The jeep rode the night back to the apartment. Yu Baiqing parked the car, switched off the engine, and grabbed his car keys. This series of actions was as smooth as flowing water.
At the front passenger seat, a young man in a suit was leaning his head against the car window, his cheeks suffused with a subtle crimson shade as he slept soundly.
Sensing that the car had stopped jolting, Ying Wan opened his eyes slowly. He pressed a hand against his temple, his brows furrowing sluggishly. “…We’re here?”
Yu Baiqing didn’t respond. He rolled down the car windows midway before taking out a box of cigarettes from his pocket. He lit a cigarette, inhaling deeply. A hand dangled outside the window.
The car doors were still locked. For the time being, Ying Wan would not be able to leave the car. He glanced at the driver’s seat from the corner of his eyes. All he could see was half his ge’s face shrouded in smoke. The dense smell of tobacco pervaded the car.
The hangover cure gradually took effect. Ying Wan’s temples still throbbed faintly, but his sense of awareness was much better than when he was at the club.
His breath smelled strongly of alcohol. He coughed twice, urging softly, “Ge, stop smoking. It’s choking.”
Yu Baiqing tapped the cigarette to remove the ash. He did not stub out the cigarette and toss it into the car ashtray per his usual routine. Instead, he withdrew the hand dangling outside the window and offered the remaining half of the lit cigarette to Ying Wan.
“Have a puff?”
Yu Baiqing asked.
The cigarette butt burned slowly between Yu Baiqing’s fingertips. The suffocating scent overwhelmed Ying Wan.
Ying Wan came to a realization. This was a cigarette his ge had smoked, a cigarette that still carried his ge’s scent.
He pursed his lips. After deliberating, he opened his mouth. “Ge, I don’t smoke–”
Before he could finish his statement, he heard Yu Baiqing laugh briefly.
“That’s true,” Yu Baiqing said. “Little Wan never smokes such things.”
Ying Wan stared blankly for a few seconds. His taut nerves slowly relaxed. “…En.”
He didn’t have an addiction to tobacco. In the past, he mainly smoked electronic cigarettes in the club. Owl and Grayback often ridiculed him for having to be in the right mood for something as simple as smoking. If it wasn’t a requirement for his task, he would only smoke one cigarette every few days just to stave off any urges.
His ge hadn’t asked him a single question about his reason for visiting the club, and now he was suddenly offering him a cigarette. Ying Wan felt that his ge was a little strange tonight.
The flame between Yu Baiqing’s fingertips burned out. He tossed the cigarette butt into the ashtray and then unlocked the car doors. “Go back.”
Ying Wan picked up the cane beside his feet and reached out to open the car door. Then, he discovered that his ge had no intention of leaving the car. He turned to look at Yu Baiqing. “Is ge not returning home?”
“I still have things to settle at the bureau,” Inserting the car key, Yu Baiqing avoided Ying Wan’s gaze. “Take a shower before sleeping. If you don’t have anything on, sleep in tomorrow morning. Forget about setting up your stall.”
Ying Wan nodded silently. Little emotion could be seen on his face. He had never been fond of asking about Yu Baiqing’s work, and he knew that Yu Baiqing had no desire to let him know too much either.
The cane tapped softly against the ground. Ying Wan turned to walk towards the apartment gate, the suit that had been slung over him in his grip. He had only taken two steps when Yu Baiqing’s voice abruptly came from behind.
“Don’t you find it dirty being with those people?”
Yu Baiqing asked him.
The sound of the cane tapping against the ground vanished. Ying Wan stopped in his tracks.
–
Yu Baiqing held another lit cigarette between his fingertips, his gaze trained on the frail silhouette in the night.
The year Ying Wan turned twelve, he gave Ying Wan his first cane as a birthday present. As the child slowly grew up, so did the length of the cane.
No matter where Ying Wan left, the black cane never left his side, as if a gust of wind would sweep him away without the support of the cane.
