Chapter 26

26

I told her, “Don’t concern yourself about that, ma’am. It all helps with the investigation. Every little detail is of importance. Did you make any changes since the theft?”

“Well, I put the plate back up on its stand, but that is all.”

“It has a plate stand, and that stand was sitting there afterwards?”

“Yes. That is what seemed odd to me. Why would I put the plate in the drawer and leave the stand sitting empty? Most peculiar.”

“Not at all, ma’am. It makes sense to me, so no need to worry about it. The investigation is proceeding normally.”

I now had all the background information I needed, so I thanked her and left.

That evening, as well all sat down to a Chinese meal that I persuaded the shop to deliver to us for a small fee, I told Sandy what I had found at the victim’s house.

“From that, I have concluded that we must have solved the camera problem.”

Sandy in reply told me what she had found.

“There are cameras that have an electric winder, so that you can take a succession of pictures, but they are big and expensive, and make a whirring sound when they wind on; not what we seek. At least I know that they exist, so I can search for one in the laboratory. The power should be adequate for me to go there tonight; right, Bob?”

“Right, my darling. You are sure you want to do the searching? I know you are better educated in what to look for, but I have more knowledge of what the place looks like.”

“Did you search all the drawers in the place?”

“I did, but I was searching for one special item, so I would have ignored anything else that didn’t seem relevant. You are going with a better mindset, so I’ll leave it to you; just give yourself enough time. I do recall looking at a thin rectangular object that looked like a mirror, but I couldn’t properly see my face in it, so I left it where it was lying.”

“Curious,” said Sandy. “I’ll have a look at it when I am there. I had better set the duration for at least half an hour; no, make that three-quarters of an hour. If I find a camera I want to check for an operating manual, so I will know what each button or switch actually does.”

“Three-quarters of an hour? That is enough time for a fuck with Bob,” Georgie commented. She was swiftly corrected by Janet.

“No; time for me to have a good fuck with our husband this time, Georgie.”

“Oh, yes. You were tail-end Charlie last night. Okay; Fair’s fair. I’ll go last tonight.”

I escorted Sandy round to the front door to get to the control panel, and made sure it was set for the lab and for 45 minutes. She operated the controls and disappeared from my sight. I checked my watch to know when the 45 minutes would be up, and took myself back round to the house door.

I was hardly inside before Janet was there to grab me for a passionate kiss.

“Time for us to fuck, Bob,” she told me, and pulled me by my nearest hand towards her bedroom, and she needed the barest minimum of foreplay before urging me inside her. I hardly needed to do much more than cooperate as she started thrusting on my hardness. I guessed she had been getting a bit of instruction from Georgie.

Within half an hour we were sated and ready for a quick shower in the one bathroom we had at this time. We showered together and despite some pawing of each other we managed to restrain ourselves due to time constraints. I dried myself and dressed to be ready to get back round to the controls for Sandy’s return to this time.

I managed it with only a minute to spare, and saw Sandy pop into existence in front of me; no fancy flickerings or anything, just there or not there. She was facing me and in her hands she held the mirror thing that I had told her about. I was not surprised, as it had been lying there on the worktop.

Sandy stepped forward gingerly and showed me the rectangular object.

“Bob, this is a miniature wonder! It is a camera and a computer and a machine for identifying a specific spot on the ground; like a navigation device, but much more exact. Here, let me show you.”

She flicked a small switch on the side of the camera thing, and the mirror plate became a sort of miniature TV screen with lots of little pictures.

She burbled, “I spent ages working out how to use this thing. It can do practically anything. It seems to act as a phone as well as a camera and it is also able to find pages like using an encyclopedia. You type in a word, and it comes up with the answers relating to the word, whatever they are. If I type in Gourock, it shows Gourock on a map, and it can show you the streets on the map, and if you want it shows real pictures of the street taken from a vehicle.”

I stopped her from careering on, and sought clarification.

“Does it take delayed timing pictures, and how many?”

“Oh. It seems to take wonderfully sharp photos without you having to do anything about focusing, and you can set it to take a picture once every ten seconds or any other time setting you want. As far as I can tell, there is no prescribed limit to the number of images it can take and store: I told you it was a marvel!”

“Fine,” I replied, having no idea how it could store lots of pictures. “What about it identifying a location for the travel machine? How accurate does it get?”

