n

n

nIt was quiet while they were on the way back to the station.

nThe car drove past two streets but none of them spoke.

nXiang Wan took a peek at Bai Muchuan and noticed that he seemed to be immersed in some kind of emotion, and his eyebrows were as though sharp as a knife.

nHence, she cleared her throat. “Ahem.”

nBai Muchuan heard that and turned to look at her. “Hm?”

nXiang Wan took a look at Tang Yuanchu. “I don’t quite understand,” she asked quietly, “how did you know if there’s a problem with the gun?…”

n“It’s a guess,” Bai Muchuan answered very seriously, and there was not a hint of joke. “After the murderer killed Mao Guigui, yet the police totally had no clue. What do you think will happen next?”

n“?”

nXiang Wan met his gaze.

nSomehow, she felt goosebumps all over.

nShe recalled back when during the 720 case, the car that appeared outside Ocean Sky Hotpot was one of the major clues that led to the police solving the case.

nShe also got reminded that during the case of the fountain goddess, Fang Yuanyuan had seen a dark shadow at the fourth floor back when they were still staying at Green Garden Estate. That had led to the discovery of the corpses hidden within the walls.

n“It’s like a hint? That they deliberately point us toward a direction?”

nBai Muchuan grunted coldly and closed his eyes.

n“Once again, we’re being looked down upon.”

nXiang Wan felt her heart aching a little when she saw the exhaustion from Bai Muchuan’s face. “Don’t be too stressed out. The murderer is hiding in the dark when we’re out in the open. It’s okay for the murderer to provoke us. What’s more important is who will be the one who laughs last!”

n“The murder case will definitely be solved,” said Bai Muchuan, “six more days to go.”

nThe dateline was in a few days time, so anyone would have been stressed.

nXiang Wan wanted to help. While in the car, she analyzed the case with him.

n“If that person is deliberately pointing us in the right direction, who would be the prime suspect? Ye Lun,Yu Ning or Xie Wanwan…?”

nBai Muchuan opened his eyes and looked at her seriously. “It’s Jia An.”

n“…”

nOf course Jia An is the prime suspect, alright?

nThe problem for them was the whereabouts of Jia An.

n“The worrying thing is, by the time we found him, he might be a corpse as well.”

nXiang Wan puffed a sigh. Her mood was heavy as she looked at the busy traffic the car drove past.

nThis modern age, the sunshine and the beautiful city… was it because the games were not enjoyable enough or the food not delicious enough… Why were there so many evils and crimes?

n…

nThat day, the Criminal Investigation Unit questioned a lot of people from the film crew.

nThe entire police unit was busy till afternoon as they focused entirely on this incident. Each individual teams shared information amongst themselves where they collate, select and investigate for anything they might have left out.

nAt six o’clock in the evening, Bai Muchuan called for an urgent case analysis meeting.

nBy now, they had screened out irrelevant information and summarized what they had gotten so far.

nFirstly, after thorough investigation, it was found out that the props team was short of a gun in their inventory. Everyone came to a consensus that Jia An must have taken the gun away. As to the question if Jia An had any real bullets with him, they were unable to ascertain this fact.

nSecondly, Jia An’s social relationships were simple. He was the youngest child at home and two elder sisters who were married. He was the favorite child of his parents and had a history of smoking marijuana. He was the disciple of a firearms props master. People who knew Jia An described him as an honest, sociable and helpful man.

nThirdly, after the incident was exposed, the middle-aged fat man who helped the film crew to get extras supplied the police with new information. That day when Tang Yuanchu and Xiang Wan went for a patrol and saw Chen Liu running away from the sight of them, he revealed that Jia An spoke to Chen Liu before he started running.

nFourth, the police verified with Chen Liu what the the middle-aged fat man had said. However, Chen Liu said that Jia An only told him that if he got caught by the extras posing as the police, the film crew might replace him with another extra… This was directly a hint that he wanted Chen Liu to run to the best he could to lure the police away.

n“This Jia An is definitely the key person or prime suspect of this case!”

n“We really need to find him fast—”

n“We have disseminated his information to the relevant departments and they will look out for him via the surveillance cameras throughout the whole city. There should be results too…”

nWith that, the case analysis meeting was about to end after the tasks had been assigned.

nBai Muchuan was about to dismiss the meeting when he received an internal call.

nIt was from Little Liu. “Captain Bai, Ye Lun refused to leave. He kept asking to look at Dong Bu’s statement. I’ve already explained to him… that this is against the rules. He didn’t care and continue to make a scene. He’s asking to see you and he said he has something very important to share with you… I’m unable to out-talk him.”

nLittle Liu was a rookie administrative officer after all, how would he be able to handle Ye Lun?

