Enter The Dark by Chris Thomas

Author:Chris Thomas
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Publisher: Bloodhound Books
Published: 2017-06-25T22:00:00+00:00

24

‘Peter, I think we might have found something,’ said Grace, excitedly, rushing into the office in a mixture of panic and relief.

She was stopped in her tracks by the raised finger of Harris, gesturing to the phone tucked under his chin. Grace waited patiently next to his desk as he finished his conversation.

‘Sorry, sweetheart, I’m going to be late again … Yes I know I was late last night, but I’ve got really important work to do at the moment … Hey, Grandma’s not boring … Look, I need you to be a really good girl for her, alright? And I’ll be home as soon as I can … Yes, fine, I’ll take you to Legoland at the weekend, I promise … OK, night night. Love you ... Bye.’

Finally, Harris hung up the phone. ‘Sorry about that. What have you got?’

‘I’ve just been down to the lab,’ she replied, placing some graph papers down on his desk that looked like ECG traces. ‘They pulled all the data from Karen Parker’s tag from a week up to the date she was reported missing. Some poor sod has sat there and gone through every minute of data bit by bit.’

‘Lucky him.’

‘Yep, but it appears to have been worth it, because he found this,’ she said, pointing to a ring drawn on the paper in red ink. In amongst the pages of identical traces was a tiny, almost indiscernible drop in the level of the line. ‘This line here shows the co-ordinates for her location. That’s how they know where she is, or if she breaks curfew and so on. And this line—’

‘Is the transmission strength,’ interrupted Harris, staring at the graphs. Grace had forgotten that he was well-versed in the workings of electronic tags. ‘Bugger, do you know what this means?’

‘Well I assume that at that point there, the tag developed a small glitch that messed up its transmissions.’

‘Precisely. But what caused it?’

‘I don’t know. The weather?’ she replied, sarcastically.

‘It could be,’ he replied, ignoring the sarcasm altogether. ‘We see breaks in transmission like this when the wearer has attempted to break the tag off of their leg, or smashed it against something, either to break it or even just accidentally.’

‘But her tag was found intact,’ said Grace. ‘So I get that when the tag was removed from her leg, it might have caused the transmitter to jump or glitch, but—’

‘No, they’re alarmed. If the wearer tries to forcibly remove the tag, or if any of what we just said happens, the tag transmits an alarm to the monitoring station. Even if she somehow managed to unlock it normally, slip it off, and reattached the clasp as if it were still on her leg, the tag would know and it would show up. How long would it take to unlock, remove, and relock one of these? Even with the right knowledge and equipment, you’re looking at a few seconds. More than enough of a time lapse for it to trigger an alert,’ said Harris, talking and scanning the graphs at the same time.

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