Much of the central area of the city was under constant CCTV surveillance, with cameras capable of zooming in to a tight close-up from a distance of several hundred yards.
The nerve centre of the operation was the CCTV room on the fifth floor of Brighton’s John Street Police Station. It was a large space, with blue carpet and dark blue chairs. There were three separate workstations, each comprising a bank of monitors, keyboards, computer terminals and telephones.
Civilian controllers sat behind two of the workstations. One of them, wearing a headset, was busily engaged in a police operation, tracking a drug dealer’s movements, but the other, Jon Pumfrey, a fresh-faced man in his late thirties, with neat brown hair, wearing a lightweight black jacket, was occupied with helping Haydn Kelly navigate through the system in his search for sightings of Anna Galicia.
The forensic podiatrist, cradling a tepid Starbucks coffee, had cramp in his right thigh. He had been seated at this console since shortly before midday, with the exception of one quick break to grab a sandwich and this coffee. It was now coming up to 5 p.m. A kaleidoscope of images of parts of the city of Brighton and Hove, and other Sussex locations, changed constantly on the multiple screens. People walking. Buses moving. A sudden zoom shot on to a man standing by a wheelie bin.
Kelly had spotted Anna Galicia on six different cameras so far, during Monday evening. In the first she was seen walking in the direction of Café Conneckted. In the second she was heading towards the location of the HSBC cash machines in Queen’s Road. In the third, fourth and fifth images she was walking around the outside of the Pavilion grounds, threading her way through the crowds of onlookers. In the sixth, she was walking towards the Old Steine, at 11.24 p.m. Although there was extensive camera coverage around that area, she did not reappear. Jon Pumfrey told Kelly that her disappearance from vision indicated she had probably taken a bus or jumped into a taxi and gone home for the night.
They were now scrolling through the images in the area around the Pavilion grounds from yesterday, fast-forwarding through the whole day on each of the different cameras in turn, in the hope of seeing her again. Kelly glanced at his watch, mindful that he needed to be back at Sussex House for the 6.30 p.m. briefing. It was almost 5 p.m. He already had more than enough for his purposes, and he was excited about what he had to report.
Then something caught his eye. He frowned.
‘Jon, go back a few seconds!’
The controller moved his joystick, and the image began reversing.
‘Stop!’ Kelly commanded. The time on the screen displayed as 1 p.m., yesterday, Tuesday.
The image froze.
‘What street is this?’ Kelly asked.
‘New Road.’
‘Okay, zoom in on that guy, please.’
The image of a balding man in a business suit filled the screen. He stepped out of the front door of an office building, hesitated, held a hand out as if to check if it was still raining.
‘Now, go slow forward, please.’
Kelly watched, with growing excitement, as the man walked out of frame. Then he said, ‘Keep it running – you can fast forward. I think he’ll be back.’
The forensic podiatrist was right. Ten minutes later the man returned, holding a small paper bag. He shot a glance at a bicycle chained to a lamp post, then went back into the office building.
‘I need a copy of that, please,’ he said to the controller.
A few minutes later, when Pumfrey handed it to him, he loaded it straight into his laptop, then ran the software he had developed for gait analysis on it. After he had taken off the measurements and calculations, he made a comparison with the figures computed from the footage of Anna Galicia walking.
And now he could barely contain his excitement.