Guan Qingyun went down to the second floor and turned left. A sign reading TECHNICAL UNIT came into view.
She pushed open the door and spoke before anyone could greet her. “I need the survey report from the factory scene.”
A short-haired policewoman seated at the front desk reacted first. She pulled a report from the top of a stack and handed it over.
“Deputy Captain Guan, this is the report that just came in.”
Guan Qingyun accepted it. “Are you new to the technical team?”
The policewoman nodded. “Yes. I’m a new technician. My name is Lin Ruan.”
“Thank you for the hard work.”
Guan Qingyun moved like a storm. Before Lin Ruan could respond, she was already out the door.
She took the crime-scene report straight to Lin Yitang. The medical examiner scanned it quickly. “The ambient temperature at the scene was fairly stable. The victim has probably been dead for about a day. I’ll need to perform the autopsy before I can be more precise.”
“I’ll assist,” Zhou Bin volunteered from where he was leaning nearby. “Doesn’t Qingyun hate this kind of thing?”
Lin Yitang laughed. “Captain Zhou, you really have been away too often. While you were out on assignments, Qingyun practiced with me plenty of times.”
“Enough talking. Let’s deal with what’s in front of us.” Guan Qingyun tossed Zhou Bin a pair of gloves, then pulled on her own.
Lin Yitang sliced open the stomach. A strange, pungent odor began to spread through the room.
Zhou Bin leaned closer and sniffed. “Something acidic?”
It was only a guess, and Lin Yitang could not offer a reliable answer yet. She had to proceed little by little. If poison was involved, the nature of the case would change again.
She opened the chest cavity with her scalpel and fitted a retractor into place. Guan Qingyun leaned over to look. “There are small blisters. Poisoning is highly likely, and the signs fit death by asphyxiation. But what is this black mass?”
Lin Yitang answered almost immediately. “Tissue corroded by poison—and not an ordinary toxin, either. Whoever killed this man knew exactly what they were doing.”
Zhou Bin stripped off his gloves. “There are so many possible causes of death that we can’t tell how this guy actually died.”
“And the body is incomplete. This is as far as we can go for now. We can extract the toxin from the liver fluids first and identify it.”
As he spoke, he pointed at Lin Yitang. His meaning could not have been clearer.
“Captain Zhou, I know what you mean…”
Before Lin Yitang could finish, Zhou Bin’s phone rang at the worst possible moment. He turned and stepped outside to answer it.
“Don’t rush. Cases like this have to be solved one step at a time. Zhou Bin has a short fuse, but he means well,” Guan Qingyun explained.
Lin Yitang almost snapped that medical examiners did not have endless free time, either. Crime was surging lately. She had examined two entire bodies yesterday and still had no firm conclusions on either one.
Instead, she said she was not angry and returned to the remains.
Guan Qingyun sighed and left the autopsy room. Zhou Bin’s expression was grim. Her first thought was that more body parts had been found.
“Qingyun, we have an emergency.” He ended the call and spoke in a grave voice. “An explosion just occurred downtown. Fortunately, there were no casualties.”
Guan Qingyun frowned. “An explosion downtown, but no one was hurt?”
She was already heading for the exit. Zhou Bin fell into step beside her. “Honestly, I find it strange too. It happened inside Shaohua Supermarket, practically the largest supermarket in Jinghai. The fact that no one was injured doesn’t make sense.”
“We need to see the scene before we can understand anything.”
They left the station at once and drove toward the supermarket.
Traffic was nearly at a standstill. Without Zhou Bin’s emergency lights, they would never have made it through.
Guan Qingyun suspected the explosion had caused the congestion. The road was already the only direct route to Shaohua Supermarket.
As soon as they arrived, they jumped out of the car and rushed inside.
“What’s the situation?” Zhou Bin demanded of the first officer he saw.
The officer stepped forward. “Captain Zhou, it’s complicated. Whoever started the fire seems to know the supermarket’s layout very well. They avoided every camera and acted almost entirely inside blind spots.”
“The fire was set in an emergency access corridor. Staff and ordinary customers usually don’t go there.”
Guan Qingyun steadied herself. “Have you questioned the witnesses?”
“Yes. Several people noticed a suspicious man. He wore a black cap and a black T-shirt and kept moving around the mall with something in his arms. Security stopped him once, but he spoke unclearly and couldn’t explain himself, so they let him go.”
Suspicious behavior meant he could be connected to the case, but it proved nothing yet.
“Where are the security guards?”
“I’ll take you to them.”
The officer led the two captains deeper into the supermarket. Police were everywhere. Some were questioning witnesses while others processed the scene.
“Checking everyone one by one won’t tell us where the suspect went next, but it can establish that he was here,” Guan Qingyun said.
Zhou Bin put his hands in his pockets. “If the cameras didn’t capture him at all, interviews may be all we have.”
Guan Qingyun smiled and shook her head. “The crime scene may show us another side of the case.”
They rounded a corner and found a group of security guards being questioned by Xiaoling. She asked them one question after another, but their answers were vague and oddly inconsistent.
“Xiaoling, what have you got?” Zhou Bin stared at her with a deep frown.
Xiaoling sighed and shook her head. When she explained what she suspected, Zhou Bin’s face darkened. He was about to lose his temper.
“You’re saying these people are hiding something?” He raised his voice, strode toward the guards, and pointed at them. “I’m not worried about you delaying our investigation. I’m worried you genuinely want to spend time in a cell. Do you want to try it?”
He must have struck a nerve. Every guard immediately lowered his head.
“Do you think sitting in a police station is comfortable?”
“What benefit is the arsonist giving you for lying?”
Silence settled over the scene. At last, one guard raised a trembling hand. “I—I know who that man is.”
Zhou Bin crooked a finger at him, and the guard stepped out from the group.
“What do you know?” Guan Qingyun asked. “Do you recognize him?”
The guard was visibly frightened by Zhou Bin. He swallowed. “I’ve seen him before. He came to the supermarket a few days ago. We thought he was a homeless man and tried to throw him out, but he wouldn’t listen. He kept forcing his way back in.”
“I asked our security chief what we should do. He told me not to interfere.”
“Pull the surveillance footage from the previous few days,” Guan Qingyun ordered.