IC - 16 - Day 3 - Kris

[Mephistophilis]

'Sorry detective, nothing on those, or Park End Street or Hythe Bridge Street.' Maybe she went down a side street or ducked just out of the camera view?'

[Philulhu]

”Possibly...” mused Kris, absentmindedly rubbing at his arm. He looked closer at the map. “If it’s the person I’m looking for, she may be in a car. Where we lost her suggests she could have parked at the station car park - they should have their own CCTV. Alternatively, if she’s gone north on Rewley Road, she might have been picked up by the cameras at the fire station.”

He sat and stared at the screen a while longer. “There’s a hotel there, isn’t’ there?” he said. “The Royal Oxford... ... that’s also a possibility. I think I need to take a walk down there and see what I can find out.”

[Mephistophilis]

As Kris rubs his arm, out of the corner of his eye, he notices a spreading stain on his shirt sleeve.

'I can try and find a car if you give me a model, colour, and approximate time' says the CCTV operator, 'If we're looking in the night anyway, I can't locate a car during the rush hour on these shitty cameras.'

'Dunno about the fire station but the train station definitely has its own CCTV, you'd need to talk to them directly.'

'Royal Oxford Hotel is on Frideswide Square but there's loads of backpackers and B&Bs in the area.'

[Philulhu]

”The person we’re looking for is driving a white Vauxhall Astra,” said Kris. “Oh, wait! It could also be a dark blue Ford Focus because she hired a car, too. Can you take a look and see if you can find either of those?” He scribbled down the registration numbers for the CCTV Operator.

“If we lost sight of the suspect at 4.15am, I’d expect to see the vehicle moving shortly after that.”

[Mephistophilis]

'Nah, no sign of either, not much traffic that time in the morning.'

[Philulhu]

OOC,Is Kris able to get an indication if the figure is male or female? I may have been barking up the wrong tree...

[Mephistophilis]

OOC,He thinks they're female: [url]https://www.callofcthulhu.org.uk/pbp/viewtopic.php?f=469&t=7330&start=20#p246869[/url]

[Philulhu]

”Can we see the vehicle coming in? I should think if we saw the suspect at 2.00am that she could have arrived anywhere up to half an hour before that,” said Kris. “Also, if you were going to burgle somewhere, wouldn’t you have a drive past to see if there were any signs of life, first? I expect if she’s come by car, she’d have driven past for a look see.”

[Mephistophilis]

'I dunno, I don't usually burgle places' he says facetiously. After a few minutes he gets back to Kris, 'Right, 1.30am to 2am, cameras from Hollybush Row to George Street Mews. No sign of an Astra or a Focus. Saw someone who might have been your lady about 1.35am on the Hollybush Row feed, heading west on foot. Before you ask, that's not a great camera, and the coverage isn't complete, it's Pan-Tilt-Zoom, so I'm reliant on wherever the camera was pointing at the time, so I'm afraid I don't know where she came from or where she went.'

'Look, I've got a lot of other stuff to be doing, if you want to trawl through the CCTV come back down to the station and have a look yourself.'

[Philulhu]

”Ok, I’m on my way,” replied Kris. He’d have preferred for the CCTV operator to complete the search but he knew how busy they could be.

He returned to see the vet and explained what he had found out so far. “Did you notice if anything else was missing while you were tidying up?” he asked before her left.

OOC,Kris will head over to check out the CCTV when he leaves the vets.

[Mephistophilis]

Kris leaves the vet tidying up, she hasn't managed to find evidence that anything else is missing. He makes a mental note to check in with the Scenes of Crime Officer later regarding those fingerprints.

Back at the station Kris goes to the CCTV control room. There are banks of monitors showing all the police and council CCTV in Oxford. The CCTV operator tells him that the feeds are stored for thirty days and shows him how to wind back and forth through the footage.

OOC,Okay, what does Kris want to look at, what dates/times/locations and what is he looking for? The more specific you are the more you'll find but the more stuff you look through the longer it will take. Also, roll Spot Hidden.

[Philulhu]

OOC,Spot Hidden (40%) - 0

Kris had managed to scrounge a cup of tea and a notepad and he started making notes about the timings that the potential burglar could be seen on CCTV.

He started with her appearance in Frideswide Square at 4.15am, trying the judge from the direction in which she was walking, which of the side streets or buildings she may have been heading for.

[Mephistophilis]

Looking at the woman walking across Frideswide Square at 4.15am it is not possible to see which way she exits the square because the camera automatically pans away as she approaches the east edge of the square. She is still walking along the frontage of the Said Business School when she moves out of shot.

