Chapter 125: Suspicious Voices (2) |
Tang Jinxia and Shen Qing were inside the creative studio talking, while the four police officers waiting in the living room sat patiently.
During their door-to-door investigations and interviews, they had encountered all sorts of strange situations, and maintaining patience was the most basic requirement for completing their tasks.
As long as the person being questioned was cooperative, it greatly improved communication efficiency, made it less likely to miss important and critical information, and prevented detours in subsequent investigations. So waiting a little longer wouldn't waste any time.
On the contrary, those seemingly rushed, blunt, urgent, or even forceful interrogations often turned things into a complete mess, wasting even more time.
After nearly twenty minutes, the two of them finally came out of the creative studio.
Shen Qing had apparently mentally prepared herself. The expression on her face was relatively natural, but her body language was a bit stiff. She had probably never dealt with this kind of situation before.
That was hardly surprising. Not to mention a young woman barely over twenty, even someone with rich life experience would inevitably feel some tension upon suddenly learning that a major case was connected to them.
The way Tang Jinxia had emphasized the severity of the situation during their earlier conversation had clearly had some counterproductive effect on Shen Qing. It was a double-edged sword.
Wei Hongbo smiled and said, "Hello, Shen Qing. My colleagues here are all fans of your songs, and I often listen to them too."
The other three officers also smiled back, hoping that the fan identity would ease her tension. But the effect seemed somewhat limited.
Wei Hongbo had to take it slow. Following procedure, he said, "I'm Wei Hongbo, a criminal police officer from the Jingning District Branch. These three are my colleagues. We're only here today to gather information, so don't be nervous."
As he spoke, he showed Shen Qing his police badge and an interview notice.
Shen Qing stared at the credentials for a moment, then looked at Wei Hongbo. "Officer Wei, are you Wei Hongsi's older brother?"
Wei Hongbo was a little surprised but nodded. "Yes."
He knew his younger brother had met Shen Qing before. When Paradise had done reshoots for the commercial, Wei Hongsi had gone to the set for half a day, spotted quite a few useful clues, and then came to the Brigade to give him and Zhang Shengyong an analysis.
But he hadn't expected Shen Qing to actually recognize his brother. And after receiving his affirmative answer, she visibly relaxed, which secretly impressed him. First there was Ji Cheng, and now Shen Qing. Both managed to benefit from his brother's reputation somehow.
In truth, Shen Qing had only met Wei Hongsi twice. However, during an online conversation a couple of days ago, Wei Hongsi had given her excellent advice for her creative work, and she had already come to regard him as a kindred spirit. For her, that was far more effective at closing the distance between them than meeting face-to-face any number of times or exchanging any number of words.
She adjusted her sitting position slightly to make herself more comfortable and said, "Officer Wei, please go ahead and ask your questions."
Wei Hongbo said, "Let's start with this person, Zhou Huai."
Shen Qing was prepared for this. She began by telling the story of how she had met Zhou Huai.
When she was a senior in college, she had composed two pop-style pieces and posted them on the school's website for fellow enthusiasts to review. There were both good and bad comments, but the former were in the majority, which further solidified her determination to become a singer-songwriter.
Among the many comments, one private message on the site caught her interest. It contained lyrics written for her two pieces.
Shen Qing's major was composition, and writing lyrics was not her forte. That was why she had only posted the music without words. She found that the two sets of lyrics fit the mood of her pieces perfectly and expressed exactly what she had intended to convey. They were far better than the several drafts of lyrics she had written herself.
The person who sent her that private message was Zhou Huai. After that, Shen Qing wrote another piece and asked Zhou Huai to help fill in the lyrics. After Zhou Huai finished, they met in a piano room at the school. Shen Qing tried singing it and felt it was very good, so she discussed with Zhou Huai the possibility of collaborating on a release.
Zhou Huai told her, "It's clear you want to be a singer-songwriter, so you should write your own lyrics." From then on, Shen Qing began learning how to write lyrics from Zhou Huai.
Their communication was mainly online, and they didn't meet often. Especially after Shen Qing debuted, they might see each other only a few times a year. However, whenever she had doubts about creative matters, she would still seek Zhou Huai's advice.
After Shen Qing finished this part of the story, Wei Hongbo asked, "Can you tell me your impression or evaluation of Zhou Huai as a person?"
"How should I put it." Shen Qing thought as she spoke. "He's eight years older than me, but in our interactions, he seemed even older than that, so I've always called him 'the teacher.' He's given me a lot of advice on creative work and personal development, and I think it's all been quite insightful."
"How would you rate his lyric-writing ability?"
"Excellent. He's one of the top lyricists, I'd say."
"Has he ever published any works publicly?"
"It doesn't seem so." Shen Qing thought carefully. "I don't recall any. Including those three lyrics he first wrote for me, he had me rewrite the lyrics before publishing them."
Wei Hongbo asked many more details about Zhou Huai, including the content of their conversations during each meeting, the environment at the time, the other person's emotions, and so on.
Since many things had happened quite a while ago, Shen Qing couldn't remember them clearly, but she still tried her best to answer the questions.
If anyone else had asked like this, Tang Jinxia would have stopped them long ago. But seeing Wei Hongbo's expression was very focused and completely different from a journalist's gossipy questioning style, and combined with her preconceived notions, she was willing to believe that the police needed this information for the investigation.
And that was indeed the case. Wei Hongbo focused on seemingly trivial details because it helped the expert team construct a Multimodal Stimulus Package. The more detailed and realistic the simulated content was, the easier it would be to obtain valuable information from Zhou Huai.
The interview lasted over an hour. Wei Hongbo also obtained from Shen Qing their online chat records from the past year and more, as well as all the materials Zhou Huai had ever sent to Shen Qing.
After the four police officers left, Tang Jinxia and Shen Qing thought this matter was settled. But the next day, Sunday, Wei Hongbo visited again and brought them some rather unpleasant news.
Based on the information provided by Shen Qing, experts had learned through interpreting Zhou Huai's dreams that the Guide Light Society had carried out "Spiritual Contamination" on Shen Qing. Additionally, "Psychological Viruses" had been detected in several video files that Zhou Huai had sent to Shen Qing.
Wei Hongbo gave them a limited introduction to the whole "Paradise Advertisement Incident," explaining the concepts of "Psychological Virus" and "Spiritual Contamination."
This really scared Tang Jinxia. Previously, when Ji Cheng had contacted her about reshooting the ad, he said the reason was that the creative director Peng Jun had met with an accident, and using his version for the new product launch would be "unlucky."
Although Tang Jinxia had her suspicions, she hadn't looked into it further. After all, Peng Jun had nothing to do with them. Since Paradise was paying, she just treated it as another job. Now she finally learned that there was a much bigger hidden story behind it all.
