Chapter 124: This Old Man Doesn’t Care Who’s Backing Him
In the afternoon, Cao Weida leaned back in his chair, feet propped up on the desk, pondering some details of last night’s action.
The footprint left behind not only directed Ono Shiota and their attention to a nonexistent target, but also dispelled his own suspicion in the process—a case of killing two birds with one stone.
However, reflecting on it now, it seemed he hadn’t done quite well enough.
If he had directly packed up and taken away the two corpses at the time, solidifying that it was done by the mysterious person, wouldn’t that have been better?
“Tch, the plan still wasn’t meticulous enough. Looks like for any future schemes, I need to plan even more meticulously.”
Knock knock knock~~
“Come in.”
The office door cracked open, and a head poked in, revealing a flattering smile: “Captain, I didn’t disturb you, did I?”
“Dafu, it’s nothing, come in.”
The visitor was Gui Dafu, a team member under Sang Liuji. Now that Sang Liuji had ‘heroically sacrificed for the Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere,’ Cao Weida had completely seized control of this patrol team.
Of course, he hadn’t wanted to vie for control before—with Ono Shiota and Bureau Chief Xu Hancheng as backers, Sang Liuji simply had no capital to compete with him.
However, at that time he had still hoped to utilize Sang Liuji, needing Sang Liuji to wholeheartedly take the blame for preparing supplies, so he naturally let Sang Liuji continue to be rampant.
The door opened wider, and Gui Dafu walked in holding a piece of paper, respectfully handing it over.
“Dafu, what does this mean?”
Gui Dafu said with a flattering smile: “Captain, don’t misunderstand—these are all tokens of love and respect from the brothers. It’s not much; please don’t mind.”
“The things are downstairs. I’ll have someone send them to your residence later.”
These days, giving gifts was done so blatantly, and there was no real subtlety to it.
This was clearly because the patrolmen below saw that Cao Weida had gained power and feared he would settle accounts after the autumn harvest to make trouble for them, so they were racking their brains to curry favor.
Cao Weida looked at him playfully without speaking. Gui Dafu grew somewhat uneasy under the gaze and tentatively asked: “Captain, should I go now…”
“No need. Return all the items listed here intact to them.”
Gui Dafu’s face paled, feeling a sense of utter despair. What did the captain mean? Was he really planning to settle accounts?
And how exactly did he plan to deal with them?
Given Cao Weida’s relationship with the bureau chief, even if he demanded they all be fired, the chief probably wouldn’t deny him face.
They did patrol work, and though the monthly salary wasn’t high, occasionally collecting some ‘respect’ made it enough to get by, and most were the pillar of the family. If they lost this job, then…
“Captain, we…”
He had just opened his mouth to beg for mercy when Cao Weida waved him off: “Relax, I’m not the petty type, and I have no intention of settling accounts with you all. Tell the brothers to put their minds at ease.”
In this life plus his previous one, this was only his first time holding real power as an official, but even if he hadn’t eaten pork, he had seen a pig run.
Managing a jurisdiction was simple if you said it was, but truly not simple if you said it wasn’t.
He managed a total of over twenty patrolmen, covering several streets and nearly fifty hutongs’ public order.
This area had several thousand households, with a resident population of nearly forty thousand.
Manpower was already critically short, and he was counting on his subordinates to help him get things done.
If he fired them all, who would help him work?
He couldn’t possibly do everything himself, could he?
Never mind whether he could keep up with the busyness—even if he did, what about the slacking points?
New recruits?
Forget it—managing streets wasn’t something you could decide on a whim. It involved all sorts of matters, and without a familiar transition period, it would be a complete waste.
So, his first step after taking power was to get a grip on these patrolmen.
He wouldn’t bother with how they had pretended to obey but disobeyed in reality before—as long as they were willing to listen from now on, Cao Weida was happy to keep them, saving himself a lot of trouble.
And to make this bunch obey obediently, his method was simple and absolutely effective: pay them enough money!
No one was stupid—pay for the work you get. Expecting them to risk their lives on fodder-level wages?
And conveniently, Cao Weida looked down on those trifles, and even more on the occasional ‘respect’ from the patrolmen below.
Sang Liuji was a sly, underhanded type—or rather, aside from a few sergeants, most sergeants were cut from the same cloth.
When Sang Liuji was sergeant before, due to years of accumulated authority, plus his habit of gambling occasionally, his own greed, and liking to eat alone…
As a result, he was unwilling to share any of the money he got with the brothers below.
This left the patrolmen below living miserably, forced to find ways to skim their own oil.
