Chương 43: This guy is definitely a competitor.

"Door locks, car locks, combination lock panels, electronic lock modules. About twenty or so."

"He only took the lock cylinder. He didn't touch the TV, the laptop, or the coin jar on the shoe rack."

Su Wan pointed to the glass jar on the shoe cabinet, which contained a few ten-yuan bills and a handful of coins, gleaming dimly in the morning light.

"This person knows the lock cylinder is valuable. Or maybe he was specifically looking for a lock cylinder. It wasn't a random crime; he came specifically for your lock."

Lin Zhou walked to the front of the TV cabinet.

I squatted down and looked at the spot where the lock cylinders used to be—a row of shallow circular marks on the dark wood grain, traces left by the lock cylinders pressing on it for a long time.

He reached out and touched the marks, his mind racing.

There are more than twenty lock cylinders, ranging from Grade A to Grade C, from civilian locks to vehicle locks to combination lock modules.

Ordinary people can only sell these things as scrap metal, but for those in the industry, these lock cylinders are teaching materials.

Each lock cylinder is a puzzle; disassembling it reveals the arrangement of the pins and the locking mechanism. Not a thief, but a fellow thief.

"Stop trying to pry open doors, just take the lock cylinder—" He patted his trouser leg and stood up.

"The same person. Last time at the BMW 7 Series, a colleague of mine squatted on the curb watching me drive for twenty minutes. He later told me he was going to tell everyone when he got back."

The comments section began to analyze.

"In this old residential area in the north of the city, one of the motion-activated lights in the stairwell is broken. At 10 a. m., all the neighbors had gone to work, so no one heard the door being pried open. Lin Zhou was supposed to go on a blind date today. He left at 7: 30 a. m., arrived at Starbucks around 9 a. m., and only just returned around noon. The window for the crime must have been open for at least three hours."

"That thief knew Lin Zhou usually carried a tool bag when he went out, knew where he lived, and even knew he wouldn't be home today. Maybe he was watching him during the BMW 7 Series incident, or somewhere else. The lock-picking king's skills are too conspicuous. He can earn a thousand a day picking locks, has been to the police station five times in three days, and has 30, 000 people watching his live streams. It's impossible that his peers didn't notice him."

Old Zhou picked up the enamel mug from the shoe cabinet.

"Where's the security camera?"

Lin Zhou looked up.

"What?"

"Does your neighborhood have surveillance cameras?"

"... Yes. There's one at the property management office and another at the entrance of the complex. But I'm not sure if it'll work. Nobody pays their property management fees in this complex." Old Zhou held up his enamel mug.

"Let's go."

The property management office is located at the entrance of the residential complex, in a low, single-story building with pale yellow paint on the exterior. The door was open, and inside sat an elderly man in a dark blue security guard uniform, probably in his early sixties, with short, graying hair. He was listening to a storytelling performance on the radio, specifically Shan Tianfang's "The White-Browed Hero," at a volume that was just loud enough to drown out the hum of the old air conditioner overhead.

The old man paused for a moment when he saw the three people walk in. Then he saw Su Wan—she was dressed casually today, in a dark gray sweatshirt and jeans, but she habitually wore her police badge on her belt. The old man's gaze lingered on the badge for a moment. On the radio, Shan Tianfang was talking about "the White-Browed Hero wielding a golden-ringed broadsword." He reached out and turned off the radio.

"Comrade, what's the matter?"

"A burglary occurred this morning in apartment 302 of building 3. We need to check your community's surveillance footage," Su Wan said.

The old man stood up.

"302? That young locksmith?" He glanced at Lin Zhou.

"Your lock was perfectly fine, how could it have been stolen?"

Lin Zhou opened his mouth but didn't speak. Old Zhou, standing beside him, took a sip of tea from his enamel cup and subtly pressed the corners of his mouth down.

The monitoring room is at the end of the corridor.

The old man pushed open the door. Inside, there was a space of about three or four square meters, with a table, a chair, and an old desktop computer on the table. The screen was an LCD screen from ten years ago, with yellowed bezels.

An old video recorder sat on the shelf on the wall, its indicator light still on, flashing green. An electric heater sat on the floor, making the whole room hot and stuffy.

"Only two cameras in our surveillance system are working: one at the main gate of the residential complex and the other at the entrance of three buildings."

The old man sat down in front of the computer, swiped the mouse across the table a couple of times, and the monitoring software on the screen slowly opened.

"The others have been broken for half a year, and the property management doesn't have the money to fix them."

"Starting at 7: 30 a. m.," Su Wan said.

The old man's hand trembled twice on the mouse, and he clicked several times before finally dragging the timeline to 7: 30 in the morning.

Two images appeared on the screen: the one on the left was the security camera at the entrance of the residential area, which was black and white and the image was a bit washed out.

On the right are the entrances to three buildings, in color, but the image quality is probably around 200 pixels.

Morning light streamed in through the gate as the sanitation worker pushed his garbage cart out.

At 7: 45, Lin Zhou appeared at the entrance of Building 3—wearing a blue down jacket, without a tool bag, with his hair sticking up, standing downstairs and hailing a taxi.

Then a deliveryman came in on an electric scooter, with the logo of a certain courier company printed on the side of the tricycle.

A little girl in a red dress ran past with her schoolbag on her back, probably chasing after her mother.

"Fast forward. Between eight and ten o'clock," Su Wan said.

The old man pressed fast forward, and the scene started jumping forward at double speed, then quadruple speed.

"Fast forward. Between eight and ten o'clock," Su Wan said.

The old man pressed fast forward, and the scene started jumping forward at double speed, then quadruple speed.

The numbers on the timeline are changing rapidly.

At 8: 15, a person wearing a baseball cap walked in through the gate of the residential compound.

He wasn't walking on the main road; he was walking close to the wall. The security camera at the entrance of Building 3 captured his back—of medium build, wearing a drab gray work jacket, with a canvas bag slung over his shoulder.

He paused at the entrance of Building 3, looked up at the windows upstairs, and then opened the door and went inside.

"Stop," Lin Zhou said.

The old man pressed pause.

The image freezes on the entrance of Building 3. Dusty gray work jackets and canvas bags.

The brim of the hat was pulled low, obscuring the face.

He had seen that work jacket before—he had seen it just yesterday. Lin Zhou and Officer Zhou had waited for him for ages by the roadside.

Old Zhou gently tapped the enamel mug on the table.

At 9: 23, the man in the gray jacket came out of the entrance of Building 3.

His canvas bag bulged out, and he kept his head down.

The brim of the hat was pulled down even further than when it went in.

He didn't take the main road; he stayed close to the wall.

After exiting the community gate, turn right and disappear from the edge of the surveillance cameras.

At 9: 31, he reappeared in the footage at the entrance of the residential complex—walking into the stairwell of the old building across the street. That building had no access control, and the door frame was covered with little "GG" stickers.

Lin Zhou straightened up.

He stared at the gray silhouette on the screen that had been paused.

The canvas bag was bulging, probably containing his row of twenty-odd lock cylinders.

He recognized the creases on the work jacket.

"Do you know him?" Old Zhou asked.

"Tsk."

Lin Zhou let out a soft breath, his gaze fixed on the screen with a complex mix of emotions, a hint of a sigh in his eyes.