Late at night, there was silence.

I flipped through my Weibo and reminisced about some of the previous cases.

It's a June day.

The siren roared, and Xiao Liu drove the police car, carrying Tang Zhenguo and me to Ganning Town at high speed.

Today is the day of the market in the town, there are a lot of people, there are a lot of cars, after entering the town, there is a big traffic jam. I learned from Lao Lu over the phone that the scene of the crime was only about a ten-minute walk from the town, so I simply got out of the car and rushed to the scene of the crime on foot, followed by Tang Zhenguo.

When we were about to reach the scene of the crime, I noticed that the country road on the bank of the river was crowded with people, and many villagers had gathered. They looked eagerly, craned their long necks toward the beach below the road, like a flock of begging ducks.

I squeezed through the crowd and came to the river, only to see Liu Lili and another forensic doctor squatting on the bank to examine the body, and I was standing about 5 meters away from the body, and I could already smell a rancid smell.

"Old Lu, what's the situation?" I walked over to Lao Lu, who was frowning and contemplative, and asked.

Lao Lu said: "A headless female corpse was found by a villager who was chasing ducks this morning, and the forensic doctor preliminarily determined that she had been dead for more than two months. ”

"Been dead for more than two months? Only then did you find out? I'll take a look. As I spoke, I asked one of the surveyors for a plastic cap and mask, and took out the plastic gloves I had brought with me and put them on my hands.

The body was packed in a large white plastic woven bag with some patterns and words on it, but I couldn't read the exact contents because it was pressed by the body and the sludge was sticking to it.

The blue plastic evidence box next to the body was uncovered, and inside the box were four stones and a piece of twine. Apparently, the four stones were used to increase their weight in a plastic woven bag, and their purpose was to sink the corpse.

I checked the four stones, and there were no signs of water impact on the stones, and it was clear that they were not from the Ganning River. So what is the geographical scope of these stones? I took a closer look at the stones, and almost every stone had traces of moss on them, apparently they had been placed in a dark, damp place.

I checked the hemp rope again, and it was about a meter long and as thick as an adult's little thumb. It is a jute rope made of three thinner strands of twine tightly wound with each other. This kind of jute hemp rope has the advantages of wear resistance, corrosion resistance, rain resistance, and easy use, and is also widely used. Of course, the main use is to tie the tie.

However, this hemp rope has been blistered, so the clues that can be found on the hemp rope are quite limited. If it has not been blistered, you may be able to find the remnants of something it once tied up in the gap between the hemp ropes, which is very helpful in solving the case.

Liu Lili had done a preliminary autopsy on the headless female corpse, she pushed the black-framed glasses frame on the bridge of her nose with the back of her hand, and said to me: "This is a female corpse around 30 years old, the time of death is more than two months, the body is highly decomposed, but no fatal injuries were found on the body, so I estimate that the fatal injuries are on the head." ”

I frowned, looked at the neck of the naked female corpse, and crouched down to get a closer look.

"Liu Lili, look here." I pointed to the broken neck and said, "There is subcutaneous bleeding in the neck wound, and this purple spot is obviously bleeding caused by the rupture of the capillaries in the neck of the deceased before his death. What can cause this situation is that the deceased was strongly choked before his death. I estimate that the deceased was choked to death and then beheaded. ”

Liu Lili nodded and said, "Indeed, this purple spot is a typical bruise left after the neck is pinched, Brother Ouyang, your eyesight is really good." ”

I said, "It's nothing, even if I don't find this detail, you will find out when you bring the body back to the forensic identification center." ”

Liu Lili looked at me and snorted.

I said, "When you perform a detailed autopsy on the corpse, pay attention to whether this female corpse has a history of childbirth and whether she was sexually assaulted before her death?" Because most of the killings of young women are related to love killings. ”

It is pitiful and pathetic to hate from love.

Several forensic doctors loaded the headless woman's body into a white body bag and loaded it into the car.

I took a closer look at the plastic woven bag that contained the corpse from the inside out. This plastic woven bag is a kind of chemical fertilizer with a brand called 'Huawang', and the words 'water-soluble powder fertilizer' are also written on the bag.

It can be inferred that this chemical fertilizer is mainly suitable for flowers and plants, so the origin of this plastic woven bag is of course not from ordinary farmers, it is very likely to be from flower farmers.

When I opened the plastic bag, I found that the lodging of aquatic plants under the plastic bag was very distinctive, and the lodging of those aquatic plants was not chaotic, but orderly lodging in one direction, and this direction was the direction of the water flow. It shows that this is not the place where the murderer dumped the body, but the body was hit by the water and ran aground on this tidal flat.

