Chapter Twelve Interrogation

  "Hello, I have a few questions to ask you, can you answer them?" Zhou walked up to the female teacher, with a kind face and soft voice, if not for the ICPO exclusive badge on his chest, no one would have known he was an Interpol officer.

  "Yes." The female teacher's emotions seemed to calm down, but her voice was hoarse. "Please, police officer, you must find the killer who murdered Aryan!"

  "No problem!" Zhou nodded and then asked, "Your name? And your relationship with the deceased..."

  "My name is Lin Jingran. I am Ah Liang's wife."

  So that's how it is. Zheng Hanfei nodded to himself, now that he had figured out her relationship with the deceased, the direction of determining the motive for the murder was clearer, so he asked: "Did you have any disputes with the deceased before his death?"

  "He is..." Lin Jingran glanced at Zhou Zheng, his eyes filled with confusion, as if asking Zheng Hanfei how he ended up in this place.

  "Please answer his question!" Zhou Zheng said, "What he said is also what I was thinking of asking."

  "You're suspecting me!" Lin Jingran's face was filled with anger, "Although I often quarrel with him, our relationship is very close, I have no reason to kill him!"

  "Calm down, calm down! We're just following convention." Zhou Zheng smiled and signaled Lin Jingran to calm down.

  "Hmph!" Lin Jingran angrily turned her head away, no longer looking at Zhou Zheng and the others.

  "Let's go." Zhou whispered in their ears.

  Zheng Hanfei nodded, he knew that even if he asked Lin Jingran now, she wouldn't say anything. Fortunately, he still grasped an important clue: Lin Jingran had a motive for murder.

  "What's wrong?" Zheng Hanfei asked as he was about to leave, noticing Gu Jie's thoughtful expression.

  "She seems to be telling lies..."

  "What?!"

  "When she was angry, I saw a flash of panic in her eyes, and...her sadness was a bit too much." Gu Ge furrowed his brow, daring to confirm that the other party must have had an ulterior motive.

  "Alright, don't think about it for now! Let's ask her again when she's in a better mood." Zheng Hanfei patted Gu Jie on the shoulder and then pulled him along to go question the next suspect with Zhou Zheng.

  As he was about to leave, Zheng Hanfeng turned his head and glanced at the other person, a glint of light flashing in his eyes, his heart thinking who-knew-what...

  "Hello, there are some things I'd like to ask you, is it convenient for you?" Zhou asked the muscular man with a full beard in front of him.

  "Are you a police officer?"

  "So to speak."

  "Then go ahead and ask!"

  "You seem a bit impatient!" Zheng Hanfei suddenly blurted out, he always felt that Li He's behavior was somewhat problematic.

  "Of course!" Li He said loudly, "A friend is dead, how can I be in a good mood?"

  "But your temper..."

  "My temper is innate! It seems that you are a new transfer student, you can ask the students around you, they all know my temper, whether I am happy or angry!"

  Zheng Hanfei looked at everyone, only to see that they all nodded in unison, instantly making Zheng Hanfei feel a sense of helplessness.

  "Are you and the deceased good friends?" To avoid further embarrassing Zheng Hanfei, Zhou Zheng changed the subject and asked Li He.

  "Yes, we've been friends since junior high school, and after growing up, we both became teachers here. He's a great guy!"

  "I heard some people say that you recently had a conflict with the deceased, is it true?"

  "Yes! Because of some small things, the relationship has not been good lately." Li He said, "However, officer, I am not the murderer. If you suspect someone, it's better to suspect that English teacher Lin Jingran instead."

  "What did he say?" Zheng Hanfei hastily asked. He felt that Li He's next words might possibly find some breakthroughs for the case.

  "Before, when I drank with Wang Liang, he told me that he wanted to divorce Lin Jingran, seemingly because he couldn't stand her temper. However, he was indecisive about when to tell her, so he was quite worried. Because their relationship has been bad recently, I don't know if he's told her or not."

  As expected! Zheng Hanfei's mouth corners slightly curved, with this testimony, Lin Jingran's motive for murder became clear. Of course, he still couldn't determine that Lin Jingran was the murderer, after all, the mystery of the sealed room had not been solved yet, and Li He's words might have been a lie to shake off suspicion.

