“It’s not that simple,” the operator said. “You asked for the program to lock on the doors from the minute they exit the tunnel. The doors aren’t always in shot, so the software loses track.”
Quinn sounded out his words as if he were speaking to a child. “I… need… to… see… as much footage of the fifth carriage and its central doors as possible. I don’t care about your program.”
“Okay, why didn’t you say? Damned pushy Yank.” This was spoken under the technician’s breath.
Quinn heard. Anger always made his accent more pronounced, but the kid just wasn’t getting it.
The operator tapped at the keyboard, and again the screen showed commuters crowded along the platform, necks craning, focused on the lights of the approaching train as they grew larger in the dark tunnel.
When the train entered the station, the driver’s face was a mask of concentration. Quinn knew he’d be watching for jumpers and making sure to hit his marks so the doors would align with the exits.
“Can you slow it down?” Quinn asked.
The operator tapped at a key. “Tell me when.”
The train slowed to a crawl. “Like that, good.” He leaned in closer, his earlier annoyance replaced by intense concentration. The footage switched, smoothly this time, to the key camera mounted at the center of the platform and looking down from behind the heads of the waiting crowd. The fourth car rolled past, crammed with passengers. The fifth came into the shot. From this angle, the screen showed bodies two and three deep across the floor, some draped over seat backs like discarded coats.
Quinn’s gut clenched at the sight. He straightened slightly.
The train stopped. This time, the camera remained on the doors as they slid open and the crowd surged forward.
“Can you rewind to before the doors open? Then go as slowly as possible?”
The operator’s fingers flicked across the keyboard, and the doors were closed again. They began to inch open.
“That’s as slow as I can go. Any less and we’ll be looking at a series of stills.”
For the first time since he’d arrived, Quinn looked at the operator. “You can do that?”
“Sure, you want?”
Quinn rested a hand on the operator’s shoulder. “Not yet, thanks.”
The doors slid open, five inches, six, seven. The passengers waiting on the platform closed in, blocking the camera’s view of the interior. Then, as if a bomb had detonated, the front row recoiled, a dramatic response even in slow motion.
Quinn’s finger leaped forward and indented the computer’s flexible screen. “There!”
The technician knocked Quinn’s hand away.
Quinn ignored the move. “Okay, once more? Begin when the doors start to open and continue until that guy…” Without touching the screen this time, Quinn pointed to a bald businessman in a blue suit standing at the platform’s edge, “… falls back into the woman in the green jacket.”
The technician worked his magic. “Ready, should I run?”
“Yes, please. What’s your name, by the way?”
They had been introduced forty minutes earlier when he and Frank arrived at the Operations Center, but Quinn hadn’t paid attention.
“Austin, most folk call me Aussie.”
“Okay, Aussie. Let’s go.”
The doors opened. The crowd pushed in. They lurched back. The bald man lost his balance and started to fall.
Quinn didn’t blink, but it happened so fast he couldn’t be sure. He turned to his right. “Frank, are you seeing this?”
Frank nodded. “Someone dived out of the train.”
“Aussie, can you enhance it?” Quinn asked.
The screen split in two. On the right, the action replayed again frame by frame, but all they saw was a gray blur. Aussie shook his head. “Too fast. Not enough definition.”
On the left, the next camera showed a mass of heads crammed together on the narrow platform and moving as one. Quinn leaned over Aussie’s shoulder, straining to catch a glimpse of the lone survivor, but it was impossible in the dense crowd.
“Perhaps we can track his group,” Aussie said. “I’ll set markers to circle twenty or thirty people.” Aussie tapped away as he spoke. “The man in the blue suit’s behind him. The blond woman will stand out.”
Quinn got the idea. “Use the tall kid with the baseball cap?”
Aussie clicked the target. A red arrow appeared above the kid and, along with another five arrows, moved across the screen, floating above the crowd. The pinpointed group reached the top of the stairs leading out of the platform and started to break apart.
Quinn pointed at the screen, careful not to touch now he considered Aussie a colleague rather than a smart-ass. “What’s happening? What’s that?”
“Someone’s fallen. They’re going around,” Aussie said. The arrows flowed past the obstacle and reformed into a group.
“What’s ahead?” Quinn asked.
“The ticket barriers; once they pass through they’ll have to pick an exit.”
The gates had been swung aside so the panicked crowd could get out as fast as possible.
Quinn kept his eyes on the screen. “Frank, if you were the perp, which exit would you choose?”
“The first I could.”
Quinn smiled. “Me, too. Aussie, let’s work on that assumption.”
Aussie split the screen again.
On the left, the group passed through the barriers and scattered. On the right, Aussie displayed video from a camera mounted outside, high on a pole and trained on the Oxford Street south exit. Commuters streamed out of the stairwell. Many stopped a few feet after reaching the pavement, blinking in the sunlight, and causing a backup.
“God, people are stupid. Can’t they get out of the way?” Frank said.
Two red-arrowed passengers emerged. Behind them, someone wearing a gray sweatshirt, face obscured by a hood, pulled off his gloves and strode along Oxford Street and out of camera shot.
“There! The gray hoodie. Male!” Quinn said, stating the obvious. “Only one reason to wear a hood and gloves in July.”
Aussie backed the footage up, tapped at his keyboard, and a blue arrow hovered above the hoodie’s head. “We can’t see his face, but the software will map his body shape. The longer he’s in the shot, the more attributes to scan. Give me enough time and I’ll be able to spot him anywhere.”
“Clever,” Quinn said. “Where’s the next camera?”
“A hundred yards along Oxford Street.”
Quinn rubbed at his cheek, as though he was trying to erase a mark. “With eleven thousand cameras in London, they should have this area blanketed, not one every hundred bloody yards.”
Between cameras, they lost the killer for over a minute. When he reappeared, the hood still shadowed his face. He walked left to right across the screen.
“Big man, fit-lookin’ bugger, too,” Frank said.
“Two hundred yards to the next camera,” Aussie said, anticipating Quinn’s question.
The detective glared at the back of the technician’s head as if he were to blame for the camera locations. Time clicked away at the bottom of the screen.
“He should be here by now,” Quinn said.
They waited two minutes, three, still nothing. A few business types passed, but no hooded terrorist.
Frank straightened and rubbed the small of his back. “Lost him.”
“Let’s wait,” Quinn remained bent forward, staring at the screen, willing the man to show. The timer showed five minutes, fourteen seconds when a tall tourist in a T-shirt strode along the sidewalk.
He had a blue arrow over his head.