Free Web NovelChapter 668: Chapter 636: Photo_1
Mr. Zhao shivered and quickly took out his mobile phone to call Xu Dayuan.
"Leader, hurry and have someone check the surveillance in the corridor. Someone is lying at the north side window, watching our movements below, but I don’t know which floor they’re on, and no one could get a clear view," he said.
After speaking, Guan Jian was already dumbfounded. He leaned in to look at the office building ahead but didn’t spot anyone at the windows. Mr. Zhao waved at him.
"Get on with your work. The small storage is open. Oh, Mr. Fang and the others, they don’t know about this little storage, do they?"
Guan Jian shook his head.
"We were working on a case back then. Mr. Huang, Mr. Fang, and the others were all there. I was the newcomer. I had just smashed a toenail, so I was left behind to move house. Back then, our small second floor leaked and all the archives got waterlogged. Even our clothes and buckets floated away.
While cleaning up, I discovered some of the archives we kept. I gave it some thought and asked the deputy team leader back then. Probably because he was always sick and in a bad mood, he yelled at me, telling me to do as I see fit and to take it home to burn if the firewood wasn’t enough," he explained.
"What I really wanted to know was how to deal with all this wet stuff. It completely stumped me at first. I asked a couple more questions about whether we could dry these things in the new office building, and he blew up at me. He told me not to call him for nothing and to hang it up at my family’s ancestral grave if I couldn’t find anywhere else.
"I was bewildered at the time. After we pulled everything back, some of the waterlogged archive bags, I just sent them straight to my dad’s leather drying workshop. It took days to dry them. Then I had workers box them up, and I hauled them over here to the small storage. If you hadn’t asked today, I would have forgotten all about it," he admitted.
Zhou Ning patted Guan Jian’s shoulder and said that it was a good thing he’d forgotten. If he’d remembered, these documents might not have even been here anymore, considering the archives room was cleaned out thoroughly.
"Never mind that, open the door so we can take a look," Zhou Ning said.
Guan Jian acknowledged with an "okay" and hurried to find the keys. It was obvious that this place was rarely visited, as the key didn’t even have a label to mark it. It took several tries to finally unlock the door.
"This place is a bit run-down. The other rooms around here are the canteen and the traffic police department’s storage. Basically, it’s where we put the stuff that couldn’t be thrown away when moving. The key board is rusted and just sits in the duty room untouched," he explained.
Mr. Zhao pushed the door open with a creak, and the door swung inward with a cloud of dust. There were water stains on the ground, and looking up, Mr. Zhao noticed a leak in the roof. It was clear that this was an original building left behind when the new block was built because it seemed unobtrusive, so it wasn’t torn down.
Inside the room was an assortment of items—broken shields and helmets stacked high, and there was even a bundle of riot forks.
In the corner, there was a layer of bricks on the ground, probably for moisture prevention. On top of the bricks were cardboard boxes with open tops, filled with a mix of everything; the uppermost even appeared to be a bag of construction waste.
Guan Jian was somewhat embarrassed and gave the other two a small laugh as he tossed the rubbish aside and started rummaging through the boxes. After a while, he indeed found some dossier boxes, which Zhou Ning and Mr. Zhao began to inspect as they squatted down.
Guan Jian didn’t stop talking, mentioning that Cao Wenyu from the archives had once hinted something to him. When he was checking the archives, she scratched his palm with her finger, which startled Guan Jian, and after that, he always sent someone else to do the tasks.
Listening to the chatter, Zhou Ning had already flipped through to the fourth dossier, which was marked with a pencil notation of the Zhou character. The archive had no name or date recorded. Zhou Ning nudged Mr. Zhao.
"Tell him to shut up!" Zhou Ning said.
Zhou Ning rarely spoke so bluntly, and since he did, Mr. Zhao knew that Zhou Ning must have found something. He quickly stood up, covered Guan Jian’s mouth, and stepped outside.
Zhou Ning put on gloves, placed the dossier box on a side table, and blew away the dust on the top lid before opening the latch. Most of the side of the dossier had water stains, and the elastic had completely lost its stretch, turning yellow and hard, indicating that the dossier was very old.
As the dossier was opened, a musty smell wafted out.
Inside the dossier was an investigation report. Something slipped out from behind it, and Zhou Ning quickly caught it, only to discover it was a photograph that was well-preserved and undistorted despite the water.
As Zhou Ning pinched the edges of the photograph to lift it, he could see two clear fingerprints on the surface. He turned to look at Mr. Zhao.
"Don’t alert anyone else; we’ll take these items to examine ourselves," Zhou Ning instructed.
Mr. Zhao nodded, took off his outer coat, and saw Zhou Ning repacking the dossier. He wrapped it in his jacket, covering his hands as if he were casually draping the coat over them, hiding the dossier very effectively.
He put an arm around Guan Jian’s shoulder and smiled at him.
"I have this feeling that you’re about to earn a commendation," Mr. Zhao said cheerfully.
Guan Jian gave a smile that looked uglier than crying, unsure of what to say.
"I don’t know what I’ve done, as long as I haven’t caused trouble, that’s good enough," he said.
"Quit the nonsense, let’s move it. Call some auxiliary police over to move all these cardboard boxes to the small building in the back. Make sure you call the new auxiliaries, not the slick veterans. Speak loudly and with confidence, just act the way you usually do when you’re being silly," Mr. Zhao directed.
