Let's Just Talk, Shall We?
Inside the Annam Police Station foreign affairs team interview room.
It was a cramped space with nothing in it but a gray wall, one desk, and a few chairs.
A rough-looking Chinese man with half his head bald sat slouched in a chair, as if he could not even be bothered to sit properly. His face was twisted into a deep scowl, as though the very act of being here offended him. Beside him, a translator sat quietly.
Pyose Jun shuffled a stack of documents on the desk and asked casually, “Why did you come to Korea?”
The man blinked and looked at the translator.
Then, in a blunt stream of Chinese, he said, “How many times do I have to tell you I came for tourism? Are all Korean cops deaf?”
“Yesterday, you said you came here for work,” Pyose Jun said.
The bald man let out a snort of laughter. “Did I? Well, if tourism is work, then sure, it was work.”
Pyose Jun barely managed to swallow down his irritation. The veins on the back of his hand stood out beneath the table as he continued, “Fine. But you say you came as a tourist, yet you’re staying in a studio apartment you rented short-term?”
“What’s the problem? A friend told me it was cheaper, so I did it.”
“And you barely brought any clothes, just a laptop?”
“I’m not the type to fuss around packing every little thing whenever I go somewhere.”
Pyose Jun stared at him in silence for a moment, then set three mobile phones on the table.
“Why do you carry so many phones?”
“Because collecting phones is my hobby?”
“Does that sound believable to you?”
“Why wouldn’t it be? Maybe not in Korea, but there are plenty of people like that in China. People who like collecting things and all that.”
“Once we search them, everything will come out anyway. It would be better for you if you told us on your own.”
The bald Chinese man gave a derisive laugh. “Search my phones without my permission? Go on, if you’re so confident. Looks like Korean police don’t bother following the law when they investigate.”
“Hah...”
At the man’s sneering tone, Pyose Jun’s expression hardened.
Bang!
Suddenly, the man slammed a hand down on the desk.
“And how long are you planning to keep me here anyway? I already admitted I got drunk and messed up! I said I’d pay every bit of compensation for the damage, too! Isn’t this a violation of human rights!? Call the consulate! Contact the Chinese consulate!”
The bald Chinese man, now in a full uproar, shouted and raged. The translator tried to calm him down and said something, but as if he had no intention of listening, the man only made more of a scene.
“Haah...”
Pyose Jun let out a thin sigh and glared at him. The tendons on the back of his hand stood out beneath the table.
“I was only asking necessary questions. Tell him he’ll be released soon and he doesn’t need to cause a scene. Unless he’d rather stay here longer.”
After hearing the translation, the man’s lips curled into a smile. “He should’ve said that from the start.”
Clack.
He propped both legs up on the desk and began humming leisurely to himself.
Pyose Jun brushed his hair back and led the translator outside for the moment.
Waiting out there were the detectives from the intelligence crime unit.
Pyose Jun shook his head with a dark expression.
“He has no intention of opening his mouth. He keeps dodging every bit of bait we throw at him, too. Feels like he knows Korean law inside and out.”
“This is maddening. If only we could understand each other, I’d drag it out of him myself.”
Intelligence Team Leader Moon Dong-cheol thumped his chest in frustration.
“How much time do we have left?”
“About five hours. After that, we have to let him go no matter what.”
They could hold him for at most forty-eight hours on a warrantless arrest. Within that time, they either had to release him or obtain an arrest warrant.
“Can’t we get the warrant somehow?” Moon Dong-cheol exhaled heavily.
“Not at the moment. We don’t have direct evidence...”
“Then what do we do? We just let him go like this?”
“Haah. That bastard is definitely the one, too... This is driving me insane.”
Moon Dong-cheol scratched violently at his short hair, already shot through with gray.
Every circumstance pointed to the same conclusion.
That Chinese bastard was clearly a middleman, passing the ringleader’s orders down to the managers.
First, there was the officetel he had taken as his lodging.
There were a large number of people living nearby who were suspected to be part of the voice phishing ring. They were probably managers or remittance handlers, and his movements overlapped with theirs in ways that were too neat to be coincidence.
Even a quick look at his immigration records turned up suspicious patterns.
The intervals were far too regular, far too frequent.