“Ge,” Ying Wan didn’t turn back, merely giving a faint laugh. “You can look away if you don’t want to see it.”
The night lights had elongated his shadow. Tapping sounds reverberated across the limestone tiles beneath his feet. Cane in hand, Ying Wan’s figure gradually moved further and further away, till he vanished from sight.
Yu Baiqing didn’t return to the bureau that night.
There was nothing urgent requiring this ex-Captain who had already lost his position to rush back that very night.
The Octopus had started cohabiting with his girlfriend not long ago; opportunities to have one-on-one time were hard to come by. Ruan Tianjie had met an old friend at the club and had arranged to go drinking with them at another bar along Bar Street.
We’re sorry for MTLers or people who like using reading mode, but our translations keep getting stolen by aggregators so we’re going to bring back the copy protection. If you need to MTL please retype the gibberish parts.
He had no one to blame but himself for not applying for a dormitory room in the police district. If he didn’t want to go home in the middle of the night, he didn’t even have a place to put up at.
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Images he’d never thought of in the past appeared before his eyes like a revolving carousel. A debauched environment, a multitude of colors, soft and feeble entreaties, pleading moans…
He could not imagine the expression Ying Wan would have.
Half an hour later, Yu Baiqing drove the car back to Bar Street.
The port was the busiest at midnight. A group of police officers with guns at their waists appeared along Bar Street and started checking the identification cards of customers by random.
This was the area with the highest human traffic in Fan City. The moment the weekend arrived, tourists and businessmen from different countries and regions would gather near Bar Street to indulge in luxuries and music the entire night. Naturally, there were also many under-the-table transactions that took place.
Yu Baiqing parked the jeep at a carpark opposite LEON. He dialed a number.
He touched his chest in passing and found an empty cigarette box. Suddenly, he recalled that after sending Ying Wan home, he’d smoked all the cigarettes he had on him in the car.
The person who picked up his call was one of his informants at Bar Street – a waiter at LEON.
“Hello, Yu-ge,” Amidst the ear-piercing background music, a trace of laziness could be heard in the young man’s voice. “There’s going to be another exercise tonight?”
Senior police officers in the bureau all had their own informants in ritzy places and neighborhoods with higher crime rates. The young man was called Ah Wu. He had just reached the age of twenty-one and was one of the victims Yu Baiqing had rescued from the hands of drug dealers. Though he was two years younger than Ying Wan, he had already been with the club for a long time.
“Meet me at the VIP parking lot five minutes later,” Yu Baiqing said. “I need your help for something.”
There were only ten VIP rooms in LEON, but the number of parking lots reserved for customers who booked these rooms was many times that. Driving into the carpark, he found an unobtrusive lot close to the VIP zone to park at.
Several minutes later, a man with spiky hair and dressed in a waiter’s uniform appeared at the entrance exclusively for the club’s staff. He glanced left and right, confirmed that no one was tailing him, and then jogged towards Yu Baiqing’s jeep with his hands in his pockets.
Ah Wu sat at the back. He retrieved two crumpled pieces of photocopy paper from his pocket and handed them to Yu Baiqing. “Yu-ge, I heard from the supervisor that room number seven’s customer is a frequent visitor. This is his member registration information.”
“But you also know that most people who visit our place have complicated identities. A lot of them don’t use their real names when registering.” Ah Wu lowered his volume. “…Yu-ge, is there a problem with this foreigner?”
“What does this person look like?”
Ah Wu leaned over the front seat, gesticulating as he described, “I’ve seen him a few times. Blonde hair, blue eyes, pretty tall. He’s quite conspicuous. Most importantly, he’s generous. There was a time when we vied for our turn at the VIP zone, all because of the tips he gave.”
“But he didn’t come for a period of time. If I’d known that he would be here tonight, I would definitely apply to go to the VIP zone.”
Yu Baiqing asked another question, “When did he last come?”
“…Around half a month ago?” Ah Wu thought about it. “Room number seven’s always kept vacant for him, but he rarely came since the start of this year.”
