Seymour Tapes

by Tim Lott

  And the upshot was?

  It was getting late for school. Alex hated being late. And if they were late for school, Alex would be late for surgery. So, there was a bit of a showdown. Guy refused to budge until Alex backed down, and Victoria just sat there being all moony. In the end Alex blustered but gave in. They got their pocket money. Alex often took what seemed the easiest path at the time. In the long run, of course, it’s not a good idea. But it’s human. And this kind of thing happened all the time. In fact, now that I think of it, there were several other instances of… what? Confusions, the sort of confusions that tormented him, that particular morning. Trivial stuff. It’s odd that I remember this but… Victoria started putting sugar on her Frosties and Alex told her not to, and she said I’d said it was OK.

  And had you?

  That was the trouble. I couldn’t remember. And she was so passionate about it. So Alex gave up on that one too. ‘Just this once,’ he said. Then there was the matter of his mobile phone. Victoria wanted to send a text message to a friend. Alex said no.

  This was all on the same morning?

  Yes. A typical morning in the Seymour household.

  Why did Alex say no?

  Because he didn’t like them tinkering with his stuff. He always thought they were going to break it. And as a kind of feeble punishment for leaving out the PlayStation. But it was more, I suppose, because having given way once already, he felt he had to say no to something and stick to it. Then this whole dialogue started. Not a row – Victoria rarely shouts and screams in the way that Guy does. But she whines. And she’s relentless and insistent. She doesn’t let it go. And this time Alex really had decided to make a stand. Victoria said she’d promised to send this girl the message and that Alex had always told her she should never break her promises. He said that she shouldn’t have promised in the first place. Then Victoria began to cry, and went on about how she had lost her own phone through no fault of her own, and he wouldn’t replace it even though he’d promised to on the household insurance. So he’d broken a promise too, and if he hadn’t there would have been no need for her to borrow his mobile phone. Alex reminded her that he’d offered to claim on the insurance until he discovered that there was a hundred-pound excess so she’d have to wait till her birthday. But Victoria said he’d never told her anything of the sort, only that he’d promised her a replacement.

  And had he?

  I’m not sure. I’ve no memory of him telling her she had to wait till her birthday.

  It’s as if Alex had difficulty with conflicting versions of things.

  That’s a good point. Although he tried hard to be efficient – it was one of the things he prided himself on – his memory was fallible, as it is for all of us. Only that morning he lost his keys. He thought I’d been using them, but I hadn’t. Eventually he found them in a place where he swore he hadn’t left them. But I hadn’t put them there. He sometimes acted as if he thought I’d hidden them just to annoy him.

  Was there anything else in those few days before he met Sherry Thomas that, in hindsight, might provide clues to his later behaviour?

  There were a few incidents with the kids.

  Can you be specific?

  Victoria had a friend round, Macy. She’s known him for years.

  You’ve mentioned Macy before. He’s the boy in Alex’s first tape.

  That’s right. Anyway, a few days before Alex went to Cyclops Surveillance, there was some kind of altercation. I didn’t see it myself, but Alex gave me his version of events.

  Which was?

  He said that Victoria had gone into her room with Macy and barricaded the door. When he knocked, Victoria told him to go away, and when he continued knocking there was a long pause before she opened it. Then Alex said that both kids’ clothes were dishevelled, and that one of Macy’s fly buttons was undone. Of course, Alex was upset. As I’ve said, he couldn’t bear the idea that Victoria was growing up – becoming interested in boys and so forth. I told him that they were probably dishevelled before they went into the room. That he had no proof, that he was being paranoid. Once again, he was on uncertain ground. But that didn’t stop him throwing Macy out. Victoria was mortified.

  Anything else?

