All the Rage

Adam Fawley
9 April 2018
12.56

`˜They sent the footage over straight away,' says Somer as she opens the digital file on her laptop and navigates to the right place. `˜Baxter went seriously gadget-geek when he saw it.'

And I can see why. The images aren't just high-res, they're full colour; you can actually see people's features, the looks on their faces. The camera is angled down over the broad concourse in front of the Blavatnik building and the stretch of Walton Street immediately opposite. There's a time code on the bottom left of the screen; the date is 17:03:18.

Somer presses play and forwards to 10.04. A couple of students are talking animatedly near the Blavatnik doors. On the opposite pavement, an elderly man is pushing a tartan shopping trolley. He's almost bent double, his head twisted to one side so he can see where he's going. And in the coffee shop, Victoria Parker is queueing up for a coffee before taking a seat on the bench in the window. She gets out her phone and starts tapping the screen, glancing up every few seconds to scan the road. At 10.14, a pale blue Morris Traveller pulls in on the opposite side of the street. The driver stops the car, but he doesn't get out. He looks up and down the street then opens a magazine.

`˜The latest edition of Recreational Stalking, no doubt,' I mutter darkly.

Somer glances up but doesn't say anything.

She fast-forwards the footage again, then stops when we see a girl approaching from the left-hand side.

`˜It's Sasha,' says Somer. `˜Looks like she must have come from the centre of town.'

We watch as the girl crosses the road by the coffee shop, hitching her pink satchel over her shoulder as she goes. She's wearing a fringed jacket, a beanie and a pair of black ankle boots. At this distance, and with her hair under the hat, she looks unnervingly like Somer, which judging from her face, isn't lost on Somer either. Victoria Parker looks up, and I know that what she told us was absolutely true: she did see Sasha that day, and she did see Graeme Scott.

We rewind and watch it again, and then again. Staring at Sasha as she dodges the traffic and heads straight into the Blavatnik building, disappearing out of view directly beneath the camera. And each time we run it we can clearly see the man in the car lower his magazine and stare intently at the girl. A few moments later Isabel, Leah and Patsie appear from the same direction as Sasha and stop outside the cafГ©. Victoria Parker gets to her feet and starts to pick up her things.

Somer presses pause and turns to face me.

`˜OK,' I say. `˜If I'm Scott's lawyer I'm going to claim this is pure chance. He wasn't stalking her, he wasn't even following her, he was just innocently shopping for bog roll in the Co-op and suddenly, bam, there she was.'

`˜But that's just it,' says Somer, `˜he doesn't buy anything. He doesn't even get out of the car. He's only there for one reason and that's Sasha Blake.'

`˜If that's true it had to be planned, right?'

She nods.

`˜So how did he know she'd be there? At that precise place and that precise time?'

`˜Actually, I think I may have an answer to that.' She picks up her phone and flicks to a web page. `˜I did a quick check on the Blavatnik website and there was a talk that morning that was open to the public. Art and Power in Renaissance Florence. That's exactly the sort of thing Scott might have mentioned to Sasha. He's already admitted `њencouraging`ќ her, the bloody creep.'

But I'm only half listening. I've rewound the footage and I'm looking at it again.

`˜Here,' I say, freezing it and pointing. `˜See that?'

Evidently she hasn't, because she moves a little closer.

`˜Just before Sasha crosses the road. That woman there, wheeling the bike.'

She must be fifty, perhaps fifty-five, with longish blonde hair and a turquoise coat. She's going in the opposite direction to Sasha, so there's a point when they have to pass each other on the crowded pavement. A few moments later the woman suddenly stops and stares at something, clearly startled, before turning and looking back towards Sasha as she crosses the road. Then she shakes her head and carries on the way she was going.

`˜Is she looking at Scott?' says Somer.

`˜I don't think so. He's on the other side of the road, so I doubt he's in her line of sight. And he's just sitting in his car `“ there's nothing to provoke a reaction like that.'

Somer looks more closely at the screen. `˜Victoria's on her phone `“ she wouldn't have seen anything. Damn.'

`˜I doubt she'd have seen much anyway `“ not from inside the shop. The angle's all wrong.'

`˜I suppose we could try to track down the woman with the bike,' begins Somer, `˜but we're going to struggle to find her after all this time `“'

`˜We don't need to. Whatever that woman saw, it must have been right outside the OUP building. What's the betting they have CCTV too.'

* * *

It's the first really dry afternoon for over a week, and Ursula Hollis decides to take advantage. She hasn't been further than the end of the street for days and is starting to get a bit cabin crazy. Her elderly Labrador hasn't exactly complained, but they could both do with blowing the cobwebs away. She unhooks the lead from the rack by the door and smiles as the dog gets rather laboriously to his feet. You can almost hear him sigh.

`˜Come on, Bruno, it's not that bad. Just down to the Vicky Arms and back. There might even be rabbits.'

It's a long time since Bruno chased anything, let alone a rabbit. There are silver hairs round that chocolate muzzle these days. She rubs him behind the ears and drops a quick kiss on his brow, trying not to think about what she's going to do without him, when he's gone.

Even if the weather's improved there's still hardly anyone about outside. In five minutes, the only people she passes are a man from BT doing something complicated with wiring in a green box and Jenny from number 4 wrestling with her bins.

She gets to the junction, zips her puffa jacket up a little further against the wind and heads down towards Mill Lane.

* * *