Chapter 21: Tracking

The trouble with this release of the data visualisation software, thought Catherine Chee, is sometimes the results make no sense.

She was working on the dataset for a “person of interest” following the break out at Excel. Luckily the POI had got one of the new ident cards that could be detected at about a fifty metre range from a detection point. The trouble was there weren’t that many detectors around yet, and they got fewer the further out of the centre of town you went.

There were a couple of pings close to Mudchute itself, another up towards Stratford – she wondered if they were heading to the rail station trying to get across onto the high speed line down to the Channel Tunnel – then another near Clapton. There didn’t seem to be a road linking the pings. Checking the timings, they would work for someone travelling on foot.

It was only when Catherine added a satellite view to the road map that she realised the pings were following the line of the River Lea.

The problem, then, for Catherine was what should she do with the data. It was always the challenge when you had a new source of intelligence. You had to be careful how you used to the results of it. There was always the fear of revealing what you could detect. That could lessen the future value of your resource. In this case it was hard to see how setting the MCF on this fugitive would have much benefit. The breakout had been foiled, the individual these blips represented didn’t pose a current threat. It would be better just keeping an eye on where he went. She was pretty sure Aileen would agree.