4. 夜市偶遇

The archives room grew colder as the afternoon light faded, as if the ghosts of a dozen crossed souls were exhaling their last breaths into the stale air. Lin Yanting sat in the creaking chair, still processing the weight of what Chan Do had just revealed. The photographs on the wall stared back at him—not with accusation, but with the hollow patience of the dead who had waited years to be understood.

He rose and walked along the wall, studying each face in turn. The earliest victim was a man named Ho Ming-kit, a property developer who had been found floating near Lamma Island in 1993. The notation read "Crossed — Autumn Equinox." The next was a woman, a banker's wife, discovered on a junk near Aberdeen in 1994. Then a shipping magnate's nephew in 1995. Then a former government official in 1996. The pattern was there, if you knew where to look—each victim linked by a single thread to the bankruptcy of Chan's father, each one taken on a date that corresponded to some symbolic moment in that old tragedy.

"The Ferryman doesn't kill for pleasure," Chan said from behind him, his voice low and measured. "He kills for symmetry. Every death completes a circle that was broken when my father's signature was forged on that liquidation order. He is not a monster. He is a janitor, cleaning the blood from a floor that should never have been stained."

Yanting turned to face him. "You've known about this for four years. Why didn't you go to the police?"

Chan let out a hollow laugh. "I did. Three times. The first time, the officer on duty laughed and told me to stop reading detective novels. The second time, my report was 'misfiled' and never seen again. The third time, I received a warning—a photograph of my mother's grave, with a small crack on the headstone that hadn't been there before. I understood then that someone in your profession was protecting him, either out of fear or complicity. So I stopped asking for help and started gathering my own evidence."

Yanting's jaw tightened. He thought of Superintendent Kong's evasiveness, of the missing surveillance footage from the piers, of the way crucial documents seemed to vanish from the war room just when they became useful. He had dismissed it as bureaucratic incompetence. Now he was not so sure.

"Who do you think the insider is?" Yanting asked, his voice barely above a whisper.

Chan walked to the desk and opened a drawer, pulling out a thin folder. Inside were photocopies of internal police memos, some of them stamped with classifications that Yanting recognized as above his own clearance level. They detailed the movement of the task force, the shift schedules of officers, and—most damning—a series of correspondence between a senior officer and an unknown party, discussing the Ferryman investigation in terms that were almost proprietary.

"The handwriting is disguised," Chan said, "but the phrasing is unmistakable. Whoever wrote these has been in the force for at least fifteen years. They use colonial-era jargon, references to old case files that were closed before the handover. They're not just a leak—they're a curator. They've been managing this investigation from the inside, feeding information to the Ferryman and feeding misinformation to you."

Yanting's eyes scanned the memos. One of them, dated three weeks before Thomas Kwok's death, contained a detailed profile of the task force's likely next steps—including the suggestion that a deep-cover operative might be deployed. The memo named no one, but it described the operative as "male, early thirties, versatile accent, emotionally volatile." Yanting felt a chill crawl up his spine. That was him. The memo had predicted his assignment before Kong had even approved it.

"Someone in my station knew I was coming before I did," Yanting said, his voice flat with disbelief.

"Someone in your station has been orchestrating this entire dance," Chan corrected. "The Ferryman is a weapon. The insider is the hand that wields it. And you—you are the blade they are trying to sharpen."

Yanting sank back into the chair, his mind racing. Every instinct told him to leave, to report this to his superiors, to shut down the operation and let internal affairs handle the leak. But another instinct—the one that had driven him to become a detective in the first place—whispered that there was no safety in retreat. If the insider had that much access, then any report he filed would be intercepted, altered, or buried. He was already standing on a trapdoor, and the only way out was to keep walking forward.

"What do you propose?" he asked, looking up at Chan.

Chan closed the folder and leaned against the desk, his silhouette sharp against the dying light. "We stop playing defence. We go on the offence. The Ferryman leaves me clues—always one step ahead, always inviting me closer. I have deciphered most of them. The next crossing will occur in four days, on the night of the full moon. The location is an old ferry terminal on the eastern side of the island, one that has been decommissioned since the '80s. I believe he intends to make his final move there—and he expects us to come together."

"Together," Yanting repeated, tasting the word. It felt heavier than it should have.

