CH 7

As I placed the bag of money into the trunk of the car, I could feel a dull pain coming from the wound on my right wrist. I never thought that a skinny homeless man who never knew when his next meal would be could resist with this much strength. Perhaps he already realized at that point that he was about to die.

I rolled my sleeves down to hide the wound, then quickly ducked into the driver’s seat, started up the car and got ready to leave. Just then, someone knocked on the window of the front passenger seat. I turned to look and saw Inspector Ji’s righteous looking face.

I wound the window down and asked what he wanted, but he opened the car door and got into my car instead.

“Yu, I heard that you got injured while trying to arrest the suspect yesterday. Is it serious?”

As he spoke, he insisted on grabbing my arms to check on my wound, as if he were the legendary Wong Fei-Hung who was both a master in martial arts and a physician. I reacted too slowly, so he caught sight of the wound. I said, “It’s just a superficial wound, so it’s nothing serious.” But he remained silent and looked at it for a long time before finally giving his diagnosis, “You’re right. It’s just a superficial wound.”

I ignored his useless diagnosis and said with a sigh, “It’s unfortunate that he resisted arrest, lost his balance and fell to his death. Now that he’s dead, does that mean we can’t confirm his involvement?”

Inspector Ji consoled me, “Don’t worry, someone saw the kidnapper, Liu Ergou, and the suspect enter that rented apartment and stay there for the night, leaving in the morning just before the transaction happened. The forensics have already taken fingerprints from the apartment and they are checking them against the suspect’s fingerprints. The results aren’t out yet, but I’m pretty sure they’ll match.”

The rented apartment he was talking about was the third story apartment that had the best view of the street. Honestly, I really admired Inspector Ji on this point. Logically speaking, the case could have been closed once the kidnapper was dead and the hostage was safe. But he still had doubts and went back to check the apartment we had initially hoped to use, forcibly surfacing a third kidnapper.

Inspector Ji seemed addicted to suspecting everybody around him, so immediately after he said ‘pretty sure they’ll match’, he changed the topic and said, “But there’s one thing that doesn’t make sense. Before the first transaction happened, the suspect had already rented an apartment that had the full view of the street. Why did he decide to give up on keeping watch on the day of the transaction itself and sneak off?”

I said, “Maybe the kidnapper noticed the police while we were laying our ambush and changed his mind about watching the street.”

Inspector Ji fell silent for a long time, then suddenly asked, “Yu, do you remember? During the first transaction, the first thing Fatty Sun said to Wang Jianguo was to get angry at Wang Jianguo for calling the police and started raising the ransom amount, right?”

I had to admit that we had very poor control of the situation that day. Not only did we raise the alarm, but we also allowed the kidnappers to have the upper hand.

Just when I was prepared to guiltily reflect on my past actions, Inspector Ji interrupted me, “I’m bringing up the previous transaction not because I’m looking for someone to blame, but to investigate another matter.”

I blinked in surprise. “What other matter?”

“The kidnappers had already found out by that time that the police were laying in ambush. So, when did the kidnappers find out?”

I didn’t have any answer to that.

“Did someone give the game away that very morning itself and made the kidnappers suspicious? Or even earlier?”

“Even earlier?”

“Yu, have you forgotten? During the transaction, Fatty Sun mentioned that the city management had gone to repair the surveillance cameras!”

I felt instantly enlightened. Inspector Ji was right – Sun Peiqi had said to Wang Jianguo that he had noticed someone fixing the surveillance cameras in the area and concluded that Wang Jianguo must have called the police from there.

Inspector Ji went on, “This leads us to another question. Since the technicians had already raised the alarm when they suddenly came to fix the cameras, why did the kidnappers still decide to stay the night in that rented apartment?”

I said, “Perhaps the kidnappers weren’t sure at that point if the fixing of cameras had anything to do with the kidnapping case and therefore decided to stay the night to keep a closer watch?”

Inspector Ji nodded. “That’s possible. But that bring us to yet another question. Since the kidnappers were already suspicious, then they ought to have been careful with every move they made inside the rented apartment. But according to the forensics, the apartment was filled with fingerprints, so the kidnappers didn’t seem very bothered about taking care of this aspect.”

I laughed and said, “Inspector Ji, you’re overthinking it. The kidnappers wouldn’t have expected you to check that apartment, so they just left their fingerprints everywhere.”

But Inspector Ji said, “I’m not overthinking it. If I’m not mistaken, the kidnappers already predicted that the police might check that rented apartment when they rented it.”

“Why do you say that?”

“Very simple. Liu Ergou and the suspect were seen going in and out of that rented apartment, but we couldn’t find Liu Ergou’s fingerprints at all!”

