Chapter 121
“I really miss you,” Jiang Ting repeated in a low voice.
The Phaeton slowly stopped at the entrance of the Yazhi Garden. Almost at the same time, Qi Sihao’s car pulled up at a high speed, stopped with a screech, and Captain Qi jumped out impatiently.
In just a few days, Qi Sihao had lost a lot of weight. Yan Xie blinked his eyes and looked up and down at him, asking, “You…haven’t you eaten yet? Would you like to go have a meal first?”
Qi Sihao’s face was sullen: “Hey, what eat? It’s your fault for making me check this. Who could’ve thought that Captain Jiang used to live in such a ghostly place?! I shouldn’t have come here when Wang Xingye jumped off the building last time. What can I do now? I knew I shouldn’t have helped you check at all…”
Yan Xie was impatient: “Cut me some slack; was it me who asked you to resell those ‘white goods’?”
Qi Sihao immediately shut up and looked around nervously.
Yan Xie asked suspiciously, “What’s the matter with you?”
“……” Qi Sihao rubbed his hands hard as if this was the only way to ease his nervousness: “…The police network has been upgraded now.”
“What?”
“Now, as long as you use your police number to log in to check someone’s residence information, a record will be left.” Qi Sihao swallowed hard: “Someone in the background will see me checking the address of Captain Jiang “before he died”, and… and it’s also in the same community as 701. I can’t wash away the muddy water completely this time.”
Yan Xie raised his eyebrows, laughed for a while, shook his head, and patted Qi Sihao on the shoulder:
“So why did you secretly sell ‘white goods’ in the first place?”
Qi Sihao’s face was pale, and Yan Xie turned around and walked into the community.
………
The place where Wang Xingye “jumped” down was Building B, Zone 1. The blood and flesh on the ground had been washed away. The stone slabs in the distance were glowing, seeming to be full of blood, and emitting an uncomfortable damp scent…
Uncles and aunts who had nothing to do in the community walked their dogs in the distance, tacitly avoiding this place.
Yan Xie still had the old habits of doing criminal investigations, so he took a few photos and continued to move forward. According to the terrain map posted at the gate of the community, he passed through the fountain between the first and second zones and the public garden, where the children screamed and ran. The area ahead, near the back door of the community, should be the sixth zone.
Sure enough, as Yan Xie walked closer, he saw the gray door of the residential building was closed, and the number read: Building C, Zone 6.
Did I walk past it?
Yan Xie took a few steps back, and Qi Sihao followed him for unknown reasons, only to see a sign hanging under another residential building in front of Building C: Building B, Zone 6.
“Hey?” Qi Sihao looked around and found something wrong: “Where’s Building A?”
Yan Xie vaguely sensed something. He walked around the neighborhood, with Building B as the center. As long as he saw a building number, he would look closely. However, at the south end of the garden were two buildings, A and B, in Zone 5, and the number at the north end was changed to Zone 7. They went back and forth several times, but they didn’t find Building A, Zone 6.
—But how is this possible?
Jiang Ting’s address on the public security network was obviously apartment 905, Building A, Zone 6, Yazhi Garden. Why did the entire building disappear?
“Hey, excuse me Auntie,” Yan Xie stopped a woman who had just returned from grocery shopping and pointed to the residential buildings in Zone 6: “I came to see my colleague. He said he lives in apartment 905, Building A, Zone 6. Why can’t I find the place anywhere?”
“Building A, Zone 6?” The aunt gave him a strange look and shook her head: “We don’t have Building A in Zone 6 here. There are just two buildings, B and C.”
“……What?”
“I don’t know why, but anyway it’s not there. Did your colleague tell you something wrong?”
“Impossible,” Yan Xie murmured, “How could there not be one?”
“Then you’d have to ask the property management! We’ve never had a Building A in Zone 6 here; who knows why! Property management is also not good. They don’t care if the cars are parked everywhere, and there are people renovating their house almost every day and making loud noises…”
Yan Xie walked away quickly, turned around, and instructed Qi Sihao; even his voice tightened: “Call the property management, hurry up!”
“What, Building A, Zone 6?”
