Jiang Ting had lived for more than 30 years, and for the first time, someone had held his hand, sat on the edge of the bed, and whispered, "I just wanted to come and see you." He froze for a moment.
The sound insulation of the suite was very good. The KTV downstairs was almost completely isolated, and only the lamp on the desk emitted a yellow light, dyeing the quilt and pillow beside him, as well as the clean bathrobe on his body, a light cream color.
Yan Xie stared at Jiang Ting with a deep glimmer in his eyes.
"…Are you crazy?" Jiang Ting finally squeezed out this sentence, "Who gave you the discharge?"
Yan Xie said: "I did it myself. The stitches are almost healed. If you don't believe me, look." Then he lifted the hem of the T-shirt. The stitch removal marks on the strong abdominal muscles were still quite obvious, and there was some sort of transparent glue-like substance on them.
Jiang Ting's mouth twitched immediately. He recognized that it was a relatively advanced post-operative healing and scar removal bio-tape. This kind of thing was not easy to get in the county hospital, so Yan Xie must have let someone drive from Jianning to Jiangyang to pick him up with medical equipment——what personally drove the car for four or five hours with an injury? It's pure bullshit.
"Is it beautifully cut?" A playful smile appeared in Yan Xie's eyes.
Jiang Ting did not answer this question, "This place is not suitable for recuperation; you should go home."
But when he got up, Yan Xie pulled his hand and dragged him back to the bed: "But I don't want to leave."
"Why?"
"I haven't seen enough." Yan Xie whispered, "I still want to stay here and see you."
Jiang Ting's face, whose muscles were always relaxed and too lazy to make expressions, was a little complicated at this time. But he couldn't pull his hand out of Yan Xie's hot palm, nor could he keep holding the bathrobe in that half-raised position. The two stood at a stalemate for a while, and Jiang Ting couldn't help but say, "What the hell are you…"
There was no beginning or end, but Yan Xie understood what he wanted to say and immediately interrupted: "I can't say it; it's just what you think."
Jiang Ting said: "This is the blind trust and suspension bridge psychology that you have generated in others when the case is in a desperate situation. I suggest you understand the two-factor theory of emotions. Physiological arousal and emotional cognition are two different factors. When the two are wrongly linked, your brain will naturally produce the illusion of heartbeat or electric shock…"
"I don't want to know." The smile in Yan Xie's eyes deepened, and he leaned into his ear and asked softly, "Do you have a partner, Captain Jiang?"
Jiang Ting: "….."
At this time, the door was suddenly knocked on a few times, and Yang Mei's voice came: "Brother Jiang! Brother Jiang?"
Yan Xie's eyelids jumped, and Jiang Ting pulled his hand back and stood up.
"Are you asleep?"
She turned the handle with a click as if she wanted to push the door open—Jiang Ting said loudly, "Don't come in!"
Yang Mei's movements stopped.
The atmosphere froze slightly. Yan Xie looked at Jiang Ting and kept winking, but the latter just pretended not to see it. He walked over and stood behind the door: "What's the matter?"
Yang Mei stammered: "Aren't you going to eat?"
"Eat yourself; I have some information to study."
"That…I had someone cook porridge and bring it to you."
Jiang Ting: "Okay." Then he reached out and opened the door.
Yan Xie didn't expect that he would open the door without any warning. He hesitated for about 0.5 seconds between hurrying to hide to avoid being seen and standing up to say hello. However, with a conditional reflex, he stooped down, and the whole person hid under the bed. Then he heard Yang Mei's instructions coming from the door:
"Be careful, it's hot. Eat it while it's hot…"
"Well, you are busy; go do your own thing."
Then he shut the door, put the porridge bowl on the desk, and muttered, "Where's he?"
Yan Xie stood up abruptly: "So I want to ask, what kind of relationship do you and she have for her to push the door whenever she wants…huh!" The dizziness struck instantly, and Yan Xie involuntarily supported the head of the bed.
Jiang Ting: "What happened to you?"
