“What? In the last year alone, I’ve sentenced seven people to three months or less.”
“No, Ely. You recommended that. Your judgement is only a recommendation. No one gets three months.”
“That’s…” he stopped himself. He was going to say that it was criminal, but that was sedition, even if said by him. He glanced over to where he’d left his helmet. There were no cameras in the Control Room and the helmet, in the absence of an iris to scan, would have switched itself off. Nevertheless, Arthur had taught him to always be cautious. “That’s something I didn’t realise,” he finished.
“When was the last time you came in here?” Vauxhall asked.
“Last month?”
“It was last year,” she said.
“Really? It’s the patrols and the Recreation and, well, there’s just so much to do,” he said, weakly.
“Right. Exactly. Which is why, when the worst crime we usually have to deal with is some stupid fight over nothing, it would be utterly redundant to have useful workers spending precious hours just going through camera footage.”
“So what happens to the felons? Where are they?”
“They go to the launch site. Don’t get me wrong,” she added hurriedly. “They’re all volunteers. They’re given a choice, their sentence will be commuted, and they can go back on the ballot for the ships.”
“I knew the sentences were just a recommendation, that it was down to the authorities in Tower-Thirteen to ratify it, I just… I mean, someone should have… I…”
“Look, if it makes you feel better, I only found out by accident,” Vauxhall said, taking pity on the younger man. “Most of what I know I’ve found out that way. I don’t think this is something that’s exactly hidden from us, but it’s not the kind of thing they want going public. I mean, it’s basically saying that if you commit a crime, no matter how severe, you’ll be sent to work outside where the only real punishment is having to wear thick protective clothing in case the wind changes to blow in from the north. And despite the clothing, the altitude, the heat, and all the rest, imagine being able to work outside. So no, it’s not a surprise this one was kept hidden from us.” She leaned forward. “The real question, though, the one I can’t work out, is why they suddenly needed all the extra personnel down there. What changed?” She let the question hang there for a moment before she leaned back and went on. “But as I said, that’s something I can’t work out. Anyway, it wouldn’t matter even if there had been a couple of other people watching. Here.”
Against two of the four walls were rows of screens. She tapped out a command. The giant pictures of the victims that had been filling the displays were replaced by hundreds of far smaller images.
“There are 12,029 workers in this Tower, right? Let’s just forget about the other Towers and the work I end up having to do for them. 12,029 workers, two thirds of whom could be awake at any one time. That’s 7,184 visor-mounted cameras I’ve got to look at.” The images on the screen changed. “Now factor in the cameras in the Assemblies, the Twilight Room, the ‘farms’ and all the corridors in between.” The images on the screen changed again. “That’s 15,901 cameras for me to watch, assuming I’m not doing something else, such as…” The images changed again, and this time Vauxhall pointed to one. “Guiding in a transport, for instance.”
Ely peered at the screen.
“Where’s that? It’s all dark.”
“That’s the transport pad. It’s night outside. Even when it isn’t, I’ve got to guide the transport in through driving rain and one hundred mile an hour winds.”
“But you can’t see anything.”
“There are lights,” she said, exasperation dripping from her voice. “I’m not turning them on now, that would be wasteful. My point is that it usually takes an hour to bring one in, load and unload it, and send it off again, and for all that time I’ve got to be focusing on the transport and nothing else. We’ve got the daily shipment of new components for the Assemblies and the dispatch of the components that have been checked. Then there’s the food to be sent to the launch site, and on top of that, there’s the traffic to Tower-Thirteen. And for each I’ve got to work out flight trajectories and—”
“Okay, I get it,” Ely said, raising his hands in surrender. “There’s just you and you’re overworked. You don’t have time to notice that one camera in one unit isn’t pointing the right way. But isn’t there some algorithm you could use? Some way of getting the system to find out if a camera is off-centre or something.”
“Right, like I didn’t think of that. Here.” She tapped out another command.
“None of those screens are blank,” Ely said.
“No, but each of them has been knocked ‘off-centre’, as you put it. Most of the time it’s done by one of the cleaning drones, and most of the time it’s only by a few millimetres.”
“A few what?” he asked.
“Less than a fraction of an inch, it’s an old form of measurement. That’s not important. Then there are these.” She tapped out another command, the screens changed. “The fixed-position cameras. Each of these has a scratched casing or a damaged lens. You see? Someone has to go through and find the cameras that aren’t focusing correctly. That someone has to record them and then put in a request for a repair and a replacement. I’ve been doing that as often as I can, but do you honestly think that will be approved now, this close to the launch? What would be the point? What, really, is there for the cameras to see?”
“Up until now.”
“Right, yes. I know, I know. Look, Ely, there just aren’t the resources to spare.” She gestured to a mattress held above the floor on a plastic frame. “I don’t use the machines. I sleep here now, so I’m only a few seconds away from the screens.”
“Fine. I get it.” Ely stared at the array of images. “But surely, even if we don’t have an image of the killer inside the room, we must have an image from one of the cameras in the corridor. I thought that every inch of the Tower is meant to be recorded.”
“Almost every inch. Almost,” she admitted.
“What do you mean?”
“I’ll start with the good news. This was the last time the camera was facing into the room.” She tapped out a command. The image of a family jostling for position as they got into bed filled the central screens.
“Who are they?” Ely asked.
“Just watch. There. They’re all in bed. Now I need to fast forward… to… here. There, see.” The camera slowly swivelled to face the wall.
“When was that?”
“Two weeks ago.”
“Someone went into the room to move the camera, but then waited two weeks before they took advantage of it. How many shifts is that?”
“Two hundred and eighty-seven. It’s not exactly two weeks, but the point still stands.”
“That has to be the killer.”
“It has to be, yes,” Vauxhall said. “But think of it this way, two hundred and eighty-six sets of families slept in that unit before the Greenes were murdered.”
“And were there any useful images from the corridor outside on the night the camera was moved?”
“No, Ely, that’s what I meant when I said nearly every inch was covered. Look.” The image changed again. “We know that the door on the night-side opened, both when the camera was moved and when the Greenes were murdered. Right?”
“Right.”
“So what do you see?” she asked.
He stared at the screen. There was a section of hallway with a series of doors leading of it. Then he realised it wasn’t what he could see, but what he couldn’t.
“You can’t see the door to that unit,” he said.