Chapter 154 Threatening Letter

When he arrived at the Criminal Investigation Brigade, Xia Mufan saw a middle-aged man with a haggard face.

As soon as the man saw the police, he rushed forward anxiously and shouted in panic: "Someone wants to hurt me, someone wants to hurt me."

Xia Mufan and Gong Weiguo looked at each other. They had just received the task and didn't know anything. When they saw the man in front of them, they broke out in cold sweat and their expressions became serious.

Xia Mufan said gently, "Don't worry, tell me what happened. Don't worry, you will be safe here."

After hearing what Xia Mufan said, the middle-aged man breathed a sigh of relief, calmed himself down, began to introduce himself, and told the whole story in detail.

The man's name is Zou Chengye. He is a professor at Huishi Finance and Trade College. He is 45 years old, which is the age when he is in the prime of his life and ready to produce results. Zou Chengye’s wife, Yu Yaxiu, is a nurse at the school hospital. She is 35 years old and they have a son who is in the fourth grade of elementary school. He is lively and cute.

Both of them work at the school and have a good relationship. They take their children out to travel during the winter and summer vacations. They are a well-known loving couple in the school.

This year, the school built collective housing. Zou Chengye had relatively high scores in terms of professional title, academic qualifications and length of service, so he was ranked high and was successfully assigned to the third floor of a collective housing building with three bedrooms, two living rooms and a large balcony. The housing conditions were very good.

However, since moving into the new building, strange things have been happening at home.

At this point, Zou Chengye's expression changed, and a hint of fear flashed in his eyes, which made Gong Weiguo curious. Zou Chengye is a university teacher who takes teaching and educating as his mission. What kind of strange thing could he encounter that would make him run to the Criminal Investigation Brigade to report a case?

Gong Weiguo poured a glass of water and handed it to Zou Chengye, saying soothingly, "Professor Zou, don't panic. Drink some water and talk slowly."

Zou Chengye took the cup of water, his hands were still shaking, and the water in the cup began to ripple. He held the cup with both hands, trying to calm himself down until the water in the cup stopped swaying. Then he swallowed and continued speaking.

There are two buildings with a total of 6 units for collective housing. All 72 households that moved in are teachers from Huishi Finance and Trade College. Everyone got the keys and started decorating their houses almost at the same time. Zou Chengye also followed the trend and hired a construction team to decorate the new house. Three months after the decoration and ventilation were completed, the family of three moved in.

Less than two days after moving in, Zou Chengye was going to the bathroom in the middle of the night when he suddenly heard a strange noise coming from the kitchen. He thought a thief had come in, so he approached quietly with a stick, but strangely enough, the sound disappeared when he approached the kitchen.

Xia Mushi asked: "What kind of noise is it? Can you describe it?"

Zou Chengye shuddered, his eyes wandering: "It seems, it seems to be a woman's voice." As he spoke, Zou Chengye imitated the sound in the kitchen and made a horrible and strange sound, which sounded quite creepy.

“Ah, ah, ah…”

“Ooooooo…woooooooo——”

Xia Mufan frowned: "Listen to this woman's voice, is it an acquaintance or..."

Zou Chengye shook his head in panic: "No, no, no, it's not someone I know. I don't know whose voice it is, but it feels like a female ghost. No matter who it is, they will be scared to hear such a voice in the middle of the night."

Xia Mufan nodded: "Okay, then go on, is this sound continuous or just once?"

Zou Chengye said: "It happened not just once, but almost every night, this kind of noise would come from the kitchen at irregular intervals. It was really scary. I took my wife to listen, but she was timid. As soon as she heard the noise, she started screaming and said the house was haunted."

"I checked the kitchen during the day and didn't see any tape recorders or anything like that. I don't know if it's really haunted or just a prank."

Haunted? Xia Mufan has been a criminal policeman for so long that of course he knows where there is a ghost. Most of the time, it is because someone is secretly making trouble.

"And then?" Xia Mufan continued to ask. If such a sound only came from the kitchen, Zou Chengye would not have been so panicked.

Zou Chengye shuddered. "That's not all. The voice of the female ghost in the kitchen is just an appetizer. As the voice appeared, the lights in the living room also began to flicker, as if a ghost had appeared."

Xia Mufan asked, "Is there something wrong with the decoration of your house? Have you found the decoration team to ask?"

Zou Chengye smiled bitterly and said, "In order to save money, I hired a relative from my hometown to be the supervisor, and then recruited migrant workers from the main road to do the decoration. My relative would definitely not cheat me. Those migrant workers only took the money to do the work, and disappeared after the work was completed. Where can I find them now?"

Without waiting for Xia Mufan to continue asking questions, Zou Chengye knew that if it was just a matter of suspicion, it would not be enough for the police to take it seriously. He took out a few letters from his bag and placed them on the table: "Look, police comrades, someone sent me a threatening letter."

Judging from the envelope, the handwriting was from the same person. The handwriting was a bit childish, and the sender's address was written as "Details not available". Xia Mushige put on gloves, opened the envelope and looked at it carefully.

The words in the envelope were cut out from newspapers and pasted together. It seemed that they were cut out from different newspapers and pages. The fonts were large and small and were not pasted neatly.

The content is very simple.

"Zou Chengye, blood debt must be repaid with blood. I will come to take your life."

There is handwriting on the envelope cover, but the inside of the envelope is made of clippings and pasted together. Why is this so? If you are afraid of exposing your handwriting, why do you write on the envelope by hand? Unless... the words on the envelope were not written by the person who sent the threatening letter, but were prepared in advance.

