Chapter 14 "Madam is an orphan!"
It was very late when Zhu Qing returned to the police academy dormitory.
Her dormitory application was delayed and her daily commute of more than three hours left her exhausted.
She was lying on the faded, mottled iron bed, the bright incandescent light overhead glaring, and the old fan humming in her ears.
Butler Cui's words still lingered in his mind.
Through the window, she saw that the video store at the side gate of the police academy was still lit up.
A thought flashed through her mind, and Zhu Qing suddenly stood up and strode towards the school gate.
A dozen minutes later, she returned to school clutching the rented old DVDs and tentatively knocked on the dormitory manager's door.
"Can I borrow the TV?"
The dormitory supervisor pushed up her reading glasses, a kind smile appearing on her face as she recognized Zhu Qing: "It's you."
She was deeply impressed by this classmate.
They set numerous records in their final graduation exams, and it wouldn't be an exaggeration to call them legends of their year.
The dormitory supervisor invited her into the room and slowly opened a drawer to find the remote control with worn buttons.
"Haven't eaten yet? The cafeteria has been closed for ages." The auntie handed over half a char siu bun. "Have something to eat first."
She thanked him, stuffed the char siu bao into her mouth, and then focused intently on studying the VCD player.
The machine was just purchased by the internal affairs department last year, but no one uses it regularly, so it's covered in a thin layer of dust. Zhu Qing squatted down and noticed that the red, yellow, and white cables were haphazardly plugged into the TV interface. She reconnected them and pressed the power button.
"I've pressed the buttons on this machine but it doesn't respond..." Before the dormitory supervisor could finish speaking, the TV suddenly turned on with a blue light.
"I've got it! I've got it!" she exclaimed excitedly. "It's watchable!"
A former police academy student, she became a police madam and can also handle electrical appliances on the side.
The VCD player started playing discs, and the dormitory supervisor was overjoyed at the thought of being able to watch discs during her shifts.
The images on the television gradually became clearer.
That was a TV series that Sheng Pui-shan, a former Miss Hong Kong top three winner, starred in more than ten years ago.
In the alley, Sheng Peishan, dressed in a cheongsam and holding an umbrella, strolled through the misty rain.
As the camera zooms in, she suddenly turns around, her eyes glistening with tears, perfectly conveying her sorrow.
The dorm supervisor was unraveling a ball of yarn, her eyes practically glued to the screen: "She can cry on cue; the actor is really something."
...
At dawn the next day, just as the sky was beginning to lighten, Zhu Qing boarded the early bus to Kwun Tong.
In the quiet and deserted back alleys of Kwun Tong, she found the newsstand run by the parents of the deceased, Ho Ka-yee.
The tin kiosks were lit by a dim yellow light. Mr. He was organizing the day's morning newspapers, while Mrs. He was using long tongs to pick up aluminum cans that people had thrown away the night before when they were drunk. These were all recyclable items that could be exchanged for money.
After hearing Zhu Qing's purpose, He's mother put down the can, wiped her hands repeatedly on her clothes, and led Zhu Qing home through the narrow alley.
Public housing requires queuing for application. Mrs. Ho still remembers that when they won the lottery for this public housing, the whole family couldn't sleep all night.
The apartment was cramped and old. Because the space was too small, it was filled with household items, and you had to walk around it to get around it.
The slightly larger bedroom inside was He Jia'er's room before her death. No clutter was ever piled up in it, and even after ten years, the room remained spotless and unchanged.
"The clothes, shoes, and handbags are all here." Mrs. He opened the wardrobe, her voice becoming even hoarseer in just a few days. "The other officers saw them when they came last time."
A meticulously tailored dress, gleaming designer high heels, and a soft leather handbag... all these items hang out of place in the simple, old wardrobe.
But it was very smooth and clean, even the wrinkles were smoothed out.
Many of the clothes still had their tags on.
"Why did that man kill her?" Mother He suddenly choked up. "Jia'er was a very good girl. Even if she was a bit stubborn, she would never have bothered him like that..."
Zhu Qing's gaze swept over the expensive clothes and landed on the mottled wall.
On the wall, which was covered with mold, were the certificates of merit that He Jia'er had received from childhood to adulthood.
“These—” she stepped forward, “need to be taken back to the police station.”
...
