In the evidence room, he was also able to view the videos and pictures gathered from the surveillance cameras at those locations. Some of the pictures were just sent in; he wondered whether Detective Qin had studied them yet.

Qin must have been having another meeting with Internal Security.

After printing out a large number of the pictures, Yu remained sitting alone, spreading them out into four groups along the desk. It was easier to study them like that.

At least one of the points discussed between Yu and Qin was proven. Nothing from any of the surveillance cameras showed the possible suspect.

Among the dramatic changes in the city in the last several years, one was the installation of an incredibly large number of surveillance cameras, practically everywhere, and particularly in those central locations. It was done, like a lot of things, in the name of ‘stability maintenance’. In the age of the increasingly popular social media sites like Weixin or Weibo, the government was worried about sudden eruptions of people’s protests.

So it meant, among other things, that the murderer must have done a reconnaissance trip beforehand.

Perhaps he was not only young or middle-aged, but also an agile, alert man who knew something about the surveillance technologies.

Like Qin, Yu was not that sure about Chen’s theory. Whatever coup Chen had produced with the previous serial murder, this was a different case, with nothing like a red mandarin dress as a possible lead.

Under the light of the evidence room, Yu spent quite a period of time going over the pictures one by one, regrouping them from a variety of angles, enlarging them on the computer screens, and reprinting some.

Then he thought they had another thing in common. In the four groups of the crime scene pictures, each showed the presence of a mask.

Of the four, victim number two was wearing a mask on his face, but not the other three. Two of those had masks that had dropped to the ground, close to their bodies, possibly due to the violent strikes they’d suffered; but for number three, it was actually at a distance from her body. At first, Yu did not even notice it as a mask. It was visible only in one picture in the group; in the enhanced resolution it showed a slight yellowish color, looking like a lost handkerchief.

It was perhaps nothing that uncommon, however, for people to wear masks for these smoggy mornings.

Still, it left a question mark in Detective Yu’s mind.

Glamorous Bar was one of the top fancy restaurants in Shanghai, located on the corner of the Bund and Guangdong Road. The seventh-floor balcony boasted a superb view of Pudong, the east side of the river. It was said that a large number of customers went there for the view.

But Chen and Bian turned out to be the only customers sitting on the balcony that day. Like the day before, the view appeared shrouded in an impenetrable grayness.