The Passengers(36)
‘Are you going to do the same with your phone, tablets, Smart watch, credit and debit cards?’ the Hacker asked and Libby’s face flushed. ‘You distrust technology and AI for the wrong reasons. Shall I show everyone else what happened which influenced your loathing?’
Libby flinched. She knew exactly what was to come next but was helpless to prevent it.
Chapter 26
Libby’s body tensed as she braced herself for the inevitable. On the largest of the screens Birmingham’s Monroe Street appeared exactly how she remembered it.
Jack had a sense of what was coming too. ‘How has he got hold of this?’ he asked. ‘Sensitive material is supposed to be removed from the public domain and erased.’
‘Nothing disappears any more,’ shrugged Cadman. ‘Everything is somewhere. All that’s private becomes public in the end.’
From the perspective of a static camera fixed above a shop’s vinyl canopy, Libby watched herself from two years earlier walking towards the lens. She recalled how that day had begun as an ordinary summer’s morning. The sun was high in a cloudless sky and it was bright enough for her to wear sunglasses. A gentle breeze rippled the hem of her floral dress.
The road ahead curved and Libby made her way from shop to shop, glancing through the windows of those that interested her and passing others that didn’t. Half a dozen scented candles she’d bought in a sale weighed down the tote bag hanging from her shoulder. She stopped outside a flower shop. She could still remember the herb-like scent coming from the orange chrysanthemums in buckets of water outside.
The closer she appeared to the camera, the more recognisable she became to her fellow jurors.
‘Is that you?’ asked Fiona, pushing her glasses back up her nose for closer inspection. Libby didn’t reply. ‘It is, isn’t it?’
‘Oh, definitely,’ Muriel added.
Libby saw herself dip her hand into her bag, remove the phone she still used today, and begin to talk. It was her mum who had called, Libby remembered, checking whether she would be travelling home to Northampton the following weekend for Father’s Day. Her mum had been planning to cook a Sunday roast for the three of them. Libby had informed her that she was on emergency call that weekend. Even as the lie tripped off her tongue, Libby hated herself for doing it. But spending even a minute in that house made her want to run a mile.
As she ended the call, two women and a pushchair across the road caught her eye. It was their laughter that drew her attention and Libby found herself wishing she and her mum still had that kind of relationship. She couldn’t recall the last time they’d joked together.
The women turned sharply and, from behind a parked car, began to cross the road, unaware of a moving vehicle ten metres away from them. Libby expected the car to swerve and stop – there was time and space even if it meant colliding with a stationary vehicle. Instead, it braked sharply but didn’t veer from its course. She opened her mouth to shout a warning to the women but before the words could escape it was too late. As the vehicle skidded to a halt, it ploughed into them like a bowling ball into skittles, sending them flying.
The younger of the two women took the direct brunt and was scooped up and into the windscreen, before being thrown high above the car and landing on the road behind it. The older one was dragged under the front. Meanwhile the pushchair was shoved many metres along the road and the baby ejected, its tiny body sliding across the asphalt.
From the inquest room, tears pooled in Libby’s eyes as footage from a second camera played, this time attached to the dashboard of the vehicle involved in the collision. Libby relived the moment she dropped her bag to the pavement and heard the glass jars holding her candles shatter as she ran towards the injured. Her first instinct was to aid the baby but a woman with more medical knowledge than her was clearing the child’s airways and giving her mouth-to-mouth. Somehow, she was alive.
She turned to the woman caught under the front of the car. Libby crouched over her; the victim’s cropped grey hair was matted with blood from gashes to her forehead and crown. Her eyes were wide open but her stare was glazed and lifeless.
Libby’s attention turned to the opening of a car door and a Passenger slowly alighting, his mouth wide open and his skin as pale as a ghost. He was around the same age as Libby and she could see his windscreen contained computer games graphics. She assumed he had been playing as the accident occurred. ‘The car … it drives itself … it’s not my fault …’ he muttered.
Now aware of the commotion, more people gravitated towards the scene, shouting and screaming and calling for the emergency services. New footage, this time taken from a glasses cam, showed Libby hurrying towards the third person who’d been thrown over the vehicle. Several people gathered around the woman, unsure of how to assist. Libby pushed her way through them and immediately noted how the victim’s limbs were contorted and misshapen, her eyes wet and her mouth bloody. Pink spit bubbles oozed from her lips with each shallow breath. Libby used her first aid training to check the woman’s vital signs, then slipped her fitness tracker ring on the woman’s finger and checked the results on her mobile phone. Her pulse was barely detectable, her heart almost at a standstill and her stress levels at a maximum. It would require a miracle to turn around her fortunes.
‘My daughter …’ she gasped, a fine, bloody mist coming from her mouth. Libby took hold of the hand that didn’t look broken. It was icy cold. ‘My little girl …’ she said again and Libby held the hand close to her own face to offer her warmth. ‘She’s safe,’ Libby lied. Now was not a time for honesty and the woman appeared momentarily pacified. ‘And Janice?’ she asked.