  Yes. Something with Guy and money. Guy had asked Alex to lend him some cash to buy a CD that was on discount in one of the local shops. Alex said no. Later that afternoon Guy came in with the CD. Alex wanted to know where he’d got the money. Guy said he’d had some saved up that he’d forgotten about. Alex didn’t believe him but didn’t want to accuse him of lying. Anyway, he gave Guy the benefit of the doubt. Then, later on, he wanted to go down to the off-licence and pick up a bottle of wine. I told him there was five quid in my purse, but when he looked it wasn’t there. I assumed I’d made a mistake, but Alex said he thought Guy had stolen it. I told him not to be ridiculous – I’d probably spent it earlier and forgotten about it. I’m always doing things like that. Anyway, he became quite agitated, and, again, he had no proof.

  None of this immediately led to him putting in the cameras. In the beginning, I think, it was just about Miranda. It snowballed from there. If only that boy hadn’t been shoplifting at Ali’s, though, maybe none of this would have happened.

  You can’t say that.

  Why not? Ali would never have given him the card. And he would never have had the crazy idea of going to Cyclops Surveillance in the first place.

  Cyclops Surveillance Systems, Tape One, Saturday, 28 April

  Author’s Note: I was granted access to this and other tapes from Cyclops Surveillance Systems after extensive discussions with the Metropolitan Police. As far as I am aware, every tape relevant to the case of Alex Seymour has been made available to me.

  Two principal cameras were located within CSS, as well as an external camera to monitor the entrance and a police CCTV camera a short distance away on the street outside. Again, I have merged the tapes from each camera to bring together a unified picture of what happened on that first afternoon when Alex Seymour met Sherry Thomas.

  The first camera shot comes from the police CCTV, which covers the area roughly adjacent to the CSS shop on the Park Royal trading estate near the Central Middlesex Hospital in Acton. The quality of the footage is far inferior to that from cameras installed by Ms Thomas, who used high-grade colour equipment. However, it reveals some important details of the state of Dr Seymour’s mind when he made his first approach to CSS: he was clearly having second thoughts about employing covert surveillance in his home.

  The police tape for that afternoon shows Dr Seymour approaching the shop slowly. His appearance is timed at 13.07, just a few hours after he had taken the business card from Mr Ali. He is wearing the same smart but casual clothes, and seems somewhat nervous and distracted.

  The street in which CSS is situated is bland and unexceptional. There are no residential buildings, only business parks, warehouses, pubs and cafés. There are few people about – indeed, Dr Seymour seems virtually the only person to have walked down the street during his appearance on the tape. Clearly he was uneasy: the tape shows him checking the business card several times, as if he wants to be sure that he is in the right place. In another section he turns round and walks a good twenty yards away from CSS, then halts and turns back.

  The day is unseasonably warm – records show that the temperature reached one of its highest peaks ever for that time of year. The tape shows Dr Seymour repeatedly wiping his brow with a handkerchief. In as much as one can read his expression, it is one of hesitation and anxiety.

  It is at 13.09 that an image of Dr Seymour is picked up by the external camera at CSS. The colour image shows that he was an unusually good-looking man, tall, with a full head of floppy brown hair, side parted, and large, rather soulful eyes. His movements are oddly graceful – this is apparent even on the jerkier images of the street CCTV. He is clean-shaven, and has a strong jaw-line and high cheekbones. His mouth is wide and full, and he seems quite slim and athletic – there is n
o sign of the ‘middle-age spread’ to which his wife referred. However – no doubt partly because of his apparent anxiety and the heat of the day – his face is red, and he is sweating profusely: there are dark patches of sweat at both armpits. He is carrying a large leather bag over his shoulder.

  The picture shows him pause in front of the shop and gaze at the interior for several seconds. The security shutters are down even during trading hours, and it may be either that Dr Seymour thought the shop was closed, or that he was still hesitating over the path he was about to embark upon.

  From his demeanour, then, it appears possible that he was about to abandon the project. But one of Cyclops’s internal cameras shows the proprietor, Sherry Thomas, looking up from her desk while Dr Seymour stands outside. Apparently she notices the figure outside her shop and her face becomes animated. She checks her hair and makeup in a mirror mounted on a wall adjacent to her desk. Then she looks back at him, and beckons. We see her hit a button, which automatically unlocks the front door.