There is no sign of her on the Hythe Bridge Street camera or the Park End Street cameras in the minutes after she is lost to the Hollybush Row camera. The direction she's walking would fit with heading towards Rewley Road but when the camera pans back she can't be seen walking up the road, away from the camera. Perhaps she ran. Otherwise she could have ducked into a building somewhere on the north or east side of Frideswide Square or the start of Hythe Bridge Street.

Kris is aware that the coverage of the CCTV cameras on the other streets is not complete and she might have sneaked past them further into town.

[Philulhu]

Sighing, Kris rolled the footage to pick up the burglar’s first appearance at 2.00am to see if that was any more illuminating as to where she had come from.

OOC,Spot Hidden (40%) - 0

[Mephistophilis]

Kris reviews the footage from each camera sequentially, from 1am to 3am, starting with Hollybush Row. He immediately forwards to 2am and sees the woman on Frideswide Square mentioned by the CCTV operator, he doesn't think it is the same woman as she is not wearing a hoodie or a backpack and seems a bit short. Scrolling back to 1.35am he can make out a female figure in a dark hoodie, no backpack, who much more closely resembles the footage from the vet. At this time she is walking west towards the Botley Road, she seems agitated.

Moving further forward to 2.15am he sees her again walking from west to east along the north edge of Frideswide Square, moving more purposefully. Unfortunately, as before, the camera pans away before he can see where she exits the square. She could be turning up Rewley Road but when the camera pans back she is not visible walking north past the Fire Station, although that is really at the extreme of what can be seen by the CCTV so it would be easy to miss.

On the Hythe Bridge Street CCTV he can see her walking east around 1.25am and then back west a few minutes later. At 2.20am she is again walking east and then back the other way about ten minutes later, this time she seems to be wearing the backpack. Kris is unable to identify her at all on the Park End Street camera or Tidmarsh Lane, although the viewing angle for the latter is not very helpful as it only partially covers an open air carpark and a small section of footpath. Looking at the George Street CCTV the woman approaches from the west about 1.30am, seems to look around for a few moments, perhaps noticing the extensive CCTV cameras, and then turns back again.

Overall the CCTV footage is not great quality and Kris can't make out any number plates but traffic is light, and, as far as he can tell, there is no white Astra or dark Focus on the CCTV during these hours.

[Philulhu]

Kris sketched out the times of the various sightings on a tourist map he had picked up from the front desk. The sighting at 2.20am interested him the most. Within ten minutes she had gone somewhere, picked up her back pack and returned. That suggested that she had either a hotel or a vehicle nearby.

He scribbled in his notebook. The average walking speed was three miles per hour, probably no more than four. In ten minutes - no make that five minutes because she walked there and back, she would cover around 500 yards - just shy of quarter of a mile. Using the scale on the map, he carefully drew a circle a quarter of a mile from where she had been picked up by the camera.

Ignoring Park End and Tidmarsh Lane for the time being, Kris started to make a note of the places she might have gone, building up a list of car parks, hostels and hotels to check out.

[Mephistophilis]

Looking at an approximately 5min radius Kris identifies towards the west of Frideswide Square there is the Westgate Hotel and the Youth Hostel on the Botley Road. In the middle of the square there are the carparks for the station, long stay to the south and short stay to the north, and the B&B Becket House on Becket Street. Towards the east there is the Royal Oxford Hotel on the square, backpackers on Hythe Bridge Street and Park End Street, the Worcester Street Car Park, and the Malmaison Hotel in the centre.

[Philulhu]

Kris made a note of the locations, called out his thanks to the CCTV Operator and set out on foot to visit the places identified. He’d written the down in the order in which the woman would have come across them, so as to tackle the most likely targets first.

As he walked, Kris sent an email from his phone, requesting that a SOCO attend the vets, and highlighting the areas requiring special attention. He also searched through his emails until he found the information that had been sent out to hotels with the photos of Lindsey Peale and Regina Balfour so he could show it to the hoteliers when he visited.

[Mephistophilis]

OOC,Which way is Kris heading? Is he starting from Frideswide Square? If so, does he search near the square (station car parks and B&B) or go east (hotels, backpackers, carpark), or west (hotel and youth hostel)?

[Philulhu]

OOC,Kris will head from west to east, mirroring the suspect’s movements from the time and location she was picked up on the camera at 2.20am. Any places he thinks she might have stashed a bag, parked a car or had a room, he will check out.