Chapter 429: The Note on the Desk

The meeting room on the third floor of Qinghe had no curtains. A diagram of the drainage channels was pinned to the wall, one tack in each corner. Wind slipped through the window cracks, and the paper edges rattled.

Cai Qingru stood beneath the diagram, a red pen between her fingers, the cap between her teeth. She took the cap out. "Top to bottom. From where the mountain water comes down to the convenience store — upper section. Convenience store to the primary school's east wall — middle section. East wall out to the field edge — lower section."

"Twelve sampling points." The young man from Qinghe who handled water samples pushed a landscape-format form across the table. "Four per section. Left, center, right. Water samples and bottom sediment."

Shen Zhixia pulled the form toward her.

The header was printed as a supervision form, with four columns below: sampling point, observer, date, remarks. After the fourth column, someone had penciled in a dashed box with "Replanting Quantity Confirmer" written along its edge.

"I added that box," Cai Qingru said.

At the far end of the table sat Luo Gong, his hardhat hanging from the chair back, the chin strap dangling. He was in his forties, his arms darker than his face, the watch on his wrist held together by a cracked band. He put his hands on the table, then pulled them back and rested them on his knees.

"Attorney Shen, I'll say this up front."

"Go ahead."

"July is flood season. Touch the bottom sediment and it turns to slurry — the upper section washes down, the lower section can't hold it, and it spills straight into the fields. That whole stretch would be ruined for the year." He gestured toward the diagram with his chin. "I want to shift the timeline, wait until the water recedes. After October."

"Shift to when?"

"Late October, early November."

She set the form down.

"The judgment says a 180-day period, ending October 21. That deadline was set by the court, not by me. If you want to move it, submit a document to the Intermediate Court and ask for review and confirmation. I'm not signing an extension in this column."

Luo Gong glanced at Cai Qingru. She didn't meet his eyes.

"So we can't move at all?" he said. "People standing around, vehicles rented — several thousand a day."

"Do what can be done first." She took the red pen from Cai Qingru and drew a line along the section from where the mountain water came down to the convenience store. "This stretch hugs the foot of the hill. The bottom is rocky, shallow silt. If it stays dry for ten days to two weeks, it'll firm up. Clear the upper section first, bag it, move it out of the village the same day."

"Where does the sediment go?"

"Your licensed disposal site, your choice. Trucks take the village road, daytime only, out of the village before dark." She set the pen down. "Don't come at midnight."

Luo Gong closed his mouth for a moment.

"One more thing." He leaned forward slightly. "Twelve points, four per section, checked every two months, plus extra checks after rain. Who's watching? The Center has two people and one minibus. Attorney Shen, I'm out there digging on the mountain alone — I can't dig and measure for you at the same time."

"The Center comes," Cai Qingru said. "We do the sampling ourselves."

"The company that did the supervision monitoring for the plant last year can't be used." Shen Zhixia flipped to the page beside the penciled box and pointed it out to him. "This page records who ran the tender and what the tender said. Anything that company signed doesn't count in this case."

"What if a third party comes to collect samples?"

"They can collect. But the signature has to be the Center's." She said, "The sampling equipment, the seal strips, the transport out — someone has to accompany each step."

Luo Gong wiped his hand across the table, smearing dust. "You people who write for a living don't know what a day on the mountain is like."

"I know two and a half hours." She closed the form, then opened it again. "From Chengxi Bus Station to the town: two and a half hours. Then a three-wheeler up to the village. Checked every two months, plus post-rain checks — that's six or seven trips a year. Every trip needs a signature."

He didn't answer.

"What about the primary school playground?" Cai Qingru asked. "Last measurement showed the playground's over the limit too."

"The playground waits until school's out. Dig in summer, backfill in August, relay the gravel before school starts in early September, set the basketball hoop post back in its original spot." Shen Zhixia said, "How far the excavation is from the classroom windows — you measure it yourselves, write it on this form. Don't write 'approximately.'"

"A meter seventy-eight, give or take two meters." Luo Gong gestured toward the window with his chin. "That's what it looks like."

"Did you pull a tape?"

"One look is enough."

"This column doesn't take 'one look.'" She laid the pencil horizontally across that column. "Run the tape out completely, measure from the wall base to the edge of the excavation. Write the exact number. Whoever measures signs their name at the bottom. When someone comes to verify later, this is the number they'll check."

Luo Gong pulled the form over a little, looked at the column, and tapped it once with his finger.

"Who pays for re-standing the post?" Luo Gong said. "Knock it down, stand it back up — that costs too."

"It's in the remediation plan, on your side. If it's not in the plan, write a separate explanation. Don't add words to this form." She pulled the form back half an inch. "If words get added, this column doesn't count as something I signed."

Luo Gong looked down at the form, tapped the table twice with his fingers, said nothing.

"The replanting column," she pushed the penciled dashed box forward, "whoever counts, signs. On planting day, I'll be there. Director Cai will be there. You'll be there too. No seedlings visible, no signature from me. If this box stays blank, it means no replanting happened."

"Where do the seedlings come from?"

"You buy them. What kind, how many — report to Director Cai first."

"I don't know seedlings," Luo Gong said.

"You don't need to. You just pull out the ones that don't survive and replant."

