Nee-naw. Nee-naw. Nee-naw.

Sirens going hard, a patrol car and a van ran down the road.

"What in God's name is going on today?"

"Fucking slogging our guts out in the middle of the night……."

The detectives in the van grumbled.

Sokcho is a small city, and a great deal of the country air is still in it.

Gangwon in particular has almost no large cases, unlike the capital region.

It takes the summer, when the beach opens, before there is any trouble with drunks.

The knife incidents that were common once hardly happen now.

The people's minds have been enlightened; they come to terms with one another at a reasonable point and finish it there.

What passes for a case these days is assault between a husband and wife out of some domestic trouble, or violence between pupils at a school.

The Sokcho detectives have lived that quietly and that peaceably, and their lips were pushed right out at this.

The instruction had come down direct from above.

A roar from Your Honour at the Sokcho branch prosecutors.

Bring in every last one of the thug bastards!

"Do you suppose Hongdong, that bastard, has been taking something?"

A detective in his thirties asked his senior.

The particulars of the thugs they are to see to are already in hand.

More than that, they are on terms where they call one another elder brother and younger and sit down to a drink often enough.

The ground is narrow, so one step across and he turns out to be an older boy from primary or middle or high school, or somebody well known to you.

And in the end, once a man retires out of the police, they are ordinary citizens the same as the rest.

Unless they shift their ground and move away, most of these men bury their bones in the place they were born.

Falling out with the thug bastards for nothing only makes life tiresome.

Let it get serious and a man's family can find themselves threatened.

Each side kept to a reasonable line of its own…