Qi Sihao made up the name of the household registration policeman. The property manager who answered the phone was very concerned, but there were several people on the phone, and they couldn’t tell why. In the end, they found an old employee who was said to have worked since 1989. He finally slapped his thigh and remembered: “When Yazhi Garden was first developed, there was no Building A in Zone 6. The place where the building was originally supposed to be built is now a public garden!”
The thought that Yan Xie was most reluctant to guess came true, and his complexion changed slightly.
“When building A was first built, the foundation couldn’t be laid down, and a few broken coffins were dug up from there, which was terrifying! The boss invited a master to look at it, and he said that this place is too evil and can only be developed into a green space to absorb yang energy, so that yin and yang energies could be balanced. That’s why building A was turned into a garden—oh, it’s just a feng shui legend, so there are only two buildings, B and C, in Zone 6. This type of thing can be disbelieved, but not disrespected. Police officers, are you alright? After all, these things were left behind by our forefathers for thousands of years…
Yan Xie and Qi Sihao looked at each other and looked down at their feet.
Building A, Zone 6—The wet grass was sparse, and the soil exuded its unique fishy smell.
“…Captain Jiang,” Qi Sihao stammered, “When Captain Jiang made up the address…he really didn’t pay that much attention to it…”
Yan Xie hung up the phone, and his brain was buzzing. Jiang Ting didn’t live in Building A, Zone 6?
Why did he make up this fake address? Where did he use to live?
Yan Xie raised his head and looked around; the gray and white world in early winter was reflected in his eyes, and then his eyes passed through the residential buildings and locked in a certain direction in the distance: Building B, Zone 1 of Yazhi Garden.
The bare balcony of residence 701 stood out among the neighbors with drying clothes and stacking air conditioners.
Yan Xie pulled his legs and walked there, but Qi Sihao jumped up and stopped him within two steps: “Captain! Think again!”
Yan Xie shook him off.
“You think about it, think about it again!” Qi Sihao rushed to stand in front of him: “That house is not like Yue Guangping’s house with only a seal; it is under 24-hour surveillance, and there are people watching it anytime, anywhere! Are you rushing in like this to seek death?!”
“Step aside.”
“No! I can’t let you go; you’re trying to kill me too! Please stop!”
“Step aside!”
Buzzing—
The two were in a stalemate when Yan Xie’s cell phone rang.
“Hello?”
Yan Xie’s dark brows were full of anger, but he didn’t expect that the first sentence he would hear on the phone was Chief Lu saying: “Something happened on Qin Chuan’s side.”
“Hm?”
“He ran away.”
Yan Xie’s forehead suddenly jumped: “What?!”
Two police officers knocked on the door with a look of asking for instructions. Chief Lu covered his mobile phone, pushed forward a handwritten address on the table, and quickly whispered, “It’s right here. The head of the household is a thin man in his 30s. You monitor this address, don’t let him go out, and don’t allow anyone to come to the door. It doesn’t matter if you are discovered; he won’t embarrass you. I will explain everything when I go there in person.
The policemen nodded in understanding, grabbed the address, and ran out.
“Qin Chuan claimed that he was willing to provide important clues about the June 19 serial kidnapping case, so the provincial department decided to take him away for questioning. The police car just drove out of the Jianning City Detention Center when several cars on the side of the road exploded at the same time, and then a group of motorcycle riders snatched him away in broad daylight.” Chief Lu breathed out a turbid breath and said, “Ma Xiang from your detachment and several other members of the anti-drug detachment were there at that time. Fortunately, they were far away and weren’t hurt.”
“……”
There was a moment of silence on the other end of the phone, and suddenly Yan Xie spat out a sentence, “The other party really wants to save him, or are they going to kill him?”
Chief Lu was a little stunned.
Yan Xie sensed it and asked suspiciously, “Did the city bureau ever think about the possibility that the criminals plan to forcibly silence him?”
——Of course we’ve thought of it, but it was only thought of as another possibility after Qin Chuan’s active escape from prison was taken as the primary direction of suspicion.
No one was like Yan Xie, whose first reaction was to think that Qin Chuan might be killed.
“I’ve already considered this possibility.” Chief Lu restrained his expression and did not show any clues: “But according to the narration of the prison guard in the car at the time of the incident and Qin Chuan’s action of asking his former colleague to stand away before the explosion, we prefer to assume that he already knew that someone was going to break him out of prison.”
Yan Xie suppressed the complicated feelings in his heart and didn’t make a sound.
