Special District 9 Chapter 171: A Close Call

At the entrance of Flat 606.

Qin Yu heard Ding Guozhen’s exclamation and immediately pointed his gun toward the kitchen.

“Don’t move!”

“Raise your hands!”

“Put down your weapons!”

“…”

Zhu Wei, who was wearing the bomb suit, charged right into the kitchen. At the same time, Wun Sen pointed his gun over as he shouted, ready to fire at enemies at any moment.

“Don’t move!” Qin Yu suddenly shouted out loud.

In the dimly-lit kitchen, there was a human-sized clothes rack that was swaying along with the wind. It really looked as if an armed man was standing right there.

“Shit, what are you howling for?” Zhu Wei, who had barely taken two steps toward the kitchen, also noticed that it was just a clothes rack, so he cursed at Ding Guozhen before quickly backing down.

Ding Guozhen held his gun nervously as he replied stutteringly, “S-sorry, I saw wrongly.”

“Spread out!” Qin Yu ordered.

The group immediately rushed into the flat, and with three people in each team, they swiftly began clearing the rooms.

Doors were being kicked open as reports came in.

“Master bedroom clear.”

“Kitchen clear.”

“Toilet clear.”

“Bedroom clear.”

“…!”

A series of clears sounded, indicating that there was no one in the flat at all. Qin Yu heaved a sigh of relief before lowering his gun.

Through the walkie-talkie, Liu Baochen’s voice kept sounding, “Qin Yu, what’s the condition inside the flat. Hurry up and respond! Qin Yu, do you hear me? Hurry up and…!”

Qin Yu impatiently picked up his ear mic and replied, “Stop shouting. There’s no one in the flat.”

…

Ten minutes later.

Liu Baochen stomped his way upward with over a dozen armed people and questioned haughtily, “Where are the suspects? Did you not even see a single one of them here?”

Qin Yu shot a glance at Liu Baochen while taking off his Kevlar helmet and remarked, “Do you think that you’d have been able to come up so easily if they were here?”

Liu Baochen glared at Qin Yu coldly before quickly taking his look around the flat himself. Seeing that there was really no one, he murmured to himself with a frown, “Is it really a false alarm?”

Qin Yu couldn’t be bothered to answer him. Instead, he began examining the flat carefully.

By the entrance of the master bedroom, Zhu Wei took off his heavy bomb suit as he spoke contemplatively, “The bedsheets in the master bedroom look a little ruffled, and the phone charger is still plugged in. There are socks and belts inside the drawers, and a pair of black boxers under the bed…”

Liu Baochen might not have been a particularly competent police officer, but he wasn’t a buffoon. No one could have climbed to his position without having some wit. As soon as he heard Zhu Wei’s words, he immediately instructed, “If there are traces of people living here, it’s likely that it wasn’t a false alarm. Search the flat thoroughly for clues!”

In the living room, Qin Yu was standing by the entrance of the kitchen as he scanned his surroundings.

There was an electric kettle beside the stove, and its wire was connected to the plug. There was also an instant noodle packet that had been opened placed on the table together with a pair of dirty chopsticks.

Qin Yu retracted his gaze from the kitchen and turned his attention back to the living room. The television was on, and so would have been the lights had Zhu Wei not shot them when he first entered. There was a teacup and an e-cigarette placed on the table in front of the television.

“What are you looking at?” Zhu Wei walked over and asked.

Qin Yu pondered for a moment before replying, “The house hasn’t been cleaned up, as if those who were previously living here had fled in a hurry.”

“Yeah, I got the same feeling too,” Zhu Wei nodded in agreement. “Given that it was a tipoff, we can assume that the suspects were caught off-guard. The messy state of the room, which looked as if someone was still here a moment ago, also proves that. But given that we gathered outside the Charity Apartments, there should have been no way the suspects could have spotted us. How did they manage to get away in advance?”

Qin Yu shot a glance at Zhu Wei and contemplated for a long while before shaking his head. “I also don’t get it either.”

Over at the living room, Liu Baochen turned to the toilet and shouted, “Are you done checking the toilet?”

Ding Guozhen walked out and replied, “I’ve finished checking the toilet, sir!”

“What did you find?” Liu Baochen asked.

“… There are five sets of toothbrushes, razors, and a few other male toiletries. Ah, there’s also some shit inside the toilet bowl that hasn’t been flushed yet!” Ding Guozhen made an extremely detailed report.

