by Peter James
He was truly terrified of losing her. Perhaps, he reflected, it was because after Sandy had gone he had believed he would never be happy again. And always Sandy’s shadow was present. Some days he was convinced that she was dead. But more often, he believed she was still alive. What would happen, he sometimes pondered, if she were to turn up again now? If she had some completely rational explanation for her disappearance? One scenario he played over often was that she had been kidnapped for this past decade and finally escaped. How would she feel to find him married with a child?
How would he feel, if he saw her?
He tried not to dwell on that, to push it from his mind. Sandy was in the past. Ten years ago, in almost another life. He would be forty years old very soon. He had to move on. All the legal processes for having Sandy declared legally dead were under way, with advertisements placed here and in Germany, where there had been a reported but unsubstantiated sighting by a police officer friend, who had been on holiday in Munich. As soon as the ink was dry on the formalities, he and Cleo would marry. He longed for that day.
Cleo sounded tired this afternoon, and he put the phone down at the end of the call, worried. God, there seemed to be so much that could go wrong with pregnancy – and they never told you that at the outset. His joy and excitement that she was carrying their child was tempered by his fears of what might happen to Cleo, and the awesome burden of responsibility of bringing a human being into this world.
What the hell do I know about the world and about life? Am I a fit and wise enough person to teach a child anything?
Every villain he had ever locked up had been a baby once. Any human life could take so many twists and turns. Like the face staring at him now from the photograph in the court file he was working on. A grossly overweight American, in his early sixties, with little piggy eyes and a ponytail, who made big money from selling videos of people being murdered to order – and who had shot Glenn Branson with a handgun while resisting arrest. He despised this man with all his heart and soul, which was why he was putting so much work into the trial documents, to make sure there was absolutely no chance the creep got off on any technical flaws that a brief could find in the prosecution’s case.
What kind of a baby had Carl Venner been? What kind of upbringing? Did he have parents who loved and nurtured him and had high hopes for him? How did you stop a child turning rotten? Maybe you couldn’t, but at least you could try. Giving a child a stable upbringing had to be the starting point. So many of the villains in this city came from broken homes, lone parents who either could not cope, or had long since given up caring. Or parents who sexually abused them. But he knew that wasn’t always the answer. There was always going to be an element of lottery about it, too.
And an enormity. Sometimes the sense of responsibility rose up and almost overwhelmed him. There were so many books to read on pregnancy, on the baby’s first months, those vital early years. And always the fear that the baby might have something seriously wrong. You never knew. Tests gave you some reassurance, but they couldn’t tell you everything. He just hoped their child would be healthy. They would do their very best to be good parents.
He looked down again at Venner’s face. What did your father think about you, in those months before you were born? Was he around? Did he even know your mother was pregnant? Is he alive? If he is, do you think he’s proud of you? Proud of having fathered a revolting monster who traded in pornography and murder for profit?
How would he feel if he had a son who did that? Would he be angry? Would he feel he had failed as a parent? Would he write him off as evil, beyond redemption?
‘Evil’ was a word that always bothered him. It was an easy word to apply to terrible things human beings did to one other. Roy had no doubt in his mind that there were some people, like Venner, who did things that were totally and utterly evil for financial gain, just to line his pockets and his fat gut and to put a Breitling watch on his fat wrist. But many others who did bad things were victims of poor parenting or fractured society or religious zeal. That wasn’t to say you could forgive them for their crimes, but if you could understand what led them to commit them, then you were at least doing something to try to make the world a better place.
That was Roy Grace’s own personal philosophy. He believed that everyone who was born into a decent life had one price to pay for that. No one person was ever going to change the world, but all of us should try to ensure we leave the world a slightly better place than when we came into it. That, above all else, was what he strove to do with his life.
