Hong Kong Young Writers Anthologies Fiction 2020complete | Page 653

Grabbing his tablet, he started typing as Detective Lu began. Normally, he would have hooked up the
shop’s AI and make it record down and sort the details for him, but antique phones don’t connect to the 7G
network. Therefore, he painstakingly typed down the information, praying that he didn’t miss anything
important.
“On the morning of May 30th 2017, we received a call from a distressed boyfriend who had just come into
the house and found his girlfriend - our victim Bai Ling-Ling - dead in the living room. The boyfriend -
whose name is Hu Ding Quan - claims he had come by after he received a call from her telling him to
come over, only to find her laying on the living room floor with no signs of life. When we got to the scene
of the crime, we found the victim lying on her back, with a distinct red marking across her throat and the
surroundings undisturbed. It was later determined that she had died from strangulation, but we were unable
to find the murder weapon.”
Yun was frantically typing down the details. “What did the marks on her neck look like?”
“They looked like a series of interlocking strands in a uniform pattern, sort of like individual rings hooked
together to form a long piece. The pattern seemed to be around half a centimeter in width and there seemed
to be a larger marking in the center of her throat where both of the strands met. There were no distinct
traces left behind on the victim’s neck from the weapon.”
“It doesn't sound like a rope,” Yun turned towards his tablet and began searching for possible things
“probably isn’t a piece of cloth, maybe it could be …” his eyes landed on one of the antique necklaces
sitting in front of the store “could it be a necklace?”
“That's what we thought at first too, but we went over all of the jewelry pieces she had and all other
potential necklaces that we could possibly think of but none of them were able to produce the same
markings, we also tried all of the potential things that you could use to strangle someone but they all failed.”
Yun heard a loud thump on the other side of the line “All of the evidence we collected points to Hu Ding
Quan being the murderer but we just can’t find a murder weapon to convict him.”
“I know this sounds cliché, but how’s life in the future anyways? where do you live? What do you do?
Detective Lu asked
“I live in Nacre, somewhere around the center of the Pearl Delta section of the Greater Bay Area. I run an
antique shop in one of the older parts of town that was opened by my grandfather, he started off selling
some of the stuff that came along with the property and he slowly got into the antique business.” Yun
paused “I’m not actually not really sure what to say, life’s pretty normal.”
Detective Lu chuckled, “Your future sounds awfully different from what their trying to tell us now, this
point in history is filled with so many conflicting comments about the Greater Bay Area, ranging from it
being described as “heaven on earth” to it being the worst decision we’ve ever made.”
Now it was Yun’s turn to feel amused “I don’t think it would be much different than where it is now,
everything’s just more efficient, less border crossings and more technological advancements.”
“By the way, where’s Nacre? There’s no place in the world named that at this point in time.” Detective Lu
asked.
“Uhh… not sure, let me check,” Yun turned towards his screen “I think It’s what you called Tai Po back
then.”
The line on the other side turned silent. “Hello? Hello? Are you still there?”
“Any chance that your grandfather was alive during 2019?” Detective Lu asked.
“I think so, why do you ask?”