It’s the sudden movement across the top left screen that catches Gareth’s eye. Someone is speeding across the shopping centre, running hell for leather. He snatches up his radio, his thumb primed over the talk button. Someone moving that fast can only mean one thing – shoplifter. He pushes a button on the control desk, zooming in on the sprinter, then his eyes widen as she comes into focus. He knows this woman. She works in the ladies’ fashion boutique on the first floor. He’s watched her open up in the morning and close up at night. Given the fact she’s always the first one to arrive and the last one to leave he’s pretty sure she’s the manager. She’s short, not much more than five foot, with vivid red hair that she wears curled up in a bun on the back of her head.
He jolts in his seat as a hand darts across the screen, grasping for the red-haired woman. Male fingers latch around her shoulder. Gareth zooms out to see a tall blonde man in a beige jacket with a black laptop bag slung across his body, then lifts his radio to his mouth.
‘Alpha Charlie Zero. Anyone available on the first floor? Red-haired IC1 female being assaulted by a blond-haired IC1 male. Just outside Superdrug. Over.’
He takes his thumb off the button and stands up to get a better look at the screen. The shop manager looks terrified: her hands are up by her mouth, her eyes are wide with fright and she’s backing away from the man. He’s got something in his hand and he’s waving it in her direction. Gareth’s radio crackles.
‘Bravo Golf Seven,’ says Liam, one of his security guards. ‘I’ve spotted them. En route. Over.’
As Gareth watches, the guard sprints across the expanse and inserts himself between the man and woman. Gareth holds his breath, waiting to see what Liam will do next. He’s already had one warning for aggressively apprehending a shoplifter, on top of another for the state of his uniform. One more and he’s out.
Gareth pans back in so he can see everyone’s faces. The tall blonde man is shaking his head, holding up his hands as though in surrender. He opens his right hand and looks from Liam to the red-haired woman. There’s a small, black purse on his palm. The woman stares at it in surprise then opens her handbag and rummages around inside. Her lips move as she looks back at the man with the laptop and, not for the first time, Gareth wishes he could hear what was being said. He continues to watch as the woman takes the purse out of the blonde man’s hand then scurries away in the direction of Mirage Ladies Fashions.
Gareth’s radio crackles to life.
‘Bravo Golf Seven,’ Liam says. ‘Incident under control. No assault took place. IC1 male was returning a purse to IC1 female. Apparently she dropped it during a scuffle in the Evening Star pub on Broad Street. Over.’
Gareth raises his eyebrows. ‘Received. What do you mean by scuffle? Over.’
‘Not entirely sure. Sounds like she was assaulted but fought back. Not by the IC1, someone else. Over.’
‘Is she pressing charges? Over.’
‘I asked her that and she said no. Over.’
Gareth runs a hand across his face. He wishes he could go down and chat to her, to see if she’s okay and counsel her about pressing charges. But he can’t. He can’t leave the CCTV office when he’s manning it alone, not even for five minutes. At 2 p.m. he’ll swap with one of the other guards, currently on patrol. Until then he’s got to stay where he is.
‘All right,’ he says into his radio. ‘Don’t forget to write it up and file it. Over and out.’
He wheels himself over to the side of the desk and enters the details of the incident into the database, then rolls back to the centre of the desk. He looks from screen to screen, watching mothers pushing babies in prams, dads carrying young children on their shoulders, toddlers having tantrums, two elderly ladies walking arm in arm, a small group of teenagers on the skive from school, a single bloke, a single woman, people frowning, laughing, chatting and deliberating. It’s not a large shopping centre – two floors (three if you count the level where the CCTV office is situated) containing about forty shops. But hundreds of people go in and out of the Meads every day, and he watches them – looking for signs of trouble, for shoplifters and vandals, for the infirm and unwell, for missing children and frantic parents, for accidents waiting to happen (or accidents that already have). Even when he’s on patrol people rarely look him in the eye. The other guards moan about their families – how their wives nag, how their kids fight, and how the dog’s shat behind the sofa again. But in the same breath they’ll tell him what a bloody good mum their missus is, how their kids were ‘star of the week’ at school, and how the dog’s learned a new trick.
Gareth’s just got his mum. He lives in the same house he was born in. You could blindfold him and spin him around and he could still find his way from the living room to his bedroom without stepping on the loose nail in the stairs or the squeaky plank in the hall.
His mum used to wake him up in the morning with a sharp tap on the door and a cup of tea on his bedside table. He can’t remember the last time she did that. Before Dad left maybe? These days it’s him doing the waking up: knocking softly at her door, opening it a crack, holding his breath, looking at the small shape of her shrouded by the duvet, watching for the rise and fall of her chest.
The thought makes him dig in his back pocket for his mobile. It’s 1.40 p.m. and, sure enough, there’s a text from his mum’s carer Sally.
All good. Mum seems coherent today. She was telling me all about your dad and how he won the biggest marrow competition at some fair. I’ve left her with a sandwich and Bargain Hunt on the TV. Yvonne arrived before I left.
Yvonne is his mum’s other carer. Gareth hits reply and slides his thumb over the screen.
Any visitors today?
There’s a pause then,
That man from the church popped in.
Gareth grimaces. William Mackesy, the local Spiritualist Church leader, aka the biggest fraud that ever lived. He taps out a reply: What did he want?
A text pings back: He just wanted to say hello but he did mention something to your mum that freaked her out a bit.
What’s that?
I’m not sure I should tell you.
Tell me!
There’s another pause then Gareth’s phone pings again.
He said he’s been receiving messages from the other side for you and that you should be careful. There’s someone close by who means you harm.