Otto Fermin, thirty-six years old. He’d reserved the club’s VIP room number seven for the past three years. The supervisor had made a note on the registration form that he was an ‘investor in auctions’.
Yu Baiqing did a casual search on his phone. No such person existed on the internet; Otto was likely a fake name.
Looking down at the registration form in his hands, Yu Baiqing’s brows furrowed slightly.
What he had taken special note of was not the individual himself, but rather the timing of his appearance.
A few weeks ago, Ying Wan was kidnapped at a factory on the outskirts and once again returned to Fan City. This foreigner called Otto had also re-appeared at the club half a month ago.
Out of all the rumors involving Ying Wan, the most widespread rumor was of him leaving with a rich businessman who had immigrated overseas, then being cruelly discarded, followed by his return to the country.
According to the timeline, this foreign investor was the most suspicious.
Yu Baiqing had only learned of Ying Wan’s disappearance at the beginning of the year upon returning to Fan City. That was also the time when this person stopped visiting the club. And not long after Ying Wan returned, this person resumed patronizing LEON.
Why did this person called Otto return? Was he linked to Ying Wan?
Ah Wu accepted his fee from Yu Baiqing and got down from the jeep. As if suddenly recalling something, he turned and rapped against the car window. “Oh right. Yu-ge, do you know N?”
Yu Baiqing rolled down the window. His gaze swept towards Ah Wu, who hurriedly elaborated, “I was helping a customer to park their car today and saw N getting into your car.”
Glancing around, he leaned against the car window and told Yu Baiqing in a low voice, “Yu-ge, N isn’t a good person. A lot of our frequent visitors have been swindled by him. You must be careful, don’t be deceived by him.”
It was almost time for Ah Wu to hand over to the next shift, so he didn’t say much. He simply waved a hand, bidding a hasty goodbye to Yu Baiqing before running towards the staff entrance.
Yu Baiqing left Bar Street. He threw the empty cigarette box in his pocket into a trash bin along the roadside. Turning the car key to start up the engine, he then drove the jeep into the city’s dark nightscape.
He had cranked up the radio to the highest volume. Music from the late-night radio station drifted through the car slowly.
“You’ll come and find the place where I’m lying, and kneel and say an ‘Ave’ there for me–“
Every single person who had seen Ying Wan, no matter whether at a desolate street or noisy port, had reminded Yu Baiqing out of goodwill – ‘he is a liar, don’t be deceived by him’.
But nobody knew that twelve years ago, a youth who was penniless and in dire straits after paying for his school fees had still squatted at a road crossing, held the child’s small filthy hands, and asked him if he was willing to leave with him. Even with full awareness that not a single word of truth came from the child’s mouth.
He accepted all of the child’s lies and gave him a home.
–
The next morning during their regular meeting, Guan Xingwen dispatched someone to the team’s office to report that they had completed their assessment of the Mackayne D38.
After they were done with the meeting, Zhang Yu, Ruan Tianjie, and Yu Baiqing personally made a visit to the technical reconnaissance team.
Upon stepping into the office piled high with stacks of documents, the three men saw Guan Xingwen cooped up alone at a corner, watching a police drama with relish while his subordinates toiled in front of their computers.
The male lead on the screen was carrying the beauty he’d just saved from the kidnappers and swiftly shuttling through a tall building. He frantically fired shots with the submachine gun he carried with one hand, cleanly eliminating one of his pursuers in a single shot.
The three men made their way noiselessly behind Guan Xingwen. Zhang Yu gave him a meaningful pat on the shoulder. “Little Guan, I’m going to tell your supervisor to cut your bonus for watching shows during work hours.”
Not once had Guan Xingwen not been shocked out of his wits by these bigshots who walked without producing any sound. He hurriedly put down the bag of potato chips in his arms, leveling a glare at the people behind him. “Octopus, do you want to die? I’m studying! Studying, got it!”
