Chapter 9: I need to check the license plate, no, I need to check the lock.
“This case is a real headache.”
“As you know, petty theft cases like this can usually be handled directly by our Security Department.”
As he spoke, Section Chief Liu took out a pack of cigarettes, offered one to Chief Wu, and continued,
“The item was probably stolen last night. The guards weren’t alerted, and the doors, windows, and locks were all intact. That means someone with a key had to have done it—an inside job.”
“There aren’t many people in our factory who have keys to the warehouse. Besides the management, only three people do: Old Xiao, the warehouse keeper; Zhou Hongxia, the workshop team leader; and Chen Hui from the Finance Department.”
“Old Xiao isn’t well off. He has five sons, and life is already hard enough for him. Three of the younger boys are always running around stealing chickens and other odds and ends.”
“As for Team Leader Zhou, her hands aren’t exactly clean either. She’s always taking leftover fabric scraps from the workshop home with her.”
“And Chen Hui from Finance… I’ve never actually seen him steal anything, but he spends money like water. He buys new clothes and leather shoes every season, and just the other day he even bought himself a camera. His spending is way out of line with his income.”
“So tell me, Chief Wu—which one of those three doesn’t look suspicious?”
Hearing this, Jiang Xia couldn’t help frowning slightly.
At first glance, Section Chief Liu’s suspicions seemed reasonable. But aside from Old Xiao—more specifically, his sons, who did have a stronger motive—the other two had little apparent reason to commit the theft. It felt like the classic case of suspecting the neighbor because you’ve lost your axe.
With that line of thinking, Jiang Xia could understand why he had been so overwhelmed by the case.
Chief Wu realized the same thing.
Of course, that was easy to say in hindsight. If he had been handling the case from the beginning, his first instinct would have been the same—to suspect an insider, and those three in particular.
After all, both the crime scene and the circumstances were highly suspicious.
Taking the cigarette, Chief Wu tucked it behind his ear and said with understanding,
“I take it that after questioning them, you didn’t get anything useful?”
“What do you mean ‘anything useful’?”
Section Chief Liu’s face filled with frustration.
“We all work in the same factory. I didn’t dare push them too hard—I only asked a couple of questions. But every single one of them blew up at me.”
“Just now, Team Leader Zhou pointed right at my nose and cursed me out. She said they’re only scraps of leftover fabric, everybody takes them home, so why is she suddenly being blamed the moment something goes missing?
“Old Xiao is getting on in years. He got so worked up that he fainted on the spot. He only just came around. His family showed up and started making a scene too, saying their whole family lives in that tiny place. With neighbors all around them, if anyone went out in the middle of the night, everyone would know about it. So how could they possibly be the ones who stole the goods?
“As for Chen Hui, he says he went to night school yesterday evening and slept there afterward. Several people can testify for him. There’s no way he could have come back to the factory to steal anything.”
At this point, Section Chief Liu let out a long sigh.
“To be honest, what they’re saying makes sense too. But they’re the only ones who have keys, and the keys were neither lost nor borrowed by anyone else. If it wasn’t them, then who else could have done it?”
That was hard to say.
Jiang Xia felt that Section Chief Liu was starting to get tunnel vision. But without evidence, there was no point arguing, so she simply followed his line of reasoning.
“So what you’re saying is, Chief Liu, you can’t prove that they stole the goods, and they can’t prove they weren’t colluding with an outsider. Everything’s stuck in a deadlock, and that’s why you’re at your wit’s end.”
“Exactly!”
Section Chief Liu slapped his thigh excitedly.
To be fair, the young police officer Chief Wu had brought along might be inexperienced, but she was quick-witted. She had put the situation into words perfectly.
“That’s why the old saying goes, ‘To catch a thief, you need the stolen goods.’ Once the evidence is right there, there’s no room for excuses. Unfortunately, we discovered the theft too late. We didn’t catch anyone in the act, and now there’s nothing left to investigate.”
Turning to Chief Wu, he said,
“We’re out of our depth here. From this point on, we’re counting on you.”
“Don’t worry,” Chief Wu replied with the practiced assurance of an experienced officer. “We’ll do everything we can.”
In truth, he wasn’t very confident.
This case was far trickier than the one at Dong Aihua’s house, and he had no promising leads. For now, all he could do was hope Jiang Xia could uncover some useful clues.
But judging from what Section Chief Liu had said, the crime scene had probably been heavily disturbed by now.
There was a good chance she wouldn’t find much at all.
He’d better start thinking now about what to say if they came up empty-handed.
Chen Dong had really done him dirty this time!
As they talked, they arrived at the warehouse.
The garment factory’s warehouse was newly built—a single-story concrete building over twenty meters long. Its main entrance was in the middle of the front wall, directly facing the factory’s outer perimeter wall.
The wall stood over two meters high and had been coated with white paint, giving it an imposing appearance. Years of wind and rain, however, had left faint vertical streaks of dirt running down its surface.
Wiping the sweat from his forehead, Section Chief Liu sighed and looked expectantly at Chief Wu.
“This is the warehouse that was burglarized. Old Xiao and the others are waiting next door. Would you like to question them first, or…?”
“No rush.”
Chief Wu shook his head slightly before turning to Jiang Xia.
“Xiao Jiang, what do you think? Any ideas?”
“I need to examine the scene first.”
Standing at the warehouse entrance, Jiang Xia let out a long sigh.
