I am a super cop

Chapter 3040 Acting
Seeing that Gu Chen seemed to know a thing or two, the young man smiled awkwardly before saying:

"It seems you're an expert."

“Who comes here isn’t an expert? If they’re not an expert, they’re easily fooled by you,” Lu Weiwei couldn’t help but complain.

The young man chuckled twice and continued, "Actually, there are certain barriers to entry in the antique business, especially in judging items. If you don't know anything about them, you'll definitely suffer a great loss."

Spreading his hands, the young man continued, "If you're interested in an ordinary item and want to buy it at a high price, can we refuse to sell it to you? No."

"So this industry is open to the public. Experts can make money, but ordinary people can just go to the antique market in the south of the city and buy whatever they want."

"Aren't there any high-end items in the antique market in the south of the city?" Yuan Shasha asked curiously upon hearing this.

The young man smiled and explained, "There are basically no high-end items. If there are, they are all the boss's private collection."

"But if you want to buy high-end goods, you still have to come here. Everyone in the industry knows that."

"Stop with all that nice talk, do you have any other good stuff here?" Lu Weiwei didn't care about any of that; she was eager to get to the third floor.

Lu Weiwei also knew that the middle-aged woman was hiding on the third floor, and what she wanted was to meet that middle-aged woman.

The young man hesitated for a moment, and seeing that no one seemed particularly interested in the items on the second floor, he added:

"If everyone doesn't like these things, then I can take you to the third floor to take a look."

As they were talking, the young man led everyone toward the stairs to the third floor.

The difference between this place and the previous first and second floors is that there is a curtain blocking the staircase area.

You need to sweep aside the curtain to enter the third floor.

As soon as Gu Chen and his group entered, a middle-aged woman came out of the room.

The young man quickly explained to the middle-aged woman, "These guests didn't like the things downstairs, so they brought them here to take a look."

"Hmm." The middle-aged woman also glanced at Gu Chen and the others. There were four of them in total. Their numerical advantage seemed to make the woman have no intention of harming them.

After all, according to Zhao Wen's previous account, he selected a jade pendant here, which was then switched by these people.

I was almost threatened by these people.

Given that the store only had middle-aged women and young men, there must have been other people around.

These people should be able to go upstairs at any time and put pressure on customers.

However, Gu Chen's purpose in coming here was not to actually buy anything, but simply to find out about Zhang Meng's situation from these people.

These people clearly didn't recognize Gu Chen and his group, and judging from their accents, they were all from out of town.

Therefore, Gu Chen was able to quietly appreciate the objects, though everyone's real intentions were not what they seemed.

Therefore, when viewing objects, one tends to be more casual.

Of course, the middle-aged woman was an expert and had seen many customers, so she naturally knew that these people didn't look like customers at all.

So when the middle-aged woman saw Gu Chen and his group looking around casually, she quickly said, "You're not here to buy anything, are you?"

“That’s right.” Seeing the middle-aged woman speak first, Officer Wang stopped pretending and responded directly.

Upon hearing this, the middle-aged woman frowned and asked, "Did you come here for something?"

“Of course, we’re here to get to know someone,” Yuan Shasha said, stepping forward.

The middle-aged woman and the young man looked at each other, seemingly not quite understanding.

So the young man quickly asked, "Whom do you want to know about?"

“Zhang Meng, you should know this person, right?” Gu Chen stepped forward and said.

Upon hearing Gu Chen's explanation, both the middle-aged woman and the young man were taken aback.

The middle-aged woman quickly asked, "What do you want with Zhang Meng? We don't know him."

"Do you really not know me, or are you pretending not to?" Lu Weiwei asked with a smile.

The middle-aged woman was somewhat displeased and said irritably, "I really don't know you. What's wrong? If you're not here to buy anything, then we won't keep you company. We're very busy."

Seeing that the middle-aged woman wanted to leave, Lu Weiwei directly blocked her way.

The middle-aged woman frowned and hurriedly asked, "Young lady, what exactly do you want? Who are you people?"

