Fog City Detective

Chapter 10: Job Hunting

John laughed heartily and took out a bunch of keys. "The first gift is the detective agency. If you're willing to be a detective, you can keep it. If you don't want to be a detective, you can sell the detective agency."

Liang Xi was taken aback. "John, your health hasn't deteriorated to the point of retirement yet."

John didn't answer Liang Xi's question. Instead, he pushed the keys toward Liang Xi and said, "The detective agency is now yours. I've already contacted the lawyer, and he will take care of the formalities for you. After the paperwork is done, the lawyer will give you a cheque for £5,000 as the daily expenses for the detective agency. Whether you can make money depends on your abilities."

Liang Xi detected a small problem, "Why is the lawyer giving me £5,000?"

John replied, "Because the lawyer owes me £5,000, and using this as an excuse, I'll make him pay it back."

Liang Xi nodded, understanding the situation. Trust your old man.

John pushed the keys to the table cart to Liang Xi, "As a detective, you'll definitely need a means of transportation. That car is yours as well."

John expected Liang Xi to be very happy, but unexpectedly, Liang Xi silently drank a cup of tea before accepting the keys. His facial expression was unpredictable. This was a case of tying oneself up. What was originally a prank to tease John turned out to make himself the final clown. The old guy wouldn't have calculated that Liang Xi would calculate him back, so he turned the tables to trick himself, right?

Mary didn't participate in the conversation between the two men. Hearing this, she realized that the baking time for the cake had arrived, so she went to the kitchen to be busy. Seeing Mary enter the living room and head to the kitchen, John seemed to want to say something but hesitated. Liang Xi noticed the anomaly and asked, "Do you want a divorce?"

Detectives' imaginations are just like this—unique and jumping. However, John didn't refute it, and after thinking for a while, he said, "If you could have dinner with Mary every month, I think she would be very happy."

Liang Xi said, "Thirty times every month is fine. But your name is John Charles, not John Gates."

John laughed heartily, "Haha!"

This was a veiled hint. Recently, John had often been in contact with an old friend named Matthew and they always ate out, sometimes spending the whole day together. Considering the factors of giving the detective agency and the car to Liang Xi, Liang Xi deduced that John had recently encountered some changes. In his mind, Liang Xi listed out the possible changes for John: a terminal illness? Impossible, because Mary was a retired doctor, and without Mary's coercion, John wouldn't have been going for a medical checkup. John was definitely the last person to know about a terminal illness. Besides a terminal illness, the next worst possibility was marital problems.

John didn't deny Liang Xi's speculation about marital problems, causing Liang Xi to feel somewhat worried. He knew Mary's love for John. To give an analogy, Mary would prefer John to live like a vegetable, busy taking care of and looking after John every day, rather than having John leave this world before her. A marital problem would be a greater blow to Mary than John's death.

However, John was quite cunning; he also didn't admit to marital problems, leaving Liang Xi unable to express his thoughts on the matter. Mary brought out paper cupcakes, and the two men began discussing cases again. Mary sat on a rocking chair, knitting a sweater, while listening to the two men chat. This was her happiest time nowadays.

...

Liang Xi purchased half a drum of gasoline from a neighbor, bid farewell to Mary, and drove to his residence. Liang Xi's apartment was located on Lampl Road, not far from the university and the detective agency.

Lampl Road, also known as Apartment Avenue, was a well-known residential community of apartments in London. The main residents were white-collar workers and students. Liang Xi's residence was in building 19, apartment 2102, a small unit with a total area of just over 50 square meters. It consisted of one kitchen, one bathroom, one living room, and one bedroom. The furnishings were simple: a used computer, a bed, a table, chairs, and a wardrobe. There was no coffee table in the living room, no sofa, just a stack of plastic stools in the corner to accommodate possible visitors.

Liang Xi didn't have many clothes—T-shirts, jeans, and sneakers in the summer; hoodies, jackets, thermal underwear, jeans, and sneakers in the winter. His most expensive outfit was a suit tailored by an Italian bespoke tailor that Mary bought for him after he started university, along with a pair of £1,000 leather shoes. He had only worn this outfit once when accompanying John on a case in Belgium.

