Chapter 44.1: Reopening the Case
A technical exchange was definitely out of the question.
This Lame Ding was clearly completely unrepentant. His desire to find out how he had been exposed was nothing more than an attempt to further improve his criminal methods.
Judging by the amount of money involved, he would basically be sentenced to life imprisonment. But a life sentence didn’t necessarily mean spending the rest of his life behind bars. If he behaved well and gradually earned sentence reductions, he could potentially be released in as little as a decade or so. By then, he could still be in good enough shape to pull off another major operation.
Could they use the fact that they had caught him to lure him into revealing who he’d been selling the counterfeit bills to, without actually giving away any technical information?
Feng Zhengming didn’t know.
But there was an easy way to find out.
Why not just ask?
Having made up his mind, Feng Zhengming saw Section Chief Duan off and immediately went upstairs to find Jiang Xia.
At that moment, Jiang Xia was locked in a fierce battle with her thesis.
She currently had the upper hand. Two more punches and she could finish it off and claim victory. She was in an exceptionally good mood.
That good mood lasted until Captain Feng arrived.
Out in the hallway, Jiang Xia leaned slightly against the wall and asked, somewhat puzzled, “Captain Feng, aren’t you interrogating the suspect? Why are you looking for me?”
“We haven’t been able to get anything out of him.”
Feng Zhengming said, “I want you to help me come up with an idea. This Lame Ding seems pretty concerned about how he was caught. I want to see if we can use that as a breakthrough.”
What?
Jiang Xia felt like she had heard him wrong.
For the sake of obtaining clues, criminal investigators would indeed accommodate certain requests from suspects within reason, such as letting them smoke a cigarette or see their family. But knowing how he’d been caught could hardly be considered a reasonable request. How had Captain Feng come up with such a terrible idea?
She was beginning to question Captain Feng’s intelligence.
“Captain Feng, you’re not actually thinking of having me explain the basic principles of printing to him, are you? Are we here to interrogate him or give him an advanced lecture? What if he goes back to prison and starts teaching the others?”
“Of course not.”
Many prisons had a rule prohibiting criminals from privately exchanging information about criminal methods. And, as everyone knew, no matter how ridiculous a rule might seem, once such a rule existed, it meant there were definitely even more outrageous things happening behind it.
The fact that prisons across the country had independently arrived at the same rule was, in itself, indirect proof that criminals were extremely active when it came to exchanging knowledge about criminal techniques.
Feng Zhengming certainly didn’t want to see a more technically proficient Lame Ding enter prison and teach a whole bunch of inmates how to make counterfeit money. He waved his hand and said,
“Lame Ding is extremely protective of his accomplices. There’s basically no chance he’ll confess anything that could lead to his brothers. But he should be willing to talk about how many counterfeit bills he sold. Those counterfeit bills have already entered the market, and the harm they could cause is pretty serious. We have to find out where they went.”
“I want to use information about how he was caught to bait him, but we can’t reveal any of the actual techniques. I’m not quite sure where to draw the line, so I came specifically to ask you. What can we tell him, and what can’t we?”
Oh. Now that made sense.
Jiang Xia suddenly understood. She rubbed her chin and pondered for a moment before instantly coming up with a wonderfully devious idea.
An enemy’s success was certainly frightening, but what really made your blood boil was getting blindsided by your own teammate!
“Easy. We just pin the blame on the person who was distributing the counterfeit bills.”
Jiang Xia grinned mischievously. “Captain Feng, just tell him that someone took twenty cloth coupons to the supply and marketing cooperative to buy cloth, and the sales clerk immediately noticed something suspicious and reported it to us. After the technical department examined them and confirmed that they weren’t hand-drawn but had actually been printed, we started investigating who knew how to make engraved printing plates. And that’s how we eventually traced it back to him.”
Jiang Xia had directly tripled the actual number.
Feng Zhengming froze for a moment, then immediately understood.
Oh, boy. If Lame Ding found out that this was what had caused him to get caught, he’d be absolutely furious at the distributor!
“Okay, I’ve got it.”
