‘That seems sensible.’
From anyone else, those words could be patronising. From Cody, they’re the best compliment.
‘Yes. And I found this…’
She performs a few mouse-clicks. A window pops open, showing the view of a camera in the lobby of the leisure centre. A few seconds into the video, a man comes into frame. He’s wearing a green hoody and black joggers. He heads straight towards the camera, which is angled over the door to the building.
‘That’s Toby Hooper,’ Cody says.
‘Yes. Now we’ll cut to an external camera. It’s a bit distant, I’m afraid, but I think you’ll find it interesting.’
She opens another window on the laptop. The view now is from a high vantage point covering the building entrance. Toby can be seen emerging from the leisure centre and then strolling along the driveway separating the building from its car park. It’s raining heavily, but Toby doesn’t seem to mind.
Seconds later, another figure comes into view from the bottom right of the picture. Cody shuffles forward for a better look. The man – at least, Cody thinks it’s a man – is wearing a navy-blue rain jacket with the hood up, and his back is to the camera. He is making a beeline for Toby, and at some pace.
‘Who’s that?’ Cody asks.
Grace doesn’t answer. She’s enjoying leaving Cody in suspense, not to mention the fact that he is now leaning right into her.
Toby suddenly halts and turns towards the man, who now rushes at Toby, grabs him and slams him into a wall. There’s some animated conversation, and then the man slaps Toby hard across the face before pointing a finger at him and then continuing the argument. Toby can be seen shaking his head as he speaks.
Eventually the man lets go of Toby but not before giving him another whack across his head. He leaves, but his face is still not visible. Toby stares after him, rubbing his cheek, then heads off in the opposite direction.
Cody sits back in his chair. ‘When did this happen?’
‘Three weeks ago,’ says Grace.
‘Is there another camera view of the guy who attacked Toby?’
‘Afraid not. There are good views of the whole of the car park, but the man didn’t come from that direction.’
Cody stares at her. ‘Why do I get the feeling you’ve got more to tell me?’
Oh, Cody, she thinks. You know me so well.
‘Because I have. I’ve been developing some software to help me search the videos. The way it works is that I feed in relevant descriptors and it checks each frame for their presence. Obviously, it’s much faster and more reliable than anything a human could do.’
‘Obviously. What kind of “relevant descriptors” are we talking about?’
‘Take a look at this…’ she says.
She runs another video clip. It shows the side of the building on the main road, with traffic flying past.
‘What am I looking at?’ Cody asks.
‘I’ll show you again.’ She plays the brief CCTV snippet once more. ‘See it?’
‘Nope.’
‘I’m not surprised. I don’t think any detective going through this footage would find it. Some of the things I asked the software to look out for were certain car number plates. It highlighted this one.’
She presses a few keys on the laptop. The video begins to run again, then suddenly freezes as the computer draws a box around the registration plate of a car on the road.
Grace says, ‘Notice that this car has its left indicator on. It’s about to turn down the side road, heading towards the area that man disappeared to after he attacked Toby. Notice the timestamp, too. This was picked up about ten minutes before the end of Alexa’s lesson. My guess is that the man drove there and then lay in wait for Toby to show his face.’
Cody turns to her, his excitement clear. ‘Grace, whose car is that? I can’t even read the number plate.’
She smiles. ‘Luckily, the computer can.’ She hits another key. The computer zooms in on the number plate, then converts the jumble of blurred pixels into a recognisable sequence of letters and digits.
‘That looks familiar,’ Cody says.
‘Yes. The car belongs to Oliver Selby.’
Grace pauses for dramatic effect, allowing Cody to absorb its impact.
Cody says, ‘I asked Toby directly. He told us he never met Alexa’s husband.’
‘Well, I suppose it’s possible that the attacker never revealed who he was, but that seems unlikely.’
‘I agree. Toby definitely lied to us. The question is why. And also, why did Selby go after him? Slapping him about for saying a few inappropriate things about his wife seems a bit of an overreaction, no matter how possessive he was.’
Time for surprise number two, Grace thinks.
‘I think I can help you with that, too,’ she says.
Cody’s grin sends another electric pulse through her.
‘I took a look at Toby’s online activity,’ she continues. ‘Very childish stuff mostly. Superheroes and trash TV. But there was some other stuff he posted on social media and later took down.’