“In short, the situation is very serious now. Qin Chuan, as the deputy team leader who has a lot of inside information, and information about undercovers, informants, etc., has fallen into the hands of drug dealers. This is the worst situation. We must immediately prepare for the worst-case scenario to happen. “
“I understand.” Yan Xie finally forcibly suppressed all his thoughts and coughed: “I’ll go back to the Criminal Investigation Detachment and cooperate with all the work, and besides—”
“No,” Chief Lu interrupted him, “I need you to go on a business trip.”
Yan Xie paused suspiciously.
Chief Lu said solemnly, “Qin Chuan explained Teng Wenyan’s burial place.”
Teng Wenyan, 16 years old, was a shampoo girl in a third-rate beauty salon in Lingzhou City, S province; her real name and family background were impossible to investigate. Together with Wang Rui, a barber next door, she became one of the first pair of victims in the June 19 serial kidnapping case.
Unlike Li Yuxin and Bu Wei, Teng Wenyan, with a primary school education, had nothing in common with Jiang Ting, the “executioner” template in the King of Spades’ heart, besides her beautiful appearance.
It was precisely because of this that her experience and background had become the top priority of the investigation work, but so far there was no way of finding a needle in a haystack—the Municipal Bureau didn’t even know where she was buried, and Wang Xingye had committed “suicide in fear of crime”.
“It’s in a particular forest reserve near Tongshan in S province. The nearest county town police have already set off to search.” Chief Lu stood up, packed his briefcase, and strode out of the office: “You can go over now. I’ll arrange for Little Gou to take the forensic doctors and the trace inspectors to follow up and give me a response immediately after confirming the body. As for the criminal investigation detachment, don’t worry too much; your Captain Yu has already arrived, and there should be no problem holding on for the time being.”
“But……”
“What the hell are you thinking?”
Yan Xie held the phone in one hand, rubbed the throbbing temple with the other, and finally said hoarsely: “Qin Chuan once tried to kill Jiang Ting, if he and the King of Spades are in Jianning, I’m afraid……”
Chief Lu was not surprised. He knew he would say this and said directly on the spot: “It’s okay, I have already sent someone to protect your house!”
“But if I don’t come back in person—”
“You don’t have to come back yourself!” Chief Lu hurriedly opened the door and said decisively, “I’ll go in person!”
Outside the office door, the anxious Deputy Chief Wei and Yu Zhu turned their heads at the same time.
“That’s it!” Chief Lu stopped talking to Yan Xie and hung up the phone.
“Who is this? Yan Xie?” After all, Wei Yao watched Yan Xie grow up and was very familiar with his voice, so he immediately asked sensitively.
Chief Lu nodded, stuffing his phone into his briefcase as he walked toward the elevator.
Deputy Chief Wei hurriedly asked: “Is he in trouble again? Is he questioning the system’s arrangements? This kid acts like he’s in his teens or twenties. After Qin Chuan’s accident, I immediately told him that he should maintain a sense of proportion and boundaries, but he still—”
Deputy Chief Wei eagerly followed behind, but Chief Lu turned a deaf ear. Yan Xie’s somewhat rash question suddenly sounded in his mind: Did the Municipal Bureau ever think about the possibility that the criminals planned to forcibly silence him?
“……” Chief Lu’s aging face changed, and he sighed: “Yan Xie’s heart is too soft.”
Deputy Chief Wei obviously did not understand what he meant by this.
The elevator reached the floor with a ding, and Chief Lu suddenly turned his back to the slowly opening door. He looked back and forth at Deputy Chief Wei and Yu Zhu, who were full of doubts. His eyes flicked over their gray temples and wrinkles, and some complex and unspeakable emotions gradually emerged in his heart.
Yu Zhu was a little startled by him: “Old Lu, are you alright?”
“It’s nothing,” Chief Lu smiled with emotion: “I suddenly remembered that we’ve been working together for almost twenty or thirty years.”
Yu Zhu and Wei Yao were very confused, not knowing why he was saying this.
“Only now did I realize that our old bones have been able to stand side by side until now; no one has lost their way, and no one has been separated. It turned out to be such an easy thing.” Chief Lu stretched out his hand and patted the two of them respectively on their shoulders and sighed, “Everything is good, everything is fine.”