“Would those tiny arms and legs of yours be able to lift a submachine gun?” Zhang Yu raised a brow. He dragged a chair over from behind. “Don’t just watch, let’s discuss Old Yu’s case.”
They huddled around in a circle. Just then, Ruan Tianjie noticed that Yu Baiqing had changed into a fresh uniform. There were also water droplets on the ends of his hair, as if he’d just had a quick shower.
He raised the documents he’d been holding in front of his face and inched closer to Old Yu. “…You didn’t go home last night?”
Yu Baiqing had both arms crossed in front of his chest. Silence was his answer.
Ruan Tianjie’s eyes widened. “What about Little Wan?”
Yu Baiqing’s expression remained unchanged. “I sent him back, he’s sleeping.”
Before Ruan Tianjie could get to the details, Guan Xingwen stood up and walked to the front of the work station. He showed them a drawing board. “This Mackayne D38 is not new, there are visible traces that it has been used before. As for the operations, Yu-ge should know better than me, so I won’t touch on that.”
“We only picked up fingerprints from Yu-ge’s di on the gun grip and trigger. This is consistent with the situation at the scene. Our preliminary assessment is that the sender had specially removed their fingerprints before delivering the gun.”
Zhang Yu immediately followed up with a question after Guan Xingwen finished speaking, “Have you checked the delivery parcel and packaging?”
The look Guan Xingwen gave Zhang Yu screamed ‘you don’t say’. “We then checked the delivery box, the foam in the box, and the doorbell of Old Yu’s house. We did pick up several different fingerprints from these surfaces.”
“The outcome might disappoint you. After conducting a verification with our cyber-database, these fingerprints belong to a few delivery staff in the city. We have not discovered any suspicious characters at the moment.”
“However,” Guan Xingwen diverted the thread of discussion. “There is something noteworthy.”
He displayed the information on the retrieved fingerprints and their corresponding identities on the screen. He glanced back at Yu Baiqing. “Old Yu, the only fingerprint we did not discover on the delivery box was your didi’s.”
“The question is – if he did not personally open the delivery parcel, then how did he get his hands on the gun placed inside?”
For a while, Yu Baiqing seemed to be contemplating. He raised his eyelids. “He was wearing gloves when opening the box.”
He had developed a habit of noting every single detail in his life from his many years as a police officer. The box for miscellaneous items at the side table contained disposable gloves for barbecue purposes. He’d noticed signs of someone rifling through the box, so he’d specially asked Ying Wan about it. Ying Wan had claimed to be looking for scissors.
Zhang Yu laughed. “Who would have expected that fellow to have some anti-reconnaissance awareness.”
“But why did your di put on gloves when opening the box, yet remove them when picking up the gun?” Guan Xingwen couldn’t help but question. “Was he negligent? Or he wanted to leave his fingerprints on the gun?”
Everyone fell silent. Nobody understood what Ying Wan had been thinking at that time.
He’d received a gun through a delivery package, carelessly pulled the trigger by accident, and then called the police in a panic. This was in line with how any ordinary person would react, let alone the fact that Yu Baiqing’s di was a person with a disability for whom daily activities were more inconvenient.
However, everything that followed this incident seemed odd. They couldn’t shake the feeling that they’d missed a crucial element.
“Old Yu, I have a conjecture. I don’t know if it’s correct,” A while later, Ruan Tianjie spoke up hesitantly. “I think Little Wan misfired not because of a lapse in operating it, but because–”
“…He wanted the police to be involved!”
Guan Xingwen interrupted Ruan Tianjie, a look of enlightenment on his face. “Think about it. If not because he wanted us to investigate this case, why would he cause such a huge ruckus in a residential district?”
As an international trading port, this city was crawling with people from all trades. If he’d only received an ordinary handgun of unknown origin and the misfiring incident had not happened, the officers from the Lower Ninth District definitely wouldn’t dispatch so many police cars with such fanfare to the small neighborhood, let alone directly rope in the municipal bureau.
