Chapter 471: Two "No"s

The court waited several minutes.

The bailiff walked back to stand by the door, glanced up at the clock on the wall. In the gallery, someone coughed and swallowed it back. Auntie Wang leaned toward the aisle; Cen Hong had a hand on her arm. Zhi'an sat the same way as before, hands on her knees, eyes forward. Tang Guo took her bag off her shoulder and set it on her lap, pressing down on it with both hands.

The clerk gathered up the previous sheet of paper and replaced it with a fresh one, uncapped her pen, and laid it on the edge of the paper.

He Xiufen turned back and opened the metal box. She pulled out the photocopy of the handover form, set it on top, then rotated the box so the opening faced her. She did all this without a sound.

She flipped the notebook back to the page from the morning, let her eyes run over those few lines, then flipped back. The characters written later on that page were more cramped than the earlier ones.

At 10:10, the bailiff opened the door a crack and stood by it. Footsteps approached from down the corridor—not fast, step by step, leather heels on terrazzo, evenly spaced.

Han Chongli walked in.

Gray suit, white shirt, tie knotted neatly. Hair combed smooth, pressed flat at the sides. He did not look at the gallery, nor at the table beside the defense bench.

"Witness, to the witness stand."

He walked to the small table and stopped. A paper cup sat at the corner of the table, condensation still beading on its sides, untouched. He placed both hands on the edge of the table, fingers together, fingernails trimmed neat.

"Witness, please be seated."

"I'll stand, if that's all right."

"That's fine," Judge Liang said.

"Witness, state your name and profession for the court."

"Han Chongli. Lawyer."

"How many years have you been practicing?"

"Over thirty."

The clerk carried the witness pledge over and spread it in front of him.

"I'll read it aloud. Please listen."

She read faster than the afternoon reading. When she reached "truthfully provide testimony," she looked up at him. When she reached "knowingly giving false testimony or concealing evidence carries legal liability," she read that sentence a second time.

"I understand," he said.

"Please sign."

He picked up the pen, set the nib steady on a line, and wrote slowly, stroke by stroke, pulling the final stroke of his name out full. The signature ran larger than any of the printed fields on the page.

The clerk brought over the ink pad. He pressed his fingerprint, lifted his finger, accepted the tissue, dabbed his fingertip, folded the tissue, and set it at the corner of the table.

"State to the court the facts you know."

He looked at the judges' bench.

"That year, this firm represented Hengyue Chemical's Baixi Village plant. I signed the retainer agreement."

"The re-test of that batch of water was requested by the client."

"The firm agreed and arranged for the samples to be sent for testing."

"The handling of the samples and the handover was done by a trainee lawyer from the firm."

"I did not involve myself."

He delivered this sentence with the same flatness as the ones before, without pausing.

"When the report reached the firm, I read the conclusion. It stated the results were inconsistent with the initial test."

"Beyond that, I know nothing."

She lowered her head and wrote. She wrote "re-test, requested by client," wrote "testing, arranged by firm," and when she reached "handled by: trainee lawyer," the pen stopped. The person from this morning had signed his name on this paper, a few lines below his own statement. She wrote "trainee lawyer" exactly as he'd said it, without adding a single word.

"Noted," Judge Liang said. "Defense counsel may question."

He Xiufen stood, the metal box open.

"Witness, the retainer agreement between Hengzheng and Hengyue Chemical that year—you signed it?"

"Yes."

"The re-test was requested by the client?"

"Yes."

"The firm arranged the sample submission?"

"Yes."

"Who called for the car?"

"Administrative staff."

"Who handled it?"

"A trainee lawyer from the firm."

"Which one?"

"Lu Jibai."

In the last row of the gallery, against the wall, a certain person did not move.

"He testified in this room this morning," He Xiufen said.

"I'm aware. A witness doesn't sit in on proceedings. I was in the witness room."

"You didn't hear what he said?"

"I did not."

He Xiufen turned the paper in front of her partway over, then back again.

"Witness, this morning's witness described something. On the morning of March twenty-first, he carried the second box. The opening faced him. The seam of the new tape was on the right, overlapping the old tear. The old staple holes were still visible, and the new staples were set a finger's width away."

She paused, raised her face.

"When did you learn of this?"

"I heard it for the first time in this courtroom today."

When he finished, both hands still rested on the edge of the table, unmoving.

She looked up at him. His back was straight, his tie hadn't loosened, and the tone of that answer was identical to when he'd said "yes" moments before.

[Thud. Gallery Seat, one use today.]

The sounds of the courtroom receded far away.

Substitute.

That single word.

The clerk's pen still moved across the paper. Judge Liang was speaking, mouth opening and closing, but the sound couldn't reach her side. Someone in the gallery shifted, a chair leg scraping the floor, also on the other side of that layer.

She sat behind her table, both hands on its surface, notebook beneath them. Sweat had gathered on the back of her neck; her collar clung to her skin. Her writing hand's palm had slickened the pen barrel.

It was there. As clear as a piece of paper held before the eyes.

