The Balance of Guilt

by Simon Hall

  Adam sat down on a bench. ‘So, if that’s the case – why bother taking all that trouble to hide it?’

  ‘To throw us off the real scent. Because he knew we’d do a search and that we’d find it. And that would be it. We’d be happy with our clever little discovery. We could work away at the hidden clue contained in it, like good investigators, and we’d never think that …’

  Adam let out a loud groan. ‘That there was something else hidden here. The missing thirty seconds.’

  ‘Exactly. We only lose Ahmed for forty seconds. By our own experiment, he took about ten of those to hide the decoy phone, just doing it well enough to make it look realistic. So, what was he doing with the other thirty seconds?’

  They waited while a couple of kids rode their bikes through the arcade, sending shoppers dodging from their path. One old man waved a walking stick at them. Adam must have been distracted. The paragon of the law didn’t look remotely like intervening.

  Finally the detective said, ‘He was hiding the real evidence. Getting rid of the actual phone that Tanton had called. He used those thirty seconds to hide it.’

  ‘Exactly. And where do you think he did that?’

  Adam looked up and down the arcade, an expression of puzzlement growing on his face. It was a cheap emotion, admittedly, but Dan couldn’t help enjoying it.

  ‘It has to be here?’ the detective said.

  ‘Yep. Ahmed only had those few seconds. He couldn’t have gone anywhere else.’

  ‘But we searched everywhere.’

  ‘Almost everywhere.’

  ‘Where did we miss then? Come on, stop this bloody teasing, will you?!’

  Dan sat down beside his friend, stretched out his legs and rolled his neck. It was still stiff after the night in the vet’s surgery. He knew he should feel tired, but didn’t.

  Finally, he said, ‘Ahmed put the phone right in your face. Directly under your nose. The one place he might guess you wouldn’t see it.’

  ‘What? What are you talking about?’

  ‘Do you know what one of the wisest teachers at my school used to say? It was very clever. I’ll never forget it.’

  ‘What? Dan, what the hell are you talking about? Look, Ahmed’s going to be released at any minute and if this phone’s here, we need to find it. I don’t have time to mess about with your bloody teasing and …’

  Dan stood up. ‘Come on then. Let’s go get it.’

  ‘Get what? The phone? Ahmed’s mobile?’

  ‘Yep. Follow me.’ Dan pointed along the mall. ‘It’s just up there, waiting for us. Shall I tell you what my old teacher said, while we walk?’

  ‘What?’

  Dan smiled, couldn’t help himself. ‘It’s this. He used to say – where better to hide a pebble than on a beach?’

  Adam’s mobile rang. He glared at it, but answered and held a brief, almost monosyllabic conversation as they walked along the arcade. Ahmed’s solicitor had been in some heated discussions with Greater Wessex Police’s legal department. There were threats of a writ and High Court action. Now, unless any new evidence could be found, the solicitor would be calling at Heavitree Road police station at half past ten to have his client freed.

  Dan glanced down at his watch. They had an hour. It should be enough.

  If all went smoothly.

  He checked the message on his own mobile. It was indeed Lizzie, and she was on fizzing form. The non-good morning greeting lasted almost a minute, of which approximately ninety-five per cent was a list of demands for another story on the bombing. The ratings apparently had the temerity to sag a little overnight and needed immediate boosting with an exclusive. The weight of the very future of broadcasting was set squarely upon Dan’s shoulders.

  He sighed. It was ever thus with his manic editor. He would call in later when he had the ritual sacrifice of a story to offer. He hoped.

  Adam hung up and passed a couple of choice comments about the legal profession. Shameless parasites hanging onto the blistered backside of humanity was the gist of it. He was so wrapped up in his tirade he didn’t notice that Dan had stopped walking.

  ‘Come on!’ he barked, looking round. ‘Ahmed’s going to be free in an hour. Quit the bloody pantomime and tell me where you reckon his phone is.’

  Dan just waited. ‘See anything here that might help us?’ he asked.