As for the reason for the stranding, I guess it was because the heavy rain a week ago caused the river to rise, and the corpse swelled at the bottom of the river, which increased the buoyancy, and the weight of the four stones was not enough for the swollen corpse to continue to sink to the bottom of the river, so the corpse was suspended in the middle of the water, and after the river rose, it was stranded here by chance.

I told Lao Lu what I found, and I was sure that the body must have been dumped in the upper reaches of the Ganning River, so I hoped that Lao Lu would send more people to find the place where the body was dumped.

I estimate that there will be traces of blood left at the site where the body is dumped, because the body has been decapitated, and it is obviously very difficult to dispose of the body without a trace of blood.

I went up the river along the shore, and of course sometimes there was no road, so I had to go back to the road and continue to check. My purpose in doing this is to see where it is more appropriate to throw a corpse.

However, I found that it was very difficult to sink the body to the bottom of the river if it was dumped on the shore, because the water near the shore was relatively shallow, and the plastic woven bag containing the body was easy to find. In addition, the time to throw the corpse was two months ago, the dry period has just passed, and the wet season has not yet arrived, so it is even more impossible to choose to throw the corpse on the shore.

So where is the best place to choose to dump the body? Apparently in the middle of the river.

There are two reasonable ways to dump a body in the middle of the river, the first is to take a boat to the middle of the river, and the second is to dump the body in the middle of the bridge.

The first type of throwing corpses by boat was quickly rejected by me, because it is not only cumbersome, but also leaves clues to the crime on the boat, and the limited number of people who have the conditions to dump corpses by boat, I think this kind of corpse dumping is very unlikely.

Then the focus is on throwing the body off the bridge.

One kilometre upstream from the scene of the crime, there is a cement bridge without guardrails, although this bridge is a cement bridge, but it is very simple, only pedestrians and motorcycles can pass through. Of course, there are very few bicycles in a mountainous area like this.

Although the bridge is not far from the town and there are residents around, there is no monitoring equipment here. Although there are many pedestrians coming and going here during the rush, in the middle of the night in the countryside, it is also dark and silent. So it is very likely that the murderer chose to dump the body on this bridge late at night.

Lao Lu took the criminal police and the investigation team to temporarily block the bridge and began to look for clues on the bridge.

Sure enough, in the center of the bridge, near the side of the bridge upstream, the survey team found a bloody stain, which had become dark brown and had apparently been some time coming. The investigation team collected some blood-stained samples, and as long as DNA comparison was carried out in the scientific laboratory, it was possible to prove whether it was the blood of the deceased and whether it was the first place where the body was dumped.

At the forensic identification center, I participated in Liu Lili's autopsy of the headless female corpse.

The basic signs of the deceased are first determined. The female corpse was about 157 centimeters tall and weighed less than 45 kilograms, which should be regarded as a relatively standard woman.

Secondly, the neck scar is judged, the neck scar is incoherent and uneven, and the head is excluded from being sawed off by a hacksaw, and it is biased to break due to multiple slashes with sharp weapons, which should be an axe or kitchen knife.

In the end, Liu Lili conducted an autopsy on the female corpse, proving that the woman had not given birth and had not been sexually assaulted before her death.

However, because the female corpse was very badly decomposed, there were almost no unique traces such as birthmarks and scars on the corpse, and there was no head, which brought great difficulty to identifying the corpse.

In the comparative testing of DNA, no match was found in the national DNA database. The bloodstained DNA found on the cement bridge matched the DNA of the female corpse. It was confirmed that the bridge was the place where the body was dumped.

So under the leadership of Lao Lu, the criminal investigation team began to visit and investigate the residents near the cement bridge, hoping to find eyewitnesses from the investigation.

Hard work pays off. During the visit, we met an old man surnamed Li, who provided us with reliable information.

Li Lao said that more than two months ago, he was fishing at night by the Ganning River, and it was about 1 a.m. when he was about to reel in the rod and go home, when a small car drove over.

The car stopped at the side of the concrete bridge and turned off the fire. Li Lao didn't pay attention at the time, but just turned on the flashlight and cleaned up his fishing gear. About three minutes later, Li Lao heard a 'bang' sound of water, which was extremely harsh in the silent night, so Li Lao remembered it deeply. Obviously, this sound of water is likely to be the murderer throwing the body.

However, it was dark at that time, and he was about 50 meters downstream of the bridge on the riverside, so he couldn't see who threw the body, let alone the license plate of the model.

The clues provided by Li Lao are extremely limited, and from the content he provided, it is proved that the murderer came by car to throw the body, so that the scope of the murderer will be greatly expanded. Because of driving, the murderer may be from this town, or from other towns, and more likely to be from urban areas or other districts and counties, or even people from other places.

In terms of the scope of the murderer, I provided a clue. The plastic woven bag containing the corpse was originally used to hold a water-soluble powder fertilizer with the brand name 'Hua Wang'. Then you can investigate, where can you buy a fertilizer like this, and who is its buyer? The killer is likely to be among the people who bought it.

