Diary of a Criminal Investigator

Is it too hot?

After Lu Chuan finished speaking, several criminal police officers behind him went out to find a sledgehammer and were about to start smashing.

"Don’t smash it!"

Wang Qiang saw the situation was unbearable and quickly stopped them: "Don’t smash... inside... there’s someone inside..."

Someone?

Although Lu Chuan had discovered that these walls were hollow.

However, when Lu Chuan checked inside the room just now, he had already seen that it was impossible for there to be a hidden door within the walls; otherwise, with his level of expertise, he would definitely have noticed it. This was also why he instructed the team to smash the walls.

But now Wang Qiang said there was someone inside without a door, what was going on?

Then, Wang Qiang pointed under the bed: "The entrance is under the bed."

Under the bed?

Lu Chuan motioned, and several criminal police officers came over and removed some clutter from under the bed.

Sure enough, they saw a hidden door on the wall.

"Captain Lu, there’s indeed a door inside, it’s locked."

Lu Chuan looked at Wang Qiang: "Where’s the key?"

"Here it is, here it is!"

The key was not on Wang Qiang’s body; he opened a drawer beside the bed and took out a key.

"Li Chuan is inside, he’s in there."

"Move the bed."

The room was long and narrow; moving the bed revealed the hidden door.

A few criminal police officers crawled out from under the bed, together moved the bed aside, and exposed the position of the hidden door, which was not very big, only about one meter long and half a meter high.

Soon, they opened the hidden door with the key.

As a result, when they saw the situation inside, everyone was stunned.

Li Chuan was tightly bound and stuffed inside, clearly in an unconscious state.

"The money is here too!"

There was also the stolen cash from Li Chuan, all inside the hidden compartment.

Lu Chuan went up to check; Li Chuan wasn’t dead.

Just fainted.

"I fed him sleeping pills..."

"What happened?"

"...He... what happened with him..."

Since Li Chuan had already been found, Wang Qiang had no way to conceal it any longer and confessed all the criminal facts.

It turned out that before Li Chuan planned to commit the robbery, he had already contacted Wang Qiang.

"He wanted me to support him on this side, and the three of them went to rob the bank; I was his retreat route."

"That day, when he was robbing, I was waiting for him on this side, and after he came, he hid in my house."

"So what happened now?"

"This... this..."

As it turns out, Wang Qiang saw that Li Chuan had stolen so much money and started to have other thoughts.

"He originally said he would give me 300,000 after the robbery, to help cover his escape."

"But there were more than two million in that box, just giving me 300,000, I thought it was too much of a loss."

"Then that night, I drugged his water, knocked him out, and tied him up."

"I wanted to wait until these few days of trouble passed, then take him out, and run off with the money."

"But, Officer, I didn’t want to kill him, I was just after the money; if I wanted to kill him, I would have already done it. You see, I just knocked him out, and I didn’t actually do anything else."

"Is my crime... not too big, right?"

Not too big?

It’s really hard to say whether it’s big or not.

From the perspective of robbing a bank, Wang Qiang did not directly participate in the robbery; he was just the liaison for Li Chuan.

Not directly participating in the robbery acts means at most he was harboring.

But after harboring, he got the idea to knock Li Chuan out to take possession of the two million in stolen money.

If this money were a legitimate income of Li Chuan, then such behavior by Wang Qiang should fall under kidnapping and extortion or robbery.

But the opponent’s money is stolen money.

How to count robbing stolen money...

"Take them back first."

After clearing the scene, Lu Chuan and the others took the two back to the Binzhou City Criminal Investigation Team.

In the interrogation room, Li Chuan slowly woke up.

Seeing that the environment around him had changed, Li Chuan’s expression dramatically changed.

Captured.

Ultimately captured.

In fact, Li Chuan’s plan for this bank robbery was very meticulous.

The escape plan for Zhang Xiaohu and Chen Zheng was actually designed by him. To be honest, those two plans had a certain possibility of being detected by the police, but the escape plan he chose was impossible for them to discover.

The secret compartment under Wang Qiang’s house was proposed by him.

The hidden compartment wasn’t big; after he got in, the police would definitely not find him because the outside showed no flaws, and the entry and exit of the hidden compartment was under the bed.

Even if the police searched here, they would only see that there was no one under the bed and let it go.

So hiding at Wang Qiang’s house was foolproof.

In this way, as long as he held out for a day or two until the heat was off, he could take the money and escape far away.

But Li Chuan never expected to be betrayed by Wang Qiang.

"Cursed Wang Qiang!"

This was Li Chuan’s first sentence after regaining consciousness.

All three criminal suspects have been apprehended, and all the stolen money was also recovered; from a criminal investigation standpoint, this case should be considered solved.

Chen Tianbao, Chen Zheng, and Zhang Xiaohu all confessed to their crimes without denial.

Along with Wang Qiang’s testimony, even without Li Chuan’s confession, his guilt could be confirmed.

The remaining matter is to organize the relevant materials and hand them over to the plaintiff for prosecution.

The interesting point lies in how to define Wang Qiang’s criminal actions.

Some people advocate for charging him similarly to a robbery charge.

Because Wang Qiang knew well that Li Chuan was going to rob the bank and had agreed to the reward. His premise of sheltering was for the sake of reward; the reason he did not participate directly was not because he didn’t want to or didn’t dare but because he served another purpose, which was to help Li Chuan escape.

So, from a subjective consciousness point of view, Wang Qiang had the subjective intention to rob the bank.

Which means he had the intent to commit a crime.

If it was just this, that would be one thing, but Wang Qiang, after Li Chuan robbed the money, knocked him out to take more than two million of stolen funds for himself.

This involves another form of robbery crime.

If Wang Qiang did not know Li Chuan’s money was stolen and therefore conducted a robbery, this crime would count as normal robbery.

But Wang Qiang knew full well that Li Chuan’s money was stolen; in such a case, his robbery cannot be entirely adjudicated as a robbery crime.

Of course, how to charge and how to prosecute, what final judgment will be made is up to the court, Lu Chuan and the others were just speculating in conversation.

The task force quickly solved such an important case, receiving substantial affirmation from both the city and the province.

That night, the Binzhou City Public Security Bureau director personally invited Li Donglin and other members of the task force to dinner.

The next morning, the task force would disband and all members return to their respective units. Li Donglin would also return to the provincial department to give a detailed report on the case.

To be honest, the rapid resolution of this case was advantageous mainly to the Binzhou City Public Security System.

The Binzhou City Public Security Bureau chief, along with the Criminal Investigation Team captain Gao Xiang, both felt their pressure significantly relieved.

Otherwise, whether they could continue working was another story.