Chasing Innocence (16 page)

‘DVD, is that what you were going to say? Thought you said it was on tape?’

‘No,’ Steve said from his chair. ‘You asked where the tapes were, we didn’t correct you.’

‘So which is it?’

Sachgian answered. ‘Security systems haven’t used video for years, the quality isn’t good enough. You can have someone bang to rights and they’ll still deny it’s them and there’s nothing anyone can do.’

‘So DVDs like in movies you rent?’ Brian asked. ‘
Happy Feet
and all that?’

‘I suppose so, if that’s your thing.’ Sachgian scratched at his chin. ‘Each camera takes a single high-definition picture every second and stores that on disk. We pick out the required timeline and burn it to DVD.’

Brian smiled and clapped his hands together. ‘Excellent, I’ll take two copies like you made for the police. Stevie boy can do that. And make sure you don’t mess me about because if you do I’ll be back to haunt this place. Same goes for calling the police when I’m gone.’

Without acknowledging him Steve slowly stood and reached up to a shelf, pulling down a stack of DVD cases.

‘While you’re doing that I have a few more questions for young Sachgian here, about last night.’

THIRTY

Simon leaned over the slumped body of the child. She was so peaceful and innocent and so beautiful, even with a tear-stained face and red splotches around sore eyes. She was so small, yet already something of the woman she might be. His need shifted inside of him, a craving that he fought in the prolonged dark of closed eyes. But the need won and he reached out, stroking stray hairs from her face, his fingers across the soft skin of flushed cheeks.

‘Stop that, Simon, there will be time enough.’ Hakan picked up the syringe from the floor. ‘She is ready?’

‘She is.’ Simon stepped back from the sofa. ‘She’s very loyal to her father, but in time she’ll have no choice but to believe us, we know too much about him.’

‘Good, then you’d better get the woman. It is time to cut off the loose ends.’

Simon carefully scooped the child into his arms, shifting her head onto his shoulder and her weight onto his forearm. He carried her through to the hallway and out through a doorway into the garage.

Hakan pulled his phone from his leather jacket, keying in a number and watching the screen. He began pacing an elliptical path around the living room, turning the syringe over and over. He was tired, none of them had slept. For the first time in a long time Simon was giving him problems.

‘Halloo Baldur.’ He did not pause for pleasantries, nor did he bother to switch into Baldur’s native tongue, which was different from his own and from this English language that he could not abide. ‘What is your status?’

Hakan’s momentum around the room slowed as the remote voice answered at length. Resuming his pacing and smiling, he listened to the voice explain all it had just finished doing.

‘And her bag, the coat?’ Hakan asked. ‘…Back in her flat! Good.’ He chuckled to himself. ‘You are very inventive. The husband is not there?…OK, then he’s probably still with the police…Is that right? In the bedroom? Very much the modern woman. You have done well, what about the car?…No, not that, the Rover. It cannot bring police here…No, I do not care. We need that document, that address is all that ties us…Yes, it was a mistake for Simon, but it was the least of them. If not for this woman it would not have mattered…Then do what you do best Baldur, I want that path erased. If someone looks hard enough, I do not want to lose what we have here. Understand?…Excellent my friend, thank you.’ He snapped the phone closed.

Just one piece of paper and one troublesome woman stood between Hakan and untroubled sleep. And he would deal with the woman right now.

THIRTY-ONE

Adam stacked the bags of maps on the table and sat down, watching the throng of people flow through the main concourse. He tried to imagine Sarah here, less than a day ago, maybe sitting at one of these tables, possibly even the one he was at now.

The image of Sarah on a morgue table now haunted him almost permanently. It kept him with Brian on this fool’s errand, although doing something did keep his emotions at bay. Brian also seemed to offer some hope, but Adam could not imagine what they would learn by being here. What would anyone remember? What could they find? Putting everyone into a headlock would take a while.

He pulled a large atlas from one of the bags, absently watching a door open on the far side of the concourse. To his surprise Brian emerged, stepping around people and up the steps. He dropped into the chair opposite and placed two DVD cases on the table. He tapped his index finger against the plastic.

‘Guess what they are?’

‘Neil Diamond in Vegas?’ Adam ventured.

