After what happened here, the council put a sensor along the roof parapet that alarms when anything stands at the edge for more than ten seconds. It goes at twenty to one every night. The roof camera shows the parapet empty. The camera on the pavement seven floors down shows a shadow arrive on the paving, the size and shape it would be, and the paving is bare.
I manage a town centre multi storey and I have the roof alarm on my phone, which was my choice and which I regret most nights at twenty to one.
Why there is a roof alarm.
Because people use car park roofs for the thing people use them for. Ours had four in six years, and after the fourth the council paid for a sensor strip along the parapet. Stand at the edge for ten seconds and it alarms in my office and on my phone and a recorded voice on the roof says that help is available and gives a number.
It has gone off for real twice since it went in and both times a person was there and both times they came down the stairs with us. It works.
It goes off at twenty to one every night, and nobody is there.
The roof camera.
It sees the whole of the parapet on the south side, which is the side over the street. At twenty to one the sensor trips, the recorded voice plays, and the parapet is empty. The voice plays to nobody for its forty seconds and stops.
The sensor strip logs where along the parapet it was tripped. It is the same place every night, a point about a third of the way along from the stair tower, where the parapet is lowest, which is the place three of the four used.
The pavement camera.
Seven floors below is the pavement, and the council's street camera looks along it. I asked for the footage, for twenty to one, for a week. The officer who pulled it watched it with me and did not say anything for a while afterwards.
At about a minute after the roof alarm, something arrives on the pavement. Not a thing. The shadow of a thing. The street lights throw shadows on that pavement and at twenty to one a new one arrives, all at once, the way a shadow arrives when the thing casting it has been moving and stops. It is a person's shape, lying. It is in the place a person landing from that point on the parapet would land. It stays about a minute and it fades, the way a shadow fades when the thing casting it is lifted away.
There is nothing on the pavement. The paving, under the shadow, is lit and bare.
What has been checked.
The sensor. Replaced. The strip logs the same point.
The street lights. The shadow cannot be a light fault because it is cast by three lights at once, from three directions, and all three agree on where the thing is.
The roof, by me, at twenty to one. The parapet is empty. The alarm goes. The voice plays. I have stood at the point, with my hands on the parapet, and felt the concrete under my hands go cold in the shape of two other hands, a little way apart from mine, and I have stepped back, and the voice has said help is available, and it has been me it was saying it to, by then.
Who.
Three of the four went from that point. I have not asked which. I do not want to know which of them it is, or whether the shadow is one of them or takes turns, and I have decided that not knowing is the one kindness left to me in this.
What is done about it.
The alarm at twenty to one is logged as a false activation and the council's contractor has a standing job to find the fault, and they have found no fault, and the recorded voice plays every night on an empty roof to an empty street, and I think that, of all the things that happen here, that is the one I would stop if I could.
I cannot. The voice is the safety measure. It has to play when the sensor goes, and the sensor goes because something is standing at the edge for ten seconds, every night, and it does not matter that I cannot see it.
What I do.
I manage the building.
I go up at half past twelve now. I stand near the point, not at it, and when the sensor trips and the voice starts, I say the number too. Out loud. The number the voice gives. I say it to the empty parapet, because the voice is a recording and I am not, and because I do not know whether anybody ever said it to them when it would have helped.
The shadow lands on the pavement anyway. Every night. But last Tuesday, on the roof camera, there was a second shadow on the parapet, for the minute before the alarm, a standing one, next to mine, and I was alone, and I had my hand out, and on the camera something was holding it.