They waited for the coffee to drip and then walked to the back of the studio, to what Marek called his office. It was partitioned off from the rest of the studio and contained a desk, table, telephone, two chairs, graphics instruments. Walker set up his dictaphone on the edge of the desk and asked Marek about his films. He had no interest, apparently, in talking about his past films but, to Walker’s relief, was eager to answer questions about the new film, the city montage.
‘We printed five thousand leaflets — you’ve seen the leaflets, yes? — in five different languages. So, twenty-five thousand leaflets. We left them in bars and restaurants, galleries. Then, from dawn of the ninth we handed them out in the main tourist parts of the city.’
As Marek talked he reached up to a shelf behind him and took down a snow-storm of the city’s cathedral. He shook it up and let the snow swirl around the model’s twin towers.
‘We had no idea what the response was going to be. At best we expected to get, I don’t know, maybe two thousand replies. There were so many things that could go wrong. You know, people just chuck it away without reading it, others read it and aren’t interested. People intend doing it but lose the leaflet or the address or just don’t get round to doing it when they get home. Or they see their photos and think nobody could be interested in these. It all hinged on this initial response but for a week there was nothing. Then a few things from local people but after three weeks it looked like it hadn’t worked.’
The snow had settled, the cathedral was plainly visible. Marek picked it up again, shook it and placed it on the table. Walker kept glancing at the silent swirl of flakes.
‘Then it started pouring in. Stuff was arriving from all over the place, Germany, Greece, Japan, Australia. Photos were still coming in up until a month ago — by now it’s just about dried up. Then the real work had to begin. The response was almost too good. The amount of material we had to get through was so daunting. And that’s what we’ve been doing for the last couple of months.’
‘So what form is it taking?’ asked Walker, nodding like a journalist.
‘First we needed to arrange everything in chronological order. That’s actually much easier than you think. The individual snaps on a film are all in order and then there are other indications — shadows, light. Sometimes there’s even a clock. We’ve taken copies and now have everything broken down into quarters of an hour. At the same time we’ve been filing everything by place, all the shots at Piazza San Pietro, for example. That way it can all be cross-referenced. It will make the assembling easier later on but, you know, it’s taken a lot of time and it’s difficult to see the wood for the trees.’
‘You have no idea of the form it might take?’
‘Some kind of form will emerge but with a mass of material like this that doesn’t happen until you start nudging it a bit. Besides, there are all sorts of technical problems. How to integrate the snaps and the moving footage, how to get a kind of narrative.’
Marek waited for the next question; they both looked over at the snow-storm which had almost settled.
‘I wonder,’ said Walker, shifting in his seat. ‘Perhaps it would be possible to follow an individual through the day. I mean, the person featured in one picture would crop up in the corner of another, and a third and a fourth. It might be possible to track someone’s movements through the day.’
‘That’s something I hadn’t thought of,’ said Marek. ‘But it might be possible, yes.’ Walker could see that the idea instantly attracted Marek. He was silent and Walker sensed that he was already working through the inherent possibilities and difficulties of such a project. He picked up the snow-storm and turned it over in his hands, looked at Walker. The dictaphone continued running, measuring the silence between the two men.
‘Maybe you had this idea before you came to speak to me,’ said Marek finally.
‘Not exactly.’
‘But you are more interested in this idea than you are in. . What was the name of the book you are writing?’
Walker smiled, ‘I am looking for a man named Malory. I believe he was in the city on 9 April, on the day of your filming.’
‘That is a coincidence.’
‘The more I think about that word the less sure I am of what it means. I sometimes think it means the opposite of what it’s meant to,’ said Walker.
‘The inevitability of coincidence,’ said Marek and waited for Walker to continue.
‘I wonder if it would be possible to find this man in your film, to discover what his movements were.’
‘It would certainly lend an element of suspense to the film.’
‘Yes.’
‘And what is your interest in this man?’
‘That is hard to explain.’
‘Has he committed some crime?’
‘Not as far as I know.’
‘He is not wanted by the police?’
‘Possibly. No.’
‘And you are not with the police?’
‘No.’
‘A finder?’
‘No.’
‘Tracker?’
‘No.’
‘So what are you?’
Walker shrugged.
‘And you have a photo of this man?’ Marek asked.
‘Yes.’
‘May I see it?’ Walker pulled the photo out of his wallet, unfolded it and passed it over.
‘Do you have any idea of what time he was at a particular place? Otherwise it is difficult to know where to start.’
Walker shook his head.
‘It would be like looking for a needle in a haystack,’ said Marek.
‘Well, maybe not as simple as that,’ said Walker.
They started their search that afternoon. Reasoning that Malory must almost certainly have passed through the Piazza de Repubblica, the main square, they went through that pile, one of the biggest, first. On the assumption that he hadn’t posed for any snaps they discounted the people featured in the photographs and concentrated on figures in the margins, people who had strayed unintentionally into the picture-frame.
It was painstaking, frustrating work and by two in the morning their early enthusiasm had been overwhelmed by the drudgery of unrewarded labour. They still had two-thirds of the pile to go through but decided to call a halt and resume in the morning. Marek searched around the studio for a camp bed and then they sat by the desk drinking beer. They were bleary-eyed, half-stupid with looking, so addicted to the task that, even as they spoke, they continued to pick up odd snaps, glancing at them. Walker drained the final drops from his can, picked up one last snap — and there was Malory. The picture showed a Japanese girl smiling at the camera, a handbag over one shoulder. In the foreground the photographer’s shadow groped towards her. To her right a couple were sat on some steps, eating, and to her left, walking towards the camera, was Malory. Walker reached for the magnifier and immediately Malory’s face, blurred and grainy, loomed into view.
‘I’ve found him.’
Marek came round the desk and looked over Walker’s shoulder. ‘You’re sure it’s him?’
‘Take a look.’ Marek looked from the magnifier to the original and back again.
‘We’re in business,’ he said and cracked open a bottle of vile-tasting spirits to celebrate. Grimacing, they took a shot each.
Within ten minutes of waking they were back in the office, swallowing dark coffee, munching croissants.
‘OK. Now this is where the months of cross-referencing pay off,’ said Marek. ‘The first thing we do is find a copy of this photo in the sequential piles.’ Walker followed him out of the office and into the studio where trays of pictures were stacked up against the walls. Marek pulled out a couple of trays until he found a copy of the photo. ‘OK, so it was taken at about quarter to eleven. Good. Now we can try to guess where he’s going and look at the relevant stuff — but if he doesn’t crop up there we can resort to the sequential piles, look at every picture from eleven o’clock onwards.’