Chapter 141 — Old Buffon's Origins
Years of Heartflutter · Page 120 of 214
At the time of his father's murder, the only person his father had fallen out with was a Hong Kong starlet named Shu Ya. His father had wanted to bed her and been refused, and both sides had parted on very sour terms. Not long afterward, his father had been killed.
But Little Dorsk did not believe Shu Ya could have killed his father—she simply did not have the capacity. Those who died alongside his father included Eagle Temple of the Mingyue Group and several of his men, whereas the only ones who had boarded with Shu Ya were herself and her father, Shu Haikuo.
Little Dorsk studied the files on Shu Ya and Shu Haikuo in detail and concluded that the two were hardly likely suspects. There could have been no prior connection between them and his father at all. Europe and Asia were far apart, and his father's business had been confined to Europe; it had not yet expanded into Asia, and the collaboration with Eagle Temple had been no more than an experiment.
So there was no history between Shu Haikuo, Shu Ya, and his father. The conflict aboard the ship had arisen on the spot, and it had been nothing more than a simple quarrel. Little Dorsk did not think Shu Ya would have gone and killed his father afterward, and so he naturally ruled her out.
But having ruled out Shu Ya, Little Dorsk found himself in a dead end. The whole ship had been full of tycoons and celebrities. Many of them had disliked his father, true, but there had been no real clash of interests. Who on earth could have harbored such hatred for his father?
Could it have been an outsider? At this thought, Little Dorsk felt as though he had seized hold of something. That was it—everyone aboard had been tycoons and celebrities, and the likelihood of any of them committing murder was not great, especially on the Alice. Everyone knew the background of the ship's owner, Alice; to stir up trouble on that vessel, once exposed, would bring endless trouble down upon one's head.
Even if the police let the matter drop, Alice would never let the troublemaker off. The Alice had always been renowned for safety and serenity—how could Madame Alice tolerate anyone disrupting that?
Especially since Little Dorsk had vaguely heard certain things about Alice's background and the rumors surrounding her. Surely the others aboard could not have been ignorant of it either. And so his theory became plausible.
The time of his father's murder coincided exactly with the period when the Alice was docked at Henry Island. What if someone had slipped aboard during that stop to carry out an assassination?
It was not impossible. At this thought, Little Dorsk's head began to ache. If that were truly the case, the investigation would become a real nightmare.
The scope was far too broad. Moreover, the population of Henry Island was highly fluid. Though Henry Island was not a public island and anyone wishing to come ashore had to register, the servants and bodyguards of the wealthy needed only to accompany their masters and go through a cursory registration to gain entry.
If the killer had hidden among the retinue of some tycoon or celebrity, there would be no way to trace him at all. The trail had gone cold, and Little Dorsk agonized over these matters every day.
Then, just as Little Dorsk was at his wit's end, drowning his sorrows in a bar, he overheard a crucial lead.
"You know that fellow Dorsk, don't you?" a man who looked rather distinguished said in a low voice to one of his companions.
"You mean Dorsk? Isn't he the big drug lord who died on the Alice a while back?" his companion asked. "Why, were you acquainted with him? Oh, that's right—you were at the Alice party too, weren't you?"
"Me? I certainly didn't know him," the man said with a twist of his mouth. "A perfectly good party—I'd been hoping to meet a few more celebrities—and because that bastard went and died, the whole thing had to be cut short. Damn it."