Chapter 865: Justice And Kindness
Translator: Azza
Old Zhang knelt on the ground, crying so much his nose was running. He was holding the cell phone tightly in his hand. This was his own cell phone, but he recorded the two numbers. Dialing one of them would lose his wife, dialing the other number would lose his daughter. He clearly knew what he had done, and his heart experienced pain as though it was tearing. Tears couldn't stop falling from his eyes.
"What did you do?! What did you do?!" Lin Qiupu ran over and asked.
Old Zhang raised his tear-stained face, "No matter what, Tingting can't die!"
Lin Qiupu was speechless. He was afraid that Old Zhang would continue to do impulsive things and said, "Hand over the gun!"
Old Zhang placed his gun, handcuffs, and police badge on the ground along with the mobile phone. Lin Qiupu only took the gun and ordered, "Don't cry and keep looking for your daughter!"
Lin Qiupu pressed on the radio and said, "Little Zheng, Little Fan, you two should check the room where the explosion occurred. The others will continue to look. Don't stop! Tingting still has explosives on her body, which is still dangerous to her life!
Hearing this, Old Zhang wiped his tears away with his sleeve, stood up, and continued the search.
This incident happened so suddenly that it casted a shadow in everyone's heart. They didn't have time to say anything, so they continued to search one by one.
The time had passed the time limit and the sky was getting darker. After 7:00, there was a cry from the radio that had been silent for too long. "Found her! Found her!"
Everyone hurried to the direction of the discoverer. In a small warehouse whose door was kicked open, Tingting, who had been unconscious due to dehydration, was hidden under a tarp. Her body was densely packed with explosives and electronic components. A cell phone was embedded in the middle.
Old Zhang separated the crowd and rushed in agitatedly, hugged Tingting. Lin Qiupu instructed, "Call an ambulance!"
Ten minutes later, Tingting was taken away. During this time, she woke up once and cried, "Dad" to Old Zhang. These two words made Old Zhang burst into a never-ending stream of tears.
Watching the ambulance leave, Lin Qiupu said, "Old Zhang, from now on you have been suspended!"
Old Zhang said dimly, "I will be responsible for everything I’ve done!"
"This isn’t fair at all!" Lin Dongxue protested loudly. "We only found Tingting two hours later. If Old Zhang didn't do this, both of them would have died. At least one of them survived!"
"But this can't change the fact that he personally killed his wife." Lin Qiupu said.
"So he should have just done nothing and lost two family members?!"
"I have a suggestion!" Chen Shi looked around at everyone. "Everyone present is an eyewitness. Our statement determines the nature of Old Zhang's behavior. We all know that he was forced by helplessness. As long as we unanimously say that the criminal detonated the bomb, then he’s innocent."
"Do you mean that we should all commit perjury together?" Lin Qiupu frowned.
"Yes, let's commit perjury together!" Chen Shi said frankly. "Between justice and kindness, I would rather choose kindness!"
Some police officers wavered and said, "I support Brother Chen."
Lin Qiupu shook his head. "I will report this matter truthfully. How Old Zhang's behavior should be judged and whether it’s appropriate for his sentence to be reduced is a matter for the courts to decide. Someone once told me that what the police maintain isn’t kindness, but justice!"
"That man is an idiot!" Chen Shi yelled.
"Enough from you!" Lin Qiupu roared back.
"What if this had happened to you?" a policeman asked in a bad tone.
"I will, like Old Zhang, bear all the consequences caused by myself!"
"Don’t be hypocritical!!!" The policeman shouted. "The person who hired Zhou Xiao is Lie Guoxiao, your father. You’re excluded and only our family will suffer! I quit. I’m heading back and protecting my mother without leaving!"
He handed over his badge and gun to a colleague and left without looking back.
This policeman had never confronted Lin Qiupu even once ever since he joined the force. Everyone knew that the current atmosphere made him lose his mind, especially when he witnessed the tragic death of Old Zhang's family.
Lin Qiupu suppressed his anger. "Who else wants to quit? I will allow you to go home to protect your family. I won’t blame you!"
Everyone looked at each other. Another policeman stood up and said, "Sorry Captain Lin, I haven't been home in 48 hours. I'm really afraid of something going wrong with my family."
Another policeman said, "Me too… I'm sorry!"
"Go!" Lin Qiupu said weakly.
He looked around and the faces of the remaining people were shaken and hesitant, but they finally chose to persevere. Lin Qiupu said, "Let’s head back", turned around, and walked towards the car. His back looked very lonely.
The depressing atmosphere permeated the second team. Back in the bureau, Lin Qiupu sat in the office alone, lit a cigarette, and watched the cigarette slowly burn out. His eyes looked empty.
"Brother!"
Lin Dongxue walked in and sat down beside him. "Would you like to go home and rest for a while?"
"Should I go and meet Lie Guoxiao?" He said unexpectedly.
"Meet him? Is that useful?"
"He’s doing all this to retaliate against the police because he knows he’s about to get finished. If I make a deal with him…"
"Brother, don't be stupid! If he can't be persecuted by the law, even more people will be killed. You must not be confused! This is not the usual you at all."
"The usual me…" Lin Qiupu sighed and shook his head. "What happened today made the police's dignity and the law's majesty look like sh*t! If I was Old Zhang, I would do the same, but I still have to be this villain!"
Lin Dongxue grabbed Lin Qiupu's hand and comforted him. "Brother, what you did is right. It's what a captain should do! Zhou Xiao and Ling Shuang will definitely be arrested. Definitely!"
Someone knocked on the door. An explosives expert from the material evidence center came in. He said, "Captain Lin, I have a report for you to see here."
Lin Qiupu returned to his usual demeanour, took the papers in his hands, and scanned through them a few times. He didn’t know too much about bombs, so he could only understand the general gist of it. He noticed a few key words and asked tentatively, "The meaning in this is that there was a problem with the bomb found at the scene?"
"The problem lies with the two mobile phones. They couldn’t be dialled through at all. The colleagues in the Information Department also confirmed this. They didn’t track the mobile phone signal from the beginning till the end. We found a timing device in the wreckage. It wasn’t a remote bomb. It was a timing device!"
"What did you say?!" Lin Qiupu stood up.
"I don't know if you asked Officer Zhang yet, but was there a delay between him dialing the number and the explosion? That's all I can do."
After the expert left, Lin Dongxue said, "That's great. If it was a time bomb, then Old Zhang didn't kill anyone!"
"But why was it a time bomb? Doesn't it violate their rules of the game?"
"They have no rules in their game at all!" Chen Shi stood at the door. "Ling Shuang is very confident in her psychological portrait of him. She predicted that Old Zhang would do this, so she arranged the script in advance. That is, Old Zhang completely had no choice."
"Old Zhang didn't make a choice? What about Captain Peng and Miss Gu?" Lin Qiupu said.
"Yes, I'm here to talk about this. I discussed it with Old Peng for some time now. Miss Gu may have already…" This fact made Chen Shi very sad. "You don't need to find Miss Gu. Use all your strength to search for Zhou Xiao!"
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