The Bank Burglary Case (4)

Chapter 4

October in Tonglin Town was sweltering. Yun Song had traveled to the hometowns of the two workers – one in Sanli Village about twenty kilometers away, and the other in neighboring Yulan Town. By the end of the day, she was so exhausted her throat felt like it was smoking. Neither worker had returned to their hometowns.

On her way back, she kept wondering: if these two men really were the ones who stole the bank’s money, where would they go now?

Clues remained scarce, mainly because the people of Tonglin Town were busy working during the day and slept very soundly at night.

She could only hope the reward offer would yield results.

As it happened, the moment she returned, she was surrounded by a family of four. Yun Song had only heard rumors about the Old Lady’s behavior before and had never actually met her.

Seeing this family coming forward to provide clues, she didn’t immediately realize this was the same Old Lady Tong Jin had mentioned.

“Come inside the dormitory and have a seat.” It was too hot outside.

Tong Jin and Tang Chao wanted to give Yun Song a warning look, but then they reconsidered. It didn’t matter; between the three of them, everyone had to take a turn being fooled.

So, Yun Song poured them some water and asked about what they had learned.

“Our neighbors are very likely the ones who robbed the bank,” the Old Lady spoke first.

“How did you discover this?”

“They’ve been eating meat for two days straight,” the Old Lady’s daughter-in-law said while peeling a couple of potatoes.

The child in the family quickly tugged at his mother’s sleeve. “Mom, don’t tell the truth. If you say it like that, the police will definitely think we’re just jealous of them eating meat.”

The Old Lady waved her hands hurriedly. “The police will surely understand what we mean. It’s not that we’re jealous. Their family used to be even poorer than ours. There’s a sick old mother upstairs who needs a dose of medicine brewed every day, and three kids downstairs to feed. When it’s time to pay school fees, they have to borrow money from one end of the street to the other. Their cooking pot didn’t have a drop of oil in it, and not long ago, debt collectors were even pounding on their door…”

As the Old Lady spoke, memories of how miserable that family was flooded her mind, and her rationality suddenly returned.

The Old Lady thought to herself: I’ve miscalculated. I’ve truly miscalculated today. If that whole family robbed the bank and can now eat meat every day, I’ve made a mistake.

By running here to tell the police, she would get five hundred yuan at most, and she would offend her neighbors in the process.

If she had sent her son directly to the neighbors to say they knew about the stolen money and demand a cut, it would surely be much more than that.

In that moment, the Old Lady became a self-taught expert in extortion.

With this new thought, the Old Lady said, “Officers, we were just jealous of the neighbors eating meat earlier. We were talking nonsense. Sigh, look at us, we’ve been poor for so long that we lose our heads whenever we see someone else eating a bite of meat. Please don’t take it to heart.”

The daughter-in-law felt something was off, but then she figured her mother-in-law must have a reason for saying this, so she immediately nodded.

“We just couldn’t stand the sight of them eating meat.”

Yun Song didn’t get angry. She could more or less guess what they were thinking, so she said, “It’s fine. You may go back now.”

Once the family left, Tong Jin said, “Why do I get the feeling that this family was actually telling the truth this time?”

Yun Song nodded. “Let’s go over and ask around now.”

“Aren’t we eating?” Tang Chao had just finished cooking. They had originally planned to eat at the student canteen, but since Yun Song had been out investigating the two missing workers, she naturally returned late and missed the canteen hours.

Tang Chao had borrowed a small pot from a school teacher to keep the food warm for Yun Song.

“Let’s go now. If we wait any longer, they’ll be asleep.” Most people in Tonglin Town were laborers who worked hard all day and naturally went to bed early.

Tang Chao gave an affirmative grunt, walked out a couple of steps, then turned back to grab a cloth and lift the dishes out of the pot.

“Eat while we walk.”

Tong Jin nodded. During their few days here, they often saw adults and children running around with bowls in hand during mealtimes.

When in Rome, do as the Romans do.

Yun Song agreed with the logic. She took her bowl and ate as she walked.

The Old Lady’s neighbors were named Liao, a family of seven squeezed into a small two-bedroom apartment.

The weather was stifling. An elderly woman sat by the doorway making shoe soles¹, while three children did their homework nearby.

“Old lady, making shoes?” Tong Jin stepped forward. Having recently graduated, she had a very approachable manner.

