S.C.I Mystery Series Volume 6 Chapter 50

The Culinary Murderer 02 – Doors and Walls

---

Nearly ten years ago, Bai Ye spent a period of time living in a small seaside town in a certain South American country.

He rented a room in the home of a fishing family.

The landlords were an elderly couple, very simple and honest people. They had two sons, the elder was away at sea for long stretches fishing, while the younger worked as a labourer at a factory that processed and canned seafood.

The seaside town had been beautiful and tranquil, quite peaceful, and sparsely populated.

One day, the younger son of the landlord, Anton, came home looking gloomy. Bai Ye asked him what was wrong, and he replied that the canning factory he worked at was about to shut down. He was a little worried about whether he would even get paid for that month.

At the time, Anton had been saving up for tuition fees, so every month's wages were important.

Bai Ye had been puzzled. The canning factory's business always seemed good, why would it suddenly shut down?

Anton said, "The boss disappeared, he's been missing for half a month now."

Bai Ye also knew the owner of the canning factory. His name was Lucas, a cheerful, flirtatious, and lecherous man.

"Did Lucas get caught two-timing again?" the landlady, who had been sun-drying fish, overheard and sighed as she shook her head. "He used to be such a shy young lad when he was younger."

"Ai..." Anton had been torn between waiting for the boss to return or going out to look for another job.

"What did his family say?" Bai Ye asked.

"Neither he nor his wife are at home. Feels like no one's lived there in ages," Anton said. "The factory reported it to the police. Dominic has been searching for a week and hasn't found even a ghost of a trace."

Dominic was the sheriff of the town. He was getting on in years and nearing retirement. He lived nearby and was well acquainted with both Anton's family and Bai Ye.

That evening, Anton's family ended up arguing over whether he should change jobs. His mother advised him to wait a little longer, but Anton had been worried that if he waited too long, he'd miss the start of the academic term.

Bai Ye's place had been close by, and hearing the commotion, he stepped out and went to find Sheriff Dominic.

When Dominic heard that Bai Ye wanted to take a look at Lucas's factory and house, he readily agreed to accompany him.

Dominic had known about Bai Ye's "identity" and was naturally pleased to see him offering to help.

He, too, had found Lucas's disappearance suspicious. Although the man had been sloppy and a known philanderer, he had always taken the factory seriously. In all these years, something like this, vanishing without reason, had never happened.

Bai Ye went with Dominic to the canning factory first.

To Bai Ye's surprise, it had been a well-equipped facility, with a fairly high degree of mechanisation. Many of the processes were sterile.

Bai Ye asked Dominic, "So, the chances of him having been canned are pretty low, aren't they?"

Dominic had been amused by Bai Ye, and shaking his head, replied, "The machines' on-off records are all logged, and there are surveillance cameras in the factory. We've checked it all, there's no way he died in the factory."

Bai Ye then went to have a look at Lucas's office, but found nothing unusual. However, one thing caught his attention, a fish tank. The tank had sand and rocks, but not a single fish. Yet the water had been very clean, not the way an abandoned tank would be.

After leaving the factory, the two of them went to Lucas's home.

Lucas lived in a high-end apartment block in the centre of the town. He was someone who enjoyed nightlife, so he preferred living in the city.

The apartment was unusually tidy, quite at odds with the impression Lucas gave off. It had the feel of a cosy little home for a couple. Bai Ye also heard from Anton that although Lucas's wife was fierce, she loved him very much.

Bai Ye stood in the middle of the living room with his arms folded, surveying his surroundings.

At that moment, he noticed there was also a fish tank on a cabinet against the wall. But just like the one in Lucas's office, it contained nothing but sea sand and stones.

"We sprayed the entire apartment with luminol reagent and got no traces of blood," said Dominick, spreading his hands – it was now a situation where the people were neither seen alive nor found dead.

Bai Ye pointed towards the fish tank in the corner with some interest and asked, "What was kept in this tank?"

Previously, Bai Ye assumed the tank was empty, but just now he thought he had seen something moving beneath the sea sand.

Dominick glanced over and chuckled. "Have you heard of a Bobbit worm?"

Dominick then began to explain the peculiarities of the Bobbit worm to Bai Ye, and afterwards fetched some dried fish from beneath the tank and tossed it inside.

Only then did Bai Ye, for the first time, see the strange creature.

Dominick said, "Lucas used to keep a tank of fish. Somehow, a Bobbit worm ended up in the sand, and it ate all the fish. He tried to remove it with tweezers, but the worm snapped in half, and a few days later, there were two of them. From then on, he became obsessed with the worm, he kept them apart, one at home, one at the factory."

Hearing this, Bai Ye didn't reply. He simply stood there staring blankly at the worm in the tank.

After quite a while, Bai Ye suddenly lifted his head and began inspecting the air conditioning vents, ventilation ducts, and skylights in the room. He even knocked on the walls, listening carefully as he did so.

Dominick tilted his head, watching him. "You think the pair of them were murdered and sealed into the concrete walls? You sound like those girls at our precinct who read too many crime novels."

