Chapter 21: In Front of Everyone

"Take your hands off him," Su Ye said.

He had not raised his voice.

The captain glanced at him, bored.

"This is a police matter, young man. Sit down."

"I'd like to ask you a question first." Su Ye came around the table slowly, straightening his cuffs. "Who made the report?"

"That's confidential."

"What time was it made?"

"Sir..."

"The wine tested pink eight minutes ago. Nobody at this table has called anyone." He looked around the table.

"Did anyone here call the police?"

Nobody answered.

"You arrived knowing about the poison before anyone at this table did, Captain."

Su Ye's eyes did not leave him.

"You said attempted poisoning. We only found the poison tonight."

The captain's jaw tightened.

"We received a call."

"When?"

"Earlier."

"Before the dinner," said the lawyer, very quietly. "Officer, would you mind reading the time of the report from your radio log?"

The younger officer hesitated.

He was perhaps twenty-six, with a plain, honest face, and he had gone pale.

He took the radio from his belt, thumbed a button, and listened to a flat voice repeat a number.

"Six fifty," he said. "The report came in at six fifty."

"The family was still arriving at six fifty," Su Ye said.

"Constable," the captain said sharply.

"It says six fifty, sir."

The younger man had not moved the handcuffs from Lu Chen's wrists, but his grip had loosened.

Lu Chen looked at Su Lu.

She sat very straight, with one hand around the stem of her empty glass.

Her face was blank.

"There's more," Ma Rui said.

He was crying quietly and did not seem to know it.

He took out his phone and pressed a button, and a man's voice filled the dining room, thick with beer.

It said a woman in a cream coat had paid him four thousand yuan.

The job was to keep cell nine empty on the eighteenth for a new inmate called Lu Chen.

"That's the guard at the city detention center," Ma Rui said. "My friend's cousin recorded him last night, in a bar. He's willing to say so."

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