The director called me to his office.
I sat down and he talked to me.
"There are four crematoriums in our city. Now the leaders have asked us to close the other four crematoriums to prevent duplication and waste. All personnel and old corpses will be moved to your crematorium."
I was stunned when I heard this. There are four crematoriums in this city. If we bring them all here and merge them together, the most troublesome ones will not be the living but the dead. There will be old corpses in every crematorium.
"Don't worry about their affairs. I will just accept them. The old corpses will be transported over by themselves. The date has been set. You should prepare to accept them. These directors have been transferred to other departments and are no longer in the crematorium. I am afraid it will be difficult for you to manage them in the future. By the way, Deputy Director Bu Lele will report there tomorrow to cooperate with you in your work. Remember, Bu Lele is Minister Bu's daughter."
I was stunned. I have never met Bu Lele, but I have heard of her. She is a novelist in the city. I have read her novels and liked them very much. I have met Minister Bu once, when I went to the crematorium to inspect the work.
"Can you send a man?"
"how?"
I said nothing more and just shook my head.
"When will you old corpses move?"
"Tonight."
"Why do it at night?"
"This is very particular. If you don't understand, don't worry about it."
"Whether you need the police or something, I will communicate with you."
"They are not prisoners, so there is no need."
It takes nearly an hour to drive from the old site to the new site. It takes twenty vehicles to transport hundreds of corpses. Everything is ready, and I start to feel nervous.
After dark the next day, the employees, the car, and Liu Shougui all arrived.
"Change the shroud?"
When moving the body, a new shroud must be used. The original one was white, so a black one should be used when transporting it.
When changing the shroud, the body is loaded onto the vehicle.
Two hours later, everything was done and the car drove out of the gate. Heli stood at the gate without saying a word, as if he was seeing off these old corpses.
The car is driving slowly, it will take an hour and a half at this speed.
Liu Shougui said while sitting in my car.
"There might be trouble. Keep an eye on the car. I have a feeling something is wrong. Be careful."
After driving for an hour, we entered an area with no people living in it. The newly built road was very wide, with room for ten lanes, and was fitted with a crematorium.
When I discovered the problem, I saw a man standing on the side of the road. He looked very strange, standing there looking at our car. There was no one else around, so was he walking? Obviously, this was unlikely.
I pulled over to the side of the road and looked ahead and saw a car with its back door open.
"Uncle Liu, something happened. The person standing there is the old corpse. Did you see that the car door is open?"
"I saw it. Ignore it for now. Chase it and make that car stop. Then the other ones can continue driving."
We chased after it and asked the car to stop. When we got up to take a look, we found that two old corpses were missing. We closed the door and let the car continue driving.
"Leave this to me. You transport these old corpses to the cold storage safely."
Liu Shougui walked back, apparently to look for the old corpse. I was a little worried.
That day, all the old corpses were sent to the cold storage, lined up in rows, and covered with white shrouds. This time it looked a bit scary, unlike before, when it was a freezer where you couldn't see anything inside, only the freezer emitting a cold light.
I was sweating profusely and was busy until midnight when everything was finally finished. I called Liu Shougui but couldn't get through. I knew that trouble was coming.
I drove back along the road and went back and forth twice, but didn't see anything. It seemed like I was in real trouble.
I went back to the crematorium, the old crematorium, and I felt something was wrong there.
The guard still had the light on, so I went in and saw Heli drinking.
"Sit down!"
"I… "
"Liu Shougui will be here soon."
As soon as I sat down, Liu Shougui came in and walked out of the venue.
"They came back, right into the old morgue, and it didn't seem like home to them, and they were reluctant to leave."
I breathed a sigh of relief.
"How come you guys are walking so fast?"
"Old corpses are naturally different from us. I came back by hitchhiking. I feel like they should come back here."
"Uncle He, I think you should go to Xinchang tomorrow!"
"No, I want to stay here until all the last bodies are gone."
I was talking when the phone rang. At this time, what I was most afraid of was the phone ringing.
I picked up the phone and it was Li Xiaohuan.
"Master, the box jumped."
I was startled. This time, in addition to transporting the old corpse, there was also an urn. How come the urn jumped out
"What's going on?"
"There was an urn missing. When we were doing the inventory, we discovered that one was missing."
"Is that correct?"
"I checked it ten times, and yes, one was missing. I was so confused at the time. The urn was lost. It was really evil. The urn was placed in the car, and it was sealed. How could there be a problem?"
Liu Shougui glanced at me and said.
"Okay, let's talk about it tomorrow. Anyway, it's already jumped out of the box."
When an urn is lost, it is called "jumping box". There is only one possibility for this situation, that is, it is man-made, and someone took the urn away. The person who took the urn naturally has his own use for it.
"What about these two old corpses?"
"Buried right there."
"How can we do that? If we do that and the family members come to claim the body, we will be in big trouble."
"The three of us know about this. Don't tell anyone else because there's really no other way. If we really let them go, it will cause unrest in the new place. Something will happen every few days. These two old corpses are at least 16 or 17 years old. They can't be moved."