She had prepared herself mentally, but the chaotic mess of overlapping footprints beyond the doorway was still enough to make her heart sink.
These days, the three most effective tools for solving a case were footprints, fingerprints, and interviews.
And among them, footprint analysis was her specialty.
Yet with so many people having trampled through the crime scene after the theft, the original footprints had been completely destroyed. Her strongest skill was practically useless.
It felt even worse than loading into a ranked match only to find your best hero had been banned.
Oh—and the hero had been accidentally banned by your own teammate.
Now that was enough to make anyone’s blood pressure rise.
Forget it, forget it. Solving the case comes first.
Pulling herself together, Jiang Xia stepped into the warehouse.
Rows upon rows of bundled merchandise came into view.
There were more than a dozen stacks of goods, some large and some small. Every bundle looked the same: rectangular, over a meter long and about half a meter high, wrapped in coarse brown burlap and tightly bound with rope. At first glance, they resembled oversized sticks of dynamite.
Jiang Xia bent down and tried lifting one of the bundles near the edge of a stack.
It was astonishingly heavy—easily over a hundred jin (about 50 kilograms or 110 pounds).
“Section Chief Liu, were the four missing bundles the same as these?”
Liu nodded.
“That’s right. Everything from our factory is packed like this. It makes loading them onto trucks easier.”
The bundles were incredibly heavy. Four of them couldn’t possibly have been carried off by one person alone.
There had to have been more than one thief—or perhaps they had used some kind of vehicle.
As she mentally sketched out a profile of the thieves, Jiang Xia set the bundle down. Then something caught her eye.
One of the bundles in front of her was marked 4-13.
She stepped back and noticed another stack with a bundle labeled 3-30.
Looking farther to the right, she spotted yet another marked 4-27.
Those numbers look like dates.
Deep in thought, Jiang Xia asked,
“Section Chief Liu, are the bundles in each stack all being shipped to the same destination? And on different dates?”
“Huh?”
Liu looked surprised.
“How did you know that?”
“I guessed from the numbers.”
She continued, “How many people in the factory know about this system?”
“Oh, practically everyone,” Liu replied. “Most of the factory knows.”
A vague thought flashed through his mind, but he couldn’t quite put it into words. Instead, he asked,
“Why do you ask?”
Jiang Xia blinked.
If everyone in the factory knows this information, then why would an insider choose to steal goods that were scheduled to be shipped today?
Were they simply panicking when they picked the bundles?
That was possible.
But if they had been flustered enough to grab the wrong shipment, how had they still remained calm enough to close the warehouse door behind them and lock it again before leaving?
The behavior didn’t add up.
Something was off.
She continued her questioning.
“Section Chief Liu, which stack were yesterday’s missing bundles taken from?”
Liu pointed toward the back.
“Over there, next to that post where the sample is hanging.”
“Is this bedsheet the same type as the ones in the missing bundles?”
“Yes.”
Jiang Xia walked over.
The spot Liu indicated was far from the entrance, tucked away against the wall in an inconspicuous corner. The workers had already cleared away the remaining bundles, leaving only a large light-red floral bedsheet hanging from a nearby rope as a sample.
She glanced at the floor.
Just as she’d expected, the footprints there were hopelessly trampled and impossible to distinguish.
After making a complete circuit of the warehouse, Jiang Xia returned to Chief Wu’s side.
Seeing the expression on her face, Chief Wu gave her a thoughtful look.
“Found anything?”
“A little.”
Jiang Xia spread her hands helplessly.
“But it’s the same old problem—no evidence.”
She suspected that Section Chief Liu’s conclusion was wrong.
Ordinarily, if someone could slip into the warehouse without alerting the guards or patrols, without damaging the doors, windows, or locks, and then restore everything afterward, the most likely explanation was indeed an inside job.
But if it had been an insider, they would surely have stolen goods that weren’t scheduled to be shipped for quite some time. Otherwise, if they stole them yesterday and the missing bundles were discovered today, they’d practically be inviting people to catch them.
Besides, there were plenty of stacks near the entrance and in the middle of the warehouse marked for shipment in April. What insider would walk all the way to the back just to steal bundles that were due to be loaded onto trucks the very next day?
Only an experienced outside thief—someone unfamiliar with the warehouse’s shipping schedule—would assume that goods stored farther inside would be less likely to be noticed and make a mistake like that.
And a seasoned burglar, after spending time casing the factory, could just as easily learn the guards’ patrol routes, sneak into the warehouse by picking the lock, and restore the lock afterward before leaving.
The theory made perfect sense.
But Jiang Xia kept it to herself.
Without hard evidence, it would just be speculation, and Section Chief Liu—already convinced it was an inside job—would never believe her.
She pondered the problem.
The key to distinguishing between the two possibilities lay in how the warehouse had been entered.
An insider would have used a key.
An outside burglar would have used burglary tools.
If she could prove that the lock had been opened with tools, her theory would hold.
So how could she prove what had been used?
Jiang Xia raised her eyes toward the warehouse entrance.
Time to examine the lock.
She took a pair of gloves from her bag, put them on, and carefully removed the padlock from the warehouse door.
The moment Chief Wu saw what she was doing, his eyelid twitched.
The lock again?
He hurriedly warned her,
“Jiang Xia, just look at it, all right?”
“Whatever you do, don’t go demonstrating how to pick it with a piece of wire in front of Section Chief Liu again. I won’t be able to explain that one away!”