"How could talking to someone at a supermarket take that long? Because she knew a lot?"
"Isn't that obvious?" Wang Yan explained with a smile. "A supermarket sees people coming and going all day, so naturally they hear a lot of news. Especially a small supermarket like this one, unlike the big supermarket next door. Big supermarkets rely on merchandise to do business; small supermarkets rely on personal connections. Say someone is short by thirty or fifty cents—they'll just waive it. It's not much money, but it warms people's hearts, and they'll be willing to come back next time.
"Doesn't that mean they know plenty of people? Sister Su is quite chatty. Most people who come by will talk with her for a while. Like those people chatting with us just now—you heard them too. She knows all the gossip worth knowing in this neighborhood. That information helps us carry out our work.
"After visiting this little supermarket, we only need to spend ten or twenty minutes talking at the other shops, getting a feel for the people and checking fire safety while we're at it. Us station police officers—we've got one good thing going for us. We can't handle anything, yet we can handle everything."
When he said they could handle everything, he meant that all kinds of police calls came in, all kinds of disputes existed, and they involved many different departments. As for not being able to handle anything, that was naturally because they lacked that authority. It was common for different departments to pass the buck. They were only station police officers; at most, they could deal with public security cases. Anything more serious had to go to the criminal investigation unit, so naturally they could not handle everything.
Even the case involving Han Tianquan and