She would have done in the past. And she wants to again. Ajay explains that she’ll be shown a mugshot of one person for ten seconds. She must then watch up to sixty minutes of real CCTV crowd footage and try to spot the person. Analysing CCTV is particularly draining, but she will do this final test – for Ajay. And also for her. She’s determined to recover – identifying Conor at the station in the village gave her a surprising thrill – but she never wants to revisit the police life she’s left behind. She just wants to paint people again, see them for who they really are.

‘Would it be useful if you also looked at some of my latest drawings?’ she asks.

‘Sure,’ Ajay says, ‘I’d like that.’ But she knows he’s humouring her.

‘And afterwards?’ she asks. ‘I must go to Brittany?’

He nods, but his manner’s become forced again, not like Ajay at all. He turns to his attaché case, open beside the laptop, and pulls out a circular device of some sort.

‘Rob wants you to wear this for the next test,’ he says, holding up what looks like a grey rubberised necklace punctuated with flat metal contact points. He places it on the table next to the laptop.

‘What is it?’ she asks, suspecting that it’s another fitness gadget that Rob’s company has invested in.

‘The latest wearable technology,’ he says, but he’s not looking at her. He’s busy on the laptop. ‘It measures various biometric data while you’re studying the CCTV footage. Blood flow through the carotid artery, that sort of thing.’

He stands up and comes over to her side of the kitchen table.

‘We’ll need to take this off,’ he says, nodding at her beach-glass necklace. ‘It might interfere with the readings.’

She lifts her chin up and unfastens it, then lets him slip on the rubber device in its place. His hands are warm, sweaty.

‘Comfortable?’ he asks.

She’s not listening. She’s looking at the image on Ajay’s laptop, her target mugshot. It’s a photo of Rob, staring directly at the camera. At least she thinks it’s Rob.

‘Are you ready?’ Ajay says, following her gaze and then glancing at his watch. ‘Ten seconds.’

She leans in to examine the photo more closely, searching the eyes for a clue. She’s no longer sure.

‘Is that Rob?’ she asks quietly, slipping a finger inside the neckband to loosen it. It’s too tight.

‘It doesn’t matter who it is,’ Ajay says. ‘You’ve just got to spot his face in the crowd.’

82

Silas