Chapter 1531 — Finding a Clue

"The old man doesn't know one model of car from another, but from his description we pulled up photographs of several vehicles for him to identify, and we can be fairly certain it was a Land Rover. As for the plate, the old man paid it no attention; according to him, no license plate seemed to be mounted on the vehicle at all." So the traffic policeman told Qiu Lingshan.

"A Land Rover... so it was a Land Rover after all!" Qiu Lingshan nodded. "Thank you for your investigation. These leads are extremely useful!"

Earlier, while analyzing the case back in Songshan City, Qiu Lingshan had likewise narrowed the suspect's possible vehicle down to a few models: a Land Rover Discovery, a Volkswagen Tiguan, and a Chevrolet Captiva. All three were off-road vehicles, and all three had by coincidence appeared in surveillance footage shot not far from several of the crime scenes.

The suspect was a masterful parker. He always chose the blind spots of the cameras, so that by the time the car reached a spot under surveillance, it was impossible to tell which of the three it had been. Only after Qiu Lingshan and Liu Wangli had combed through the surveillance footage near one crime scene after another had those three possibilities emerged.

Yet which of the cars it truly was, Qiu Lingshan could not determine. Now, however, after hearing the local police's account, she could be all but certain: the car the suspect had driven, or ridden in, was a Land Rover Discovery bearing no license plate at all.

"Come, let's go to the highway administration and pull the surveillance footage!" Without lingering a moment, Qiu Lingshan led her people straight to the highway administration to retrieve the recordings.

In the footage from the toll station at Jiawuzi Town, one could see that before and after the crime, a plate-less Land Rover had indeed passed back and forth through that tollgate. But there had been only one person in the Land Rover: a rather short, stout man in oversized sunglasses, whose build did not match the suspect's in the least. In other words, he was merely the driver, not the suspect.

As for the suspect, he must have been hidden inside the car. But the rear windows were covered in dark protective film, so there was no making out the back seat or what lay in the trunk. If the suspect had curled up in the trunk or crouched on the back seat, the toll station cameras could never have captured him.

"Copy this footage and identify this man in the sunglasses!" Even so, Qiu Lingshan and the others had achieved a breakthrough of sorts. They had found no footage of the suspect's face, but they had found footage of the driver's face, and working from the driver, they ought to be able to dig up some leads.

"Yes, sir!" Liu Wangli answered at once.

"Even so, I doubt we'll get anything out of him," Wang Hekan said with a frown. "If the man showed his face in the open like that, he must have been ready to be investigated. There's more than one way into Jiawuzi Town—there's the toll-free national highway as well. No fees there, no toll booth, no camera to catch him. Why insist on the expressway? My guess is he simply isn't afraid of being investigated."

"Be that as it may, this is an extremely important lead. What you say makes sense, but it is only speculation." Qiu Lingshan could not afford to abandon a single possible lead.

Wang Hekan said no more. The group drove back to Songshan City, and at the toll station there they pulled the surveillance footage as well. Songshan City's was a large toll station, with cameras at several angles, and Qiu Lingshan hoped to find some lead in the recordings.

The first few clips were much like what they had seen at the Jiawuzi Town toll station, with nothing that could yield new evidence. Just as Qiu Lingshan was about to give up, the last clip caught her eye.

It showed the road after the car had passed through the toll station—footage that ordinarily offered little to go on—yet it was precisely in this segment, recorded by this camera, that Qiu Lingshan spotted something important.

The plate-less Land Rover, after driving some distance past the toll station, pulled over at the roadside, and out of it stepped a masked man whose build matched the suspect's exactly.

"That's him, no mistake!" Qiu Lingshan froze the frame and pointed at the suspect in the picture.

"It must be him. That means this Land Rover is the car the suspect rides in every time," Liu Wangli said. "Let's keep watching and see what he got out to do."

Qiu Lingshan nodded and went on watching the footage. To her surprise, the suspect took a set of license plates out of the trunk and mounted them on the car.

"He actually put a plate on?" Qiu Lingshan was somewhat astonished. Wasn't that a pointless extra step?

"Well, the traffic police are on duty at the city entrance every day, checking vehicles that have no plates," Liu Wangli said. "They must have been afraid of being stopped by the traffic police."

"So that's it!" Qiu Lingshan nodded. "Judging by the image quality, we can't make out the plate number yet. Liu Wangli, copy this footage, and when we get back, hand it to the technical department for plate reconstruction. Get that plate number identified as quickly as possible!"

"Understood!" Liu Wangli nodded and did as he was told.

...

Since that afternoon, a blizzard had been howling across Ice Snow Spirit Mountain, snowflakes as big as a palm whirling through the air and beating against Wei Zhao's head and face—yet Wei Zhao did not so much as knit his brows.

He stood facing into the blizzard, because behind him was Feng Xiaoxiao! To keep the wind and snow off her, Wei Zhao had chosen to shield her with his own body.

Once he had found a suitable spot, Wei Zhao closed his eyes and entered the jade pendant space to replenish his energy. He had not eaten a morsel for days, and had been standing there all the while, so the drain on his strength could well be imagined; but with the energy the jade pendant space supplied, Wei Zhao was untroubled.

On the high terrace within the Ice Palace, the Ice Palace Master and Xiaoqing—one in green, one in white, two striking figures—likewise stood amid the blizzard. Unlike Wei Zhao, however, the two seemed wholly untouched by the storm, and in fact quite at ease.

"Aunt Qing, I am beginning to believe what you said. He truly is devoted to his girlfriend," the Ice Palace Master said, gazing at Wei Zhao in the blizzard, and there was feeling in her voice.

"I told you, this man is loyal and true of heart. He would not deceive anyone," Xiaoqing said.