The two of them looked at each other, but Chief Lu turned his head, coughed, and stepped into the elevator first.
………
S province had been rugged and mountainous since ancient times, and the Tongshan area was at the junction between S province and Gongzhou. Although the road was difficult to walk, Qi Sihao, after hesitating again and again, signed up for field work and insisted on following Yan Xie.
The reason why Qi Sihao was panicked and suspicious of everything was that he had just logged onto the police network to check the address of the Yazhi Garden. Now his heart was beating rapidly, and he urgently needed to find some illusory sense of security. Therefore, Yan Xie didn’t stop him too much. The two set out on the road overnight. The car couldn’t be driven there, so they bought train tickets for the immediate departure, and prepared to go to the border of the forest reserve to contact local public security, and then follow the police car up the mountain.
“I can’t go back tonight. I have something to do. Hmm… Have you eaten? What did you eat?”
Yan Xie leaned against the corner seat, shaking slightly with the roar of the train. The first-class compartment was brightly lit but very deserted. Qi Sihao was leaning on the other end while tightly holding his clothes, dozing off with his eyes closed.
“I’ve made some soup and will eat it later.” Jiang Ting’s quiet answer came over the phone, and then he asked, “How about you?”
“There are noodles on the train. This horrible weather is cloudy, humid, and cold. I saw that the wind outside made the trees crooked… It would be nice to stay at home. I miss the big bone soup you made.”
Jiang Ting seemed to laugh silently and said, “Come back and drink it.”
Those few words were like hot springs, gurgling out from the bottom of his heart. The corners of Yan Xie’s lips rose slightly, but when he looked out the window, he saw his haggard and confused face through the dark glass like thick ink.
“…Jiang Ting.”
“Um?”
Did you ever live in Building A, Zone 6, Yazhi Garden?
Or was it in room 701 where the Queen of Hearts appeared and your fingerprints were found?
Yan Xie closed his eyes, swallowing the difficult question, and smiled briefly: “It’s nothing. Do you miss me?”
“……”
“I asked you something?”
“I do.” Jiang Ting said slowly, “I want you to come home now.”
Yan Xie opened his eyes, and a warm white mist appeared on the window glass.
The train tracks stretched infinitely westward, and the train roared forward, leaving the rolling hills, rivers, and villages far behind in the night.
“I really miss you,” Jiang Ting repeated in a low voice.
A few hundred kilometers away in Jianning, in the lakeside community, the warm lights reflected in the kitchen, and the bone soup on the stove was boiling with steam gushing out.
The doorbell finally rang – ding dong!
Jiang Ting put down his mobile phone and sighed without making any noise in the faint smell of smoke.
He turned off the fire and walked to the entrance door. He didn’t even look at the peephole and opened the door directly.
The two policemen who had been guarding the gate for the whole afternoon were indeed gone, replaced by a serious and experienced old man with a briefcase under his arms——
Chief Lu.
“Qin Chuan escaped from prison,” he said solemnly.
The two of them looked at each other across the door frame. Jiang Ting still held a spoon in one hand, and he raised his eyebrows after a while: “I have already reminded you to prevent him from escaping. Now that he has run away, what’s the use of guarding me? Do you think I can bring him back?”
Chief Lu laughed: “You’re just being modest. If you really want to do something, Captain Jiang, can’t you do it?”
Jiang Ting looked at him indifferently.
“Oh, by the way, I haven’t had time to tell you yet. Yan Xie has a temporary mission, which is actually about…”
“No need to make it up, I don’t want to know.”
“Okay, that’s fine.” Chief Lu seemed to be quite happy: “Actually, I haven’t had time to make up the reasons.”
It was convenient for smart people to deal with each other. They could basically figure things out from each other’s reactions, and some things didn’t need to be pointed out to increase embarrassment.
The two of them stared at each other for a while. The air was freezing and stiff, and only the sound of the soup gurgling from the kitchen was particularly obvious. After dozens of seconds, Chief Lu spread out his hands and finally said his real purpose: “I have something I want to talk to you about. Can you invite me in now, Captain Jiang?”
Jiang Ting’s eyes flickered, and he finally lifted his foot and stepped back half a step.
“Please come in.” He said lightly, “The tea belongs to me, and the soup belongs to Yan Xie. I have nothing to entertain you. Forgive me.”
