Late of the Payroll
Grey’s own office along the corridor looked out onto the administrative building beside the station. From his window he could see neither the ranging forces of law and order to the rear, nor the scattering of people forming on the green out front. Some of these gathered people were factorymen, others members of the public worried after having read their papers this morning. There was even a dog walker or two, wondering what the fuss was all about as police vehicles roared past with extra purpose this morning. They had begun arriving about the time work would be starting at the plant – perhaps here looking for answers, or hoping to feel safe as their town became unknown to them, or maybe just nosy? For it wasn’t every day around these parts that such transforming events were ‘going down’; and who on such a day as this had anything else to do, or anywhere else to want to be?
Grey opened his office door to find someone already there.
‘Hello Sir,’ said Sarah Cobb, rubbing her eyes as she sat up on the small sofa, a laptop still on at his desk and displaying the station’s screensaver. ‘It got busy in the mess room last night, so I came up here for some quiet. You don’t mind do you?’
‘You’ve been here all night?’ He noticed then her zippered jumper and grey jogging bottoms.
‘Well, I went home after a few hours,’ she said, rising from her sleeping position and tending towards the coffee maker, ‘but then I couldn’t stop thinking about it, so I went for a run about nine, and accidentally/on purpose found I was running past the station... You know how it is, when you’re on a case.’
‘I do,’ he said sadly. ‘But still...’ He found himself torn between guilt at letting his staff go so far beyond the call of duty for him, and eagerness to learn what she may have found. ‘You really didn’t have to...’ Grey found himself saying, before her eagerness took over,
‘But it was worth it, sir. Come and see.’ He joined her as she placed two piping cups from the machine by the laptop, and pulled another chair around in front of the computer screen,
‘So I was looking through the CCTV footage, from the cameras overlooking the services carpark. Once you’d given me a starting point, I found the camera nearest to the hotel and began scanning from around seven o’clock on the Tuesday night.’ She tapped at laptop keys and found for Grey a blurred black and white still of parked cars, and behind them what could just be made out to be the hotel frontage at night.
‘You’ve put all this film on your PC?’ he asked.
‘No, they have an electronic hard drive system. All the cameras feed through and store their data there. I can access it online. Anyway, over the very first few frames I found this...’
In the film, its frames progressing in stop-motion, was a man, little more than an outline, approaching and then pausing by – just at the edge of the frame – a car Grey noted to be a contender for the one described by Maria, the evening receptionist. And then there she was herself, casting a backward glance at Thomas as she made for the hotel front door to begin her shift. The car did indeed seem larger than the others, its glinting chrome showing clearly against the darkness around it.
‘You’ve found Thomas!’
‘Yes sir... and after that I thought I’d just keep working through all the CCTV film. That’s not all I found though,’ she added, a note of caution in her voice.
Grey watched ominously, as Sarah’s fingers moved to speed up the sequence of images,
‘This is about seven minutes later,’ she explained, slowing the playback to a crawl; as firstly the figure identified as Thomas seemed to look across sharply at something out of shot, before dashing off in the opposite direction so quickly that by the next still he had vanished from the frame completely.
‘What happened?’ asked Grey, his question answered though by the very next image, where a second figure – no more than a blur – shot across past the parked car, coming from the direction Thomas had been looking towards and then moving in the direction in which he had then fled.
‘Who was that?’ he asked.
‘They’re moving too quickly to see,’ Sarah replied, ‘but they are a bit clearer later on.’
Moving expertly to queue up another stream of images, scenes of night-time and movement, caught in low resolution, Sarah explained,
‘So, I asked Records, and they found me an Ordnance Survey map of the area,’ (Grey noticing it then folded up by the computer.) ‘I had a look around, at how it all fitted together – the hotel, the Corridor, the motorway and the services.
‘I started in our corner of the carpark, and then marked on it where there were cameras and what direction they looked out at; then I began scanning the footage for the remainder of the evening...’
‘So you had another load of cameras to go through? No wonder you’ve been here all night. Sarah, you didn’t have to…’
‘Sir, just let me show you this one thing.’ Now she looked really worried.
‘Go on.’
‘Now I couldn’t see anything on the film from the next two cameras along the carpark, and so with nothing specific to go on I was all set to pack up then, and let the general scanning of all hours of all the tapes resume tomorrow. But as I say, I had a second wind, and wouldn’t have slept with all this going on in my mind.’
