The Brother. [6]

The next day had already come as the black clock on the office wall indicated that it was 9 o' clock in the cold morning.

Sun-Jae never left the police station as he could not sleep, ultimately deciding to stay in the office to search for Jin-Ah's whereabouts.

So far the only information that Sun-Jae had was the number plate of the car he saw Jin-Ah's brother driving away in yesterday and decided to memorise it on the spot to which he then proceeded to check the registry information on the car and found that it did not belong to her brother but another person.

The person who Sun-Jae decided to pull out information about was a recently released convict named Oh Nam-Jun, who had multiple charges of assault and battery, extortion and substance abuse. The picture that came up was of a skinny and wrinkled skin, middle aged man that had a receding hairline, a large forehead, extremely narrow eyes and thin lips who gave a creepy feeling to Sun-Jae when he looked at the picture.

Sun-Jae had then decided to look up his address and quickly found it and immediately had thoughts of rushing there and performing 'Bad cop.' but then discarded that idea as he would be alone with a criminal.

So he decided to wait until one of the violent crimes unit members of team three to arrive and then go with them as this case was a murder case so he had no jurisdiction over it as he belonged to the narcotics unit.

Sun-Jae looked at the time on his phone and decided to head to the other building to see if anyone had arrived or was not busy.

'If there's no one then I'll do it by myself.' Sun-Jae thought, speed-walking up the stairs and straight to the door and knocked. "Come in." Said a deep voice as he entered the second office of the violent crimes unit, finding Kang In-Hyuk who was organising some files as he noticed Sun-Jae.

"Oh, you're here." Kang In-Hyuk said, looking at Sun-Jae who was walking over and noticing the dark circles under his eyes along with the same clothes he wore yesterday. "Did you not go home?" He asked the obvious as Sun-Jae shook his head.

"No, I have to find Jin-Ah as quickly as possible." Sun-jae replied.

'Such a dedicated kid.' Kang In-Hyuk thought as he nodded, remembering something. "Ah, I went around to some of the areas and got the footage of the places that car could have driven by. There was some heavy traffic jam yesterday so the paths available were cut down so it wasn't hard to find him," Kang In-Hyuk explained as he pulled up the footage from the street cameras, showing the car driving by in the night as he continued to explain, "The number plate couldn't be seen but I was able to find the last place the car was seen which was in Namsul-Dong."

"Ah, I remembered the number plate and found the owner of the car." Sun-jae immediately said, showing the papers he had printed on the man as he pointed to his address that was in Namsul-Dong, immediately looking at each other.

"Let's go with my car." Kang In-Hyuk said, tapping Sun-Jae's arm while walking to the door as they decided to set out to the address of the car owner.

***

Kang In-Hyuk and Ryu Sun-Jae arrived at the address given and parked on the opposite street fifteen minutes later. They sat in Kang In-Hyuk's navy blue car as they looked across the road straight to the entrance of the shabby looking apartment while they waited for the man to appear.

Approaching him was not a good idea since an ex-convict would panic and escape when two police officers came knocking on his door so they planned to discreetly corner and interrogate him at the station.

"What do we do when we see him?" Sun-jae asked, still staring at the stone stairway of the apartment.

"Just keep your distance when we approach and follow my lead." Kang In-Hyuk advised, staring at the stairway as well.

After ten minutes of silent waiting, an old and rusting van parked near the apartment as the exhaust puffed out a cloud of smoke with the engine shutting down.

The door opened with a squeak as a man wearing dirty construction clothes that had holes in them along with a unwashed beige bucket hat that hid his receding hairline and large forehead but showing his wrinkled skin, extremely narrow eyes, and thin that gave Sun-Jae a creepy feelings as he recognized his face.

"It's him, Oh Nam-Jun."Sun-jae called out in a hushed tone as he tensed up.

"Alright, let's wait till they come back down and then approach them.

Sun-Jae nodded and waited for a few more minutes, growing more tense as he stared at the stairway that the man along with another person went up with.

As soon as they saw the shoe of Oh Nam-Jun landing on one of the steps, they got out of the car and discretely walked at a slow pace towards the two men carrying a large box with them. Kang In-Hyuk tapped Sun-Jae on the shoulder and signalled him to walk behind the other man that was carrying the large box to the back of the van.

"Oh Nam-Jun," Kang In-Hyuk called out behind Oh Nam-Jun who was shocked when he saw the police identity card being held at his face as Kang In-Hyuk said, "We have some questions for you."

Oh Nam-Jun made a few slow nods, turning to the person carrying the box with him and signalling for him to run as he also pushed Kang In-Hyuk and ran down the street.

The other man with decent agility, weaved through the gap and ran as Sun-Jae looked at Kang In-Hyuk lying on the road and then decided to chase the man running the opposite direction of Oh Nam-Jun with athletic speed.