“Oh?” I was surprised and didn’t know what to say.

Inspector Ji said, “There’s only one explanation. The homeless man who stayed the night in that rented apartment was most likely a scapegoat!”

I said, “I don’t think so. If he wasn’t one of the kidnappers, why did he resist arrest yesterday?”

“Well, even illegal business owners flee desperately when they spot an inspector from the government, never mind a homeless man.”

“But we weren’t there as inspectors!”

Inspector Ji said calmly, “In his panic, he might not have noticed and thought that we were inspectors from the government.”

I had spent so many years of my life as a police officer but I had never heard of such a terrible conjecture. I could hardly believe how he managed to twist a suspect’s suicide into something like that.

I couldn’t be bothered to argue with him, so I just said that the case was already cracked and he didn’t have to keep thinking about it. But before I could finish speaking, Inspector Ji raised his hand to stop me halfway and he asked me with a serious expression on his face, “Yu, what do you think makes me different from ordinary cops?”

I knew he was going to start blowing his own trumpet again, so I casually replied, “You’re an inspector and the rest are just police officers.”

“That’s just what you see on the outside. You’ve got to look past the surface and look deeper,” he tried to patiently lead me to the right answer.

But I couldn’t come up with anything, so I shook my head.

Inspector Ji wasn’t bothered by my ignorance and decided to enlighten me himself, “The difference between myself and ordinary cops is that…I’m extraordinary!”

He glanced at me, then continued to praise himself, “Usually, the police would follow standard procedures when investigating a case. But not me. I rely on intuition to crack cases!”

He then applied it to an actual case, “Let’s take this case, for example. It looks like it has been solved on the surface, but I keep feeling like there’s more to it. It looks like we’ve gotten all the kidnappers, but I still feel that the real mastermind is still walking about scot-free!”

The more he spoke, the more excited he got. He proceeded to analyze the case, “Do you still remember the first transaction? The fact that the mastermind could silence Fatty Sun in front of so many witnesses proves that this mastermind is a very meticulous and detailed person. Such a person would definitely plan a spectacular kidnapping and the ending of the case would be equally perfect!”

I nodded. “Indeed. The kidnapper predicted that once he handed over the hostage, the police would definitely try to nab him at all costs, so he tied explosives to his accomplice to make him look like he was willing to die with everyone, but it was actually to prevent the police from making a move. Unfortunately, he detonated the bomb by accident, so there’s no perfect ending to this case.”

Inspector Ji wagged his finger. “No, no, no. Quite the opposite, in fact. It was precisely the blast that helped this kidnapping case come to a perfect end.”

“What do you mean?”

Inspector Ji patiently led me to the answer again, “Yu, have you forgotten about how you installed a GPS tracker in the bag of money? If the explosives hadn’t gone off, we would have been able to trace the bag to the third kidnapper and nabbed him as well. We wouldn’t be left guessing.”

That made sense too. I sighed. “I guess nothing that a human plans can overwrite the plans that the gods have.”

But Inspector Ji snorted and said, “No, no, this wasn’t the plans of the gods. This was planned by a human!”

I got even more confused now. “Are you saying that the kidnapper purposely set the bomb off?”

He nodded. “I suspect this is all a scheme.”

I got a terrible shock. How on earth did this man manage to come up with so many ideas about a simple case that was already closed?

“Don’t you think so? Think about it. The kidnapper who did the actual transaction didn’t have to tie actual explosives to himself. Even if he tied a fake bomb to himself, the police wouldn’t have dared to open fire. And do you remember? The bomb had wires that tracked the kidnapper’s pulse too. Since the kidnappers could put together such a high tech bomb like a dead man’s switch, how could he have made such a low level mistake of accidentally setting it off?”

I said, “But at that time, we already gave orders for the police to let him go. Why would he want to set the bomb off when it wasn’t going to kill any of the police officers surrounding him?”

“That’s because the one who set the bomb off wasn’t the kidnapper who conducted the actual transaction, but the kidnapper who made the bomb.”

“That’s even crazier. Why would he want to blast his own accomplice to pieces?”

“He shot Fatty Sun dead to silence him, so he must have blasted Liu Ergou dead to hide his tracks. I think he already knew that you had installed a GPS tracker in that bag of ransom money!”

I said, “That’s impossible. How could he have known?”

Inspector Ji began to look at this case from the perspective of a game. “If he were the game master, there’s nothing impossible with him.”

“Game master?”

Inspector Ji said, “Do you remember the first transaction? Police officers had surrounded Fatty Sun, yet this person could kill Fatty Sun with a gun, then come and go without leaving any trace behind. Such an omniscient and omnipotent character has to be a game master of sorts, right?”

