Dangerous Games

Chapter 6 part 2

So, later that evening, Claire and I were sitting on my sofa facing the television and with two cups of tea in front of us on the table. She'd put the DVD in the machine and was holding the remote, ready go turn it on.

"Okay, I'll talk you through this. Remember, this is a compilation of all the disks that tracks where Charlotte goes and when. I do have the copies of all the disks if you want to check through the originals. Right then, prepare to be amazed."

She pressed play. The screen sputtered into life and showed the lobby of Cowleigh House. I recognised it immediately. Dead centre in the screen was the closed lift door. The butterflies were playing merry Hell in my stomach, as usual, but whether that was because of my thing with lifts or whether it was excitement I couldn't say.

"Right, this is the lobby. Note the time stamp in the bottom right corner." The time clock, in hours minutes and seconds, showed the time to be 15:22. Additionally the time stamp included the floor number, in this case LOBBY. "Any second now, the girl arrives. There! There she is. You'll see her press the button to summon the lift, then stand there while she waits for it."

Charlotte was indeed standing in front of the lift door, her head nodding rhythmically in time with the music that must have been playing through her earphones. Seconds later, the lift door opened and the girl stepped in. As Claire had promised, the view into the lift was perfect. We watched as the girl as she turned round, still nodding, and pressed one of the buttons on the keypad. The door closed.

"Now we switch the camera on the first floor," Claire explained. "I've tried to make the jump as seamless as possible. Note the time on the clock continues with barely a flicker." It was true. The floor indicator changed to FLOOR 1, and there was a slight wobble as the camera changed, but the time clock didn't miss a beat. Whoever had lined those cameras up had made a good job of it.

As if on cue, the lift door slid open to reveal Charlotte. She was still nodding, but had something small and white in her hand - the list of instructions. Claire held up the crumpled, dog-eared piece of paper that Charlotte had given us. "Recognise this?" she asked. "Now, watch her get out and look around. Then she gets back in and presses the button for the fourth floor."

The girl did exactly as Claire had foretold. Even on the small screen, her sense of boredom was almost palpable. It was as though she desperately needed something to fill her meaningless hours and this was the best she could come up with. Although we couldn't see what button Charlotte was pressing, we could make an educated guess from the rough position of her hand. Again the door closed.

Over the next few minutes we tracked Charlotte's journey to the fourth floor, down to the second, then to the sixth and down to the second again. There was a slight judder as the film switched from one camera to another, but the time stamp confirmed the floor at each step and that no time had been duplicated or missed out.

Claire was beginning to get excited now, like someone watching the last few furlongs of a horse race, having placed a large bet. "We're getting close now. She presses the button near the top of the keypad for the tenth floor."

Sure enough, the display changed to the camera on the tenth floor, and ten or fifteen seconds later the door opened in front of us. Claire grabbed the remote and hit the pause button. She had the air of a stage magician trying to prove to the audience members that nothing was hidden up her sleeve.

"Right, this is the vital part. Please note that this is the camera for the tenth floor, that the time is now 15:35 and ten seconds, and that Charlotte is clearly visible in that lift. You see?"

"Okay," I checked the screen. "I believe you. What happens now?"

"Well, when I press play, you will see her press the button for the fifth floor and the lift door close. Note that she does not get out of the lift. She stays inside."