Chapter 9 iPhone 6S Ransomware
"Son, it's okay, mom has already bought you an iPhone 6, of course, it's genuine. Mom lined up for a whole day to buy it. Yes, yes, it's silver. Okay, that's all for now, roaming is very expensive."
A standard Mandarin voice came from beside, and when I heard it in Hong Kong, I suddenly felt a sense of intimacy. I inadvertently took a look and saw that a woman sitting next to me on the card seat was chatting with her son on a roaming phone.
My unintentional glance revealed a huge secret: the woman making the phone call was actually the cleaning lady of the luxurious building, the impoverished Aunt Cai.
Cai Ayi was the first person to discover Yang Hong's murder and also reported it. Although I didn't actually visit her, I saw her photo in the materials provided by Huan Dong. We surprisingly missed such an important person! However, after the fact, I found out that meticulous Chen Qiuyang had investigated her.
I gave Chen Qiuyang and Kui Ruolan a signal with my eyes.
Cai Ayi is a cleaner at the Rich Luxury Building, with a monthly salary of only around 1,500 yuan. Her husband has been bedridden at home for years due to chronic kidney disease, resulting in huge medical expenses. Logically, their family should be struggling financially. However, Cai Ayi recently appeared on the streets of Hong Kong buying an iPhone 6 for her son. It's not that poor people can't afford an iPhone 6 - some have even sold a kidney to buy one. But given Cai Ayi's current financial situation, it's unlikely she would splurge on an iPhone 6 in Hong Kong.
Where did Aunt Cai get this money from?
The three of us quickly got up from our seats and sat down around Aunt Cai's seat, surrounding her.
"What do you want to do?" Aunt Cai seemed to be scared by us.
Ruo Lan smiled and said: "Aunt Cai, hello, I'm Ruo Lan."
"Do you know me?" Aunt Cai asked in confusion.
"Cai Ayi, let's get straight to the point and not beat around the bush. We are police officers. We are currently investigating Yang Hong's case and suspect that you are related to his death, so we have come all the way from the mainland to take you back."
My intimidation tactics had the desired effect, and Aunt Cai's face immediately changed color. She spoke in a panicked tone: "Hey, hey, I already told you everything I knew when I was making my statement at the police station! Mr. Yang's death can't possibly have anything to do with me! You can't arrest me! If I were the killer, why would I go report it? You don't know how terrifying the scene I saw was... it was so terrifying!"
Kui Ruo Lan chimed in beside me, "Aunt Cai, don't be too nervous, we're just making a preliminary guess. We've been investigating your bank account since early morning and found that every month, Mr. Yang Hong transfers a sum of money into your account."
Actually, we didn't really go to the bank to investigate Aunt Cai's bank account, and we also don't know for sure if Mr. Yang gave money to Aunt Cai. All of this is just our speculation based on the information we have obtained.
This guess is useful.
"Right, right, since you've all investigated, I'll just say it straight out. This money was indeed given to me by Mr. Yang Hong, but he gave it to me of his own free will. I didn't extort anything from him, and I didn't kill him either. I'm even afraid to kill a chicken, let alone a person..."
"So you tell us, why would Mr. Yang give you money."
"Because he killed my daughter."
Aunt Cai would never have thought that she would run into Yang Hong, the one who had killed her daughter. That day, she was cleaning up trash as usual when she suddenly saw the owner of apartment 1201 - Yang Hong. This was something that had happened two years ago, Aunt Cai's first encounter with Yang Hong. But when she first laid eyes on Yang Hong, she felt a strong sense of familiarity, as if she had seen him somewhere before, but couldn't quite place where it was. On the other hand, Yang Hong greeted her warmly: "Hello Auntie, you're working hard, throwing away trash every day, thank you."
Yang Hong's enthusiasm made Aunt Cai a bit embarrassed, and she quickly said: "It's nothing, it's the work of our cleaning staff." After Yang Hong threw the trash bag into the trash can, he warmly smiled and returned home.
Cai Ayi stared blankly at the closed silver iron gate, and couldn't help but let out a bitter laugh: "I was just thinking too much, what luck would I have to know someone as wealthy as this?"
Later, after seeing each other several times, the familiar feeling of "déjà vu" disappeared. When eating at home, she would occasionally mention Mr. Yang Hong and say "he is really a polite rich man". Her husband's body began to become unhealthy around that time. Her husband was originally a security guard in the community and often had to work night shifts, but his body became weaker and weaker, often feeling limp and weak all over.
This Spring Festival, Cai Auntie was sweeping the floor at home and found an old wooden trunk under the bed. The wooden trunk had a rusty iron lock on it and many small holes on its surface that were bored by insects. Cai Auntie stared blankly at the wooden trunk, tears streaming down her face uncontrollably.
It's been 8 years. In these 8 years, Aunt Cai has not dared to face this wooden box, forcing herself to forget about it. Because the items inside this wooden box are like sharp and cold knives, every time she opens it, she is stabbed by these gleaming knives, bleeding profusely, suffering endlessly.
But today, on this sunny holiday, Aunt Cai suddenly had the courage to open the wooden box and revisit the items inside after 8 years. This great courage came from her growing nostalgia and guilt towards her daughter over the past 8 years.
However, Aunt Cai found that she no longer had the key to open the iron lock. At that time when she made up her mind not to look again, it was so resolute and decisive, vowing never to look again in this life. Now she began to regret it. Fortunately, after all these years, the hook of the iron lock had become very loose, and Aunt Cai used a screwdriver to pry it open with force, and the iron lock fell off.
Aunt Cai found her hands shaking uncontrollably as she closed her eyes, summoning all her strength to quickly open the wooden trunk. Inside were all the belongings of her late daughter, Guo Meili: a colorful tin frog that was her favorite toy from childhood and which she had treasured into adulthood; a pink scarf that Aunt Cai had given her on her 18th birthday; and a notebook with a cover featuring stills from "My Fair Princess" in which she had recorded her daily life after starting work in Shenzhen.
Cai Ayi opened her notebook again. 8 years ago, after her daughter's death, she had been reading this notebook day and night, the contents of which were all records of that Hong Kong man whom she loved to death - like a huge lightning bolt splitting open in Cai Ayi's brain, Cai Ayi's whole body shook violently.
Cai Aunt finally remembered that the resident of Room 1201 in the luxurious building, the refined and courteous Mr. Yang, was actually the murderer who killed her daughter!
Although Aunt Cai had never seen the man her daughter loved from head to toe, during a quarrel with Guo Mei Li, she saw the photo of that man in her daughter's wallet. That man was indeed Mr. Yang.
Aunt Cai finished telling the story of her daughter, Guo Mei Li, while crying. She looked at me and said: "At that time, she was working as a caddie at a golf course in Shenzhen, where she met Yang Hong. She fell deeply in love with him, to the point of life and death. I strongly opposed it then, saying those rich people from Hong Kong were just playing with her, don't take them seriously, don't think about marrying them. But she was obsessed, enchanted by Yang Hong's words, even threatening to cut ties with us and leave with him. It was during the Spring Festival when she came back, we refused to let her go back to Shenzhen, so we locked her in her room. The next morning, I opened her door to find that she had taken her own life. She left a note on her notebook: 'Mom, he sent me a message last night, saying he doesn't want me anymore...'"
