daylily

+【默读 - 英文版】第四章：于连 三 | The Light in the Night

+译者前言和之前的章节见合集

+这两天开始上课啦，更新大概会慢一点（要不然我爆肝也行？

+最近我的lof有点问题，合集的阅读量都虚高（只是想说明一下

——————

Chapter 4: Julien Three

     “I saw that news too, apparently it’s really close to where we are?”

     “Once you cross Nanping Road, it’s only a little bit more of a walk, sometimes when I’m visiting my parents and don’t want to take the overpass, I would take a detour over there. Before, I just thought it was chaotic, who would’ve thought…ah!”

     In the breakroom, two white-collar office workers were slacking off on the job and too immersed in their conversation to notice someone behind them was tuning in live. One of them shuddered, and her unsteady hand almost spilled an entire cup of hot water onto the floor.

     “Careful,” Fei Du reached out and held the mug in her hand from underneath, taking it over to set aside. “Next time, don’t pour yourself water that’s this hot, your hands are so delicate, what if it burnt you?”

     Usually, it was rare for Fei Du to raise his voice when speaking, and when he spoke, they seemed to be typical, proper words. Yet when these proper words came out of his mouth, they instantly took on a hint of secretive intimacy, often luring others to fall for him one-sidedly. But thank goodness he generally took his leave right after saying them, leaving enough time for others to realize that their daydream had shattered.

     “Mr. Fei, you scared me to death!” the two officer workers were startled initially, but when they saw it was him, they instantly relaxed. This was because compared to the dictatorial senior Chairman Fei back in the day, Prince Fei, who had inherited all his properties, was basically a mascot that cheered people up.

     He didn’t bring his playboy character into the company, generally upholding his act of a dignified and reliable front and didn’t exercise his executive powers nor his work obligations. Occasionally he would joke around with the young women in his office, but they were very appropriate jokes as he strictly followed the principle of not taking advantage of those close to him, never stepping over the line.

     Fei Du wiped off the spilled hot water with a tissue before returning the mug, asking casually, “what current event were you guys talking about just now?”

     “We were talking about the West Sector across the street where a robbery-homicide case just happened yesterday, apparently the culprit hasn’t been caught yet. Maybe us at human resources should send out a group email later to remind everyone to be careful on their way here and back home?”

     “Sure,” Fei Du said, looking stern and serious. “If it comes down to it, we can give everyone a temporary holiday until the culprit’s caught. Your safety is much more important than work.”

     The two young women knew he was kidding, but they were still extremely flattered and happily headed back to work.

     A while later, Fei Du received a group email from human resources as expected.

     He squeezed more than half a cup of hazelnut chocolate syrup into a cup with only a bit of coffee left, planning to soak the sugar into every atom of caffeine. Currently bored with nothing to do, he clicked open the video attached in the email as he stirred the drink.

     “During late night yesterday, a malicious case occurred behind this residential area in the West Sector of our city’s Huashi District. As of now, the police have not released any official statements. According to our sources, the victim Mr. He was residing in a hostel near the crime scene…”

     The video was from an online media that was known for its eye-catching exaggerations; after a few minutes of narration that only appeared to be matter-of-factly, a string of loud yells suddenly sounded from behind the camera.

     The shaking camera instantly shifted its attention like a hungry predator, focusing on a food stand.

     A middle-aged woman wearing an apron seemed to be the owner of the food stand, she was pushing a teenager around with anger written all over her face, “you little bastard, can you not do the math or do you lack a conscience? It’s just a few bucks, what are you going to do with it, buy a coffin for your mom?”

     Beside them, a few old men who had nothing better to do were sitting around the food stand that illegally took up the sidewalk, eating wontons. These people had quite the mouth, even eating couldn’t stop them from voicing their not-so-humble opinions, and faced the camera to begin narrating voluntarily.

     “That boy was buying fried pancakes, you know? The owner told him to put the money down and get the change himself from the change box, it’s all up to his own good conscience, right? He gave the owner a ten and was going to take fifteen from the change box, I saw everything just now.”

     “Pay five get five free, nice, he’s not far from striking it rich.”

     “He deserves to get beaten – if he’s stealing when he’s young, what’s he going to do later, traffick drugs and murder people? Don’t you know how the public order is in our area? Nobody dares to loiter outside when it’s dark, how I see it, it was all ruined by these outsiders who are trash of society.”