  He was standing outside the second-hand shop. Adam swore again and came striding back over. ‘Look, I’ve had enough games …’

  Dan raised a finger to his lips, took a pace backwards and leaned against the shop window.

  ‘What the hell are you doing?’ Adam snapped. ‘We’re trying to catch a terrorist, we’ve got just minutes to do it, and you’re behaving like a …’

  ‘Look!’ Dan interrupted, angling his head to the window.

  Adam growled, but did so. Dan watched his friend’s gaze range over the display. Video games, binoculars, cameras, satellite navigation systems, computer accessories, mobile phones.

  The detective’s eyes stopped and his expression changed.

  ‘Shit,’ Adam groaned. ‘A pebble on a beach. It was right in our faces. That’s what he was doing in those missing seconds.’

  ‘Yep,’ Dan replied. ‘That’s what I reckon. So, let’s go get it.’

  ‘Let’s just hope it’s still here, after all this messing around,’ the detective replied sulkily.

  A thin man with a smattering of acne was standing behind the counter. He greeted them with the kind of uncertain smile that suggested his young life had already equipped him with the ability to recognise a plain-clothes police officer.

  Adam explained what they wanted. The smile vanished.

  ‘I’ll have to ask the manager,’ the lad said. ‘He’s in town, doing some banking. He’ll only be an hour or so.’

  ‘There’s no time for that. I want a list of when all these phones were brought in.’

  ‘I can’t do that without …’

  Adam propelled his warrant card forwards so it was almost touching the assistant’s nose. He recoiled and blinked hard.

  ‘List of phones now, or you under arrest for obstructing the police, team of cops in here to pull place apart, shop closes down and you out of a job.’

  The two men stared at each other, then Adam allowed a detective’s smile to form on his face. It was the product of years of practice of intimidation, as warm and welcoming as the glint of a guillotine in the first morning sun.

  ‘I’ll get the list,’ the young man said.

  He brought them a couple of tatty sheets of paper. The shop only bothered to buy the most modern phones. Older models didn’t sell, were rendered obsolete too fast by the typhoon of technological advancement. The entirety of their stock was in the window, around forty models.

  Adam walked back to the doorway. The assistant went to follow, but was waved away.

  ‘If Ahmed walks in here, can he just lean into the window and place the phone in?’ the detective asked.

  Dan tried it with his own mobile. The display wasn’t sealed and it was simple to do, just a case of shifting a panel and reaching over.

  ‘Yep,’ he said. ‘It’d only take a second or two.’ He looked across the counter. ‘And whoever was on duty wouldn’t see it.’

  ‘Then let’s get looking at these phones. Whichever one doesn’t match the list, that’s the one we want.’

  Adam lifted the display from the window and set it down on the floor. He began working through each mobile, while Dan ticked them off from the list. A clock on the wall said it was almost a quarter to ten. They had forty-five minutes.

  The phones were described by colour, condition, manufacturer and model number. They checked off ten with no luck, then twenty. Adam let out a low sigh and pulled his tie a little from his neck.

  It was surprisingly warm in the shop, the air still, close and stale. Dan noticed an earwig crawling out from under a display. He scratched at his back. It was odd how the sight of an insect often prompted an i
tch.

  A cleaner walked past and brushed around the doorway with a broom. The man’s efforts succeeded more in rearranging the dirt than removing it. An announcement boomed out from the mall. A special offer on beauty products was underway. Eternal youth was yours, and for a remarkably reasonable price.

  Marketing people never understood the meaning of moderation.

  Thirty phones checked now. Still no success.

  Dan shifted his weight and noticed a hole in his sock. He’d have to do some clothes shopping soon. The prospect of the oncoming winter was bad enough, without his socks offering extra opportunities for the cold to spread its insurgent chill.

  They kept working through the phones. Adam’s own mobile rang again, but he ignored it. ‘We’re almost there,’ he said. ‘Keep going.’

  At the top of the window, a spider scuttled to the corner of its web. The light caught in the gossamer pattern of spun strands. A couple of shoppers stopped to watch the two middle-aged men in their suits, squatting in the shop doorway, going through a pile of mobile phones. The assistant walked over to ask how they were doing.

