Detective Chinatown Episode 4 Recap
> Detective Chinatown Recap
Lin Mo, in an attempt to understand the sisters' experiences, mentally recreated the mysterious events they had encountered. The outcome was shocking: Dinan had fallen to her death, her demise mirroring Shui’s. At the scene, Lin Mo detected only Wen’s scent on Dinan’s body, prompting him to question if Dinan truly fell by accident. He felt a symbolic presence of Dinan, expressing regret over their karma and asking for revenge. Sasha was immediately tasked with examining Dinan’s phone.
Wen was brought in for interrogation. She recounted that Dinan had called her, distraught and claiming to hear chanting again. Wen rushed to Dinan’s apartment, finding her in a state of mental breakdown. Dinan then grabbed Wen, attempting to pull her to their deaths together, before accidentally losing her footing and falling from the balcony. Wen expressed her willingness to take responsibility for Dinan's death but believed she, too, would soon meet the same fate as Shui and Dinan.
Lin Mo, however, saw through her fabricated story, accusing her of acting. He revealed his knowledge of Shui’s true fate and Wen’s intricate schemes, stating that the trap was set by Wen, Qin Jun, Dinan, and Zhaya. He then directly accused Wen of eliminating Dinan because Dinan had threatened her. Wen vehemently denied everything, maintaining her victim facade and pleading with Lin Mo not to inflict further harm upon them.
Unmoved, Lin Mo declared he would continue to watch her, because she was guilty. Despite Lin Mo's accusations, the Police Chief expressed sympathy for Wen. He accepted the handprints on Wen’s neck as irrefutable proof of self-defense and ordered her immediate release. Other officers voiced their disbelief at the hasty decision, pointing out that someone had just died and recalling the ominous billboard incident that nearly crushed Wen.
The Chief, however, dismissed their concerns, demanding concrete evidence which Lin Mo could not yet produce. He then formally removed Lin Mo from the case. As Wen walked free from the interrogation room, Lin Mo’s gaze remained fixed on her retreating back. Sasha informed Lin Mo that Dinan’s phone contained no unusual data. Lin Mo, unwilling to abandon the investigation, vowed to continue and instructed Sasha to safeguard Zhaya, their last remaining lead.
Lin Mo and Sasha rushed to the hospital to find Zhaya, only to discover she had been discharged earlier that morning and her whereabouts were unknown. Police inquiries revealed Zhaya had booked a flight to Singapore. Lin Mo and Sasha knew that Thailand lacked an extradition treaty with Singapore, meaning that if Zhaya reached Singapore, bringing her back would be extremely difficult. Despite their urgent race to the airport, they arrived too late; Zhaya had successfully escaped.
Defeated but not deterred, Lin Mo and Sasha stopped at a beef noodle shop near the airport. Lin Mo, now having pieced together the entire puzzle, began to explain his deductions to Sasha. He asserted that the entire series of "supernatural" events, including Shui’s supposed suicide, was an elaborate scam orchestrated by Wen, Dinan, and Zhaya to cover up Shui’s murder. He detailed each illusion: Shui’s apparent self-immolation was achieved by applying phosphorus powder to her clothes.
Wen’s terrifying “ghost choking” incident at the bar was a staged performance. She had pre-applied phenolphthalein solution to her neck. With the bar's air conditioning conveniently broken, her sweat, being alkaline, reacted with the solution, causing red handprints to appear, creating the illusion of being choked.
Her near-fatal fall onto the subway tracks was also an act, as there was a spacious gap beneath the platform where she could safely hide, ensuring no real danger even if no one had come to her rescue. Dinan and Wen’s harrowing car crash into the river was a premeditated stunt. The car was driven into a tree first, significantly reducing its speed before it plunged into the water.
Dinan, a skilled swimmer (a detail noted in her graduation yearbook), had agreed to this dangerous act under certain undisclosed conditions, likely involving insurance money for her old car. The fact that Dinan’s non-waterproof phone remained undamaged after the supposed plunge further cemented the staged nature of the event. Qin Jun played a crucial role in Shui’s psychological torment. He used low-frequency bass speakers to play eerie chanting sounds in their home.
The low frequency made the sounds disorienting and impossible to pinpoint their source, driving Shui into a state of paranoia and mental breakdown, making her believe she was suffering from hallucinations. Lin Mo then revealed the shocking truth of Shui’s death: she did not commit suicide; she was murdered. On the afternoon of Shui's death, Qin Jun had purchased a new cabinet. This cabinet was not for storage, but to smuggle Wen into Shui's apartment undetected by surveillance cameras.
Once inside, Wen, disguised as Shui (wearing her pajamas and a wig), performed a "wish dance" on the rooftop to further mislead any potential witnesses or cameras. Simultaneously, Qin Jun administered a large dose of Amitriptyline, a sedative Shui was already prescribed, rendering her deeply unconscious. He then threw the real Shui from their apartment balcony, meticulously staging her death to appear as a "possessed" suicide.
Wen, after completing her rooftop act, simply jumped to a concealed flat roof below, making her apparent "fall" vanish from sight. Finally, Lin Mo concluded that Dinan’s death was a direct consequence of her discovering Wen and Qin Jun’s murderous secret. Dinan had likely attempted to blackmail Wen, leading Wen to kill her to silence her. Sasha presented Lin Mo’s comprehensive analysis to the police, but the Chief, adamant about hard evidence, dismissed it as mere speculation.