Hearing those words, Liu Baochen immediately drove him out, saying, “Shoo, newcomers should just stand by the doorway and not cause any trouble. Just watch and learn from the veterans!”

Qin Yu beckoned Zhu Wei and Hun Sen over, saying, “Let’s take a look at the master bedroom.”

The other two nodded, and the three of them made their way into the master bedroom. Putting on disposable gloves, they began flipping through the items inside the room.

The room was rather small, being around 20 meters square large, and there wasn’t much furniture in here—just a bed, bedside drawers, two cupboards, and one clothes rack.

Qin Yu walked over to the bedside drawers and pulled it open.

There were a few pairs of new socks, two boxes of branded cigarettes, and a phone that had been switched off.

Qin Yu took out the cigarette boxes and tossed them over to Zhu Wei, saying, “Let’s take these to smoke amongst ourselves.”

“Heh, sounds good,” Zhu Wei replied with a grin.

“A phone?” Qin Yu muttered to himself. He picked up the phone from the drawer and shouted, “Bring the evidence bag over.”

He was just about to get up and leave the area when his eyes suddenly fell upon a pillow above the bed, causing him to pause for a moment. Then, he moved the pillow aside and found a small booklet underneath.

“What is it?” Wun Sen asked as he walked over to take a look.

Qin Yu picked up the booklet and quickly browsed through its content.

Black Street. Lil’ Feng. M Gun x4, 3000 bullets. $16,000. ✓

Black Street: Iwobi. Colt M1902 x15, 4500 bullets. $31,000. ✓

…

Jiangnan: Miao and Dajun. M Gun x4, Army Type 99 Landmine x10, Pistol x20, 3000 bullets (+1500). $80,000. Note: Dajun’s boss, Wu Yao, a major distributor in Jiangnan. Might have been scammed. Hard to trace down.

“Heh.” Qin Yu couldn’t resist chuckling to himself.

“What’s written on there?” Wun Sen craned his neck over to look at the booklet.

“The list of clients that the gun smugglers are working with,” Qin Yu replied. “It’s written clearly here that Dajun got into a conflict with the gun smugglers because he wanted to swallow their money, that’s why the gun smugglers ended up kidnapping him. My guess is that Wu Yao went to meet those gun smugglers personally and tried to shirk payment too, only to agitate them and end up getting stabbed to death.”

“… Heh, what a find. Instead of finding the culprits, we ended up digging up some scandal on Wu Yao instead,” Wun Sen sneered coldly to himself.

“This only shows that Wu Yao could have been involved in the smuggling of guns.” Qin Yu shook his head. “It’s not enough to serve as evidence to indict Wu Yao. In the first place, the words left behind by gun smugglers lack credibility, and there’s no other supporting evidence here.”

“You found something?”

Like a sharp-nosed hound, Liu Baochen caught a scent of something and entered the master bedroom too.

“Hurry up and take a photo first before passing it over to Platoon Commander Liu,” Qin Yu quickly instructed Wun Sen.

Wun Sen discreetly took the booklet over and quickly snapped a photo of its contents.

…

Half an hour later.

Yuan Ke dialed Liu Baochen’s number and asked, “Did you manage to catch the culprit?”

“The operation was a failure,” Liu Baochen replied.

“Are you able to confirm if the culprit was living in that flat?” Yuan Ke asked once more.

“Yes, we should be able to confirm it. There were signs that the previous tenants of the flat left in a hurry, and we managed to secure an accounting booklet and a phone…”

“You managed to find such crucial evidence?” Yuan Ke asked with an agitated tone.

“The evidence is quite crucial, but there’s an issue with it. Those fixers are like kindergarten kids; they clearly wrote down that Dajun owes them money, and they even pointed out that Wu Yao had a stake in Jiangnan’s gun market…” Liu Baochen explained awkwardly.

It took a while before Yuan Ke finally managed to make sense of the situation. “So, not only did you fail to catch the culprit, but you even managed to find evidence of Wu Yao’s wrongdoing? Bro, what the fuck are you trying to do here?”

“I also didn’t know that we would end up uncovering this!”

“Can you destroy the evidence?” Yuan Ke asked anxiously. “It would be best if you don’t bring it back to the Police Bureau at all.”

“I can’t. Qin Yu was the one who found the booklet,” Liu Baochen replied meekly. He also felt extremely stifled by how things turned out, such that his face was turning violet.

“… Fucking hell!” Yuan Ke, who was on the verge of suffering a breakdown from this idiocy, cursed in exasperation.