At this moment, Sheng Peishan was pushing her wheelchair outside the children's room at the Sheng family home.
The Filipino maid, Marissa, stood behind her and respectfully answered the young lady's question: "The young master didn't throw a tantrum, he just... didn't say a word."
The door to the children's room was ajar, and Sheng Peishan's gaze passed over the plump Marissa and looked into the room.
She lowered her eyes and glanced at the warm milk in her palm.
In fact, she was not close to her younger brother and was not good at coaxing children.
In the past, the young master of the Sheng family was spoiled and willful, a veritable little tyrant. But because the child was so adorable, with his delicate, sculpted face and downturned lips, no one had the heart to really argue with him.
However, after Sheng Wenchang and Qin Lizhu died, everything changed. The bodyguards no longer stayed by his side constantly, and the servants became increasingly lax. In just a few months, even when Sheng Fang caused trouble, the adults turned a blind eye, mechanically cleaning up the mess he left behind without reprimanding him…
Gradually, all of Sheng Fang's tricks stopped working. Sheng Peishan wondered if this little one would start to doubt her too.
“Second Miss, should we invite Madam over?” Marissa suggested cautiously. “Young Master likes her very much. He even called the police station to chat with her the other day.”
On the bay window, a small figure was curled up.
Shengfang stood with her back to the door, clutching an Iron Man model in her hand, motionless and unusually quiet.
“Officer Zhu and my younger brother really hit it off,” Sheng Peishan asked softly. “What did they talk about?”
“I heard…the young master say that not all parents will protect their children as they grow up.”
"It seems like Madam told him—"
Sheng Peishan: "She also has no parents."
"Second Miss, how did you know?" Marissa asked in surprise. "Young Master said on the phone that Madam is an orphan!"
Sheng Peishan didn't reply, but handed the warm milk to Marissa.
“You take it,” she said. “I’m tired.”
Aunt Liu stepped forward and pushed Miss Sheng's wheelchair back to the bedroom.
Before the door closed, Sheng Peishan suddenly spoke.
"Don't let anyone in."
"I'm waiting for a phone call."
...
When Zhu Qing returned to the police station, she happened to be there for the morning meeting.
The clues to the whiteboard skeleton case have not yet been removed; arrows and photos intertwine to form an invisible net.
At Mo Zhenbang's instruction, Zhu Qing added the new information to the whiteboard.
Sheng Peishan had postponed her move due to feng shui issues. Is there any connection between this and Chen Chaosheng stopping the construction team from working at night?
Furthermore, the time when Sheng Peishan was in a car accident was also during the construction period of that villa on the hillside.
"Wait a minute—you mean, Miss Sheng might not be as innocent as she seems on the surface?"
“He’s thirty-seven years old,” Uncle Li said. “Even if he were seventeen, growing up in an environment like the Sheng family and then struggling in the chaotic entertainment industry, how naive could he be?”
If Uncle Li had said this three to five days ago, Zeng Yongshan would definitely have jumped up and argued for Sheng Peishan.
But now, with those contradictory testimonies intertwined, she's confused too.
“Do you remember…” Zeng Yongshan recalled, “That day, when the second son-in-law committed suicide and asked the second daughter for a statement, she said, ‘If you were going to be so suicidal, you should have been suicidal more than ten years ago.’”
“This doesn’t match what the housekeeper said at all,” Zhu Qing said. “The ‘feng shui’ of the hillside mansion is problematic, so even if we performed a three-day and three-night ritual, we couldn’t avoid that serious car accident, which happened ten years ago.”
"Could it be—" Xu Jiale frowned, "that she's deliberately obscuring the time of the car accident?"
Zhu Qing's eyes suddenly narrowed.
She reopened the case file and searched for the statements of the nightclub hostesses.
“This Ah May said that the last time she saw Ho Ka-yee was when a man in a luxury car picked her up, and the trunk was full of luxury bags.”
Zhu Qing: "From beginning to end, no one really saw clearly whether the person sitting in the car was a man or a woman."
"Huh?" Zeng Yongshan looked surprised, then suddenly realized, "Yeah...who said that people who drive luxury cars are necessarily men?"
They were misled by deeply ingrained beliefs.
In fact, the one holding the steering wheel back then was the second young lady of the Sheng family, who was not yet disabled.
But why did she do that?
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