Crossroads. Chapters 11 and 12

0x000A

Sergeant Holmes Caleb looked at the faces of the young people in front of him. What is forty years? This is the time to do things that determine the rest of your life. Such thoughts fussed in his head, along with what he had heard in a calm presentation of the eldest of them. He seldom was mistaken, and this time he was sure: these guys got into the cover not against their will, they were not the ones who were in the field of berries, and he would have to sweat in order to unravel the matter. They are “clever men”, this can be seen a mile away, and to give them free rein so that they can join the investigation process will be the right decision.

They said something about the recognition of a person from biometric data, he had heard about this method, but in passing, this is from a new, little-known world of new technologies. But in this case, Caleb realized he simply had his police chuya, that they were saying the case.

- So, you say that the gun in your car could be changed in the period from 23:00 to 00:30 and the car was located opposite the hotel entrance. We received a recording of two video cameras, which fixed the figure of a man who was near your car at 23:27. He spent about thirty seconds near the trunk of the car, but in those seconds the cameras saw only his head, covered by a hood, and it was not clear whether he had opened the trunk or not. He then headed north on Farringdon Street and disappeared around the bend. Unfortunately, in the quarter where he turned, the cameras did not capture him. Your version, as I understand it, suggests that this person opened the trunk of your Rover-75 car and made some manipulations with the weapon. By the way, it is strange that your airsoft gun is so indistinguishable from the real “Glock”.

“Virtually indistinguishable,” Illya looked straight into the constable's eyes. “I know that the police in England do not carry weapons, but your experience allows you to have a gun assigned to you.” I know that the metropolitan police are armed with a Glock-17 pistol. I have exactly the same, only in airsoft execution. You can compare them, they are indistinguishable from each other.
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Already! - Caleb grinned. - Indeed it is. I was surprised and I consider it a dangerous undertaking - to make the game weapon so similar to the real one. These are all global arms companies, profits, advertising, money ... Money is always full-fledged persons involved in crimes. So what do you want from me?

We need your video of a person who appears near our car. It is necessary that our friends get it. We have a special computer program that is able to determine the identity of a person according to his manner of movement.

By walking, - said Smolkin, - for all the little things to which the human eye does not attach importance.

“True,” Ilya continued, “we will need footage of the shooting of the person we suspect of this crime, for comparison with the existing record, but this is the second part of the task, we will think about it, if you allow us.”

Igor and Sergey sat across from the prisoners and listened attentively to Cohen.

- Constable Holmes shows us the degree of trust that allows us to try to prove our innocence for some short time, and excuse me for the protocol vocabulary, to expose the criminals who have put the human life at real risk. So, listen to me carefully, do not interrupt and move my brains. I am convinced on the basis of two logical conclusions that the one who worked on the bases, knew that Sasha and I decided to attract two actors from the cabaret ... in order to remove from them the models in this key scene in the gateway, which seemed to me , unlike Smolkin, not realistic enough.

Wanda and Fitch. We met them in our last visit to London. They agreed to play the lovers who are killed by the villain, even without payment - just out of friendship, well, and for dinner at their restaurant. They were interested to see how it would look in the game, which we told them about in a popular way. This arrangement was not discussed by phone, but was entered into the plan of our actions in a computer file. And the fact that Smolkin will have to shoot artists, I spoke to him on the phone. This means that someone, despite the quite serious protection of our computers, was able to penetrate their software and had the opportunity to listen on our phones. To do this, they needed to have two things: a strong personal interest in the Perekrestok project and a powerful technological base for carrying out such a large-scale operation to integrate into our communications. Therefore, I suspect this team Halperin. To this we can add the attempts of Dima himself to contact us about the sponsor, with whom we signed a contract without his help, and conversations with Sasha, about which Smolkin told me already in the cell. The conversations that concerned our idea, the conversations in which Elena participated. And I think that she plays the main role in this crime. Halperins could not help but understand that we would think about them first, but they behaved the way desperate people behave in the hope of getting what they want at any price, going all-in, spitting on any moral propriety.

“So maybe I’ll go to Scrooge and talk to him like a man?” - Sergey clenched his fists, unequivocally crunching knuckles.

“No violence, no Krav Maga.” The task is ... - Ilya turned to the guests a laptop left by the sergeant on the metal table of the meeting room. On the screen, a man in a gray sweatshirt with a hooded face moved in quick steps from the Rover, the car in which the Glock lay in the trunk, moving off toward the city center.

- I sent this story to Alla's address. I do not think that Scrooge’s people are watching her mail, but even if this is so, this post will not be news for them. We need to find out who this person is and prove that he had contact with one of the Halperins: either with both of them or with people associated with them.

