At the beginning of ninety-seven, Cao was transferred to the Special Case Investigation Department directly under the Ministry of Public Security, thinking that he would become very busy and not necessarily have time to come to the small courtyard again, but I didn't expect him to come back to the courtyard no less frequently than before. Pen Fun Pavilion wWw. ｂiquge。 info thought that we would not have anything to surprise us after so many strange cases, but the truth has repeatedly warned me that there will always be secrets waiting for you in this world that you have never heard of.

It snowed early in Beijing that winter, and the snow in the courtyard was ankle-free overnight, and I was thinking about whether to sweep the snow away, and I was a little reluctant to warm the fire in the house, when the call from Team Cao came. On the phone, his voice was a little hesitant for some reason, asking me if I could have time to go to Chongqing with him, there was a strange case, I must be interested, and we have been in Beijing for more than half a year, it is better to go out for a walk.

I thought to myself, every time Team Cao dragged me to help him investigate the case under the guise of traveling and distraction, I encountered a dangerous journey, and there was another time when I was at ease, but the inexplicable curiosity in my heart made me unable to refuse at all. And at this point, the Cao team still has the potential to be blue. Just a few days ago, I went to the ministry to collect the consultant fee and ran into the Jiang team, and now it should be the Jiang Bureau. When chatting with him, I half-jokingly suggested that he was a little old, and that the consultant also had a retirement mechanism.

Team Jiang laughed and said how old I am, don't put too much pressure on these old comrades who are still on the front line, he turned around and arranged for Team Cao to accompany me out for a walk and relax. This pit has already been dug and waiting for me to jump.

Team Cao briefly told me about the situation on the phone, and it turned out that a place called Eling in Yuzhong District, Chongqing, is a small hill, but it is a place where humanities have gathered for a hundred years. The former residences and villas of many celebrities are scattered among them, with lush vegetation and magnificent scenery. During the Anti-Japanese War, many air-raid shelters were dug on the mountain, extending in all directions, and it is said that the entire mountain was hollowed out. The Chongqing massacre, which was a sensational occurrence at that time, occurred not far from here.

After liberation, most of these bomb shelters were mothballed, but some were still used to store supplies. After the reform and opening up, some of the air-raid shelters facing the street were repaired and renovated, and some of them were used as a place for citizens to cool off in the summer, after all, Chongqing, one of the four major furnaces in China, is still difficult to endure in the humid heat in summer. Others were rented to small owners who owned restaurants, and were turned into hot pot restaurants with a simple environment but a strong flavor. I don't know if it's because the citizens are familiar with and even attached to the environment here, or because the temperature and environment of the air-raid shelter really have a great impact on the taste of hot pot.

But only about a tenth of the bomb shelters are open, and most of them are abandoned and closed. Over time, coupled with the loss of architectural drawings of the year, these dense mountain bottoms have become the most hidden part of the city. Many of the tunnels have not been entered for decades, and no one knows how they are connected or where they lead.

But part of the bomb shelter under the Goose Ridge was converted into an underground vault for a bank. At first, it was only an expedient measure, but later the designers of the vault discovered the advantages of this kind of vault, one is that when it is expanded in the future, it will be much more convenient, and then a hole will be opened, and the wall and ground will be poured with concrete again, leaving a lot of earth and stone excavation. Another advantage is that these air-raid shelters were originally excavated based on the mountain structure, and the Eeling itself is a large stone mountain that stands between the two rivers, which is extremely strong, and it is impossible to dig a hole from the outside with bare hands, so there is no need to worry about safety.

During the period of the capital, Eeling was the place where the gold of the Central Reserve Bank of the National Government was stored, and it can be said to be the most important place in the rear of the entire Anti-Japanese War. The vault of the state-owned bank was rebuilt on the basis of the original central bank of the Republic of China, and the thickest part of the concrete wall was more than two meters, plus the only outward passage, several solid gates, it can be said that it is impregnable.

But no one could have imagined that such a secure underground vault would be met with a shocking theft at the end of last year. More than 100 kilograms of gold were lost in the vault, but there was no trace of damage in the vault, and the monitoring equipment at the gate of the vault did not find that anyone had transported gold out of the vault, and the lost gold accounted for only one-tenth of the stored gold, which confused the management of the vault and did not find out about the theft at the first time, so that it was impossible to judge the exact time of the theft.

The Chongqing Municipal Public Security Bureau investigated for a month, investigated all relevant personnel, and found no clues, and reported it to the Ministry of Public Security as a major case, and the Cao team was ordered to rush to Chongqing. To be honest, Team Cao didn't know much more about the case than I did before he arrived in Chongqing, and the situation he introduced to me was very brief, but what really made me curious was why Team Cao had to invite me to join me in such a criminal case, and the leaders of the Ministry of Public Security were still very supportive of his suggestion?

