Chapter 20 Forging Backgrounds

Chapter 20 Forged Background

"What nonsense are you talking about?!" Qin Ruonan immediately retorted loudly, her heartbeat instantly accelerating as if she had been caught red-handed doing something wrong for the very first time.

"Whether it's nonsense or not, you know best in your heart." Zhong Han didn't care about Qin Ruonan's attitude at all. He stretched lazily, opened the car door, and said, "For the sake of my own safety, I think I'd better not hitch a ride with you! Well, see you if we're meant to!"

He waved his hand, hopped out of the car, closed the door, pulled the hood of his outer garment over his head, shoved his hands into his pockets, and strolled away leisurely.

Qin Ruonan felt as though her heart was about to explode. Today, one wrong step led to another. From the very beginning, she shouldn't have bought medicine for An Changpu, which wouldn't have led to the subsequent affairs involving Tao Yinyin. After that, she shouldn't have played the good Samaritan by driving An Changpu home and listening to him say things that left her feeling deeply agitated. She shouldn't have—or rather, she shouldn't have lost her mind just now and parked her car right in front of the movie theater; otherwise, she wouldn't have run into Zhong Han and Tao Yinyin!

Tap, tap, tap. Someone was knocking on the car window outside.

Qin Ruonan turned her head to look and was startled. Zhong Han, who had just left, had turned back and was now pressing his face close to the car window, looking at her from the outside.

"What are you doing?!" Qin Ruonan asked loudly in a burst of anger, pressing the electronic button to roll down the passenger-side window.

"Nothing, I just forgot to tell you earlier: do you plan to tell An Changpu about what happened today?" Zhong Han asked.

Qin Ruonan looked at him guardedly and remained silent. It wasn't that she couldn't bring herself to tell him the answer, but rather that deep down, she had no answer at all.

Zhong Han waited for a moment, and seeing that she said nothing, he shrugged indifferently: "Anyway, decide for yourself."

With that, he turned and walked away, hailing a taxi not far off. After he got in, the taxi made a U-turn and drove off in the opposite direction from Qin Ruonan.

Could it be that he clearly wasn't heading this way earlier and had deliberately walked with her just to say those few words to her? What on earth was this man's intention?

The doubts in Qin Ruonan's heart grew larger and larger.

Sitting quietly alone for a while, she finally managed to pull herself together, suppress her irritation, and drive toward home. On her way back, she made a detour to Cui Lidong's rented apartment. Guan Heshen had previously mentioned that when he went to find Cui Lidong, he had caused a commotion by shouting loudly in the hallway, which displeased the neighbor across the door. It was now just past nine o'clock in the evening, a time when people had usually returned home and presumably had not yet retired for the night.

díky her status and gender advantage, Qin Ruonan didn't spend much effort getting the neighbor across from Cui Lidong's to open the door. After explaining her purpose, she asked the couple about the events of that night. The husband didn't know much about it, as he had been on the night shift at his workplace and wasn't at home. However, the wife remembered very clearly and corroborated Guan Heshen's account, stating that there indeed had been someone shouting and making a racket in the hallway that night, apparently because the neighbor opposite refused to open the door.

"Actually, if it were me, I wouldn't dare open it either. I saw through the peephole that whoever it was clearly looked like bad news in the middle of the night—how terrifying! My son was already asleep at that time, and he had school the next day. It was only then that I summoned the courage to tell him to keep it down, but he glared at me fiercely outside the door. My husband wasn't home either; although I threatened to call the police, I was actually scared out of my wits. Fortunately, that person seemed afraid that I would really call the police and left shortly after," the wife said.

Qin Ruonan recorded the information, thanked the couple, and left Cui Lidong's neighbor's place.

Early the next morning, she arrived punctually downstairs at An Changpu's building. An Changpu came out of his house very soon. Judging by his gait, the pain had clearly eased. Although he still limped slightly when walking, it was basically not easily noticeable unless one looked very closely.

"Thanks to the medicine you bought me, my ankle was quite swollen when I got home last night, but when I woke up this morning, most of it had gone down!" As soon as he got into the car, An Changpu started showering Qin Ruonan with praise. When he fastened his seatbelt and turned to look at her, he was startled: "Tell me, did you go thieving last night or what? Did you sleep at all? How come your dark circles are so heavy?"

Qin Ruonan awkwardly rubbed her lower eyelids with the back of her hand, as if the dark circles An Changpu mentioned were some kind of dirt that could simply be wiped off. She had no intention of admitting that she had spent the better part of the night trying to digest those sudden sights and sounds, only to realize in the end that those things were completely beyond her digestion.

"I was thinking about the Cui Lidong case," she said insincerely. "I went to his neighbor's place last night, and Guan Heshen didn't lie. Therefore, if Cui Lidong really killed Song Chengliang that night, the distance from his place to Song Chengliang's is quite far. Judging by the time of Song Chengliang's death, if Cui Lidong made the round trip entirely on foot, it would be basically impossible. So he must have chosen to take a bus or a taxi."

"So we should try to find eyewitnesses among the bus drivers on the routes near Song Chengliang's and Cui Lidong's homes, as well as taxi drivers! I agree with this approach, but you're too dedicated. Not sleeping in the middle of the night and pondering over a case—that won't do! Before you know it, you'll wear yourself out before the case is even solved!" An Changpu, unaware of the background and context, simply assumed Qin Ruonan had suffered from insomnia because she was thinking about the case.

Qin Ruonan nodded with a bitter smile, looking the picture of someone humbly accepting his criticism. She drove away from the residential complex where An Changpu lived and headed straight for the Public Security Bureau.