What they did most was dejectedly extort the small street vendors, but in these times, those small merchants were already struggling with business—who had money? In the end, they could only squeeze out trifles.
The previous Sang Liuji didn’t care about their life or death, or how much they earned—Cao Weida was in power now, so of course he had to make changes.
He paused for a moment, then said to Gui Dafu: “We’ve been colleagues for so long. Even though not in the same team, everyone knows each other. You should know what kind of person I am.”
Gui Dafu bowed and nodded—the old Three Cowards of the Rat’s Gallbladder was history. Now no one in the police station dared to tease Cao Weida about it.
But his reputation in the area he had managed before was still well-known by all.
“After you go out, have the brothers tell the merchants with some scale in the jurisdiction and those running eateries—regardless of who’s behind them, all of them need to come to the police station before work ends this afternoon to meet and get familiar. That way we won’t have misunderstandings if we run into each other later.”
In Beiping these days, over half of those who could build up a business were traitors or related to traitors.
Because only they could get supplies!
Extorting them gave Cao Weida no psychological burden.
Of course, it wasn’t impossible there were upright merchants, but Cao Weida didn’t care—whoever was in power managing those streets, their ‘respect’ was still due in full. It couldn’t just stop with him, right?
No such reason!
He couldn’t bring himself to target the people, but these merchants wouldn’t miss those trifles.
Moreover, what they gave to previous managers might just be routine money, but with Cao Weida, he could at least guarantee peace for their business after they paid—they wouldn’t lose out!
These words carried a threat. Gui Dafu listened with trepidation and couldn’t help reminding him softly: “Captain, some merchants have connections behind them. Are you sure it’s all of them?”
Cao Weida leaned back arrogantly, quite arrogantly saying: “This old man doesn’t care who’s behind them—Ono Taijun is behind this old man! No matter how big the person behind them is, can they be bigger than Taijun?”
Gui Dafu gave an embarrassed laugh. Well, the captain had said it himself—what more could he say?
Anyway, he had given the reminder; it wouldn’t be blamed on him in the end.
After sending Gui Dafu out, with nothing else to do, Cao Weida lay down to feign sleep. Nights of exertion plus running out to complete tasks—though his physical condition was top-notch, he still felt a bit tired.
But things didn’t go as planned. Before he could doze off long, Duomen knocked and came in.
“Master Duo, you’ve been busy these past few days, running around outside every day.”
The two were so familiar now that Duomen didn’t stand on ceremony with him, plopping down in a chair with a sigh:
“Still busy with the previous case. Just today, another kneeling corpse appeared. We’ve checked all the leads there are, but still no key clue.”
“If it drags on, who knows when the next victim will appear.”
In this era, people died often in Beiping City. One or two deaths drew no attention—everyone was too busy fending for themselves, with hardly anyone truly working the cases.
A dutiful patrolman like Duomen was one in a million.
But precisely because few patrolmen put their minds to solving cases, once an incident happened, tracking it down became extremely difficult—nobody wanted to cooperate, especially if the case was in someone else’s jurisdiction.
Take that previous scene of wailing and commotion at the police station entrance—Sang Liuji and Xiao Zhou’s attitudes said it all.
“Another death?” Cao Weida frowned. “This time a woman again?”
Duomen shook his head. “No, this time a child of thirteen or fourteen. I noticed the two victims have something in common: their family conditions are decent.”
“Master Duo, with your case-solving ability, no case big or small can escape your sharp eyes. Not finding the key clue now is just temporary difficulty—it definitely won’t stump you.” After comforting him, he added: “Can I see the file?”
“What kind of talk is that? Here, I carry it with me.” Duomen handed over the file under his arm. “For this case, I haven’t slept well these days. Don’t flatter me—what big or small cases escape my eyes? If I really had sharp eyes, things would be good.”
“Master Duo, you just like to be modest.” Cao Weida chuckled in response, opened the file to review it, and asked: “Master Duo, do you have any suspected targets now?”
“Not yet. We haven’t even found the killer’s motive for the killings, no pattern either—just the prostrate kneeling posture. I’m thinking about what that posture really means.”
Cao Weida nodded, then his eyes suddenly sharpened. Through his top-tier criminal investigation skills, he keenly spotted a certain doubt.
However, without seeing the scene, he didn’t dare conclude.
Standing up, he said: “Master Duo, the scene hasn’t been disturbed, right?”
“No, the scene is relatively intact. I’ve had Xiao Wang and Xiao Pan watching it. I came back for something and heard you were here, so I stopped by to ask about Sang Liuji.”
“Good, let’s go to the scene now. We can talk on the way.”
