On the morning of June 18, 1933, Tang Jiapeng, the manager of the famous "Shanghai Big World" playground and the proud protégé of the leader of the Green Gang, Jin Rong, was stabbed six times in a row by the murderer who ambushed the door of the "Big World", which became a major case that shook the beach for a while.
Under the high attention of all walks of life, Rao Boze, deputy chief police inspector of the Police Department of the French Concession Public Security Bureau, personally led the team to investigate the case. Rao Boze, a Frenchman, was an old criminal police officer of the Paris Police Department before coming to Shanghai, known as the "Paris Detective".
According to the clues provided by the witnesses, the assassin was Gu Zhuxuan's subordinate "Small Steel Cannon".
Gu Zhuxuan, a native of northern Jiangsu, known as the "Gangster of Jiangbei", is a figure of the Qing Gang's tongzi generation, whose division of teachers, gang status and reputation are only after the three tycoons of the Shanghai Beach Qing Gang, Jin Jinrong, Du Yuesheng and Zhang Xiaolin.
Gu Zhuxuan's sense of fellow villagers is extremely strong, and he is very righteous and angry, so that he can fight and hug unevenness. He used regional relations as a link, and there were many of his men, and there was no shortage of people who were not afraid of death.
After the "little steel cannon" Wang Xinggao was captured, he claimed that one person did one thing and one person did it, and that he assassinated Tang Jiapeng without any instructions or accomplices, purely out of righteous indignation.
Tang Jiapeng was originally Gu Zhuxuan's subordinate, deeply supported by Gu, and once married Gu Zhuxuan's cousin. Later, he went out of The Gate and turned to Jin Rong, who was deeply valued, but behind his back, he hooked up with Huang's daughter-in-law Li Zhiqing and became an adulterer.
Wang Xinggao claimed that everyone could criticize Tang Jiapeng, who violated gang rules, was ungrateful, and had little shame, but he was only one step ahead of others.
Two months later, Wang Xinggao, who was in prison, claimed to have a clue to the important case and said that he wanted to meet with Rao Boze.
The two then met in prison and separated from the others, and Wang Xinggao first talked about the conditions and benefits of the whistleblowing before revealing his secret to Rao Boze.
It turned out that when Wang Xinggao first came to Shanghai, he had a good companion Xu Jifa, who later became Du Yuesheng's subordinate. In May, the two reminisced in the tavern, and Xu mentioned that he had just done a job of "planting lotus flowers", and had several pieces of valuable jewelry in his hand, and asked Wang Xinggao to help see if there were good buyers.
"Planting lotus flowers" is the jargon of the Tao, which means to put the living into sacks and throw them into the Yangtze River.
A few days later, Xu Jifa was captured by the French Concession patrol to get the case, and after a meal of tiger stool pepper water, he explained the process of the "planting lotus flowers" case.
In March, Xu Jifa was called into the Du mansion by Du Yuesheng's housekeeper Wan Molin and arranged for him to lead someone to "plant lotus flowers" for a woman surnamed Cai. The cause of the incident was that the surname Cai offended a big figure of the Song clan and demanded a huge "breakup fee". Wan Molin repeatedly stressed that this matter was personally entrusted by Boss Du, and he must use his brain, not be reckless, and be unaware of ghosts, clean and neat, and leave no trouble.
Xu Jifa and his three subordinates observed the movements around Miss Cai's house for three days in advance, and tracked Miss Cai's whereabouts.
After the arrangements were made, one morning, when Miss Cai walked out of the house, Xu Jifa went up to say hello and asked her to go to the bank immediately, saying that there was a Mr. Song waiting at the bank and needed her to be present to handle the remittance procedures.
Miss Cai said, "Wait a minute," hurried home to dress up, put on jewelry, put the household registration book and personal seal in her handbag, and followed Xu Jifa to the Zhonghui Bank on the old North Gate Street in the French Concession.
Entering the bank, the two came to an office, and Xu Jifa and the three accomplices who had been ambushed in the room beforehand covered Miss Cai's mouth, choked her neck, tied her hands and feet, and then stuffed a towel into her mouth, put it into a sack, and put it in a warehouse at the dock of The Sixteen Shops.
After nightfall, several people carried her onto a small steamer, which sailed from the Huangpu River into the Yangtze River estuary outside wusongkou, and at the center of a river, threw her into the Yangtze River.