After investigation, it was found that this kind of 'Huawang' fertilizer is only sold in four fertilizer stores in the urban area, and the sales objects are more complex, including flower farmers, garden enterprises, and parks.

I would have liked to narrow it down a little bit more and have the four fertilizer stores identify which fertilizer store sold the woven bags containing the bodies. However, because there is no barcode on the woven bag, there is no special marking, so none of the four fertilizer stores can give a positive answer.

But despite this, the scope is also greatly narrowed. Because a statistic was made on the 'Huawang' fertilizer sold by four fertilizer stores. Among the buyers, there are three flower garden cultivation bases, which are located in Xintian Town, Longsha Town and Wuling Town. There are four landscaping companies, all of which are contracted municipal, community and corporate greening companies, and these companies are headquartered in urban areas, so it is relatively easy to investigate.

Among the buyers, there are also Xishan Park and Nanshan Park, as well as some retail investors. Lao Lu Du sent people to visit and investigate one by one.

What Lao Lu and I did together was to investigate the missing women between the ages of 28 and 30 in the past two months. The age of the deceased is estimated by the amount of carbon-14 in the lens of the deceased's eye, so even if the body is badly decomposed, the error is less than 1.5 years.

Among them, 21 school-age women were reported missing by the public security department. So the police conducted DNA comparisons with the families of the 21 people, but unfortunately, none of the family members matched the DNA of the headless female corpse.

I speculate that the deceased may have been a foreigner, because even if a foreigner is missing, his family will only report the incident to the local police.

Now the whole case is deadlocked. I thought to myself, this suspect has a strong anti-reconnaissance method, he cut off the head of the corpse, stripped the corpse naked, and sank the corpse in the Ganning River, which will obviously bring great difficulties to the investigation. Even the first step is to determine the identity of the deceased.

So there is another question, where did the head of the deceased go?

Lao Lu attached great importance to this headless female corpse case, and he sent water police to salvage the Ganning River with a large iron hook in the shape of a row, hoping to find the head of the deceased at the bottom of the Ganning River. However, the salvage work was carried out for five days, and there was no result, so I had to give up.

Lao Lu also sent police dogs to search along the Ganning River, but the result was still nothing.

Lao Lu was very frustrated by this, and I was at a loss.

The difficulty of this case is not only the inability to confirm the identity of the deceased, but also the inability to find clues to the scene of the dumping of the body. Because the time of throwing the body has been separated by more than two months, the clues that may have been left at the scene have long been destroyed by the wind and rain.

I once thought about looking for the car that transported the corpse by looking at the monitoring probe in Ganning Town, but because the monitoring probe entering the fork in Ganning Town was in the maintenance stage, it was impossible to extract effective video data. This has invisibly increased the difficulty of handling cases.

I know that there are many headless cases around the world that have become unsolved. Even if the case is solved, many similar cases take many years to be solved. The reason why I recorded this case on Weibo is because it is a big problem I have encountered in my career.

The criminal investigation team is still visiting the enterprises and individuals who buy the 'Huawang' fertilizer, but no suspicious ones have been found for the time being.

However, the scientific laboratory of the Criminal Investigation Team examined four stones used for the sunken bodies. One of them was found to be an absorbent stone, which is generally used to make rockeries.

This clue opened my mind. Because the three items of the sunken corpse can be connected.

The first is jute rope, which is mainly used to bind items. Of course, a gardener will also use such hemp rope to fix flowers and branches, etc., to ensure that the plant grows the shape that the gardener wants.

The second is the plastic woven bag of 'Huawang' fertilizer. It's not uncommon for horticulturists to use this fertilizer to fertilize flowers.

Finally, there are these four stones used for the sunken corpse, although three of them are ordinary stones, but one of them is actually a rockery material absorbent stone. It makes sense for a horticulturist to work near a rockery made of absorbent stones.

So I deduced that the killer was a gardener.

Then the focus of the investigation will be on the enterprises or individuals who have hemp ropes used by horticulturists, rockeries made of absorbent stones, and the use of 'Huawang' water-soluble powder fertilizers.

After three days of investigation, there is a company, an individual and a park that have the above conditions at the same time.

Lao Lu and I first investigated the company. This enterprise is a well-known communication company located in the Jiangnan New District.

During the investigation, I found out that the company contracted the maintenance of the garden to a property company, and the company had a good security system and monitoring system. Although it is in line with the absorbent stones, fertilizers and hemp ropes, I found that there is no moss on the rockery of this company that I found on the sunken stone before, because their rockery is located in a very open place with plenty of sunshine, and the possibility of moss growing is very small. So this communications company was ruled out in the first place.