Bai Ye shot him a sideways glance.

Dominick just chuckled.

After knocking on the wall for a bit, Bai Ye stood still and thought for a moment. Then he asked, "When we came in earlier, there were CCTV cameras at the entrance to the building. Did you catch anything?"

Dominick blinked and asked curiously, "How did you know?"

Bai Ye replied, "Why would those girls at your precinct suspect the couple had been killed and sealed in the walls? It means you're looking for bodies, and you think they're here."

Dominick clicked his tongue. "You really are as sharp as a wild animal... but the police investigation is confidential, I can't reveal anything to you..."

Bai Ye waved a hand, telling him to cut it out.

Dominick had no choice but to speak more quietly. "This is a high-end neighbourhood, so there's quite a bit of surveillance... We saw Lucas and his wife enter the building a week ago, but they've never come out since. So we actually already turned this apartment inside out with a fine-tooth comb, but there's no one here, they just vanished from right inside their own home."

"Vanished..." Bai Ye murmured to himself, then suddenly asked Dominic, "Were you close with Lucas?"

Dominic said they got on quite well, they'd known each other for over twenty years.

Bai Ye asked, "The neighbour next door..."

Dominic spread his hands and said that a young woman lived next door, but a few days ago she had gone travelling with a suitcase. He'd wanted to ask her some questions as well.

"You haven't seen her?"

Dominic shook his head. "She's not here..."

"Are you sure?" Bai Ye said as he began to search the apartment. In the end, he found a hairpin in the bathroom, then stepped out and headed straight for the apartment next door.

Watching Bai Ye get ready to pry open the neighbour's door, Dominic cried out, "Whoa, whoa, whoa! We don't have a warrant..."

"She's not here," Bai Ye replied, and with a click, had already picked the lock.

He pushed the door open and turned on the light.

The room was just as tidy, and the décor, how to put it... had a rather sultry flair to it. At a glance, it was clearly the room of a beautiful woman living alone.

On first glance, nothing seemed out of the ordinary. As he walked through the room, Bai Ye began knocking and tapping, just as he had done in the other apartment.

Dominic watched him suspiciously.

After a long while, Bai Ye stopped in front of a wall in the bathroom.

The wall was tiled, it looked completely ordinary.

Suddenly, Bai Ye raised his foot towards the wall.

"Hey, hey, hey!" Dominic quickly stopped him and asked, "What's behind there?"

"A corpse," Bai Ye replied.

"A... a corpse?" Dominic asked nervously, "L... Lucas?"

"Besides the corpse, there's a door," Bai Ye answered calmly.

"A door?" Dominic was surprised. "It's connected on both sides? But the apartment next door clearly doesn't have..."

"Dominic, what do you think counts as a door?" Bai Ye asked him in return.

Dominic tilted his head, looked at Bai Ye in confusion. "What... what's a door? Something that opens, can be locked, well, just a door..."

"And what about the back of a door?" Bai Ye seemed to adjust his angle, then raised his leg again.

"The back of a door?"

"A door with no handle, no keyhole, a door made of stone, is that still a door, or is it a wall?" As Bai Ye finished speaking, he kicked the wall hard.

With a loud bang, a hole appeared in the tiled wall, and it turned out to be wood underneath.

But what lay beyond wasn't the next room, it was a dark, cramped space.

Dominic looked utterly bewildered, frowning as he stared into the pitch-black hole. Although the lighting was poor, he could still make out splattered blackish-red bloodstains on the walls, and he caught a whiff of a stench he knew all too well, a putrid, unsettling smell.

The moment he thought of Lucas and his wife's corpses being inside, Dominic felt his stomach churn violently.

Bai Ye reached his hand into the hole to feel around, and then there was a click...

Dominic heard a clicking sound coming from the wall, and then a gap appeared along the edge. With a strong pull, Bai Ye wrenched the entire wall open. What lay before them turned out to be a door that had been sealed over with tiles. On closer inspection, it wasn't real tiling at all, but rather 3D wallpaper stuck on with adhesive.

Frowning, Dominic then heard Bai Ye say, "The ones who died probably weren't Lucas and his wife."

"No?!" Dominic's face was full of question marks. "Then...?"

"However..." Bai Ye opened the door as he spoke, "they're most likely the murderers."

Dominic finally saw what was behind the wall, a hidden compartment.

It was a tiny room, roughly one square metre in size, enclosed by four walls.

The wall directly opposite them looked like solid stone, but there was a door handle on it, along with six bolts, one at the top, one at the bottom, and four along the side.

Suddenly, Dominic understood what Bai Ye had meant with his earlier question – Such a door might be considered a door from this side, but from the other side, it appeared to be just a wall. No wonder they hadn't found any passageway earlier, it could only be opened from next door!

Facing the stone door was another one, the wooden door Bai Ye had kicked a hole in just now.

After peeling away the adhesive wallpaper, it became clear this was a normal door. The lock faced the bathroom, while the handle was on the side of the hidden compartment.