"I've been alone in this for too long," Chan said, and for the first time, his voice cracked, revealing a vulnerability that he had kept hidden beneath layers of polish and composure. "I have read every file, memorized every date, chased every shadow. But I cannot face him alone—not because I lack courage, but because I lack perspective. You are a detective. You see patterns I might miss. You ask questions I might avoid. And you are the only person in this city who has looked at me and seen something other than a suspect."

Yanting wanted to argue, to point out that he had indeed seen Chan as a suspect, that he still did not fully trust him. But the words died on his lips. Because somewhere in the past forty-eight hours, the line between suspicion and fascination had blurred into something he could not name.

"Four days," Yanting said finally. "That gives us time to prepare. I need to check in with my partner—she's covering for me, but if I disappear for too long, she'll raise alarms."

Chan nodded. "Use a public phone. Don't call from your mobile or from the station. And don't tell her everything. The less she knows, the less she can be used against you."

They left the archives room as the last rays of sunlight bled through the boarded windows. Chan locked the door behind them, and they descended into the dusk-drenched streets, where the neon signs were beginning to flicker to life—crimson, emerald, and electric blue, painting the pavements in a carnival of false cheer.

Yanting found a payphone on a corner near the old Central Market, its metal casing dented and scarred by decades of impatient hands. He inserted a prepaid card and dialled Ma's number. She answered on the second ring.

"Where the hell have you been?" Ma's voice was a sharp whisper, laced with anxiety. "I've been calling your mobile for hours. It keeps going to voicemail."

"Battery died," Yanting lied smoothly. "I've made contact. I need you to do something for me—pull the personnel files for every senior officer who was posted to the Western District before 1993. Include their transfer history, their disciplinary records, and any known associations with property development firms."

There was a pause on the other end. "That's a broad net, Yanting. What am I looking for?"

"A connection to the Chan family bankruptcy. Specifically, to a textile firm called Prosperity Weaving. The partners who signed the liquidation order—I need to know if any of them had relatives or close friends in the force."

Another pause, longer this time. "You're not just investigating a serial killer anymore, are you?"

"No," Yanting admitted. "I'm investigating a conspiracy. And I think it goes all the way to the top."

Ma let out a low breath. "I'll see what I can find. But Yanting—be careful. If you're right, then the people you're hunting are already hunting you back."

"I know." He hung up before she could say more, and leaned against the phone booth, his heart pounding. The street hummed with the evening rush—trams clattering, taxis honking, pedestrians flowing like water around a rock. He was a rock, standing still in the middle of a current that wanted to sweep him away.

Chan was waiting for him at the entrance of a noodle shop, where a small table had been set with two bowls of steaming broth. Yanting joined him, and they ate in silence for a while, the clink of chopsticks against porcelain the only sound between them.

"You're good at lying," Chan observed, not looking up from his bowl. "That call—you sounded calm, convincing. Your partner believes you."

"I've had practice," Yanting replied. "But she's also smart. She'll start digging, and when she finds what I asked for, she'll know I'm in deeper than I told her."

"Will she compromise you?"

Yanting thought about Ma—her loyalty, her sharp instincts, her refusal to let go of a case until it was solved. "No. She'll protect me, even if she doesn't approve. That's who she is."

Chan set down his chopsticks and looked at Yanting with an expression that was unreadable. "You trust her completely."

"With my life."

"And yet you're lying to her."

The question hung in the air, a mirror held up to Yanting's own contradictions. He opened his mouth to respond, but no words came. Because the truth was, he had lied to Ma not because he distrusted her, but because he was afraid of what she would see if she looked too closely. She would see that his interest in Chan Do was no longer purely professional. She would see the way his pulse quickened when Chan smiled. She would see the crack in his armour that the Ferryman's coin had already found.

"Trust is not the same as transparency," Yanting said at last. "I trust her to do the right thing. But the right thing for her might be to pull me out, and I can't afford to be pulled out. Not now."

Chan's lips curved into a faint smile. "You are a man of contradictions, Detective Lin. That's what makes you interesting."

"And you're a man who keeps too many secrets," Yanting countered, but there was no heat in his voice. "Tell me one thing—if the Ferryman is your father's friend, why has he never tried to contact you directly? Why the clues, the games, the long delay?"

