Mo Du (默读) - Silent Reading

Macbeth XXX

In Yan City’s Ping’an District, the police station on Ping’an Road received a report from the central hotline. There was a very old apartment building in their jurisdiction that had originally been an office building. It had been out of repair for many years, the rent and housing prices were very cheap, so it was very welcomed among those who are out-of-towners and those who are looking for cheap housing. People came and went; the composition of the residents was very complicated. They were always having disputes.

One household had smelled an indescribable stench for several days in a row. There was a pregnant woman in the household who couldn’t stand the stink. Her family determined that the stink was coming from next door and proceeded to go open negotiations, but no one answered the door of that apartment. The pregnant woman’s family then went to the building’s hardly better than nonexistent property management. The property management did a search and discovered that that apartment had been rented out and the tenant hadn’t left any contact information. The owner’s number had been disconnected long ago.

The irate pregnant woman’s family thought that the property management was being deliberately inactive and wanted to break down the door. The two sides began to fight, and in the end the police were alerted.

The Ping’an Road police station dispatched two civil policemen who were experts at resolving neighborhood disputes. As soon as they arrived, before they had time to engage their dispute resolution function, the crappy apartment’s door met another fierce kick from the pregnant woman’s family member and, at this critical juncture, the door shaft gave out a crack and collapsed, coming to a tragic end.

It was as if the seal had been broken on a stink that could have served as a “biochemical crisis”; it nearly knocked everyone at the door flat. One of the old civil policemen thought he’d smelled this before and suddenly remembered something. His expression altered. He ordered everyone not to go in. He got out shoe coverings and a truncheon, then carefully searched through the apartment, finally pulling open the door of the fridge—

Three hours later, the City Bureau’s police cars were occupying the lot in front of the apartment building.

While Luo Wenzhou was still lame, he had already become accustomed to peacefully coexisting with his “third leg”. According to what he said himself, he’d have no problem climbing up to lift off a roof or going underground to catch a thief; going to a crime scene was easy.

He held his crutch horizontally behind him, as if carrying a big sword in a game on his back, firmly planted on one leg in front of the fridge, leaning forward to examine their dear friend inside.

There was a man’s corpse in the fridge.

It had gotten cold early this winter. All of Yan City’s districts were turning their heating on early. Because no one had been paying the bills, the electricity in this apartment had been shut off about a month before. The early heat had piled on top of the stopped refrigeration, the temperature had risen rapidly, and the corpse had had a “centennial conference” with the many different varieties of mold in the fridge, producing a fantastic biochemical reaction.

Lang Qiao had wanted to go support Luo Wenzhou. She persisted for half a minute, nearly went into a shock, and fled away from the battle, running to the door and clamoring, “Boss, do you have sinusitis?”

“Between his work and his daily life, what kind of rotting substances hasn’t a police officer who’s familiar with the kitchen seen? The ignorant are easily surprised,” Luo Wenzhou said without looking back, and then waved a hand at the medical examiner. “Enough, I’m done looking. Take it away.”

“Captain Luo.” Tao Ran passed him a folder. “Look, this was found under the pillow of the victim’s camp bed.”

Luo Wenzhou put on gloves and took it.—This was a very ordinary folder. There were only a few thin sheets of paper inside. Each sheet had a photograph stuck to it, with the name, sex, home address, and other basic information of the person in the photograph next to it. In the corner there was a clearly indicated date, and a number of unclear meaning. Some had been printed, some had been written by hand. The handwriting was very heavy, with incorrectly written characters throughout.