sincerity of lies

There is a price to pay for seeing a beautiful woman smile.

The price was that Ji Xun sat cross-legged in front of the trash can in the Chinese restaurant with gloves on, and began to tidy up the trash can.

Huo Ranyin had indeed tidied up the trash can, and many things in it were sorted out, and the rest should not be too important.

But Ji Xun is still going to sort it out again.

After all, Huo Ranyin has Huo Ranyin's observation angle, and he has his own observation angle.

Even if what they observed basically overlapped.

So as long as there is a little bit of misalignment - the possibility of solving the case will be thrown up by 1%.

After reorganizing the trash can in his hands, Ji Xun quickly discovered a small detail.

"Date." Ji Xun said.

"What?" the other two asked him.

"The instant noodle bucket has a plastic seal." Ji Xun explained, "The bottom of the plastic seal is usually stamped with the production date. I looked through all the production dates here and found that the batches are different."

Needless to say, Ji Xun, Huo Ranyin had already discovered these things when he was checking the garbage.

"Then?" he asked, frowning.

"There are three dates here."

He has picked them all out and placed them in different categories.

First of all, the two are the same, and they are also the earliest.

H2016031507A

11:18

Then came a batch of eighteen identical copies.

H2016040107A

10:56

It ended up being a batch of seven identical.

H2016032107A

21:23

"What does this represent?" Meng Lingshan asked directly.

"When I first saw it, I didn't realize anything until I calculated the scores of these same production dates."

There is no need for Ji Xun to say any more, Huo Ranyin has already connected softly.

"7—the number of bosses, 18—the number of bodyguards, Mr. Liu, and crew members, 2—the two internal bosses who were poisoned in the bowl."

Ji Xun gave Huo Ranyin a look of approval.Then he asked logically and meaningfully:

"Why are the production times of the instant noodles of the two bosses who were poisoned in the bowl exactly the same?"

When Ji Xun pointed out this point, instant noodles and how to poison the instant noodles were closely connected by lightning-like inspiration.Meng Lingshan felt a shock like an electric shock.

I understand!

Great.

so amazing……!

The murderer is powerful.

Ji Xun, who immediately figured out the modus operandi when he saw the wrapping paper, was also amazing...!

"That makes sense." Huo Ranyin exhaled heavily, also feeling the excitement of the breakthrough in the investigation, "The poison didn't fall under our noses. The poison was put in the instant noodle bowl a long time ago. In the instant noodles When it was still in plastic packaging, the poison was already inside, most likely in the seasoning packaging bag. This is not difficult to achieve, but it requires some precise preliminary preparations. It is consistent with the image of the murderer killing people step by step on this ship. "

"The method of poisoning has been revealed." Ji Xun said, "The next step is to find out how the murderer delivered the two bowls of instant noodles to the deceased. For this, we need to find the crew and find out how the supplies here are. Assigned, in order to proceed to the next step of deduction, deduce whether the murderer is a targeted murder or a random murder..."

"You're right." Ji Xun said to Meng Lingshan suddenly after finishing his analysis.He licked the corner of his mouth and showed a satisfied smile, "I'm really lucky today. We've got the key clues. This case isn't that difficult anymore."

"What's in your hand?" Huo Ranyin said suddenly.

hand?Ji Xun glanced at his hand, it was a few sticky notes.

"A note." Ji Xun said.

"I know it's a sticky note." Huo Ranyin paused, "Where did it come from?"

"It came from the trash can." Ji Xun said, and then he realized, "Didn't you see this thing when you cleaned the trash can?"

"No." Huo Ranyin said firmly.

"It's fun." Ji Xun muttered to himself, "Someone came back here after all of you left, emptied the trash can first, threw a few pieces of paper in it, and then put the trash back... What do you think? , will do this, who is it?"

There was almost no pause, and the other two blurted out:

"murderer!"

"That's right, the murderer." Ji Xun said slowly. "With this action, we can eliminate the suspicion of some people..."

"First of all, after you left the Chinese restaurant, all the bosses, crew members, and suspects were driven into separate rooms, and then Mr. Liu stayed in the corridor on the second floor with his bodyguards until Mr. Liu thought of how to contact the outside world. , and took all the bodyguards to the deck...Then the eight bodyguards beside Mr. Liu are not suspected. They have no room to act alone. The only person who can act alone is someone in the room.

"This certain person came out of the room while Mr. Liu and the bodyguards were leaving, came back here again, and put a few pages of notes in the trash can. I think this kind of notes should only be found in the guest room ?”

Ji asked.

Huo Ranyin confirmed his guess.

"Well, I have it in my presidential suite. It's in a brown leather coil book."

"Considering that the bosses don't know enough about the structure of the ship, I'm afraid they won't be able to complete the set of prerequisite operations of administering ecstasy - destroying the hull - placing a signal jammer in a short period of time, and the scope of the murderer can be further narrowed down. The staff on the ship... It seems that as long as they are more careful, they will be able to catch the murderer by the tail. But before that—"

Ji Xun's gaze turned to the note paper in his hand.