Brian ignored him. ‘CCTV footage on DVD. How about that?’

‘Really, from last night?’ Adam was shocked and a little impressed.

‘Sure, two copies. From five in the afternoon through to midnight.’

Adam looked at Brian. ‘How’d you get that?’

Brown eyes gleamed back. ‘I asked nicely. Security were only too pleased to help when I explained why. Ran me off two copies there and then.’

‘And that was it?’

Brian nodded.

‘Cool,’ Adam said. ‘I’ll get my computer.’ He looked down at the atlas on the table and back to Brian. ‘I got this and about fifteen cities from Birmingham upwards. Marker pens are in there as well.’

Five minutes later he returned with his laptop bag bouncing off his hip. Brian had the atlas open at the UK map, using a marker pen to draw an upside down triangle with a corner each touching Blackpool, Hull and Warwick.

Adam cleared a space for the laptop as Brian closed the atlas, scuffing his chair around. They both waited for the computer to load the first DVD. Several small images appeared on the screen. Brian leaned in closer, almost with his chin on Adam’s shoulder.

‘How’re we supposed to make anything out?’

‘It’s a contact sheet, Brian. There are seven cameras.’ He expanded the first folder and clicked on the first image. It filled the screen, showing the slip road from a vantage point high atop a lamppost. The road wound around to the car park, illuminated by several globes lighting the approach, the occasional splotch of green. The date and time were stamped in yellow numbers on the bottom right of the screen. Adam pressed the spacebar and advanced the image, but nothing changed save for the time by an increment of one second. He repeated the process until the time had advanced by fifteen seconds. Apart from the shifting shadows and leaves everything remained static.

Adam leaned back in his chair. ‘With seven cameras, each with sixty pictures a minute, that’s over three thousand images per hour per camera. We could be here for days. On top of that coordinating the timeline between cameras is going to be a nightmare.’

Brian looked blankly from the screen to Adam.

‘I tell you what,’ Adam offered. ‘Why don’t you get some drinks and I’ll see if I can download something. We can’t be the first people that needed to check through multiple CCTV feeds.’

To Adam’s surprise Brian wordlessly pulled a handful of change from his pocket. ‘What do you want?’

By the time Brian placed two coffees on the table and resumed his co-pilot’s position, Adam was busy pressing keys and flicking between images. He waited for Brian to settle.

‘The file structure is fairly standard for CCTV. There were lots of programs we can use, I downloaded this one because it’s simple to use.’

Adam pressed a key and the images started advancing. Seconds passed with only the yellow numbers and shifting shadows changing. Then the screen flared and a car emerged from the slip road, arcing around in short jerking movements.

‘The software works like a normal video player.’ He demonstrated fast forward and rewind. The digits were now accelerating like a stop watch, cars appearing as momentary flares on the screen. He pressed pause.

Brian looked from the screen to Adam. ‘Seems simple enough but what about the other cameras?’

‘That’s the clever bit, watch this.’ Adam pressed a key and the image switched to a bird’s-eye view of the car park, from a camera mounted high above the services entrance. The time stayed the same. He moved through the different cameras, the next inside above the main services doors, looking along the main concourse. It showed the corralled area of tables on the left and the shops on the right, the image frozen with bodies mid-motion. The next camera faced the line of shop entrances. A third camera pointed back along the main concourse to the entrance, the shops on the left, the seated area on the right. The final two feeds were blank screens with the time stamped at the bottom. He switched to the camera covering the shop entrances.

‘How come the picture is so clear?’ Brian asked.

‘It’s the quality of these cameras and the lighting. I could make a fair guess at the branding on that woman’s handbag if I wanted. They probably rely on the quality to make convictions.’

‘The blank screens are dead cameras?’

‘Yup, the computer stamps the blank image anyway.’ He switched back to the car park slip road.

‘Very good.’ Brian reached across to his drink. ‘So we step through this until Sarah’s car shows up.’

‘Exactly.’ Adam fast-forwarded through the images, a brief glare on the screen heralding the headlights of each new car. They watched through to 17:45. ‘I called Sarah about this time,’ Adam said, concentrating on the screen. ‘She was approaching Delamere.’

