The Ultimate Inspector, Kang Ji-hyeok - Chapter 44



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Episode 44

“Mr. Park Chan-jin. Do you admit to using a forged passport?”

Sitting in the interrogation room, he crossed his arms and exercised his right to remain silent.

“You were arrested in the act as a criminal, but are you exercising your right to remain silent?”

Park Chan-jin smiled vaguely, then opened his mouth for the first time since entering the interrogation room.

“I just want to make one phone call to protect the rights of the arrested person and get legal assistance.”

“As expected from a reporter, you speak so difficultly. Aren’t you asking me to call a lawyer?”

Park Chan-jin kept his mouth shut for a moment, then lowered his head, pushed himself away from the chair, and spoke.

“Emergency arrest is wrong from the start. According to Article 200, Paragraph 3 of the Criminal Procedure Act, there needs to be a reason to suspect that a crime punishable by imprisonment of three years or more has been committed.”

Look at this kid?

Are you blabbering on because you know a little?

I said with a smile.

“According to the criminal procedure law, those who are at risk of destroying evidence or fleeing are also included in the emergency arrest requirements. Do you know that?”

Park Chan-jin stared at me with an amused expression.

“You studied a lot, didn’t you? Well, you’re a promising prosecutor at such a young age, that says it all.”

Park Chan-jin said with his eyes slightly opened.

“And, can investigators just make arbitrary arrests? They’re not even police officers.”

“A person arrested in the act is someone who is committing a crime at the scene or has just completed a crime, even if the crime is not a serious one. Anyone can arrest the person, even if they are not an investigative agency.”

Park Chan-jin bowed his head and folded his arms as he spoke.

“···Call a lawyer.”

After arrest, the investigative agency must apply for an arrest warrant within 48 hours of the arrest. If no warrant is applied for or is rejected, the person must be released immediately.

One of the cartels that killed me.

Park Chan-jin.

I finally made him sit in front of me as a suspect.

But, strangely, I didn’t feel nervous or excited.

I felt calm.

That was really weird.

“Mr. Park Chan-jin. From now on, we will be interrogating you with the goal of requesting an arrest warrant.”

Shudder.

Park Chan-jin’s eyebrows moved.

He raised his head, which had been bowed, and asked me.

“Prosecutor Kang Ji-hyeok. Don’t you know the principle of presumption of innocence?”

“You’re caught in the act. Don’t you know the law before you talk?”

“···Call a lawyer, no matter what.”

Yeah, I got it.

I’ll call a lawyer for you.

This kid.

I handed him my cell phone.

“You’ll have to call the best lawyer.”

“Don’t forget that I’m a reporter. And that I have the best lawyers by my side.”

Please do so.

I’ll show you that nothing is useless in the face of evidence.

법꾸라지 새끼야.

* * *

dripping.

After a while, someone came into the interrogation room.

“Prosecutor, suspect Park Chan-jin’s lawyer is here.”

“Tell him to come in.”

A plump lawyer came in, his tie slightly loose, looking like he had come running in in a hurry.

The face looked like it belonged in his early thirties.

I thought he was going to be a clean-cut guy from a big law firm, but he wasn’t.

He took a handkerchief out of his pocket and wiped the sweat.

“I came in a hurry and the pork belly broth is flowing out. Haha. Hello! I am Je-gu Cheon, a criminal lawyer.”

Are you attorney Cheon Je-gu?

That lawyer nicknamed ‘the maestro of litigation’?

“That special rapist son of a bitch is out?”

“That’s not guilty either. F*ck.”

“Did Cheonjegu get involved this time too?”

“Of course. If that son of a bitch gets caught, the trial is over.”

“You’re Judge Hunter. I heard you’re good at using the judge’s mind.”

“I’m talking about Attorney Cheon Je-gu. I saw him in person a while ago, and contrary to rumors, he seems like a pretty good guy.”

“Well, lawyers are much better people than the elders.”

During his time as a detective, he was known as a lawyer who could find loopholes in investigations to secure not guilty verdicts or minimum sentences.

Yet, even the detectives who hated lawyers didn’t hate him that much.

