Until The End

CHAPTER 8 - A MAN WITH NO FACE

Silence filled the room as the doors to the massive command and control centre of the headquarters opened. The staff members who had been debating over the image of the mysterious figure displayed on the screen of the enormous video wall, fell silent with a single look at the man who had emerged through the doorway.

Not sparing even the barest of a glance to his employees, Dylan, followed by Markus, went to stand in front of the extensive LED wall. The picture displayed on one of the smaller windows of the screen was of a hooded figure of a man, walking with his head down. The awful quality of the image suggested it was a zoomed-in still of a CCTV recording.

"What do we have here, Zeke?" Dylan directed the question to his bodyguard.

Ezekiel, in turn, signalled the operator to play the video. After a few taps on the keyboard, another window appeared on the screen. It was a CCTV recording. Dylan noticed it was of the same day as the explosion. The green tint over it indicated it was taped at night. The time at the bottom of the screen specified it was merely an hour before his car burned up in flames.

For the initial 20 seconds, the video showed nothing but a street bustling with night traffic. The sidewalks on either side of the road were relatively quiet. A few pedestrians could be seen walking along the street but there was nothing unusual that would spark interest.

Then the very next second, Dylan noticed it. A man appeared on the right side of the screen on the opposite sidewalk. His hands were in his hoodie's pockets as he walked with his head down. A major part of his face was masked by a cap under the hood. The broken street lamp and the incredibly abysmal camera quality further assisted him to hide whatever more was left of his face.

Just as casually as he had entered the frame, he walked out. A minute and twelve seconds later, he entered the frame once again. This time from the left. He strolled to the right and was out again.

"This went on for about ten minutes," Zeke informed.

The video was sped up for the said ten minutes, brought to a pause, and played at normal speed thereafter. When the hooded man came into view again, his hands were out of the pockets. His fingers moved over the keypad of the flip phone he now held. Seconds later, he put the phone to his ear.

After precisely 7 minutes and 38 seconds, he placed his cell phone back in his pockets. Adjusting the hood and the cap, he walked for another two laps before finally heading out of the frame for a final time.

"One of the four calls the drunkard received was from this exact spot" Zeke explained. "None of the CCTV footage from the area shows this guy's face. It's as if he knew exactly where every single camera was set up and avoided them with ease."

Dylan sorted the information he had extorted from the drunkard outside the nightclub in his head. The time and duration of the call from the burner phone in the video matched exactly with the third phone call in the drunkard's call records.

According to the guy, he had never spoken to the caller in person. The instructions had been passed over the calls and the money had been found, in a nameless envelope, inside his mailbox the next morning.

"What about the other three calls?" Markus inquired.

Zeke looked over to the operator. Right on cue, a detailed map appeared on the video wall. Four red markers were positioned at the centre of it. The screen zoomed in, scattering the markers in different directions over the map.

"They were from three different locations around the city. The calls were made using a burner phone by the same guy but we couldn't find anything remarkable that could be used to track him down. Not a single camera there could capture his face" Zeke answered.