When Rao Boze asked Xu Jifa about the whereabouts of his three co-conspirators, Xu Jifa replied that the three had left Shanghai and there was no news.
Xu Jifa confessed that in a warehouse at the Sixteen Shop Pier, the three men who guarded Miss Cai saw that she was extraordinary, and they couldn't help but attack her, and were stopped by Xu Jifa. Xu Jifa warned his subordinates to be entrusted by others and loyal to others; everyone can only do their part well, and cannot give birth to right and wrong. Moreover, there is also a way to steal, and a woman with the surname Cai has no grievances and no hatred with everyone, so why should she do evil.
When He Zhi waited for Xu Ji to send it out and buy a good meal and return to the warehouse, he saw that the three of them had stripped off Miss Cai's clothes and were defiling things, and there were still burn marks on Cai's body. In anger, after returning from Wusongkou in the evening, Xu Jifa not only did not give the three people a reward, but also drove them out of Shanghai, warning them not to step on the beach again. Since then, there has been no trace or news of them.
The next day, Rao Boze brought people to Cai's house. Cai's father insisted that his daughter had been married to a wealthy Nanyang businessman and had been away from Shanghai for half a year.
When Rao Boze placed a few pieces of jewelry in front of them, Cai Mu suddenly burst into tears.
Rao Boze warned in a loud voice that if the Cai family knew about it and did not report it, it would be a conspiracy to commit a crime, and the whole family would be tortured and taken away to prison.
Cai Mu only then told the ins and outs of the matter.
It turned out that Father Cai was a small clerk of a foreign firm, and there were two daughters and a son in the family, and the second daughter was in trouble. She is beautiful and white-skinned, slender, can dress, loves vanity, likes to socialize, and is a well-known "Shanghai Celebrity".
At a dance party, Miss Cai met Song Ziliang, Song Meiling's younger brother.
At that time in Shanghai Beach, Song Ziliang belonged to the imperial relatives and relatives of the state, and was a popular figure in the social circle, who had always been mercurial and generous. When they first met, Song Ziliang was attracted by Miss Cai's beauty and fell in love at first sight. After that, he frequently asked Miss Cai to dance, watch plays, and eat; he bought clothes and jewelry for her. Soon, a luxury hotel on the Bund chartered a room as a place to meet Miss Cai.
A few months later, Song Ziliang was looking for a new lover outside and began to be lukewarm to Miss Cai. One day, Miss Cai told Song Ziliang that she was pregnant. Song Ziliang originally felt tired of playing, and was thinking of throwing away a few money to send her away, when he heard about Miss Cai's pregnancy, he took out a few thousand yuan and asked Miss Cai to beat the fetus, after which the two were cut in two.
However, Miss Cai was willing to give up and asked for compensation of 100,000 yuan as the future living expenses of her mother and son. He also threatened that if he did not agree to her conditions, he would stab Song Ziliang's ugly deeds in the newspaper.
The ugly thing that Miss Cai said was that Song Ziliang had raised more than a dozen young and beautiful Shanghai celebrities before and after. Second, Song Ziliang once revealed to her that last year, a Miss Zhang of the Vienna Ballroom asked him for a break-up fee, and he sent someone to "plant lotuses" and sunk into the Yangtze River.
Song Ziliang saw that Miss Cai's tone was very strong, so while agreeing to raise money, he quickly ran to the Du Mansion and asked Du Yuesheng for help.
The day after Miss Cai disappeared, someone went to Cai's house to warn that this matter should not be publicized, otherwise the whole family would be in trouble.
At this point, Rao Boze found out the inside story of Miss Cai's case, but because the case involved the brothers of Song Ziwen and Song Meiling, prominent figures in the Kuomintang government, Rao Boze did not dare to act without authorization, and immediately went back to report to the French consul general in Shanghai, Mellier. Melière did not dare to take the initiative, and specifically asked the French Ministry for instructions, but he did not get a reply until the outbreak of the War of Resistance, and the matter was not resolved.
Song Ziliang settled in the United States on the eve of liberation, and in his later years, his life was sloppy, and he lived by borrowing money from relatives and friends. He died in New York in 1983 without his relatives present.
In her later years, Song Meiling once said that the biggest regret in her life was that this younger brother Song Ziliang did not fight when he was alive, and he did not see him before he died.