“We are police officers from the Furong Branch.” Lu Weiwei stopped pretending and immediately took out her police ID.

At the same time, Gu Chen and the others all showed their police IDs.

Upon seeing that he was a policeman, the middle-aged woman's attitude immediately became warm: "Oh! You're a police officer?"

"We're here to investigate a case," Officer Wang said slowly as he approached the middle-aged woman.
"So please cooperate."

"Of course." Seeing that Officer Wang had said so, the middle-aged woman also greeted him with a smile.

"Zhang Meng, do you know this person?" Officer Wang brought up Zhang Meng again.

"I don't know her." But when Officer Wang asked her, the middle-aged woman still shook her head.

"Hehe." Officer Wang glanced at the middle-aged woman, chuckled twice, and said without further ado:
"Madam, if we didn't know the situation, would we still be here? Just say what you know, don't hide anything, understand?"

Seeing that Officer Wang seemed to be threatening her, the middle-aged woman felt uncertain. After a few seconds of brief thought, she quickly looked at the young man and asked:
"Have you ever heard of this man?"

"N-no...never heard of it." The young man seemed to be putting on a show with the middle-aged woman.

The two worked together seamlessly in their question-and-answer session.

Lu Weiwei crossed her arms and walked to the middle of the two, continuing to ask, "I'll ask you one more time, do you know Zhang Meng or not?"

"Since we were able to find this out, we must have some information about you. If you don't want to talk, we can invite you to the police station for some tea, and then we can talk about it slowly. What do you think?"

Lu Weiwei had already put it this way, so the middle-aged woman and the young man naturally understood.

If you pretend not to know them at this point, you'll definitely be taken to the police station.

After thinking it over, the middle-aged woman said with a wry smile, "Sigh, we might know each other, but... I don't quite know what the other person's name is."

"Zhang Meng, a retired old man from a chemical plant," Officer Wang quickly reminded him upon seeing the situation.

"Oh, if that's how it is, then I have no recollection of it." The middle-aged woman quickly replied, seemingly trying to save face. "Zhang Meng should be quite familiar with you, shouldn't he?" Gu Chen was also blunt, directly stating the relationship between the middle-aged woman and Zhang Meng.

The middle-aged woman smiled and said, "We know each other, but we can't say we're very familiar. After all, the guests who come here will talk to us for a while."

"If chatting makes us feel like we're close, then you all just talked with us for a while, so does that mean we're close too?"

"Don't pretend with me." Officer Wang wasn't going to put up with the middle-aged woman and continued, "Don't think we didn't know you were working together with Zhang Meng here before."

"We're here to investigate Zhang Meng's whereabouts. If you know where he is, please tell us immediately."

"Where is Zhang Meng?" Upon hearing Officer Wang's answer, the middle-aged woman became somewhat worried again.

Officer Wang raised an eyebrow: "What? Is there a problem?"

"No...no problem." With a sigh, the middle-aged woman could only turn her gaze to the young man.

The young man, being quite tactful, quickly stepped in to smooth things over, saying, "We may have spoken with that Zhang Meng you're talking about for a while."

"It's not as simple as just exchanging information. You two should be quite familiar with each other. Did you switch out the jade pendants that customers bought from you before?" Officer Wang asked bluntly.

"This……"

Feeling that it was difficult to admit to this, the young man hesitated and looked at the middle-aged woman.

The middle-aged woman gave a wry smile and quickly said, "Officer, you must have misunderstood us."

“Whether we misunderstood or not, you should know very well that you cooperated with Zhang Meng at that time so that Zhang Meng could gain the trust of that consumer. I’m not wrong about that, am I?” Gu Chen said.

The middle-aged woman and the young man looked at each other, at a loss for what to do.

After all, the police were able to describe the events that happened here in such detail, which shows that they had done their homework before coming here.

