Nobody’s Hero (Ben Koenig #2)

Chapter 21

The video was a compilation of every CCTV camera that had caught the Speakers’ Corner incident. Kinda like the highlights reel on Oscars night. Some cameras covered other areas of Hyde Park, and Speakers’ Corner was on the periphery and out of focus. Other cameras were too far away. There was no aerial shot. And Jane Doe had avoided almost every camera in London until she’d been caught on the one at the Greek deli.

It came down to what one modern camera had caught. The picture was crystal clear, as high-def as any CCTV footage Koenig had seen. If he’d been shown it out of context, he’d have figured he was watching a ‘found footage’ movie. Koenig thought movies like The Blair Witch Project or Cloverfield were an unwelcome trend. They restrained movies rather than liberated them. In any case, if Koenig wanted to watch a bunch of chuckleheads running around in circles, he’d go and see the Yankees.

But the Speakers’ Corner video wasn’t a found-footage movie. It was a slice of life. And death. Two deaths. The camera must have been positioned at least twenty feet in the air as everyone in Speakers’ Corner was visible.

They watched it three times, and each time Koenig saw it, the more convinced he became that something had been missed. Or rather misinterpreted. He asked to see the footage again, this time from the moment Margaret Wexmore had arrived, instead of when the Romanian pickpockets had. He set the timer on his watch. When Jane Doe arrived, he nodded.

Smerconish only had half the story. The same half the British tabloids had run with. That Jane Doe had murdered the two Romanians in cold blood. And while that was technically accurate, it lacked context. Because if Smerconish’s interpretation of events was ketchup, Koenig’s was tomato sauce. They looked the same, but they weren’t. Koenig thought everyone had got it back to front. The wrong way around. They saw black. They should have been seeing white.

‘Jane Doe wasn’t abducting Margaret Wexmore,’ he said. ‘She was protecting her.’