Read Chapter 3: — THE MYSTERY TEAM

Nuclear Medicine had an unofficial inner circle that called itself the Mystery Team, mostly because long shifts became easier to survive when everyone had a ridiculous nickname.

Tang Enda, a diagnostic physician who alternated between fasting diets and stock charts, was “Commander Tang” on serious days and “Fasting Tang” on the others.

Xu Jiehui, an imaging doctor active in hospital youth programmes, had become “Councillor Xu.”

Li Qiancheng invested in property whenever he had money and answered to “House Brother.”

Wang Yongnian, warm-hearted and financially comfortable, was “Villa Wang.”

Their deputy director, Qin Zhengjie, had returned from postdoctoral work in the United States and carried the unenviable responsibility of making this collection of personalities function as a department.

With Li suspended, lunch breaks had become oddly quiet.

Then a newspaper landed on Tang’s chest.

The headline announced that a corpse had been found beside Hongda Hospital’s landscaped lake. Forensic examination had detected residual radioactive material. Within hours, frightened residents gathered outside Nuclear Medicine, accusing the hospital of conducting dangerous experiments.

The dead man, Ye, sixty-six, had metastatic prostate cancer and had undergone a bone scan two weeks earlier.

Li had participated in the imaging.

That was why Detective Zhao Zhigang came looking for him.

And that was how Li properly met Zhao Chenxi.

The autopsy room was colder than he expected and more ordinary: stainless steel, labelled containers, clipped voices. Chenxi moved through it with disciplined respect. She did not romanticise death. She did not look away from it either.

Old Zhao introduced them with the subtlety of a matchmaking aunt.

“My daughter. Thirty-two. Excellent pathologist. Plays piano. Terrible personality.”

“Dad.”

“Li Xiangyang. Thirty-six. Doctor. Also terrible personality.”

Chenxi looked at Li as if deciding whether conversation or dissection would be easier.

Then she showed him the body.

The case stopped being funny.

Ye’s two teenage grandsons had died as well.

So had three cats in the family home.

Whatever killed them was not a normal radiotracer.

“The activity in the body could come from his recent scan,” Li said. “The tracer does not explain the other deaths.”

“So we have coincidence?” Chenxi asked.

“Or camouflage.”

Old Zhao left the room under a pretext so transparent that both of them understood he was trying to leave them alone.

“Your father lacks subtlety,” Li said.

“My father once questioned a suspect for nine hours because he lied about where he bought breakfast.”

“So that’s a warning?”

“That’s mercy.”

Their first alliance began over the dead, not attraction.

Chenxi had forensic questions Li could answer about nuclear imaging. Li had questions she could answer about decomposition, toxicology and the limits of post-mortem interpretation.

Within hours, the supposed “radioactive death” looked less like a nuclear accident and more like a coincidence hiding another cause.

The Mystery Team joined the investigation.

Tang was delighted until Chenxi informed him that “mystery team” was not an official police designation.

“It should be,” he said.

“It absolutely should not.”

Li found himself smiling for the first time in days.