"Why don't we take a look first, what clues did the murderer leave us?"

A few pieces of sticky notes, turned upside down, have no words, it seems to be torn off and thrown into the trash can casually. If Huo Ranyin hadn't checked the trash can, no matter who came, it would not be the first Time to realize that there is something wrong with these few sheets.

But once they realize that there is something wrong with these few pieces of paper, and then focus on it, the clues left by the murderer on the paper will be displayed in front of them without any concealment.

Morse code.

The murderer used the inherent shape of the coil itself to process the row of vertical strips of paper one by one.Among them, if the vertical bars are completely torn off, it represents '·', if a small part is torn off, it represents '—', and if more parts are torn off, it represents '-'. After such a process, a string of Morse code It's simple to pass on to them.

Ji Xun translated through the code: "1N3R16."

He pondered: "N...Number, R...Row, number 1, row 3, row 16...what do you think of?"

"Tea room." Meng Lingshan thought of it all at once.He remembered the book he was holding on the bookcase in the tea room that signaled Ji Xun, and he also remembered that there was a person holding a book like him at that time—a magazine.

help cook!

Meng Lingshan told the two of them the details.

"He is indeed suspicious." Huo Ranyin said coldly, "Go up and take a look now?"

"Before going up, do we have to think about another possibility?" Ji Xun said.

"What is possible?"

"Don't you think this piece of paper is similar to the microphone we dropped on the ground before?" Ji Xun asked, "It's like a little bait."

"You're right." Apparently Huo Ranyin had thought about this a long time ago, he nodded, and asked smoothly, "The bait we put on Mr. Liu is for Mr. Liu to send someone down to break it down; the murderer put it on us. Bait, what do you want us to do?"

"..."

This is a question, Ji Xun was silent for a moment, pondering what the murderer was thinking.

"It's not so much detours, it's just helping us." Meng Lingshan replied.

Two decent people looked at Meng Lingshan suspiciously:

Killer helping detectives and police?

"Don't forget the current situation. Mr. Liu has already found a way to communicate with the outside world, and the murderer doesn't have much time." Meng Lingshan showed sarcasm, "When desperate, people will inevitably take the road of using crime to punish crime. If The murderer’s purpose was to destroy the ship and kill Mr. Liu, so his purpose is not too different from ours. In this case, he helped us and gave us some directions so that we could find out what he wanted to do. What's so strange about what we found?"

Meng Lingshan's explanation convinced two people.

"From this point of view." Ji Xun said, "It makes sense. So let's follow this thing and go directly to the bookshelf in the tea room upstairs to look for it?"

With a little effort, they bypassed the bodyguards on the second floor and came to the tea room in the middle hall on the third floor.This action is not too difficult, after all, Mr. Liu's bodyguards have set themselves a safe zone visible to the naked eye.They remained motionless in the safe zone, as if they would be blown up beyond recognition by the invisible minefields outside if they stepped out of the safe zone.

On the third floor, around the stairs in the central hall, there are four rest tearooms. I don’t know which tearoom’s No. 1 bookcase the murderer put the things in, but it’s not difficult. They choose a place for each of them, and just look for it.

Meng Lingshan followed the instructions of the Morse code and came to the third row of grid No. 1. He found that this row was full of colorful magazines. When he counted to 3, he suddenly saw a notebook.

It was placed in his room and arranged uniformly by the ship, for them to write and draw, to remember things, and some people even wanted to use it as a diary.

Which crew member landed here?

Or...

Or, is this what they were looking for?

When Meng Lingshan realized it, the notebook had already appeared in his hand, and he opened it.

This is an old notebook that has been used repeatedly, at least repeatedly opened, and there are still things in the notebook.

He saw what was in it.

"Engine Logbook".

"Ji Xun..." He called softly.

Ji Xun and Huo Ranyin who were looking for something were startled by Meng Lingshan!

The middle hall runs through, and downstairs is a group of bodyguards with guns. Although the bodyguards are determined not to overstep the threshold under Mr. Liu's restraint, when the sound spreads unimpeded, it is unavoidable to call out. It's too arrogant... I'm really not afraid that the bodyguards below will grab their guns and rush up to give them a shot.

But soon, they had no time to worry about this.

Meng Lingshan handed the notebook to Ji Xun.

Ji Xun saw the engine log, saw 1976, also saw the diary stuck to the back of the engine log, saw "Miss Huo" and "Huo Qiying" written in the diary, and the oath overlaid on the last line of the diary——

"I, Lu Kun, promise that the diary on this page is all written by myself, and I hereby explain it."

He handed this page to Huo Ranyin, and quickly, impatiently, flipped through the entire notebook.

In the end, I found that there are seven copies of things like this in this notebook.

Seven parts, taken together, is a complete narrative from beginning to end.

It happened on Dingbo in 1976, a complete account from Huo Qiying's boarding to Huo Qiying's death.