The Red Era: Living in Seclusion in a Siheyuan as a Boss

Chapter 675 The "Three Musketeers": The Interrogation Experts!!!

Let's continue the story from last time.

Meanwhile, Gu Shen was questioning "A Tieguo" about how his aunt died.

At first, when facing Gu Shen's interrogation, "A Tieguo" seemed very calm: "Either it was suicide, or his colleague killed him."

Gu Shen knew perfectly well that this kid was trying to confuse the issue.

First, the deceased had no grudges against anyone before her death. Second, she showed no signs of depression beforehand. Third, even if she really wanted to commit suicide, why would she go to such a remote place as Qingpu?
Gu Shen cut to the heart of the matter: "Where were you on the night of the 29th?"

“I’m watching videos in Zhou Wang’s video room,” “A Tieguo” replied.

Gu Shen knew that the video arcade was on the west side of the village, while the Jiwang Town bus station was on the east side. This was "A Tieguo" deliberately avoiding the issue and consciously distancing himself from the case. He pressed on, asking, "What video were you watching?"

"A Tie Guo" was speechless for a moment.

Gu Shen immediately recognized that the kid was obviously lying, so he decided to use a "trick" and said with confidence, "But we investigated, and people said you didn't go to the video arcade that day."

"A Tieguo" immediately changed his tune, saying, "I definitely went there, but I didn't go in when I got to the door."

Gu Shen added, "People saw you waiting for someone at the Jiwang Town station, and you were even squatting there."

Teacher Gu later explained to the students that he judged at the time that if "A Tieguo" went to the station, someone would definitely see him.

"A Tieguo" twitched as if he had been electrocuted, but remained silent.

Gu Shen felt that the time was right.

He said meaningfully, "Do you know where your aunt wrote down on the calendar on her desk?"

Upon hearing this, "A Tieguo's" face turned deathly pale.

After just two rounds, "A Tie Guo" was defeated.

Seeing "A Tieguo's" sullen expression, Gu Shen decided to strike while the iron was hot and intensify his emotional offensive.

Gu Shen then showed "A Tieguo" a photo of his aunt: "Think about it, your aunt has been so good to you, bailing you out early and paying for your house renovation."
She even helped you get married and start a family, treating you like her own son. Your aunt has been incredibly kind to you. How can you live up to her kindness?

Looking at his aunt's photo, "A Tieguo" lost control of his emotions. He knelt down in front of the photo and repeatedly kowtowed to it, crying uncontrollably: "Aunt, I'm sorry, I deserve to die, I'm not human!" He kept slapping himself as he spoke.

Under persistent questioning, "A Tieguo" finally surrendered and confessed to the crime.

It turns out that on March 27, "A Tieguo" called to borrow 2000 yuan urgently. On the evening of the 29th, his aunt brought 2000 yuan to the Jiwang Town bus station. His aunt could tell from his words that he was lying, so she refused to lend him the money.

Enraged, "A Tieguo" pushed his aunt into the river, jumped in to grab the money, punched her hard during the struggle, and after taking the money, simply suffocated her in the river.

On the day "A Tieguo" went to the train station, he did indeed run into a neighbor from the same village there. After standing for a while, he got tired and squatted down...

But the case is not over yet. Some people in the court pointed out that a confession alone is not enough. Although 2000 yuan of stolen money was found in "A Tieguo's" house, RMB is circulating and the evidence is not solid. If there were personal evidence such as monthly passes or work permits, it would be solid.

"A Tieguo" said that he had burned all his documents.

Gu Shen found an excuse and said to "A Tieguo": "Your uncle is going abroad to wear a suit, but he can't find the key and can't open the wardrobe door. Where did your aunt's key go?"

"A Tieguo" confessed, "It's in the dead-end ditch behind my house."

Finally, the police drained the river near "A Tieguo's" house and found the key.

What had taken two months to crack was resolved in just one night by the Shanghai and Shenzhen authorities, who gnawed through this tough nut on the very first interrogation.

Watching the interrogation video in the next room, Director Duanmu tapped his pipe and exclaimed, "I didn't expect them to get it out so quickly. They're even more impressive than I imagined."

Every time Gu Shen defeated his opponent, he would invite Zhang Shenghua, one of the Three Musketeers, to a restaurant to celebrate with drinks and talk about the success or failure.

The three musketeers grew up in this environment of mutual exchange, learning, encouragement and help, and later made a name for themselves in the police force.