‘Okay.’ He sensed she was building toward something.
‘So I came back and studied the map some more; and tried to see where someone could have run off to, in the general direction Thomas was going, without being caught on either of the next two cameras? And it’s here,’ her finger moved to the map she had opened out in front of the computer, ‘this path around the side of the hotel, which if it’s caught on a camera is going to be one of the hotel’s own. So I rang them up…’
‘At that time? They must have loved you.’
‘I think the guard I spoke to was glad of the company; he sounded lonely there all night.’
The Sarah Grey knew would have said this jokingly, he thought, with relish, with hints of innuendo; so why was she instead finding the pathos in the guard’s situation?
‘And luckily they have the same security system,’ she continued, ‘so he gave me the internet link and their pass code.’
And there, with more deft touches of the keyboard, was Thomas on screen again, dashing around the front corner of the building, Grey relieved Sarah had rejoined the trail of his journey, even as he began to dread how this chase could end.
‘There is nothing though on the camera covering the back of the hotel, so I looked to see where he might have gone next; and the only option I could see would be leaving the path here,’ she directed his view across the terrain with a quickly moving finger, ‘which looks like it might involve climbing a fence – we’d have to check – but I think he did because of this.
This next shot, though just as grainy as the others – its tones reduced to black and white, shapes dumbed down to blur and static – nevertheless showed what might, just might, have been a person running very quickly past a signpost fixed and unmoving. The image haunted Grey, offering the illusion of the signpost being visible through that wraithlike form, the dashing spectre half there and half not, a creature neither of this world or the next.
‘Running this way would bring you out quite near to the services,’ continued Sarah, beginning to flag a little now as she ran through her narrative. ‘There are eight separate cameras around the restaurant and petrol station – and you know even a busy place like the services can seem deserted at certain times of the day, once rush hour has passed. I found a couple of people coming and going, some lorry drivers talking... it might have taken hours for me to find Thomas’s trail again. But I had one last idea before I packed it in for the night, and that was that there was one particular way they could have gone which would have definitely passed by a camera. So I thought, I’m here now, I’ll do a quick scan of the cameras either side of the footbridge over the motorway – you know, for people who are travelling south and so have parked on the other side.’
Although there was a roa
d bridge, linked to sliproads and roundabouts and so forming something of a minor junction, for some drivers heading south and not requiring meals or shop goods, or who didn’t mind the walk across, there was a carpark on that side too.
She queued up the next screen. The opening shot was of a dimly lit walkway leading to steps heading upward, and of a man, though you wouldn’t want to say who, starting up the metal staircase as if leaping over water in a steeplechase. A dramatic, startling image, but nothing compared to the next...
Threatening enough to be the cover of a video nasty, dripping as it was with implied violence, in this new image were two figures seen only as outlines, stark, in equal parts blurred and jagged, each an inverted silhouette of bunched and crumpled clothing, of strong light reflecting from pale clothes and skin. They seemed to be circling each other within the narrow tunnel of the covered bridge. Grey shuddered.
‘Sir, once you see them both a bit more clearly, I’m not sure that the other one couldn’t be...’
‘Stephen Carman.’
‘Yes. After seeing his photo yesterday, it really could be him. If only he were turned a bit more towards us.’
‘They told us in Nottingham his car had passed this way on Tuesday.’
‘So what does he have to do with Thomas Long?’
‘I hope to soon find out.’
Both remained looking at the screen. By the men’s body language one seemed to be tending forward at the moment of the snapshot, the other backing away against the tunnel’s side, the latter’s shoulders and head against the glass. Similar of height and stature, at least in this inideal rendering, had he not prior knowledge of their characters Grey would have found it difficult to tell the one from the other. And how like Stephen Carman he thought, always so fearful of being spotted, if he did turn out to be the one caught in rear-quarter profile as he made his lunge.
‘He’s anti-photogenic, that Carman – he dodges lenses even when he doesn’t know they are there.’ Grey didn’t want to think about any of this.
He looked again at the image: like a square of a comic strip, it was as though an artist versed in action drawing had captured these figures in such a way as seemed almost holographic, two people alive and in motion within the still frame.
‘There’s still a couple more, sir.’ Sarah said this with such implied doom that Grey was barely able to keep his eyes on the screen. ‘This one was taken by the same camera, some twenty seconds later.’