In high spirits, Guan Xingwen had wanted to continue this line of reasoning. But then he caught sight of Yu Baiqing behind the desk. All of a sudden, he realized that they were discussing his didi in front of him without any qualms. Therefore, he very tactfully shut his mouth.
Yu Baiqing didn’t seem to have much of an opinion about their analysis. His fingers tapped against the table. Then, he asked a completely irrelevant question, “Did we manage to contact those two passersby who were nearly injured?”
“…”
“Now that you mention it, I suddenly recall something,” Ruan Tianjie knitted his brows. “Neither the Lower Ninth District station nor us received any police reports about the misfiring incident. It’s almost like that couple vanished off the face of the earth.”
Yu Baiqing lowered his gaze.
He was quite certain now.
Ying Wan’s misfire had not been an accident at all.
He wanted to borrow the aid of the police to help him locate someone, and it was most likely the young couple who happened to be ‘passing by’.
He had used his own method to leave the police a clue on the criminal suspects.
–
Yu Baiqing picked up his jacket slung over the back of the chair, telling the rest in the office, “I’m going back, you guys can continue.’
He drove back to the residential district. Instead of driving to the apartment lobby, he brought the car to a stop at the carpark located at the entrance to the district. Then, he walked to the apartment building.
It was currently 10am. Ying Wan’s bedroom curtains were still closed. He was probably still asleep.
He put on his jacket, covering his police uniform. He proceeded to join the morning crowd.
A group of elderly women were dancing in the district public square. At the residential building, several elderly men were playing chess under the shade of a large locust tree while slowly fanning themselves. Everything seemed serene.
There was a path behind him that only a single person could go through at a time. The one meter-wide path separated two adjacent residential buildings on both sides of a smelly sewer.
Yu Baiqing reached the electric pole where the police cordon had been. He looked up despite the sun, squinting at the scorched-black circuit box above.
From his position, he could see Ying Wan’s bedroom window on the fifth floor opposite.
At this moment, Yu Baiqing noticed something unusual about the surroundings.
The locust tree’s lush vegetation happened to conceal the French windows of a house on the second floor. At the top of the fridge near the window, a small red dot was flashing weakly.
Apart from voyeurs, usually no one would deliberately examine another household’s interior structure. If not for the fact that he had meticulously examined his surroundings, he would not have picked up on this detail.
This family living opposite their apartment building had installed a household surveillance camera at the top of their fridge. The fridge just happened to be facing the entrance to their apartment building and would be able to capture him and Ying Wan entering and leaving every day.
“Meow–”
Yu Baiqing heard a feeble kitten’s cry from above his head.
A tuxedo kitten leaped down from a flowerpot beside a window. It strolled leisurely to the windowsill and looked down, scrutinizing the uninvited guest who was staring at its home.
The smart surveillance camera at the top of the fridge sensed the kitten’s movements in the house and turned slowly to follow the kitten’s movements. The tiny red dot eventually stopped on Yu Baiqing, no longer moving.
Seeing that Yu Baiqing was not paying any heed to it, the kitten flipped over unhurriedly in front of the window and started grooming itself in contentment.
Yu Baiqing stared at the kitten suntanning in front of the window for a while. After a period of silence, he took out his phone from his pocket.
“Old Zhang.” After the line connected, he said straightforwardly, “Bring Chen Anyang with you to the construction site at Qin Gulf. I’ll be there soon.”
Hanging up, he immediately made a beeline for the carpark.
He knew how the murderer had committed the crime.
Ilyz: Happy 2024! May this year bring many good things~
Happy new year and thanks for the chapter!
So … does Yu Baiqing suspect that Ying Wan can see or what? I thought he suspected it right after that incident (Ying Wan shooting the gun) happened but then it didn’t really came up again. But what they now suspect only makes sense if he indeed can see …. hm
If he could deliberately shoot near that ‘passing by’ couples, it could only mean he could in fact, see! Maybe yu baiqing will confront about his didi’s sights after they solve this murder mystery? 🤔