Chapter 121
“I really miss you,” Jiang Ting repeated in a low voice.
The Phaeton slowly stopped at the entrance of the Yazhi Garden. Almost at the same time, Qi Sihao’s car pulled up at a high speed, stopped with a screech, and Captain Qi jumped out impatiently.
In just a few days, Qi Sihao had lost a lot of weight. Yan Xie blinked his eyes and looked up and down at him, asking, “You…haven’t you eaten yet? Would you like to go have a meal first?”
Qi Sihao’s face was sullen: “Hey, what eat? It’s your fault for making me check this. Who could’ve thought that Captain Jiang used to live in such a ghostly place?! I shouldn’t have come here when Wang Xingye jumped off the building last time. What can I do now? I knew I shouldn’t have helped you check at all…”
Yan Xie was impatient: “Cut me some slack; was it me who asked you to resell those ‘white goods’?”
Qi Sihao immediately shut up and looked around nervously.
Yan Xie asked suspiciously, “What’s the matter with you?”
“……” Qi Sihao rubbed his hands hard as if this was the only way to ease his nervousness: “…The police network has been upgraded now.”
“What?”
“Now, as long as you use your police number to log in to check someone’s residence information, a record will be left.” Qi Sihao swallowed hard: “Someone in the background will see me checking the address of Captain Jiang “before he died”, and… and it’s also in the same community as 701. I can’t wash away the muddy water completely this time.”
Yan Xie raised his eyebrows, laughed for a while, shook his head, and patted Qi Sihao on the shoulder:
“So why did you secretly sell ‘white goods’ in the first place?”
Qi Sihao’s face was pale, and Yan Xie turned around and walked into the community.
………
The place where Wang Xingye “jumped” down was Building B, Zone 1. The blood and flesh on the ground had been washed away. The stone slabs in the distance were glowing, seeming to be full of blood, and emitting an uncomfortable damp scent…
Uncles and aunts who had nothing to do in the community walked their dogs in the distance, tacitly avoiding this place.
Yan Xie still had the old habits of doing criminal investigations, so he took a few photos and continued to move forward. According to the terrain map posted at the gate of the community, he passed through the fountain between the first and second zones and the public garden, where the children screamed and ran. The area ahead, near the back door of the community, should be the sixth zone.
Sure enough, as Yan Xie walked closer, he saw the gray door of the residential building was closed, and the number read: Building C, Zone 6.
Did I walk past it?
Yan Xie took a few steps back, and Qi Sihao followed him for unknown reasons, only to see a sign hanging under another residential building in front of Building C: Building B, Zone 6.
“Hey?” Qi Sihao looked around and found something wrong: “Where’s Building A?”
Yan Xie vaguely sensed something. He walked around the neighborhood, with Building B as the center. As long as he saw a building number, he would look closely. However, at the south end of the garden were two buildings, A and B, in Zone 5, and the number at the north end was changed to Zone 7. They went back and forth several times, but they didn’t find Building A, Zone 6.
—But how is this possible?
Jiang Ting’s address on the public security network was obviously apartment 905, Building A, Zone 6, Yazhi Garden. Why did the entire building disappear?
“Hey, excuse me Auntie,” Yan Xie stopped a woman who had just returned from grocery shopping and pointed to the residential buildings in Zone 6: “I came to see my colleague. He said he lives in apartment 905, Building A, Zone 6. Why can’t I find the place anywhere?”
“Building A, Zone 6?” The aunt gave him a strange look and shook her head: “We don’t have Building A in Zone 6 here. There are just two buildings, B and C.”
“……What?”
“I don’t know why, but anyway it’s not there. Did your colleague tell you something wrong?”
“Impossible,” Yan Xie murmured, “How could there not be one?”
“Then you’d have to ask the property management! We’ve never had a Building A in Zone 6 here; who knows why! Property management is also not good. They don’t care if the cars are parked everywhere, and there are people renovating their house almost every day and making loud noises…”
Yan Xie walked away quickly, turned around, and instructed Qi Sihao; even his voice tightened: “Call the property management, hurry up!”
“What, Building A, Zone 6?”
