Chapter 350: This Report Contains Six Pages in Total

At 11:10 on March 12, her phone buzzed against the glass desk pad, rattling the edges of the stack of receipts.

She was still holding half a taxi invoice in her other hand. She answered first.

"Lawyer Shen." It was Master Qiu. "It opened. Come see."

"Which one opened?" she asked.

There was a pause on the other end. "Come."

"What time?"

"Two."

"The notary office—"

"I already called," he said. "Two o'clock. Don't come early."

The call cut off cleanly. She pressed her pen against the receipt, leaving a small blot of ink, then smoothed the invoice flat against the desk and wiped it twice.

Lu Jibai looked up from behind his desk. "What time?"

"Two."

"Still more than two hours." He closed the papers in his hand. "Finish what's in front of you first."

She couldn't. Every character on the invoice was readable, but together they wouldn't add up. She capped her pen, got up and washed her hands, came back and squared the receipts, snapped a rubber band around them, and pushed them into the drawer.

[Thud. It opened. When it opened, it didn't ask whether anyone was ready.]

At ten to two they arrived at the old office building in south city. The door at the end of the sixth-floor corridor was shut, a sliver of light showing beneath it. The corridor smelled of a printer just finished running paper.

She raised her hand to knock, then lowered it. Two o'clock meant two o'clock.

Ning Ping arrived a step behind them, blue cloth sleeves over her arms, a camera bag slung over one shoulder. She walked up and glanced at the door. "Door's closed and you're just standing here?"

"Two o'clock."

"Then you're standing early." Ning Ping shifted the bag to her other shoulder.

The door opened from inside. Master Qiu's sleeves were rolled to his elbows, and the old burn scar across the back of his hand faced the corridor light.

"Come in. Don't block the doorway."

Three things sat on the workbench: a removed hard drive tray, a powered-on computer, and a sheet of paper.

She recognized that paper—it was a photocopy of the list she'd signed on March 9, with a small pencil-drawn box added after each line. Some boxes had checks, some had X's. Next to the X marks, pencil read "won't open."

"First batch. Not a single one opened." Master Qiu dragged his fingernail down the lines. "Second batch. Got to the fourth one."

Her eyes followed his nail. In the second batch on page two, the box after the fourth entry number had a check in it, and below the check was written "opened."

"That line's the one you wrote out," he said. "It opened."

"What about the rest?" she asked.

"I didn't try the remaining ones in the second batch." He pulled his hand back. "One opening was enough. For the few lines I didn't test, I've written: not tested, stopped at the one that opened. If anyone asks me later what order I tried them in and where I stopped, I'll answer from this paper."

Lu Jibai stood half a step to her left, silent.

"Take this copy." Master Qiu slid the pencil-marked photocopy toward her, stopping at the edge of her hand. "The original stays in my file."

Ning Ping had already spread her record book open on her side, camera placed on the corner of the desk. "You pressed the keys?"

"I pressed them." Master Qiu said. "An inspector stood watching, reading out every character to me."

He turned the screen around.

A row of small icons, and below them a line of text she had to read twice to understand.

"One encrypted compressed file recovered from the unallocated space," he said. "Just one. Of the lines on your paper, when I got to this one, the lock opened. Five files inside, all images."

"What do you mean, images."

"Photos. The scanned kind." He moved the mouse away from her hand. "Page numbers from one to five."

"Page numbers."

"Five files, each with a page number at the bottom. In my opinion letter, I'll only state what these files are called, their size, and when they were recovered." He said, "Whatever's in the files, I describe it as-is. Whether it's accurate or not, I don't vouch for it."

He enlarged the first image.

The top line read: Jiangzhou Qingyuan Testing Center.

Below it, smaller: Re-test Report.

In the sample name field: Baixi Village well water (second sample). The number in the sample ID field matched the line on page two of her list exactly—digit for digit.

Test item: Cadmium.

She pulled her chair half a foot closer. At this magnification, the edges were pixelated. There was a horizontal crease across the paper, and the upper right corner was missing a small white patch—the paper hadn't been pressed flat during scanning, and the light hadn't reached that spot.

"This was scanned," she said.

"A scan." Master Qiu said. "A photo is a photo. I don't have the original paper here. I only have these five files."

The second image was the basis and methodology: a few lines of technical terms with an instrument listed between them. The third was a table with several values, the bottom row giving the limit. The fourth was the conclusion: the cadmium result in the tested items exceeded the drinking water hygiene standard limit.

She lingered on that sentence for a long time. She'd read those words many times before—on other people's photocopies, in other people's citations, spoken aloud by people sitting across from her. This time they'd run out of a locked drive.

On the fifth image, the final field was the issuer: a handwritten signature, the last stroke sweeping upward.

Cen Shouye.

The date line read April 1, but the two digits before the year were faint—when enlarged, just a gray blur. Beside the signature was a circular seal, a ring of characters around the edge that even at maximum zoom was only a red smudge.

