Silent Reading by Priest - Book 1

Chapter 2: Julien I

Yan City’s Central Bureau of Public Security, precisely 8:00 AM.

Each department’s workers were arriving at their posts bit by bit. The administrative office’s supply worker Xiao-Sun7 yawned and shouldered a new water barrel to deliver to the old Director-General’s office. As soon as he pushed open the door, he found that Director Zhang had already steeped his first cup of tea and was just making a phone call, his expression stern.

Their old Director-General had passed his fifth decade. He was very lean, a fiery-tempered old antique. Wherever he went, he had to carry his own water to brew tea. He always carried an old-style dumb phone that could be charged once in half a month. He never wore civilian clothes to work, but in all four seasons alternated between a few uniforms. At the center of his forehead there was a deep crease, like the Erlang God’s third eye: this was the gradual accumulation of his attitude of “everyone I see is displeasing”; if he smiled once, it was like an iron tree blossoming.

The sound from the office’s elderly landline phone leaked out a little. Half-kneeling on the floor ripping open the water barrel’s packaging, Xiao-Sun could hear the person on the other end of the phone clamoring: “Sir, I know this thing happening now in my jurisdiction really shows a dereliction of duty on my part, but…”

Xiao-Sun snuck a glance at Director Zhang’s rarely parted brows and thought, What’s happened now?

Yan City was just hosting a very important international conference. The leaders and reporters of every nation in the world were present; many business schools had taken off; all private vehicles in the city were restricted to alternate days; all the safety and security branches were on high alert.

Xiao-Sun saw the old Director-General starting to brew a storm from the neck up. Then he purposefully lowered his voice and said as mildly as possible, “North Nanping Road is less than three kilometers from the conference hall. I said before at the meeting that this month, no matter what, nothing could go wrong. It would be best if you could even clear away the roving vendors by the roadside. And here you’ve cooked up a homicide case for me. Lao-Wang, you’ve ‘exceeded the quota’ in completing this mission!”

“But, sir, it was the middle of the night…”

“The notice to reinforce the nighttime patrols was sent to every unit a month in advance. So you also want to ask the offenders to keep to an eight-hour work day and then take off?”

“Of course, of course, it’s not like I’m trying to shift responsibility, but you know, the West Flower Market District is always a mess, there are so many people coming in from outside…”

Director Zhang had restrained his temper going back and forth with the person in charge of the Flower Market District for five minutes. He found that not only did the other have no intention of examining his own conduct, he also had an excuse ready for everything. Director Zhang erupted in a rage; with no warning at all he burst out, howling with the ease of long experience: “I know shit! Isn’t the West District your jurisdiction? Isn’t it your territory? You’re telling me now that it’s a mess, what the fuck have you been doing!”

Xiao-Sun and the sub-bureau Director on the phone were both stunned silent as cicadas in winter by this howl.

Director Zhang picked up his cup and drank a mouthful of tea to relieve his anger. He accidentally took in some dregs and spit the tea leaves towards the bottom of the cup.

Then, using his “finger of death,” he jabbed two keys on his dust-coated keyboard. An earth-shattering screenshot from the local network came up on the screen.

In the small hours of the morning, a male corpse that appeared to have died savagely had been discovered in a small alley in the West Flower Market District. Right away it had been taken as a novelty and posted online; though there were far more sensational things than this online, so at first it hadn’t made a splash. But the head of the Flower Market District Sub-Bureau had been afraid of anything going wrong during such a sensitive period and so had done something idiotic: wanting to quietly suppress this matter, he had first deleted the posts, then, trying to cover up after the fact, had made matters worse by saying that the body of a vagrant had been discovered, the cause of death unknown.