns was very strong. Deng Hu not only had connections with all sorts of yamen runners, bandits, unscrupulous gentry, and litigation sharks, he also had countless street thugs under him to take the fall, so although the county yamen frequently arrested Deng Hu's underlings, they had never once apprehended Deng Hu himself.

For a major criminal of this caliber, even if the magistrate had ironclad proof — never mind that he didn't — he still had to consider whether he could be caught, whether he could be convicted if caught, and whether convicting him would provoke riots among the unruly populace. A case that clearly required provincial-level supervision, under the weak control of feudal society, could only be handled by the county bureau — this was extremely difficult.

"Ah, there's just no room to maneuver." Magistrate Lai felt this reality of being tied hand and foot deep in his bones, and so he sighed with emotion. A dignified Two-list Presented Scholar, a Seventh Rank Principal Official, yet to deal with one major criminal he had to weigh so many loose ends — truly the world was a hard place.

"In this student's view, that Deng Hu is in trouble this time." At this moment, the criminal law advisor was actually more confident than his patron.

"Oh? How so?"

"My patron, do not forget that gang of young thieves dealt with a few days ago."

"Oh..." Lai Fangwei paused blankly for a moment before catching the advisor's meaning. "When a man loses the Way, few will aid him? Heh, let us wait and see..."

And so the county yamen entered a tepid, routine case-handling procedure: going through the motions.

After that, pressure from all sides quickly transmitted over.

On the matter of Squire Xie's murder, those more agitated than the family members were the other proprietors of the Restaurant Alliance.

Before, it had been ordinary commercial competition — to put it plainly, a game tacitly understood among the rich: splashing some dirty water on each other, employing a few tricks, letting a few ant-like lives be lost, all to gain bargaining chips for the final negotiation.

But after Squire Xie died, the nature of the matter changed... Competition without a bottom line? Did the old bastard throw Eustace off the building during negotiations? This was too fantastical!

Yet that was precisely the fact of the matter.

This sort of vile conduct had already crossed the proprietors' bottom line. With the sorrow of a fox at a hare's death, this group formally reported the matter to the authorities.

Reporting to the authorities was a posture, signaling an attitude of exposing the incident and absolutely no compromise: the proprietors no longer intended to play any more tricks with the likes of Butcher Zhang and Deng Hu. This time they wanted to see the officials; even at enormous cost, they would see to it that anyone who dared threaten their lives was put to death.

And so, following the complainants from the Xie Family, Magistrate Lai also cordially received the representatives of the Restaurant Alliance in the Flower Hall, and expressed that the vicious criminals would certainly be severely punished without leniency, restoring a bright and clear world to all the proprietors.

The next to come calling was rather interesting: Butcher Zhang.

If he had known earlier that things would turn out like this, Butcher Zhang would rather die than have gone to Deng Hu to handle the matter.

Although Butcher Zhang's crowd was suspected of bullying the market and dominating trade, fundamentally speaking, their main line of work was still slaughtering pigs and selling meat. The various members of the Slaughter Guild were all meat shop owners, good citizens living their lives — a completely different concept from black society types like Deng Hu.

So when Butcher Zhang, tall and fat with a fierce and imposing image rivaling Butcher Zheng of Guanxi, learned that Squire Xie had been offed by Deng Hu, he was scared pissless on the spot.

After this, he immediately recognized the enormous business crisis at the first moment: the Restaurant Alliance would never buy his pigs again.

Once it sank in, Alliance Leader Zhang instantly began jumping and cursing, furiously screwing Deng Hu's old mother with his mouth on one side, while on the other side he gathered his manpower and drove all of Deng Hu's underlings out of their hiding places.

After making these preparations to cut ties, Butcher Zhang hurriedly prepared lavish gifts, hired the most prominent middleman in the city, and went to those proprietors and the Xie Family to explain, one by one.

While making clear that he too was a victim, completely screwed over by Deng Hu, Butcher Zhang also made a commitment on behalf of the Slaughter Guild: he admitted defeat on this deal; this time the live hog price would follow whatever the Restaurant Alliance wanted, and he would have absolutely no second word on it.

Having adopted all sorts of crisis PR tactics, although the Xie family members were still shouting to beat and kill Butcher Zhang, the other proprietors of the Restaurant Alliance, in the face of profit, were temporarily placated by him.

Once that side was settled, Butcher Zhang also carried silver on his back through the night and ran to the county yamen, knelt before His Honor the County Magistrate wailing about injustice, gesticulating wildly as he dissected his own mental journey, and hoarsely pointed out that Deng Hu was a base scoundrel, and that he and that villain shared a hatred that could not share the same sky!

By this point, the county yamen had clearly grasped the attitudes of all interested parties in this case. Seeing that public opinion was beginning to turn favorable, His Honor the County Magistrate formally put out word: on Complaint Day three days hence, the case of Squire Xie's murder would be heard.