Upon returning home, Liang Xi boiled water, grabbed underwear and a T-shirt, and went to take a shower. After the shower, with the water boiling, he made a cup of tea, sat in front of the computer, and started writing his resume, preparing for job hunting. Being a detective was out of the question—no joking, being a detective could lead to starving on the streets. Private investigators were the only ones who could survive in the detective industry. They worked on a case-by-case basis, conducting background checks and external investigations as requested by their clients. Strictly speaking, private investigators no longer fall within the traditional detective category.

As the birthplace of Sherlock Holmes in novels, London had a considerable number of detective enthusiasts. To fulfill their detective dreams, many young people would open their detective agencies. Normal cases were investigated by the police, and private detectives were only sought when the victims or their families were dissatisfied with the police investigation results. Wealthy individuals like Count Davis, who didn't want to involve the police and media, sought the assistance of detectives.

With fewer bad guys around, and the police taking the lion's share of the cake, leaving only breadcrumbs for the large detective crowd, ten years ago, along with the widespread use of surveillance in urban areas, the improvement of police technical has, and the increase in public legal awareness, being a detective had become a very niche profession. Coupled with the fact that this generation of young people rarely enjoyed slow-paced detective novels like those featuring Holmes, traditional detective agencies were nowhere to be found on the streets of London, and detectives often became the subject of ridicule and mockery on television talk shows.

The best choice was to become a detective, and the detective was selected and assessed from within the police force, so the first step was to become a police officer.

The British police had three categories. The first category was regular police officers, and the second category was community police officers, both requiring physical training and testing. Liang Xi had a mild congenital flatfoot, which didn't affect his daily life but made his foot endurance poor, unsuitable for endurance activities like long-distance running and climbing. He couldn't pass the physical tests through training.

The third category was volunteer police officers, referring to those who had full-time jobs and used their spare time to perform police duties. Volunteer police officers did not have high physical requirements and received a monthly allowance. The problem, however, was that you needed to have a full-time job first, and being a detective did not fall under full-time employment; it was categorized as either a sole proprietorship or a business partner.

Graduation was equivalent to unemployment, and the future was shrouded in mist, making it impossible to see where the road led.

Regardless, Liang Xi didn't hesitate. He went online to enter the job market and began sending out resumes. Ignoring the field and position, he focused only on the salary. Whether it was a corporate or public position, if the monthly salary was £3,000 or more, he sent a resume. Casting a wide net, and catching more fish, he believed there would be a few fools among the HR personnel or bosses who would take notice of him.

After spending half an hour sending out resumes, Liang Xi casually picked up a book, adopting the relaxed attitude of waiting for exam scores after the college entrance examination. He had done what he could, and now all that was left was to wait for fate.

However, Liang Xi lacked the luck skill for rebirth; fate seemed to think most bosses were intelligent. Over the next week, Liang Xi didn't receive a single response to his job applications. He even began to doubt whether he had entered the wrong phone number. This wasn't a joke—he had calculated the probability. Considering the rampant prevalence of telephone scams, it wasn't because the scammers were highly skilled; it was due to the large population base, ensuring a few victims in the percentage ratio. Following this logic, among his 120 resumes, at least one should have found the right target.

Receiving a call from the lawyer, Liang Xi met with him at a coffee shop below the detective agency. The formalities were quickly completed, and Rose Detective Agency, along with £5,000, was officially handed over to Liang Xi by John. After waiting for the results of his job applications for a week, during which he had mooched off John's meals multiple times, Liang Xi decided he couldn't rely solely on one tree for shelter. So, he decided to resend his resume through the detective agency and wait for the recruitment results again.

During the meeting with the lawyer, Liang Xi inquired and found out that the £5,000 wasn't actually money owed to John by the lawyer but John's own money. However, John had instructed the lawyer to give £5,000 to Liang Xi under the guise of debt. Puzzled by this, Liang Xi wondered why John would give him £5,000 when, on one hand, he hadn't noticed any signs of marital problems between John and Mary during the week of free meals. On the other hand, even if there were marital issues, Liang Xi's relationship with John and Mary wouldn't change. So why give him £5,000?

Calling John for clarification, he received the answer, "If you don't need it, you can give it back to me."

Liang Xi hung up the phone instantly. After all the trouble to scrape together some money, he was thinking of taking it back? No way!