Secret Asset

21

Three days later, Rose Love, a junior member of Investigations, came to see Judith Spratt in the Operations Room. Judith liked the first-year recruit, and she tried to encourage her. For although Rose had a First from York University and was also a strikingly pretty young woman, she seemed very unsure of herself. Despite the considerable attention paid to her by male colleagues, she was reluctant to be assertive, even when she should. Now Rose spoke to Judith in little more than a whisper. “Sorry to bother you, but it’s about the CCTV footage.”

“Yes,” said Judith loudly, unable to suppress her impatience. Doubtless there was another hitch—a disk wiped by a shop owner, or undated material supplied by the supermarket security men. She was about to tell Rose just to get on with things as best she could when she forced herself to be patient and hear the girl out.

“It’s just I think that possibly—I’m not sure—we may have found something.”

For Rose this was virtually a declaration of certainty, which made Judith focus immediately. “Let me see,” she said, getting up from her seat.

Ten minutes later Judith called Tom Dartmouth to the room downstairs, and they were both looking at a monitor while Rose moved through the footage screen by screen. “There!” called Judith sharply, and the screen froze. It was not a very clear picture, but three figures were clearly discernible at the front of the shop by the till, where they were captured at a range of seven feet by the camera positioned high on the wall above the Lucozade clock. They were male, Asian—a mix of colour and dress combined to give that distinct impression—and seemed to be young. None of them looked at the camera, or for that matter at Irwin Patel, who was serving one of them. The time meter said 20:24.

“Sorry,” said Tom Dartmouth apologetically, “but you better talk me through it. I’ve never been any good at this—it all looks like ultrasound scans to me.”

“The man at the till. We think he may be a match with one of the Dutch photos.” Judith passed him a printout, which in contrast to the frozen video frame was high resolution and clear. The face that stared out from it was of a personable-looking youth of Asian appearance, half man and half boy, who was struggling to grow a moustache and had a slight overbite and a broad smile.

“They’ve identified him as Rashid Khan. He’s nineteen years old and comes from Wolverhampton.”

“Okay,” said Tom, weighing this, “but where’s the match?” He gave a self-deprecating laugh. “I don’t mean to sound unPC, but for the life of me I couldn’t tell you which of these three he’s meant to be.”

“Look again,” said Judith. “The man at the till. See anything unusual about him?”

Tom peered closely at the screen. “He’s not very tall, is he?”

Judith nodded. “Five foot one-and-a-half inches, to be precise. At least according to the passport application of Rashid Khan. But that’s not all—look closely at the face.” Tom did so obediently. “Same moustache, or effort at one. Same slight prominence of the upper teeth.”

“Can’t say I see that,” said Tom.

Rose Love suddenly spoke up. “It’s very difficult,” she announced, then seemed about to lapse back into shyness until something prompted her and she went on. “If you watch this sort of thing several hours a day it all seems much clearer. Like the ultrasounds you mentioned—parents think they’re clear as mud, but to an obstetrician they’re picture-perfect.” And after this she blushed and went quiet, while Judith looked at her, pleasantly astonished by this intervention.

Tom held up his hands in a gesture of mock surrender. “You’re the experts. If you say it’s a match then I have to accept that.”

“We think it’s a match,” said Judith. “No guarantees.”

“Of course,” said Tom. “But assuming you’re right, who the hell is Rashid Khan?”

“We’ve got no trace under that name,” said Judith. “I’m seeing Dave Armstrong right after you,” she added, since identifying a suspect might be her responsibility, but finding them was someone else’s.

At first Irwin Patel thought the policeman was back in his shop to return the CCTV footage he had taken away the week before. But this time he was accompanied by a man in a grey parka jacket. “Could we have a word,” asked the policeman, “in the back of the shop?”

“Oscar,” called Irwin, and gestured for his son to man the till, then led the two men to the small storeroom which doubled as an office—or more accurately, the place where Irwin and his family took their breaks during open hours.

“Yes, gentlemen,” said Irwin politely but a little nervously.

The man in the parka spoke. “We found pictures on the footage you gave us of someone we are interested in.” He handed an eight-by-eleven still photo captured from the CCTV video footage to Irwin, who studied it carefully.

“Do you remember serving this man?”

Irwin thought hard. He wanted to help, but the fact was that probably fifty per cent of his business was passing trade—one-off visitors to his shop he would never see again. “No,” he said at last.

“Or the men behind him?”

Irwin peered at the photograph for some time. The beat policeman said impatiently, “Can’t you remember a group of three like this? It was probably last Monday, if that’s any help.”

Irwin was tempted to remark that his Asian clientele all looked alike to him, but said instead, “If I had to guess, I would say I serve over fifty Asian men under the age of thirty every day. Some come in alone, some with a friend, and some”—he looked pointedly at the man he now thought of as PC Plod—“come with two friends. I do not recognise any of these men.”

The constable groaned, but the man in the parka seemed unperturbed. “How about this man?” he asked, handing another photograph to Irwin. It was the same photo Judith Spratt had extracted from the five hundred or so sent by her Dutch counterparts only days before.

Whether because of the clarity of this picture or its full-frontal pose, this time Irwin’s face lit up. “I’ve seen this man!” he exclaimed. “Here in the shop.”

“Did you speak with him?”

Irwin shrugged. “I must have. He was a customer. But probably only to say thank you, or here’s your change. Nothing more than that. I couldn’t remember his voice,” he said, suddenly worried they were expecting that.

“That’s all right. But do you by any chance remember what he bought?” asked the plain-clothes man.

“As a matter of fact I do,” said Irwin. “He bought rolling papers—you know, for cigarettes. I remember that because he was very short. Not much more than five feet tall,” he added, proud of his own five feet seven inches. “I remember wanting to tell him that smoking stunts your growth.”

And at this even the po-faced PC Plod laughed. He looked towards the man by his side. He wasn’t sure if he was Special Branch or some higher kind of spook, but he wasn’t a bad bloke—he’d said to call him Dave. And Dave was happy now.