The Camera Never Lies

 

The desk sergeant barely recognized the girl.

She had almost staggered into the police station one night last week, stinking of booze and dope. She had marched up to the counter and announced that she wanted to report a theft.

The sergeant had glanced at his watch. Five minutes past midnight.

‘You’ll have to hang on, love. I’m off duty now. My colleague will be here in a minute. Take a seat.’

She sat down calmly enough, slinging her rucksack on the seat next to her, and he started getting his things together. But when he glanced over at her he saw that she was crying, the fat tears leaving wide streaks in her already smudged make-up.

She was wearing scuffed pink pixie boots. His daughter had a pair.

He could have left it to the night shift but he didn’t. Either because of the tears or the boots, he went and sat next to her.

‘Like Duran Duran, do you?’ he asked.

Surprised, she looked up, sniffed, nodded.

‘So does my daughter.’

At least she did when she had moved out six months ago. Six months, three phone calls, one visit.

‘She’s busy,’ his wife had said. ‘Happy. She’s flown the nest at last. Now we can have that spare room we always needed.’

But he noticed that the Duran Duran posters still decorated the spare room wall, their Blu-tack slowly drying in the centrally heated air.

He sighed, looked at the snivelling girl. ‘Go on, then. Tell me all about it.’

 

It was the usual story. A party, a booze-up, a fight.

‘Where is he now, your boyfriend?’

‘Back at the flat. But I’m not going back.’ She kicked her rucksack. His daughter had one the same. ‘I went and got my stuff. I’ve left him.’ The swelling bruise on her cheek told him why.

‘You said something had been stolen?’

‘My camera – the one my dad gave me.’

‘You took it to the party tonight?’

She nodded.

He sighed. ‘That’s a hell of a lot of suspects then, isn’t it?’

But no, she had said, no you don’t understand, the pub had given them a room next to the disco where they could leave their coats and bags, anything valuable. She had taken one photo just after they had arrived at the pub and then carefully put the camera with her bag in the valuables room. The pub had kept the room locked until the end of the evening.

‘You’re saying your camera was stolen from a locked room?’

Apparently, that was exactly what she was saying.

 

He wasn’t sure if it was because of the rucksack or the bruise, but he went the extra mile and asked the beat constable to call in at the pub, see if anyone knew anything.

Yes, the camera had been found. They gave it to the constable to give back to the girl.

But ‘Something fishy there,’ the constable told the desk sergeant later. ‘They know more than they’re letting on.’

But the girl got her camera back and the desk sergeant assumed that was the end of it.

 

Now, a week later, here she was again. She looked like a different girl. She was sober, tidy, bright-eyed. He noticed that the bruise on her face had faded.

‘Everything all right?’ he asked.

She nodded. ‘I came to show you these.’

She took some photos out of her bag and placed them, a trifle dramatically he thought, in a row on the counter.

‘I think you’ll find these interesting,’ she said.

The first one was of the party. A skewed shot of laughing teenagers, disco lights in the background. The next five were different. They were all of the same man, but the angle was odd. It was as if the photographer had been crouching when shooting, with the man looking down at the camera. But the sequence was clear: there he was at the door of the room, then a little closer, and closer again. The final shot showed him reaching down, as if to grab the camera. His eyes had a red tinge to them as the camera’s flash went off.

‘Who is this man?’ the desk sergeant asked.

‘He works behind the bar at the pub.’

‘Who took these photographs?’

‘Nobody.’

‘I don’t understand,’ he said.

‘How could anyone have taken them? The room was locked, remember?’

‘Are you saying the camera went off on its own, just at the very moment someone was trying to pinch it?’

She smiled, shrugged, nodded. ‘It’s a very good camera,’ she said.

 

When he offered to go and question the man, she said no, she wasn’t bothered. She was leaving, she said.

She gestured at the rucksack. ‘Got a train to catch.’

‘Got somewhere to go, have you?’

‘Home.’ She smiled, looked happy. ‘Moving back in with my mum and dad. Only temporary, mind. Just till I find a place of my own.’

‘Of course,’ he said. ‘But there’s no rush, is there?’

 

She swung out the door, taking the photographs with her. He watched from the window as her small figure was slowly swallowed by the rush hour crowds. But every so often, he caught a flash of the pink boots as she retreated into the distance.