  Before I continue the description of this first meeting, it is worth recording what the camera reveals of both Sherry Thomas and the CSS shop, immediately prior to Dr Seymour’s arrival. Like Dr Seymour, she is attractive, if not spectacularly glamorous or showy. She appears younger than her actual age of forty. She is full-bodied, though not fat, and is formally dressed in a light grey matching jacket and skirt. The skirt is tight, and cut several inches above the knee. She is wearing black shoes with heels high enough to look a little inappropriate in a business context. They emphasize the length of her slender, toned legs. She appears quite heavily made-up, but this may be partly the effect of the colour resolution on the tape. Her hair is strawberry blonde, long – almost covering her shoulder-blades – swept back, teased and bouffed in the American-cheerleader style. Her narrow, hooded eyes give her a feline, almost squinting appearance.

  Sherry Thomas spends most of her time walking around the shop restlessly. She checks her watch continuously. She is never still or relaxed. Sometimes she seems to see a smudge on a glass case, breathes on it, then wipes at it urgently with a small square of cloth.

  She seems bored and ill at ease. She picks up a magazine from the waiting area, only to put it down again. Occasionally she sighs or yawns. She lights a cigarette, then stabs it out almost immediately. She stares out of the window, then inspects the floor. She is never at rest.

  She spends a few minutes making a cup of coffee. Then she rubs her temples and takes out a small bottle from her bag. She tips out some pills and washes them down with the coffee, then washes, rinses, dries and hangs up the mug. Then she returns to her desk, where she fidgets, squirms and doodles absently on a blotter pad, until Dr Seymour arrives.

  The interior of the CSS shop is familiar from TV broadcasts, and particularly the Channel 4 documentary The Cyclops Factor – Inside The Spider’s Web. I confess to having used this programme to supplement my description, since the relatively immobile eyes of the CCTVs, although there are three, tend to limit perspective. The fittings and fixtures of CSS have been removed or ripped out now, but the documentary was made when they were still intact.

  The interior, unlike the untidy, bleak and – on the day of Dr Seymour’s visit – sweltering streetscape, is cool, ordered and professional-looking. It is clean and tidy, with not a single object out of place. Sherry Thomas’s desk is almost architectural in the precise arrangement of the objects on it, as if they were permanent fixtures on an invisible grid. There are several litter-bins, but they all appear empty.

  The room – about twenty feet by fifteen, with the desk on the west side furthest from the door – gives the impression of being chilly. This may be because it is washed in blue light, although again this may be the effect of colour distortion produced by the camera. A number of glass cases are placed about the walls, displaying neatly arranged technical equipment, which rests inside boxes lined with a purplish velvet fabric. The effect is after the style of a jeweller’s shop.

  The equipment is much as you would imagine. There are miniature tape-recorders, telephone bugs, headsets, cameras concealed within a multiplicity of ordinary household objects – beer cans, teddy bears, books. There are transmitters and receivers, battery packs, lenses, desktop cameras.

  However, there are more sinister elements to the display: in one glass case, in the centre of the north wall, a model of a child wears a frightening-looking bright yellow plastic mask with a long, flexible hose. A sign above it can be made out: ‘Emergency Defense Preparedness: Nuclear, Biological, Chemical Protection’. The mask is identified as the ‘Potomac Emergency Escape Mask’.

  Elsewhere, there are rape alarms, elaborate body armour, covert electronic lie-detectors. A magazine article, from American Time magazine, has been enlarged, framed and placed on the wall. The headline reads, ‘Someone Is Watching You.’

  There is no decoration in the room, apart from a framed picture of an American eagle that gazes down at the scene below from the wall behind Ms Thomas’s desk.

  To return to the CCTV images featuring Dr Seymour: we see him respond to Sherry Thomas’s beckoning gesture with a slight smile of acknowledgement and a raised hand. The audio picks up the sound of the door catch unlocking electronically. Dr Seymour hesitates. Then he is lost to the outside camera as he pushes hesitantly through the door to the shop and is picked up by the internal cameras. He flaps his arms around, as if to indicate to Sherry Thomas, who remains sitting behind her desk, how oppressive the heat is outside. She again beckons him in. The door closes behind him. We hear it lock with an almost symbolic resonance.

