Human Remains

he said, as I started to write a list of queries for him to complete… ‘how have you been?’
    ‘Alright,’ I said.
    ‘We’ve all been really worried about you,’ he replied.
    I looked up in surprise. ‘You don’t even know me,’ I said, before I could stop myself.
    He looked a bit embarrassed. ‘Well – you know. You’re one of the team. We look after our own.’
    Really?
I thought.
    ‘We got the CCTV back. That’s when it all went a bit mental. I don’t think any of us really believed there was someone behind it all until then.’
    ‘What CCTV?’
    ‘Of you. In the shopping centre.’
    ‘I didn’t know there was CCTV.’
    Probably, if he’d thought about it for a bit longer, he wouldn’t have shown me, or even mentioned it in the first place. But he showed me where the file was saved on the Operation’s drive on the network, and before I knew it I was launching Media Player and waiting for the file to buffer.
    The footage from the shopping centre wasn’t very good. The camera was facing into bright sunlight so there was a glare that obscured much of the image, leaving the rest dark and indistinct. Despite this, I saw a person standing outside the glass window of a shop, and after a moment of thinking that I had a coat like that I realised with a jolt that it was me. Seeing yourself on film was always a bit strange, but this was worse – I didn’t recognise myself, not just because of the shadow but because the way I was standing was just so odd. I looked hunched into my coat, the slope of my shoulders and my bent head making me appear utterly defeated. Lost.
    As I watched, I realised that there was a second figure standing next to me, slightly to my right, and I saw myself nod, and then again – although I had no memory of any of it. He was talking to me. He had his back to the camera and the top half of him was obscured by the glare from the sun, so all anyone could really make out was that it was a man, wearing a short jacket of some dark colour, dark trousers and proper shoes, not white trainers.
    And then the man turned slowly away, and a few seconds later, without lifting her head at all, the figure that was me moved and then followed him, not exactly with reluctance but just with an attitude of utter dejection.
    ‘I can’t believe that’s me,’ I said at last.
    ‘I know,’ he said. ‘Weird, isn’t it?’
    ‘Was there any more CCTV? Did they look at ANPR?’ This was the car numberplate recognition system used for tracing vehicles.
    ‘No,’ he said. ‘We did check. There’s no ANPR at the shopping centre; the nearest is on the ring road. But we had nothing to compare the data to, since we don’t know when or where he met any of the others. And it’s impossible to ID him from those images. Which is why we were all hoping you’d remember him.’
    ‘I don’t remember anything,’ I said, mystified. ‘It’s like looking at someone else. I don’t remember being there and talking to someone at all.’
    He patted me on the shoulder, which made me flinch slightly. ‘Ah, well,’ he said. ‘We’ll get him, Annabel. You know we’re throwing everything we’ve got at this, don’t you?’
    Until the next job comes along, I thought, but I didn’t say it. I went back to my list of phone billing queries, thinking that it would probably be easier and quicker to give in and do them myself.

Colin
     
     
    A long evening spent sitting on a custard-yellow plastic seat that was fixed to the floor has been rewarded, eventually. I have had to watch people coming and going for hours on end. I’ve seen fights, disagreements, five separate women falling over – a cocktail of alcohol, high heels and the Market Square cobbles – and the police, turning up in the riot van and taking people away, wandering through the square in their fluorescent jackets, moving people on, helping drunk women get to their feet again.
    But at last I see Audrey and her friends leaving Luciano’s. It is ten to midnight – not especially late, but late enough. My arse is almost completely numb. And I can still taste that filthy coffee.
    I leave the restaurant promising myself I will never set foot inside it again, and step outside into the freezing air. I twist my muffler around my throat and over the lower part of my face, and pull the black thermal wool hat over my head to keep it warm, as well as for the benefit of the CCTV cameras that are by now paying very close attention to the masses thronging