Guan Jian’s face was full of awkwardness.
Mr. Zhao reassured him, "Don’t worry, Mr. Zhao. What kind of expression should I maintain as I follow you?"
Zhao Xinli patted his face, staring at him as he put away the joke from his face. freewebnσvel.cѳm
"Everything as usual, just like when you first saw us in the cave, peering from behind Mr. Cui, don’t talk as it’s easy to show fear, and there’s no need to lock the door here, just leave it open.
That way, no one pays attention, and then move things as quickly as possible, hurry and throw these broken trashes into the garbage can, empty this little hut, even if you move things next door, it makes people think that we just found a place to store stuff."
Once Mr. Zhao said this, Guan Jian’s eyes lit up.
"Mr. Zhao, you’re so clever, I know what to do now."
He was about to make a phone call when Mr. Zhao, in a rush, slapped him on the back.
"You’ve got the order wrong, now the three of us will go out one after another, then dust ourselves off, complain a little, and head straight for the little second floor. I’ve said so much, let it sink into your head, will you!"
Guan Jian scratched his head and smiled sheepishly.
"Got it, don’t rush me, I’m just a bit slow on the uptake."
With that, he was the first to walk out, coughing a few times, continuously patting the dust off his body, and turned back to wave at Mr. Zhao and the others.
"Mr. Zhao, Director Zhou, come out quickly, I’ll have someone clean up right away, then tidy it up, this place is quite spacious and can fit a lot of stuff."
Mr. Zhao and Zhou Ning also quickly came out, and the three of them headed toward the little second floor together. At the north side window of the office building, a pair of eyes withdrew from behind the curtain.
Zhou Ning sensed that gaze again, but this time he didn’t look back, the three entered the little second floor, and Guan Jian immediately made a call, arranging for people to move things, clear out all the trash, and even went to fetch the keys from the little second floor to stuff the things that couldn’t be thrown away into the room across the hall.
After a quick set of instructions, Guan Jian hung up the phone and looked at Zhao Xinli.
"How did I do, Mr. Zhao?"
"Not bad, although a bit exaggerated, but that’s in your nature, which can be compensated for. Just now when we entered the little second floor, I also felt like someone was watching us. It seems to be internal personnel, no doubt about it. Keep an eye out here, a good eye, and have your men move the stuff over here, put the documents in the room on the first floor, and keep a close watch on each one."
"Rest assured, I’ve got it under control. I’ve always felt that there’s something wrong with the atmosphere in our bureau. You can’t blame the leaders for it. There are quite a few who have long hands and strong backgrounds. After all, it’s too hard to find a decent job in our city."
"Understood, do your best, just stand in this corner. If anything comes up, contact me by phone. We’re going to take a look at this dossier, and another thing, you can think about it, about that case last year, why the dossier went missing, where do you all keep the backups now?"
Guan Jian paused for a moment.
"I’ll ask Mr. Fang later, as the case ultimately was an inside job. Logically, no one should have requested the dossier; its absence was also discovered during this search. I haven’t talked to Mr. Fang about it yet, I’ll ask him later."
Mr. Zhao didn’t say anything more, he and Zhou Ning quickly went upstairs, while Guan Jian kept a firm watch in the direction of the dilapidated room, holding up his phone and sending voice messages. By this time, someone had already come out of the main building, dragging a garbage bin, while no one appeared to be looking out from the rooms across the building.
When they got to the top, the two entered an unoccupied office, Mr. Zhao fetched an LED light and a survey box, and then cleared everything off the desk.
He then glanced at Zhou Ning and placed the dossier on the desk. Just as Zhou Ning was about to reach for it, Mr. Zhao stopped him again.
"Hold on, I think we’re missing a step. We’ve checked this dossier, and we need to take samples, but after all, there are no local staff, and the results will be questioned. I think it’s best to call someone over." ƒreeωebnovel.ƈom
Zhou Ning thought for a moment then nodded in agreement.
"I’ll contact Director Xu. Just now I saw photographs in the dossier, pictures from the crime scene investigation. Tell Guan Jian to come up here, and find one of our people to keep watch over there."
Mr. Zhao hurried to arrange things, while Zhou Ning dialed Xu Dayuan’s phone.
"What’s the matter now?"
"Leader, please come to the second floor of the back courtyard, I’ve found the dossier. I only glanced at it, didn’t look through the contents carefully. As for local staff, I asked Mr. Zhao to call Guan Jian up here. Do you think we should notify anyone else?"
From Xu Dayuan’s side came the sound of a chair tumbling over, followed by a loud bang of a door and the sound of hurried footsteps.
"You wait for me, I’ll be right there. Meanwhile, I’ll call Mr. Qu over there and have him turn on the law enforcement recorder to record the process. Wait a minute, your dissection equipment, is it the same model as the one from Qindao? That thing has a video upload feature, right? We might as well use that, it can be checked by the system."
The phone hung up, and Zhou Ning thought about it, indeed what Xu Dayuan said made sense. The content recorded here cannot be deleted, can only be paused, and it even has a time stamp, the quality of the image is not worse than that of a law enforcement recorder.
With that in mind, he picked up the jacket of Mr. Zhao, held the dossier, and headed straight for Autopsy Room 1, bumping into Mr. Zhao and Guan Jian who were just coming upstairs. Seeing Zhou Ning’s actions, the two were somewhat surprised.
"What’s going on?"