“What are you driving at?”

He laughed, then said, “We’ve got a mole!”

“What?”

“You heard me right, we’ve got a traitor among us! The kidnappers had an informant in the police. That’s the best way to explain all these situations we have.”

Inspector Ji’s conjecture was simply too out of this world and I could hardly believe what I was hearing. “Are you saying that an officer shot Sun Peiqi dead? But that’s impossible. We checked all their guns then and all their bullets were intact.”

But he continued to come up with more conjectures based on his conjecture, “That’s because the informant didn’t use a police issued gun to shoot! He had two guns!”

He went on to make more conjectures, “If there’s really a mole in the police, then the kidnappers would have found out easily about the fact that you installed a tracking device in the bag. In order to cover his tracks, he decided to sacrifice his accomplice and blow him to pieces. All of that will make sense now.”

I said, “I’ve been in the force for so many years, but I’ve never heard of such an imaginative conjecture before. Your conjecture supported by a bunch of hypotheses sounds exciting, but it doesn’t mean anything. Why would the kidnapper go through so much trouble? For the sake of the ransom money? That $2 million was burnt to a crisp, he sacrificed two accomplices, he had to make a bomb and spent money to keep the hostage alive only to get absolutely nothing in return? That has got to be the dumbest kidnapper alive!”

“That’s not true. He’s not dumb. In fact, he’s very clever! Haha!”

He was about to explain what he meant when I cut him off right there, “Fine. Let’s go with what you said. The bomb didn’t go off by accident and was detonated by the kidnapper on purpose. If that’s true, then the kidnappers must have already known that we were going to do something to the bag before creating the bomb. In that case, he should have stopped the transaction immediately, or at least, he shouldn’t have released the hostage.”

Inspector Ji stopped me there. “That’s the clever part – he knew that Wang Jianguo had already called the police, so the police would be involved regardless of when the next transaction would take place. Instead of dragging it out longer and being at greater risk of getting caught, why not just finish the deal once and for all?”

I scoffed. “So, this kidnapper was so clever that he ended up with nothing in the end?”

Inspector Ji said in a very serious tone, “Who said he ended up with nothing?”

“The hostage had already been released, the kidnappers are dead and the ransom money was burnt to a crisp. Didn’t he end up with nothing?”

But Inspector Ji said, “The ransom money didn’t get burnt to a crisp!”

I was speechless. Everybody saw the money go up in smoke. What was this fellow talking about now?

He went on, “The bag itself was blown up and so was the cash in it, but the amount inside wasn’t $2 million. It could have been only $200,000, or $100,000, or maybe just $50,000!”

I stared at him. “What do you mean?”

He said, “Before the transaction happened, someone took some of the money out from the bag. To everyone else, it looks like the hostage has been released, the kidnapper died and the money was all burnt up. But actually…the hostage did get released, an accomplice did die, but the mastermind took all the money!”

I really had to applaud Inspector Ji for having such an incredible imagination. Being able to spin such a story from absolutely nowhere had to be a skill that even literary writers wished they had.

But while I was laughing him off, Inspector Ji continued to tell me very solemnly that his hypothesis had been proven.

He said, “I used the same amount of explosives to burn up the same amount of paper equivalent to $2 million worth of bank notes. The amount of ash left behind is way more than whatever we had that day!”

His words started to make me feel a little uneasy. “Even if that is so, you can’t use that as evidence. Do you have concrete evidence?”

He didn’t feel demoralized even after I had pointed that out. “We can take our time to look for evidence. At the very least, we can narrow the suspects down.”

“Oh?” The uneasiness I felt grew stronger as Inspector Ji went on, “The kidnapper is hiding within the police force, was part of the operation for both transactions, knows how bombs work and knew that a GPS tracker would be installed inside the bag of ransom money. Most importantly, he had the opportunity to get hold of that bag before it was used in the transaction. Don’t you think we are able to narrow down the list of suspects?”

I finally understood why I felt so uneasy. “So, you’ve gone one big round just to say that you suspect that I was the one who did it?”

After I said that, I burst out laughing loudly. This was a really ridiculous conjecture. I had worked in the police force from the day I graduated from the police academy and had been a police officer for ten years. During these ten years, I had cracked countless cases and arrested countless criminals. I was a bastion of justice, a nemesis of evil. Nobody had ever connected me to any sort of criminal activity.

But Inspector Ji’s calm mention of the phrase, “it only takes one thought for one to either become a saint or become a demon” made me freeze on the spot.

