Chapter 77: The Strange Meat Filling (1/2)
Xiaotao called the criminal investigation team immediately. Before the police arrived, she showed the shopkeeper her badge and demanded him to stop selling the buns immediately. He was startled and asked her what was wrong and whether some people had gotten food poisoning from his buns.
The customers who were lining up to buy the buns were confused and started to make a fuss demanding to know what was happening. I was about to explain to them, but Xiaotao stopped me. I then realized that telling the crowd the buns they’d been eating had human flesh in it might not be the best idea.
“I’m sorry for the inconvenience,” Xiaotao told them, “but we suspect that this man is related to a case we’re investigating.”
“But do you have to question him now?” argued one of the customers. “Can’t you let him sell the buns to us first?”
“Yeah!” echoed another. “And you must’ve got the wrong person anyway! Master Tang here would never break any laws!”
“He’s right! Just let Master Tang sell us the buns first!”
These people seemed obsessed with these buns. More and more people piped up and defended the shopkeeper. Xiaotao was at a loss and turned to me with pleading eyes.
“We suspect that the pigs used for the filling in these buns were infected with swine flu!” I shouted. “You shouldn’t eat these buns today, otherwise you’ll get infected too!”
The crowd’s mood changed when they heard this.
“Are you sure?”
“But I eat them every day and I never got sick!”
“Yeah, I’m sure it’s no big deal! Haven’t we been eating tons of chemicals and preservatives in food every day anyway? What’s so scary about swine flu?”
A number of them agreed with this sentiment. In fact, it had been the running joke on the internet that Chinese people couldn’t be poisoned due to the additives in the mass-produced food products sold in China. But that was just an urban myth, of course. The body’s intake of toxic substances would accumulate in the liver and kidneys and cause illnesses one way or another.
“Please, Officer,” pleaded the shopkeeper. “Don’t accuse me of such things! I get my meat from a legitimate source. There can’t be any problem with the pork! You’re ruining my small business here!”
Even though the customers were barred from buying the buns, they all remained there, crowding around the steam baskets, watching what was happening with fascination as if they were watching a live TV drama.
“I must trouble you to close the shop for now,” said Xiaotao. “We’ll wait for more police officers to arrive, then you can give the police your official statement.”
The shopkeeper heaved a long sigh, as if accepting his fate, and began to clean and pack his things up.
Then, I called Dali and asked him to bring me some of my equipment, just in case we find a dead body later when we search through this shop.
Once I hung up the phone, Xiaotao asked me, “Do you think the shopkeeper is guilty?”
I shook my head.
“Judging from his reactions,” I surmised, “he seems innocent. He might be hiding something from us, though. And there is another possibility.”
“What possibility?”
“That he is a psychopath who is not afraid of the police!”
“Hmm… he’s probably just innocent,” Xiaotao replied. “I’m not sure if we’re lucky or if our luck is in fact rotten. It’s supposed to be a day to relax, yet here we are stumbling upon another case. By the way, are you one hundred percent sure the meat is human flesh?”
“Absolutely!” I insisted. “If you have any doubts, you should ask the forensics team to do DNA testing.”
“We’ll do that, of course. It’s only proper protocol. Anyway, this reminds me of that case in Macau many years ago.”
I knew exactly which case she was talking about. There was an infamous mass murder case that occurred in a restaurant in Macau in the eighties, also known as the Eight Immortals Restaurant Murders. It was a huge sensation in the news for a while back then. It was rumored that the murderer killed a family of ten in a restaurant, then dismembered their bodies and turned their flesh into the filling of barbecued pork buns.