CH 36

The traffic police arrived in mere moments including an officer riding a motorcycle.

“What’s going on here?” The officer stopped and hurried to climb off his bike when he saw the driver of the Buick stuck in his seat and the bus driver handcuffed and pressed to the ground by Xing Cong Lian.

Xing Cong Lian gave a salute and handed over his ID

The traffic policeman took the ID to be examined. Thinking of the recent kidnapping and hostage case, he saluted Xing Cong Lian and handed back the ID. “Oh oh oh, Captain Xing? You’re heading to the scene now, right?”

Xing Cong Lian didn’t deny it.

At this moment, Lin Chen turned his head and said, “The driver of the Buick might have a spinal injury but it should not be severe. Nevertheless, we still need to call an ambulance.”

“Just a moment; the ambulance should be here soon.” The policeman walked over to take a look inside the car and saw that the driver was conscious and didn’t seem to be severely injured. But still, he didn’t dare to move the driver, so he headed to the hot-tempered bus driver and asked Xing Cong Lian in a quiet voice, “You cuffed him?”

Xing Cong Lian nodded. “Give him some time to calm down. I’ll release him later.”

“Fuck, he was the one who knocked into Laozi! Why are you policemen cuffing me?! I want to file a complaint!” When the driver heard Xing Cong Lian’s words, he started to struggle.

“Hey hey, mister, you were clearly the one changing lanes. If you weren’t willing to let others pass while doing so, you should have been prepared to take full responsibility if anything went wrong.”

Seeing that the policeman started to lecture the bus driver responsible for the accident, Lin Chen interrupted, “You called an ambulance?” He couldn’t believe he had watched the policeman make his way here, but never heard him say anything to his walkie-talkie even once.

“Wait, I’ll check.”

The policeman entered the bus, took a silver-grey tablet from the dashboard, then got off, tapping on the screen a few times. Soon, the tablet showed the bus’ driving route record as well as a series of parameters after enduring the impact.

This tablet was very familiar to Xing Cong Lian. It was this thing that made them run around in circles earlier today.

Lin Chen and Xing Cong Lian communicated via eye contact and went over to the policeman to take a look.

“Well, it’s already set to automatically alert the police,” he said, showing the screen to Lin Chen. The system had already called the highway’s traffic police and the emergency number, 120.

At this time, the policeman’s walkie-talkie also rang. “Xiao Cao, was there an accident in your area?”

“Two vehicles collided. It’s not serious but one person is injured. Is the ambulance coming?”

“Let me see…” There was a pause from the other party before they answered. “They’re on their way.”

Xiao Cao nodded. “It’s really efficient.” Xing Cong Lian felt that he had, though still vaguely, grasped the crux of the matter.

“Yeah, we changed the system. Now, passenger vehicles that seat more than 7 passengers, dangerous goods transport vehicles, and really any vehicle prone to safety-related accidents, have all been equipped with the latest positioning and rescue system. The command center relies on the system’s integrated assessment to deploy police and allocate medical resources.”

“The system you’re talking about, is it based on… MEMS speed sensors or something like that?”

“It’s an automatic emergency alarm system based on MEMS but that’s just the name of the car-mounted terminal. Its full name is ‘Road Safety Classification Early Warning System’,” the traffic police explained. “This system is really good, especially on highways where the roads are wide and empty. If drivers are injured or unconscious and can’t call the police, their vehicle could automatically do so. This system is widely used overseas, ah.”

“That is to say, if the vehicle equipped with this system collides with something, the system automatically assesses the degree of damage, analyzes a series of factors such as vehicle type and road condition, and then sends out an emergency signal. That way, the command center will deploy the police and ambulance to the scene based on the aforementioned factors. The more serious the accident, the higher the rating given and the more police and medical resources will be deployed in this case, right?” Xing Cong Lian pondered, frowning. With a serious tone, he asked, “Then, on the contrary?”

“What contrary?” The traffic officer couldn’t quite understand what Xing Cong Lian meant.

Xing Cong Lian turned around and patted the policeman on the shoulder in gratitude. “What else do you know about this system?”

“What… What’s wrong?” Seeing Xing Cong Lian’s solemn expression, the traffic officer became a little scared.

“Answer my question.”

“It was said that this system was introduced by the Tu An Transportation Company and has been put into testing two years ago. The result was good so it was promoted to the whole province and eventually the whole country. To put it simply, all freight vehicles, passenger buses, and especially dangerous goods transportation vehicles that are prone to safety-related accidents are all required to have the system installed.”

“Tu An Company… This system was introduced by Tu An Company. Why?” He felt as if there was a thread here, one that connected everything. 

“What’s there to be surprised about? Tu An Company introduced this system and signed a contract with the Transportation Bureau, so that they would be the ones responsible for installing, promoting and maintaining the system…”

Xing Cong Lian stopped talking. Instead, he dragged Lin Chen to the roadside.

“What’s wrong?”

“Do you remember the time we got the news that Feng Jing School’s bus was hijacked?”

“About 12:15 am?”