"…I came to see you in a hurry, and didn't eat dinner tonight…"
Jiang Ting's cheek muscles, which were a little tense, relaxed immediately, and the corners of his eyes twitched slightly. After a while, he tapped the rim of the bowl with a spoon and said, "Then come and drink this bowl of porridge."
It was said to be porridge, but it was actually very thick. Yang Mei asked the chef to add fresh shrimp, fish, scallops, egg yolks, and so on. From the selection of ingredients, Yang Mei really adheres to the simple concept of health preservation for working people: only choose the expensive ones, not the right ones. The more expensive the better; the more expensive the more psychological comfort.
Unexpectedly, Yan Xie only glanced at it and shook his head: "Don't eat it; it's too cheap."
Jiang Ting: "….."
"The shrimp is not blue lobster, the fish is not yellow-lipped, the shellfish is not geoduck, and the egg yolk doesn't look fresh. I have never eaten such shabby porridge since birth. I didn't even have it as a side dish. Come on."
Jiang Ting said coldly, "Who is the person who eats buckets of instant noodles at the city bureau every night?"
Yan Xie replied fluently: "That's me going to the grassroots to observe the people's feelings."
The two stared at each other for a long time, and Jiang Ting didn't even blink his eyelids.
"….." Then Yan Xie finally told the truth: "I don't want to eat my rival's food."
Jiang Ting threw the spoon into the porridge bowl and asked, "Why don't you starve to death?"
Five minutes later.
Looking down from the opened window, Yan Xie slid down the drainage pipe, got up, and patted the dust from his trousers. He stood in the dark back alley, waved his hands, and called in a low voice, "Captain Jiang! Don't be afraid! Just follow me!"
With a snap, Jiang Ting closed the window expressionlessly.
"Brother Jiang, where are you going?" Yang Mei stood at the door of the elevator in astonishment: "It's so late, why don't you rest; the other things can be done tomorrow?"
Jiang Ting responded vaguely and walked straight out, while Yang Mei chased after him and shouted, "Why don't I let someone send you off?!"
"It's all right!" Jiang Ting hurried out of the store, and the darkness effectively blocked his slightly hasty footsteps as if he was running away: "I'll walk around and come back!"
The night market was crowded with people, walking shoulder to shoulder. The bright light bulbs of the food stalls were enveloped by the hot and spicy steam, and the air was full of friendly and lively smells.
"Here! Two bowls of cold skin noodles (Liangpi), four catties of crayfish, and four catties of spicy crab! Beer and drinks are self-pickup; you can eat well!"
Yan Xie pried off the cap of the beer bottle with the Swiss Army knife he was carrying. Before he had time to do anything, the bottle was taken away by a hand that stretched out of thin air, and another can of drink was slammed in front of him.
"Your blue lobster, yellow-lipped fish, and geoduck." Jiang Ting took a sip of beer from the glass bottle and said, "It's perfect to match this with this 1982 Lafite."
Yan Xie looked at the words "Yonghe Soy Milk", his eyelids jumping.
If it was someone else, Yan Xie would already be impatient by now, but Captain Jiang was worthy of being Captain Jiang. Yan Xie's eyelids jumped for a long time, and then he smiled: "Look at you; we have not been together yet, and you've already started to take care of my health." Then he unscrewed the cap of the soy milk bottle and started to gobble up the crayfish.
The spicy crab was fried with bay leaves, star anise, oyster sauce, cumin, etc. It was juicy, salty, fragrant, and hot. When you break the crab claws with force, they are full of snow-white meat. Yan Xie's hand was full of oil, but he didn't forget to help Jiang Ting, who was slowly peeling the shrimp shells and digging the chopsticks into the crab meat. He shook his head and sighed: "I always think about it when I drink soup and hot water for a few days in the hospital. Well, I'm really about to forget its taste."
Jiang Ting said, "You'd better restrain yourself and be careful of the incision."
"The incision has healed long ago. Besides, what are you afraid of? How many decades can you live in this world? If a person can't even satisfy his appetite, what's the point of living?"
Jiang Ting said in his heart that you eat, eat more, and your chrysanthemum will naturally teach you to be a human being when you go to the toilet tomorrow.
Yan Xie looked at him, and the corner of his mouth twitched: "Say it again."