“Let me show you.” She pulled up a map of Gourock, zoomed in on the street we needed, and then the house where we wanted to arrive at the door. “I just tell it this is the desired location, and it comes up with the exact co-ordinates.”

She pressed on the screen which seemed to be used like a button, and... “Eh?” said Sandy in surprise, as the screen came up with the words: “GPS data not available.”

I asked Sandy, “What does GPS mean? I have never heard of the term.”

“Neither have I,” said Sandy, and she typed in the term on the screen and pressed some button. It responded with an expanded explanation: Global Positioning System, followed by a description that it was based on a system of satellites orbiting the Earth.

We both gasped at the concept, and I declared, “This means the Earth has an entire set of satellites just for locating where you are on the planet! How could anyone afford to set that up, and why?”

Sandy leaned forward to kiss me before saying, “Imagine, Bob: ships will always know exactly where they are, so they shouldn’t hit cliffs or shorelines any more. Possibly the same system is used by aeroplanes to find their way to airports in the dark. Hah! I suddenly twigged how it must be paid for: the military must use it for their bombers and fighters to know where they are and where the targets are, and help them find their way back home. Their naval ships would also use it for the same purpose: getting to the right place, and then placing accurate shell fire on targets. War must be almost impossible now, if every military power can use the system.”

My critique was simple:”Only America can afford such a system today, and I have not heard of any such satellite being sent up yet. Imagine it; a whole series of satellites for communications and navigation. Why, eventually we might be able to send TV pictures via satellite to a faraway country!”

Sandy brought me back to earth.

“Bob! We have no communication satellites yet, so no global positioning system in our time, but the co-ordinates must be able to be put into the transfer machine; otherwise how would it take me to the lab in 2026, or any of the other places you went to? I have to go back to the lab and see how I can add the site of the theft into the machine in that time, so that you can get to the house and install this gadget to record the thief in action. We should set it to take a picture every five seconds if there is enough light in the room. The thief would require light to see the necklace, so even if she enters during the night she would need to have a torch or switch on the room light to see what she is doing. Either would suit this fancy machine; it is that sensitive to light, Bob.”

“So you have to go back to 2026 to set the coordinates and feed them into the transfer machine, and from then on, it should be a destination in this control panel. Have I got that right?”

“Yes. That describes it well, and I agree that I should be the one to go to the woman’s house and set it up. You’ll have to describe where in the house the room is, so I can go straight to it. I take the coronation plate off the stand and put it in the top drawer, and use the stand for this camera machine. The camera will look like a mirror to anyone not from the future.

It needs to be set up beforehand, so that I simply place it in position, do a test to make sure it is pointed correctly, and then leave it switched on. I come back just before the owner says she discovered the theft, take the camera away and bring it back here. We can then go through all the pictures it took until we get a shot of the theft in action.”

“Lovely,” I enthused. “Then we can get the woman charged with the theft.”

Sandy stared at me in disbelief.

“No! What we do is invite her to visit Daddy’s office, where we show her the picture of her committing the crime and offer her a chance to hand the necklace back to her friend and apologise for her crime. End of story.”

“What?” I exploded. “You would let get away with it?”

“Get away with what, darling? She has to return the jewellery and confess the sin to her friend, and that can feel more of a punishment than a court case and prison. Female criminals, if caught first time, almost never commit another crime due to their shame among other women. Stopping her in her tracks and making sure she never tries anything like that again is a better solution than putting her in prison. You think too much like an ever-so-logical man, Bob. We women can see past the rules and see how to get justice instead.”
I acknowledged that females were a tiny proportion of all reported criminal activity, and that only very serious crimes merited taking a woman from the community and be put in prison. I could see that I still had much to learn about women, despite being involved with three of them.

As a result, I went along with Sandy’s wishes, and the next evening she got the technical issues sorted out in 2026, and was set up for the following day, as she did not have to be in Glasgow at all. She left our vestibule armed with the specialised camera and the house key to enter, the date and time fixed in the machine, and the duration set for one hour.

When she returned she was looking happy but mentally tired. She explained how the entering and setting up the device went well, but she was on edge the whole time in case someone walked in. She spent the rest of the hour looking around the street, trying to appear to know what she was doing, and was back outside the house, standing next to a tall hedge, in time for her disappearing act. She hoped no-one saw her vanish, as that could create a local mystery.