Cai Qingru capped her pen. "One more thing. The 'observer' column — sign your name, and under your name write your organization. If someone's replaced, give a day's notice."

"Why write the organization?"

"People leave. Organizations stay." Shen Zhixia said, "If someone later asks who observed this section, somebody has to take responsibility."

Luo Gong picked up the pen, the tip hovering over the paper's edge. "The plant just wants this done fast."

"'Fast' sounds good." She pushed the form to the center of the table. "But when it's done, someone still has to sign. The box you save today becomes the ugliest box in this whole thing later."

He said nothing more. The pen came down, traced over the box with his name once, then he looked up at her.

"Print twelve copies," Cai Qingru said. "One per section. Each inspection gets a fresh sign-off. Post-rain re-inspections follow the same rule."

The meeting ran until 3:50. She spread the form on her lap and signed her own name in the "observer" column, writing "Jiangzhou Zhengping Law Firm" beneath it, and the date July 7. She handed the form to Cai Qingru, who also signed, her pen strokes slower, then squared the two pages against the table edge.

At 3:55, Cai Qingru backed the minibus out of Qinghe's courtyard and dropped her off at the intersection in Old Town District. She climbed the steps clutching the blue folder, the form clipped inside, its edge sticking out half a finger's width past the folder.

At 1:40 p.m., second floor of the Zhengping Firm.

Footsteps came up the stairs, unhurried, pausing at the loose board on the landing.

When Lu Jibai came up, the back of his shirt was soaked dark with sweat, his briefcase strap digging into his shoulder, collar open, buttons undone. He set his bag on his desk. He didn't sit. He pulled a pen from the holder and tore off a sticky note.

The pen didn't travel far across the paper. After the last character, he pressed the note against the desk edge to let the ink dry.

Li Huilan looked up from her cubicle. She watched him pick up the note, walk to Shen Zhixia's desk, and place it under the pen holder, pinning one corner. He pressed the edge with his hand, as if afraid the wind would lift it.

Then he returned to his own desk, opened his briefcase, took something from the inner compartment, put it in the cabinet, pushed the door shut, and turned the key halfway.

Li Huilan lowered her head and kept writing. She was on the third page of Lao Kan's enforcement materials when she glanced up at the clock on the desk. 1:40.

"The Qinghe form," she said across the desk, "she took it with her."

"I know."

"She said the afternoon meeting runs to four."

"Yeah."

He drained the water from his cup into his mouth, set the cup back, the base clicking softly, and went into the inner office.

Li Huilan saw that the note he'd left bore a name, the last stroke curling back in on itself. She didn't get up to look, didn't ask. She'd known He Xiufen for all these years; she understood better than anyone how the two people in this firm communicated. One question, and both of them would have to explain themselves twice.

At 4:10, she returned to the firm.

She set her folder on her desk, went to close the window first, and only then noticed the corner of paper under the pen holder.

The note was torn from a full pad, the tear clean, a small un-torn point still at the edge. She pulled it out, holding it with both hands.

"July 7, morning, Chengnan District Procuratorate. Interview records: nine pages, signed each page. Explanation: three pages, to be submitted to the Intermediate Court tomorrow. Lu"

Dark blue ink, horizontal strokes level. She read it start to finish, reached the "Lu," then read it again from the top. The paper was thin; flipped over, the back was blank.

Nine pages. She imagined him sitting in that room, recounting that night from nine years ago, reading it back once, signing his name page by page. At the other end of the table, someone asked, and he answered question after question.

[Thud. Old Case Retrial, three items — another one arrives: a person willing to tell the truth.]

She stood there, hand hanging at the desk's edge, fingertips still pinching the corner of the paper.

She'd heard that sentence once before, in that alley off Wenchang Road, when he stood beneath the lamp at the foot of the steps and said he owed her father a testimony. The System had said: one testimony, unpaid.

Now this paper said nine pages, each one signed.

"He left it at one-forty," Li Huilan said behind her. "He came back alone. I didn't read what it said."

"Has he eaten?"

"Director He asked. He said later."

"Thank you, Attorney Li."

Li Huilan waved it off and went back to writing her page.

She placed the sticky note in the center of her desk, pressed the pen holder onto it, and pulled open her drawer. Inside the drawer was one kraft paper envelope from Qinghe. In the lower metal cabinet was another, holding that hard drive, evidence sleeve No. 3 still sealed. At home there was one more empty paper bag — the one he'd given her downstairs on the last day of last year, its mouth folded shut, still empty, waiting for a piece of paper worthy of being placed inside.

Three bags. She hadn't opened any of them.

She sat down, opened her notebook, and flipped to that later page. The words beneath July 5 were still there — "what time," "documents" — written very lightly.

On the line below she wrote: July 7, morning, Chengnan District Procuratorate, nine pages.

She paused, then added at the very bottom: Went alone.

The ink still wet, she slipped the sticky note into that page, pressed between two sheets, smoothing it flat with two fingers along the paper's back.

The inner office door was half open.

He stood at the long table inside, Qinghe's case file spread into two stacks, one hand flipping pages, the other squaring papers. The hole punch sat at hand, iron, a strip of old tape stuck to its base.

He fed a stack of squared pages into it, pushed to the bottom, pressed down.

Clack. The sound was short, dry, and the air in the room shivered with it.

He didn't look up.