Xia Mufan asked Zou Chengye: "Did you offend someone? Why did the other party say that blood debt must be paid with blood?"

Zou Chengye's pupils shrank, and he obviously thought of some unpleasant past events, but he immediately shook his head and pretended to be calm: "How could a university teacher like me offend anyone? At most, I criticized a few students and caught a few students who cheated. Could it be that they hold a grudge against me?"

Xia Mufan did not continue to dwell on this issue, but said to Zou Chengye: "A few letters may be a prank, and it has not risen to the level of a criminal case. You can report it to the local police station. Why do you have to come to our Criminal Investigation Brigade?"

Zou Chengye said anxiously: "These letters show that the other party wants to harm me. Isn't this a criminal case? Do you have to wait until the other party really kills me before you intervene? The police's responsibility is to protect the safety of the people. Now my life is threatened. I hope to get protection from the police."

Seeing that Xia Mufan's attitude was casual and he had no intention of taking over the case, Zou Chengye added, "Oh, and recently I've been receiving some inexplicable threatening phone calls. There's a woman's voice on the phone, and it's intermittent, like a tape recorder with a stuck tape."

Gong Weiguo asked: "What threats did the other party say?"

Zou Chengye thought for a moment and said, "Her voice was very sharp. She said something like, 'I found you, I'm going to kill you, you can't escape.' It was that kind of thing. It was so scary to hear."

In each recent case investigation, Gong Weiguo was in charge of the investigation of the source of the phone calls. He was very familiar with the matter and patiently asked: "Which phone did the other party call, your home phone or your office phone?"

Zou Chengye said: "She called my new home. She called at a fixed time, basically during the day. Sometimes it was 8 or 9 in the morning, sometimes 2 or 3 in the afternoon. I don't have to work at work, so I spend more time at home, and I usually answer the phone. It's really disturbing to hear a woman saying those nonsense in a weird voice on the phone."

"This incident has caused our whole family to lose sleep and eat. Police comrades, please help us and find the person who made the phone calls and sent the threatening letters. I don't know who I offended to have such a disaster happen to me!"

Gong Weiguo: "Do you have caller ID installed at home?"

Zou Chengye shook his head: "No."

Gong Weiguo: "In addition to calling and sending letters, did the other party do anything else out of line? Did he have any contact with your family members?"

Zou Chengye shook his head repeatedly: "If the other party had contact with my family and exposed their tracks, it would be better. But now the other party has been sneaking around and has not taken any substantial actions, which makes me feel uneasy. So I came here to report the case, hoping to seek help and protection from the police."

Xia Mufan wrote down what Zou Chengye said and looked at the university professor in front of him inconspicuously. Zou Chengye is thin, wears a pair of gold-rimmed glasses, and looks gentle and refined. Logically, it should be difficult for him to make enemies with others.

Judging from Zou Chengye's statement alone, he must have attracted some kind of enemy, which led to the other party sending threatening letters and making threatening phone calls. However, the other party has never really taken any action, and has been annoying him everywhere, making him uneasy.

What kind of enemies could a university teacher attract? This is an issue that the Serious Crime Unit 7 must screen. If what Zou Chengye said is true, then the students who have failed their courses, been caught cheating, or been criticized by him are likely to hate him? Then the scope of enemies is too broad.

Respecting teachers and valuing education is a fine tradition of the Chinese nation, and the possibility of students committing crimes is relatively small. However, we cannot rule out the possibility that some narrow-minded students hold grudges against their teachers because they did not graduate or for other reasons.

From Zou Chengye's wandering eyes and hesitant attitude, Xia Mufan felt that he still had a lot to say to the police.

Perhaps, some things have been hidden in the darkest part of Zou Chengye's heart.

Thinking of this, Xia Mufan stood up and said, "Okay, let's start the investigation from your kitchen."

The Serious Crime Unit 7 took over the case and followed Zou Chengye to Hui City Finance and Trade College. The college’s new fund-raising building is located near the gate. There are two buildings in total. They look tall and imposing and have the best accommodation conditions in the school.

Xia Mufan asked: "How much did you spend when you bought this house?"

Zou Chengye answered honestly: "For a collective housing building, the cost price is about 500 yuan per square meter. We spent 50,000 to 60,000 yuan on this house." Compared with the current market price, this price is quite favorable.

Xia Mushige asked: "How much did the renovation cost?"

Zou Chengye said: "We were quite frugal in the decoration, spending about 40,000 to 50,000 yuan."

In the 1990s, the income of university teachers was not high, but being able to take out 100,000 yuan in one go shows that Zou Chengye's savings were still very generous.

Xia Mufan glanced at Zou Chengye and said, "Professor Zou is very good at making money. He has so much money, and he took it out as soon as he said it."

Zou Chengye smiled and did not hide it: "I studied finance, and it happened to be the time when our country's stock market was booming. I made some money from stock trading, but it's not worth mentioning."

Gong Weiguo listened and became excited: "Oh, university teachers have professional knowledge to support stock trading, so they will definitely make money. Professor Zou has a way of stock trading, so he can teach us sometime."

Zou Chengye pushed his glasses and said, "As for the stock market, there are gains and losses anyway. We must never violate the laws of economic development. The national economy has developed rapidly in recent years, and the stock market has grown from nothing. It is easier to make money, but it may be more difficult in the future. If you really want to invest in stocks, I suggest you treat it with caution."

Gong Weiguo laughed: "What stocks are you speculating in? I'm just joining in the fun. I don't even know what stocks are, how can I speculate in stocks?"

They chatted and laughed, and soon went up to the third floor and entered Zou Chengye's home.