“I’m meeting Attorney Cheon Je-gu in person. This is Kang Ji-hyeok.”

I asked him to shake my hand.

Park Chan-jin really sang the best.

You lawbreakers, you are truly amazing.

“How do you know me? I’ve only been to five trials.”

This was a time when even Attorney Cheon Je-gu was a rookie.

I answered Cheon Je-gu simply.

“It is famous among prosecutors that in Attorney Chun’s first trial, he acquitted actor Choi Kook of the assault case.”

It was a legendary first trial story about attorney Cheon Je-gu that I heard during my days as a detective.

It was an incident where Choi Kook, a successful movie actor, assaulted a high school student at a nightclub, half-killing him.

The high school student, who was 17 years old at the time, suffered a sunken face and five broken ribs.

This was a major assault case that required 28 weeks of pre-trial detention, and the entire incident was captured on CCTV, with more than five witnesses.

It was a case where no one wanted to become a defense attorney because there was so much evidence and Choi was rumored to be violent.

Cheon Je-gu said as if it was nothing.

“Ah. Are you talking about the suicide incident of a delinquent high school student last year? At the time, Mr. Choi was under the influence of alcohol and drugs and was mentally unstable, and the high school student was a notorious school bully. The witnesses to the incident also took advantage of Mr. Choi’s celebrity status to demand tens of millions of won, so the judge saw Mr. Choi as another victim.”

A great variation on the assault case where the prime suspect is turned into the victim.

So his nickname is Maestro!

That is why they called him a conductor who could change the performance of a piece.

Cheon Je-gu looked at Park Chan-jin and said.

“I also got to know reporter Park through that connection. Your article was the decisive factor in the misconduct of the high school bullies······.”

“Attorney Chun, stop there. You talk too much.”

Cheonjegu is definitely a master.

Even admitting to using drugs, claiming mental weakness, and then exploiting the victim’s weakness as a delinquent high school student to handle it as a case of extortion and suicide······.

I took out dozens more sheets of paper and placed them on the table.

“Huh? There’s a lot of evidence for a fake passport case? You’re as thorough as Harvey Dent from Mapo-gu, who’s currently gaining national popularity. Haha.”

He, who used to laugh out loud at the end of every sentence, opened his mouth with his face completely devoid of smile.

“Harvey Dent is good, but I hope he doesn’t turn into Two-Face in our client’s case. Prosecutor Kang Ji-hyeok.”

Look at this kid.

He has a different charm from other serious law firm lawyers.

“The black one is a lawyer.”

“Well, prosecutors are originally vicious to innocent and pitiful people······.”

“I don’t know because I’ve never called an innocent or pitiful person······.”

I sat up straight.

The opponent was attorney Cheon Je-gu.

He is stronger than any lawyer I have ever met.

I didn’t think revenge would be easy.

If it’s easy, it’s more frustrating.

It’s so unfair that I was killed by such a bunch of sloppy kids.

Right? Park Chan-jin, you piece of shit.

“We will begin the interrogation in the presence of a lawyer. May we now record and videotape the interview?”

Cheon Je-gu glanced at his client, Park Chan-jin, and answered.

“Let’s do that. Our client says he’s fine now.”

He opened his laptop and showed me the CCTV footage from the airport.

“Park Chan-jin is banned from leaving the country. His wife, Jung Yu-ra, is under legal custody and is a powerful figure. If you watch this video on your laptop, you can see a scene where he buys a plane ticket with a fake passport.”

“Our client didn’t know he was banned from leaving the country. Let me make that clear. And… that guy looks like my client.”

Cheonjegu started to build a perfect shield from the start.

One is that he was unaware of the travel ban, and the other is that the man in the CCTV footage resembled his client.

I had no choice but to present a forged passport as evidence.

“This is the fake passport he was holding. We caught him trying to escape to the departure hall using this passport.”

He said to Cheon Je-gu while checking the passport, which was one of the pieces of evidence.

“My client was arrested before he boarded the plane?”

“Yes.”

Cheon Je-gu, who was looking at the passport, said with an embarrassed expression.

“This is definitely a Japanese passport. The ticket is here too.”

“You booked a one-way flight to Laos. You were probably trying to escape and go into hiding.”

