Detective Dai

Detective Dai is a member of the investigative team examining the women found at the construction site. He brings Li Yan two kinds of useful evidence: an unsettling account of his interview with night watchman Jiang Baofu, and possible identities for women among the dead. His strongest contribution comes from linking a pathologist’s observation about stress fractures to the work of an acrobat, turning a physical trace into a lead the team can pursue.

Identity and Introduction

Detective Dai is a young investigator whose carefully assembled appearance makes him memorable before he speaks. He wears an immaculate white roll-neck sweater, a powder-blue Italian jacket and sharply creased dark trousers; his short hair is styled back with gel, and he rests a thumb inside a shiny silver belt buckle. The precise grooming suggests a strong concern with presentation, but his role in the investigation is not merely decorative: he reports what he has observed and offers a practical connection between forensic evidence and the missing-person files.

At the investigative meeting, Nien Mei-Ling asks him to assess Jiang Baofu, whom he interviewed the previous day. The question places Detective Dai in the position of translating a one-to-one encounter into information the larger team can use. His answer is immediate and personal: Jiang made him uneasy. That response also recalls the discomfort Margaret Campbell and Li Yan had expressed after meeting the same man, though each had arrived at that impression independently.

The Interview with Jiang Baofu

Detective Dai describes an interview unlike the usual struggle to get a person to speak. Jiang talked at length, volunteered more than Detective Dai needed, and asked questions of his own. Detective Dai took this excessive cooperation not as reassurance but as another reason for concern: Jiang seemed to enjoy the process, and his helpfulness struck the detective as morbid. By the end, Detective Dai had found it difficult to bring the interview to a close.

The team considers competing explanations for Jiang’s conspicuous behavior. Perhaps he wants the investigators to regard him as too obvious to be involved; perhaps the fact that he was the site’s night watchman makes suspicion seem deceptively easy. Nien Mei-Ling points out that a person who buried the bodies there might have expected them to remain hidden beneath the construction’s concrete. Li Yan also considers whether the perpetrator could be psychologically disturbed. Detective Dai’s account therefore does not establish Jiang’s guilt, but it supplies a concrete reason to keep scrutinizing him while leaving room for other explanations.

Detective Dai also challenges the idea that one disturbed individual could have carried out the murders alone. The procedures involved administering Midazolam and pumping an Ambu bag, he observes, and those tasks imply assistance. His point changes the terms of the team’s speculation: the investigators must consider a collaborative operation, possibly involving two or more people, rather than treating the crimes as the work of a solitary killer. Li Yan acknowledges the logic but cautions that speculation must not displace the immediate task of identifying the victims.

Missing-Women Leads

Detective Dai’s fieldwork also helps give names and occupations to women otherwise known only through the investigation. After he finds a possible match in the missing-person files, Nien Mei-Ling reports that the team may have found its singer: Xiao Fengzhen, a twenty-eight-year-old teacher and singer at the Shanghai School of Music and Opera, missing for just under a year. The lead does not by itself confirm that Xiao Fengzhen is one of the victims, but it gives the investigators a specific identity to check.

Later, Detective Dai brings two folders to Li Yan’s office. One contains material gathered about Jiang Baofu; the other presents a further possible identification. Its missing-person form bears a photograph of a young woman cut from a group picture, her hair tied in bunches and her face preserved while the rest of the image has been discarded. The form identifies her as Wu Liyao, aged thirty, and Detective Dai supplies the key fact that she belonged to the Shanghai Acrobatic Theatre and had been missing for three months.

The proposed connection is explicitly tentative. The pathologist has reported stress fractures in one woman’s feet and suggested that she might have been an athlete or gymnast. Detective Dai reasons that an acrobat fits that description and therefore merits investigation. He does not claim the forensic trace proves Wu Liyao’s identity; he recognizes that the occupation makes her a plausible candidate. Li Yan praises the suggestion and says it is worth following up, affirming the value of Detective Dai’s link between a bodily detail and a person’s recorded work.

Investigative Method and Narrative Role

Detective Dai’s contributions are modest in scale but consequential in method. His interview does not solve the mystery of Jiang Baofu, and his proposed identification of Wu Liyao remains unconfirmed in the cited scenes. Instead, he advances the inquiry by distinguishing suspicion from proof: Jiang’s behavior is troubling without being conclusive, and the acrobat’s profession makes her a candidate rather than an established victim. That restraint matters in a case where investigators are trying to identify multiple women while still working out how the crimes were carried out.

His most revealing quality is an ability to notice evidence that can be made useful beyond its original context. A foot injury described in forensic terms becomes a reason to look for an acrobat among missing women; an interview dominated by excessive talk becomes a basis for further suspicion, not a verdict. Detective Dai thus helps move the investigation between physical traces, personal testimony and administrative records. The case’s larger insistence that the answer lies in details is reflected in his practical contribution: one carefully matched occupational clue can open a new path toward restoring a name to an unidentified woman.