Chapter 775: Mysterious Little Bowl
Translator: Azza
Song Lang took Lin Qiupu along with him to meet the girl. The girl was crying at the door of the autopsy room. It turned out that she had insisted on seeing her father, so Peng Sijue broke protocol and allowed her to stand by the door to take a look.
"Condolences." Song Lang stepped forward to comfort her.
The girl covered her mouth and nodded, "As long as we can find out the real culprit, I will definitely do my utmost to cooperate."
"Let's talk somewhere else!"
When they got to a meeting room, Song Lang asked LinQiupu to pour her a glass of water. The girl held the cup for a long time and remained silent. Song Lang noticed her gloves and asked, "Don't you take off your gloves when you’re indoors?"
"Oh, I'm used to it." She put the cup down, "My name is He Jingjing, and He Taiyang is my father. How did he get killed?"
Song Lang asked LinQiupu to talk about the discovery of the corpse. Lin Qiupu rambled on when the matter could have been summarized in a few words. Song Lang reminded him, "We don't need to talk about our speculations."
"This is the situation…" Song Lang said to He Jingjing, "When did he start operating a pawn shop?"
"For as long as I can remember."
"Has it been that long? Pawn shops and private loans were only legalized two years ago."
"He used to do it before too, but it wasn’t with a storefront like now. My dad's shop also operates a loan business. All three floors of the building belong to our family and the lower level is the shop. We live upstairs."
"How many people are there in the family?" Song Lang was still learning about the basics of the situation, and Lin Qiupu wrote down in his notebook "Find out about the situation of the deceased first."
"Me, my dad, my mom, and an employee, He Jun…My mom passed away half a month ago. I didn’t think that my dad would leave in a blink of an eye as well.”
"That’s so unfortunate!"
"Actually… actually…" He Jingjing's lips trembled, as if she had something to say, but found it inconvenient to say.
"What is it?"
"Actually, I have a clue to provide. It may sound absurd, but I swear it’s true."
"Please let us know!"
"Officer, do you know how many pawn shops there are in the city?"
Song Lang shook his head.
"There are over two hundred pawn shops in the city. There’s a strange rumor in the pawn shop industry in Long'an. According to hearsay, a mysterious man pawned a small bowl in a pawn shop called Yuxiang a few years ago. The small bowl is said to be made from human bones. Then the owner of the Yuxiang Pawn Shop died bizarrely, and the small bowl also disappeared. After that, other pawn shops received this bowl in succession. However, everyone who received it would have to offer life-preservation money, otherwise they’d die unnatural deaths. Fortunately, it never appears in the same pawn shop twice. This bowl appeared in our house a month ago!"
Song Lang raised his brows slightly. "Then who should they give the life-preservation money to? This small bowl won't appear out of thin air, right? Someone has to bring it over. Places like pawn shops usually have security cameras installed."
"There will be a note in the bowl with the address to send the money to. As for the amount of money, it’s up to the pawn shop owner. The more money offered, the safer you will be. Otherwise, family members will meet with trouble within a month. This is very evil. Everyone says so… As for who sent the small bowl, I don't know. My father takes care of everything in the store himself."
"You mean, after your father received this evil little bowl, your mother passed away. He was afraid that others would suffer a calamity next, so he decided to suffer financial loss in order to avoid calamities?"
"Yes, he went out with a box of cash tonight. According to this theory, perhaps he failed to deliver the money to the designated place in time, so an incident happened. After all, the small bowl had appeared at my house in the evening exactly one month earlier."
Lin Qiupu said, "This must be fake. How could such an evil thing exist?"
"Don't rush to judge." Song Lang took the small notebook in his hand and opened it to see what was written in it. "Don't ask your superiors too many questions, it will be annoying.", "Fuel refill fee is 200 yuan.", "Reasoning is big data.", "No details must be omitted when investigating cases, there are no geniuses in this line of work."
The small notebook issued by the bureau was actually used to record these things. He glanced at Lin Qiupu. Lin Qiupu buried his head in shame. Song Lang used this notebook to record clues about the mysterious small bowl.
"Is it still in the store?"
"It has probably been locked in a safe by my father."
"Please take us to see it!"
"Right now?"
"Didn't you say it will disappear without a trace? So the sooner the better."
He Jingjing agreed. Lin Qiupu followed Song Lang. He was very excited to ride in his senior’s car. Song Lang asked, "Where’s your partner, Dachang?"
"He went home after handing over the car."
"It’s already so late, so why aren’t you going home?"
"I… I will learn more about this case first, and learn how to solve the case."
"You’re a newcomer. Don't be embarrassed to go home for the sake of face. It's okay. There isn’t that much work to do during the ice-breaking stage of the case. Take this time to rest. When you become busy later, you won't get to sleep.
"It's okay. I think I learned a lot tonight."
"Young man, you’re very promising." Song Lang praised.
Song Lang followed the car He Jingjing was in. He kept smoking while driving. He found it too embarrassing to smoke in front of the deceased’s family. When he got into his own car, he had no more qualms. It was just that it choked Lin Qiupu so much that he found it unbearable.
"Open the window if you can't stand it. Don't be so reserved, okay? No bosses like having such a reserved subordinate." Song Lang said casually.
"Oh…" Lin Qiupu rolled down the window of the car. "Captain, you smoke too much. It's not good for your health!"
"Smoking is truly bad, and we will have to pay off our debts when we get old. However, in our line of work, we don’t even know whether we will survive to that day when we have to pay off our debts! Hahaha, I’m not going to make an excuse to preserve my image in front of you. My addiction is quite deep. Don't you usually smoke too?"
"I do, but I only smoke half a pack a day. My sister will tell me off whenever she sees me smoking, so I can only smoke secretly."
"You respect her very much. It seems that you two have a good relationship!"
"We’re orphans. Our parents passed away early… By the way, she also wants to be a policeman. She’s now in the police academy, although I don't want her to do this job."
"Think this line of work isn’t good?"
"I just think that she’s a girl, so wouldn’t being a police officer be too hard on her? It’s dangerous too."
"Whether a profession is hard or not doesn't depend on how the profession is. It depends mainly on whether you like it or not. You’ll never get tired of a profession you like. If I exchange professions with Jack Ma, I don't think either of us would be happy."
Lin Qiupu had heard another wise saying and nodded silently, wanting to write it down in his notebook.
"How far along is Younger Sister Lin now at the police academy?" Song Lang asked.
"She’s in her first year."
"Work hard. You’ll be promoted in three years, and you can take care of her when she’s transferred over, so that she will have to bear a lot less hardship and danger."
Lin Qiupu suddenly realized that he was right. If he builds a solid foundation here, he could take care of his sister in the future. He suddenly had the motivation to work hard.
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