“Why do you keep drawing the line by saying that he fled and went into hiding? I understand that our client is currently exercising his right to remain silent.”

Cheon Je-gu said, scratching his head.

He looked at the passport as evidence, squinted one eye, and opened his mouth.

“Asada Hiroguchi? It’s not an illegal forgery, it’s his cousin’s passport. He wanted to sleep with a young woman, so he tried to go to Laos without telling his sister-in-law?!”

Park Chan-jin turned his head to the side with an annoyed expression on his face.

That lawbreaker.

Act as much as you want, Park Chan-jin.

Cheonjegu started teasing me with a pitiful expression on his face.

“Inspector. In fact, my brother and his wife lived physically apart. It’s just a matter of two men, but how bad is it to live with an old grandmother?”

“What do you mean?”

“Just think about it. There’s an old woman lying in the same bed as you. One time, she got so drunk that she looked like Count Asura. She said she felt like vomiting, I don’t know.”

Are you going to blame your old wife for not being able to catch a flight to Laos?

“But why did you get married? To a woman like Count Asura.”

“Our client is the famous reporter Park Chan-jin, right? He needs to have some money to lure his informants, and he needs to get secret information from places like room salons, and stuff… Anyway, that’s what it was like, right? Right, hyung?”

“Is what the lawyer said correct? Is there anything wrong here or anything you would like to correct, Mr. Park Chan-jin?”

Park Chan-jin nodded and opened his mouth.

“All correct.”

You said you were exercising your right to remain silent?

I really wanted to say this to you directly, with my own mouth.

Taking advantage of the gap, Cheonjegu started talking again.

“This passport is not illegally forged. It belongs to my cousin. They look so similar that I guess they didn’t recognize me at the airport.”

“There was no illegal counterfeiting?”

“Yes, that’s right. If you look on the internet these days, there are a lot of pictures of Laotian women. If you look at those, it would be instinctively attractive to middle-aged men, wouldn’t it, inspector?”

“Would you rather have a young Laotian woman whose name you don’t even know than your old wife, Mr. Park Chan-jin?”

Nod.

Park Chan-jin nodded.

Exercising the right to remain silent······.

Yeah, go all the way.

You piece of trash.

Cheonjegu sent out a series of concluding comments.

“Our client felt a natural sexual desire for a younger woman instead of his old wife, and so he happened to want to go to Laos.”

“There is a possibility that this is a violation of the Special Act on the Prohibition of Prostitution. We also plan to prosecute the person for attempting to travel abroad using another person’s passport.”

Cheonjegu nodded his head.

“Prostitution is an imaginary incident that never happened, so you won’t be able to prosecute her, but borrowing her cousin’s passport… Okay. Prosecute her. But, sir, my client only bought a ticket, she didn’t even go to Laos.”

He glanced at Park Chan-jin and continued his statement with a serious face.

“My client has been a journalist for many years and has received many awards as a journalist who has contributed to society. Even though he is a man with great character, he made a mistake because he couldn’t control his momentary lust. Even if he hadn’t been arrested, he would have returned with a clear conscience instead of getting on the plane. This is something that can be argued in court.”

I was impressed when I saw Attorney Cheon Je-gu.

“I learned a lot thanks to the lawyer. Let’s wrap it up here. Here, please check the statement.”

Cheon Je-gu and Park Chan-jin read the statement I gave them and signed it themselves.

It was something of a promise that the statement could be used as legal evidence.

“Can I leave now with my client?”

I said, standing up from my seat.

“Yes, I will. I also have to make a statement regarding an important case that I was suddenly arrested on, so I will be busy······.”

I shouted, tapping my finger on the magic mirror in the interrogation room.

“Did you listen to your husband’s story? Is it true that you are going to make a new statement about Mr. Park Chan-jin, Ms. Jung Yu-ra?”

Park Chan-jin opened his mouth, causing an earthquake in his pupils.

Are you exercising your right to remain silent?

You dirty little law-breaker.

“What? What the f*ck? Who are you? Who’s listening in there?”

I whispered in Park Chan-jin’s ear.

“You’re all in your wife.