The images played on, the time marching forward. Then the screen flared and Adam paused the image at 17:49. The green Rover was frozen on the screen as it turned into the car park, a smaller silver car right behind. ‘That’s it, that’s Sarah and the Rover!’ They both leaned in.

‘Christ, Adam, she’s not being very discreet, could she have got any closer?’

Adam studied the image, hypnotised by the small silhouette of Sarah inside the silver car. ‘The Rover turned off the motorway unexpectedly.’

‘Take it back a couple seconds,’ Brian instructed. ‘Think we had the number plate there.’ He produced a small worn notepad and a very short pencil from his back pocket. The image skipped back several seconds and then froze. The lettering of the number plate was clearly highlighted against the luminous background. Brian wrote it down. ‘That a match for the one she gave you?’

‘It is, except before I wasn’t sure on the last two digits. We are now. Detective Boer will be pleased about that.’

‘Yeah, well we won’t get too excited just yet.’ Brian looked at the screen. ‘Jump to the other camera and see if you can zoom in and get a look at him.’ Adam switched to the bird’s-eye view above the services, showing a much smaller image of the Rover pulling into a space at the far end of the car park. Sarah’s car continued almost completely around, parking diagonally opposite and closer to the services exit. Adam froze the image when the Rover door opened and zoomed in. The Rover grew to a quarter of the screen’s size.

Brian fidgeted impatiently. ‘Is that as close as you can get?’

‘Yup, at this distance the camera has limits like your eyes do.’ He zoomed closer and the image broke down into square blocks of colour. He zoomed out and centred on Simon, his head and shoulders above the top of the car door, pink and dark smudges but no defined features. He let the footage play, pausing again as Simon opened the boot, but they were at the wrong angle to see anything. They watched him grow on the screen as he moved towards the camera, into the bright circle of light spotlighting the entrance. Adam paused the image, filling the screen with Simon’s head and shoulders.

‘Bingo!’ he said. ‘That’s the difference we get with him closer. The only detail we can’t see is the colour of his eyes.’ They both stared at the face.

Brian spoke first. ‘Let’s hope Sarah’s following the right car, this guy looks like butter wouldn’t melt in his mouth. Big though, hard to take down. Follow him inside.’ Brian copied the time stamp into his notebook, 17:53:37

Adam switched to the inside camera. The top and rear of Simon’s head appeared, walking straight over to a mini arcade on the right. He positioned himself and turned so he could look back at the entrance.

‘Stop!’ Brian instructed. ‘Guess he is the right guy.’

‘There’s a doubt?’ Adam asked.

‘There’s always doubt. No point us tracking the wrong guy because he caught Sarah’s eye at the right moment. So we make sure, and that my friend,’ he nodded at the image, ‘is pretty damn sure.’

Adam studied the screen. ‘He looks like he’s waiting for someone?’

‘He is, he’s waiting for someone to search him out as they walk through the entrance. Keep your eye out for Sarah.’ Adam nodded and fast-forwarded. The time ticked to 18:01:47. Simon stepped from the arcade and into the services, moving through the crowd.

‘Must have thought he was in the clear. Take us back outside to the main camera, see what your wife’s been up to.’ He looked down at his notes. ‘Back to the mug shot of Simon.’

Adam flicked between cameras to the car park, playing the images in reverse, people walking fast backward. He stopped at 17:53:35 and then set it playing. They both watched Sarah’s stationary car, partially blocked by the yellow time stamp. After a few seconds a small shadowed shape emerged, moving away from the services around the edge of the car park.

‘Christ, what’s she doing?’

‘Checking out the Rover,’ Brian stated. ‘She’s got nerve, that’s for sure.’

Adam watched Sarah peer into the Rover, then disappear from view behind it, as if she were kneeling, and then seconds later she stood and walked towards the services. ‘I told her to be careful,’ he exclaimed, plaintively.

‘You should pay attention. She’s doing what she had to.’

Adam let this pass, mostly because a building sense of dread rendered him mute. They were looking at images from over twelve hours ago. He paused playback as Sarah emerged into the light of the services. He zoomed in and centred on his wife’s head and shoulders, the light picking out her features. A chill crawled up his spine. She was looking directly into the camera, through time, right at him. There was nothing hopeful in her eyes any more, just narrow determination.