— In the meantime —
At police headquarters, Knight and Thomas were poring over every piece of CCTV footage they had collected.
Knight leaned one hand against the edge of the desk, his eyes never leaving the screen as the footage was slowed down frame by frame.
The timeline moved on coldly.
Neon light from the corridor cast a pale, trembling streak across his eyes.
Thomas stood beside him without saying a word.
Perhaps he could sense it too—something deeply wrong hidden somewhere in the dark mess of all that data.
“Ryan was taken out…”
Knight repeated the words quietly, as if only to convince himself that it had really happened.
“If it were me, I wouldn’t use the main exit.
White said the killer disguised himself as a cleaner.
The only thing that could leave this place without drawing attention…”
His eyes stopped on one point in the footage.
A bulky trash cart rolled through the corner of the camera’s view a few minutes before nine.
Clattering along.
No one pushing it.
No one walking beside it.
“…would be that.”
Thomas frowned.
“You mean… he put Ryan in there?”
“Not put.
Hid.” Knight replayed the footage at normal speed.
The trash cart moved only a short distance before stopping precisely in the blind spot between two buildings, beyond the reach of the cameras.
“To hide an unconscious person, they needed two steps: block the line of sight, then move him out of the trash cart.”
Knight pointed at the screen as a truck pulled up at exactly that moment, its turn signal blinking slowly, like the heartbeat of someone deliberately trying to make everything look normal.
“Here,” Knight said.
“The truck parks at an angle.
The side door opens just as the trash cart stops.
The entire view is blocked.
They stand the trash cart upright… then another man pulls Ryan out from inside.
None of it can be seen on camera.”
He slowly exhaled, as if he had finally found the crucial piece of the puzzle.
“All they need is a truck with a side door.
Not many trucks like that come into this area at that hour—especially after nine, when the whole area is almost deserted.”
Knight and Thomas worked quickly, switching through the camera footage.
They found eight trucks with side doors entering the area between 20:45 and 21:10.
Carefully, they recorded every license plate number on the computer.
“Fake plates,” Knight said before Thomas could even finish reading them.
There was no confidence in his voice, only the familiar weariness of someone who had seen the conclusion long before the evidence caught up with it.
“You don’t use a legitimate vehicle for something like this.
Either a stolen vehicle or fake plates.
I’d bet on fake plates.
Easier to arrange.”
Thomas sent a message through the internal app to the traffic unit on duty, asking them to check which of the plates were fake or belonged to stolen vehicles.
Thomas swallowed hard.
“Confirmed.
One plate, GT-6971, is invalid.
It entered at 20:56.”
Knight fell silent for a second.
The silence seemed to put everything back into the exact place where it belonged.
“Get word to Chief Modric at once,” Knight said urgently.
“Authorise Traffic to pull every intersection camera.
We track that vehicle’s route.
There’s no mistake… it’s the one.”