“But he’s shown us his greatest personality flaw,” Bryant shouted to his partner across traffic, wind and rain. “An anger so intense that it uncouples his senses and wrecks his plans. And we know exactly where he operates.”
“Look where you’re walking, Arthur, you nearly got hit by that van.”
“I have to be patient. I’ve stung his pride. He’ll nurse the grudge until it forces him to show himself.”
“Then don’t turn it into something personal, not while we need to lock down our unit status. Let’s get the note examined first.”
Bryant almost got squashed between two buses, and was about to bellow a reply when the call came in and changed everything.
♦
The new King’s Cross Surveillance Centre was one of London’s best-kept secrets. The underground room was accessed by an inconspicuous grey metal door, and its personnel monitored all activity above and below the surrounding streets. The local coppers referred to it colloquially as the North One Watch. Over eighty CCTV screens filled the dimly lit control room, and most of the monitors could be manually operated to provide other views in the event of an emergency. The afternoon’s surveillance team was headed by Anjam Dutta, a security expert with almost twenty years’ experience of studying the streets. He welcomed the detectives and led them into the monitor hub.
“One of my boys spotted something on Cam 16 at 15.47. That’s the down escalator you can see here.” He swung out a chair and tapped a pen on his desk screen. From this monitor he could flip to any camera in the station complex. “A young black woman fell down the entire flight of stairs. She died instantly. The steps are very steep, but we rarely have accidents because there’s a crowd management system in place here. Problems usually only occur late at night after lads have had a few. Most people are pretty careful.”
Dutta adjusted his glasses and peered at the monitors, pointing to each in turn. The detectives watched as passengers pulsed through the station, passing from one screen to the next.
“We switch the escalator directions according to traffic flow. At this time of the day we have more passengers coming up than going down, so there are four platform-to-surface escalators for every two descending, and over the next three hours they operate at their highest speed. If one of the escalators is out of order, customers spill over to the central fixed staircase. When that becomes heavily trafficked, we position a member of station staff at the base, where any accidents are most likely to happen.”
“What went wrong?” asked May. “She didn’t just miss her footing?”
“I don’t think so. Watch this.” Dutta began playback on the disc that had recorded the event from the top of the concourse looking down. “She’s there on the right of the screen.” The detectives hunched forward and stared at the monitor, but the image was blurred. “What you can’t see on a monochrome monitor is that she’s wearing an outfit in a startling colour.”
“So plenty of people noticed her.”
“My lads certainly did. They can recognise strong tones just from the greys. The monitors are supposed to be in colour, but there’s still another two months’ work to do on the Victoria Line.”
“Meaning?”
“The Victoria tunnel crosses one of the station’s main electrical conduits, and the power outages kick the monitors into black and white. We’ve completely lost some of the non-essential cameras.”
Dutta twisted a dial and forwarded the picture until it matched his disc reference. “We can follow one person through the thickest crowd without losing sight of him. Or her. There she goes.”
They watched as the woman tumbled, vanished, reappeared and was lost. “I can’t tell what’s going on from that,” Bryant admitted. “Who’s standing immediately behind her?”
“We don’t know. There’s a focal problem. The system isn’t perfect,” said Dutta. “The best cameras are stationed in all the busiest key areas. Resolution remains lower in the connecting tunnels, basically the non-essential spots. This is a good camera, but it’s due for an upgrade. Plus, you still get lens smears, dust buildup, focus shifts. Escalator cameras are key anti-terrorist tools because it’s easier to identify someone when they’re standing still on a step. The problem with the central fixed staircase is that it’s not as well covered as the main escalators. And there’s another issue, which is the recording speed. We primarily use the system to control flow and identify passengers, but sudden movements can be problematic. We’re trained to read images and interpret what we can’t make out, so I knew at once it was a fall, but here’s the interesting bit.” He reran the footage to the seconds before the woman lost her balance. The detectives saw her shoulders drop and rise. Dutta ran it again, frame by frame. A ghost image fluttered by, little more than a dark blur at her back.
“There’s the push,” said Dutta. “Right there.”
“You can tell that?” May was surprised.
“I know a stumble, and I don’t think that’s one.”
“But we can’t see who’s moving behind her.” The screen showed a soft dark shape with the head cut off.
“It’s unfortunate. A few feet further down, and we’d have got everything. The image was blocked by the people walking past to the left. By the time we get to the bottom and the rest of the commuters have bunched around the fallen woman, the suspect’s already gone.”
“But you have witnesses.”
“Not really.”
“How could you not?”
“Commuting is a chore, something most people do without really engaging their faculties. When something unusual happens they only begin noticing their surroundings after the start of the event. Their attention and concern were focussed on the injured woman. And there was a train arriving. Most commuters were more worried about getting home than waiting around to help us. We’ve put up information request boards.”
“Was she travelling alone?”
“Looks like it. We got a name and address from the contents of her bag. They’re sending someone to her flat right now.”
“So do you have more footage taken from the bottom? Can you get any sort of a fix on who was directly behind her? Anything at all?”
“No. As she fell she knocked over two other passengers, so by the time she reached the base there was utter chaos. It’s impossible to clearly see who was walking at the back.”
“Presumably you don’t evacuate the station for something like this?”
“No, that would take the setting-off of two or more alarms at the same time. A single accident can be easily dealt with. Fatalities only take about an hour to clear away, so long as they’re handled by LU staff and not the fire brigade – firefighters like to play trains. We only call them in when we’ve got an Inspector Sands.”
“What’s that?”
“Loudspeaker code for a fire alert. It’s an old theatrical term, a call for the sand buckets they always kept in theatres to put out fires.”
“But I don’t understand why you rang us,” Bryant admitted.
“We called Headquarters in Camden but they didn’t seem too interested. They’ve got a lot on their hands at the moment, with the pub.” One of Camden’s best-known public houses had burned down at the weekend, forcing the closure of a major road and the rerouting of all traffic. Camden police were being blamed for overreaction by angry shopkeepers, who were staging a protest. “One of your former staff members is the new St Pancras coroner, and he suggested giving you a call. It sounded like your kind of thing – a problem of social disorder.”
“Do you get many actual attacks in the system?” May asked.
“Hardly ever. If gang members want to pick fights with each other they generally do it away from bright lights and other people. Besides, this lady doesn’t fit the victim pattern, which is usually male and teenaged. But if she was shoved down that flight of stairs by a complete stranger, it’s a pretty nasty thing to do. And if he’s done it once, he could do it again, couldn’t he?”