Bai Ye searched the bathroom and eventually found a small cosmetic case, from which he took a key, it fit the lock perfectly.

Dominic finally understood the mechanics of the two doors. The neighbour could open both, but from Lucas's side, they could only open the wooden door, and only if the neighbour had first opened the stone one.

Inside the dim little compartment lay a woman's corpse, already starting to decompose... A preliminary identification showed it was the neighbour.

On the wall between the two doors, directly in front of the body, there was also a small metal hatch with a handle, which looked like it could be opened.

Dominic reached out and pulled it open, revealing an opening just big enough for a person to crawl through.

The space was splattered with blood.

Wearing a grave expression, Dominic crawled through the hole. After moving forward for a bit, he found a ventilation shaft ahead. He pushed it open and emerged into the ceiling cavity of the apartment downstairs, where a small stairway led down.

Going down the stairs, he arrived in another apartment.

But this one was unoccupied, a vacant room.

Inside, there was only a cardboard box, which contained two sets of clothes.

Dominic had been poring over the surveillance footage for days, and the moment he saw them, he recognised the outfits, they were what Lucas and his wife had been wearing when they entered the building.

"They stashed disguises here and changed into them, pretending to be someone else when coming and going, didn't they?" Dominic asked Bai Ye.

Bai Ye nodded, then crouched down and picked up a strand of grey-white hair from the floor. "They probably disguised themselves as an elderly couple."

Dominic rubbed his hair, which was as messy as a bird's nest. "I don't get it, did the two of them kill the woman next door? But that woman clearly left..."

As he said this, Dominic thought again. In fact, the surveillance footage wasn't all that clear. If Lucas's wife had been wearing the neighbour's clothes and a wig and came out from the apartment next door, it would indeed have been easy to mistake her identity...

Dominic's mouth fell open as he looked at Bai Ye. "The two of them killed the woman next door? Went to all that trouble? Why?"

Bai Ye shrugged, indicating that it was up to Dominic to investigate, but judging by the design of the hidden compartment, the neighbour was probably Lucas's mistress.

Dominic looked at him with a hint of admiration and asked, "How did you think of that? We might never have found that compartment, not in a lifetime."

"The Bobbit worm, that's probably where Lucas got the idea," Bai Ye replied casually and asked Dominic, "What'll happen to the canning factory now?"

"It's not going to survive, it'll be sold off, I expect."

"Make sure Anton's wages are settled for this month," Bai Ye reminded him, and asked, "Do you know of any decent jobs you could recommend to Anton?"

"Wages?" Dominic asked Bai Ye, not sure whether to laugh or cry, "You... came all this way just for Anton's pay?"

Bai Ye pointed to himself, "I want my wages too."

Dominic reached into his pocket, after all, Bai Ye had helped the police solve such a major case, there was surely a reward due.

But instead, Bai Ye took out a cup that looked like it was made of tin or silver and said, "I want this."

Dominic was confused. "Where did you get that?"

Bai Ye raised a hand and pointed at the ceiling, indicating that he'd found it in the space above.

Dominic, overwhelmed by the sheer volume of information he'd just absorbed, didn't bother to question it any further. He gestured for Bai Ye to take it if he liked, it was something he'd picked up anyway.

After that, Dominic phoned his colleagues, while Bai Ye, unconcerned with the follow-up, headed home.

......

Outside the apartment in S City where the "Hidden God" incident had occurred. (Angel: Hidden God, or 神隐, is Internet slang meaning "being hidden by gods and monsters", or being entertained by them, and disappearing from human society with unknown whereabouts.)

Ding Rui, head of the missing persons investigation unit, received a phone call from Zhan Zhao. After hearing what Zhan Zhao had to say, Ding Rui ordered someone to pry open the apartment next door.

After some searching, they also found a "suspicious" wall.

Once it was broken through, what met their eyes was also a blood-soaked hidden compartment.

Ding Rui stared at the corpse inside for a long time without speaking.

Zhan Zhao, waiting for an update on the other end of the line, asked, "Well? Have you found the body?"

"We have, Dr. Zhan," Ding Rui replied, glancing at the blood-streaked walls and then down at the corpse on the floor. Something didn't quite add up, so he said to Zhan Zhao, "I'll send you a photo."

A short while later, Zhan Zhao, who had just arrived at the seafood market by elevator, opened the image Ding Rui had sent to his phone. He stopped in his tracks and stared in surprise. "Huh?!"

Bai Yutang leaned in for a look and saw the corpse of a cat lying in a room full of blood.

The two men exchanged puzzled glances. Isn't the victim supposed to be a person? It's actually the body of a cat?!

‿︵‿︵ʚ˚̣̣̣͙ɞ・❉・ ʚ˚̣̣̣͙ɞ‿︵‿︵

Previous Chapter | TOC |

Translator Notes

Please feel free to comment any mistakes I made so I can improve and do better as I go through the book.

Translated: May 9, 2025 by Angel

Edited: July 23, 2025 by Soojin