Yun Song observed the family from the side. She had spent a long time following an old practitioner of traditional Chinese medicine² to treat patients, so she could tell at a glance that the elderly woman and the three children suffered from long-term malnutrition.

The elderly woman made a couple of “ah-ah” sounds. The child beside her said cautiously, “My grandma can’t hear, and she can’t speak either.”

The child didn’t look up while speaking, appearing to be afraid of something.

Tong Jin then asked, “Where are your mom and dad?”

The three children kept their heads down, none of them daring to speak.

There really was something off about this family. Tong Jin had a feeling she might be able to get some information out of them.

Yun Song gave her a tug and said to the three children, “Then you kids stay home and do your homework. We don’t have anything else.”

Tong Jin looked confused.

Yun Song led the two of them back downstairs.

“If it really is this family, it won’t be too late to ask when the parents return.”

So the three of them waited downstairs for their return.

At that very moment, the couple Yun Song and the others were waiting for was walking rapidly through the mountains.

They originally lived in the town, but lately, before it even got dark, they had to run into the mountains after eating.

“If this keeps up, you might as well just kill me and bury me in the mountains,” the man couldn’t help but complain.

The woman replied, “Don’t even dream of something so easy! You’re the one who caused this trouble, so deal with it. Just deal with it. Besides, didn’t you eat plenty of that meat today?”

The couple bickered all the way until they finally reached a farmhouse.

The woman walked to a table, placed the items she was carrying on top of it, then moved the table aside to reveal a door underneath.

A cellar door.

The woman lowered the items down. There wasn’t a sound from below.

Taking advantage of the moonlight, the couple first fed the pigs, then the chickens and ducks. Finally, under the moonlight, the couple shouldered their hoes and began to dig the earth.

As she dug, the woman thought about the bank robbery everyone in town was talking about. Anyone providing a lead could get five hundred yuan.

Five hundred yuan.

She knew the lead, of course. She wanted that five hundred yuan! But she couldn’t take it.

The more she thought about it, the angrier she became.

During the day, she had to start stitching shoe soles the moment she opened her eyes until she nearly went blind. At night, she had to come to the mountains to feed the pigs and chickens, dig the earth, and do farm work.

There was clearly five hundred yuan within her reach, yet she couldn’t go and get it.

The woman collapsed onto the ground. Her mind was filled with the thought that once she finished digging here, she would have to rush back, exhausted to the bone, only to get three or four hours of sleep before dragging herself up to work again.

Why was her life so bitter? Had she committed murder or arson in a past life?

“I really can’t go on like this for another day!”

And so, when the couple was so exhausted they barely had the strength to walk, dragging their bodies back to town, they ended up running straight into the police at their front door.

One of the officers looked at them with a stern face and said, “We already know everything. Do you want to confess yourselves, or should we explain it for you?”

The couple didn’t suspect for a moment that the police were bluffing. Instead, they felt a sense of relief.

The woman had already vented her emotions in the mountains and was relatively calm now, but the man’s suppressed emotions finally broke.

“We confess, we confess.”

“If we confess to our crime and provide a lead on the bank robbery, can we still get that money?”

Yun Song said, “Explain what you did first.”

“We originally just wanted to steal a little money, maybe ten or twenty yuan. Who would have thought that old couple would come back early?”

As Yun Song listened, she felt something was off. The crime they were confessing to wasn’t the same case she was investigating.

“And then what did you do?”

“We didn’t have a choice! If they had made a scene and told everyone, how could our family keep living in this town? You people just got here, you don’t know the folks around here. Every one of them has a poisonous tongue and a wicked heart!”

“Did you kill them?” Tang Chao asked.

“We didn’t have the nerve for that. We locked them in the cellar.”

“How long have they been locked up? Are they still alive?”

“It’s been forty-six days. Both of them are still alive.”

“Nobody noticed?”

“They live in an isolated house. Occasionally someone passes by, and we were afraid of being discovered…”

“So, we have to go every day to bring them food. We also have to harvest their corn, cut their grain, and feed their pigs and chickens…”

It was currently the busy farming season. Just the corn and grain alone had driven the couple to the brink of exhaustion.

But their actions had an upside. Forty-six days had passed, and no one had realized the old couple was missing.

Even if relatives passed by, they saw the livestock were fine and the fields were being tended to. Even if the door remained closed, people just assumed they were out working in the mountains.

On one hand, the couple thought they were clever; on the other hand, they were truly driven mad by the labor.

Translator’s Notes