  "Xiao Hanfei, you seem to have understood something," Zhou Zheng said with a smile, "That confident expression is exactly what a detective has when they grasp an important clue."

  "Yes, but you and Ouyang Xiuxiu should understand too." Zheng Hanfei nodded, but felt extremely helpless inside. It was their first meeting, yet he called him Xiao Hanfei, being overly familiar? And there was even a "Xiao" in front of it, looks like this old man still has a youthful heart.

  "That's right." Ouyang Xiu said affirmatively, and then asked: "Teacher Li He, I'd like to ask you something. What were you doing between 11:20 and 12:00?"

  "You mean my alibi, right?" Li He said, "From 11:20 to 11:50, I was chatting with other teachers in the office on the first floor. You can ask around and many people can vouch for me. As for the rest of the time, you and that little girl can be my witnesses, right?"

  "Yes." Ouyang Xi nodded, because at that time, he and Qu Menghan were going to find the deceased with Li He.

  "So when you saw the deceased enter the chemistry lab, was it seen by someone else?" Zheng Hanfeng suddenly asked. If he was the only one, then his testimony would be somewhat unreliable.

  "Yes!" Li He replied, "I went into the first floor office with several teachers, you can go ask them, they should have seen it."

  "Go ask right away!" Zhou Zheng shouted at a young police officer behind him.

  The young policeman nodded and turned to run downstairs to ask Li He's eyewitness. After he left, the short policeman who was called by Zhou Zheng to search for something rushed back, panting and saying a few words in Zhou Zheng's ear.

  "Zhou Zheng Tan Chang, what have you found?" asked Zheng Hanfei.

  "Ah, there's a lead. As Little Ouyang said, the deceased had good interpersonal relationships. According to the police investigation results, the deceased recently only had bad relationships with three people: one was Li He, another was Lin Jingran, and the third person was out of town, so they were ruled out by the police."

  "So, the killer who murdered the deceased is either Li He or Lin Jingran?"

  "Yes. There's one more thing, the two marks on the deceased's neck match the rope used for hanging, and that rope is the murder weapon, but there are only the victim's fingerprints on the rope."

  "Really." Ouyang Xiu nodded, "It's hard to say who the murderer is for now, but before that, we need to figure out one thing."

  "Locked Room Mystery!" Zheng Hanfei's eyes flashed with a hint of sharpness, "How did the murderer do it? The lock in the chemistry lab is a spherical lock, so using thin lines or something to achieve a locked room is an impossible method."

  "Since that's the case, let's go back to the scene and investigate again," Nan Ruo Xun suggested, "Just waiting here isn't going to do anything, we might as well go ask Lin Laoshi about his alibi again."

  "That's exactly what I meant." Zhou nodded and led everyone back to the scene of the crime.

  ……

  "How's it going? Any discoveries?" After searching the window for a while, Zheng Hanfei let out a sigh and looked somewhat disappointed. It seemed he hadn't found the clue he was looking for, so he asked others instead.

  "No." Gu Jie and Zhong Lixia shook their heads simultaneously as they searched around.

  "You're really something," Nan Ruo Xun said, "The police have already searched the entire place, why do we need to waste our minds searching again? Do you suspect that the Huaxia police are incompetent?"

  "It's not that I don't believe! It's just that their help ultimately still has a flaw." Ouyang Xiuzi said while searching around the deceased, "What we do is fill in this 'flaw', you see!"

  Ouyang Xiu's voice attracted everyone, and as they looked around, Ouyang Xiu was pinching a few grains of sand in his hand.

  "This is..." Nan Ruo Xun couldn't help but ask.

  "It should be from the killer's shoe sole, the deceased's shoe sole doesn't have any sand." Ouyang felt the texture of the sand, "This sand is dry, rough on the surface, and yellowish-brown in color. Wanyi, does the academy have this kind of sand?"

  "Let me think... it seems like there's only one around here."

  "Hey! Come and take a look." Zhou Zheng's voice drew everyone's attention to him again. He pointed to the ground in front of and behind the door, and casually picked up something from the ground. Upon closer inspection, it was also sand, and looked very similar to what Ouyang Xiuxiu was holding.

  The same sand? Could it be... Suddenly, a flash of inspiration appeared in Zheng Hanfei's mind, and he seemed to have understood the trick of the secret room. However, he still needed to find some decisive clues and evidence.