I commented, “And who is going to be taken seriously of they claimed to see a person disappear from the street beside a hedge? Anyone told about it would assume the disappearance was simply the person going round the corner of the hedge when the observer blinked or otherwise was distracted for a moment. The event is too easily explained away,” I told Sandy, and she saw my argument.

I ended,”And if they thought they recognised you, you could provide proof that you were elsewhere at the time: probably in Glasgow at the university on that day.”

Sandy reflected, “By God, yes. On that day I was indeed in Glasgow and can prove it!”

“There you are,” I said with authority. “You can forget about being spotted doing your disappearing act. More to the point, when can you go back to the day the theft was discovered? Will the machine need a full recharge as you were there for an hour?”

Sandy checked the dials and found that the load would permit another transfer, so she reset the day and time to get there while the owner was still out and had not yet discovered the theft. This visit was a simple in and out to collect the camera, so she set it for ten minutes duration. Ten minutes later she was back, and looking chuffed to bits.

“Bob, the machine has hundreds of pictures in it! I wonder if it can run through them at speed, for we just need to watch for a visitor walking into the room?” A few minutes research with the camera cum computer cum research tool cum navigation device cum more, and she had it set up to run through the photos like a film showing, and two days in, there we had it: The thief walking in and looking around for the jewellery box, opening it, spotting and taking out the necklace; slipping it into her pocket and walking out again. It was all over in less than two minutes. She may have been visiting the owner at the time, and simply had to pretend to have visited the loo, then said goodbye and walked out.

I did not have a picture of the presumed thief to confirm it, so I suggested we go together to Daddy Thompson and show him the pictures, and Sandy could take it from there. I expected his reaction would be the same as mine: the legal route, but Sandy can be persuasive when she wants to be; look at what she has done to me.

We decided to walk to his office, with Sandy carrying the camera device in a shopping bag. When we walked in, his secretary saw our happy smiles and said, “You have good news of some kind, I can tell. Not pregnancy I presume?”

Sandy giggled, “No, I have been insisting on condoms! This visit is business we have with Daddy.”

“Well, he has nothing important at the moment, so go right on in.”

When we walked in, her father’s eyes lit up at Sandy’s arrival, then took in my presence as well, and drew his own conclusions.

“What is it? Unexpected pregnancy?”

“Not you too, Daddy; nothing like that. We have pictures of your mysterious thief for you to examine. Do you know what the presumed thief looks like?”

“Yes. My client gave me a photo of the two of them together on the promenade. What do you have and how did you get it?”

Sandy set up the machine and set it to run through from one time to another on the day we knew when the theft occurred. “Watch this, Daddy.”

He allowed the sequence to run through without showing more surprise than a dropped jaw as it ran like a movie, than asked Sandy, “Can you run that again?”

She repeated the sequence, and he sat back, amazed.

“Astonishing!” he remarked. “Never seen the like! There is only one problem: we can’t show this to the police or the court.”

“Why not?” I asked.

“We would have to show how we obtained the pictures; which we can’t, for this machine is impossible. Also, if we saw the theft happening, why didn’t we stop it? And thirdly, how did we know there was going to be a theft? And fourthly, what camera technology allows this to be done? We know who did it now, and my client was correct: this is the suspect. But we can’t use it as evidence; too many unanswerable questions.”

I moved my eyes to Sandy, and nodded to show how correct she was, and for her to go ahead.

“Daddy, you and Bob thought in the same way, but we women don’t think that way. Shame is a powerful tool in the right hands. I can speak to the woman and get her to return the necklace and apologise profusely to your client, who will have a hold over her for all time to come. I had to explain this to Bob, and he saw the female viewpoint: restitution and the punishment of shame. That is far more severe than any prison time.”

Thompson stared at his younger daughter, and thought it over for a little while.

“You could be right, young lady. Your mother would have seen things that way, I expect. Admittedly very few female criminals end up in prison. Judges tend to see service in the community as more appropriate, unless the crime is heinous. How do you propose we deal with this matter?”

“Bob and I think we should have a meeting in your office with the culprit; show her the pictures of her committing the crime, then offer her a way out through restitution and apology if her friend will accept it. We tell her that the evidence will remain with you in case it ever has to be publicly revealed, such as if she did anything similar in future.”

Thompson asked, “We don’t threaten her with a court case?”

“No, Daddy. We threaten her with public exposure. A picture in the Greenock Telegraph of her stealing the necklace would be the last straw for her. She would have to leave the district or take poison; it would be that nasty for her to face.”