While the county seat was in noisy uproar, the originator of this case, the murderer, Comrade Deng Hu, had already set up camp in a residence outside the city.

Retreating outside the city — this was something Shopkeeper Deng had not done in years. But this time was different; not retreating was no longer an option.

When he first got word of Squire Xie's murder, Deng Hu initially didn't take it too seriously: what's that got to do with me? But when the second wave of news came, Shopkeeper Deng was dumbfounded on the spot: what, there were blood characters on the ground?

Not long after, the third wave of details emerged, and then Deng Hu immediately figured out who was scheming behind the scenes — those dead at the Xie Family's outer residence were precisely the underlings he had sent a month ago to cause trouble at the Bear Estate.

Furious beyond restraint, Deng Hu's first thought was to clarify... but once he calmed down, he realized what he needed to do now was retreat.

As for clarifying — having taken on plenty of framing jobs in the past and possessing rich experience in this area, Deng Hu quickly grasped the vicious brilliance of this venomous scheme: no one would believe his explanation; the blood characters and the corpses of his trusted underlings had already nailed him down tight.

Realizing the situation was dire, and possessing considerable intuition for danger, Deng Hu immediately led his men out of the city, stationed himself in a relatively secluded compound, and then began frantically gathering information.

Bad news came in one after another: the Xie family was furious, the Restaurant Alliance was furious, Butcher Zhang had turned hostile and driven out all the brothers sent to help...

What gave Deng Hu the biggest headache was the county yamen. According to informants, His Honor the County Magistrate was likewise furious over this matter and preparing to deal with it severely.

By this point, Deng Hu was instead no longer in a hurry.

Since the city was already in an uproar, and a large number of wealthy and powerful people, along with the County Magistrate, all wanted to deal with him, that meant soft methods like finding litigation sharks, finding fall guys, and finding some unscrupulous gentry to help were already useless.

Since the usual methods for wriggling out of crimes were no longer effective, then the only option was to tough it out. So-called toughing it out, to put it plainly, was stalling for time — first lying low, and once the situation stabilized, slowly restoring his reputation and settling the matter.

Deng Hu was very familiar with this routine. Back in the days before he had grown big, whenever he committed a crime he usually had to go outside and lie low for a while. The only thing he hadn't expected was that, so many years later, he would actually be framed and forced to once again leave the city to temporarily take cover... This made him hate Xiong Dao to the marrow of his bones.

Of course, at Deng Hu's level of stature, even though he was now holed up in a secret residence outside the city, he could not simply vanish without a trace like some petty thief in the days to come. He had to stir up some noise from time to time, to let his adversaries and certain peers know that although the Old Man was not in the Edo, the Edo still had legends of the Old Man.

This was a necessity: he still had residences, family dependents, properties, and underlings in the city. If he didn't stir up some noise, people's hearts would scatter, and his household would know no peace either.

So these past two days, while closely monitoring the case, Deng Hu had also sent men to Taihu. As the number one gathering place for criminals in the Jiangnan region, the eight-hundred-li Taihu held far too many bands of bandits and pirates.

And a crime boss like Deng Hu naturally had countless ties with the men of Taihu. So this time he intended to summon a group of men over, pick the right moment to pull a few big jobs inside and outside the county seat, by way of sending a greeting to the County Magistrate.

Three days later, Complaint Day at the county yamen. County Magistrate Lai, in full official robes, took his seat and ascended the bench, beginning to process these backlogged cases one by one. And the very first one he handled was the matter of Squire Xie.

His Honor the Magistrate's case-handling procedure was very standard. First he summoned the constable to the bench, publicly heard the case details, then summoned the coroner to the bench. After these procedures were done, the next to take the bench were the Xie family's eldest son, second son, and their litigation master.

After hearing the complaint read by the Xie family's litigation master, His Honor accepted the plaint from the Xie family accusing Deng Hu. Next, His Honor summoned the Restaurant Alliance's representative Proprietor Lu, their litigation master, and the pig-transporting worker whose leg had been broken the night of the crime to the bench. Once the procedures for these people were done, the magistrate likewise accepted their plaint accusing Deng Hu.

At this step, the evidence-gathering work for the case was still not complete. Next, the County Magistrate still had to summon the tainted witness: Butcher Zhang.

Butcher Zhang had been waiting below the bench since early that morning. Once he took the bench, he naturally pushed the whole matter completely away. In fact, he didn't need to exaggerate anything; anyway, Squire Xie was killed by Deng Hu — everyone knew that — so he only needed to testify that Deng Hu was the killer.

Once Butcher Zhang stepped down from the bench, the magistrate's evidence-gathering procedure could be considered fully complete. And the next step, naturally, was to summon the person involved, Deng Hu, to the bench for questioning regarding the case. So Magistrate Lai signed and issued on the spot a "Summons Ticket" to summon the Commoner Deng Hu, ordering Constable Cao to set out immediately and bring that Deng Hu back to the county yamen to await investigation.