He was a bit ruffian by nature, and it stands to reason that this kind of face would give people a sense of slickness, but so many years of a criminal police career have squeezed out that slickness and refined it into a fierce and tough bandit. When he smiled maliciously, he looked very handsome and attractive.
"Gaozi debated with Mencius, saying that the desire for food and eroticism are the most instinctive pursuits of human life. I just escaped from a calamity, and when I came back, there was food, drinks, and a beauty like you beside me, Captain Jiang. It can be said that life is complete; what is there to be afraid of?"
…This fallacy was simply too terrible, but Jiang Ting did not express any opinion. He put down his chopsticks and slowly took his last sip of beer before saying, "Don't go to the city bureau tomorrow."
"Why?"
"I'll take you to an ophthalmologist."
Yan Xie burst out laughing and seemed to find it very interesting. With a smile, he took out the cigarette case and took out a soft Chinese cigarette, lit it, and then handed it to Jiang Ting.
Jiang Ting's black and white eyes glanced at him, but one couldn't see any emotion on his face; he took the cigarette.
"Really, after you left today, I really regret it. In fact, the few words I tried to test you with were not sincere." Yan Xie lit a cigarette for himself and said, "But I have been thinking about those questions in my heart for a long time, so I couldn't control them in a hurry, and I also wanted to provoke you on purpose."
Jiang Ting said lightly, "Which question?"
Yan Xue said, "TingYun."
Around the food stalls, some people were drinking after losing in the finger-guessing game; some were shouting loudly, pretending to be crazy because of alcohol… Men wearing thick gold chains, women chatting, gossiping, and laughing, children running around screaming, as well as the greasy floor, the table full of leftovers, and the hustle and bustle on the road at the door—all this reflected the most lively side of Jianning City at night.
No one knew that there were two investigators in the corner, drinking and chatting about the most secretive, expensive, and bloody-evil drugs on the market.
"The name of the new type of fentanyl compound is blue gold, most of which should have been exported to Southeast Asia through smuggling channels, but a considerable part of it has flowed to the United States and Mexico. Blue gold was rare in China in the early years, mainly because a considerable part of the poisonous raw materials are not on the list of state-controlled chemicals, and if they are sold on a large scale in China, it is likely to arouse the vigilance of the State Administration of Supervision and even the Ministry of State Security."
Jiang Ting exhaled, and Yan Xie stared at his calm face in the white mist: "So you already knew about the existence of 'Blue Gold'?"
"This new compound once appeared in an armed robbery case of drug addicts that I handled," Jiang Ting said, "but the physical and chemical report was altered, and the inspector at the time was transferred. The existence of blue gold was covered up by some people whose identities I couldn't find out, so I tracked them secretly for about a year or two, found an underground drug production base in an abandoned village around Gongzhou, and also sacrificed some informants in the middle."
The color of Yan Xie's eyes changed slightly.
——I tracked them secretly for about a year or two and sacrificed some informants in the middle.
How many horrific killings and crimes were hidden in these two calm sentences.
"…and then?"
"Then it was discovered." Jiang Ting said hoarsely, "King of Spades happened to be in the drug production base that day."
Yan Xie's pupils shrank slightly, only to see Jiang Ting lower his eyelashes and slowly flick the ash.
"The reason I asked you if you had seen his face was not because I was afraid that you might have seen something you shouldn't have seen and thus risked being silenced. It was because I wanted to know what he looked like."
"…what?"
"I haven't seen him." Jiang Ting said, "In the drug factory that night, the most recent contact I had with this person was that he pointed a gun at my head from behind and said that the fentanyl compound in front of me is worth 600 million."
"600 million, you see," The King of Spades' intimate whisper seemed to echo clearly in the back of his head: "Earthly happiness is so valuable."
The torrential rain washed over the underground factory, and the taillights of the trucks in the distance were like scarlet eyes, reflecting the countless bags of faint blue powder in the depth of the factory building.
"…Do you want to kill me?" Jiang Ting asked hoarsely.