“Yes.” Xing Cong Lian’s voice was low and serious. “But the hijacking should have occurred between 8:30 to 9:00 am…”

“A three hour lag.” Lin Chen realized the key point. “Our response was too slow.”

The police arrived within a few minutes for a minor car accident. But when a bus full of children was hijacked and its passengers were taken hostage, it took more than three hours for the police to be notified. This was just appalling!

“The answer to a traffic accident that the kid wants us to find should be similar to the hijacking he had orchestrated.”

“An accident with severe consequences due to a delayed response.”

“So, his target is actually the Road Safety Classification Early Warning System?” Lin Chen stood by the edge of the railing, feeling that even the spring wind was getting cold.

“Or, a person who has direct access to that system.”

Xing Cong Lian called Wang Chao. “Have you gotten out of the car? Is Yang Dian Feng still with you?”

“Huang Ze just ditched us after squeezing us dry. He said he doesn’t need my help anymore and asked me to just chill in the reed field. What’s up Boss?” 

“Stay away from Yang Dian Feng, I have some questions to ask you.”

Sounds of rustling were heard from the speaker and a few moments later, Wang Chao’s voice was heard again. “Done. I left stealthily, very stealthy!”

“Are you done filtering the accidents on the highway?”

“Just did. You don’t know how harsh my working conditions here are… Only two students of Feng Jing School were injured in a car accident on HongJing Highway, and it wasn’t serious.”

“Are there students whose family died in an accident?”

“Honestly, Boss, you think a brat from Feng Jing School pulled off the hijacking?”

“Kids his age must be students. And of course, it’s easiest to start with his own school, as he has the highest probability of finding people who would be willing to help him there,” Xing Cong Lian answered.

“Oh, I see.” Wang Chao clicked open a new document. “Then, there are three Feng Jing School students whose immediate relatives died in traffic accidents.”

Remembering the policeman’s explanation, Xing Cong Lian thought that if this system was still in the promotional stage, then not all vehicles would have been required to install them yet. “Find out whether there was any accident involving vehicles with MEMS self-help systems installed out of those three. Focus on passenger vehicles and road freight vehicles.”

“Okie.” A few moments passed before Wang Chao said with a somewhat skeptical tone, “This is a bit weird ah, Boss.”

“There’s a clue?”

“On May 11th, 2014, a medium Jin Long bus with a Hong Jing license plate passed through the Yong Chuan river section. Due to a faulty brake system and the driver’s error, the whole bus overturned and fell into the Yong Chuan River. None of the passengers survived, all 23 of them…” Wang Chao took a deep breath as he continued to read. He was reading at a slow pace, and when he saw the next words, he felt his cheeks turn cold. “In this accident, Fang Zhi Ming, a narcotics police officer who was merely 40 years old, was one of the passengers, and had valiantly sacrificed his life while on duty…”

To find a particular answer in the midst of thousands of stories was like finding a needle in a haystack. But it was ridiculous how easy it was to find the most special case from three traffic accidents.

Xing Cong Lian had thought the case could get heavy, and Lin Chen did give him a heads-up in advance, but he never thought this case would be related to a comrade whose life was sacrificed. It took him a long time to respond. “Send me the details.” After saying that, he realised that he still held onto a faint glimmer of wishful thinking. He thought that maybe this accident had nothing to do with the “Candy Robber”, and that the young man who hijacked a bus was not the child of a narcotics officer.

The email was sent over in mere seconds. Xing Cong Lian glanced through it before stiffly stopping.

The shock and grief in Xing Cong Lian’s green eyes gave Lin Chen a bad feeling. He turned his sight to the screen. The man’s usually steady hand was now  trembling.

Following his fingers, Lin Chen’s sight fell onto a small row of letters on the phone screen.

【Two of the passengers died from severe intracranial injury, one from a punctured lung and the remaining 20 passengers drowned. The list is as follows…】

The sun was fading, the spring breeze cold.

“This is the story he wanted to tell,” Lin Chen looked up and said in a soft voice.

———

Xing Cong Lian drove as if he was courting death. The sun chased their car in a relentless pursuit, but it was soon thrown off.

The story was very simple. Since the passengers had died from drowning, it implied that when they had fallen off the cliff and into the water, they were still alive. They might have been injured, or wailing in anguish, but they were all still alive. The bus wouldn’t be so quick to sink. They were waiting in the water, filled with expectations. Perhaps it had been five minutes, or possibly even ten, but it was until the ice-cold river completely submerged them.

Xing Cong Lian drove with care and full attention on the road, but his expression was so serious that the traffic officer who was forced into the car before he could even handle the car accident was too terrified to breathe.

“Don’t worry, we just want to ask you some questions,” Lin Chen soothed, noticing that the policeman had started to panic.

“Wh…what can I do for you?”

“How long have you been stationed on the highway?”

“Two years.”

“In these two years you were on duty, has there been any accident that seemed really weird to you…”

“What do you mean by weird?”

“For example, due to late response from the rescue team, the accident turned fatal.”