She flipped back to the first image and looked at the small print at the bottom of the first page, smaller than everything else: This report contains six pages total (including one appendix page).

She read that line a second time.

There was a piece of paper only she could see, and its first line meant the same thing: one page, missing. She didn't turn to it, and she didn't say anything.

"Six pages," she said. "There are five images here."

"Page numbers one through five." Master Qiu didn't look up. "The sixth page isn't among them."

"Does it say here what the sixth page is?"

"There's a line at the end of page five." He clicked with the mouse. "It says: Appendix: Sample Handover Form (photocopy). Just that one line. The page after it isn't in the five files."

Ning Ping's pen moved across the paper. She wrote slowly, pressing line by line downward. When she finished, she looked up and asked, "Should I record this—'sixth page absent'?"

"Record it," Shen Zhixia said.

"I record what I see." Ning Ping said. "There are five files on the screen, page numbers one through five. The previous page states there are six pages total. Both statements go in. Why it's missing, I don't write."

"Good."

At 14:30, the screen still showed the first page. She read the phrase "including one appendix page" once more.

"He tested it after all." Lu Jibai said quietly beside her.

The voice was low, right at her ear. Master Qiu didn't look up. Ning Ping's pen paused for a beat, then continued.

She heard it.

She didn't ask.

Who the "he" in that sentence was—she wouldn't ask now. Something was stored in her mind: on March 15, or some other day, someone would finish that sentence. She'd ask then.

Two knocks came at the door.

Cen Hong entered, her blue apron still on, a barcode scanner in her pocket, her hair blown loose in one strand. She stood in the doorway and took in all four faces in the room before walking over.

"I asked the neighbor to watch the counter," she said. "One hour, I told them. One hour."

"Look at this." Shen Zhixia turned the screen slightly toward her.

Cen Hong looked at the first image. Her hand went into her apron pocket. She took out the scanner, gripped it once, and put it back.

"That's my dad's handwriting." She pointed at the issuer field on the fifth image. "He always flicks the last stroke upward when he writes. Signing my homework notebooks when I was little—same flick, always past the line."

"You'd know it," Master Qiu said.

"I know my dad's writing." She looked again at the red circular seal. "This seal I don't recognize. Never saw it at home."

"Is this real?" she asked.

Master Qiu took his hand off the mouse.

"I only write what I did," he said. "Which day the seal was broken, who was present, the disk image made twice, which entries were tested, which one opened, what the five files look like, their size, which day they were exported. Whether the report is genuine, I don't write. I don't know either."

"So can this be used?" Cen Hong asked.

He didn't answer that. He glanced at Ning Ping.

Ning Ping set down her pen. "I only notarize the process witnessed in this room today. What appeared on the screen, I record; whether what's written in the files is correct, I don't evaluate. That handwriting isn't mine to judge."

Cen Hong stood there, both hands at her sides.

"He never said anything," she said.

No one in the room answered that.

Lu Jibai asked, "Anything else on the drive?"

"That's the only thing recovered." Master Qiu said. "Nothing else. The numbered entries you couldn't try—still empty after it."

At 16:00, export. Cen Hong went out and made a phone call in the corridor, then came back and said, "Another half hour."

The inspector opened each of the five files one by one, then closed them one by one, and burned two discs. Master Qiu wrote the labels himself—on one disc the writing faced inward, on the other outward.

Ning Ping stood behind him, watching as he placed the second disc in its case, closed the case, and pressed the lid shut twice. She wrote in her notebook: what time, who pressed it, how many discs burned, what was written on each.

The original drive was re-sealed as before. He took a new seal strip from the drawer, let her and Ning Ping each inspect it, then pressed the strip across the bag's opening, ran it over the perforated edge twice, and wrote the number—No. 3.

"The previous seal envelope was No. 8 when opened," Ning Ping said.

"That was No. 2," Master Qiu handed her the pen. "This time it's No. 3. You sign the seam, she signs too."

Ning Ping signed and passed the pen to Shen Zhixia. Her hand was steady as she wrote. On the last stroke, she remembered what he'd said on March 9: don't write your signature small. She filled the box with her name.

The printer rattled at the far end of the corridor and spat out a set of pages. She went to collect them—five sheets, still warm.

The top line on the first page was even smaller on paper than on screen.

She stacked the five pages by page number, aligned the two edges, and flipped back so the first page sat on top.

"Opinion letter comes out on the fifteenth." Master Qiu stood the sealed envelope upright against the wall. "The discs and the printed set will be delivered together that day. Bring money to settle."

"Notarization on the fifteenth." Ning Ping closed her notebook. "The certificate will say the same as today: unsealing, testing, opening, export—four stages. Nothing else."

Cen Hong stood by the desk, unmoving, her eyes still on the screen.

[Thud. The name has stepped onto paper. The original—not yet on paper.]

She looked up.

Lu Jibai stood at the far end of the table. The screen still showed the first page. He was looking at the line that read "including one appendix page."

There was nothing on his face.