Before he could finish speaking, he felt the heat approaching behind him and pressing against his ears with a smile: "Or you can share wealth and power with me equally… A good and smart police officer is more important than a corpse, much more, isn't it?"
"So he didn't kill me, or, in other words, it doesn't really matter whether he kills me or not. My private investigation has just involved the nearby area, and the fact that my whereabouts can be exposed so easily shows a lot of internal problems." Jiang paused and said: "Besides that, I should have been a character that would have been more troublesome to kill at the time and would have been very useful to keep, and they didn't have to worry too much about me going out and talking nonsense. Of course, as far as I know afterwards, they quickly abandoned the factory, which is probably one of the reasons why I was able to save my life."
Yan Xie took a sip of cigarette, thought for a while, and asked, "What happened after that? You disappeared after the explosion of the plastic factory, and you didn't see the real King of Spades during that time?"
Jiang Ting was surprisingly cooperative tonight, but he was silent for a long time in the face of this question. It wasn't until Yan Xie thought that he would not answer this question again that he suddenly said, "I've been in a coma for three years… Those details are already very confusing."
"I don't know where I was at that time, and I can't recall valuable clues about climate, temperature, geographic features, etc. The only certainty is that the memory was always dark, indicating that my eyes have been blindfolded."
He pointed his index finger to his temple:
"Later, I tried to build a face model of the King of Spades in my brain, but it failed. After all, the human brain is not a computer, and strong negative emotions can affect the senses, which is something even I can do nothing about."
Jiang Ting held the cigarette between two slender fingers and pried open the bottle of beer. The metal bottle cap tinkled and fell on the table full of crayfish shells.
"…So when you tried to catch him later, he thought that you had betrayed this alliance of interests." Yan Xie asked, "Isn't it?"
This was actually a very decent and considerate statement, basically eliminating any possibility of embarrassing Jiang Ting, but to his surprise, Jiang Ting shook his head: "No, from his way of thinking, it should be me betraying him."
"How to say?"
"Serial kidnapping is a very personal form of expression. When a boy or a girl is fifteen or sixteen years old, when their feelings are the purest, they support each other in a desperate situation. All images have a strong direction. If you think that I have destroyed the relationship between power and money, there is no need to design such a complex and bizarre serial kidnapping for self-expression; otherwise, there will be too much personal emotion. People like King of Spades who have both criminal talent and experience must know that the more obvious the emotional connection in the criminal process, the more clues and flaws can be analyzed."
Yan Xie bowed his head slightly and said nothing.
——In fact, he also thought the same thing and thought even more deeply. It's just that, after the conflict in the afternoon, he didn't want to tell Jiang Ting at this moment.
"The kitchen is off! Last order! A spicy crab and crayfish BBQ hot skewer! Last order!"
The owner of the food stalls shouted. Yan Xie looked at his watch and said gently, "Let's go. Tomorrow we will go to the Tianzong Mountain scene to see, maybe we can find some clues."
Jiang Ting nodded, raised the only remaining beer bottle to his mouth, and suddenly paused again as if remembering something and said, "In this serial kidnapping case, when the victim wakes up, we will definitely be able to catch a few individuals, but we may not necessarily be able to catch the King of Spades."
Yan Xie had expected this, so it was not very surprising.
At present, the big drug lords caught in China were still mostly dealers. Even if there were manufacturers, most of them produced entry-level illegal drugs such as methamphetamine. Among those who could invest a lot of money to independently develop new compounds and achieve mass production in factories, there was only one who was at the level that could alert the Ministry of National Security and who had been lurking for more than ten years or even twenty or thirty years.
In short, it was very difficult to bring down the main lord in one fell swoop before his minions were completely beheaded.
Jiang Ting's face was half turned, and his eyes were lowered. At this angle, the dim yellow light came from the side, from the forehead to the bridge of the nose, which seemed to appear particularly sharp.
"You may still have doubts, but the person who wants to kill the King of Spades the most in this world is indeed me, Yan Xie. With the professionalism of a criminal investigator, you can have doubts about anything else, but there is no doubt about that."
After speaking, he raised his head and drank the last few sips of beer, put the glass bottle on the table, got up, and said, "Let's go."