     “We’ve complained about it so many times, and nobody ever took action. And what do you know, someone died this time, what did I say?”

     When the senior cheerleading squad wanted to urge on a fight, the effect was not to be taken lightly, and the conflict was quick to escalate.

     The angry aura that shot out from the stand owner’s head expanded to tower overhead as she decided to simply settle it with force. The teen who stole from her hugged both his hands over his head and curled up into a ball, revealing a neck and earlobes that were blushing a flaming shade of scarlet; he remained silent, and only dodged around.

     At that moment, a few bystanders couldn’t bear to watch anymore and attempted to separate the two who were going at it, but unexpectedly, they too were caught in the battle zone.

     Suddenly the conflict rose to a whole new level, mistakenly escalating to become a fight between the West Sector’s native residents and out-of-town tenants to inculpate each other.

     The scene could be described as a chaotic mess, the camera was knocked ajar three or four times. Fei Du was done stirring his coffee, thinking that this “looks worse than it is” conflict was extremely boring and lacked any appeal to the audience whatsoever, and was about to close the video.

     Abruptly, someone in the video yelled, “the police are here!”

     To be seen was a few people dressed in uniforms squeeze in between them with difficulty after a moment of chaos, uncoordinated and trying to separate the group of fist fighters, but ended up being drowned out by the crowd; someone had even knocked off the glasses of a young officer.

     When Fei Du saw a familiar figure within them, his hand that moved to close the window immediately froze.

     After lunch, back at Huashi Substation’s office, Wang Hongliang excused himself with having a meeting to attend and ran off like the wind.

     Luo Wenzhou had his hands behind his back as he bent down to look closely at Tao Ran, “last time when we were assisting our colleagues over at Drug Control with arresting drug dealers, we had a gunfight for over twenty minutes, and even then, nobody was “seriously injured” like this. I knew it, as soon as you all are out of my sight, something was bound to go wrong. Don’t forget to go get a rabies shot at the hospital when we head back later.”

     On Officer Tao’s chin was a bloody scratch from an unknown brave soul’s claws.

     The substation was in a frenzy, the civilians who were involved in the all-out brawl were riding an emotional high and refused to settle down even when they had been taken back to the station. Amid the cursing and profanity being fired around was the same “crouch down”s and “stay still”s from a few officers, their vocabulary seeming poorly insufficient. The extra officers that were temporarily called over to help from the area’s subordinate neighbourhood stations stood aimlessly aside in a line, at a loss of what to do.

     When Luo Wenzhou walked in, he lifted a hand and banged the door heavily, overwhelming the two opposing forces with an even more outrageous aura. Everyone was startled by the booming sound, concurrently turning around to look at him.

     Luo Wenzhou leaned against the doorframe, “who were the ones that were assaulting officers?”

     Nobody said anything.

     “No one’s admitting, thinking that the law can’t punish numerous offenders?” Luo Wenzhou nodded, “alright then, detain them all, don’t forget to notify their family to come pay bail, for those that don’t have family, notify their employers. I heard that certain individuals were also involved in illegally taking up sidewalk space and operating without a permit? Perfect timing, make sure to punish them seriously and harshly, the proper way, I’ll tell the colleagues in the subordinate neighbourhood stations to take special care of these people with a criminal record from now on.”

     He barely finished talking when a middle-aged man in his fifties started shouting, “who’s got a criminal record, now? Who are you to say we were assaulting officers? Have you got any evidence? You’re detaining us without any evidence, I’ve got heart problems, I’m telling you!”

     Luo Wenzhou didn’t bother raising his voice or his eyelids, “have you heard of a law enforcement recorder? You illiterate idiot.”

     Lang Qiao walked over at this appropriate moment to hand Luo Wenzhou some printed documents. He took them and glanced them over, giving the man who was the lead troublemaker a long, meaningful look, “what a coincidence.”

     Having said that, he took out his phone to dial a number, “Hello, Principal Han, this is Wenzhou…no, no, it’s the usual – there’s a security guard employed by your school called Yu Lei, is that correct?”

     The middle-aged man who was causing trouble was stunned at first, then his face immediately paled, looking as if he really was about to have a heart attack.

