Septday, Bertzia 24th 067.M42
Holy frak. I think we found something. I think we may actually have found something that we can use to begin actually properly looking into Daisy's disappearance.
Maddy's spent the last couple of days at my place and we've just been going over and over the pict footage, trying to see if we could find the spot where everyone lost sight of Daisy. Even with the both of us, it seemed like an impossible task. We could watch her walking down the street, there didn't seem to be anyone following her, she didn't seem to get into any altercations with any passers-by. There's just a moment in the crowd where she sort of seems to blend with it all, and by the time the part of the crowd that she was in makes it to the next picter, she's just not there any more.
It seems to happen when she passes one of the feeder alleys that leads to the great mass elevators that allows cargo vehicles to move between levels of the hive. It's not actually immediately apparent, but the main picters on the street actually haven't got great visibility of that alley, there's the smallest dead spot between two. While there should be a picter in the alley itself that covers the gap between them, when we finally found the reference and pulled that footage up, it became very apparent that the picter from the alley had failed some time ago.
It was actually Maddy who found anything useful. An office block across the road from the alley had their security picter footage caught up in the data request and one picter in one office a few storeys up just happened to be angled in just the right way to give a partial view of what happened in the alley.
You can just see Daisy in the crowd, and as she comes into frame she seems to be walking normally on her way. But as she passes this alley - right in the dead spot between the picter ranges - she just suddenly stops and turns, like she's heard something. Then she just steps off of the street and walks down into the alley. It gets a bit hard to see after that, as the picter we found is behind a window, and after a certain point light glare bouncing off the glass gets in the way, but just before she passes completely out of view, it almost looks like she's met by at least two people in robes. Between the angle and the light glare, I couldn't tell which branch of the Adeptus they belonged to, or indeed if they might have been pilgrims or preachers. All I could tell was that they weren't red, so at least that rules one out, I suppose.
But the most disturbing thing wasn't just Daisy suddenly deciding to head off down this alley, despite clearly having a purpose and a daughter to return to. We decided to focus on that footage for a couple of hours either side of Daisy's disappearance, to see if we could catch the people she stopped to speak to either moving closer to the mouth of the alley, or moving into or coming out of it. Which was a bust - they must have come in and left from the lifter end of the alley. But in those hours of footage we scanned through, it wasn't just Daisy who suddenly stops there right in that perfect dead spot, stands there for a moment and then turns to walk off down the alley for no apparent reason. We counted four before her and two after.
Maddy says we should take this information to the Magisters, hand it back over and get them to look further, but I'm afraid that even if we do they'll just say that there's no evidence of wrondoing. She doesn't look fearful as if they're threatening her - she doesn't even look back at all after stopping. I'm sure they'd argue this could be some prearranged meeting or some other form of gathering. I want to just try and find something more, anything else that I can add that will make it impossible for them to ignore. I'm going to try and put in an application for another period of family leave, this time a few days, so I can spend some time down around that area and see if I can't find anything a bit more solid.
If something has happened to Daisy that's related to these robed figures, I'm not going to just go running down there demanding justice and vengeance. I'm not Sly Marbo or anything like that. But if we have a bit more knowledge, then at least we can convince the authorities to take this a bit more seriously, I should hope at least.
Thought for the Day: Knowledge is half the battle.