The Cao team seemed to have thought of me asking such a question, so they simply took me to their technical center and showed me a video footage from the bank's surveillance footage. In that year, security monitoring equipment was not yet popular, the price of equipment was very high, and only banks and public security institutions had installed it.

The footage was apparently taken on a beam above the vault door, and the resolution was not high, and the tape appeared to have been used several times, often with white horizontal stripes, and when there were horizontal lines, the picture would shake, but it did not affect the viewing.

Team Cao showed me the video, poured me tea on the side, and didn't speak. I watched the TV screen for more than ten minutes, and I didn't see anything unusual, except for the occasional horizontal stripe, the picture basically didn't change.

I looked up at Team Cao and saw him staring at me with slanted eyes, and when I turned my head, he hurriedly looked aside. I thought to myself, don't he mean to play tricks on people, right? I quickly asked him, "Team Cao, what is the point of this video? Are you going to let me watch it like this?"

Team Cao coughed twice and smiled at me maliciously, "Old, of course there is a problem, but if you don't look carefully, you can't see anything, but if you find the mystery, you will know why I insisted on letting you go." ”

Team Cao's words made me interested at once, and I pressed the fast-forward button of the video recorder and accelerated to look backwards. The time is shown in the upper right corner of the tape, but there is no date, the tape starts at about 1 a.m. and ends at 4 a.m., and no one has been in or out during this time, so I don't see anything unusual at all.

I shook my head and smiled bitterly: "Team Cao, what else are you selling me? I really can't see anything abnormal, let's talk about it." “

"I have long told you that you don't underestimate the people in our technical department, although they are not on the front line, there is no danger, but people have watched hundreds of videotapes repeatedly, only to find the problem, watch it for a week, every moment in front of this boring monitoring screen, this is really not what ordinary people can do, anyway, I can't. Team Cao lit the table with his hand and said with a smile.

"Team Cao, when do you see when I have underestimated you, whether it is bravely charging in the front or silently dedicating to the back, in my heart, you are all heroes, say it quickly, what's wrong?"

"After the case was reported to the Ministry of Public Security from Chongqing, we immediately arranged for people to go to Chongqing to conduct on-the-spot investigations, and it was the team led by Xiaolei. "It turned out to be Xiao Lei, no wonder he didn't come to me recently, and I went to change the gas tank myself.

"Like the results of the on-site investigation of the comrades of the Chongqing Public Security Bureau, there is nothing unusual in the vault, except for the lack of some gold, no suspicious footprints, no fingerprints, the walls and the ground are intact, the door is not a key can be opened, and the password and key are separated, and the three executives of the bank need to be present at the same time before they can be opened, from the last time the door was opened to the incident, the camera at the door did not capture anyone's entry and exit, and the gold seemed to disappear out of thin air, without a clue. “

"Yes, it doesn't make sense to take away more than a hundred kilograms of gold without a trace. "This is indeed the most bizarre case I've ever heard.

"I still have to say that Xiao Lei is very powerful, and after the investigation, he didn't have any valuable clues, so he simply studied the surveillance videotape, and this research really made him find a problem, Lao Chang, look at this. Team Cao said, pointing me to the time in the upper right corner of the video screen.

I looked at the picture carefully, and subconsciously looked at the watch on my wrist, and I was surprised to find that the time displayed on the screen was actually slower than the time of the watch. I didn't bother to ask Team Cao, and when I walked away with my watch for a minute, I watched the video time keep beating.

"One minute on the watch, the timer on the camera is nearly ten seconds slower, could it be that there is a problem with the camera's timing?" I turned to ask Team Cao.

Team Cao shook his head, "Xiao Lei specially found someone to check the video equipment, and there was no problem. But after checking the videotape, he found that all the tapes had such a problem, but unfortunately the bank surveillance video was only kept for fifteen days, and if there were no special circumstances, the tape would wash off the original content and continue to use, so Xiaolei could not determine the earliest time when this phenomenon occurred. However, the camera's timer is normal during the investigation, and this timing problem must have a certain connection with the theft of gold, but what kind of connection is only up to you to support it. “

I nodded, and continued to stare at the image that never seemed to change, stunned.

"Lao Chang, don't you think this case is a bit similar to the incident of Xuanmen in the subway that year?"

I nodded to Team Cao and said with a wry smile, "Team Cao, I understand, that's why you want me to join, right?"

(Sincerely, sincerely.) If you are not sincere, you can't move people. Therefore, those who cry strongly, although they are sad, those who are angry, although they are strict, and those who are strong relatives, although they laugh and disagree. True sorrow is silent and mourning, true anger is threatened before it is released, and true relatives are reconciled without laughing. Those who are really inside, God moves outside, so they are noble. --Zhuangzi's "Nanhua Sutra")

(To be continued.) )