Under the twilight of Gloucester, Kingsley was eating a hamburger and fries.
In the Wizarding World, such fast food was rarely seen, but in Muggle society, it was entirely different.
Office workers needed cheap, high-calorie, convenient, and tasty food. Though Kingsley wasn't entirely accustomed to it, he still devoured his dinner heartily, just like the polices around him.
"Could we have targeted the wrong group?"
The chief of the Bristol Police Department asked Kingsley.
"The clues provided by the informant in Bristol are inaccurate. That group of five driving toward Gloucester with a child… were they really not the ones we're looking for?"
"No." Kingsley stated firmly, "It must be him."
The police chief was a little confused as to why Kingsley was so confident.
"Do you have key evidence we're unaware of?"
Kingsley didn't answer. Sometimes, a wizard's intuition couldn't be presented as concrete evidence, yet it existed… and in most cases, it was remarkably reliable.
He shifted the topic to another matter.
"This afternoon, you mentioned the Gloucester police would take us to check something?"
"Surveillance cameras." The police chief obviously didn't have much hope for this kind of thing, "But there are only a few dozen of those things in the entire UK right now, and they are mostly installed in big cities like Birmingham and London. Gloucester only has two… one at the busiest intersection in the district, and the other temporarily out of service because nearby residents complained it violated their privacy."
Kingsley asked cautiously.
"What does it do?"
The police chief wasn't surprised by his question.
Color surveillance cameras had only just begun to spread across Britain in the early 1980s, but due to technical limitations, their numbers were still small, and few people knew about them.
So even a 'specialist' from London like Kingsley, unless working in a related field, might not be familiar with them.
"A small camera installed outdoors that records video 24 hours a day, collecting all the images of what happens in a certain place for review at critical moments."
Hearing this, Kingsley's eyes visibly brightened.
As a professional Auror, he clearly and keenly realized how much help this thing would bring to law enforcement if it was widely adopted!
As if he could see Kingsley's expectation, the police chief had to temper his expectations.
"Perhaps in the future, it'll become the greatest tool for police investigations, but for now, don't get your hopes up. It can only store very little video data, and the image quality is terrible… Only a small area can be seen clearly."
"Let's try our luck." Kingsley nodded and said, "With just one street covered, the chances of finding anything are slim."
They quickly finished dinner, and under the guidance of the Gloucester police chief, they arrived at the station's only surveillance room.
There, a technical officer had already pulled up all the footage from last night to the present and was reviewing it at high speed.
And when Kingsley saw the bulky, television-like monitor with his own eyes, he understood why the chief told him not to have too high expectations.
While the images shown above are indeed in color, they are extremely blurry, and the coverage was pitifully limited. There is only one cross-shaped street, barely capturing a newsstand at the edge, without even showing the surrounding residential buildings.
Yet, despite this, Kingsley remained patient… far more so than the Bristol police chief who had accompanied him.
After sitting there for just over ten minutes, the chief grew restless and stepped outside for a smoke.
Meanwhile Kingsley still kept his eyes fixed on the monitor, watching as the technician fast-forwarded through the footage at quadruple speed.
He sat there for a full four hours. When he arrived, the sun had just set, and now, the sky was completely dark. Aside from drinking three cups of tea, he hadn't moved an inch all.
The surveillance footage played from night until the morning, showing the bustling street as people came and went.
The technician, who is drowsy from staring at the screen, had already used eye drops twice.
If not for the presence of someone watching over his shoulder, he would have long since dozed off at the desk.
But even if he hadn't slept, his attention had long since drifted away from the monitor.
Few people could believe that this street camera, which only covered a single intersection, would yield any useful clues.
They had only suggested checking it because the leads were so scarce. At this point, they were willing to try anything, no matter how unlikely.
Just after another hour, the technician kept nodding off, and it seemed that even if someone was watching him from behind, he would not be able to hold on and would fall asleep.
But then, a voice suddenly woke him up.
"Rewind one minute! Play it back at normal speed!"
Kingsley's sudden shout startled the technician and also woke up several accompanying police officers, who had been drifting off.
Quickly, the technician in charge of the surveillance adjusted the video progress bar back one minute according to Kingsley's instructions before switching off fast-forward.
The others also gathered around at this time, wanting to see what Kingsley had discovered.
The timestamp read 11:21 in the morning. The cross-shaped street was still crowded with pedestrians, their faces only slightly discernible when they passed directly under the camera.
Everywhere else, they were little more than blurry, pixelated shapes.
A minute passed quickly, and the police officers, who had seen the suspect's photos, did not find anything unusual in the footage.
They turned to Kingsley, who remained deep in thought before speaking again.
"Go back to 11:21:42."
The screen rewound to that exact moment, then Kingsley pointed to the edge of the frame, near the newsstand.
"Zoom in, zoom in on this place!"
The screen zoomed into the newsstand, and at that precise second, there are three people standing there.
There was a woman in what appeared to be a white dress, a hunched elderly man walking a dog, and a tall, dark-clothed man with his hair tied back, seemingly engrossed in something in his hands.
