Angel on the Inside by Mike Ripley Page B

part-time probation officer, part-time rating revaluer and occasional cat-kicker – entered and left the piazza. Debbie was quite specific about her arrival and departure times, and one of the guards reckoned her appearances would be on one tape but of course we couldn’t see it there and then as his VCRs were recording and he didn’t have one for playback.
    â€˜Hasn’t Amy got one in her office?’ I asked casually, not knowing whether or not she had a desk or a chair in her office.
    â€˜Good thinking,’ said Debbie.
    Amy’s office had not one but two VCRs, a DVD player, a widescreen digital TV, a hi-fi with twin turntables and shiny steel speakers shaped like bullets and a glass fronted fridge stocked with Rolling Rock beer and fancy mineral waters. No wonder I’d never been allowed in there before.
    â€˜You could do some serious mixing with this gear,’ I said as Debbie turned things on and inserted the security tape.
    â€˜Some of the designers do,’ she said casually. ‘They find it difficult to create without the right ambiance. Fashion is a mood, you know.’
    â€˜Absolutely,’ I agreed, opening the fridge.
    She stopped fiddling with the tape and looked at me over the top of her big round glasses. My hand moved away from the beer section and chose a bottle of mineral water. The bottle was moulded plastic twisted to look like a corkscrew and quite stylish. The water was Ty Nant, a natural spring water from Wales of all places. Just my luck, but I opened it and took a swig as if I was really looking forward to it. I suppose it tasted better than London tap water, but then, how would I know?
    The security tape was even less help than I’d feared. The quality was, as always, uniformly grey, grainy and crap. Why firms go to the expense of installing CCTV and then don’t spend the extra penny providing enough tapes to stop constant over-taping or, even cheaper, a head-cleaner tape, never ceased to amaze me. Also, as I pointed out to Debbie, and she actually made a note of it, the piazza’s cameras were so geared towards spotting shoplifters legging it from the boutiques that they didn’t actually have a camera covering the security office itself. Therefore the best view we would get of the mysterious Alison George would be walking away from the office towards the lifts.
    Debbie zapped the tape fast forward using one of half a dozen remotes, one eye on the time clock counter in the corner of the screen. Then she stopped the tape and rewound.
    â€˜I’m sure this is the right area,’ she said, pressing ‘Play’ again. ‘In fact I know it is, because I’d just had to cancel a conference call with New York and I’d waited until ... There she is, the cow! Look at that.’
    â€˜Look at what?’
    I could see a grainy figure, or rather the back of one, hurrying towards the lift. Until I got my eye in and noticed the hips, I wasn’t even sure I could tell which sex it was, but in the few seconds she was on screen, I took in some sort of plastic showerproof jacket (though it hadn’t rained for days), a baseball cap and the fact that she was carrying a large square bag of the sort that have wooden handles and look as if they’ve been made out of Inca rugs.
    The figure got into the lift and studiously kept her head down whilst pressing the buttons. No sooner had the lift doors closed then Debbie was fast-forwarding the tape, muttering ‘Bitch, bitch, bitch’ under her breath.
    â€˜Hey, chill out there, Debs. What’s your problem?’
    â€˜Don’t you see?’ she hissed, her eyes fixed to the flickering screen. ‘She deliberately deceived me. When she got out of the lift there was no see-through rain coat and no baseball hat. She had her hair bunched underneath it for the cameras and I bet they went in that bag she was lugging.’
    â€˜Maybe she just wanted to look smart for her