First-Class Lawyer

A few of them persisted in watching the black-screen footage for a while.

The restaurant owner asked the young man, “Do you usually pay attention to this screen? Is it really always this dark?” 

The young man felt quite awkward. “Uh… That side’s not part of the restaurant, so I never really looked at it.”

Actually, he didn’t always keep an eye on the surveillance in the restaurant either. Although the video recording was there to deter any trouble, the price range of this restaurant was towards the higher end after all, most of the people who came to dine here would be those who cared about their public image and wouldn’t kick up anything here.

At approximately 7:34 p.m., a light was suddenly turned on in Kitty Bell’s house.

Only, that light was unsteady, as if swaying gently with a person’s footsteps. 

“This… should be a flashlight?” The young man moved his fingers, zooming the frame in.

Kitty Bell’s house was in the recording, but due to the downward camera angle and the awkward positioning, only the upper half was captured. The lower half was similarly blocked by the windbreak wall of the nearby house and the stacked planks. Through the zoomed-in footage, if they squinted, they could faintly see a person’s figure holding on to a flashlight, slowly walking from someplace further inside the room to closer to the window.

From the movements and the silhouette, this should be Mdm Kitty Bell herself.

When she stood a little further away, they could still make out the silhouette of her figure and the flashlight through the upper half of the window. Her legs were the first to disappear out of view, followed by her upper body, then her shoulders and face…

By the time she walked up to the window, they could no longer see her anymore.

“Damnit, the wall and planks are in our way!” The young man was even more agitated than the lawyers.

Yan Suizhi patted his shoulder. “Calm down a little.”

He had seen many cases where a chain of evidence dropped at critical moments like this. It was already quite something that they were able to have this video recording; evidence that perfectly proved everything for them wouldn’t just fall into their laps. 

Although the person couldn’t be seen, they could make a reasonable conjecture from the shifting of the lights and shadows in the room—

The old madam seemed to have lowered her flashlight slightly as she fiddled with something. Then, the light in the room turned on.

“There are lights in there? I’d thought there was something wrong with the wiring or that her light was broken.” This time, the one who spoke was the restaurant owner. “After all, that house is probably a whole century older than I am.”

The things that notary Julian Goyle came across everyday were a lot more than the restaurant owner ever had. He said, “In order to cut down on utility bills, many of the residents here wouldn’t turn on the lights unless it gets dark enough. However, I don’t know what habits this old madam has, it’s only a guess.” 

And a moment later, a thin layer of condensation fogged up the window panes.

“The old madam has turned on the heater.”

The case file had said that Mdm Kitty Bell liked to knit. She would knit in the day by the window that faced the sun, and at night, she conversely would sit where the heater was to warm up her fingers as she knit.

The heater was a blessing for the old madam, letting her fingers turn agile. But it wasn’t very friendly for the people who were watching the video recording. 

As the glass was fogged up with condensation, the interior of the room could no longer be clearly seen; they could only see hazy light and blurred outlines.

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At 7:55 p.m. in the video, something shocked them all awake. 

“Ehhh!! Isn’t that hair! A clump of hair has come over!” the sleepy young man sat up straight, his finger jabbing towards the screen, pointing at a black shadow that had appeared past the windowpane.

It should be a person, secretly creeping up on the old madam from behind.

Naturally, due to the windbreak wall and the planks blocking their view, they could only make out a little bit of the top of his head.

But they still watched with bated breaths. Shortly after, through the glass fogged with condensation, they saw a black shadow swinging in an arc over that man’s head and slamming down. 

Even if they couldn’t hear the sound, and even if they couldn’t see the whole picture, they could still imagine that that person was holding a certain hard object, knocking that old madam out cold.

This time, the young man watching the video didn’t rush to speak. Conversely, his two hands covered his mouth, and he sat frozen for a long time before silently drawing in a sharp, chilly breath.

The restaurant owner gave a long sigh. “I wish the old madam had heard something. These old houses all have alarm systems installed near the light switch…”

The notary considered this for a moment before saying, “Actually, many of the alarms in these old houses are broken, it may not necessarily be working. Furthermore, if he wasn’t afraid that the police would be alerted, he wouldn’t have needed to knock the old madam out.” 

As they idly discussed this, the people actually in need of the video recording, Yan Suizhi and Gu Yan, never opened their mouths from start to end, their attention rapt on the screen.

The young man felt someone behind him incline forwards towards his seat, and he unconsciously turned back.

He heard his boss mention when these people first entered that the man standing behind him was an intern lawyer. His first impression of this intern was that he strongly exuded the air of a student; perhaps it was because he saw the other constantly with a slight smile on his face, making him appear particularly warm and friendly.

But now, when this intern lawyer stared at the screen, his face was completely devoid of emotion. Any hint of a smile was gone, as well as any sense of warmth and friendliness. The screens on the wall were reflected as bright spots in his eyes like crystal clear glass, beautiful and cold. 

Was the difference between a person smiling and not smiling so huge?

The young man glanced over again, this time to the authentic lawyer. He had a hand resting on the table, his face impassive as he stared at the screen, radiating a frosty chill.

“…”

Caught between two icebergs, the young man shrank his neck down, silently turned his head back around, and shifted his chair forward. 

When he looked back at the screen, the dimly lit glass abruptly went dark.

“Huh? Why did it go dark?!” the young man was surprised.

“The man inside turned off the lights,” the notary, Julian Goyle, said.

