Lei Mi - Profiler

It took Tai Wei a long time to gather his thoughts. At last, he said, "So what you're saying is, the killer was copying Harold Shipman's criminal method?"

"Exactly. Now as you'll recall, the victim at the second crime scene was found with a pornographic Japanese manga in her handbag. Its contents included scenes of torture fetishism and homosexuality. I believe this comic was meant to be a clue to the third crime, during which a seven-year-old girl was tortured to death." Saying this, Fang Mu took several more photocopied papers and placed them in Tai Wei's hands.

"These documents are about the infamous Japanese serial killer Tsutomu Miyazaki. He was born prematurely, leaving him with deformed carpal bones in both hands. Because of this, he developed an inferiority complex from a young age. Although he did not like to interact with other people," he said, "he loved watching pornographic anime. When he was arrested, police discovered over six thousand titles of pornographic anime in his apartment, much of which was focused on torture fetishism. Miyazaki committed his first murder in 1988. The victim was a four-year-old girl. After strangling her to death, Miyazaki raped her corpse and then filmed a close-up of her genitals, which he later used to masturbate. In October and December of that year, and then in June of the following, he committed three more murders. The victims were all little girls no older than seven, and after torturing each to death, he raped their corpses. Most perversely, in January of 1989, the killer returned to the site where he had buried the first victim's body and collected her decomposed remains. Then he packed them in a cardboard box and sent them to her family. Inside, he also left a short, cryptic note describing the crime. Later, he would also send similar notes to several relatively large newspapers. Then, in July of 1989, Miyazaki was arrested. In 1996, the Tokyo district court sentenced him to death; however, he is still appealing the charge to this day."

Hearing all this, Tai Wei muttered to himself. "This…this is simply identical to the Jin Qiao case." Then, too impatient to wait for Fang Mu, he grabbed the documents stacked on top of the fourth case folder and said, "What about this one? Who was he copying here?"

"Ed Gein, the infamous American serial killer." For some reason, whether exhaustion or something else, Fang Mu's voice had grown quiet and his expression was even gloomier than before.

"When the body of Jin Qiao was discovered, she was holding a broken piece of ceramic pottery in her hand. This piece came from a copy of a vase originally created by the British artist Grayson Perry, who is a transvestite. The most famous transvestite serial killer in history was Ed Gein. For his whole life, Gein lived under the stern and tyrannical eye of his mother. When she died, he placed her corpse in a special room in his house and then sealed it off, like a holy tomb. At first, to stave off loneliness, he would dig up the bodies of recently buried women, and then touch and enjoy the sight of them. Later, he began skinning these corpses and sewing them into dolls. In the end, his perversity intensified, and within three years he killed three middle-aged women. He would later turn their body parts into 'handcrafted objects', which included clothes made of human skin and a bowl made of a human skull."

Fang Mu pointed at a photograph on one of his photocopies. "Here, these are the clothes made of skin. After Gein was captured, he admitted to longing to know what it felt like to have breasts and a vagina. When he wore the human skin-clothes he had sewn, he would fantasize that he was his own mother. Have you ever seen The Silence of the Lambs ?"

Tai Wei nodded.

"The plot of that movie was adapted from the life of Ed Gein," said Fang Mu, picking up some of the case files that Tai Wei had brought for him. "In the fourth crime, the CD that the skinned girl was 'listening' to was a clue to the next murder, in which the killer imitated Charles Manson. After claiming to have received instructions from The Beatles song Helter Skelter , Manson began what he hoped would become an apocalyptic race war by slaughtering bourgeois whites. As I said before, not only did Manson write something at each crime scene calling the victims pigs, he also always referred to his murders as 'pig butchering'. Before you is all the information I have gathered over the last two days. I believe that the killer is modeling his crimes after history's most famous serial killers and is leaving a clue at each scene that hints at whomever he will be copying next. In my opinion, the sixth crime will most likely have something to do with that five-pound note."

For a moment Tai Wei appeared lost in thought. Then, as if something had just occurred to him, he said: "What about the first crime? You never said who he was copying there."

Frowning, Fang Mu said, "I've also been racking my brains about the first crime. There are too many historical examples of serial killers who dismembered their victims after murdering them. Based on the method used by our killer, it's extremely difficult to judge who exactly he was imitating. However, one of his motives for the crime was definitely jealousy, I'm certain of that. Think of the risk he took transporting Qu Weiqiang's body from his apartment all the way to the soccer field. That's got to mean something."

After thinking for a moment Tai Wei said, "What about Professor Qiao's idea about the killer wanting to rebuild Wang Qian anew. Could that be some kind of clue?"

Fang Mu didn't reply. Picking up the folder from the first case, he flipped directly to the crime scene photographs.

Wang Qian's body lay on the floor, cut into six parts and pieced together in a spread-eagle position.

Fang Mu stared at the photograph, as well as its accompanying description. All of a sudden he seemed to notice something, and his brow furrowed in concentration.

"Head to the north, feet to the south… head to the north, feet to the south…" he muttered to himself, before abruptly asking: "Where were the door and window located at the crime scene?"

After thinking about it for a moment, Tai Wei replied, "I think it was a north-south arrangement. The door was north and the window south. I remember Old Zhao saying to me at the time that the victim's head was pointed towards the door and her feet towards the window."

"What you're saying is, when the police entered the room, this is what they saw?" Saying this, Fang Mu thought for a moment, and then rotated the photograph. Wang Qian's spread-eagle body was now upside-down, her head, arms and legs pointing in five different directions.

Fang Mu's swept his eyes across the victim's head, torso, arms, and legs. Suddenly his breathing grew rapid. Pulling his cell phone from his pocket, he quickly dialed a number. Tai Wei could see his hands were shaking.

After a few seconds, Fang Mu heard Du Yu's voice on the other end: "Hello?"

"It's Fang Mu. Du Yu, do you still remember what that five-pointed star on our door looked like?"

"Five-pointed star? What five-pointed star?"

Fang Mu leapt to his feet in agitation. "The one from the night of the World Cup finals! We watched the game at a restaurant, came back, I went to the bathroom, and then when I returned to our room, you were wiping something off our door. You said it was a five-pointed star. Do you remember or not?"

"Oh, now I remember. Yeah, that's what happened. What made you think of it now?"

"That's none of your concern! I just need you to tell me, what did that five-pointed star look like?"

"It had five points man, what else can be said? As I recall it was pretty damn ugly, too."

"C'mon, just think; was there anything else special about it? For example…"

"Oh yeah, I just thought of something. The five-pointed star, it was upside-down."