Kingsley's gaze locked onto the man.
His appearance in the video is completely unclear. The most he can see is his silhouette and that he is wearing black clothes and has black hair that seems to be tied up.
But Kingsley could recognize this person at the first sight.
He is Severus Snape!
"Go to this intersection! Take me to this intersection immediately and find the newsstand's attendant!"
The police officers were somewhat puzzled as they took action. They had no idea how this specialist from London could identify a suspect from such a distorted image.
The two police chiefs who had been accompanying him had already gone to rest, so Kingsley took charge, leading a police car straight to the busiest intersection in Gloucester.
The newsstand's attendant, who lived in a nearby apartment, was quickly located and brought forward.
"He is not very old, he looks to be around 30 at most! His hair is a little long and tied into a short ponytail, and he looks a lot like a star on TV! But he is very kind, he even called me 'sir' and smiled at me!"
After listening to the description of the newsstand's attendant, Kingsley was completely certain that this man is Severus!
"What did he buy from you? And what did he say?"
"He bought a road map." The attendant recalled carefully, "Before taking the map, he seemed to mutter something, saying he was taking the wrong road."
Kingsley also picked up a road map at this time, looking at the traffic network that covered the entire Great Britain like a spider web, his frown never relaxed.
They were now certain that Severus had been here, but he clearly hadn't stayed in Gloucester, but had gone elsewhere after realizing he had taken the wrong road.
'But where did he go?'
Kingsley looked at the attendant and asked a few more questions.
"Do you remember if there was anyone with him? Like a child or maybe an unconscious girl?"
The attendant shook his head.
"No, he was alone. But I did see him get out of a car."
"Where was the car parked?"
The attendant pointed to a location on the west side of the intersection, near a trash can.
"Over there. It stayed there for about twenty minutes."
Kingsley didn't press the attendant further. Instead, he walked to the spot the man had pointed out.
It is a vertical parking space completely outside the surveillance camera's range.
He paced back and forth along the marked lines, constantly recalling the scene he saw on the surveillance camera and the attendant's words, trying to find further clues from them.
However, no matter how he pieced the information together, he couldn't deduce where Severus had gone after he discovered that he had taken the wrong road!
But Kingsley felt that he could not give up this line of thought, 'There must be some important information hidden here… I just had not discovered it yet.'
The anxious mood affected his thinking, making it difficult for Kingsley to concentrate all his attention.
His hand slipped into his coat pocket, where there was a small bottle of golden, extremely precious potion-
Felix Felicis.
He had carried a vial with him ever since becoming an Auror, but Kingsley had never encountered a situation where he needed to drink the potion himself, not even when facing the vicious Death Eaters.
This time, he only hesitated for a few seconds, then took out the potion from his pocket, unscrewed the lid and carefully drank a sip!
A wave of exhilarating certainty surged through Kingsley, as if every possibility in the world had suddenly opened up.
He felt he could do anything, anything-
He was no longer anxious, then he began to carefully observe everything around the parking space.
"Who handles garbage collection here?" Kingsley asked the Gloucester police officer beside him.
The police officer frantically pulled out a phone book, "Uh… it's Mrs. Newman!"
"Could you bring her here, please?"
As Kingsley spoke, he glanced up at the apartment building across the street. Two windows directly facing the parking space glowed with warm yellow light, showing that someone was home.
He pointed to the window.
"And those two residents upstairs. Can you invite them down as well?"
His requests were swiftly fulfilled, and Mrs. Newman, who was in charge of garbage collection, was called from her home, and two residents from the apartment building were also brought down.
"Were you working around 11 a.m., ma'am?" Kingsley asked the elderly woman, Mrs. Newman, first.
"I'm always working!" Mrs. Newman's voice was loud and sounded harsh, "Every single moment! I handle all the trash on this street! But the pay they give me isn't even enough to feed myself and my husband, who does nothing but lie in bed eating and drinking all day!"
"At 11:20, in this trash can next to me, were you here then?" Kingsley remained eerily calm. His voice carried a strange, almost hypnotic persuasiveness as he questioned her.
"I think... I think I was probably handling this very trash can at the time." Mrs. Newman's voice wasn't as loud as before.
"Very good, your hard work will be duly rewarded. Now, please try to recall… while you were cleaning the trash, did you happen to see a car parked nearby? There were at least a child and a young woman inside, and the driver was a man with a short ponytail ail."
"Yes! Yes!" Mrs. Newman's voice suddenly rose, "I remember now! They were sitting in a car that looked like a square box, and there weren't just the three you mentioned, but a whole group of them! There was a tall one in the back whose head nearly touched the roof, and a short, fat guy with glasses, always scribbling something!"
"Did you hear them say anything?" The closer he got to this point, the calmer Kingsley became, so much so that he could even hear his own steady breathing.
"I only caught one thing the boy said. He said, 'We're going back to Surrey again!''"
Under the street light, there is Kingsley, who is seasoned Auror who had captured countless Dark wizards in his time, laughed.
"It's in Surrey."