Qi Sihao made up the name of the household registration policeman. The property manager who answered the phone was very concerned, but there were several people on the phone, and they couldn’t tell why. In the end, they found an old employee who was said to have worked since 1989. He finally slapped his thigh and remembered: “When Yazhi Garden was first developed, there was no Building A in Zone 6. The place where the building was originally supposed to be built is now a public garden!”
The thought that Yan Xie was most reluctant to guess came true, and his complexion changed slightly.
“When building A was first built, the foundation couldn’t be laid down, and a few broken coffins were dug up from there, which was terrifying! The boss invited a master to look at it, and he said that this place is too evil and can only be developed into a green space to absorb yang energy, so that yin and yang energies could be balanced. That’s why building A was turned into a garden—oh, it’s just a feng shui legend, so there are only two buildings, B and C, in Zone 6. This type of thing can be disbelieved, but not disrespected. Police officers, are you alright? After all, these things were left behind by our forefathers for thousands of years…
Yan Xie and Qi Sihao looked at each other and looked down at their feet.
Building A, Zone 6—The wet grass was sparse, and the soil exuded its unique fishy smell.
“…Captain Jiang,” Qi Sihao stammered, “When Captain Jiang made up the address…he really didn’t pay that much attention to it…”
Yan Xie hung up the phone, and his brain was buzzing. Jiang Ting didn’t live in Building A, Zone 6?
Why did he make up this fake address? Where did he use to live?
Yan Xie raised his head and looked around; the gray and white world in early winter was reflected in his eyes, and then his eyes passed through the residential buildings and locked in a certain direction in the distance: Building B, Zone 1 of Yazhi Garden.
The bare balcony of residence 701 stood out among the neighbors with drying clothes and stacking air conditioners.
Yan Xie pulled his legs and walked there, but Qi Sihao jumped up and stopped him within two steps: “Captain! Think again!”
Yan Xie shook him off.
“You think about it, think about it again!” Qi Sihao rushed to stand in front of him: “That house is not like Yue Guangping’s house with only a seal; it is under 24-hour surveillance, and there are people watching it anytime, anywhere! Are you rushing in like this to seek death?!”
“Step aside.”
“No! I can’t let you go; you’re trying to kill me too! Please stop!”
“Step aside!”
Buzzing—
The two were in a stalemate when Yan Xie’s cell phone rang.
“Hello?”
Yan Xie’s dark brows were full of anger, but he didn’t expect that the first sentence he would hear on the phone was Chief Lu saying: “Something happened on Qin Chuan’s side.”
“Hm?”
“He ran away.”
Yan Xie’s forehead suddenly jumped: “What?!”
Two police officers knocked on the door with a look of asking for instructions. Chief Lu covered his mobile phone, pushed forward a handwritten address on the table, and quickly whispered, “It’s right here. The head of the household is a thin man in his 30s. You monitor this address, don’t let him go out, and don’t allow anyone to come to the door. It doesn’t matter if you are discovered; he won’t embarrass you. I will explain everything when I go there in person.
The policemen nodded in understanding, grabbed the address, and ran out.
“Qin Chuan claimed that he was willing to provide important clues about the June 19 serial kidnapping case, so the provincial department decided to take him away for questioning. The police car just drove out of the Jianning City Detention Center when several cars on the side of the road exploded at the same time, and then a group of motorcycle riders snatched him away in broad daylight.” Chief Lu breathed out a turbid breath and said, “Ma Xiang from your detachment and several other members of the anti-drug detachment were there at that time. Fortunately, they were far away and weren’t hurt.”
“……”
There was a moment of silence on the other end of the phone, and suddenly Yan Xie spat out a sentence, “The other party really wants to save him, or are they going to kill him?”
Chief Lu was a little stunned.
Yan Xie sensed it and asked suspiciously, “Did the city bureau ever think about the possibility that the criminals plan to forcibly silence him?”
——Of course we’ve thought of it, but it was only thought of as another possibility after Qin Chuan’s active escape from prison was taken as the primary direction of suspicion.
No one was like Yan Xie, whose first reaction was to think that Qin Chuan might be killed.
“I’ve already considered this possibility.” Chief Lu restrained his expression and did not show any clues: “But according to the narration of the prison guard in the car at the time of the incident and Qin Chuan’s action of asking his former colleague to stand away before the explosion, we prefer to assume that he already knew that someone was going to break him out of prison.”
Yan Xie suppressed the complicated feelings in his heart and didn’t make a sound.
