Translator: Nyoi-Bo Studio Editor: Nyoi-Bo Studio
In the office, when Zhao Yu retold his conversation with the executives of the film company, Li Qian was the first to reply to him, “Guo Yihang gave Qian Jin 20,000 yuan to get the role! Qian Jin was the one who got him in the cast!”
She then said, “As far as I know, Qian Jin has been on a tight budget recently. Apparently, he invested in a business and ended up losing all of his money and racking up a mountain of debts!”
Li Qian shook her head, then added, “So… Guo Yihang only had to pay 20,000 yuan to get him in the cast? Hmm… For a film like this, his role could have been played by anyone, even our cook Zhang Yong! So, why should Qian Jin recruit another new person? He must have received some benefits from it. Moreover, Guo Yihang is too young to play this role!”
After he finished listening to what she had just said, Zhao Yu muttered, “That is to say, Guo Yihang must have bribed Qian Jin to get into the crew.”
He now thought that his previous prediction might be wrong. If the scriptwriter Cai Jinda and the actor Guo Yihang were accomplices, then Guo Yihang had no reason to give Cai Jinda any money. It seemed that Cai Jinda had brought these people together in the crew for another reason altogether.
“Leader, did you ask about Qiao Ruxue?” Zeng Ke suddenly interrupted Zhao Yu’s thoughts.
“I actually just wanted to talk about that!” Zhao Yu said. “When I mentioned Qiao Ruxue, Gao Peng got a funny look on his face. So, I believe that there must be something fishy about him. Zeng Ke, you look into Gao Peng and Champion Pictures to see how they are connected to Qiao Ruxue.”
“Okay!” Zeng Ke nodded.
“Xiumin,” Zhao Yu then turned to speak to Wu Xiumin again. “You go delegate tasks to the Quliang police force. Today, we must find out all of their connections and relationships with one another!”
Then, Zhao Yu went on to assign specific tasks. “First, send someone to investigate the investors of ‘Crazy Delivery Woman.’ Specifically, see if director Qian Jin forced Qiao Ruxue to sleep with any of the investors. Second, send someone to search Zhang Chenggong’s house and his studio to see if there are any videos of Qiao Ruxue.”
He took a breath, then continued assigning tasks. “Third, send someone to investigate Qin Hao, the makeup artist, and see if our thoughts about cefuroxime are right. Fourth, talk to the original crew of ‘Dragon Palace’ and investigate Xie Hao’s relationship with the actresses in the cast, especially Qiao Ruxue.”
He then concluded with one final task. “Fifth, do a thorough investigation of the scriptwriter Cai Jinda. We need to find out more about his previous history with Qiao Ruxue and Guo Yihang!”
“Okay!” Wu Xiumin wrote each task down in her notebook.
But, apparently, Zhao Yu wasn’t done assigning tasks yet! “Sixth, I need you to go to the hospital and talk to Kang Leming. In fact, he is the real survivor! So, he must know more than the others! Ask him about Guo Yihang and Qiao Ruxue to see his reaction.”
“Don’t worry, Leader, I’m good at this kind of thing!” Wu Xiumin promised him. “If there is anything suspicious about him, I will be able to tell immediately!”
“Finally, although the prop person Xu You seems to have nothing important to do with this case, we mustn’t ignore a single clue!” Zhao Yu added. “It is possible that the murderer left a clue on him, but it was burnt by the fire. So, we need to send someone to verify if he at all connected with Qiao Ruxue.”
“Ok!” Wu Xiumin replied.
“Li Qian and Zhang Yong!” Zhao Yu then turned to speak to the two survivors, “You need to follow me to the island again. I want to re-investigate the crime scenes! Then, you’ll need to tell me more about the cast.”
“Okay.” Li Qian nodded.
However, cook Zhang Yong was trembling and seemed reluctant. After all, the island was a nightmare that he never wanted to revisit! Zhao Yu ignored his reaction, while hastily taking a fried dough stick before taking them to the island.
Last night, Zhao Yu had neglected to thoroughly investigate a lot of things at the crime scenes because it had been so dark. So, he had decided to go over them again today to see if there were any new discoveries.
However, this shocking news had already spread. At this moment, on the sea around Yongjin Island, there were many speed boats and ships that had been hired by the press. They were clearly trying to find out more details about the situation.
Fortunately, the Tongjiang Provincial Office had sent a marine police force early in the morning to support Zhao Yu and his team. They had blocked the island, so that no other ships and boats were allowed to come to the island!
After arriving at the island, Zhao Yu did not rush to the scenes, but called Gao Facai first to see if he had any updates. He also wanted to ask Gao Facai if the order of deaths could had been determined yet.
Since taking about this case, Zhao Yu had always felt that this was a well-planned murder, which shared an eerie similarity with the plot of ‘And Then There Were None!’ He felt that something was not right about all of this, but he couldn’t yet put his finger on it specifically.
He hoped that discovering the order of the deaths might inspire him. However, Gao Facai told Zhao Yu that, due to the different ways that the victims had been killed, he could not accurately calculate the exact time of death for every victim. Instead, he could only narrow each death down to a window of time.
Moreover, as the time widows for the murders were relatively close to one another, it was almost impossible to determine the order of their deaths. Zhao Yu was disappointed to hear these results.
However, this later reminded him that the reason why the murderer had used different methods of killing was very likely to mislead the police as they were trying to discover the order of the deaths. This made Zhao Yu wonder…
Why did he do that?
Does the order of the deaths really matter so much?
Zhao Yu also had a slight feeling that the murderer might know the inner workings of the police regarding how they handle cases! If so, he might have even killed the people in different ways in order to increase the difficulty of solving the case!
Thinking of this possibility caused Zhao Yu to return to his previous question… If the murderer was Guo Yihang, how could he possibly let Kang Leming survive?
“Leader Zhao!” While Zhao Yu was contemplating this, a speedboat stopped at the dock of Yongjin Island. Captain Dou rushed to the dock and greeted Zhao Yu, “Leader Zhao, I’m back!”
After that, he took a breath, then said to Zhao Yu, “Last night, we checked all of the cameras that were near the beach, but none of them captured Guo Yihang. It’s like he vanished into thin air!”
As he heard Captain Dou’s report, Zhao Yu was thinking… Guo Yihang is missing. Was it really him who drove the speedboat away?
It was at that moment that Captain Dou saw Li Qian and Zhang Yong. He looked at them, then asked Zhao Yu doubtfully, “And… They are…”
“Captain Dou, you’re just coming at the exact right time!” Zhao Yu said before he turned to introduce the pair, “I’ve asked these two to help me today. Now, I’m going to go over the crime scenes again!”