A smile appeared on his face as well. After thinking for a moment, he asked, “By the way, Jiang Xia, are you free tomorrow morning? I need you to draw portraits of Ding Si and Yang Da.”
Jiang Xia nodded. “I am.”
Her thesis only had a little bit of finishing up left. She could probably complete it in an hour at most, and after that, all she had to do was make a clean copy. If everything went quickly, she could package it up and send it off in the afternoon.
“Then that’s all. I’ll go back downstairs and continue the interrogation.”
Having gotten his answer, Feng Zhengming didn’t linger. He said this and turned around, preparing to continue the interrogation.
Halfway there, Feng Zhengming suddenly stopped. After thinking for a moment, he went back to the office and picked up several counterfeit cloth coupons.
Jiang Xia was still standing outside in the hallway.
She hadn’t gone back inside. Instead, she stretched, and the joints in her arms and back all cracked loudly.
After sitting and working on her thesis for so long, she hadn’t realized how stiff her body had gotten. It was only after coming outside that she noticed.
Better take a walk before going back.
It wasn’t like she wanted to watch two dogs tear each other apart anyway.
＊
Interrogation Room
Lame Ding sat listlessly in the interrogation chair.
Being stuck in here with nothing to do was truly boring.
Unable to help himself, his thoughts began to wander.
He wondered whether his eldest sister’s husband would treat her differently after finding out that all her brothers had gotten into trouble. He wondered whether Ding Si had managed to escape, what their lives would be like in the future, and whether Yang Da would betray him…
And, most importantly, how exactly had he been caught?
He couldn’t accept it.
He had worked so hard, day and night, for several months. He had produced so many counterfeit coupons, and he had been just one step away from putting them into circulation. How had he suddenly been caught?
He was still trying to figure it out when the interrogation-room door suddenly opened, and Feng Zhengming and Tian Jianguo walked in one after the other.
Lame Ding immediately became wary.
Feng Zhengming, however, seemed rather relaxed. He pulled several counterfeit coupons from his pocket and tossed them onto the table. Then he straightened his jacket, casually sat down, and asked,
“Do you recognize these?”
Lame Ding raised his head. “How could I not? Aren’t these the cloth coupons I made? Pretty convincing, aren’t they?”
“They’re pretty convincing.”
Feng Zhengming couldn’t deny that. He went along with him.
“Aren’t you curious how we discovered such convincing counterfeits and how we managed to catch you?”
Curious?
That was putting it mildly. He was practically dying to know!
Lame Ding instinctively leaned forward, but he quickly realized that this was just Feng Zhengming’s way of getting him to implicate his accomplices.
He immediately clamped his mouth shut.
His resistance was extremely obvious, but from the man’s body language, Feng Zhengming immediately reached a conclusion.
There was a way in.
Slowly, he said, “I’m not asking you to confess anything else. Just tell me how many counterfeit grain coupons you’ve sold, and I’ll tell you how you were caught. How about it?”
It was only a number. It wouldn’t have any impact on Fourth Brother, either.
Lame Ding hesitated for a moment before opening his mouth.
“Fifteen bundles.”
One bundle contained a hundred coupons. Fifteen bundles meant 1,500 counterfeit cloth coupons. That was quite a lot.
Good thing they’d asked.
Feng Zhengming began considering who could possibly have bought that many cloth coupons.
“I told you.”
Seeing that Feng Zhengming wasn’t saying anything, Lame Ding urged him, “You should tell me how I was caught now, right?”
“Sure.”
Feng Zhengming picked up the counterfeit coupons from the table. As he showed him the number of coupons, he deliberately fanned the flames.
“Your buyer isn’t very bright. He took thirty cloth coupons straight to the supply and marketing cooperative to buy cloth. The sales clerk hadn’t seen anyone buy a full ten meters of cloth all at once in ages, so she casually counted the coupons. And that’s when she noticed something was wrong with them.”
“What?! Thirty?”
Lame Ding’s mind instantly went blank with a loud ‘buzz’. His ears began ringing, and his entire body gradually turned red.
