Chapter 5: The Letter “e”

While Du Qiu was busy figuring out a way to open the door, a man of modest height with dark skin was loitering around Zhang Mingliu’s home with a single-shoulder bag.

He was looking at his phone while walking, occasionally stopping to look around.

As he covered two-thirds of a cross-street, his expression started to become more serious.

This cross-street was only five to six hundred meters long, and at the other end was another main road.

Currently, it was a little after nine in the morning. Vehicles still occasionally passed through the street and there were even more pedestrians and electric scooters in a hurry.

The storefronts lining the cross-street only had a breakfast shop open near the entrance, with many others closed—quite a few had signs displaying transfer contact numbers, making it obvious that overall, the brick-and-mortar businesses in the area were fairly deserted.

Since it had rained the night before, the road and sidewalks were very clean.

When the man reached a point less than a hundred meters from the exit of the cross-street, he stopped and looked around, waiting until there were fewer pedestrians and vehicles before he slowly walked a few dozen meters forward.

He walked slowly during this stretch, eventually stopping in front of a shop with a closed door.

He noticed that the roller shutter of the shop seemed to have marks of being struck and upon closer inspection, he saw some red color above his head on the roller shutter.

After checking his surroundings again to make certain no one was passing by, he measured the height of the red marks.

Then his expression turned even uglier, and he couldn’t help but mutter to himself.

“This blockhead—didn’t even leave a sign for me after getting into trouble, damn it!”

The man began to circle the nearby area, and as he found more traces, he was convinced that his accomplice had been attacked.

When he continued to walk out to the other end of the cross-street, at the root of a white wall on his left, he finally found a red circle with a lowercase letter “e” inside it!

The man’s face was steely as he watched the red “e” for a long while before raising his head to cautiously glance around.

Once sure that no one was paying attention, he took out his phone to check it, looked in the direction of the main street to the right of the cross-street, and then turned back and continued along the left side of the cross-street.

He walked at a measured pace; although his head didn’t move much, his eyes were scanning all over the sidewalk.

After only walking about ten meters, he noticed that several divider panels between the slow and fast lanes were missing, and some damaged ones were piled by the side of the slow lane, apparently dealt with by the cleaners.

Next, he saw a fresh scratch on a roadside tree near the pile of broken divider panels.

A satisfied look appeared in his eyes. He stood there and glanced across the street, noting an alley around ten meters diagonally opposite.

He walked away nonchalantly and made his way to a traffic light up ahead, crossed the main street, and reached the opposite alley entrance.

Walking into the alley, he spotted faint red and black marks on the right wall.

Once sure there was no one in the alley, he proceeded to walk forward.

What he didn’t notice was a security camera among the branches of a tree near the entrance of the alley, pointing towards it.

When the man emerged from the winding alley, he was on another street. At the alley’s entrance, he noticed clear skid marks on the nearby road surface.

With his experience, he judged that these skid marks must have been made within the past day.

He made another round of the area but didn’t find any new traces or signs left by his accomplices. He did notice, however, that there was a camera recording illegally parked vehicles on this street.

Thus, without lingering, he casually hailed a taxi.

After getting in, the man directed the driver to detour around to Zhang Mingliu’s residential complex, but did not stop; instead, they drove past the entrance.

Soon, the man changed taxis twice and entered a large supermarket—though when he came out of the supermarket, he appeared to be a completely different person.

His height was the same, but the crew cut had changed into a full head of white hair, and his face and hands were covered in wrinkles as if he were an old man in his sixties or seventies.

The man left the supermarket and took a cab to a shopping mall. When he emerged from there, the white-haired elderly appearance transformed into a yellow-haired, disheveled youth.

Subsequently, he wandered through streets, entered an internet café, found a corner seat, turned on a computer, and adeptly took out a USB flash drive to install a program.

Only after running the program did he proceed to open a browser and enter a series of web addresses, landing on a very simple web page.

This interface only had two separate chat boxes, one above the other. The person sent a message directly: “Blockhead’s in trouble, whereabouts unknown, target person’s home without goods, request instructions.”

Shortly after, a message appeared in the blank chat box above: “Be cautious, there’s another police officer in Magic City who can be included in your search range, his son is called…”

After noting down the information, his hands moved rapidly to close the browser, then the program, and lastly, he uninstalled the program.

Having done all this, he began to play games, only leaving the internet café an hour later when he saw the computer performing an automatic restore shutdown.

++++++++

“Brother Xu, Brother Wang, thanks for your hard work.”

Du Qiu greeted the two officers with a smile as he sent them off, then pulled out his phone to make a call.

“Thanks, Brother Su. Brother Xu is impeccable in his work; he brought Officer Wang from the local police station along with him.”

“You wanted a surveying instrument; I guarantee I’ll expedite the process and complete it. Rest assured, it’ll be your case-solving magic weapon.”

……

After finishing the call, Du Qiu turned back to look at the place where he’d worked for a year, feeling somewhat emotional.

“Boss, you’re amazing to have such good relationships with the cops.”

“Doctor Du, could you get your police friends to help catch Manager Yan and the others? How are we going to deal with our unpaid salaries?”

“Du Qiu, I really owe you one. It would’ve been such trouble if we couldn’t get the car keys out.” Sun Hongming came over and said.

“Don’t mention it, Brother Sun—I’ve got my stuff in there too,” Du Qiu replied to Sun Hongming.

He then said to Yuan Minhua: “Sister Yuan, my friend is a detective; even if they were to file a case, it would be the purview of the Economic Investigation Brigade.

However, I think it’s unlikely they’ll file a case. Yan and his gang know these tricks all too well; when they followed the trend and got into internet companies before, they probably did the same thing.”

Sun Hongming nodded and said: “That’s right, Vice President Xiao and others indeed had internet companies before, and they failed.”

Liu Yaofeng lamented, “In the future, let’s be careful about joining startup companies. We must check the founders’ backgrounds. It’s best to be cautious about those who have failed before.”

“But why? Isn’t it said that failure is the mother of success?” Yuan Minhua asked in surprise.

“Wrong,” Liu Yaofeng said candidly, “in the business world, feng shui matters. Those with bad luck should be avoided!”

“What are you talking about?” Du Qiu slapped Liu Yaofeng lightly, saying, “Didn’t Daddy Ma fail too?”

“He’s different. He actually made money from China Yellow Pages, that counts as a success,” Liu immediately rebutted.

“Hey, let’s not argue about Daddy Ma right now. Let’s think about our own situation.”