- As I understand, this subject did not have a phone in gray, so billing will not help. I have an idea, though, a little crazy, but this is just about the topic of billing.

Igor coughed, prepared to speak, after carefully listening to Cohen.

“We know the exact time and exact place of the presence of this person, who, as we suspect, opened the Rover’s trunk and changed its weapon, and we know in which direction he was moving after leaving the car, despite the fact that time, judging by the record, no one was near, the lane is deserted, and we know its further path - and we can imagine where it could go: Scrooge’s office and apartments are just a few blocks from your hotel. True, there are more lively places along the way, and there, for certain, passers-by will come across - our companions incognito and people coming to meet him ...

- What the hell are you driving at? “Smolkin rose impatiently.

- Now, do not shoot me down, I myself do not really believe in my idea, but listen to the end. Imagine that cellular antennas, penetrating the space with their own signals, stumble upon the radiation of this signal on an obstacle and create some kind of turbidity in this space. If you receive signals from several such antennas - three or more - then you can see, I suppose, something like a cloud with coordinates on the ground and a form that will differ in size and configuration of a person from, say, a car, a tree or a bench . So, if you get logs from the providers of these devices, stored in the memory of their programs, related to that place and recorded at the time that interests us, then this idea can be checked.

“Listen,” Sergey turned to Igor, not hiding a puzzle, “the idea is really crazy, but even if“ this ”- he did not immediately find the word for“ this ”- if“ this ”is possible, then how can you track such an amorphous cloud? “The cloud” seemed to him a suitable term for the definition of a condensing part of space.

- What will happen when others appear on our cloud path? They will dissolve in each other, and we will lose what we watch.

Seryoga was a concrete person, and it became easier for him to interpret something when he could imagine an image of what was discussed.

“I’m sure,” continued Igor, “that our cloud will be different from all the rest — even if microns, but it will be — and for the computer program micron is the same as for us a kilometer.” Ask the constable to contact the providers.

0x000B

Sergeant Caleb was in some confusion. His disposition to the detainees was based on his experience in dealing with people in difficult circumstances, and he aimed to achieve success in investigating this strange case, but the “clever men” with each new proposal made him increasingly surprised at the unusual way of thinking. Catch the offender with some obscure image, derived from the radiation of cellular signals? Images in the form of a cloud (and the constable heard a tall, strong guy call him a "ghost")! Caleb grinned: what his colleagues would say, and the bosses, that he, on the threshold of retirement, believed in ghosts. And a pension, which is not yet so close, can quickly be very close.

But an inner voice suggested that these guys could be trusted and that this investigation would be truly successful for him.

Sergey once again supported his reputation as an amateur of specifics, when Danik displayed information from logs received from providers. All clapped their hands for joy when they saw on the display an oscillating cloud of gray color, of irregular shape, but still having borders.

Time is 23:27. Before that, not a single “ghost” approached the shadow left by the car. But at 23:27, first one thing, then two more clouds sailed near the observed site. One, the first, stopped at the car, the other two left without stopping. At that moment, Sergey thought up to mark this suspect, as they suggested, with a “ghost” with color: the program caught on its parameters and, within these parameters, marked it with pale gray and painted it criminally red.

“There is no need to check millimeters, however, we can duplicate it for persuasiveness,” explained Sergey Igel.

The next day, Sergeant Holmes knocked on the door of Chief Inspector Alsopp Oliver. He was already waiting for the sergeant, who had previously asked him to meet on an important and, like the one with meaning, added an unusual question.

Alsopp viewed with interest the three satellites of Holmes Caleb, whom the constable had introduced him one by one.

Olsopp, a red-faced, overweight fifty-year-old man who listened attentively to the short report of his subordinate and old friend Caleb, was intrigued by the unusual way that this police investigation was proposed by representatives, as Holmz put it, of the forefront of technological innovation, and added simply: “terribly smart men.

Danik opened the laptop and demonstrated to the audience a recording of their night view, taken from the logs of the five cellular antennas located in their focus.

The red "ghost" spent no more than a minute with the Rover, which was rented to Alexander Smolkin, and then went to the northeast direction. It mixed in its path with other clots of dark spots in some quarters and alleys, and the red color turned out to be a reliable marker that made it possible to follow the cloud to the building where the Halperins office was located, confirming Cohen’s guess where he could go. he who could already be called a criminal. The red cloud reached the end point at 23:47. At the office of the Halperins' company, as well as in all other rooms of the second floor of the five-story building, there were no other moving spots, implying the presence of visitors or employees, at such a later time, except for one dark spot that met red, and that the older The inspector, who, unlike the others, saw the recording for the first time, looked into his forehead. Spots mixed and continued to be in such a strange state for a long time.