“F*ck his ancestors! Liu the Third—does that bastard have a pig for a brain that even a dog has chewed on?! Taking thirty coupons to the supply and marketing cooperative in one go to buy cloth—how could he be any more conspicuous? He might as well have just sold me out directly!”
“F*ck! What a goddamn liability! Selling to him was the worst luck I’ve had in eight lifetimes!”
“I… I…!”
Lame Ding instantly erupted in fury, spewing a continuous stream of curses.
Feng Zhengming immediately signaled Tian Jianguo to hurry up and write down the name he’d just mentioned.
The nickname sounded rather familiar. There really was someone known as Liu the Third on the black market. However, Feng Zhengming couldn’t be completely certain it was the same person. He could only wait.
Once Lame Ding had cursed himself hoarse, Feng Zhengming continued questioning him.
“The Liu the Third you mentioned—is his real name Liu Gui?”
After cursing Liu the Third thoroughly and venting his anger, Lame Ding regained some of his rationality. He couldn’t help but grow suspicious.
“This is way too stupid. You aren’t trying to trick me, are you?”
“Heh, what would we have to trick you about?”
Feng Zhengming gave a disdainful laugh. “No matter how real those coupons of yours look, they’re still fake. In your hands, they’re nothing but scraps of paper. They’re only valuable once you exchange them for genuine goods. You sold so many of them at once, so naturally he’d have to exchange a large number of them, wouldn’t he?”
That made sense.
Lame Ding couldn’t help cursing Liu the Third as an idiot again in his mind, but he remained wary on the surface and asked for confirmation once more.
“What about the guy who used the counterfeit cloth coupons?”
“He ran as soon as he realized something was wrong. The people from the supply and marketing cooperative couldn’t catch him.”
There was a hint of regret on Feng Zhengming’s face as he continued fanning the flames.
“It’s a shame that lead went cold just like that. Later, the supply and marketing cooperative sent the counterfeit coupons to the Municipal Public Security Bureau. Thirty of them, no less. It was obvious at a glance that they’d been printed from an engraved plate. Nowadays, apart from people who make engraved seals, who else even knows how to carve those plates? So naturally, once we started looking, we traced them straight back to you. And now you’re sitting here, while they’re still out there enjoying themselves!”
‘F*ck!’
Even though Lame Ding knew Feng Zhengming was deliberately provoking him, an enormous wave of anger still surged through him.
Damn it. After all the hard work he’d put in, he’d actually been brought down because of those idiots?
Now he was sitting here being interrogated, with no idea how many years he’d be locked up for, while they were still outside enjoying the good life?
In their dreams!
Lame Ding ground his teeth furiously.
“I want to report them! That guy is Liu Gui! He bought ten bundles of counterfeit coupons from me in one go! And there’s another guy named Yang Youjun—he bought five bundles too!”
‘That’s what he’d been waiting for!’
Feng Zhengming immediately pressed his advantage, getting the addresses and usual whereabouts of both men. He then promptly sent officers to arrest them.
This time, the operation went much more smoothly.
The two men were quickly brought back. Both were relatively minor black-market operators. The former was somewhat more notorious, while the latter had only started engaging in illicit profiteering within the past two years.
When Yang Youjun was arrested, he was actually in the middle of peddling counterfeit coupons. Both sides were rounded up on the spot.
Liu Gui certainly lived up to his reputation as a seasoned black-market operator. He hadn’t kept any of the counterfeit coupons on him, and there weren’t any at his home either. Fortunately, they had Lame Ding’s testimony. Liu Gui held out for only a short while before finally confessing everything.
He had moved fast, too. He’d bought the coupons in the morning and started distributing them by noon. Fortunately, he’d only sold them to two people, and he knew both of them, so they were arrested and brought back that very day.
Most of the 1,500 counterfeit coupons were recovered. Unfortunately, about forty had been sold a few at a time, making it impossible to track down the buyers.
Fortunately, that small quantity wouldn’t cause much harm. Feng Zhengming already had a mountain of other work to deal with and couldn’t spare manpower to chase down a handful of counterfeit coupons, so the case was closed.
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