Seeing that the two were still hesitating, Gu Chen took the initiative to step forward and reminded them:
"We discovered that Zhang Meng has mysteriously disappeared, and it is very likely that his life is in danger. We must find him as soon as possible."

“If you know where he is, you must tell us, otherwise you will also be involved.”

"Oh, officer, we really don't know anything about Zhang Meng's matter." The middle-aged woman was also a little anxious upon hearing this.

Lu Weiwei quickly said, "Then why do you say you're not familiar with Zhang Meng? We already know the situation. Would we have come here if we hadn't figured it out?"

"We need to find Zhang Meng right now. We don't have time to waste here with you, and we don't mean to make things difficult for you."

"Otherwise, if you operate illegally here, we can simply ask the industry and commerce bureau to rectify the situation."

"Oh, no, no, no!" The middle-aged woman quickly begged for mercy, sensing that Lu Weiwei wasn't joking.

Lu Weiwei wasn't going to let it slide and continued to ask, "What exactly is Zhang Meng's relationship with you?"

"He... he doesn't really have anything to do with us." The middle-aged woman spoke as if she had deflated like a punctured balloon.

Lu Weiwei frowned: "Explain yourself clearly."

"Yes, this old man named Zhang Meng is actually one of our customers," the middle-aged woman sighed and said slowly.

"When we first met him, he was just like you, coming into the store to look at things."

"But this person is very knowledgeable and knowledgeable about culture. He quickly pointed out that some of the items we had displayed here were fakes and had flaws."

After a pause, the middle-aged woman continued to explain: "When we first saw this old man, we felt that he was not a simple person, so we started talking to him."

"After a while, we became familiar with each other."

"And because there were some things that we hadn't even noticed ourselves, it was this old man who pointed them out to us, so we really admire him."

"Gradually, we became familiar with each other and would invite him to the shop for tea. We would then have various conversations, and it was through these conversations that we learned that this old man was a retired employee of a chemical plant."

"He is the type of technical expert who also has a deep understanding of culture."

"Did he ask you for help or anything like that?" Gu Chen asked.

"Yes," the middle-aged woman said abruptly, flicking her fingers.

"He asked us to do a favor, which is to do exactly what we're supposed to do when a shop owner comes in to look at things, and then have a little argument with the customer."

"Make the customer feel a little embarrassed again, and then he'll step in and smooth things over."

"Why would he do that?" Gu Chen asked calmly.

The middle-aged woman sighed, "Who knows? He wanted to get to know this person, but he lacked an opportunity. He knew where this person usually drank."

"But we don't know how he could be so sure that the owner would walk into our shop. He just told us to put a few specific antique paintings at the entrance."

“We didn’t know what it meant at the time, but since we had become friends with him, we helped him out.”

"After all, when the store gets new items, he can help with his opinion, so for some things, it's just an exchange of benefits between us."

"So, that person walked into your store?" Officer Wang asked.

"Yes." The middle-aged woman nodded silently, and said without further ado:
"That person walked into our shop, and just as this old man had said."

"This only made us admire the old man even more. He was truly a genius. Later, the man came to the third floor and took a fancy to a jade pendant. Actually, we were willing to sell this jade pendant."

"We just happened to have a counterfeit piece, and we thought we'd switch it with the real one and cause him some trouble."

"After all, this was what the old man had instructed, and in the end, that person found out and they started arguing."

"We called a few friends over, thinking we'd have to argue with him."

"Moreover, these people were hired by that old man with his own money."

"Zhang Meng paid for it?" Yuan Shasha was also incredulous when she heard this.

The middle-aged woman nodded silently and said without further explanation, "The truth is, these people were all hired by Zhang Meng and have nothing to do with our shop."

"Besides, our store doesn't need another customer; we're just doing Zhang Meng a favor."

"It's clear that he put in a lot of effort to get close to this person. We don't care what he's thinking; we just want to help him out."

After a pause, the middle-aged woman sighed and said, "In the end, the result was that when we were arguing with this person, Zhang Meng appeared and started putting on a good show for us."

……