Police officer Chen Shu

There's a little incident in Chapter 40.
It's late summer now, and the temperature isn't too hot anymore. People are gradually getting used to not using air conditioning.

Perhaps it was because Zhu Chaoran was overweight and sensitive to heat, and because he was wearing a lot of police equipment, that he felt unbearably hot and stuffy when he returned from receiving a call and entered the small, enclosed interrogation room.

As a result, he took it upon himself to turn on the air conditioner, then opened the door and went into the interrogation room to continue working.

Actually, it was a trivial matter, but when the cold wind blew in from outside, Chen Shu, who was intently waiting for Zhang Yun to confess, felt his hair stand on end and shivered.

He glanced sideways at Zhu Chaoran, who was grinning at the door, and a bad feeling crept into his heart. He quickly gave Zhu Chaoran a wink, then gently tilted his head toward the seat inside the interrogation table.

Upon seeing this, Zhu Chaoran immediately realized his inappropriate behavior and quickly lowered his head to walk back to his seat. After settling down, he kept his eyes down and acted as if he were just an observer who had come to make up the numbers.

After the little incident was over, Chen Shu turned his head, steadied himself, and said in a deep voice, "Zhang Yun, please continue."

Zhang Yun lowered his head again, remaining silent, leaving Chen Shu with only his dark head.

A long-absent silence returned to the interrogation room.

Chen Shu was getting increasingly frustrated. Just when Zhang Yun was about to confess to the theft, Zhu Pangzi suddenly appeared and turned the tables on his own people.

Man proposes, God disposes. Police interrogation of suspects is not much different from war; the initial momentum fades with each attack.

Chen Shu sat on the interrogation platform, looking down at the middle-aged man who had once again lowered his head. He watched as the man gripped the armrests of the interrogation chair tightly, and sighed inwardly.
Sigh, he's shut up again. This case has neither witnesses nor physical evidence; as long as he doesn't confess, there's really nothing we can do about it.
He was a carefree person, and since things had come to this point, he stopped dwelling on it and stood up to walk towards the door: "Fatty, take him to the detention room."

Before Zhu Chaoran could reply, Zhang Yun shouted, "Officer! You can't detain me without evidence!"

This time, the voice was different from before; it sounded more confident.

Upon hearing this, Chen Shu paused, realizing that this guy knew he had almost fallen into the pit just now, and this time he was probably putting in all his strength to hold on to the end.

He left with those words, without looking back.

Let's wait until the full 24 hours are up before we talk about it.

There was no further sound from behind.

Back in his office, looking at the dusty desks, chairs, and sofas he hadn't seen in a long time, Chen Shu felt a pang of nostalgia.

However, with the case piling up right now, he had no interest in cleaning. He simply took a police uniform from his wardrobe, changed into it, and went to the duty room on the first floor.

Li Chaoyang went to the epidemic prevention site, and now he has to go there to sit on the stage.

A few hours later, in the duty room.

Chen Shu sat behind the front desk, with a steaming cup of tea and an open case file beside him.

He would glance at the surveillance images of the detention room on the monitor screen for a while, and then take out his case memo to scribble and revise, showing no signs of fatigue but full of energy.

Zhu Chaoran, looking frustrated, leaned on the small platform at the front desk.

Neither of them spoke, tacitly avoiding mentioning what had happened in the interrogation room at noon, as if Zhang Yun had never appeared.

The silence was somewhat stiff until Zeng Hong returned from his duty outside the police station, breaking the awkwardness.

"Instructor." Zhu Chaoran, who had been lying down, straightened up and greeted him weakly.

Chen Shu shrank back, using the small, high platform under the reception desk to slip and hide underneath. "Hmm." Zeng Hong nodded to Zhu Chaoran and continued walking up the office building stairs.

Just as he was about to reach the stairs, he unexpectedly turned back.

"Where's Xiao Li? Where did he go? Why isn't there a single police officer at the front desk?" Zeng Hong returned to the front desk of the duty hall, looked around, and was slightly surprised.

Zhu Chaoran coughed, opened his mouth, but ultimately chose to remain silent, simply staring out the door.

Sitting behind the front desk, the dispatcher Xiao Wang felt a pang of embarrassment and awkwardly drank water from his thermos.

Zeng Hong knew something was amiss as soon as he saw this. He went straight to the back of the front desk and saw a man wearing a police uniform with the words "Police Officer on Duty" on his left arm facing away from him. He was squatting on the ground, busy fiddling with the computer host under the table.

Zeng Hong glanced at the monitor on the table, which was displaying a normal image, and felt a little uneasy, but seeing that the other person was busy with something, he didn't want to interrupt.

The duty room fell into a brief silence.

Seeing that he couldn't avoid it, Chen Shu had no choice but to awkwardly smile and slowly turn his head away.

"Teacher Zeng, what a coincidence. Are you here to work as a hostess today too?"

A local police station joke compares being on duty to working at a prostitute.

Upon hearing this, Xiao Wang, who was sitting quietly sipping his tea, immediately spat it out.

Zeng Hongyi saw it was Chen Shu, his face tightened, and he glared at him, saying, "Who do I think it is? Why are you crawling under the table with your butt sticking out? What, are you so afraid of seeing me?"

Seeing that Zeng Hong was a little angry, Chen Shu quickly snapped to attention and stood up straight: "Reporting, Instructor, my injuries have fully healed, and I am reporting for duty!"

After saying that, he reached for Zhang Yun's simple case file on the table, handed it to Zeng Hong, and smiled smugly: "Instructor Zeng, a theft case happened in our jurisdiction, and it just happened to be brought to my attention. The suspect is already in the cage. You can go upstairs and rest first. I'll need to ask you to approve the detention later."

The Dongzhou police are monitoring and tracking all individuals.

Since it concerned the security of the area, Zeng Hong lost his desire to tease him. He took the file, flipped through a few pages, and pondered for a moment:

"Hurry up and finish the case. The bureau is wrapping up Operation Summer Breeze these days. I'll have Huihui write a publicity report for you tomorrow."

Huihui, whose full name is Zheng Huihui, is the only female police officer at Zhongshan Police Station. In addition to her assigned internal affairs, she also oversees the station's publicity work.

"No problem, just go upstairs and wait patiently. I've already thought of a title for the article: 'Autumn Wind Sweeps Away Fallen Leaves, One Sweep and One Fallen Leave!'"

Chen Shu kept bringing up "going upstairs," something Zeng Hong knew perfectly well. He shook his head, not continuing the topic, and glanced at the surveillance footage of the detention room on the monitor, where a lone man was sitting.

He then turned and went upstairs.

Zhu Chaoran looked blank for a moment, as if he was recalling what happened in the interrogation room at noon: "Brother Shu, that guy won't confess, what do we do?"

Heh, stumbling upon a theft on my first day at work, I have to make sure everything is handled properly. If a direct confrontation doesn't work, then I'll just have to resort to shamelessness and being a rogue. Chen Shu remained calm and composed, folded the printed paper with Zhang Yun's identity information on the table twice, and stuffed it into his shirt pocket.

"Fatty, go and bring him out. This time, we're going to the interrogation room again."

(End of this chapter)