A word wasn't evidence.

She couldn't ask, either. In this hearing, the ones allowed to question were the person at the defense bench and the prosecutor opposite. Her own table had no microphone, just a nameplate facing outward with her name and, beneath it, her role. Where she could speak came much later.

She flipped her notebook to a blank page.

Pressing the nib down, she wrote half a line, stopped, and read it over. That question he could brush off with a simple "I don't recall." She tore the page out and crumpled it in her hand.

She rewrote. This time the nib landed slowly, word by word.

She tore this page out too, tearing along the bound side so the white margin came away uneven.

She used the nib to pin the corner of the paper and pushed it sideways.

The paper slid across the foot-wide desktop, reaching He Xiufen's hand. He Xiufen pressed her palm over it.

He Xiufen looked down. After a moment, she folded the paper once and tucked it beneath the metal box. She raised her face, her voice exactly as it had been.

"Witness, on the morning of March twenty-first, did you speak by phone with the sample intake person at Qingyuan?"

The courtroom went still. In the third row of the gallery, someone leaned forward.

"No," he said. "I don't know the intake person."

She turned his answer over in her mind. The answer was shorter than the question, and he stopped right after it. The extra came only in the second half—ask a person about something he never did, and "no" was enough. "I don't know them" was extra.

"At Qingyuan, who do you know?"

"Director Cen. A few technical people, from meetings."

"Not the intake person?"

"No."

He Xiufen drew the photocopied page from the metal box and passed it over. The bailiff took it, set it on the witness stand, and pushed it toward his hand.

"Witness, this is a page preserved in that year's procuratorate case file. A sample handover form."

He lowered his head and looked. The look didn't last long; his hands never touched the paper.

"The name in the 'Sample Submitter' column—do you recognize it?"

"I do."

"The check mark in the 'Sealing' column—who drew it?"

"I've never seen this page."

He Xiufen pressed the corner of the folded paper beneath the metal box.

"The attachment page—that handover form—have you seen it before?"

"No."

"When the report reached the firm, was the attachment with it?"

"I only looked at the conclusion page."

"Do you know how many pages that report had in total?"

"I don't."

He Xiufen remained standing, asked nothing further, and sat down. As she sat, her hand pressed once on the lid of the metal box.

"Prosecutor may question," Judge Liang said.

Prosecutor Ke shifted the stack of papers in front of her half an inch to the left.

"Witness, on the night of March twentieth, that batch of samples was stored at the Baixi Village Committee office. Did anyone from Hengzheng go there that night?"

"At the time, I didn't know where the samples were kept."

Judge Liang glanced at the clerk.

"Record exactly as spoken."

The clerk acknowledged, and her pen moved across the page for a while.

"When did you learn where the samples were?" Prosecutor Ke asked.

"The day of the sample submission."

"That year's re-test—who at Hengzheng approved it? Was there a written directive?"

"Firm matters were handled verbally."

"After the re-test report came out, did the firm hold any discussion about the conclusion?"

"I read the conclusion. There was no discussion."

Prosecutor Ke tapped her pen once on the paper.

"No further questions."

"Does the defense have any?" Judge Liang asked.

"No," He Xiufen said.

Judge Liang glanced at the watch lying flat on the desk, then looked up.

"Witness, is there anything you wish to add?"

He stood, both hands lifting from the edge of the table, letting them drop to his sides, then returning them.

"No."

"Witness may leave. Please verify and sign the record afterward."

He nodded once toward the judges' bench and turned.

The bailiff pulled the door open.

He walked from the witness stand toward the center of the courtroom, passing the empty defendant's bench without the slightest break in his stride. Passing in front of the defense bench, he didn't turn his head. She saw from the side how his chin tucked slightly inward, all the way to the door.

Light from the corridor spilled in, and he was out.

Before the door had even closed, someone rose from the last row of the gallery, near the door.

Song Qiming. Gray suit. As he stood, he buttoned the lower button of his jacket, slid his chair half an inch back under him, and followed out.

The door shut. Two sets of footsteps moved down the corridor, one after the other—impossible to tell who was following whom.

Someone in the courtroom shifted in their seat, then it went quiet. Zhi'an sat motionless, her eyes still fixed on the empty witness stand. Tang Guo lowered her head to look at her hands. In Ma Jianjun's row, someone leaned toward the aisle, glancing at the door.

Judge Liang looked at his watch.

"We'll take a recess. Court resumes at 4:20."

The scrape of chairs filled the room. The bailiff held the door open, standing to one side. He Xiufen picked up the folded paper from the lid of the metal box, came over, and set it on her table. Her fingers paused on the edge of the paper, then withdrew. She said nothing, turned back, and gathered her own notebook.

She looked down at the paper.

Folded once, with an uneven white tear along one edge.

The sounds around her returned one by one—chairs, footsteps, the clerk gathering papers, someone speaking in a lowered voice. That word did not come back with them. It stayed where it was, as clear as before.

She folded the paper again and tucked it into her notebook.

On that page, besides that one line of questioning, nothing was written.