nBai Muchuan grunted. “Something very important? Fine, I’ll give him an opportunity to tell me about it.”

nAfter hanging up the phone, he lifted his hand. “Meeting dismissed. Everyone stay vigilant and report if there’s anything new…”

n“Yes!”

nEveryone proceeded to leave the meeting room.

nBai Muchuan gave Xiang Wan a glance.

n“Wanna meet the hot young stud?”

n“Hur! What are you talking about? Am I that kind of person?”

n“You are.” Bai Muchuan’s gaze felt warm. When he came up to her, he let out a low chuckle. “Otherwise you wouldn’t have liked me?”

nWell…

nSounds so reasonable!

nXiang Wan tilted her head and looked into his clear, deep eyes. She pursed her lips and smiled.

n“You’re hotter than him!”

n“Really?”

n“You’re more handsome than him too!”

n“Hm.” Bai Muchuan said, “This young master is glad.”

n“So—” Xiang Wan raised an eyebrow. “You’ll help me get dinner tonight, okay?”

n“How can you do this to me?”

n“I’m so tired that I don’t even want to lift a finger.”

n“Hmph!” Bai Muchuan gave her a cold glance. “You shouldn’t have asked me to get dinner for you,” he said it casually while he started to walk away, “you should have directly given me an order: Bai Muchuan, you have to get dinner for me for the rest of my life!”

n*Pffft! *Xiang Wan’s mood was immediately lifted up.

nHe was so busy and so tired, yet he made effort to cheer her up…

nMoreover… he said he would get her dinner for the rest of her life. That sounded nice.

n…

nIt was quiet in the reception room.

nLittle Liu looked at Ye Lun nervously as though he was holding a hot potato very carefully.

nWell, it was true that Ye Lun was indeed someone difficult to handle.

nWhen the police questioned the film crew about the gun incident in the morning, some of the crew had already been questioned twice while some, thrice. Ye Lun was definitely one of those who had visited the police station the most among them. He behaved totally as though he was so familiar with the place. He sat comfortably on the sofa, shaking his legs as he listened to music with his headset and his head moved along with the rhythm.

nFor the police, this guy was a real pain in the neck!

nXiang Wan and Little Liu exchanged glances and Little Liu cleared his throat.

n“Mr. Ye… Our captain is here.”

nYe Lun was listening to music with his eyes closed. He might not have heard Little Liu as he was still shaking his head along with the music.

n“Mr. Ye?” Little Liu’s brows were closely knitted and he started to get anxious. “Ye Lun—Ye Lun—” He increased his volume.

nBai Muchuan lifted an arm to stop Little Liu and directly gave a kick on a chair in front of him.

nThat was an office chair with wheels. The chair moved towards the direction of Ye Lun with that kick.

nThomp! The chair knocked against the sofa, giving an impact. Ye Lun was startled, opened his eyes, and lifted his head with a look of surprise.

nHe had been treated very politely throughout his previous “visits” to the station. It had never come across his mind that Captain Bai would have a fiery temper. He was stunned for a moment and hurriedly removed a ear piece from a ear.

n“Yo, Captain Bai’s finally appeared?”

n“I’m very busy.” Bai Muchuan pulled the chair back that he had kicked and sat down nicely with no trace of anger. “What do you want to talk about? You may talk now.”

n“Tch! Captain Bai doesn’t seem to have a friendly attitude towards the civilians?”

nYe Lun smiled, his gaze then fell on Xiang Wan who was sitting beside Bai Muchuan. His long eyelashes moved and revealed a meaningful smile before he slowly shook his head. “I’m a civilian who wanted to cooperate with the police,” he sighed, “your hot temper will deter the development of building a good relationship with the public…”

n“Hurhurhur!”

nHe actually talked to Bai Muchuan using bureaucratic words?

nXiang Wan couldn’t resist the urge to laugh, and had a hard time controlling her laughter.

nBai Muchuan looked at her expressionlessly and Xiang Wan’s urge to laugh was all gone.

n“Since you know this is the place where we handle cases,” he grunted a laugh, “so let’s not waste everyone’s time.”

n“Straight to the point! That’s why you’re the captain.” Ye Lun still had another earpiece latched on a ear, his head moving in rhythm to the music, looking all frivolous. “My request is very simple. I want to see what Dong Bu said about me in his statement to the police.”

n“No!” Bai Muchuan refused his request flatly, “We have the obligation to keep the statement of the witness private.”

n“Witness? How can he be a witness?” Ye Lun seemed agitated like a prickly hedgehog. “He’s an ungrateful bastard! Piece of garbage! He calumniated and slandered me…”

n“Didn’t you dismiss him already?” Bai Muchuan raised an eyebrow.