     Luo Wenzhou held the phone in his hand and smiled at him, “could you please check for me, it’s Y-U, Yu, and L-E-I, Lei, male, fifty-three years old – it’s nothing much, this geezer was too feisty for his age and got into a fight with others, he’s been detained by our colleagues at one of our subordinate neighbourhood stations. After we took him in, he said he has heart problems, if he gets a heart attack here and word got around, that’s going to be a whole new issue, wouldn’t you agree? We really can’t take responsibility for this right now, Auntie Han, I’m begging you to please send someone over soon and bail out this high-risk person who’s trying to incriminate us.”

     “I…I, I-I did it to defend the safety of the residents in our neighbourhood!” Luo Wenzhou hasn’t even finished the call and the middle-aged man named Yu Lei was clearly panicking, “it was justified self-defence.”

     Luo Wenzhou was amused, “wow, you even know what ‘self-defence’ is?”

     Yu Lei stuck out a finger to point at the few young men who were obviously a separate group from them, “I was self-defending, the murderer from last night is among them! I heard everything!”

     Luo Wenzhou: “…”

     No one would’ve thought that a public order fiasco somehow turned into individual interrogations.

     The officers who were out gathering evidence from the neighbourhood all hurried back to urgently collect the witnesses’ testimonies.

     “According to that old hooligan Yu Lei, after he turned off the lights and went to bed last night, he heard arguing voices when he was half asleep. They were voices of two male, both of them had out-of-town accents. Their dialectic accents were too heavy, so he didn’t really understand what they were arguing about, but he felt like it was someone he knew,” Lang Qiao brushed backed her long hair. “We have confirmed that this Yu Lei lives very close to where the victim’s body was found, less than fifty metres as the crow flies. He lives in a single-storey building, if the back window was open then he should’ve been able to hear it.”

     Luo Wenzhou: “What time was it, approximately?”

     “Not sure, but he said he went to bed at nine and wasn’t usually insomniac, if he was half asleep…probably before nine-thirty, which matches the deduced time of death. There are also a few other people that live close by and said they heard it indistinctly, but drunks often get into fights in this area at night, they were used to it, thinking it wasn’t a big deal and wasn’t going to be nosy enough to go out and check.”

     “Cap,” Tao Ran stuck his head in with a Band-Aid on his chin, “there’s a guy here, come take a look.”

     In the interrogation room, Xiao Haiyang wore a pair of glasses that were held together by clear tape, seated facing him was a small, thin teen.

     “This kid’s name is Ma Xiaowei, he claims to be eighteen years old already, but to me he looks underage. That all-out brawl at noon today originated from his stealing five bucks,” Tao Ran said. “He’s the victim He Zhongyi’s hostel roommate, and very likely the last person to have seen the victim alive.”

     Luo Wenzhou nodded and pushed open the door to walk in.

     Ma Xiaowei looked up at him swiftly, but perhaps the aura around Commander Luo was too intense, the teen’s face showed a slight perturbation.

     Xiao Haiyang: “It’s fine, continue.”

     Ma Xiaowei twisted his fingers together, his voice like the tiny buzzing of mosquitos, “he...He Zhongyi is from H Province [7], the same as one of our other roommates, but their hometowns aren’t in the same area. Apparently, H Province is quite expansive, I think Zhongyi Bro’s hometown is in a more rural area. He just came here last year, he’s quite a nice person, pretty extroverted, when we lived together, he was very diligent and often tidied the place up…h-he hasn’t made enemies of anyone.”

[7] Just a reminder that all settings in the story are fictional places and certain cities or provinces will not be conspicuously named.

     Xiao Haiyang asked another question, “do you know if he has any other relatives or friends in this city?”

     Ma Xiaowei’s chin dipped, then remembered something and shook his head quickly, “I-I don't know, I haven’t seen anyone like that.”

     Luo Wenzhou interjected, “where were you between eight and ten PM last night?”

     Ma Xiaowei gulped, still too afraid to look at him, and said quietly, “…a-at home.”

     Luo Wenzhou: “By yourself?”

     Ma Xiaowei seemed to have just realized what he meant, his face suddenly darkening.

     “It’s alright, honey,” Luo Wenzhou pulled out a chair and sat in front of Ma Xiaowei, smiling pleasantly. “This is a Violent Crimes Unit, we’re only in charge of criminal investigations, attempted theft of five bucks isn’t going to get you a sentence, don’t be so nervous.”

