Chapter 47 Red Leaves 08
Fulu Community is located in the west of Donglan City. It is very close to the hospital, only about ten minutes away, and it is only more than half an hour's walk from the deep well where the body was found.
The two took a taxi and soon arrived at Fulu Community.
This residential complex, a high-rise building with an elevator, was built eight years ago. It's quite spacious, well-located, and has a high occupancy rate. Part of the complex is resettlement housing, while the rest is commercially available. Currently, housing prices here remain stable at around 30,000 yuan per square meter.
It is naturally difficult to investigate such a large and densely populated community.
Luo Siwei looked around the neighborhood and asked Ni Xiang, "Is it Deputy Captain Guo who's coming today?"
Ni Xiang hummed, "He said he would do some research near the community this afternoon."
Luo Siwei said, "Let's go and meet them."
The investigation naturally had to start from the victim's residence. Luo Siwei compared the address registered in the file and took Ni Xiang to the house where Bao Hongyuan lived.
In order to observe the environment, Luo Siwei chose to go up through the safe passage.
When they reached the door, they saw the police had already sent someone to open it and set up a cordon. Since they were all from the same team, Luo Siwei put on gloves, nodded to the auxiliary police guarding the door, and walked in.
It was obvious that this house was the residence of a man living alone. There wasn't much furniture inside, and the doors and windows were closed. It looked quite clean, as if the owner had just gone out and hadn't returned yet.
What was particularly eye-catching was that there were several large file folders placed above the TV cabinet. An auxiliary police officer was taking them down and sorting them out. Inside were Bao Hongyuan's rental contracts from the past few years.
As soon as Luo Siwei and Ni Xiang got to this point, they saw Huo Cunsheng coming out of the bedroom yawning.
This case is a major one, and the leaders were pushing him hard. He didn't take a lunch break today, and he set off with the criminal investigation team right after lunch.
Bathed in sunlight, Huo Cunsheng felt a little sleepy. He had just yawned halfway when he saw Luo Siwei stop yawning. The captain who was supposed to be in the hospital suddenly appeared. Huo Cunsheng felt like he saw an illusion, and his eyes widened.
Luo Siwei was just about to go over and tease him when she suddenly noticed that Huo Decunsheng's expression became strange. He winked at her, gestured with his hands, and winked towards the room.
Luo Siwei suddenly realized that the person leading the team today was...
When she saw that the situation was not good, she stopped moving forward and quickly retreated with Ni Xiang in her hand.
Fortunately, Luo Siwei was alert enough. Just as he retreated to the door, Chi Li's voice came from the room: "Who? I think I heard footsteps..." Then he asked, "Old Huo, is anyone coming?"
Huo Cunsheng laughed and covered for them: "Property management." Then he shouted outside, "How dare you! Didn't you see the cordon at the door? We're investigating a case. Don't come in and disrupt the scene. I'll go to property management and find you to check the surveillance footage later."
Luo Siwei hurriedly pulled Ni Xiang into the elevator. Before the elevator door closed, she heard Chi Li's voice coming from inside the house.
Luo Siwei took the elevator downstairs and patted her chest, still feeling a little scared. If Chi Li found out that she had escaped from the hospital, wouldn't he hold her accountable?
It seems that meeting with the team members is not feasible.
She sent a message to Huo Cunsheng: "Remember to update me on the progress. Also, let me know when Captain Chi leaves."
Huo Cunsheng immediately replied: "Don't worry, Captain Chi is so busy, he might withdraw in the second half."
Ni Xiang asked, "Captain Luo, what are we investigating now? Should we go to the neighbors to inquire about the situation?"
Based on the information in the file, Luo Siwei concluded that Bao Hongyuan had very cold family relationships. As a demolition household, he still owned so many houses and certainly could not get along with his neighbors.
She flipped through Bao Hongyuan's financial records again, and Luo Siwei said, "These transfers look like they were made by intermediaries. Let's go to the gate of the community and ask those intermediaries what they know."
When getting off the car just now, Luo Siwei discovered that there was a row of real estate agencies outside the gate of Fulu Community.
In modern life, as long as it involves housing, it is inseparable from the agent.
In the previous case of Cha Junxi, the agent provided them with some important information. The same applies to this case. For a landlord like Bao Hongyuan who owns multiple properties, it is impossible for those agents to know nothing about him.
The two men went to a chain agency, identified themselves as police officers, and said they wanted to know relevant information about Bao Hongyuan's house.
The store manager quickly pulled up Bao Hongyuan's relevant information in the store, and then called over a young man: "Xiao Zhu, Uncle Bao is your client, right? Come to think of it, I haven't seen him for a long time."
Xiao Zhu was tall and thin, very young, with a few faint pimples on his face. He wore a standard agency shirt and tie. After chatting for a few minutes, Xiao Zhu led them to the meeting room: "There are many clients here, so it's quieter inside."