Having tossed and turned in thought all night, she ultimately decided against telling An Changpu what she had run into yesterday. No matter what, his old injury had flared up and he hadn't fully recovered yet. Telling him at a time like this that his girlfriend had been seen walking out of a movie theater with his old friend's arm linked seemed somewhat inappropriate. Moreover, before figuring out how far his relationship with Tao Yinyin had progressed, Qin Ruonan was also somewhat worried about what kind of impression she would leave on An Changpu if she rashly blurted out her discovery.

Although An Changpu's ankle had improved somewhat, his mobility was still not particularly convenient. To aid his recovery, tasks that required running around everywhere naturally could not be assigned to him, so he had to be left at the bureau to handle work that didn't require much walking. Qin Ruonan and Tian Yang took printed copies of Cui Lidong's photographs to taxi companies and to the starting terminals of all bus routes near the homes of Song Chengliang and Cui Lidong, distributing them to the drivers and asking them to help identify and recall whether they had seen the person in the photographs taking their cabs or buses on that particular night.

This was the first time Qin Ruonan was actually glad she wasn't operating alongside An Changpu. Away from him, her mood could finally relax, and she wouldn't involuntarily keep dwelling on the events of the previous night.

Asking the drivers to help with identification sounded easy, but in practice, it was extremely tedious. The bus side of things was relatively manageable; since they couldn't rule out the possibility that Cui Lidong might have transferred halfway, they had to track down every single route that passed by Song Chengliang's or Cui Lidong's residence, have the bus drivers review the photos one by one, and leave a few copies with them to aid their recollection.

The taxi side was much more troublesome. In C City alone, there were several taxi companies, and each company managed a vast number of cabs. Tian Yang and Qin Ruonan didn't feel comfortable simply leaving the photos with the taxi company management and walking away, so they had to spend a considerable amount of time having drivers who happened to be on-site review them, repeating instructions and reminders before finally leaving.

An Changpu wasn't idling at the Public Security Bureau either. The results regarding the scissors they had previously sent to the criminal forensics department had come back. Cui Lidong's prized pair of scissors had been wiped very clean, bearing only his own fingerprints left behind when he put the scissors back into their leather sheath, with no other traces to be found.

By the way, An Changpu had also searched the internet and found that the brand of scissors Cui Lidong regarded as precious as treasure was sold on numerous websites and online stores, with varying prices, making it difficult to distinguish the genuine from the fake.

According to the information they had gathered, quite a few people knew that Cui Lidong was left-handed, so the possibility could not be ruled out that someone deliberately purchased the exact same brand of scissors to kill Song Chengliang and frame Cui Lidong.

In addition, the more information they collected and the more evaluations they heard regarding Song Chengliang, the deeper An Changpu's doubts grew. Why on earth would a man with such a stellar reputation and exceptionally good interpersonal skills generate such a massive friction with the hairdresser Cui Lidong over a minor, insignificant superficial wound on his ear, and then press the issue aggressively and relentlessly? Was he dealing with some troubling matters that caused his irritability to skyrocket, or was this a reflection of his true personality?

Which one was Song Chengliang's true face?

When Tian Yang and Qin Ruonan finished running through the taxi companies and returned to the Public Security Bureau, it was already the evening closing time. Along with them came another piece of news.

"Let me tell you some freshly baked, hot-off-the-press information!" Mo Dou entered the Major Case Team just after Qin Ruonan and the others. Since An Changpu shouldn't be overworked, tasks requiring running around outside naturally fell to Mo Dou as his substitute. "This is definitely big news!"

"What information? Spit it out, don't keep us in suspense and torture our curiosity!" Tian Yang urged him.

"Didn't you guys ask me to investigate Song Chengliang's previous stint as a nutritionist for a certain celebrity? I've just confirmed it—that whole thing is completely fake! Not only was he never designated as that celebrity's nutritionist, but he was actually dropped from the roster before even passing the entertainment company's half-year probationary period!" Mo Dou said excitedly.

"Why was he dropped?" An Changpu asked.

Mo Dou was slightly taken aback and scratched his head awkwardly: "Ah, well, I haven't had time to check on that yet!"

"It's fine, Ruonan and I will check tomorrow!" An Changpu said quickly, afraid that Mo Dou would blame himself.

Mo Dou laughed sheepishly with some embarrassment, and Tian Yang checked the time as well: "Yeah, it's already this late. We should hurry home and rest; there'll be plenty of things to do tomorrow!"

"Alright, let's head out then!" An Changpu had no objections. There were still many loose ends in this case that needed sorting out, and it couldn't be resolved in a split second. He nodded to Qin Ruonan, signaling her to leave with him.

Qin Ruonan hesitated for a moment, took An Changpu's car keys out of her bag, and handed them to Tian Yang: "Sorry to trouble you with driving him home tonight!"

Tian Yang looked at Qin Ruonan doubtfully and didn't reach out to take the keys, while An Changpu also looked at her with a questioning gaze.

"I didn't sleep well last night and I'm tired. Going to your place and back will take a long time, and I want to go home early to rest." Qin Ruonan found a seemingly plausible excuse, thrust the keys into Tian Yang's hands without room for argument, nodded at them, and turned to grab her coat and handbag as she walked out of the office.

"Did you tick her off?" Tian Yang's first reaction was to ask An Changpu.

"Unless these legs of mine were beaten by her, how could I possibly have ticked her off?!" An Changpu defended himself with a grievance, while also looking in the direction Qin Ruonan had left with bewildered confusion, frowning deeply.