“Is that what I was thinking now?” - He turned to the young man showed the recording. Danik shrugged.

“Yes, Oliver, this is 99 percent what you thought.” These ghosts fuck on some weakly manifested cloud, in the sense - on the table.

Caleb allowed himself to be scabrous as an old friend, and even with some sly, hoping to confirm in the minds of the authorities the indisputability of the fact confirming the assumption that the people in the Rover’s trunk were replaced by a person connected with people from the Halperin company with those who were interested. in creating problems for competitors in the face of these young people from the Perekrestok startup.

- The picture we see here can tell us one thing: since we know that the person who did some manipulations at the car near the entrance to the hotel where our two prisoners were located is a man, then a cloud with which his red marker is most likely a woman could copulate, if, of course, he is not a homosexual.



Everyone tried to keep a smile. The moment was critical: whether the senior inspector gave consent to the continuation of the investigation taking into account these methods of evidence that had never been used before, the outcome of the case depended, or at least its duration in time.

“Well, well,” Olsopp rubbed his chin with the tip of a fountain pen. He was obviously worried, but he tried to look calm.

- As I understand it, you will try to talk with the owners of the office and find out who was in their premises at that time. Suppose you figure it out, but how do you prove that this particular person came to the office after allegedly doing some actions on your car? This red cloud will not be accepted as evidence by any judge.

- Let me? - Igor tactfully appealed to the sergeant, trying not to break the chain of command, not to jump over the head of the subordinate, referring to the superior officer. All the guys went through three years of service in Tsakhal and understood the subtleties of relationships among people wearing epaulets. Caleb waved his hand dismissively.

- Of course, this is your idea.

“Mr. officer,” Beller began, sitting down opposite the senior inspector. - The fact is that we are engaged in the creation of the game, and, - having met Alsopa’s surprised look, he added: - a computer game. In the program, which is the basis of this game, we use some technologies that allow us to identify a person by his movement, the characteristics of his gestures, his walk, the habit of, say, tilting his head or tugging his shoulders. Some variants of such studies using biometric indicators of a person are known to us, but we consider our system of definition comparable to such identifiers that determine belonging to a given individual, such as fingerprints or cornea of ​​eyes. If we ask the person who appears in this record as a red cloud, go the same way from the place where the car stood in the direction of the office, even if only a couple of tens of meters, and record it on a video camera, and then take a recording from that camera, which captured him that night, when, according to our assumption, the airsoft gun was replaced with a real “Glock-17”, and we compare these two records, passing them through our program, then we will be able to say with absolute certainty that the person who made the substitution weapons, and the man who That night, a meeting with someone in Halperin's office - one and the same person.

Alsopp listened attentively to the interlocutor and addressed his colleague, Constable Lehmann Wilmot, who was sitting at the next table, listened with interest to the popular explanation of the strange or rather unusual technology of searching for the criminal.

- Wilmot! You have a telephone recognition specialist. Find out if we can get billing from this address - and he sent him the email address of the Halperins' office - between 23:30 and 00:30. In the meantime, the constable will find out who was in the room where your red cloud was formed, I suggest you drink coffee.

Indeed, before the cups of perfectly brewed coffee were emptied, Leman Wilot reported what all those present were already aware of. During the specified period of time last night, two calls were made from the Halperins' office, both from the phone that belonged to Elena Halperina. She called up with Dmitry Halperin, and both conversations lasted no more than half a minute.

- So, Scrooge himself did not directly participate in this matter, - Danik said these words with relief. - And what shall we do now? He looked questioningly at Cohen. Illya shrugged in surprise and pointed to the senior inspector:

“It’s not up to us to decide how to conduct a police investigation while sitting at a police station.” Or maybe the constable will decide that we ourselves could have previously talked, say, with Dima? And they will confess and tell us everything?

“Judging from the billing of Mr. Halperin’s phone, he was in these two short conversations at the Great Fosters Hotel, this is on the outskirts of London in Surrey. We will proceed as follows: I will send Sgt. Holmze to Mrs. Elena Halperina, and he will ask her to come with him to the station, and you, - and he looked at Sergei, - you can still phone with Mr. Halperin and talk to him in advance, that is before we call for this and his case.

Igor grinned:

“Serega,” he whispered in his friend’s ear, “the observant ment apparently tells you how to talk to Scrooge.”

“Cohen doesn’t recognize my methods,” Igel clenched his fist and opened it, showing a sluggish palm, “I’ll speak friendly,” and after a pause: “First.

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