Was all of that really a coincidence?
Of course not.
What was more, the mobile phones they had confiscated were divided into receive-only and send-only devices.
And even stranger, for someone who claimed to be here on a tourist trip, there wasn’t a single photo taken with those phones.
If they dug through his call logs and financial records, they would almost certainly find something even more damning.
Of course, that would only be possible if they got the warrant.
“Haah... This is a pain in the ass.”
They had been chasing these people for two full years.
Even now, if they really wanted to, they could arrest any number of the lower-level thugs.
But that would accomplish almost nothing.
As always, the bastards would simply cut off the tail and replace it with someone else, as if daring them to try.
In the end, unless they ripped out the root, the stalk would only keep growing back.
“If that bastard really is a middleman... then maybe this is our only chance. To catch the ringleader.”
For him, it was desperate.
He wanted to catch them so badly it made him furious.
The criminal profits from the voice phishing ring were estimated to be in the hundreds of billions of won.
Among the victims, there were even those who had taken their own lives because they could not endure the guilt and self-blame.
If they missed this moment, there was no telling when another chance would come.
“Team Leader. Why don’t we at least ask the prosecutor? If we plead with him, isn’t there some way?”
“Right. Prosecutor Eom isn’t exactly the kind of man who’s impossible to deal with.”
The detectives from the intelligence team grabbed at Moon Dong-cheol and pressed him, because everyone wanted the ringleader caught just as badly.
He understood their feelings, but Moon Dong-cheol could only shake his head.
“It’s impossible. No matter how certain the circumstances are, we still don’t have anything beyond that. He’ll never approve the warrant. Unless that bastard goes insane and confesses.”
“Then we let him go like this? This might be our last chance.”
At his subordinate’s frustration, Moon Dong-cheol could only sigh in silence.
That was when it happened.
Knock, knock, knock—
The door opened, and someone walked in.
Someone who looked completely out of place in this room.
A man in a fluorescent safety vest, dressed in the uniform of a local district patrol officer.
“Ah! You’re here?”
When Pyose Jun spotted Song Tan, his face lit up and he hurried over.
“A patrol officer?”
The intelligence detectives glanced at Song Tan’s insignia and tilted their heads.
“Inspector Pyo. Who is this...?”
“Oh, he’s the district patrol officer who arrested that Chinese man on the spot after he caused a drunken disturbance.”
“Constable Song Tan, probationary officer with Machon District Patrol.”
“Probationary?”
The detectives’ faces immediately soured.
They already didn’t understand why a patrol officer had been brought in, and now they were even more bewildered to hear he was still on probation.
“Ahem. Inspector Pyo, even so, time is short. Bringing in a probationary officer for practice at a time like this...”
“It isn’t that. I called him because I’m grasping at straws.”
“What do you mean?”
“That arrogant Chinese bastard will talk to Constable Song, though. I remembered that and asked the district patrol to send him over.”
Everyone looked baffled.
Hadn’t they just seen it for themselves?
That Chinese man was playing on a level above the police. He couldn’t speak Korean, yet he knew Korean law with uncanny familiarity.
“Even so, a probationary officer...?”
“If I weren’t desperate, do you think I’d do this? I’m not letting that bastard go. I’ll try everything I can. I’ll use every means available.”
Seeing the feral look in Pyose Jun’s eyes, Moon Dong-cheol had no choice but to nod.
He knew that Pyose Jun’s biological mother had once fallen victim to a voice phishing scam and suffered a serious illness because of it.
Besides, they were already out of alternatives.
“Probationary officer. No, Song Tan, was it? You’ve heard the situation, right?”
“Yes. I heard that man is suspected of being part of a voice phishing ring.”
“He’s a sly, vicious bastard. Try to shake him enough to make him slip up, even a little. I’m not expecting much, so don’t feel too much pressure.”
“I’ll give it a try.”
“Good. Go on in.”
At Moon Dong-cheol’s signal, Song Tan lowered the cap he had been wearing, straightened his clothes, and walked toward the interview room.
The detectives from the intelligence team whispered among themselves.
“Inspector Pyo, this is wild. To think you’d bring in a probationary officer.”
“He wants to catch him that badly. Maybe even more desperately than we do.”
