In the winter of 1984, a local mixed passenger and cargo train drove into Songhe, a small town in Northeast China. While the stoker was cleaning up the cinders, he pulled out a charred corpse beyond recognition from the ash box of the steam locomotive.
Han Weidong, a young police officer who had just started working independently, took over the scene. There were three things around the deceased: a miner's lamp plate, an old work permit and an engraved cigarette box. They belong to three living people, and all three people can prove that they have never boarded the locomotive.
There was no way a complete human body could fit into the coal hatch, and no one approached the firebox along the train. What was even more bizarre was that some people claimed to have seen the dead man after the train arrived at the station.
The investigation followed a modified dispatch sheet and returned to the Qingshiling mine disaster ten years ago. How many people were there that night? Who disappeared from the list, and who survived by using the name of the dead?
