Chapter 4 Dinner

  "Captain Cai has arrived. Ah, beauty! She's much prettier than Lu Xiaoman!"

  "Tsk tsk, so young and already a captain, quite an impressive background. If I were thirty years younger... Heh heh heh..."

  "Ha ha ha, stop dreaming, look at your age."

  ……

  I lowered my head to eat the porridge, and heard the guests on the side discussing in a flurry. I quietly raised my head to take a look, just in time to see a woman wearing a white captain's uniform, with long hair draped over her shoulders, looking elegant and spirited.

  My heart skipped a beat, what a handsome girl! This is a face that's somewhat exotic and mixed-blood-like, with slightly deep eye sockets, slender eyebrows, the rounded chin of Eastern aesthetics, and those not-too-big-not-too-small lips. I felt my face burning as I stared at her in a daze.

  The girl with a face as red as mine frowned and said in a pleasant voice: "What are you looking at!"

  I realized I was out of line and quickly shifted my gaze from the woman's face, then... it stopped dead on her chest.

  What a perfect figure! This dress is so body-hugging, it accentuates her slender and toned physique to an extremely sexy degree.

  "Cough cough, Hong brothers, let me introduce you, this is our captain, Cai Lingyu."

  Xie Lao San's words pulled me back, and it was only then that I noticed the few people standing next to the woman. Xie Lao San looked at me with an awkward expression, and it was clear that if the others didn't know that I knew Xie Lao San, they would have kicked me away long ago.

  I hastily stood up, treating the previous discourtesy as if it had never happened, and with a thick face, I smiled and said: "Hehe, I'm Hong Xingdong, nice to meet Captain Cai, Xie San Ge, and... uh, foreigner?"

  Apart from Old Third and the female captain, there was a young man in his thirties dressed as a sailor, tall and thin, standing beside Old Third, possibly the second mate. And beside them stood three impeccably dressed foreigners!

  These three foreigners looked serious, one fat, one tall and one short, all of whom appeared to be over 40 years old, but it's also possible they were under 30. Foreigners generally look older and have a shorter shelf life.

  The young sailor introduced himself: "My name is Zhang Jue, I'm the second mate here, please give me more guidance, Mr. Hong." As expected, no mistake. Then Zhang Jue introduced the three foreigners: "These three are our company's foreign directors, Mr. Sherlock (the fat one), Mr. John (the tall one) and Mr. Spike (the short one), all from England."

  "Oh, nice to meet you." I said hypocritically, having no good feelings towards foreigners.

  "Haha, Brother Hong, I heard from Old Third Xie that you're a brave detective, hahaha, I admire detectives the most. My name is Sherlock, same as a great detective in our British Empire." Sherlock said with a smile in Chinese, politely extending his large right hand: "Nice to meet you, wishing you a pleasant journey on the Golden Flower Wheel."

  I was surprised by the foreigner's fluent Chinese, stood up, stretched out my hand and shook hands with him: "Hey, not a detective, just a small policeman, running errands." I secretly thought that this foreigner had a big handshake! I noticed that the other two foreigners were serious and didn't greet me, maintaining their noble identity with a hint of arrogance in their eyes. These two are authentic British people, it seems that the one in charge can only be Sherlock, who knows how to get along with people and must have stayed in China for quite some time, understanding Chinese customs and etiquette.

  "Hehe, don't stand there, sit down and eat!" Xie Lao San called out.

  We all sat down. The waiter immediately brought the dishes, basically the same as my diet. John said something in English to Sherlock, pointing at the food and shaking his head. Although I didn't understand his language, he was probably complaining about the food. Cai Ling furrowed her brow, glared at John, who muttered a few words, shrugged, and quietly ate his scone.

  "Haha, it seems that this beautiful female captain is not just a vase." I ate with my head down, secretly sizing up these six people. The beautiful Captain Cai Lingyu spoke little, eating elegantly, without even showing her teeth, and would wipe her mouth with paper after taking a sip of soup. If you didn't listen carefully, you wouldn't even hear the sound of her chewing. She was just like a famous socialite from Shanghai. I wondered how this well-educated beauty could lead these rough men like Xie Lao San and Zhang Jue. Was she actually wild at heart despite looking so refined? Meanwhile, Sherlock and the three foreigners were eating pickily, with some hesitation."

