Page 113 of 56 Days
They settle into the car in the same positions as earlier: doors open, Karl in the passenger seat and Lee behind the wheel, coffee cups resting on the dash.
Karl balances the laptop on his knees, opens the lid, and powers it up. “Mr. Instasham said the icon should be right here on the desktop...” He tracks a forefinger across the pad.
“Mr. who?”
“And you’re givingmeshit because I didn’t get Lois Lane? The guy from the property management company. Crap Instagram Account Man. So, how are we doing this?”
“The quickest way possible. What have we got?”
“Ah... Nine different feeds, it looks like.”
“I think the lobby is our best bet,” Lee says. “Let’s start there and work our way backward from this morning.”
“I’ve got facing out and facing in.”
“In, please.”
“That’s what she s—”
“Don’tyou evendare.”
After a few clicks and taps, Karl angles the laptop so they can both watch together.
Ahigh-resolutioncolor video is now playing at high speed and full screen. It’s the feed from the camera in the lobby that’s positioned over the front doors, showing the doors leading out to the courtyard and the letterboxes.
They sip their coffee and watch residents coming and going, the progress of the sunshine on the floor—as well as the clock in the bottom right corner of the screen—tracking the days as the video plays.
It’s a slow process and the coffees are gone before they see anything of interest, from five days before.
“There,” Lee says, pointing. “Play that forward at normal speed.”
They watch as a familiar figure enters the frame.
“Well, well, well,” Karl says. “What have we here?”
It’s Laura Mannix, standing in the lobby of the Crossings, looking out through the main doors.
She does this for a while, as if waiting for someone who never comes. Then she turns around and, very quickly, slips something into the letterbox for apartment one.
When she moves out of shot, it’s to go back toward the elevators and so, presumably, back upstairs.
“There’s our envelope,” Lee says. “What time was that?”
“Ah... Five fifteen, ish. On Monday last. She didn’t do a very good job of hiding her face from the CCTV, did she? She stood in front of the camera to make sure we saw it.”
Lee shrugs. “Maybe she didn’t know it was there.”
“There’s a big camera on the ceiling.”
“There’s astandardfish-eyelenson the ceiling,” Lee corrects, “in the corner, and so what? People don’t really think of CCTV in places like this, lobbies and lifts. And if you’re not doing anything wrong, you wouldn’t be thinking about it at all, would you?” She nods at the laptop. “Play on.”
Karl taps a key.
“Remember,” he says, “we’ve onlyforty-eightmore hours to go.”
But they only have to speed through another five of them before they see Laura Mannix again: coming out of the corridor from the direction of apartment one and, moments later, going down it.
“Well, well—” Karl starts.
