Chapter 29 - The Caller (1/2)

“What are we looking at?” Hu Cheng lighted up another pipeful of tobacco as he asked.

“The person who delivered the letter.” Sun Fei projected the letter retrieved from Li Kui onto the screen. The handwriting was neat and the strokes were strong.

“Even though he was not caught on the surveillance footage and Li Kui did not reveal his looks, the fact that the murderer directed Li Kui to cause trouble repeatedly suggests that he was trying to draw our attention away from the case. He was scared!”

Initially, Xu Lan was unsure what purpose would it serve for Li Kui to cause trouble.

Would it not make sense for a murderer to keep a low profile? If Li Kui was not the murderer, who would the murderer be?

It was only until that night when Hu Cheng called him that he finally realized something.

The murderer would be the person who was giving orders to Li Kui! He left behind a fatal mistake! It was only a matter of time before they discovered the key leading them to the murderer.

Li Kui’s role was to generate public outrage and to cause pressure on the police. Meanwhile, the murderer would take advantage of the situation and destroy the lead!

Clap, clap, clap…

Li Xiu who sat at the corner started clapping. He straightened his legs and stood up, making his way to the screen.

“After hearing Officer Xu’s analysis, I must say that I’m impressed with his sharp observation and accurate analysis. However, I have a question,” he said.

“Pray tell.” Xu Lan shut his eyes out of reflex, something that he did subconsciously when he was thinking and when he sensed danger.

“According to Officer Xu’s hypothesis, the person who wrote the letter is the murderer. How do we explain Li Kui’s third attempt at causing a scene? I do play a role in it and for that, I shall apologize to everyone here.” He bowed as he posed his question.

“If Li Kui could potentially expose the murderer, why would the murderer take a chance and order him to cause more trouble? The outcome would contradict your analysis in its entirety. Moreover, we are only given ten days to solve this case. This would be undesirable to the murderer as we would scrutinize every lead that we come across.”

“Officer Li, you are right. However, I did not attribute Li Kui’s third attempt to the murderer. As Li Kui was leaving the police station, there is no way that he would have written a letter. Seeing how cautious the murderer is, he wouldn’t have given his order to Li Kui via handphone.”

“We can easily find out about this through an investigation. Moreover, some here mentioned the words on the victim earlier. Would it be possible to compare the handwriting with those in the letter? If this is fruitful, we could narrow down our search. There is no way that all of the surveillance rooms in this area broke down.

“As the murderer would have checked the area out, we just need to identify individuals who loitered around specific spots. After singling out the suspicious individuals who are not a resident here, wouldn’t it be possible for us to find a lead or two?”

After speaking to his heart’s content, Li Xiu took a huge gulp of water as he waited for replies to come through.