Lao Lu and I found the gentleman who met the conditions for committing the crime. He lives in a small high-rise residential area in the back street of Guanyinyan. To our surprise, this small high-rise residence belongs to this gentleman. It can be said that he is a local tyrant, but an old tyrant who is nearly seventy years old and has gray hair. This gentleman is also surnamed Lu, in order to distinguish him from Lao Lu, I will call him Lu Dong.

After Dong Lu knew our intention, he did not feel disgusted, but happily cooperated with our investigation.

It turned out that Lu Dong used to be in the construction and garden business, and after he retired, he bought this house for the whole family to live in. Because he has been in the garden business all his life, he has a deep affection for garden flowers, so he opened a roof garden on the roof of his house.

In the garden, there are rockeries made of absorbent stones, branches tied with hemp rope, and of course, chemical fertilizers are also used.

However, I immediately ruled out the suspicion of Lu Dong, because although his rockery is made of absorbent stones, it is a complete large absorbent stone, and there are no traces of new fractures in this absorbent stone, although some plants have grown on the absorbent stone, it is obviously not the kind of moss I found.

Another point is that the hemp rope he used to tie the branches was completely different from the hemp rope used to tie the body bag, and the hemp rope he used was very fine, and it seemed to be an imported high-end product of hemp rope. This also shows the difference of Tuhao.

also ruled out the suspicion of Lu Dong.

Finally, it's time to investigate the park.

This park is very famous in Wanzhou, it is called Xishan Park.

Xishan Park is located at the southwest end of the main city of Wanzhou District, facing the Yangtze River and looking at the Three Gorges in the east, with an area of 14.3 hectares, which was founded in the 14th year of the Republic of China (1925), formerly known as "Commercial Port Park". On September 5, 1926, the "September Five" tragedy occurred when the British ships bombarded Wanxian, and in order to commemorate this event, it was renamed "Ninety-Five Park", and Zhu De inscribed the name of the park. In 1928, in order to commemorate the victory of the Northern Expedition, it was renamed "Zhongshan Park", and at the end of the year, it was renamed "Xishan Park". In the 80s of the last century, Xishan Park was included in the "China Famous Garden". The forest in the park is lush, the winding paths are secluded, and the pavilions and pavilions reflect each other. The Bell Tower, the Kurishenko Cemetery, the Quiet Garden, the Wuzhou Pond, the Platform, the Forest and other 6 scenic spots, as well as the zoo and the flower garden, are melted and have their own characteristics.

And the place where Lao Lu and I are going to investigate this time is the Jing Garden located in Xishan Park.

This quiet garden, built by the warlord Yang Sen of the Republic of China, is located at the end of Xishan Park, is a garden covering an area of more than 30 acres. Although this quiet garden is small, it belongs to the same century-old Chinese garden as the major gardens in the south of the Yangtze River.

There is a large stone screen in the courtyard, and the stone screen is engraved with the "Xishan Maxim Tablet" written by Tao Meicen, which is thought-provoking. "Xiaobao Spring" is a major attraction of Jingyuan, the trickle is still flowing, and Yang Sen's inscription poem on the stone wall is still there. The spring water of this "small bag spring" has been scientifically identified, and it has been confirmed that it is a clear spring, and contains dozens of trace elements required by the human body, drinking it not only quenches thirst, but also benefits the body and mind. I was amazed at this, why did this clear stream still keep it untouched around this quiet garden, which was already a filthy and bustling city? I can only sigh at the wonder and wonder of nature.

Of course, what impressed me the most in Jingyuan was the haha mirror in the courtyard. Although I am now in my forties, I will never forget the strange appearance of the mirror.

A female staff member surnamed Zhou in the park received me and Lao Lu, who was nearly 50 years old and was about to retire, so I would call her Sister Zhou.

After I explained my intention to Sister Zhou, Sister Zhou cooperated with us and led us to Jingyuan.

When I entered the Jingyuan, I found the water-absorbing stone rockery, which should be some years old, covered with vegetation and lush greenery. I walked to the foot of the rockery and crouched on the edge of the pool, frowning at the four shallow mud prints and some moss-covered rocks on the edge of the pool.

Apparently, the Corpse Stone was obtained from here.

I wandered around a little more and noticed that there was hemp rope wrapped around the branches of the nearby flowers, and I removed one of the hemp ropes and found that the hemp rope was exactly the same as the hemp rope wrapped around the body bag.

Now it is even more certain that the murderer of the headless female corpse case has an extremely close relationship with Jingyuan, could he be the gardener of Jingyuan?

Under Sister Zhou's leadership, we found a horticulturist who was working next to a cluster of flowers, but this gardener surprised me. She is a skinny girl in her early twenties and about 150 centimeters tall? Could such a woman be a murderer who kills people, beheads and sinks corpses?