Moreover, Liu Yong also knew that his teacher was a very meticulous person.

Once, Liu Yong encountered a difficult problem while solving a case. In desperation, he called Teacher Gu for advice. Teacher Gu told him about a similar case he had once worked on.

In the late 1980s, one morning in late January, a carjacking and murder occurred in the Songhe area of ​​Shanghai. Someone reported that a male corpse was lying face down in a ditch near Hengtang Bridge in Sijing, Songhe.

Upon on-site investigation, it was found that the deceased had a thin hemp rope with a diameter of 0.5 centimeters tightly wrapped around his neck. He was a 56-year-old driver named Chen who worked for the Maritime Bureau. His ID card, driver's license, and nearly 200 yuan in cash were found in his pocket.

The forensic examination determined that the death was due to asphyxiation, and was a homicide.

An investigation revealed that on the afternoon of January 23, the day before Mr. Chen was murdered, he went to the finance department and wrote a blank check, intending to go to the car repair shop the next morning to have his car's ignition system repaired.

Because the repair shop was close to his home, Mr. Chen told the team leader that he could drive the car home that night.

After the incident, the Municipal Public Security Bureau quickly disseminated the notice for assistance to areas surrounding Shanghai.

That evening, the Criminal Investigation Detachment of Jiacheng Public Security Bureau called to provide an important clue.

"Around 11:30 p.m. last night, a red Santana sped through the toll booth at Jiachang Tanghui.

The car then veered into a bamboo grove on the right side of the highway in Jiaxing City, where it became stuck in the mud. The driver is nowhere to be found.

According to the license plate number at the scene, the Jiaxing police confirmed that the car belonged to Mr. Chen before his death.

Based on this clue, Gu Shen and investigators from Songhe and the Maritime Bureau rushed to Chiayi City.

Unfortunately, the crash scene had been disturbed, and the items inside the car were gone; only a few drops of blood were found on the passenger seat.

Because there were very few useful clues at the scene, the case was temporarily stalled.

Gu Shen proposed several investigative approaches: First, to ask local investigators for their cooperation in finding witnesses;
Secondly, it's possible that items on the vehicle were taken by locals, and the locals could use the custom of considering it unlucky to take things from the deceased to persuade the person who took them to return them.

Subsequently, staff at the Tanghui toll station also provided an important clue.

Staff reported that there were two young men in the car, and the driver was a short man.

Later, the items that had been taken from the car were indeed returned by the locals.

The items taken included cigarettes, matchboxes, chocolates, and a black suit.

The suit was made of acrylic fabric and was soaked in mud and water, wrinkled like a rag. Two train tickets, an electronic scale record card, and a silk handkerchief were found in the suit pocket.

The two train tickets were hard-seat tickets from Suzhou to Xuzhou on the 20th, costing 24 yuan each. The back of the tickets had the words "Non-refundable" written in pen.
An electronic scale record card indicates a height of 1.65 meters.

The case has finally seen a breakthrough, and the public is thrilled.

After everyone quickly finished dinner, Gu Shen began to make arrangements for the work.

Gu Shen divided his team into three groups: one group asked the scouts from Songjiang to stay in the area and continue to gather clues;
The maritime investigators were asked to return to Shanghai to continue searching for people close to the deceased and gather clues.
He himself led three subordinates to Suzhou Railway Station overnight to search for the ticket holder.

"You can't be more lucky!" Gu Shen said to Liu Yong with a sigh as he recalled the case from back then.

When Gu Shen and his group arrived at the police duty room of Suzhou Railway Station overnight, coincidentally, they were greeted by Officer Wu, the officer on duty who had written "No refunds" on the back of their train tickets.

When confronted by his colleagues from Shanghai, Officer Wu recalled that on the afternoon of the 20th, he saw two young men loitering on the platform. He took them back to the duty room to inquire, and the two claimed to be students who were traveling south from Dongshan Jiaocheng.

Old Wu asked them why they were lingering at the station. They said they wanted to go back to their hometown, but they didn't have enough money for tickets. They only had enough money to buy tickets to Xucheng.

Because tickets were scarce and hard to buy, in order to get them back as soon as possible, Lao Wu kindly bought them two train tickets to Xucheng, and even wrote "non-refundable" on them, in case the tickets were resold.

Upon hearing this, Gu Shen asked anxiously, "Did you register their names, home addresses, or contact information?"

"Of course there is!" Old Wu started looking for the register, and Gu Shen and the others helped him look as well.