“In short, the situation is very serious now. Qin Chuan, as the deputy team leader who has a lot of inside information, and information about undercovers, informants, etc., has fallen into the hands of drug dealers. This is the worst situation. We must immediately prepare for the worst-case scenario to happen. “
“I understand.” Yan Xie finally forcibly suppressed all his thoughts and coughed: “I’ll go back to the Criminal Investigation Detachment and cooperate with all the work, and besides—”
“No,” Chief Lu interrupted him, “I need you to go on a business trip.”
Yan Xie paused suspiciously.
Chief Lu said solemnly, “Qin Chuan explained Teng Wenyan’s burial place.”
Teng Wenyan, 16 years old, was a shampoo girl in a third-rate beauty salon in Lingzhou City, S province; her real name and family background were impossible to investigate. Together with Wang Rui, a barber next door, she became one of the first pair of victims in the June 19 serial kidnapping case.
Unlike Li Yuxin and Bu Wei, Teng Wenyan, with a primary school education, had nothing in common with Jiang Ting, the “executioner” template in the King of Spades’ heart, besides her beautiful appearance.
It was precisely because of this that her experience and background had become the top priority of the investigation work, but so far there was no way of finding a needle in a haystack—the Municipal Bureau didn’t even know where she was buried, and Wang Xingye had committed “suicide in fear of crime”.
“It’s in a particular forest reserve near Tongshan in S province. The nearest county town police have already set off to search.” Chief Lu stood up, packed his briefcase, and strode out of the office: “You can go over now. I’ll arrange for Little Gou to take the forensic doctors and the trace inspectors to follow up and give me a response immediately after confirming the body. As for the criminal investigation detachment, don’t worry too much; your Captain Yu has already arrived, and there should be no problem holding on for the time being.”
“But……”
“What the hell are you thinking?”
Yan Xie held the phone in one hand, rubbed the throbbing temple with the other, and finally said hoarsely: “Qin Chuan once tried to kill Jiang Ting, if he and the King of Spades are in Jianning, I’m afraid……”
Chief Lu was not surprised. He knew he would say this and said directly on the spot: “It’s okay, I have already sent someone to protect your house!”
“But if I don’t come back in person—”
“You don’t have to come back yourself!” Chief Lu hurriedly opened the door and said decisively, “I’ll go in person!”
Outside the office door, the anxious Deputy Chief Wei and Yu Zhu turned their heads at the same time.
“That’s it!” Chief Lu stopped talking to Yan Xie and hung up the phone.
“Who is this? Yan Xie?” After all, Wei Yao watched Yan Xie grow up and was very familiar with his voice, so he immediately asked sensitively.
Chief Lu nodded, stuffing his phone into his briefcase as he walked toward the elevator.
Deputy Chief Wei hurriedly asked: “Is he in trouble again? Is he questioning the system’s arrangements? This kid acts like he’s in his teens or twenties. After Qin Chuan’s accident, I immediately told him that he should maintain a sense of proportion and boundaries, but he still—”
Deputy Chief Wei eagerly followed behind, but Chief Lu turned a deaf ear. Yan Xie’s somewhat rash question suddenly sounded in his mind: Did the Municipal Bureau ever think about the possibility that the criminals planned to forcibly silence him?
“……” Chief Lu’s aging face changed, and he sighed: “Yan Xie’s heart is too soft.”
Deputy Chief Wei obviously did not understand what he meant by this.
The elevator reached the floor with a ding, and Chief Lu suddenly turned his back to the slowly opening door. He looked back and forth at Deputy Chief Wei and Yu Zhu, who were full of doubts. His eyes flicked over their gray temples and wrinkles, and some complex and unspeakable emotions gradually emerged in his heart.
Yu Zhu was a little startled by him: “Old Lu, are you alright?”
“It’s nothing,” Chief Lu smiled with emotion: “I suddenly remembered that we’ve been working together for almost twenty or thirty years.”
Yu Zhu and Wei Yao were very confused, not knowing why he was saying this.
“Only now did I realize that our old bones have been able to stand side by side until now; no one has lost their way, and no one has been separated. It turned out to be such an easy thing.” Chief Lu stretched out his hand and patted the two of them respectively on their shoulders and sighed, “Everything is good, everything is fine.”