Chan's smile faded, replaced by a shadow of old pain. "Because he blames me as much as he blames them. I was my father's son—I inherited his shares, I signed the final papers that dissolved the company. I was abroad at the time, but I could have come back earlier, could have fought the liquidation. I didn't. I chose to stay in London, to finish my degree, to pretend that my father's problems were his alone. The Ferryman knows this. He has been punishing me—by showing me what I could have saved, what I allowed to be destroyed. The victims are his way of saying: 'This is your inheritance, Chan Do. This is what your silence bought.'"

Yanting reached across the table and placed his hand over Chan's, a gesture that surprised them both. "You were young. You couldn't have known."

"I knew enough," Chan whispered, but he did not pull his hand away. "I knew, and I chose to look away. That is a sin that no amount of tracking will ever absolve."

They sat in silence, the noodle shop's fluorescent hum filling the space between them. Outside, the night had fully fallen, and the neon glow cast trembling reflections on the wet pavement. Yanting felt the weight of the coin in his pocket, a cold round anchor that tethered him to a case that was no longer just a case.

"You said the crossing is in four days," Yanting said, breaking the stillness. "What happens if we don't go?"

"The Ferryman will find another victim," Chan replied, his voice flat. "And another. And another. He has a list that is longer than both of us will ever know. But if we go—if we show up at the terminal and present ourselves as the final passengers—he may stop. He may finally rest. Or he may take us down with him."

"Those are not good odds."

"They never are."

Yanting withdrew his hand and picked up his bowl, draining the last of the broth. The salt and warmth did little to settle his nerves. He thought about the photographs on the wall, the crosses beside each name, the meticulous record of a decade-long obsession. And he thought about the man beside him—the man who had chosen to spend his life chasing a ghost, who had built an archive of grief, who had just admitted that he carried guilt as heavy as any murderer's.

"I'll be there," Yanting said. "But I'm not doing this for your absolution. I'm doing it because I want to see this end."

Chan nodded, as if he had expected nothing less. "Then we meet at the old Eastern Ferry Terminal, midnight, the night of the full moon. Bring nothing that can be traced. And don't tell anyone—not even your partner."

They parted at the noodle shop's entrance, two figures melting into the nocturnal tide. Yanting walked back toward his apartment, his mind churning with fragments—the coin, the note, the archive, the memos, and the persistent, unsettling feeling that every move he made was being watched.

When he reached his building, he paused at the lobby and checked his mailbox out of habit. Inside was a single envelope, cream-colored, no stamp, no return address. He tore it open with trembling hands.

Inside was a photograph of Chan Do, taken from a distance, sitting at the noodle shop with Yanting. The timestamp on the bottom read: 20:13, tonight. On the back, in that same elegant calligraphy, was written: "You have chosen your crossing. I will choose the boat."

Yanting crumpled the photograph and shoved it into his pocket. The Ferryman knew about their meeting. He had been watching them both, not just at the market, but now—tonight—at their most vulnerable. And he was telling them, without ambiguity, that they were not the hunters anymore.

He looked up at the city's skyline, a jagged silhouette of towers and cranes against a bruised purple sky. Somewhere out there, a man with a boat and a collection of bronze coins was preparing for the final crossing. And somewhere closer, perhaps in the lobby itself, a pair of eyes was waiting for him to make the next move.

Yanting stepped into the elevator and pressed the button for his floor. As the doors slid shut, he caught a glimpse of his own reflection in the polished brass—a man with shadows under his eyes and a coin in his pocket, riding up to face a night that had only just begun.

He did not sleep that night. He lay on his bed, staring at the ceiling, listening to the distant hum of ferries crossing the harbour. Each one carried a different cargo, a different fate. And somewhere among them, the Ferryman was counting down the hours, waiting for the moon to rise and the tide to turn.

At dawn, Yanting made a decision. He would not wait for the full moon. He would find the insider first, tear the conspiracy apart from its root, and use whatever leverage he gained to force the Ferryman into the open. It was reckless, it was dangerous, and it would likely get him killed.

But it was the only move left on the board.

He reached for his phone and dialled Ma's number again. This time, he would tell her everything—or at least enough to make her an ally in what was about to become a war.

The phone rang. She answered.

"I need your help," Yanting said, his voice steady. "And I need you to promise me one thing—no matter what you hear, no matter what they tell you, don't let them pull me in until I've finished what I started."

Ma was silent for a long moment. Then she said, "I always knew you'd be the death of me, Yanting. Tell me where you are. I'll bring coffee."

He smiled—the first genuine smile in days—and gave her the address.

The game had changed. And the final move was his to make.