  Dr Seymour seems embarrassed, and moves awkwardly to the near side of the desk. Sherry Thomas rises, holds out a delicate hand. He takes it.

  – Hi. Welcome to Cyclops.

  – Thank you.

  They maintain contact, it seems, for longer than would be normal in such a formal business situation – several seconds. And it is Dr Seymour who withdraws first. He takes a seat, after Sherry Thomas gestures for him to do so.

  He coughs, then shifts in his chair. He seems uncertain of what to say.

  It’s worth noting here that from the beginning there appears – and I grant that it is possible that I am imagining this – to be a certain tension between Dr Seymour and Sherry Thomas. It is hard to say whether or not it is sexual – just as it is hard to say if their final relationship was fully sexual – but a ballet of gesture and facial expression suggests some mysterious connection between them.

  Certainly, she is not obviously seductive, or even outstandingly attractive for someone later characterized as a femme fatale. But – and this is only my impression – an implication in her words and gestures suggests a powerful, unspoken subcurrent of emotion, passion or need. It is significant that Dr Seymour’s greatest weakness, by all accounts, is for the needy – both physically and psychologically. If Samantha Seymour is to be believed, the desire to make himself indispensable runs deep in him. It is another reason why Sherry Thomas might have exerted on him a magnetic influence.

  Eventually Sherry Thomas speaks again.

  – It’s very warm outside today.

  – It’s chilly in here, though. I’m shivering.

  – I like the a/c on high. It keeps me calm. I don’t know why.

  – Right.

  – My name’s Sherry Thomas.

  She hands over a small business card. Dr Seymour takes it, then introduces himself.

  – Dr Alex Seymour.

  – A medical doctor?

  – I’m a GP.

  At this point he shuffles in his chair and looks around the room uneasily. The impression is that he is having second thoughts once again about his intention. He picks up the bag that previously he had put down on the floor and fiddles with it. Sherry Thomas remains still, with a confident smile.

  – I didn’t expect a woman.

  – Most people don’t.

  – So what… I mean…

  – We’re not supposed to under
stand all those complicated male things.

  – I didn’t mean that.

  – Don’t worry. I don’t take myself that seriously.

  For the first time, Dr Seymour loses his nervousness and smiles.

  – For an American.

  Sherry Thomas laughs.

  – Good Lord, two prejudices for the price of one!

  – I was joking.

  – I know. We’re not completely without irony, you know.

  – Of course not.

  – So. What can I – DAMN!

  She rises suddenly from her desk, a look of alarm and anger on her face.

  – Those goddam traffic wardens. I’m, like, paid up to one fifteen and the restrictions end at one thirty yet those vultures – Look, she’s writing up a ticket!

  – Oh dear.

  She moves as if she is intending to go out and confront the parking attendant, but as she does, Dr Seymour rises.

  – Look, maybe –

  – I’m going to give that vulture a piece of my mind.

  – Just a moment. Perhaps – perhaps I can sort this out. Do they know you?

  – What?

  – Do they know that that is your car?

  – I don’t think so.

  – OK. Just bear with me a second, will you?

  Dr Seymour leaves Sherry Thomas in the shop and heads outside to where the parking attendant is writing out the ticket for her red 5-series BMW. He approaches, gives the attendant a wide smile, speaks a few words to her and takes out his wallet. He shows her something – presumably his identification as a doctor. The parking attendant looks suspicious, but stops writing. Dr Seymour says a few more words, smiles again and returns to the shop. The parking attendant watches him return and, as he approaches Sherry Thomas’s desk, does not take her eyes off him. Dr Seymour glances briefly behind him, then turns back.

  – I’m sorry. This is a bit embarrassing. Do you mind if I pretend to examine you?