The two of them looked at each other, but Chief Lu turned his head, coughed, and stepped into the elevator first.
………
S province had been rugged and mountainous since ancient times, and the Tongshan area was at the junction between S province and Gongzhou. Although the road was difficult to walk, Qi Sihao, after hesitating again and again, signed up for field work and insisted on following Yan Xie.
The reason why Qi Sihao was panicked and suspicious of everything was that he had just logged onto the police network to check the address of the Yazhi Garden. Now his heart was beating rapidly, and he urgently needed to find some illusory sense of security. Therefore, Yan Xie didn’t stop him too much. The two set out on the road overnight. The car couldn’t be driven there, so they bought train tickets for the immediate departure, and prepared to go to the border of the forest reserve to contact local public security, and then follow the police car up the mountain.
“I can’t go back tonight. I have something to do. Hmm… Have you eaten? What did you eat?”
Yan Xie leaned against the corner seat, shaking slightly with the roar of the train. The first-class compartment was brightly lit but very deserted. Qi Sihao was leaning on the other end while tightly holding his clothes, dozing off with his eyes closed.
“I’ve made some soup and will eat it later.” Jiang Ting’s quiet answer came over the phone, and then he asked, “How about you?”
“There are noodles on the train. This horrible weather is cloudy, humid, and cold. I saw that the wind outside made the trees crooked… It would be nice to stay at home. I miss the big bone soup you made.”
Jiang Ting seemed to laugh silently and said, “Come back and drink it.”
Those few words were like hot springs, gurgling out from the bottom of his heart. The corners of Yan Xie’s lips rose slightly, but when he looked out the window, he saw his haggard and confused face through the dark glass like thick ink.
“…Jiang Ting.”
“Um?”
Did you ever live in Building A, Zone 6, Yazhi Garden?
Or was it in room 701 where the Queen of Hearts appeared and your fingerprints were found?
Yan Xie closed his eyes, swallowing the difficult question, and smiled briefly: “It’s nothing. Do you miss me?”
“……”
“I asked you something?”
“I do.” Jiang Ting said slowly, “I want you to come home now.”
Yan Xie opened his eyes, and a warm white mist appeared on the window glass.
The train tracks stretched infinitely westward, and the train roared forward, leaving the rolling hills, rivers, and villages far behind in the night.
“I really miss you,” Jiang Ting repeated in a low voice.
A few hundred kilometers away in Jianning, in the lakeside community, the warm lights reflected in the kitchen, and the bone soup on the stove was boiling with steam gushing out.
The doorbell finally rang – ding dong!
Jiang Ting put down his mobile phone and sighed without making any noise in the faint smell of smoke.
He turned off the fire and walked to the entrance door. He didn’t even look at the peephole and opened the door directly.
The two policemen who had been guarding the gate for the whole afternoon were indeed gone, replaced by a serious and experienced old man with a briefcase under his arms——
Chief Lu.
“Qin Chuan escaped from prison,” he said solemnly.
The two of them looked at each other across the door frame. Jiang Ting still held a spoon in one hand, and he raised his eyebrows after a while: “I have already reminded you to prevent him from escaping. Now that he has run away, what’s the use of guarding me? Do you think I can bring him back?”
Chief Lu laughed: “You’re just being modest. If you really want to do something, Captain Jiang, can’t you do it?”
Jiang Ting looked at him indifferently.
“Oh, by the way, I haven’t had time to tell you yet. Yan Xie has a temporary mission, which is actually about…”
“No need to make it up, I don’t want to know.”
“Okay, that’s fine.” Chief Lu seemed to be quite happy: “Actually, I haven’t had time to make up the reasons.”
It was convenient for smart people to deal with each other. They could basically figure things out from each other’s reactions, and some things didn’t need to be pointed out to increase embarrassment.
The two of them stared at each other for a while. The air was freezing and stiff, and only the sound of the soup gurgling from the kitchen was particularly obvious. After dozens of seconds, Chief Lu spread out his hands and finally said his real purpose: “I have something I want to talk to you about. Can you invite me in now, Captain Jiang?”
Jiang Ting’s eyes flickered, and he finally lifted his foot and stepped back half a step.
“Please come in.” He said lightly, “The tea belongs to me, and the soup belongs to Yan Xie. I have nothing to entertain you. Forgive me.”
