“Just listen,” Jerome said, pointing at the roof, just above the door. “Look up. It’s a CCTV camera. Most pubs have them. On that stretch alone, by the Flowers and Archers? I counted five cameras there. On Durward Street? At least six on the path the victim was walking along. If they don’t have footage of the Ripper, then something is seriously wrong with the system.”
“Jerome is going to be a journalist,” Jazza said again. She was tipsy, rocking a little to the music.
“I’m not the only one who’s noticed this!”
I looked up at the camera. It was a fairly large one, long and thin, its electronic eye pointed right at us. There was another one next to it pointing in the other direction, so that both halves of the pub garden were covered.
“I’m not a prefect,” Jazza said suddenly.
“Come on, Jazzy,” he said, tucking up under her arm.
“She is.”
Jazza was talking about Charlotte, obviously.
“And what else is she?” Jerome asked.
Jazza didn’t offer any reply, so I chimed in with, “A bitchweasel?”
“A bitchweasel!” Jazza’s face lit up. “She’s a bitchweasel! I love my new roommate.”
“She’s a bit of a lightweight,” Jerome explained. “And never let her have gin.”
“Gin bad,” Jazza said. “Gin make Jazza barf.”
Jazza sobered quickly on the way home, which was exactly when I felt the fizziness in my own head. I started to tell Jerome some of the stories I’d been telling Jazza the other night—Uncle Bick and Miss Gina, Billy Mack, Uncle Will. When he dropped us off on the steps under the large WOMEN sign over our door, he had a strange and unreadable look in his eye. Charlotte was sitting at the desk in our front lobby, a checklist and a Latin book in front of her.
“Nice night?” she asked as we came in.
“Wonderful,” Jazza said, a little too loudly. “And you?”
For the first time, as I walked up the winding stairs, I felt like I was coming home for the night. I looked down the long stretch of our hallway, with its gray carpets and odd bends and multiple fire doors breaking the path, and it all seemed very familiar and right.
The rest of the night was cozy. Jazza settled down with her German. I replied to some e-mails from my friends back home and noodled around on the Internet for a while and thought about doing French. Nothing disturbed my peace of mind until I was pulling the curtains for the night. As I did, something caught my eye. I had already yanked the curtain shut before my brain registered that it had seen something it didn’t like, but when I opened it again, there was nothing out there but some wet trees and cobblestones. It had started to rain. I stared for a moment, trying to figure out what I’d seen. Something had been right below—a person. Someone had been standing in front of the building. But that was no surprise. People stood in front of the building all the time.
“What’s the matter?” Jazza asked.
“Nothing,” I said, pulling the curtain shut again. “Thought I saw something.”
“This is the problem with all of this media coverage of the Ripper. It makes people afraid.”
She was right, of course. But I noticed she pulled the curtains on her side more tightly closed as well.
GOULSTON STREET, EAST LONDON
SEPTEMBER 8
9:20 P.M.
Of course now was the deadline to get this website done, one of her biggest and most lucrative jobs of the year. The contract had no provision for lateness due to the fact that the Ripper chose to strike directly across the street, at her pub. In fact, she had installed the CCTV cameras at the pub after they had been robbed last year. Because she was friendly with the owner, she’d done it for a fraction of the normal cost. In return, he provided her with free drinks. Earlier in the day, she’d watched the police remove the recorder. They would be watching the results of her work …
Didn’t matter. Nor did the sirens, the noise of the ever-increasing numbers of police going in and out of the mobile lab parked outside of her building, the helicopter that flew overhead constantly, the police who came to her door to ask if she’d seen anything. Normally, she could wander out in her bleach-stained TALK NERDY TO ME T-shirt, her old tracksuit bottoms, her slippers, her pink and bleached blond hair piled into a messy knot on top of her head and secured with a plastic clamp meant to tie back computer wires. This was completely acceptable attire for grabbing a double espresso at Wakey Wakey. Today, she couldn’t even step outside because the whole area was roped off and all the world’s press was standing at the end of the road.
Nope. No excuses. Either she finished today, or she didn’t get paid.
As a concession to the event, she had the news on her muted television. Every once in a while, she would glance over and stare at aerial views of her own building, long shots of the front of her house. Once, she even caught a glimpse of herself in the window. She resolutely ignored the two dozen messages from friends and family, begging to know what was going on.
But then something caught her attention. It was a new banner at the bottom of the news screen. It read: CCTV FAILURE. She quickly turned up the sound in time to catch the gist of the report.
“…as in the first murder on Durward Street. This second failure of CCTV to capture any useful images of the individual dubbed the New Ripper calls into question the effectiveness of London’s CCTV system.”
“Failure?” Veronica said out loud.
The website instantly faded in importance.
No. She had not failed. She had to prove those cameras had not failed. It took a moment of thought, but then she remembered that the footage was backed up to an online server, and she had the documentation around somewhere. She got down on the floor, threw open a document file, and dumped out the contents. This was the box where she stuffed manuals and warrantees for all her equipment. Toaster oven, no. Kettle, no. Television, no …
Then, she found it. The paperwork for the cameras, with the access codes scribbled in pen on the front.
Of course, this meant she had to watch the footage.
She went to the kitchen, opened up a cabinet, and pulled out a bottle of whiskey—the good stuff, a birthday gift from a Scottish ex-boyfriend. This was the stuff she touched only on very special occasions. She poured herself a heavy shot into a juice glass and drank it all in one go. Then she pulled her curtains shut and sat in front of her computer. She went to the site, entered the codes, and was granted access. She clicked through the options, selecting Playback.
According to the news, the murder had occurred between five thirty and six in the morning. She set the playback time to start at 6:05. Then, with a deep breath, she hit Play, and then Rewind.
The footage was shot in night vision mode, which gave it a strange green-gray cast. And the first thing she saw was the body. It lay there alone on the concrete patio by the fence. It was strangely peaceful, if you ignored the gaping wound in the abdomen and the dark pool around it. Veronica swallowed hard and tried to control her breathing. Failure, her arse.
She could have stopped right there, could have immediately called the police, but something compelled her to keep watching.