But after searching for a long time, I still couldn't find the information that Lao Wu registered back then. Where did he put it?

"Oh dear, I clearly registered, so where did it go?" Old Wu grabbed his hair in self-reproach.

"Don't worry, think about it carefully. Did you forget where you put it?"

"No way, I clearly..."

"Oh no, it's all for nothing..." This greatly worried the criminal investigators from Shanghai who came to investigate.

Unlike the others, Gu Shen was not frustrated or panicked. His eyes scanned the corners of the ground and found a plastic wastebasket in the corner.

He immediately went forward and dumped all the waste paper out of the container, then squatted down and rummaged through the trash with his hands.

The wastebasket was full of wads of paper, cigarette butts, fruit peels, and tea leaves.

Gu Shen carefully picked up each crumpled piece of paper, unfolded them one by one, and meticulously searched for them. He even pieced together the torn pieces of paper to examine them.

Finally, on a piece of official paper, Gu Shen left lines of handwriting from different locations. Among the place names such as Jinling, Wucheng, Sucheng, and Zhengcheng, the six characters "Jiaocheng City, Dongshan Province" suddenly appeared. Gu Shen's eyes lit up immediately. He put on his glasses and examined it closely, trying to make out the following characters in the flamboyant handwriting: "Sun Hao," "Song Dalong," 17 years old... Among them, the character "Hao" showed signs of being altered.

"Hahaha..." Gu Shen laughed, holding up the note with ecstatic joy: "Found it!"

A major case of mobile murder and robbery was solved by finding a breakthrough in this detail.

With the address and name in hand, the subsequent investigation proceeded smoothly and with unstoppable momentum.

And so, Gu Shen and his men rushed to Jiaocheng and captured the two men.

After hearing about Teacher Gu's case, Liu Yong was deeply moved.

My heart, which had been restless due to the deadlock in the case, has miraculously calmed down.

Liu Yong took a deep breath, his gaze hardening again—since they were stuck in a dead end, why not start looking for clues from scratch?
With this determination, Liu Yong began to sort out the case clues from the beginning.

He carefully reviewed every file and repeatedly examined the on-site photos, leaving no detail overlooked.

Persistence pays off, and Liu Yong finally succeeded in solving the case that had troubled them for so long.

Bold yet meticulous, Liu Yong learned a great deal from his teacher, Gu Shen.

Gu Shen's forte was interrogation. He once taught Liu Yong a saying: "Interrogation is psychological warfare, a contest between the two sides."

Just like fighting against a martial arts master, Gu Shen felt a sense of exhilaration whenever he encountered a formidable opponent, with both sides locked in a close battle after several rounds.

The more cunning the opponent, the more challenging it is.

But interrogation isn't something you can accomplish by glaring, blustering, or using harsh words.

Gu Shen's interrogations were always conducted with a smile on his face, and he spoke in a gentle and detailed manner. Every confrontation was a turbulent undercurrent beneath a calm exterior.

One year, a shocking case of diamond theft occurred in Shanghai.

On November 17th of that year, at around 4 PM, a package of diamonds weighing 1.77 kilograms disappeared from the Daijiaku bonded warehouse of a certain air freight company's Shanghai branch.

This bag of diamonds was purchased from a European country and contained 5174.64 carats of rice-shaped diamonds. At the time, it cost US$67, which was equivalent to more than RMB 470 million, an astronomical figure back then.

Technical personnel from the Shanghai Municipal Bureau quickly arrived at the warehouse to investigate and learned that the goods had been delivered to Hongqiao Airport and, after inspection, were sent to the shipping department's insurance warehouse.

After questioning and interviewing more than 20 warehouse staff, the investigators focused their suspicions on Xu Jie, the receiving clerk.

At 10:11 AM on November 14th, Xu Jie went to pick up the goods.

Warehouse keeper Lao Liang handed him a light blue box and specifically instructed him: "This is a valuable item. It cannot be mixed with other ordinary items. Be sure to store it in a separate box."

However, when Xu Jie delivered the item to the Dai family's warehouse, he did not tell the custodian, Xiao Yang, that it was a valuable item, which resulted in Xiao Yang placing the item in the ordinary goods storage location number one.

The following day, Xu Jie delivered two more batches of diamonds imported from Europe.

This time, he told Xiao Yang that these were valuables and should be put into the safe in the warehouse office.

The investigator asked Xu Jie to stay behind and got straight to the point: "Why didn't you take note that the goods were valuable when you purchased them?"