After entering the small conference room, Xiao Zhu poured a glass of water for Ni Xiang and Luo Siwei.
Luo Siwei lowered his head and observed Xiao Zhu's hand holding the water cup. The man held the disposable paper cup in both hands. The water in the cup was shaking gently, and his hands were shaking.
Luo Siwei immediately understood. The claim of having many customers outside was just an excuse. She wondered what the young man was afraid of. She said seriously, "Please give us your identification information so we can register."
Xiao Zhu took out his ID card.
This man is called Zhu Sheng, he is 25 years old and has been working as an agent in this store for two years.
Zhu Sheng put on a professional smile and sat across from them, playing with a pen in his hand. "What do the two officers want to know?"
Luo Siwei was asked about her hometown and personal information.
This didn't look like an inquiry, but more like an interrogation. Ni Xiang was taking notes.
After Luo Siwei finished asking those basic questions, he got to the point: "When was the last time you saw Bao Hongyuan?"
Zhu Sheng thought for a moment and said, "About a year ago. I haven't seen him in a long time. He didn't even reply to the message I left online."
Luo Siwei asked: "Why did you contact him at that time?"
Zhu Sheng said, "Last August, a tenant's house lease expired. The order was made through our store. When the customer checked out and couldn't find him, he came to me. I paid the rent for him and even paid the deposit..."
Luo Siwei became sensitive to a word: "Advance payment?"
Zhu Sheng felt that he had let something slip and hurriedly explained: "I thought at the time that Mr. Bao must have gone out of town or somewhere urgent, so I paid him first. He owed me a favor and would have to pay it back in the future. Who would have thought that he never showed up again..."
Luo Siwei asked him, "You would rather pay the deposit yourself than call the police?"
"After deducting the water and electricity bills, there isn't much money left. I'm not related to you in any way, so there's no need to make a fuss over two thousand yuan." As he spoke, Zhu Sheng blushed with a guilty conscience, which was the result of the dilation of the capillaries on his face.
Luo Siwei asked, "What happened to the house after the tenant moved out?"
Zhu Sheng's voice lowered: "It has been empty all the time."
"Is it empty?" Luo Siwei asked again.
In order to prove what he said, Zhu Sheng said, "I have a key here. You can go and see it now."
"Always?" Luo Siwei asked him again, looking straight into Zhu Sheng's eyes.
Zhu Sheng groaned, his expression paused briefly, and then he nodded vigorously: "Always."
Nodding and giving affirmative answers is a way of expressing his desire for others to approve of his answers, which just shows that he is extremely guilty.
Luo Siwei mercilessly exposed his lie: "The house is just vacant now. Bao Hongyuan has been missing for so long. You found out about this, so you rented it out as your own private property?"
Zhu Sheng panicked: "No...no."
Luo Siwei didn't let him go: "Or, in other words, this was your plan from the moment you paid the deposit? You know Mr. Bao has a lot of houses. If he shows up, you can say you paid for him and do him a favor. If he doesn't show up, you can bring people to occupy the house and earn the rent. If he never shows up, all the money will be yours."
Luo Siwei analyzed the greedy little thoughts of the young agent thoroughly.
As soon as she said this, Zhu Sheng's hand shook, and the pen fell to the ground with a click. He hurriedly bent down to pick it up.
Taking advantage of this gap, Ni Xiang and Luo Siwei's eyes met and they exchanged information.
Ni Xiang’s question is: Could he be the murderer?
Luo Siwei shook her head slightly. "No, the real murderer wouldn't have such a poor mental state. This is probably just a young man who got greedy when the landlord was away for a while. He probably didn't know Bao Hongyuan was killed, otherwise he wouldn't be here talking to them like this."
The two of them communicated silently for a moment, then turned around and sat upright facing Zhu Sheng who had picked up the pen.
"Illegally renting someone else's house is a crime," Luo Siwei asked. "Who did you rent the house to? How much illegal profit did you make?"
So far, they have not revealed any information about Bao Hongyuan's death. Luo Siwei is deceiving the young man in front of him, making him think that they came because of this matter.
Zhu Sheng clenched his fingers for a moment, sweat on his forehead. He gave up resistance and asked softly, "Can you not tell the store yet? I will lose my job. Let me explain this to you..."
Luo Siwei said, "You say." She was not in a hurry to deal with the young man. He couldn't run away anyway. The important thing was to get information from him.
Zhu Sheng's face showed an expression of annoyance, and he stammered, "I really didn't rent the house for long, just two months. I saw that Mr. Bao hadn't returned at the time, and I thought that his house being empty would affect his income. Someone happened to ask about it, so I... I just made a connection."