He continued, “You knew the kidnappers and you know how bombs work. Most importantly, you could take the chance to take the money when you were supposedly installing a tracking device inside the bag, right?”

I said, “That’s ridiculous. But since you insist that I’m the biggest suspect in this case, nothing I say will be of any use. All I can say is, please show me what evidence you have!”

To Inspector Ji, evidence was like a precious daughter, so he wasn’t going to whip it out if he didn’t have to. But even more incredulously, he was still able to find it in himself to question me in a self-righteous voice despite not having any evidence on hand, “Inspector Yu Dahu, you’ve cracked countless cases and arrested countless criminals, so you know exactly how the police would investigate a case and you would know how to avoid criminal loopholes. You wouldn’t leave any damaging pieces of evidence behind so easily!”

I spat and scoffed. “If you don’t have evidence, then shut up and get out of my car! I’m off duty already!”

He didn’t know what else to say, so he put his hand on the door handle and finally looked like he was going to get out of the car. But just before he pulled the handle, he suddenly turned around and smiled as he asked, “Yu, we’ve spent such a long time talking but you’ve left your engine running the whole time. Is it because you’re really in a hurry to make your getaway? Is the evidence actually in this car?”

I said, “What nonsense are you talking about? I’ve had to work overtime for so many days because of this case and we’ve finally cracked the case. I’m in a hurry to see my son in the hospital.”

Inspector Ji looked like he hadn’t heard anything as he said, “That’s right. You’ve been eating and sleeping in the police station for the past few days because we’ve all been busy working on this case, so you haven’t had the chance to bring the ransom money you took from the bag back home. The case was just closed today, so given your cautiousness, you’d definitely take it out with you at the first chance you get. If I’m not wrong, the remainder of the ransom money is lying in the trunk of your car!”

I laughed and asked, “So, are you going to inspect my trunk now?”

He grinned and said, “That would certainly be the quickest way to find out if you’re guilty or not. But of course, if you refuse to let me do so, there’s nothing I can do. I don’t have a search warrant, after all.”

I smiled back. “It’s only a matter of time before you apply for one anyway. Since you suspect me, then I’m sure you’re going to follow me, watch all my activities and search everything I have. So instead of going through all that trouble, why don’t we clear this up right here and save us more problems in the future?”

After I said that, I paused for a moment before continuing, “You want to search my trunk? Go ahead then.” I pressed the button in my car that automatically unlocked the trunk.

Inspector Ji didn’t realize this could be a trap and seemed to be beside himself with glee as he said, “Not just your trunk, but the rest of your car too.”

I calmly replied, “Sure. Go ahead.”

He added, “Also, your home and your office need to be searched.”

I smiled and said, “No problem. Take your time and search all you want.”

Inspector Ji didn’t know what else to say, so he cleared his throat and leaned out of the car door when he suddenly piped up, “Yu, I know the sort of person you are. Honestly, I would never have believed that you’re the mole. But there are just too many oddities about this kidnapping case and all the evidence points towards you, so I really have no choice! Of course, if I don’t find anything, that would prove your innocence, so wouldn’t that be a good thing? We’re colleagues after all, so please don’t take this to heart.”

As he said the last sentence, he hopped out of the car and walked towards the back of the car to inspect my trunk.

At that exact moment, I slammed on the accelerator and the car instantly moved forward.

Inspector Ji was caught off guard, so he tripped over himself and fell to the ground. But very admirably, despite having hurt himself after falling down, he still wanted justice to be served. He reached for his gun as he yelled loudly, “Yu Dahu, you’re guilty after all! How dare you try to escape! Surrender now!”

After he shouted so loudly, all our colleagues leaving the station turned to look at what was happening. I grew even more antsy and stepped harder on the accelerator, moving to fourth gear quickly.

My car was about to leave the compound when I suddenly heard a loud bang. Inspector Ji had fired a shot! This shot was probably aimed at my seat or one of my tires, but it ended up hitting the front window of the police station, causing the glass to shatter. The security guard at the gate got a shock and thought it was a terrorist attack, so he pulled the emergency alarm and brought the barrier to the main gate down.

I was driving too quickly, so when my car crashed through the barrier, the violent impact caused my trunk to fly open and the money inside the bag within the trunk started to fly out as well.

I really wished I could stop the car to pick up all the money that flew out. Being a kidnapper was really no easy task at all. You had to take such a great risk just to earn one or two million, which wasn’t enough for one to live on for long. After paying for my son’s surgery, I’d be left with nothing. My heart really broke as I saw the bills fly into the air just like that.

But I didn’t stop the car because I knew that I didn’t have any other way out. The only thing I could do now was to run for my life.