The promissory note’s flaws ran far deeper than just the date.
The next afternoon Luo Youtian carried back a stack of old ledgers from the commune. On top lay the supply and marketing cooperative’s record of transactions from September the year before last. The pages were warped from dampness giving off a musty scent as they were turned.
“I checked over at the health clinic” he said. “Shen Yumei was indeed transferred to the county hospital on the seventh day of that ninth lunar month.” He paused. “And on that very same day the cooperative’s books show a three-hundred-yuan disbursement listed as ‘loan to Shen Yumei.’”
Ma Guifen straightened instantly. “There! You see? Public records do not lie on my behalf!”
“Who was the bookkeeper?” Shen Qinghan asked.
Luo Youtian did not answer he simply turned the ledger around.
At the foot of the page was a tiny single character Zhao.
Zhao Chengliang.
“Chengliang was the bookkeeper what could possibly be wrong with his entries?” Ma Guifen demanded.
“From which cash box was that money drawn?”
“Public funds come from the public cash box obviously.”
“Does the cooperative hand out three-hundred-yuan loans to private individuals just like that?”
Luo Youtian cleared his throat. “It was not listed as an official loan marked as an advance payment. It should have been cleared later.”
Everyone flipped forward.
Ten days later that exact same three hundred yuan was reversed. The note read Repaid by the Shen family. In other words on paper the money had left the cooperative for only ten days before being returned.
If Shen Yumei had used it for medical treatment how could a gravely ill woman have come up with the sum to pay it back so quickly?
More suspicious still the Zhao family’s promissory note had never been surrendered and was now being used to press Shen Qinghan for repayment.
“Perhaps I repaid it on her behalf” Zhao Chengliang said.
“What was your monthly salary the year before last?” Shen Qinghan asked.
“That is my private business.”
“If you repaid three hundred yuan on my mother’s behalf it is no longer private business. Where did you get the money?”
Zhao Chengliang fell silent.
He earned little more than thirty yuan a month. Board and lodging went to his mother there was no way he could have suddenly come into three hundred yuan unless he had diverted funds from elsewhere.
The cooperative’s director was summoned. A man in his forties he began by reprimanding Zhao Chengliang. “Advances over fifty yuan require my signature. Why was I never shown this entry?”
And yet the director’s signature was clearly there.
“That is your handwriting” Zhao Chengliang said.
The director leaned in. His expression darkened. “It looks like it but it is not mine. When I write approved the heart component of the final character is connected in one stroke.”
On the ledger the characters were neatly formed except the four dots of the heart component were entirely separate.
A cold dread settled over Shen Qinghan.
In her past life Zhao Chengliang had later made a name for himself forging signatures impersonating others to collect wages altering delivery slips for his sister-in-law. When exposed he would always claim he was merely helping the family tide things over. She had seen him practicing the same name over and over on scrap paper until not even the signatory could tell the difference.
So he had possessed that skill even back then.
“Place the note beside the ledger” she said.
Side by side the two documents revealed a shared tell. The characters Shen Yumei and the director’s signature seemed distinct but certain strokes bore the same habit a flick upward at the end of horizontal lines and strokes cut short too sharply. Most notably the final dot in both Yu and Yi slanted distinctly to the right.
“The same hand wrote both” Shen Qinghan said pointing it out. “The dots are always flicked toward the right.”
Zhao Chengliang’s composure finally fractured.
The director seized his wrist. “Explain yourself! What did you do with that three hundred yuan?”
“Director you cannot prove this from a few strokes alone.”
“You kept the books and you held the keys at the time!”
“I was on rotation with two others during those ten days.” He quickly named two colleagues seeking to cast suspicion elsewhere.
The director proposed taking the ledger back to the cooperative for a full audit but Luo Youtian objected. “This concerns a betrothal and debt dispute. The original must remain sealed here in the village both parties shall retain certified copies.”
“Public records stay in public custody.”
Tempers rose.
Then Shen Qinghan recalled a scene from her past life a disputed ledger arguments over who held authority shouting until dusk only for the original to be returned to the office where it was reported chewed by rats the next morning the critical page reduced to confetti.
“The original may go back to the cooperative” she said at once. “But first two verbatim copies shall be made before witnesses. Each page will be signed across its edge by all present. And an impression of the promissory note will be taken for comparison.”
“You do not understand official procedure” the director said impatiently.
“I do not which is why we shall ask Comrade Chen to decide.”
Comrade Chen the commune cadre was still in the village following the poisoning incident. He listened and ruled the original would be returned to the unit the village and interested parties would keep copies photographs would be taken for county records and carbon paper could be used to produce duplicates immediately.
“I shall fetch the carbon paper” Zhao Chengliang offered. “We have some at the cooperative.”
“No” Shen Qinghan said meeting his gaze. “You will not touch the books today.”
“And why not?”
“Because you are the person under investigation.”
Comrade Chen assigned another bookkeeper to collect the supplies. Zhao Chengliang said no more but his eyes never left the ledger.
By late afternoon both copies were complete. The original was placed in a canvas pouch sealed with paper stamped by Comrade Chen Luo Youtian and two witnesses. Shen Qinghan folded her copy and tucked it close against her chest.
The paper pressed uncomfortably against her ribs but she did not shift it. Pain served as a reminder what she had preserved had not come easily.
Zhou Yanchuan was absent that day.
No one stood guard at her door no military uniform deterred the Zhao family. And yet step by step she had secured the fragile document that might otherwise have vanished.
Before leaving the village office she took three extra precautions she had diagonal lines drawn across every blank space to prevent tampering she had the director publicly confirm the page count and she asked Aunt Sun to note the tiny tear in the seal’s top-left corner. She offered no explanation saying only that having once been robbed of her wedding veil she would not let her papers be stolen too.
The villagers sighed in sympathy and asked no further questions. Only Zhao Chengliang lingered on the porch his gaze moving from the diagonal lines to her hands seeing the woman he had once dismissed as too indifferent to even check her own work points with new eyes.
That night the director rode back to the commune. Zhao Chengliang asked to return to his post but was suspended on the spot and ordered to remain in the village pending inquiry. He agreed with unnerving calm.
Walking back to the old family home Shen Qinghan’s unease grew. Zhao Chengliang was not the sort to wait passively.
She left her main copy with Aunt Sun for safekeeping carrying only an insignificant guest list home. Shortly after midnight soft footsteps circled the yard.
A thin wire slipped through the door crack probing at the latch.
Shen Qinghan lit no lamp. She stood behind the door rolling pin in hand.
The latch had barely lifted when a man’s voice spoke from outside.
“Suspended from duty and yet you sneak here in the dead of night. What business do you have at the Shen family home?”
Footsteps scrambled back.
Through the gap in the shutter Shen Qinghan saw Zhou Yanchuan standing in the moonlight. In one hand he held a medical bag with the other he had clamped a firm grip on Zhao Chengliang’s wrist.
Clutched in Zhao Chengliang’s palm was a sharply pointed metal wire.