     Ma Xiaowei was almost about to jump out of his chair.

     Luo Wenzhou continued with a change in his tone, “but as I recall, if it’s repeated theft after many times of being told off, you're going to get a sentence even if it’s not a large amount, don’t tell me this isn’t your first time?”

     Ma Xiaowei instantly froze, his pale face completely blank.

     Luo Wenzhou knocked on the table lightly, “you were by yourself watching TV? What about the people that live with you?”

     “After He Zhongyi got off work yesterday, he went out again after changing his clothes. Zhao Bro…the one from the same province as Zhongyi, he went back to his hometown a couple of days ago to attend a funeral, and a few other fellow workers left to look for people to play cards with. I-I was all by myself, but it really w-wasn’t me…”

     “I didn’t say it was you,” Luo Wenzhou cut off his irrational explanations, “people who live nearby have told us that they heard arguing voices coming from the crime scene at the time, judging from how far you live away from the crime scene, you should’ve heard it. Did you hear anything at the time?”

     Ma Xiaowei bit his lips tightly.

     “If you heard it, just say you heard it, if you didn’t, you didn’t, is this a question that you need to ponder about for so long?”

     “M-maybe I heard a little bit of it, the TV volume was turned up…”

     Luo Wenzhou: “Approximately when was this?”

     Ma Xiaowei answered without hesitation, “quarter past nine.”

     The moment he answered, Xiao Haiyang, who had his head down as he recorded the conversation and Tao Ran, who was standing by the door listening both looked straight at him.

     Luo Wenzhou narrowed his eyes, “didn’t you just say ‘maybe heard a little bit of it’? How come you remember the time so precisely now?”

     Ma Xiaowei: “…”

     “Ma Xiaowei, you need to tell the truth,” Tao Ran said softly, “how do you know it was quarter past nine? Was it because you heard it or were you near the crime scene at the time? What do you know?”

     Luo Wenzhou didn’t give Ma Xiaowei time to react, instantly continuing where Tao Ran left off, “if you don’t explain yourself today, you will be highly suspected as the culprit!”

     “I believe that it likely wasn’t you,” Tao Ran was playing good cop, bad cop with him, “if you didn’t do it, you have no need to be scared, just tell us everything you know. This is a violent case where someone died, you know what’s at stake, don’t you?”

     Ma Xiaowei instinctively shot him a look that begged for help.

     Luo Wenzhou slapped the table, “who are you looking at? I’m telling you to spill it!”

     “It’s not me…I h-heard it,” Ma Xiaowei was on the verge of tears, “at quarter past nine. I heard someone downstairs had started arguing, the voice sounded familiar, so I wanted to go down there and take a look…”

     “What did you see?”

     “Nothing,” Ma Xiaowei’s eyes were opened widely, “I didn’t see anyone, not even a ghost, as if everything I heard was just a hallucination, and the streetlight was broken, too, I…I…”

     Luo Wenzhou snickered, “kid, are you telling us a ghost story?”

     Ma Xiaowei’s eyes were bloodshot and gave him a look full of fear; tiny capillaries climbed onto his eyeballs one by one.

     They repeated their questions nonstop in different ways, shapes, and forms and interrogated him all the way until the evening when the work day was over, until Ma Xiaowei was on the verge of breaking down. However, the teen didn’t provide any further useful information and reiterated his poorly organized ghost story multiple times.

     “I feel like it’s not him,” Lang Qiao said as they left the substation, “this kid’s mentality is pretty weak, with just a little bit of intimidation he’ll spill anything. The way we were interrogating him, if there really is something up, there’s no way he would’ve held on until now…but the ghost story was also very strange.”

     Luo Wenzhou let out a “hmm”.

     Tao Ran: “What is it?”

     “It’s hard to say,” Luo Wenzhou said, “he may be telling only part of the truth, there’s probably something he’s hiding – we’ll leave it for tomorrow. How are you two getting back, heading back to headquarters first or…”

     Before he finished talking, he was cut off by a whistle.

     The supervision trio looked up together to see an SUV that towered two metres tall on the curbside. A person was leaning against the car, “it’s been a long day, Officer Tao, may I drive you home?”