Page 56 - The Chronicles Ser2 (6-10)

of a child. The man’s eyes were flowing with tears; the crumpled tiny form limp in his arms.
“I found her in the area where the street vendors’ carts were” he was shaking. Jenny and
Corrigan signalled their crews to start filming. An Emergency worker took the child’s body
and put it on a gurney. Lomax felt his stomach churn. Lucy nudged him and they went back
to their car.

At HQ; Dreck was going through the vid and Data footage the Weather service had
sent. Most of it was just general shots with embedded data streams. So far nothing seemed
to stand out. The resolution was extremely high as they’d just taken delivery of some ex-
military units. The vid footage of the explosion was shaky where the shock wave hit; even as
far away as the drone was. It gave an indication of how fierce the blast was; watching it in
slow motion only made its impact worse. Bodies and debris seemed to scatter like leaves in
a gust of wind. He felt sick, a sensation that was made worse when Mark Wiggins came over
eating a sandwich made from a particularly smelly cheese. He missed the footage after the
explosion so rewound to just before and stepped through the footage again. That was when
he spotted the Force car parking up and a figure coming out of the Casino that Frankie and
David nearly bumped into. He was sure he recognised the man’s body stance and gait, but
couldn’t be certain. From this angle the man’s face wasn’t visible. He made a note to talk
with Frankie when he was capable of giving his account of what happened, maybe it might
jog his memory. He took an edited section from the footage and saved it to a storage
crystal. He whizzed the footage forward to the end of the explosion sequence and ran it on
in slow motion. The footage showed that moment where those nearby momentarily froze
before rushing in to give assistance. One car, a blue Sedan was traveling away from the
incident apparently unaware of what had occurred just a few blocks behind them. He
passed the plate details on to traffic. He was unaware at that time he had probably solved
an important part of this investigation. The footage ended there because the drone had
been ordered to move to another location. If it had lingered in the area for a few more
minutes it would have recorded Marven’s meeting with Herne. It turned out that this was
the only footage of the bombers to surface as the News crews had been covering local
charity fundraising events. He packed up the evidence and headed to the Incident Support
room. The phone on the Incident desk rang and Mark answered it; he signalled Dreck over
to take the call.

“Female caller from Bedlam Bronx area” Mark said as he handed Dreck the receiver.

“Hello; Detective Inspector Dreck speaking how can I be of assistance?” he asked

“I think my boyfriend did something really stupid. I think he planted the bomb…” the shaky
voice said. She went on to explain that she wanted to remain anonymous as her family had
ties to City Hall. Her and her boyfriend had worked at the Casino until early this morning.
There had been some discrepancy in takings from the Tambla Tables she was Pit Boss for
and he’d stepped in to defend her. He’d told Mr Cordeaux to check the vid footage, but the
Boss wasn’t having any of it. He fired them both on the spot. His thug Vernon then escorted
them out of the rear entrance so as not to upset customers. Danny Spinks, her boyfriend
was Pit Boss for the upper room tables. Before he was escorted off the premises he’d made
a copy of the vid data and they’d looked it over that morning. They’d discovered a team
working a scam; one of them Danny had recognised as working for the Carnegie Syndicate
over in Hedebar.