nYe Lun got interrupted by Bai Muchuan before he could finish his sentence. “Wow, Captain Bai is really well-informed. Yes, I’ve dismissed him. If you’re in my shoes, how will you treat a b*stard like him? If I don’t dismiss him, you expect me to keep him till new year?”

n“…”

nFrankly, no matter what Dong Bu said was true or false, it was understandable for Ye Lun to not want to keep someone who acted like a time bomb that could take him out any moment.

nIn principle, there was nothing wrong with what he did, however…

n“We need not discuss matters unrelated to the case.”

n“Let’s talk about something related to the case then.” Ye Lun squinted his eyes slightly and stretched his legs. “Detective comrade, I want to sue Dong Bu for slander—”

n“That’s up to you,” said Bai Muchuan, “this is the Criminal Investigation Unit. We don’t take care of such matters.”

n“I request to look at his statement and know what kind of blame he pinned on me.”

n“The court will ask for the statement after you sued him.”

n“Hah?” Ye Lun squinted his eyes; he was angry. “Is this how the police work? That you’ll allow others to slander me so easily without verifying his statement?”

n“We have our own standard operating procedures to follow. We need to verify with the facts before we believe the statement of a witness,” Bai Muchuan looked at him coldly as he explained, “Although the surveillance footage caught a man who was highly similar to Mr. Ye leaving Mao Guigui’s room that night, we did not base on that obscure footage and…”

n“That’s only because my lawyer had arrived. Otherwise, you guys will let me off?”

n*Hur! *Bai Muchuan sneered as he glared at him coldly. “It was not because of your lawyer. It was because we had lacked evidence.”

n“…”

nYe Lun narrowed his eyes as he looked at Bai Muchuan. He suddenly kept quiet.

nBoth of them looked at each other for quite some time.

n“Alright, I believe you.” Ye Lun softened his stance, his tone was not as overbearing as earlier. “It’s fine if I can’t take a look at the statement but I have something to remind you, Captain Bai. There was something going on between Dong Bu and Jia An…”

nThe words “something going on” really did seem to indicate so.

nXiang Wan was interested to hear such news. Bai Muchuan lifted his hand as indication for Ye Lun to continue talking.

nYe Lun pulled a face, but his expression was unusually serious. “Dong Bu has always liked gambling but it comes to work, he was actually reliable. Hence, I closed an eye to his private matters as I feel that it’s alright for men to gamble a little. He likes to ask me to lend him money and I’ve never refused him…”

nHe suddenly paused for a while, his expression seemed a little grim.

n“Until just recently, he actually wanted to borrow 500,000 yuan from me. I asked him why the sudden huge sum, he told me he owed a lot of gambling debts. If he did not pay up, those people are going to chop off his hands… I was exasperated as I feel that it’s getting out of hand if this goes on. So I told him that it’s better they chopped his hand off so that he won’t go gambling again.”

n“So what happened?” Bai Muchuan asked, “What did he say?”

n“He did not say anything and left with his head hanging low.” Ye Lun shrugged his shoulders. “I guess that he must be thinking that 500,000 yuan is nothing to me since I’m so rich, and that I’m leaving him in the lurch…”

nThe relationship between a celebrity and their assistant was an extremely complex one.

nThrough their daily contact with each other, the assistant would get to know the privacy and even secrets of the celebrity. However, assistants were not paid as much as the value of privacy and secrets that they knew of… And this could easily arise to problems.

nHence, Bai Muchuan did not fully believe in Dong Bu’s testimony.

nAfter pausing for a while, he asked, “When was the last time Dong Bu asked you for money? Do you still remember?”

nDuring the past interrogations, Ye Lun was always saying, “I don’t know, I don’t remember and I’m not clear about it.”

nNo one expected that this time, he actually cooperated and told them all he knew.

n“It was two days before the incident at Grand Orchid Pavilion.”

nBai Muchuan pondered for a while. “What do you mean by there’s something going on between him and Jia An?”

n“Yes! I wanted to talk about this.” Ye Lun was as though finally recovered from the state of complaining about Dong Bu and removed the other ear piece. “Dong Bu did not know Jia An from the start. It was after all of us got together in the film crew of ‘The Grey List’ that he got to know Jia An and was familiar with each other in no time. Dong Bu told me about Jia An before. He said Brother Jia has wide connections and knew people from all walks of life…”

n“What’s so strange about this then?” Bai Muchuan raised an eyebrow, expressing his doubt.

n“Dong Bu’s gambling debts were later paid up,” sneered Ye Lun, looking at Bai Muchuan straight in the eye, “I heard from my manager that it was Jia An who lent him the sum of money. Captain Bai, do you still think that there’s nothing strange in their relationship?”

n