Silent Reading by Priest - Book 1

Chapter 3: Julien II

Around Nanping Road there was a morning rush hour disaster area; the congestion lasted from six-thirty to ten.

All over the road, high-level white collar workers heading towards the East District’s commercial center met and clashed with disorderly droves of motor-bikers. If a public bus had happened along and inserted itself into the fray, it might have manufactured the death trap of the century.

The roads in the West District were laid out especially intricately, some wide, some narrow, all jigsawed together. It was common practice among the local inhabitants to put up a mess of private construction; man-made dead ends were everywhere. Motor-vehicles that had mistakenly wandered in were like little bugs caught in a spider’s web—they had to struggle for their lives, charging left and dodging right, if they wanted to see the light of day again.

Luo Wenzhou stuck his head out the car window and gave a blast on the siren. He yelled, “Handsome, we’re conducting official business and can’t get through. Could I trouble you to shift that prize steed at your gate?”

At this, an old man came out of the yard of the single-story house beside the car, flattened his lips and looked at Luo Wenzhou, then totteringly pushed a mobility scooter into the yard.

On the left side of the mobility scooter was a sticker reading “Especially for picking up my grandson, ”on the right one reading “The angrier you are, the slower I’ll be.” As it moved along a bark came from it. Luo Wenzhou raised his sunglasses from his nose bridge in surprise and looked down. A big yellow dog leapt out from behind the scooter.

The big yellow dog sauntered up beside the police car, exchanged a glance with him, then brazenly lifted its back leg at the car’s wheel.

Luo Wenzhou whistled at it. “Piss, little darling,” he said kindly. “When you’re done, I’ll cut off your little willy, cook it into a pancake, and eat it.”

This method of eating was truly novel; the big yellow dog had never heard of such a thing. It was struck with awe on the spot by Officer Luo’s veteran hooligan attitude, let out a howl, and decamped with its tail between its legs.

Lang Qiao blocked her face with her tablet. “Chief Luo, have you noticed that there’s an unmarried young lady in the backseat?—They’ve sent over what they currently have from the sub-bureau.”

“Lady Comrade, please pick out the objective facts and summarize them for me.” Luo Wenzhou slowly pushed the car out of the cleared-out narrow alley. “Ignore the subjective and groundless parts. That bastard Wang Hongliang is a bootlicker. The Flower Market District Sub-Bureau is rotten from the top down. It’s all questionable goods.”

“Okay. The victim’s name is He Zhongyi, male, eighteen years old, a worker from out of town. He was employed as a delivery man for a coffee shop chain. There are indentations on the body’s neck, cause of death is asphyxiation…he was strangled. The preliminary conjecture is that the murder weapon was something like a piece of cloth. Time of death was between 8 PM and midnight. We have to wait for the medical examiner to get further before we get concrete determinations about the circumstances—oh, right, the body was discovered not far from the illegal shared rental the victim lived in, so his identity was confirmed quickly.”

Luo Wenzhou was a very accomplished driver; boring his way through the peril-ridden alley with hardly a millimeter’s clearance, he still had attention to spare to interrupt and ask, “Where did the rumors concerning the looting and strangling gang come from?”

“Apparently the victim was picked clean. His phone is gone, and his wallet was emptied and tossed aside, though there’s no saying whether it was the murderer who did it.” Lang Qiao quickly skimmed the e-mail. “Right, the person who reported the case said there was a piece of paper covering the body’s face, with a strip of glue on it. It was stuck to the victim’s hair. The character ‘money’ was written on it.”