Execution

SEVENTEEN

Rik Ferris struck gold not long after beginning his trawl for CCTVs along Coldharbour Lane. Close to where it intersected with Denmark Hill, he came to a short stretch of shops. Above a beauty salon, he spotted the blue glass eye of a camera beneath a protective dome. He checked the point where the bracket was fitted to the wall. He could see a power lead but no data cable. It was a wireless unit. His laptop carried a useful software programme called Eye Drop; it gave him the ability to plug in to wireless CCTV feeds and copy any recorded footage. But why stand out here and do it if he didn’t have to?

He entered the shop, where the air was hot and perfumed. It was little more than a reception area and trade counter, with glass racks of beauty products around the walls. A curtained doorway led through to a larger room at the back, from where he could hear laughter and the hum of a hair dryer.

He asked to see the manager, and the girl behind the counter disappeared through into the back, to be replaced moments later by a slim, striking woman in her fifties. She was wearing a white overall and peeling off rubber gloves.

‘Can I help you? I’m Maria Carvalho, the owner.’

‘Nice to meet you, Mrs Carvalho.’ Rik smiled winningly and handed her his ID card. He explained that he was helping in the search for a young female patient who had discharged herself from the hospital. ‘She hasn’t completely recovered,’ he said. ‘We think she may be in shock, and confused by what happened. She was seen heading in this direction, and your camera might have picked her up.’

The woman looked him up and down with a momentary suspicion, then seemed to relent. ‘We fitted the camera after some break-ins,’ she explained, in a soft accent. ‘Our insurers insisted, and it seems to have worked well so far.’ She shrugged philosophically. ‘Or maybe we’ve just been lucky.’

‘How long do you keep recordings for?’

‘For no more than two weeks. It’s movement activated, so we don’t fill up the drive with pointless rubbish. At least, that’s what the man who sold it suggested.’

Rik nodded. He was familiar enough with the technology. The less footage he had to trawl through, the better. ‘Could I see it? It would cover just a couple of hours of recording, that’s all.’

She gestured towards the curtained doorway. ‘Of course. Come. I’ll show you where we keep the machine.’

Rik followed her through the main room, which was a combination beauty treatment and hair salon, nodding at a clutch of assistants and their customers. Mrs Carvalho led him to a small office and gestured to a shelf with a hard drive and monitor. The monitor’s screen was dark, but a green operating light was blinking on the hard drive.

‘Help yourself,’ she offered. ‘I’ve got a colouring job to finish, so please excuse me.’

Rik watched her leave, then got to work, calling up the programme menu and selecting a time frame which focussed on the night Clare left the hospital.

There were many brief snatches of movement, mostly of cars stopping at the kerb then moving off, and several pedestrians walking by. Conducted in silence, it had the eerie feel of a cheap horror film, with snatches of movement and the play of car headlights forming shadows across the pavement. The footage was grainy and stuttering, and whoever had sold Mrs Carvalho the system hadn’t gone for high-end technology. But it was clear enough to make out some detail of faces and clothing.

He’d been at it for nearly forty minutes when a figure went by just beneath the camera. He almost missed it, but for the glint of light off the metal stick in the figure’s hand. He hit rewound then played the scene again. A buzz of excitement went through him. It wasn’t a stick; there was an odd shaped attachment at the top.

A metal crutch.

He breathed easily and replayed the footage over and over, watching the figure ghost by, seemingly hugging the building and bent over. Female or slim male? Female. There was something about the build. From what he recalled about her, Clare wasn’t exactly sylph-like, but neither was she a weightlifter.

Then the area around the figure flared with light as a car pulled up at the kerb nearby, and the face became clear.

It was Clare.

Rik took out his mobile and called Harry.

‘Got a sighting.’ He gave the address of the beauty salon. ‘And I think the manager fancies me. Her name’s Carvalho. You’d better hurry — I’m frightened.’

‘Keep your legs crossed,’ replied Harry. ‘Two minutes.’

Rik ducked his head through into the main salon and beckoned to Mrs Carvalho. She followed him and he showed her the footage, pointing out the glitter of the crutch.

‘A colleague’s on his way to verify it, but I think this is her.’

‘Poor dear,’ the owner replied softly, a frown of concern etching her forehead. ‘Why is she walking like that?’

‘She had a stomach operation. It’s not fully healed yet and she shouldn’t be on her feet.’ He tapped the hard drive. ‘Can I isolate this section and email it to my computer? I’ll need to distribute this to others helping in the search.’

‘Of course, yes.’ She watched while he did it then said, ‘I hope you find her. This is not a good place for a young woman alone late at night.’

Voices approached and Harry walked in. He nodded at the woman and said, ‘Thanks for your cooperation, Mrs Carvalho. It’s good of you.’

‘Miss,’ she corrected him, and patted her hair, eyelashes fluttering. ‘Always happy to help.’

Harry peered at the screen. ‘It’s her.’

They made their escape, leaving the owner excitedly regaling her customers with the story.

‘She was heading north,’ said Rik. ‘But I’m not sure that helps us much.’

Harry took out a street map and stabbed it with his finger. ‘There’s a four-way junction up ahead with side streets. It’s going to be messy finding out which way she went from there. But it’s all we’ve got.’

It took them a further two hours of false starts, broken cameras, reluctant owners and poor footage around the large junction to find other premises with a private CCTV that offered a decent, useable clue. This one was above a bingo hall in Camberwell Road, showing Clare’s figure heading due north towards the area known as Elephant amp; Castle. She was bent over and seemed to be leaning on the crutch more than she had been earlier.

‘She must be hurting,’ Rik commented. ‘Could you do that? I couldn’t.’ His voice carried a hint of admiration.

‘No,’ said Harry. ‘Nor me. Come on.’ He thanked the bingo hall manageress for her help and led the way back onto the street.

‘Where to?’

‘She’s going for the river,’ said Harry. He made a note in his notebook. He’d been plotting the position of street cameras as they went, building the progress line ready to hand over to Ballatyne. The MI6 man might not be able to do much with it very quickly, but being able to give him precise positions where Clare had passed by would narrow down the search time considerably.

It made him wonder what Clare had in mind, and whether she was absolutely clear about her intentions. The closer she got to the centre of London, if that’s where she was heading, the greater became the density and coverage of street cameras. And that exposed her to enormous risks of discovery by the MI6 trackers as well as the Russians. On the other hand, tracking a single figure through the streets, camera by camera, was not that simple, unless someone had access to real-time footage and knew exactly where to look. If the followers on either side got that much, then they would have Clare in their sights, unless he and Rik could get to her first.

He consulted a street map. The Elephant amp; Castle would be a nightmare for the two of them to check out. There were several roads leading off from the main gyratory system, and a maze of smaller streets Clare could have ducked into to stay out of the open. Covering them all would be impossible without an army of helpers or direct access to the street cameras from a central position.

He followed the map with his finger, leap-frogging ahead. Clare probably knew this area as well as he did. If so, she’d have probably headed for somewhere familiar, somewhere she could join the army of night people gathering in the area and lose herself among them. That meant only one logical destination: Waterloo Station.

He texted Ballatyne.