This new image, the penultimate it turned out, was near identical as the one it replaced onscreen – same frame, same angle – yet altered in that now only one figure stood midway along the tunnel, though still with their back to the camera. They were standing with intent, as if an animal over its kill, the thrill and struggle of battle over. Yet the space at their feet, where the other should, in this reading of the scene, be laid out, was clear, empty, with not a sign of the vanquished prey. Nor was this some trick of the lens or unfortunate cutting off of the frame: for had the original designer of this CCTV system been brought forward to that night and instructed by the police how they wished this future scene to be viewed, they could not have placed the camera to give the officers this morning a better view of the empty space at the attacker’s feet. His shoulders were raised, back hunched as if breathing in deeply, arms curved slightly outward as if about to grapple a barrel.
Grey’s mind lurched into the realms of phantasmagoria, fancying that if only that pixelated face were looking his way he would see fangs there, and blood around the mouth. Yet the scene was gruesome enough as it was, something from a psychological horror movie or an adult video game; and he suddenly thought of Sarah, left alone up here in his office and spending her night searching through reels of night-time film for the next in this grim sequence.
‘This is the last I have,’ said Sarah as she queued up one last picture, ‘taken from the far staircase.’ This final shot was something of a comedown after all that had preceded it: recognisably the same bridge, but taken at a new angle, the remaining figure moving gingerly as they emerged from the stairwell, heading towards that side’s carpark. Their head was tilted slightly sideways – perhaps one last glance back at the scene? Grey couldn’t be sure.
‘There’s only two cameras on that side, and I’m not sure the other is working.’
‘Southbound,’ uttered Grey. ‘London.’
‘If he found a lift he could be anywhere now,’ concurred Sarah.
‘He could have called anyone to collect him. He had his “work” mobile presumably.’
‘I’m afraid I rather flaked out after finding these shots, sir.’ said Sarah apologetically, she looking fit to flake out again now, Grey thought. ‘I hit the hay and haven’t found Thomas or… him again since.’
‘But somewhere, in all these hours and hours of footage…’
‘…we will find them as they move across different cameras. I’m sure we will, sir.’
‘I hope so.’
‘Bear in mind I was moving through the tapes quite quickly, sir; and the cameras on the carpark have quite long delays between frames.’
‘But Thomas... he just vanishes.’
‘He must have gone somewhere, sir.’
Grey knew at that point that something very bad had happened along that bridge, however confusing those final images. Yet despite he wanting so much to find the secrets within this mass of film, this desire was as nothing compared to his gratitude to Sarah, and his wanting her to get home and get some sleep,
‘But you’re not going to find any more this morning,’ he advised.
‘But I really think in a couple of hours…’
‘No buts. Tired eyes don’t see. You’ve moved us on three days here in one night. Now get home; and I’ll remember all you’ve done in my report.’
He was sending home one of the few people in the station – bar himself, Cori, Rose, the Desk Sergeant, Custody Sergeant, and a skeleton crew of officers for emergencies and orderlies for those duties which must be maintained – who weren’t heading for the factory frontline. With Sarah away her work would rest undone.
Her recent efforts were what Nash would expect from his team as a matter of course, it then occurred to Grey: unswerving dedication in time as well as application, with complete disregard for the work/life balance or their family lives. Not that Grey’s team were slouches of course, or any less conscientious, but come on, there was a line here... He was glad Sarah had done this extra work, but glad also that it had been exceptional, that she had almost had to apologise for spending her free time at the office.
Still, I’m glad I’m not one of those on Nash’s list this morning, Grey thought, suspecting that that city might be a much safer place by lunchtime.
‘This map,’ Grey studied it on the desk, ‘it has all the camera points and timings marked on it?’
‘Yes sir, it’s how I kept track.’
‘Then I’ll take it with me when I go, if you don’t mind. And then I don’t want to see you back here for a good few hours. If anything gets left, we can pick it up tomorrow.’ Tomorrow was a Saturday, not that either of them batted an eye at being here at weekends.
‘I might be needing to go on a treasure hunt,’ said Grey, as Sarah left with a smile and a hand on his arm. He wished though, that like in the stories of his childhood, it was a wooden chest of Spanish coins that he was looking for, and not… well, he wouldn’t think about that for the time being.
Chapter 26 – A Difficult Release