Chapter 64 — Clues to the Robbery
The Blossom Guardian · Page 1 of 3
In any case, though Gu Pengzhan had said Qing Bo was a man to be trusted, Wei Zhao could not shake the feeling that Gu Pengzhan was hiding something from him. Bringing him here to keep Gu Mengyao company was not simply a matter of finding her a study companion, a nanny, and a bodyguard rolled into one; there seemed to be something deeper behind it.
What that something was, however, Gu Pengzhan had not said. Qing Bo, he suspected, knew nothing of it either; most likely only Gu Pengzhan himself knew. "Mr. Gu, I've parked the car. May I come in?"
"Come in. Yizheng and I were just talking about yesterday's business," Gu Pengzhan said.
Qing Bo pushed the door open and came in, settling onto the sofa beside Wei Zhao.
"Earlier we were discussing why the kidnappers chose the bank. Yizheng already explained it — the school requires every student to open a bank card, to deposit their tuition and fees..." Seeing Qing Bo enter, Gu Pengzhan picked up the thread where they had left off. "From this it follows that there may well be someone inside Yao Yao's school passing information to them. Otherwise the kidnappers could never have chosen that particular moment to rob the bank."
"Yes," Wei Zhao nodded. "That's what I thought too. And I believe the informant must be a member of the school's staff, not a student. Only a staff member would know these things in advance — by the time the students learned of it, it was already almost dismissal time, and notifying the kidnappers to prepare at that point would clearly have been too late!" "Exactly!" Gu Pengzhan nodded in approval, apparently much pleased with Wei Zhao's quick thinking. "As for the school, I'll look into that as well... but... never mind, let's not go into that..."
"Why? Is it difficult? Isn't Uncle Chu a school trustee?" Wei Zhao was puzzled. Surely it would be relatively easy for Gu Pengzhan to investigate matters at the school?
"Why? Is it difficult? Isn't Uncle Chu a school trustee?" Wei Zhao was puzzled. Surely it would be relatively easy for Gu Pengzhan to investigate matters at the school?
"I am a trustee, true enough, but the school has three trustees, each holding a stake in it, so there are many of their people in the school as well. You can imagine the resistance an investigation would run into..." Gu Pengzhan did not conceal this from Wei Zhao; it was no secret.
"So that's how it is. Then I'll keep an eye out while I'm at school," Wei Zhao said after hearing Gu Pengzhan's explanation.
By this point Wei Zhao had roughly pieced the picture together: the kidnappers had not snatched Gu Mengyao for money or her life. They meant to use her to force Gu Pengzhan into concessions over a business partnership.
And the reason they had not chosen to carry out the kidnapping elsewhere was purely to throw the police off the scent and buy time. If Gu Pengzhan's daughter were abducted, one could well imagine the massive police force that would be thrown into a frantic search for the kidnappers' trail.
In that case, Gu Mengyao might well be found by the police before their goal was ever achieved.
...
Indeed, once Yang Huaijun returned to the criminal investigation unit, he immediately took over the bank robbery case — and in his hands, the case proved remarkably easy to handle!
Yang Huaijun simply made one phone call to the city management command center and obtained the surveillance footage from every street near the bank the day before! Only then did Qiu Lingshan realize how foolish she had been!
Although "Digital City Management" had been in operation in Songshan for less than a month, Yang Huaijun had sharply committed these useful details to memory! "Digital City Management," as it was called, referred to the use of information technology and mobile communications to process, analyze, and manage information on all the city's management components and incidents, an informatization measure to modernize urban administration.