He begrudgingly granted Lin Mo one week to find irrefutable proof, assigning two officers to assist him. Three days passed with no significant breakthroughs. Qin Jun, meanwhile, began liquidating Shui’s assets, transferring vast sums overseas, and initiating the auction of her hotels—clear signs of an impending escape.
However, a diligent officer, whom Lin Mo had requested to track all movements, discovered a critical detail: Dinan had rented a new car after her accident, and the night before her death, she had followed Qin Jun to the Yalan shopping mall in Chinatown. Qin Jun’s financial records also showed a transaction at the same mall that night, marking their only overlapping location. Lin Mo and Sasha immediately went to the Yalan mall.
Reviewing surveillance footage, they saw Qin Jun waiting alone in a cafe, repeatedly checking his phone, indicating he was waiting for someone. Dinan, however, never entered the mall; instead, she parked in the underground garage. Further footage showed Qin Jun eventually leaving the cafe and getting into his car. Dinan’s car did not follow him. Lin Mo deduced that Qin Jun was indeed waiting for Wen, but Wen, cautious, did not meet him in the public cafe.
Instead, she met him privately in his car in the parking garage. Dinan, having followed Qin Jun, had captured this clandestine meeting on her phone. This video on Dinan’s phone was the crucial evidence they needed. Police technicians confirmed that the phone’s data had been manually deleted, but recovering it from the old model would take several hours.
At the same time, police received urgent news: Qin Jun and Wen had booked the same flight to Singapore, departing in less than three hours. The Chief, still lacking concrete evidence, refused to issue an immediate arrest warrant. With time running out, Lin Mo, taking matters into his own hands, booked a ticket for the same flight, declaring he would personally "send them off."
At the airport, Lin Mo orchestrated a fake bomb threat, causing widespread chaos and forcing the immediate delay and diversion of the flight. During the ensuing pandemonium and delay, the police technicians successfully recovered the deleted data from Dinan's phone. The evidence included not only the video of Qin Jun and Wen's secret meeting but also an audio file of Dinan confronting Wen and Qin Jun about Shui’s murder.
With the irrefutable evidence in hand, Sasha apprehended Qin Jun and Wen at the airport. Zhaya was subsequently extradited back to Thailand. Faced with overwhelming proof, all three—Wen, Qin Jun, and Zhaya—confessed to their crimes. Their confessions painted a grim picture of human vice: Wen was driven by insatiable greed. She resented Shui’s privileged background, despite Shui’s genuine kindness, which included sacrificing her own overseas study opportunity and abandoning Pei Shan for Wen.
Wen’s jealousy festered into hatred, leading her to desire all of Shui’s possessions. She cunningly seduced Qin Jun and conspired with him to murder Shui and inherit her vast wealth. In her chilling confession, she admitted to merely using Qin Jun, planning to dispose of him in Singapore after securing the money, convinced that men were fundamentally unreliable. Zhaya was consumed by anger.
Her life was a series of misfortunes: a failed career, a broken marriage marred by domestic violence, and deep-seated resentment. Shui’s seemingly perfect life intensified Zhaya’s bitterness, fueling an uncontrollable malice that led her to participate in the plot. She claimed, however, that she would never have cooperated if she had known about Wen and Qin Jun’s affair. Dinan represented ignorance and folly. Naive, lazy, and somewhat arrogant, she was easily manipulated by Wen.
She was swayed by Wen’s deceptive story that Shui had secretly prayed to Brahma to steal their luck, intensifying their collective resentment over missing their college entrance exams due to Shui’s alleged typhoid infection. The sisters' bond was a fragile illusion, broken by their individual vices.
Qin Jun's confession later revealed that the "shitty gifts" Shui gave them at the reunion were, in fact, the very items each sister had wished for and written in their graduation yearbook, highlighting Shui's thoughtful nature. However, the other three, consumed by envy and hatred, had dismissed the gifts, gossiping about Shui behind her back and discarding her thoughtful gestures, a fact Pei Shan had witnessed.
The full truth of Dinan’s death also emerged during the confessions: Dinan had indeed discovered Wen and Qin Jun's affair and their conspiracy to murder Shui. Armed with the video and audio recordings from her phone, Dinan confronted Wen, demanding 500 million baht from Shui's inherited assets, threatening to expose them. Wen, initially denying her involvement, eventually agreed to Dinan's terms. However, upon realizing Dinan had also recorded their blackmail conversation, Wen desperately struggled with Dinan for the phone.
In the violent struggle, Dinan fell from the balcony to her death. Lin Mo later visited Wen in prison. Now mentally unstable, Wen taunted him, accusing him of being responsible for Dinan’s death, claiming his earlier line of questioning had inadvertently prompted Dinan to investigate Qin Jun. She remarked that his scent had changed, now resembling Qin Jun’s, and accused him of punishing others to atone for his own past sins, calling him a "wild dog."
Lin Mo, embracing the moniker, retorted that a wild dog, once it bites, never lets go. Wen then challenged him to reveal his own story, especially about the "terrifying woman" who had so profoundly shaped his distrust of women. Lin Mo, with a somber expression, agreed to recount his long story.
