Catacombs of Terror! by Stanley Donwood Page A

“So there you have it. Visual mapping. His face has just been compared to all the criminals—convicted or otherwise—in our system archives. He’s clear. No record. Well, not as far as we know. But if we have any reason to be suspicious, we can e-mail his mugshot to the central police archives, and they’ll do a nationwide search. There’s no hiding place for crooks in our city.”
    I was absolutely horrified.
    “That’s quite something,” I said. “Very impressive. No hiding place for crooks in our city, hey? Might make a decent headline.” Robinson glowed with pride. “Would it be all right to have a photographer come down, take a few pictures of you guys at work, in front of all the monitors?” I pretty much knew this would be refused, but I liked to tease. Robinson was thinking he was going to be famous. Of course, Murnau put the cosh on the notion immediately.
    “I’m afraid that won’t be possible, Bob,” he interjected firmly from the gloom behind us. “We cannot put our chappies at risk from criminals who may have been convicted on the strength of video evidence. No, photography is completely out of the question. And no names must be used in your piece. We will naturally need to check it over before publication.”
    Robinson looked a little downcast. He was going to have to wait a while longer for his fifteen minutes of fame. I smiled inwardly. It was fine for these legitimised voyeurs to film, photograph, and file unknowing Joe and Jane Publics. But not okay for the process to be reversed. Yeah, well.
    “What a shame. A photo’s always nice to accompany blocks of text. But never mind. There’s a couple of things I’d like to know, just to wrap things up. Do you have a map—a plan—of the areas covered by the cameras that I could look at? We will need some sort of graphic, if a photo’s not possible. And do you have any plans to extend the network?”
    “I can get you a map. One moment. And no, there are no plans to extend the network at present.” Robinson was terse. Back to anonymity for you, friend. Being an unknown’s not so bad though. And it looked from the technology in the room that anonymity was getting to be a rare thing. Getting rarer every day. A machine across the way, where Murnau was standing, purred quietly for a few seconds, then I was passed an A4 sheet.
    “I’ll show you out,” said Murnau briskly. I’d had my allotted thirty minutes. I said my goodbyes to the ‘chappies’ and followed Murnau back up the steps, glad to breathe fresh air, if not so pleased to feel the rain on my face.
    “Bloody weather,” muttered Murnau under his breath.
    “Must be quite a strange occupation,” I said. “Watching telly all day in a basement.”
    “ScryTech do a very good job indeed. You’d be very surprised what we see.” A policeman passed us on the steps. Murnau nodded curtly to him.
    “Well, thanks very much for your time,” I smiled. “It’s been
very
interesting.”
    “Not a problem. Always happy to talk to our illustrious local newspaper. When will your piece appear? I expect Robinson would like to see it.”
    I bet he would, I thought.
    “Oh, some time soon. Next week or so,” I answered breezily. Don’t hold your breath, Murnau. Don’t wait up, Robinson.
    “Goodbye then, Bob.”
    “Bye.”

Chapter 10
Shiny New Shoes
    It was just after midday. Town was packed. Shoppers and tourists everywhere, despite the rain and the wind. I glanced up. A black CCTV camera swivelled idly towards me, twenty feet above the crowds. Here’s to you, Mister Robinson, I thought. I barged through the hordes back towards my office. I was definitely interested in the fact that Mario Murnau hadn’t noticed my use of
‘
KHS’ instead of ‘ScryTech’ when I’d asked him about the financing. Maybe I was even intrigued. A little idea about the relationship between KHS and ScryTech had germinated, and now it was growing fast. Like a fungus.
    Another interesting thing was