"I forgot," Xu Jie said calmly.

"You delivered two more shipments of valuables on the second and third days. How come you didn't make the connection?" No matter how the investigators pressed him, Xu Jie kept saying he had forgotten.

After careful analysis of the case, it was found that 36 units in Shanghai and three units in Suzhou, Changzhou, and Bengbu picked up goods between the 14th and 17th. Is there a possibility that the goods were delivered incorrectly?

The Shanghai Municipal Public Security Bureau's investigators split into three groups to conduct the investigation.

Dozens of investigators were deployed like a net, but after working day and night, they found no further clues.

Xu Jie is the most suspicious.

Xu Jie had no prior criminal record, but he met three conditions for committing the crime: he knew the contents were valuable, he had seen the actual goods, and he had the opportunity to enter the warehouse and handle the goods.

After 12 lengthy interrogations, Xu Jie either pretended to be deaf and dumb and remained silent, or solemnly patted his chest to guarantee his innocence, or beat his chest and shouted that he was wronged.

On December 6, Director Duanmu asked Gu Shen, who was teaching at the Public Security University, to take charge of the case.

Gu Shen arrived early the next morning.

Gu Shen did not immediately begin the trial, but instead sought to understand the progress of the case. He also learned that Xu Jie had a poor relationship with his wife and had two mistresses.

One is a finance officer at a food factory, surnamed Yu, and 40 years old this year;
The other mistress, surnamed Zhang, is unemployed and 26 years old this year.

Xu Jie is also applying for a passport to England, and has borrowed money from his two lovers, 1 yuan and 8000 yuan respectively.

After the incident, Xu Jie inquired about smuggling with others.

That evening, Gu Shen, wearing a brown leather jacket and shiny leather shoes, appeared in the interrogation room.

Xu Jie was led in, and after he sat down, he looked up and saw that the person opposite him was an older policeman.

Xu Jie was taken aback when he saw strands of silver hair mixed in with Gu Shen's neat hair before asking, "How is my daughter?"

Gu Shen glanced at him and realized with a keen sense that Xu Jie had been missing his daughter terribly over the past few days.

“It’s fine,” Gu Shen replied with a smile, having already made up his mind, then casually asked, “What day did you come in?”

"June 21th."

"What did you do to get in here?"

"Playing mahjong, arbitrarily transferring foreign currency, and living illegally with a woman."

Do you know why we've imprisoned you?

"Something was lost because of our company."

"What does this thing look like?"

"It was wrapped in a plastic bag, and inside the bag was a light blue box."

"Did you pick up this shipment on the 14th?"

"Yes."

"Where did you bring this from?"

"They first received it from the regular warehouse, but couldn't get it. They then received it from the classified warehouse."

"How many times have you been to the classified warehouse?"

"the first time."

At this moment, Gu Shen suddenly slammed his hand on the table and said sternly, "Do you understand what the first time means?"

Then, Gu Shen asked three more questions: "When did you get married? When was your daughter born? When did you meet your lover?"

"..." Xu Jie answered fluently without hesitation.

“This is the first time, and everything you experience for the first time in your life will be unforgettable,” Gu Shen was “enlightening” him.

He then asked, "We were repeatedly told to keep it separately, how could you forget that the first time you entered the classified warehouse? How long does it take to get from the airport to the warehouse?"

"Four minutes." Fine beads of sweat appeared on Xu Jie's nose.

Gu Shen retorted, "Does it make sense that you forgot in just four minutes?"

“It doesn’t make sense, forgetting doesn’t make sense.” Xu Jie began to stammer.

The first encounter didn't end until after 4 a.m., with Gu Shen searching for his opponent's weaknesses in the back-and-forth exchanges.

Gu Shen came again at 9 p.m. the next day.

He brewed another strong cup of tea, and this time, he changed his strategy.

Gu Shen didn't mention "diamonds" at all, but instead talked at length about his parents' nurturing grace, his wife's loving affection, and his daughter's doting love.

She also mentioned that Xu Jie's daughter is quite cute, saying, "I haven't seen you for many days, and I miss you very much. She has asked her mother many times, 'Why hasn't Daddy come back from his business trip yet?'"

Upon hearing this, Xu Jie buried his face in his hands and knelt down, revealing his distress. He cried and said, "My head hurts today, I'll tell you tomorrow. I promise I'll tell you everything I did. Can I see my wife and daughter tomorrow?"

(End of this chapter)