"this… "
"In this way, the freezer is floodproof, goes underground, and is connected to electricity. The electricity is connected secretly, underground, and connected from there. There is no problem at all."
"That freezer can't dissipate the heat, so it won't take long before it breaks down."
"It only needs to work for three hours. Put ice flakes and water in it. If there are no major problems, the body will not rot. After ten or twenty years, the family members will definitely not come looking for it again. If they do, we can give the body to them."
"No, two bodies are missing, the director won't kill me."
"Then just transport it over there and go ahead with it. It's impossible that no one will die."
I'm a little confused, said Heli.
"I'll tell you the truth. I saw those two old corpses coming back. Sometimes they would steal my wine to drink. I know that the wine would be less from time to time, but I always pretended not to know. You can't touch old corpses like these."
I really have no choice.
"Okay, I'll handle this with Heli."
I went home and slept for a while, then went to the new place. Regarding the box jumping incident, I asked whose urn it was.
It belonged to an old man who was somewhat famous in the city. I remembered that the urn was made by Ji Yihe, and it was a very exquisite one. In other words, the person who stole the urn did so only for the urn, not for the ashes.
"Turn up the surveillance."
In this new venue, there are no blind spots and everything can be controlled. There are only a few surveillance cameras outside, and the others are hidden and cannot be seen at all.
After checking the surveillance footage, I found that it was indeed an employee who did it, so I called that employee over.
"What's wrong with you?"
"What's up?"
"The urn thing."
"That's none of my business."
"You also said that it's all in the surveillance."
"I, this..."
"Bring me the urn, and then you're out of here. You're fired."
"I, the director, was wrong."
The urn was taken back, and I didn't want to fire this employee, but unexpectedly, the ashes inside were gone. This was really a problem. He said that he had poured the ashes into the river.
I was stunned when I heard this. This person is a famous calligrapher in the city. If he lost his ashes, wouldn't that be courting death
He had been keeping it there waiting for his wife to die so that they could be buried together. This was their agreement.
I thought about it and wanted to report it to the director, but then I thought, something had happened to the old corpse, and if something else happened, the director would have to consider whether I, as the director, should continue to work. Of course, it would be a good idea to go back to the dressing room and put on makeup.
I reported it anyway. An hour later, the director came with his men, sat in the office and looked at me.
"That employee is fired. You, find a way. Only the two of us know about this. Keep his ashes for him."
The director left after saying this.
I didn't expect that the director also understood these things. He got in the car and called me.
"Your office is more awesome than the mayor's."
After saying that, he hung up the phone. What does this mean? How about you be the director and I be the director? Damn it, it's really hard to guess what the leader is thinking, especially for those who only say half a sentence.
It was done that day, I did it myself.
In any case, the problem has arisen and the solution is different, but I don’t know what will happen in the end.
Liu Shougui told me that everything had been resolved.
A week later, I went to see the old site. Oh my god, it was built so fast. The ground had been leveled. They were going to build a big theater there, and it was said to be completed before the end of the year. The renderings were hung outside. It has a steel frame structure and looks like the sun. It is very beautiful.
I walked to the location of the old morgue and couldn't see anything. This happened to not be the location of the foundation, so I felt relieved.
The next job is to receive the old corpses and urns from the other four crematoriums. The handover is all within the new area. I don’t care if any problems arise outside, and I can’t do anything about it.
Bu Lele came to work three days late, which gave me a very bad impression of her.
Unexpectedly, Bu Lele, who was about twenty-six or twenty-seven years old, looked young and pretty, and was dressed very elegantly. Her office was right next to mine, and in terms of layout, it was a level lower. She came in to report, just told me, sat for a while, and then went back to her office.
Sitting in the office, I could see every corner of the place. I saw Bu Lele enter the morgue. There were single rooms and suites in that building. At most, there were four dead bodies in one room. Everything was controlled by computers. Bodies were carried in and out without any help. Li Xiaohuan was with Bu Lele, and they were talking about something.
It seems that Bu Lele is serious about her work. I think maybe she is just curious, and after the curiosity period, she will not care about anything anymore.
Bu Lele actually held a meeting in the afternoon and required to work full-day, arriving at the post at 6 a.m. and leaving get off work at 4 p.m. She held the meeting without telling me or notifying me to attend. I didn't know what she meant. Li Xiaohuan was unhappy and came to me after the meeting to criticize Bu Lele.
"Well, it's nothing. She reduced my workload, which is a good thing. Didn't you say you would treat me to a meal?"
"Okay then."
Somehow I ended up at Dong Xiaoqiang's Xilailou, but I never quite understood that painting.
Half an hour after we had been eating, Dong Xiaoqiang came in, sat down, and poured himself some wine.
"Director Ke, I'd like to have a drink with you today. This is Director Li, the director of the crematorium. The director of the crematorium now is not the same as he was back then. He is a senior director, and his rank is also higher."
This Dong Xiaoqiang knows a lot. I know what he means when he says this. He just told me that he knows everything. (To be continued)