The dungeon's dark secret

The storm was coming. Even the youngest fisherman could easily see this, and even if they were very courageous, they did not dare to go to sea rashly. The continuous gale and torrential rain fell from the sky, turning all the main roads in Southshore into muddy puddles. After all, until recently, this was just a small fishing village.

As someone who never needed to go to sea, prison guard Jacques also hated storms. In fact, he hated the rainy season. During this time, the dungeon where he worked became a mess. Mud seeped from the cracks in the ceiling, and disgusting white worms crawled on the walls. They liked dampness. At lunch today, a drop of dark green foul liquid fell on the bread, making him curse for a long time and swear to kill the intermediary who had tricked him from the quarry here with the so-called "easy work, three meals a day during this difficult time, not easy" reason.

Therefore, when the stranger suddenly appeared and demanded to visit an important suspect, Jacques thought he had found a target to vent his anger.

The young man had a sturdy figure, but his overly calm eyes and drooping mouth made him appear very tired but trying to cheer up, reminding Jacques of a disgusting stubborn boulder covered in moss. Not to mention the clothes the man was wearing were not much more decent than his work clothes in the quarry.

"I want to see David Langston. He should have been transferred here from the temporary detention center last night."

"Who are you to him? Brother, creditor? Do you have Mayor Malib's permission? Answer quickly, otherwise shut your trap-like mouth and get out of here...Listen, if you want to cause me trouble..."

The young man took out a brass badge from the front pocket of his chest and showed it to Jacques for a second. A second ago, Jacques, who was about to raise his voice and continue to ridicule, now had a lump in his throat as if kicked, and blinked suddenly.

"Oh, I didn't know...so you are..." He swallowed. "Looking for David Langston, huh? He's in the far left room, the innermost one..."

"Thanks." The young man put away the badge and walked straight past Jacques's desk.

"According to the rules, you should probably register..." Jacques took out a small blue book, flipped open half a page, and closed it himself. It seemed that the man had no intention to register; and no one had ever told Jacques, a prison guard who was gnawing on bread soaked in mud, whether he had the right to record the name of a Military Intelligence Section 7 officer.

"Well. Stay away from trouble. Enjoy my lunch." He put away the small book.

The Military Intelligence Section 7 investigator ignored the gazes coming through the iron bars on both sides of the corridor and walked quickly to the innermost part. In the last room—the twentieth cell, he saw the man he was looking for cowering in the corner, hugging his knees and napping. His face was divided into three parts by the shadow of the iron bars, like a row of strange piano keys.

"David Langston?"

David woke up from his light sleep, rubbed a strand of hair on his forehead with two fingers of his left hand in a daze, then opened his eyes, leaned against the corner and slowly stood up. With an innate obedient tone, he cautiously said, "It's me, sir. Do you have business with me...? I don't know you..."

"My name is Jorgen, I work for Military Intelligence Section 7. I need to question you."

"Oh, no. Sir, I didn't do it, I didn't kill him—"

"I'm not the judge who came to convict you, just came to understand some things. You better cooperate. Get away from the corner and sit on the bed. Easier to talk that way. "

Even the most inexperienced suspect would be terrified by the words "Military Intelligence Section 7". There was no threat in Jorgen's tone, but it made David feel doubly uneasy. Jorgen could clearly discern the cringe and self-abasement in David's eyes, although in his twenty-five years of working for Military Intelligence Section 7 for less than a year, he had already seen such eyes countless times.

David sat on the rotten wooden board bed. The bed was placed against the wall with vertical iron bars, so now he could only turn his head stiffly to see Jorgen. This unnatural posture deepened his anxiety.

"Jorgen...Sir, won't you sit down? I think you can ask Jacques for a chair..."

"How long have you known Henry?" Jorgen completely ignored David's suggestion. He understood that the more a suspect flattered you, the less chance he should be given to relax.

"Twenty years, sir." David immediately burst out this number from his mouth, as if he had answered it a million times. "We've known each other almost since birth. We used to be like brothers..."

The local businessman Henry was found dead in front of the mirror in his bedroom a week ago. His throat was cut, and the fresh blood splattered across half the wall. Although there were no eyewitnesses, David was immediately arrested as the primary suspect for a clear reason.

"We worked our way up from peddling partners to where we are today. There is no piece of land in Azeroth that we two have not gone to! But I didn't expect..." The light that appeared in David's eyes dimmed for a moment.

" 'Worked your way up to where you are today'? He became a rich man by trading in fabrics, while you went bankrupt and were chased everywhere for debts. I see there must be some difference between you two."

"We did have arguments, and then we lost contact for a whole year. Then he suddenly became so rich. For this matter, I can only say that doing business requires luck, sir. Especially at this time of the year..."

Jorgen interrupted David's business experience. "Do you know why you were brought here? David. You said to at least three people that if Henry did not lend you money to pay off debts, it was a betrayal of twenty years of brotherhood."

"I may have said something similar, but sir, I was drunk at the time..."

"Yes, drunk. On the very night Henry was killed. You said these words in public at the hotel, and then left. Four hours later, Henry was found dead in his pajamas in the bedroom. Can you explain where you were for those four hours? "

"I passed out behind the hotel...really, sir."

"So far no one has proven this. No one saw it."

"There must be, sir. Look carefully," David was a little restless, "Someone can prove my innocence."

For several seconds, Jorgen did not speak, as if he did not hear David's plea, just staring at him. It was a gaze devoid of any emotion, like looking at a piece of bark full of scars. These few seconds made David feel as long as centuries, his twisted neck stiffened to the limit, and his neck hurt as if clamped in pliers.

"Did they beat you, David?" Jorgen looked at the bruise above David's chest. The lower half of this purplish skin was hidden under the clothes, so one could imagine that if the clothes were taken off, Jorgen could see more injuries. In addition, the swelling above David's right eye had just subsided.

"Yes, when they caught me...before throwing me into this cell, I had already suffered enough, sir. I really didn't kill Henry. You are different from those stupid local security guards, I can see..."

Jorgen ignored this cheap flattery and turned away. When passing by the prison guard's desk again, Jacques squeezed hard with his chair against the wall, as if by squeezing so he could give Jorgen a wider aisle.

Jorgen left the dungeon. The rain had stopped temporarily, but the sky over Southshore still looked gloomy and muddy. Pedestrians with wet collars came and went on the muddy street in front of them.

He did not come to Southshore to investigate the murder case. His purpose was Henry himself. Military Intelligence Section 7 believed that his overnight transformation into a rich man was related to the increasingly rampant Syndicate organization in the Hillsbrad region. Now that he was dead, leaving behind a luxurious mansion, property worth over 650,000 gold coins, and a former business partner accused of being a suspect.

Some critical information had already reduced David's suspicion of murder, but this was not something David should know. One of them was: no valuables were missing from Henry's magnificent bedroom. Either David really got so drunk that he only remembered the murder but forgot the very reason for the murder—to raise money to pay off debts; or he was not the murderer, or he was just a complete fool.

In short, he still needs to be locked up for a while, Jorgen thought. After all, the key to solving a case still lies in how much one holds in one's hands.