The apartment manager was a thin old man. He sat on a square wooden chair behind the glass in the duty room, silently and meanly looking at the air in front of him.
Sitting next to him was a Hayok that was even thinner than he looked. It was dull in color and had a weak tail. It had not evolved but already looked more senile than a long-haired dog.
Hugo knocked on the glass in front of the duty room door. Seeing that the old man did not respond, he opened the door and walked in.
The apartment manager and Hayok glanced slowly at the white-coated detective together, as if they were two mechanical devices connected by levers. Then they pursed their lips in unison, turned their heads together, and continued their staring contest with the empty air.
Hugo didn't care after being treated coldly, and looked around the duty room with a pair of sneaky eyes.
Broken tables, broken chairs, wall clocks on the wall, landline phones, old fans, locked drawers, sticky notes covered with twisted symbols, waste paper baskets filled with miscellaneous items... In the narrow duty room, Everything is within sight.
Hugo's eyes casually glanced at the ghost-like note, and his eyes began to become playful.
"Ahem." The detective suddenly cleared his throat and faced the old man and said, "Old sir, in addition to being an apartment manager, you should also be doing some work as a house leasing agency, right?"
The apartment manager lowered his eyelids and glanced weakly at the detective, still not saying anything.
"Generally speaking, it is completely legal for private individuals to engage in real estate agency and collect small-scale remuneration." Hugo said with a smile, "But this apartment building looks very high-end, and the requirements for apartment managers should be more stringent. Is that right? For example, administrators are not allowed to use residents’ information to make profits, etc.?”
Hayok suddenly bared his fangs and let out a low bark at the detective, but was knocked on the head by the old man and calmed down.
"How did you see that?" The old and hoarse voice came to me with a rotten aura.
Hugo didn’t hide it either——
"Your desk drawer is locked. The average administrator would not do this to facilitate access to things. This means that there is something in it that is not convenient for disclosure. The buttons on the telephone base are badly worn, but the outer casing is relatively It's relatively new, which makes it easy to think of whether you often make phone calls. There are balls of carbon paper and paper towels with light red dots in the trash can. I can't help but wonder if you have handled a contract recently. The paper towel is just for wiping the traces left by the ink pad. As for the note..."
Having said this, the detective couldn't help but smile: "Don't you think that as long as the handwriting is more sloppy and the strokes are more continuous, others won't be able to tell that this is a list of property rental status? I guess every time a new customer comes to your door, you He would glance at the number on the note, then quote the room number recorded on it, and let the client visit the apartments for rent.”
The administrator also twitched his lips with a smile: "You smart guy, stop talking nonsense and explain your purpose."
"Murder." Hugo said straight to the point, "I am a private detective outside the alliance system. I would like to know if Mr. Greta, who died in his own home, was once your client?"
The manager of the apartment building and the first person to discover the crime scene shook his head in silence.
Then, facing Hugo, who was meeting for the first time, the administrator revealed information that even the police kept secret——
"He's not, he came from another agency. That trainer is as stubborn as a rock. He would rather leave the house empty during the half-year trip than rent it out for a second time. Now it seems that it is really a waste of money. It’s easy to get retribution.”
"Has he been traveling for half a year?" Hugo asked in surprise.
"Yes." The administrator nodded half-deadly, as if he was going to doze off in the next second, "It was in the first half of this year, just two months after he came back, he encountered an accident."
"That's it." Hugo touched his chin thoughtfully.
The old man touched Hayok's restless head with his hand and urged dissatisfiedly: "When you know the situation, leave quickly, otherwise my old partner will bite you."
"No." Yu Guo flatly refused, "I also want to know about the situation of other residents."
The old administrator’s brows almost turned into walnuts. He struggled internally for a long time and then said——
"Five thousand, give me five thousand and I'll let you check."
There was an obvious look of disdain on the detective's face, but the old man didn't care at all. As if it was natural, he stretched out the fingers of his withered palm towards the detective.
"well."
Hugo sighed, reached for his wallet, and complained casually: "We had a pleasant chat, I thought I wouldn't have to go to the tax bureau to investigate someone's tax payment status..."
Hugo had already opened his wallet, but the hand that was originally placed in front of his eyes retracted.
"What's wrong, do you want to regret it?" the detective asked pretending to be confused.
The old man didn't bother to talk, so he fished out a key from the table and threw it to the detective.
Hugo was not polite. He stepped forward and opened the desk drawer with the key, skillfully removing the debris on the surface. As expected, there was a tattered account book at the bottom of the drawer.
Opening the account book and seeing the dense cursive writing inside, even Hugo felt a little dizzy for a moment. Although he could barely decipher the content, the detective couldn't help but feel sick to his stomach at the thought of reading all these ugly symbols.
"Well, why don't I ask you directly, is the resident downstairs from Mr. Greta's house your client?" Hugo faced Mr. Administrator again and asked seriously.
"That family." The old man looked reminiscing, "They are indeed my clients, but the people who live there now are not the original family."
"How to say?"
"Probably in the past few months, that person also acted as an intermediary, subletting the house to a group of guys whose origins he didn't know. He just ate the difference and made a net profit of 300 yuan a month."
The manager's old face showed a look that said the grapes were sour despite not eating them. The old dog beside him curled his lips in disdain as if he felt the same way.
"It turned out to be the second landlord." The detective nodded, and then continued to ask, "How many new people are there? How are their daily performances?"
"No one likes those six guys. They live together, have no fixed jobs, idle around all day, and make noise day and night."
The old man spoke ill of the tenants and looked impatient, as if those six noisy guys were right in front of him.
"The surrounding residents complained countless times and came to protest countless times, but to no avail. One day they even almost started a Pokémon battle in the corridor. However, there were more people and more elves, and the residents below were convinced. I felt weak, and then I couldn’t bear it anymore and I just quit the rent and left. The room is still empty to this day.”
After listening to the information provided by the apartment manager, Hugo didn't bother to look at the account books anymore. He looked directly into the skinny old man's eyes and asked seriously: "Have the six new residents gone out since the incident?"
"No, right? They rarely go out, and they have been staying behind closed doors these past few days..."
Suddenly, Hayok beside him started barking.
The detective raised his head and saw six sneaky figures through the glass trying to avoid the sight of the police officer at the door and trying to sneak out.
The detective glanced at the old man in front of him: "Mr. Apartment Manager, now is your chance to do your duty faithfully."