Ni Xiang was recording while thinking in her heart that no matter what Zhu Sheng said now, it could not change the fact that he was greedy.
"As for the money, I didn't take much... I just made back the deposit I put down, really... And I was unlucky. The house wasn't rented out for very long before I got into a lot of trouble. The tenant kept scolding me."
Luo Siwei asked: "Can you tell me in detail what happened?"
Zhu Sheng gathered his thoughts before beginning to speak, "The last time our store rented out a house on the 8th floor of Unit 4 for Mr. Bao, it was Unit 802, with three bedrooms and a living room. It was rented to a family, and when the lease expired, they found me as their agent."
"I really didn't think too much about it at first. I couldn't contact Mr. Bao at the time, and the client was very anxious. He said he rented the house from us and wanted to complain to me. I didn't want to cause trouble, so I helped to advance the deposit. I thought the house would be gone, and I would ask Mr. Bao for it when he came back."
"Mr. Bao never showed up, so I figured... I had the keys anyway, so I rented it out to a young couple who happened to be looking at the house. But I didn't expect them to come back to see me after living there for a month."
"The young couple said there was something wrong with the upstairs residents. They often heard noises in the middle of the night, like steel balls dropping to the ground, the corner of a table scraping against the floor, or footsteps. They also heard someone constantly flushing the toilet. They wanted to talk to their neighbor, so they went upstairs and knocked on the door, but no one opened it. They looked up from downstairs and saw that the windows of room 902 were always closed and the curtains were drawn, which seemed strange."
Luo Siwei asked: "What happened next?"
Zhu Sheng said: "Even though they often have trouble sleeping at night, they are still willing to rent here because of the cheap rent. What really made them give up the lease was something they discovered later.
"One day, the female tenant was taking the elevator to work in the morning. When she passed the seventh floor, a man wearing a mask came out of 701 and carried an elderly woman into the elevator. The female tenant thought that he might be carrying the elderly woman out because his parents had difficulty moving around. She even offered her seat to him."
When Zhu Sheng reached this point, he couldn't help but slow down his speech.
"A few days later, she saw the man again, still carrying an old lady on his back. The strange thing was that this old lady was completely different from the previous one. Moreover, the old lady he was carrying was so thin that she looked like a skeleton. The old lady lay on his back as if she had no bones, and her eyes were closed, just like..."
Luo Siwei asked: "Like what?"
"Like a dead person," Zhu Sheng said. "That's what the female tenant said. She said she saw this scene in the elevator this morning and was scared out of her wits. The old lady also had a distinct odor. She didn't know if it was because she hadn't showered, was incontinent, or... the stench of a corpse."
"When she returned home that day, she looked up and noticed that the curtains in Room 701 were also drawn, which looked strange. At the weekend, she and her husband came to me to cancel the apartment, saying they didn't want to rent it anymore."
At this point, Zhu Sheng wiped the tears from the corners of his eyes and said, "Comrade police, I'm telling the truth. This is all I have to say. I really just want to make up for the loss of my deposit. I'll talk to Uncle Bao when he comes back. In the end, we'll almost settle the account. If you don't believe me, I'll show you the tenant's contact information and the transfer records."
Ni Xiang collected the information and found that the payment records were indeed similar to the amount he said.
Luo Siwei and Ni Xiang checked the table. Unit 4, 701 and 902, were also Bao Hongyuan's houses. She asked Zhu Sheng, "Do you know who these two houses were rented to?"
Zhu Sheng said, "I don't know. Mr. Bao owns many properties and is a well-known landlord in this area. He has good relationships with several nearby real estate agents. When they have clients, they bring them to him. Sometimes he also rents out his properties himself, to sub-landlords or something like that."
"Sub-landlord?" Luo Siwei asked.
Zhu Sheng spoke indignantly: "There are some sub-landlords here who will sign over the house from the landlord, renovate it themselves, and then rent it out to others as a shared apartment or partitioned room. They usually sign contracts with the landlord for several years, and some landlords will give the house to them to save trouble."
Ni Xiang looked up and asked, "Isn't the property management responsible?"
"Why should I care? Those sub-landlords have bribed the property management company. The nearby police are also known to me. If we really call the police, they won't be able to intervene." Zhu Sheng said, "In short, those landlords were deceived by their sweet talk. There are many sub-landlords who have absconded with the money in recent years. Those sub-landlords are deceiving their superiors and have no intention of doing things properly. I've seen a three-bedroom apartment divided into pigeon coops that can accommodate eight people. If you give them your house, it will be ruined in a few years."
Luo Siwei continued to ask: "Can you confirm that those two households are indeed rented by the sub-landlord?"
Zhu Sheng was speechless again: "Uh... I'm not sure."
Luo Siwei stood up and said, "Then take us to the scene to have a look."
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