“What do you mean by that?! What late rescue?!” The policeman got a little angry hearing that. “The highway sections where the accident happens is beyond our control! In addition to traffic jams and other factors, our only option is to fly over to the scene if we want to arrive right after an accident occurs, ah!”

“But the road classification alarm system has its own loopholes, you know.”

“What loopholes?”

“The classified alarm is based on the degree of the impact on the vehicle, right? According to the severity of the accident, if the vehicle is very badly damaged, the command center will receive a high-level alarm from the system. But if the damage isn’t serious, yet the vehicle is in an even graver situation… For example,  a bus that overturned into a river…”

“What you’re talking about is a special case. Besides, how could a bus fall into the river without taking any damage? We would have received the alarm. You, you… you can’t deny the functionality of the Early Warning Classification System because of that!” The policeman shook his head.

“Never happened?” Xing Cong Lian slammed the steering wheel. “So the accident where a bus fell into the Yong Chuan River on May 11th didn’t happen?” he said, looking at the policeman through the rearview mirror with cold eyes.

The policeman frowned, looking like he didn’t understand why Xing Cong Lian would all of a sudden mention that accident. “I remember that ah… The May 11th accident was caused by a driver error. Also, before the bus overturned and fell into the river, the driver had already pressed the alarm button, and the medic team arrived at the scene in record time.”

At this, Xing Cong Lian looked at the policeman with incredulousness. “If the response was timely, then why did 20 of the passengers drown?”

“The Yong Chuan river is deep, and the current was turbulent at that time. It was nighttime too, which made rescue difficult. When the rescue team arrived, many of the passengers were already on the verge of death.”

“But don’t you think that accident was too peculiar?”

“The casualties were heavy in this accident, yeah. But if you’re insistent on saying that our response was late, you can check the data in the system to see if there was any problem with the time the driver sent us the alarm and the time we arrived at the scene.”

The policeman’s explanation didn’t ease Lin Chen’s mind.

Yes, just because his father died because of the late arrival of the rescue team, he had to hijack a bus full of children and kidnap them? This seemed too radical, and too unreasonable. Such an unreasonable purpose would not have been able to persuade a driver to lie to the police, let alone convince those who might have helped him in the dark.

But if that wasn’t the case, then how terrible was the truth behind this traffic accident?

He didn’t hesitate to once again ask the tech geek for help.

Wang Chao was lying on the reeds, his clothes becoming a bit damp. Hearing Lin Chen’s voice coming from the speaker, he turned energetic. “May I know what I can do for you, sir?”

“Xing Cong Lian and I suspect there are loopholes in the Road Safety Classification Early Warning System. Can you find out the time the vehicle sent out a help signal and the specific time the rescue team arrived at the scene of the May 11th accident?”

“Oh, the latter’s easy. The traffic police has a file here, let me see…” Wang Chao put the laptop on his lap before sitting up. “On May 11th, the time the rescue team arrived at the scene was 9:20 pm.”

“What about the time when the alarm system received the automatic alert from the vehicle?”

“That ah…I’ll have to get the data from the transportation company’s back end, it’ll be a little troublesome.”

“Did something happen?”

“Because I… I’ll need to… do something against the law again…” Wang Chao said, sneaking a glance at Huang Ze who was standing not far away. “When are you and Boss coming?” he asked, vigilant as he hacked into the transportation company’s system.

“How is it going there?”

“Fuck, it’s Inspector Huang, don’t you know how he is? If military force is an option, he will never negotiate. The snipers from the special force are all in place, it’s terrible. It’s a live-action Counter Strike, ah. This is the first time I’m seeing something like this,” Wang Chao reported. He tapped ‘Enter’ then said, “Bingo. It was 9:12 pm.”

“That is to say, the rescue team arrived only 8 minutes after the help signal was sent?”

“Yeah, there’s no problem.”

Lin Chen kept the phone by his ear, but he didn’t know what to say for a moment.

“No, there must be a problem somewhere.” Xing Cong Lian pressed the horn, avoiding a collision with the car in front.

“Sigh, that’s why I said you guys are overthinking it, yet you insist the rescue response was delayed. No matter how late it was, there are always cars on the highway so even if the driver themselves didn’t make the emergency call, other drivers on the road would have once they saw an accident.”

Lin Chen suddenly thought of something after hearing this, but Xing Cong Lian, who was driving, spoke first. “You’re right. So, what if it was more than an accident?”

“Wang Chao, did the police receive a manual emergency call that night? I mean, other than the automatic alarm from the system,” Lin Chen asked.

“This …” Wang Chao searched the data again, wishing he had eight arms. “There seems to be none eh.”

“That means, the road was too dark at that time, so no one saw how the accident happened.” After a few moments, Xing Cong Lian said, “Isn’t this too much of a coincidence?”

“Wang Chao, if someone had altered the data, would you be able to find that out?” Lin Chen finally asked.

Translator(s): Kuro

TL Checker(s): Zryuu

Editor(s): Namio

Proofer(s): Celine