  ‘Fine,’ Adam replied without looking up, conveying in one sharp word another unmistakable dismissal.

  The clock on the wall chimed ten. There were just half a dozen phones left.

  ‘I’m getting a bad feeling about this,’ Dan muttered.

  ‘It has to be here. It has to.’

  Adam hesitated, looked up and then said more slowly, ‘Are we sure about this? What if Ahmed hid the phone somewhere else?’

  ‘Well, if we’re thinking like that, what if he’s not even the radicaliser?’ Dan replied. ‘What if we’re on the wrong track entirely and it’s someone else? What if …’

  ‘We can’t go into that at the moment,’ Adam interrupted. ‘This is our best shot for now.’

  They continued working. Now they were down to the last three phones. Dan shifted his position again and stretched his legs. His knees had started to throb. Adam held up the first of the remaining mobiles. It was a silver Nokia.

  Dan found it on his sheet of paper. ‘Check.’

  Next, a black Siemens phone. Dan knew it was there on the list, but he looked twice, just to be sure. ‘Check.’

  The final phone. Another Nokia, red and silver, a little battered at the edges. Dan heard himself muttering a prayer.

  Their last chance.

  Another blast of advertising from the tannoy. This time, more eggs than an army could breakfast on in a week was the current special offer at the supermarket. Autumn, apparently, was the perfect time for an omelette.

  Dan found himself fancying one. He was feeling peckish.

  One of the strip lights flickered and began an annoying buzz. It was dusty in the store, the attack of the fine imperceptible haze drying mouths and teasing noses.

  Adam held up the last mobile. ‘This is the one. It has to be. Come on, tell me it’s not on the sheet.’

  Dan traced his way down the piece of paper. The movement was forlorn with miserable expectation. There was just one line left he hadn’t put a tick by. A red and silver Nokia, in average condition, a few scrapes and scratches.

  ‘It’s here,’ he said quietly. ‘The bloody thing’s here.’

  Adam leaned back on his haunches, then sat down heavily on the carpet. ‘Shit,’ he hissed. ‘We’re stuffed. And I thought we had him. Now he’s going to walk free and there’s nothing we can do. So much for your brilliant idea and all the bloody melodrama too.’

  Dan didn’t have the spirit to retaliate. ‘I’m sorry. I just thought it made sense. It all seemed to fit. And I was so damned sure.’

  He sat down too. Suddenly, he felt very tired. A young woman walked into the shop and gave them a curious look, picked her way past and towards the counter.

  ‘Unless,’ Adam said, ‘Unless, someone’s come in and bought it. Maybe that’s why it’s not here.’

  ‘Is this the kind of place where they’d sell a phone if they didn’t have any record of buying it in the first place?’

  Adam gave him a scornful look. ‘What do you think?’

  ‘OK, but how does that help us? They don’t keep notes of the people who buy things.’

  Adam got up, span around and pointed to the counter. Above it was a small CCTV camera.

  ‘No, but they do have security. And maybe we can identify who bought the phone. If we can get a picture and show it around all the local cops, someone might recognise him, or her.’

  ‘Maybe I can do better than that,’ Dan said. ‘Lizzie wants another story. What if I put out a TV appeal for whoever it was to come forward. It won’t stop Ahmed being released, but …’

  ‘If we put a tail on him, and if we can find the phone, we can arrest him again later,’ Adam interjected. ‘We can still get him. Come on.’

  The young assistant looked even more worried as Adam bore down upon him for a second time.

  ‘CCTV,’ the detective said, pointing to the camera. ‘How long do you keep the recordings for?’

  ‘A week.’

  Dan breathed out a sigh of relief. One hurdle overcome.

  ‘I want to see the recordings. Right now.’

  Evolution had not passed the man by. This time he didn’t even bother arguing. He led them to a small office at the back of the shop. The walls were covered with pictures of naked women and the room smelt strongly of cigarettes. A DVD recorder was attached to a television set and a couple of black boxes, coloured lights blinking on their front.