As the young man stared at the screen, he felt someone pat him lightly on the shoulder. 

Yan Suizhi, “Excuse me, can you enlarge the visual, please?”

The young man adjusted the settings again.

The dark window panes practically occupied half the screen. Yan Suizhi leaned in a little closer. His centre of gravity shifted forward and he placed his left hand on the table, yet his gaze and attention never strayed from the screen in the slightest.

He didn’t even notice that the ‘table’ that his hand rested on was any different. 

A moment passed. And the ‘table’ suddenly moved, pulling out from under his palm.

Distracted, Yan Suizhi glanced to the side just in time to see Gu Yan stick his hand back into the pocket of his pants.

“…”

Gu Yan’s gaze swept past his face. 

Unconsciously, Yan Suizhi wrung his hand, feeling that his peripheral nerves were probably dead. He actually wasn’t even able to tell the ginormous difference between the back of a hand and a table.

By the time he looked back up, Gu Yan had already shifted his gaze away and had gone back to looking at the screen.

That pitch-black screen, magnified, was still a blinding black in their sight. They couldn’t make anything out at all.

After a while at approximately 8:05 p.m. on the video’s timestamp, light washed anew in the house. Swiftly after, a silhouette hastily ran over by the window in a frenzy… 

That should be the old madam’s grandnephew, Chester, who had just come back.

This video recording with dismally little content was requested to be played and replayed three times over, after which the video file was obtained with the notary Julian Goyle acting as witness.

The restaurant owner rubbed his hands together, saying, “Alas, it seems like I wasn’t able to be much help. If only there wasn’t anything obstructing it, or even if there were a streetlamp in that alley. Really, how unfortunate!”

The young man stood up, scratching his head. “I don’t usually watch the screen monitoring that window. If only I had seen it then, who knows if I could’ve been more useful.” 

“Thank you,” said Yan Suizhi, “this video recording is very useful.”

When he talked to them, the smile came out again, as if the coldness from before when no one’s attention was on him was a mere illusion.

The restaurant owner also went through the pleasantries with him. “You’re welcome. It’s about time for dinner, do you want to just have it here?”

Gu Yan waved his hand. “No need, we still have to look into other things.” 

“Oh, is it? Alright then…” The restaurant owner looked regretful that he wasn’t successful in his attempt to pull in customers.

After Yan Suizhi, Gu Yan, and Julian Goyle came out of this restaurant, they went into a few other restaurants in the vicinity, just as before, negotiating with the boss to view the surveillance footage from the 23rd.

But it was very unfortunate that there wasn’t a single infrared camera that faced towards the window. Moreover, either the angle was even further off or the height not high enough, but they weren’t able to obtain any more useful information.

The only exception was the sixth restaurant that they entered. 

The surveillance cameras in this restaurant, likewise, weren’t able to capture Kitty Bell’s window. However, the staff in charge of surveillance said something of interest. He pointed at a corner not far off from the yard wall. “Tch. I remember that this corner didn’t use to be so dark. Here, or just a little bit closer… uh, there. There should have been a streetlamp over there.”

“Are you sure?”

“Positive. This area wasn’t this dark before, I’m sure.”

If there was a streetlamp, it could’ve cast a little light on the yard wall around Kitty Bell’s house. In that case, that person… or perhaps anyone who had climbed the wall before the crime would have been recorded. 

To prove the validity of his words, the staff went ahead to sweep through the recordings a few days further back.

Sure enough, on the evening of the 15th, there was a streetlamp in the corner of the alley. It wasn’t bright and the radius of its light wasn’t wide. The gas appeared slightly faulty as well; the light kept trembling like a dying man who’d die at a mere touch.

Nevertheless, it indeed shone at Kitty Bell’s yard wall.

Did it just happen to spoil? Or had someone broken it on purpose? 

The staff fast-forwarded through the video recordings from the 15th to the 16th.

“Pause for a moment.” Gu Yan stared at the screen and said aloud, “Play it back at original speed.”

The video recording quickly returned to play at original speed. Two youths could be seen standing near the streetlamp talking to each other. Those two people weren’t unfamiliar to Yan Suizhi. One was the old madam’s grandnephew, Chester. The other was Joshua Dale.

Somehow or other, the chat between these two people turned into a quarrel. They pushed and shoved at each other, looking as if they were about to start brawling. 

As they jostled around aggressively, Joshua Dale hauled Chester against the streetlamp. Chester slammed into the lamp post, and immediately after yanked Joshua Dale, flipping over and shoving him against the lamp post.

Neither side got the upper hand; both incurred heavy losses.

And that already faulty gas streetlamp, just like that, went completely cold.

Despite this, those two bratty kids didn’t have mercy on it. 

They continued fighting for another three minutes or so. A bystander came trying to break up their quarrel, but the three of them ended up getting into a wonderfully, beautifully messy scuffle.

Yan Suizhi, whose face had become paralysed watching this, “…”

He turned to smile at Gu Yan, his voice cloyingly affectionate as he said, “You know what? I want to rip off that child’s head and hang it on the streetlamp.”

What rolled off his tongue was ‘child’, but the way he said it made it sound more like ‘dumbass’. 

“…” Gu Yan raised his eyes. He let Yan Suizhi keep smiling for a while, then suddenly reached out to pinch his chin and turn his face back. He said coldly, “Tell that to Joshua yourself.”

The esteemed Professor Yan had never been treated like this before. This chin-hold froze him up. He thought to himself, you’re really overstepping, Student Gu.