Chapter 65

On this day, the interrogation room of the Shenzhen Municipal Public Security Bureau was heavily guarded. The room was surrounded by three layers of police, and no one could get in or out. Both the police officers in uniform and the plainclothes officers not in uniform looked solemn and tired. The corridor was filled with smoke, and no one could be seen even a few meters away.

At this moment, two policemen were standing in the corridor, with the collars of their police shirts open, cigarettes in their mouths, their eyelids swollen as if they had blisters, and the disposable paper cups in their hands were already stuffed with cigarette butts. For two days and one night, a group of people were replaced every few hours. They had just been replaced for a short rest, but there was still no progress inside.

"That Huang Laoxie," the young policeman rubbed his face fiercely, "looks at women and makes noises, he's really a tough cookie!"

The older policeman said nothing, just puffing away. He turned around and glanced at the white-haired man in a white shirt inside the door. He had a thin figure, feminine and weak eyebrows, and was well-maintained. From a distance, he looked like a young man in his early thirties, but he was already forty-five years old, as if he had practiced the art of immortality. In addition to his "legendary" life, he was nicknamed Huang Yaoshi on the first day he came to the police station. This was the fourth time Huang Yaoshi was brought in for trial.

He sat like this during the third interrogation, and finally fell headfirst onto the table. He was sent to the hospital for emergency treatment due to heart failure and was delayed for a month. He was re-interrogated after he was able to speak, but he was still the same as before, not saying a word and not eating a grain of rice. They didn't let him sleep, so he kept his eyes open and looked down at his shackled hands on the table with a half-smile, and then looked up at the electronic calendar on the wall of the interrogation room from time to time.

There were so many issues surrounding him, and they were so serious that he had to keep going no matter how hard he tried. Therefore, this fourth joint interrogation not only involved the Shenzhen police, but also people from above.

The person sitting in the interrogation room at this moment is the person from Beijing.

"People say Southeast Asia is now the backyard of Hong Kong gangs." The middle-aged man behind the interrogation table was more relaxed than the others. He crossed his legs and jokingly said, "I thought it was just a rumor, nonsense, but I didn't expect it to be true."

He smiled and fiddled with the pen on the table. "He's also talking about one of Shenzhen's top ten outstanding entrepreneurs, Chairman Jiang Huaijiang, one of the first patriotic Hong Kong businessmen to respond to the call to return in 1997. Isn't that ironic?"

The person on the other side still didn't speak.

"Oh...what a shame, what a shame." The middle-aged man sat up straight, holding the file with a top-secret red stamp in his hand as if it were an ordinary document. He flipped through two pages casually and said with a smile, "If you can make this prescription and really practice medicine, Mr. Jiang's name will be added to the history of medicine."

But the person opposite just raised an eyebrow when he heard it, and when he leaned back in the chair, the shackles made a rattling sound, as if he had no intention of talking about his life to anyone anymore.

The middle-aged man wasn't angry. He smiled, picked up the teacup, blew away the heat, took a sip, put it down, and continued, "Mr. Jiang is a smart man. He should be aware of his current situation. Putting aside other matters, the illegal possession of firearms alone is enough to constitute a serious criminal offense."

"We also received a report earlier. The reporter claimed that you illegally detained and physically harmed Ms. Zhou Yue for four years, causing extensive skull damage and severe mental illness. From what we know now, most of what the reporter said is true."

The middle-aged man's smile persisted, his eagle-like eyes fixed on the person sitting opposite him. "But based on these two accusations, Mr. Jiang, I don't understand what you are still insisting on."

Silence, still silence.

An interrogation lasted from early morning to almost midnight. The interrogation room was dead silent. Those who couldn't bear it would go out to smoke a cigarette. When they came back, they still had to face the gloomy and ugly faces of their colleagues and leaders.

As the interrogation neared midnight, the person being interrogated began to look up at the electronic calendar on the wall. When the red numbers jumped to 00:00 on August 28, 2018, he suddenly spoke:

"I want to see my wife."

They were stunned, completely stunned. A group of policemen stared at him with wooden faces. It took them a long time to realize that he had spoken.

The interrogation lasted all night, and the young police officer sitting next to the middle-aged man was already furious. He suddenly lost his temper and sneered, "Wife? This is New China, Mr. Jiang. Concubines are no longer popular. Legally speaking, you are unmarried. I can only say that there are two women with whom you have close contact: Li Songzhu and Zhou Yue. Which one are you talking about?"

The man sneered after hearing this, scratched his ears, leaned back in his chair, and stopped talking.

The young policeman was so angry that he slammed the table and yelled, "Jiang Huai! Watch your attitude!"

The atmosphere in the interrogation room suddenly became tense. At this moment, there were two people sitting in the corner. One was wearing a white police uniform shirt with three stars on his shoulders. He was at the level of a bureau chief. The other one was completely invisible. He was only wearing a black jacket and looked to be in his fifties. He had not said a word from beginning to end. At this moment, he just opened his mouth, and everyone in the room looked at him.