  The assistant pointed to a rack of silver discs and begrudgingly handed Adam a remote control. ‘We use one a day. They’ve got the days written on them.’

  He walked back out to the shop. Adam picked up the disc marked Monday, loaded it into the machine and pressed play.

  The image was black and white, but impressively clear. Dan ticked off another of his mental list of potential pitfalls. Much of the CCTV footage he’d seen in his career was so indistinct that attempting to make sense of what was going on was like trying to pick out a golf ball in a snowstorm.

  The camera was static and fixed on the counter and till.

  ‘We won’t see Ahmed coming in then,’ Dan observed. ‘So we won’t get confirmation he did hide the phone in the window.’

  ‘No, but that’s not the most important thing. We’ll have to assume he did. What we need is to spot anyone who buys a mobile.’

  There was a digital clock in the corner of the picture. Adam found the time of the bombing and began fast forwarding, then pausing whenever someone came to the counter. It was fortunate the shop was not busy or the task would have been a long one.

  A woman bought a computer game, a young lad an ipod. The focus of the camera was sufficiently sharp to make out even small details, like the money they were handing over. It was interesting that everyone who came to the counter glanced up at the camera, as if instinctively aware they were being monitored.

  Dan noticed Adam looking at his watch. It was ten past ten.

  ‘Try not to think about it,’ he told his friend. ‘We’re going to have to accept that Ahmed will be freed – for now. But we can still get him later.’ He patted Adam’s shoulder. ‘And we will.’

  ‘Yeah, I know. It just – well, sticks in my throat. We’re so close. I can sense it.’

  Dan nodded. ‘There’s no point going back to the station and trying to bluff him, is there? Now that we think we know how he hid the mobile. We could try to scare him that we’ve found it – you know, something along the lines of “Guess what I’ve just bought from the window of a second hand shop in that arcade where you were arrested?”’

  Adam ran a hand over his chin. ‘It might be worth a try. But I don’t reckon we stand much chance. He’s too smart. He’d just sit there, nice and quiet, and wait to see what it is we’ve got. He’d soon realise we haven’t actually got anything. I think we work at it this way, try to find who bought the phone and see if we can trace them. It’s our only chance of getting some evidence t
hat’ll stick.’

  Adam spooled on a few minutes. The recording showed an elderly couple talking to the young assistant about a camera. He was demonstrating how it worked.

  Another twenty minutes forwards. Some kids at the counter, looking at watches, but not buying. Now an older man who seemed to be trying to sell a video recorder. He left again quickly with it under his arm.

  The only place he was likely to secure a sale was in an antiques shop.

  Video recorders. When Dan was young, he had marvelled at the magnificent new technology; its revolutionary boast that you no longer had to be sitting in front of a television at a defined time to see the programme you wanted. And now –

  Sometimes, the pace of life’s progress could leave you feeling more than a little old.

  It was a quarter past ten. Ahmed would be free in fifteen minutes, strolling out into a gentle autumn day. Perhaps he would walk past the Minster, sit on a bench and enjoy the sight of the atrocity he had been so instrumental in inflicting.

  A bald man, his head flaring in the image, was talking to the young assistant about a radio. It was placed in a bag, the till opened and closed and the man left.

  Another few minutes on. Another man appeared in the shot. He put a mobile phone on the counter.

  Adam lurched forwards and hit the pause button.

  It was a mobile they were waiting to see. And one sat on the counter, the man and the assistant frozen in their discussion.

  But it wasn’t the phone at which Dan and Adam stared. It was the man who was buying it. Who was holding a brief conversation, handing over a spray of bank notes, refusing a bag, quickly putting the phone into his pocket, turning and walking out of the shop.

  A man who kept the collar of his jacket turned up the whole time. Who had clearly wanted to make the purchase as fast as he could and escape. Who hadn’t looked at the CCTV camera once, unlike all the other customers. But it was a man who, nonetheless, was very familiar and instantly recognisable.

  Adam and Dan both leaned back on their chairs. For several seconds, neither could speak. All they did was to stare at the dusty old screen.