“Still, that damned Chinese bastard... If he gets released, he’ll obviously bolt straight back to China. Then we’d have to start all over from zero, wouldn’t we?”
“That’s very likely. Haah. My head’s already hurting.”
While the detectives murmured in low voices, Song Tan reached for the interview room door.
“Huhhh~ ssswa-sswa-ssasa.”
The bald Chinese man was still humming to himself with his feet on the desk.
When he heard the door open, he raised his voice as though he’d been waiting for it.
“Damn it, get me out of here already! Are you going to buy my plane ticket if I miss it!? Huh!? I swear I’m not letting this go! This is insane! You think I’m lying!?”
He was still shouting when he saw who had entered, and he froze as if turned to ice.
“Y-y-y-y-you... Why are you here!?”
“What happens if you don’t let it go?”
Song Tan sat down across from him with his eyes gently curved, his tone pleasant and polite.
“It’s nice to see you again like this. I was disappointed we had to part so quickly.”
“Ah... A-ah...”
The bald Chinese man could not say a word. He only opened and closed his mouth helplessly.
The people watching from outside tilted their heads.
“What’s wrong with him?”
“How should I know...? He just said hello...”
When Moon Dong-cheol asked, the translator repeated exactly what had been said.
There really hadn’t been anything remarkable about it.
“For now, how about taking your feet off the table? I’d say that’s basic courtesy between people, wouldn’t you?”
At the soft-spoken remark, the man jumped and dropped his legs at once.
Then he sat upright, straight-backed and properly composed.
The detectives watching outside were dumbfounded.
“What the hell is with him all of a sudden? Did he get scared or something?”
“No, all he did was politely ask him to put his feet down and talk.”
“Then why is he reacting like that? He looks like a recruit getting corrected by an instructor.”
“........”
No one denied it.
Because, to anyone looking, that was exactly what it seemed like.
Sniffing that something was off, the detectives held their breath and focused on what was happening inside.
***
“B-but... you... why are you... here...?”
“I’m a police officer too. Is there a problem with that?”
“You do a different kind of work!”
“Not really. Catching criminals—that’s what police officers are for.”
Song Tan’s demeanor was bizarrely calm, and maddeningly courteous.
By contrast, the Chinese man looked tense to the point of panic.
“I-I didn’t do anything! Really! I’m telling you, I really just came here to have fun! I already said I’d pay for everything I wrecked at the restaurant! What the hell is the problem!? You can’t just do this in a democratic country, can you!?”
Song Tan listened in silence, then leaned forward and pressed one finger to his lips.
“Shh. Your voice is too loud. It makes it hard to have a proper conversation.” His gaze was serene, almost kind. “Shall we just... not talk?”
The man flinched and began shaking uncontrollably.
His body remembered.
His body and his mind both remembered the horrifying pain.
And before him, that devil of a police officer was warning him.
Did he want to taste that hellish agony again?
The man shook his head so violently it looked as though his neck might snap.
“I-I’ll talk! I’ll talk, definitely!”
“Good. Ah, one thing before we begin.”
“Y-yes, yes. Go ahead.”
“If you don’t answer my questions properly, or if you tell clumsy lies...” Song Tan smiled faintly. “Then I think I’ll feel very, very disappointed in Mr. Haoyu. I do hope that won’t happen.”
The moment Haoyu met Song Tan’s eyes, his whole body locked up tight.
Like a deer standing before a predator.
The horrifying pain he had never once experienced in his life still clung to him, vivid and sickening.
Even worse was the fact that he had no idea what that devil-like policeman had done, or how he had done it.
The blood drained from Haoyu’s face.
And he made a vow then and there: he would rather die than ever go through that pain again.
“Is Mr. Haoyu a member of the organization committing voice phishing crimes against Koreans?”
The detectives watching from the observation room had their faces twist in disbelief.
“What the hell is he doing!? Who asks it that bluntly!? Unless that guy’s crazy, why would he answer that honestly!? Damn it, this is why rookies are useless!”
One detective, who had been raging like a madman, froze.
“Y-yes! I’m just someone who receives instructions from the ringleader in Shandong Province and passes them on to the manager in Korea. That’s all. I swear.”
For the first time in his life, he saw a suspect answer a police question so obediently.