  After the self-introduction just now, there was nothing to talk about, and we ate in silence for a few minutes. Feeling a bit awkward, I decided to hurry up and finish eating and go back to my room to rest.

  At this time, Sherlock left half of the porridge uneaten, pulled out a cigar, narrowed his eyes to a slit, and took a big puff, instantly filling the air with thick smoke. The two old smokers, I and Old Sān, looked at each other with envy, our eyes gleaming green.

  Sherlock saw our expectant eyes, smiled apologetically, and his right hand reached into the inner pocket of his suit. I was delighted, thinking this foreigner was going to pull out a cigar.

  "Hey, you guest..." Before he could finish, my smile disappeared. All I saw was that the foreigner pulled out not a cigar, but a black and white photo.

  The photo was solemnly placed on the dinner table and slowly moved in front of me. After Sherlock's large hand covering the photo was removed, I saw the content of the photo and suddenly gasped.

  "Grass, you don't want to eat, but I still need to eat! What's the point of showing me this disgusting dead person photo?" Xie Lao San slammed his hand on the table and scolded, throwing down his chopsticks, not being polite at all to this foreign director.

  "What do you mean, Sherlock?" asked Cai Lingyu.

  "Hey, don't get me wrong, I just knew Mr. Hong was a police officer and suddenly felt like discussing a bizarre murder case with him that I recently heard about." Sherlock hastily explained, saying: "It's like this. A friend of mine is a security consultant in the former French Concession area of Xuhui District. Three days ago, he found a peculiar corpse in his jurisdiction, which had been dead for about a week based on the degree of decay. Due to the bizarre cause of death, it immediately caught the attention of the relevant high-level authorities and was identified as an extraordinary case. He knew I liked this kind of detective case, so he made a copy of these precious crime scene photos for me."

  "Mr. Hong, look at this person's death appearance..." Sherlock disregarded the frowns and disgusted expressions of Cai Lingyu and others, pointing at the photo of the deceased and talking freely. Although the deceased in the photo had already undergone significant changes, his facial features were still relatively well-preserved, revealing a 40-year-old man with a thumb-sized birthmark on his face. His eyeballs were deeply sunken, his mouth was unnaturally open, exposing his dark throat. What was most disturbing was that his purple-colored skin was crawling with maggots, white and plump, embedded in the flesh and wriggling around, extremely nauseating.

  "Ugh, this old man's cooking is too heavy!" Xie Lao San and Zhang Jiao almost spat out their porridge.

  Cai Lingyu covered her mouth and stood up directly, leaving her seat.

  Sherlock's hopeful gaze turned to me, with a hint of a smile, and said: "What do you think, Mr. Hong?"

  I took a deep breath, stared at the dead man's photo for a long time, pulled out a pack of Meili cigarettes from my pocket, Sherlock lit it for me, I took a fierce drag, puffed out a smoke ring, and glared at Sherlock with bloodshot eyes, saying in a low voice: "You're lying!"

  Sherlock was taken aback: "Everything I said is true."

  I shook my head and said unequivocally: "You say he's been dead for a week? That's absolutely impossible!"

  "Haha, Mr. Hong, this is the best medical conclusion obtained from forensic autopsy in Shanghai. As a police officer, you should believe in the accuracy of science even more." Sherlock didn't think much of my judgment.

  I rubbed my eyes, picked up the photo, pointed at the dead man's face and said calmly: "But I believe my own eyes more, this person... three days ago I saw him! At that time he was still alive!"

  "What?!" Sherlock as well as Xie Lao San and Zhang Jue who were eavesdropping on our conversation exclaimed, looking at me in disbelief.

  "Mr. Hong, you can't be mistaken about this person." Sherlock thought I was talking nonsense.

  I replied firmly, "There's no mistake, I remember this face very clearly." Then I didn't say anything else, but in my heart a storm was brewing. The dead man was none other than Tian Wenliang, the secretary of the Shanghai branch of the Intelligence Bureau who had sent me the Jinhua ship ticket and secret mission three days ago!