"Please invite Miss Zhou over." He said in a very soft voice.

The middle-aged man behind the interrogation table looked at him, then thought for a moment, then said to the young police officer beside him, "Go, ask Miss Zhou to come over."

"But..." The young policeman was still hesitant. However, since it was an order, he had no choice but to stand up and walk out. However, he was still furious. As he walked out, he said coldly, "You hurt someone like that, and you still have the nerve to call me madam!"

This sentence unexpectedly hit the mark. The arrogant smile on the man's face disappeared. He was stunned for a long time and then lowered his head.

After a long wait, the interrogation room was unusually quiet, but this quietness was different from the previous dead silence. Everyone was alert and focused, holding their breath.

When someone said, "Here they are," the man in the black jacket spoke again: "Everyone, please go out." He smiled, "Give Mr. Jiang and Ms. Zhou some time to themselves."

After everyone in the room had left one after another, Jiang Huai finally raised his hands in shackles, slowly straightened his hair, and smoothed his collar.

When he finished all this, someone came in, but he still kept his eyes down. When a pair of feet wearing blue flat shoes appeared in his sight, he pulled out a chair and sat down. Then he lowered his head and smiled slowly.

"Happy birthday."

The woman sitting there was stunned and subconsciously looked at the wall of the interrogation room. It was a one-way mirror, reflecting her pale face. There should be people standing behind the mirror at this moment.

"Don't look at it." Jiang Huai still lowered his head and smiled, "It wasn't the police who told me."

He chuckled a few times, his thin chest rising and falling. "You even told me that your dad made up your birthday to get you to go to school early. You must be kidding."

He laughed for a while, then couldn't laugh anymore. He lowered his shackled hands to his knees, lowered his head even more, and said softly, "Okay, don't be angry. What I said the other day was just a fit of anger. I won't be able to kill you even if we go back to Shahe Street."

The woman was silent, and he didn't expect her to respond. He just stared at the blank wall of the interrogation room and muttered to himself, "That day, I woke up and had a dream. It wasn't a dream, but it didn't feel like a dream. Everything was too real. I felt so painful that I felt like exploding. I was still half asleep when a clumsy woman dug me out of the garbage dump and dragged me home.

But this time was different. I lost, and the people who wanted to kill me won. From then on, Jiang Huai no longer had a place in Hong Kong and Shenzhen. I became a penniless little scoundrel, and could only live with the stupid woman who saved me in a smelly tube-shaped building on Shahe Street for the rest of my life.

He laughed again when he said this, "Do you think this is a good dream?"

"But after waking up from the dream, I quickly realized..." He lowered his head again and said with a smile, "If I really became a poor, powerless, and insignificant scoundrel, that woman wouldn't follow me anymore."

After a long silence, he looked at the door of the interrogation room and sighed, as if he was exhausted to the extreme, but his tone was still relaxed: "That little bastard Ajie escaped on the day he was arrested. He ran home, killed his wife and daughter, and then turned himself in, just to come to me and tell me that he was very disappointed in me."

"He bit his tongue before he even left the door." Jiang Huai looked at the granite floor at the door. The bloodstains had been cleaned away long ago.

He looked away and lowered his head. After a long pause, he smiled and said, "What about you?" He blinked again, took a deep breath, and said, "How about this? Let me ask you another way."

He finally raised his head and looked directly into the woman's eyes.

"Have you ever treated me sincerely?"

The woman also looked at him for a long time, then shook her head calmly, firmly and slowly.

They stared at each other for a long time. It was unknown how much time had passed before Jiang Huai smiled, nodded, and said, "Don't worry, I will pay you back."

After hearing this, the woman withdrew her gaze, stood up and walked out. When she reached the door, she heard Jiang Huai calling her.

"Zhou Yue."

Zhou Yue turned around and saw Jiang Huai still smiling, but she had never seen such a bright and beautiful smile on his face.

"The 10 million from SARS was clean," he said with a smile, his eyes red. "I'm sincere."

Zhou Yue turned around and ran out. The police came in one after another. Behind her, a man's heart-wrenching cry came from the interrogation room.

Zhou Yue ran all the way, and the pain in her chest became more and more severe. She had to stop and gasp for breath, and beads of sweat the size of beans dripped onto the ground.

She bent down and supported her knees, and found herself standing on the boundary between light and dark, with shadow behind her and sunlight in front of her.

She stood there and discovered that the corridor leading out of the interrogation room was actually a bridge. There was a saying that prisoners could atone for their sins in this life by walking across the Bridge of Sighs. She wondered if this arched corridor had the meaning of ferrying people across.

But people can only save themselves.

She stood up and looked at the Thousand Splendid Suns ahead of her, still without looking back.

"Zhou Yue's life ends here."

She said, and walked into the sunlight.

On August 28, 2018, the suspect Jiang Huai confessed to all crimes he had committed.

On August 29, 2018, the suspect Jiang Huai committed suicide on the way to the judicial authorities.