Ningtai County Bureau was exceptionally quiet.
By six o'clock in the afternoon, a large number of men and women in shiny trousers had joined the flow of traffic heading home from work.
Even the buses were free of pickpockets, quietly carrying people in long trousers and those in shorts toward home.
Jiang Yuan rode a joyless pedal motorcycle out of the parking lot like a middle-aged uncle, blending into the crowd as if he were an ordinary social creature of medium-to-large size, heading home.
Today was yet another day of cracking only a minor cold case.
There was a sense of satisfaction, but not quite enough.
It was like eating hot pot with a clear broth and leaving eighty percent full.
Tasty, but it always felt like something was missing.
In a nutshell, appetites had grown, and these cases that only resulted in two or three years of sentencing seemed unsatisfactory.