Chapter 30: The Big Burly Officer (2/2)

When we got to the car, I saw a big burly man who was probably in his early forties. He had a cigarette in his mouth. His physique looked strong like that of a boxer’s; his face was cold and jagged; his chin was full of stubbles; but the scariest things about him were his eyes — they were piercing, like that of a predator, and I knew when I looked at his eyes that he’d killed someone before. If I didn’t have that phone conversation with Huang Xiaotao earlier, I would’ve assumed that he was a member of a triad.

The second Dali saw the man, he immediately shuddered and hid behind me.

“Are you Song Yang?” the burly man asked, his voice hoarse and low.

“Yes,” I answered.

I found that I didn’t dare to meet his eyes, because it felt as if they were piercing through me like a pair of daggers. I could imagine him forcing confessions out of criminals without saying a word if he stared at them with those eyes.

“Team Leader Huang asked me to give you a lift,” he said, then stretched an arm to open the car door for us. “Get in the car.”

The end of his cigarette glowed in the darkness as he spoke, it looked almost like a tiny fireball.

I was about to get into the car, but Dali grabbed my arms and stopped me.

“Dude,” he said, “are you sure this guy’s a police officer? Look at him! I sense something wrong with this guy. Why don’t you ask him for his police badge before we go with him? He could be some criminal trying to get his revenge on us.”

I laughed.

“We’ve only solved one case, dude,” I said. “And the only criminal we’ve caught is Deng Chao, a college student. There’s no way anyone would want to take revenge on us right now. You worry too much. Get in the car.”

Dali reluctantly followed me into the car, sitting beside me in the back seat. I saw the police officer sweeping a glance at us through the rearview mirror before driving the car ahead.

“How should I address you?” I asked him.

“My surname is Wang.”

“Officer Wang,” I said, “What kind of case are we going to investigate? Can you at least give us some rough details of what happened?”

“That’s right,” echoed Dali, full of curiosity, “you woke us up out of bed so late at night, so I’m guessing it must be a huge case, right?”

“You’ll see when you get there…” the burly officer replied monotonously.

He said nothing else for the rest of the journey. I began to wonder why this man needed to be so terse and secretive. Then I suspected, just like Dali, whether he really was a police officer or not.

Half an hour later, we were driving along a street with shops on both sides. Most of them were already closed, and the shutters were all densely covered with advertisements. I scanned through them and saw many signs that said ‘adult healthcare’ and ‘sex supplies.’ The street itself was littered with garbage and the dirty sewage flowed in the uncovered drain. Judging by my first impression alone, this was not a nice neighborhood at all.

The car then turned into a narrow alley which was filled with many small hotels with bright neon signs. One of those was called the Yuelai Hotel. A few police cars were parked around this hotel, and the police beacon light illuminated the alley. There was a crowd gathered there too.

“Have you been here before?” Dali asked.

I shook my head and said no. Although I’d been studying here for four years, I rarely ever went out and explored the place, so most of the area surrounding my college remained foreign to me.

“This place looks really familiar…” Dali mumbled to himself. “Right! It’s a red-light district!”

“How did you know?” I asked him. “Don’t tell me you’ve been here before!”

“No way, dude!” he vehemently denied. “I’m not that kinda guy! I just heard about it from that fatso Sun — you know him, he stays on the same floor as we do! Haven’t you noticed how shady that guy is?”

“I can’t say, I don’t normally talk to people like that.”

When Dali mentioned the words red-light district, I was reminded of a no man’s land near Nanjiang City. It was near a bus stop, so there were many people there doing businesses, legal and otherwise. Violent fights among hooligans were a common occurrence in that area, and they often ended with a few people dead. There were some really shady businesses there that scammed women from other countries with false promises of high-salaried positions to go work there, but in the end, they were tricked into becoming prostitutes. So that was the kind of place that we were heading to.

The burly officer finally stopped the car. The minute we got out, I saw Huang Xiaotao running towards me.

“Song Yang! Thank god you’re finally here!” she said. “We’re at our wits’ end about what to do!”

“What happened here?” I asked.

“A hotel customer found a woman’s dead body under the bed in his room,” she explained. “There’s something strange about the way she died.” Previous ChapterNext Chapte