Towers of Silence

Chapter Nine

The man in the booth at the car park entrance pulled a face when I asked about CCTV footage.

“Hang on,” he rasped, he struggled to his feet and gestured to the side of the booth. “Come in,” he said irritably. He opened the door and waved me into the room. An ashtray full of fag ends sat on the table beside the console of screens. He sat and leant forward, pressed the switch for the microphone, his fingers were the colour of mustard. “Tony, to the office please.”

He twisted round to me. “Tony has more to do with the cameras.”

I nodded, leant back against the door of the boxy little office and prayed that Tony would arrive before I contracted lung cancer.

“Alright?” Tony opened the door and introduced himself in a Mancunian swagger: part question, part greeting. I moved to let him in.

“Young lady’s got some questions about CCTV tapes,” his colleague wheezed.

Tony tutted. “Confidential love, can’t help you.” He was a barrel of a man with a bald head.

“She’s a private detective,” the other said.

“Are you? Well, you’d know all about that then, wouldn’t you? Electronic surveillance, rules they have.”

“I’m working for the family of the woman who jumped from here back in October.”

His face flattened, eyes hardened. He didn’t enjoy the recollection.

“Horrible that was,” Wheezy chipped in.

“Doing what exactly?” Tony stared at me folded his arms defensively.

“The family have found it very hard to come to terms with what happened. They’ve asked me to try and find out what Mrs Johnstone was doing here, trace her last hours, that’s all. But I realised there’s nothing in the coroner’s report as far as I can see about the CCTV. There is a camera up there.”

Irritation flared in Tony’s eyes then he let it go, sighed. “Wasn’t working,” he said flatly.

“It was broken?”

“We’d no idea. Screens here looked fine, course no one here saw anything but you’re not watching every single minute. You’ve problems with the barrier, or people can’t remember where they were parked, out of petrol, always some crisis or other. The police asked to view the tape and then they find the camera’s faulty, or the tape was.”

“Head office weren’t best pleased,” Wheezy observed.

“They get the cheapest bloody equipment and then expect perfect bloody results.” It was obviously a bone of contention. Had Tony had an earful because of it? Not checking the cameras adequately?

Whatever, it meant there was no record of Level 5 for that day. I pictured Miriam arriving, had she used the lift, the stairs?

“I think maybe she came here on the bus. She hadn’t got a car, she didn’t drive. You’ve a camera at the pedestrian entrance, too.” I could see it on the screens and people queuing to pay before claiming their cars.

“Yeah,” Tony said.

“But they didn’t find anything on that?”

Tony shot an uncomfortable glance at Wheezy who promptly lit a cigarette and began to cough ferociously. Tony sighed, shook his head slightly.

“What?” I said.

“They never asked,” Tony replied.

“What?”

“They only asked us about the tape from Level 5.”

“But,” it was my turn to sigh. “Didn’t anyone think…” It seemed so obvious to me. Why on earth hadn’t the police asked to see all the tapes? “Didn’t you…”

It was the wrong thing to say. “What?” Tony challenged. “Not down to me, was it?”

A pause. I felt uncomfortable. “How long do you keep the tapes?”

“Four weeks and then we record over them.”

That was that then. I exhaled.

A loud squawk blurted from the intercom, making me jump. I caught a trace of amusement in Tony’s eyes. Someone with a faulty ticket. Wheezy looked at the screen, flicked a switch and lifted the barrier.

“Were you here, that day?”

Both men nodded.

“Can you tell me the sequence of events after it had happened?”

Tony shifted, shirty still at my implied criticism.

Wheezy coughed. “First we knew, a police officer comes in and tells us not to let anyone else in and they want to talk to all cars leaving the place. Was him that told us, that she’d jumped, like. By then the ambulance had come and there were police all over, looking round the place. They found her shoe, that’s how they knew it was level 5, because no one had actually seen her jump.” He blew smoke into the fuggy air. I tried to breathe as shallowly as possible.

“Place was shut for a couple of hours. They took the CCTV tape away, see if it would playback on their machines.” Tony shrugged. “That was more or less it.”

Wheezy cleared his throat in agreement.

End of story. Closed for two hours then business as usual.

“Horrible way to go,” Tony shook his head.

“Makes you wonder,” Wheezy added, “what she was thinking of. If you’re going to top yourself least you could keep it clean. For the family and that.”

Tony pulled a pack of cigarettes from his pocket. Cue my exit.

So, no tapes. One broken, the other taped over. The police hadn’t even bothered to watch it. Why not? I knew there was no reason for extensive enquiries but surely establishing when Miriam Johnstone arrived at the car park and determining what state she was in would have been pertinent to the inquest. Those observations could have helped the coroner rule on the cause of death and help Miriam’s family comprehend her suicide. I thought it was reasonable to expect the investigation to include attempts to find out the state of mind of the deceased especially in a suspected suicide. And now I’d seen the physical layout of the place I could see that the possibility of accidental death was a non-starter. No way could anyone slip and fall from up there. She hadn’t slipped, she’d jumped. It had been intentional.

I understood some of Connie Johnstone’s grievances now; the police had barely done the basics. An approach to the police complaints authority might be on the cards if I found more evidence of sloppy work or corners cut. Was it just par for the course? A matter of too few resources stretched far too thinly coupled with the pressure to improve the clear-up rates for crime in general? Would any suicide get the same half-hearted attention? Or was there indeed a racial element? Had Miriam Johnstone received less than equal treatment because she was black?