63
‘The time is 6.30 p.m., Thursday, the ninth of June. This is the twelfth briefing of Operation Icon,’ Roy Grace announced. ‘I’m pleased to welcome Haydn Kelly to our team.’ He indicated to the smiling man seated opposite him in the Conference Room of the Major Incident Suite. Kelly was in his mid-forties, sturdily built, with brown hair cropped short, and a tanned, amiable face. He was conservatively but elegantly dressed in a smart navy suit, cream shirt and a red patterned tie.
Grace looked around his assembled team, which had now grown to twenty-six people, including the MIR-1 Office Manager – Detective Sergeant Lance Skelton – two indexers and two crime analysts. ‘Okay, a bit of housekeeping before we start.’ He broke out into a broad smile. ‘I’m very happy to tell you all that the mole who has been blighting our major enquiries for most of the past year has been outed.’
He instantly had the rapt attention of the entire room, broken only for a moment by a sudden burst of ringtone from a mobile phone. A blushing DC Emma Reeves hastily silenced it.
‘I’m very pleased and relieved to tell you that it is not anyone within the police service. It is none other than our good friend, Kevin Spinella from the Argus.’
‘Spinella?’ DS Guy Batchelor said, astonished. ‘How, chief – I mean – I thought the mole was feeding him? What did he do?’
‘He hacked my phone.’ Grace held his BlackBerry up for all to see. ‘He did it electronically. He installed some form of data logger software. It made a recording of every single phone call I received or made, and all texts, and immediately sent them electronically to his own phone.’
Several of the team were frowning. ‘But how did he get access to your BlackBerry, to install it, boss?’ Nick Nicholl asked.
‘He didn’t need to,’ Grace replied. ‘Ray Packham at the High Tech Crime Unit said that all he would have needed to do was to stand within a few feet of me. I keep the Bluetooth option switched on all the time. He could have simply uploaded it from his phone to mine in a matter of seconds.’
‘But that little toerag’s a newspaper reporter, not a tekkie boffin, boss,’ DC Exton said.
‘He would have needed a tekkie friend,’ Grace said. ‘I imagine we’ll find whoever that is. At this moment Spinella’s in custody and his phone’s being taken apart. But I need the High Tech Crime Unit to check all your phones – and my strong advice is to keep your Bluetooth switched off all the time you don’t need it.’
‘So, do we know how far this goes up the chain of command at the Argus, sir?’ Dave Green asked.
‘I spoke to the editor, Michael Beard, earlier. He sounded very genuinely shocked, and said if that were the case, the reporter was totally out of line and acting in a rogue manner, completely alien to the paper’s policy. I subsequently received an email from him a few minutes before I came in here, telling me that Spinella has been suspended with immediate effect. I get the sense Spinella was acting alone – the editor wouldn’t do that to him if he were acting on official policy.’
‘So what happens to Spinella’s career now?’ Norman Potting asked.
Bella Moy rounded on him. ‘What? You care?’
Glenn Branson watched the exchange, intrigued. Until last night he thought that Bella couldn’t stand the man. Now, he realized, it was more like the bickering of an old married couple. He was still in shock from seeing them together, and had not told Roy yet. He looked at the two of them now. Surely
she was capable of attracting someone a lot better than Norman?
Such as himself.
Then again, he knew, his collapsed relationship with Ari showed just how little he understood women.
‘I think I’d be lying,’ Roy Grace went on, ‘if I said I was going to be losing any sleep over harming Kevin Spinella’s future career prospects.’
There was a ripple of laughter.
‘Has he been charged yet?’ Jon Exton asked.
‘What, like his phone?’ Potting riposted and chortled, oblivious to the raised eyebrows around him.
Grace ignored him. ‘Yes, he has. With a bit of luck he could be looking at three to five years.’
‘Couldn’t happen to a nicer guy,’ Nick Nicholl said sarcastically.
‘He’ll like being inside,’ Potting said, on a roll now. ‘He thrives on inside information!’ He chortled again.
‘Very witty, Norman,’ Grace said. Then he turned to the press officer, Sue Fleet. ‘You’ll need to liaise with the Argus and find out who will be our new principal contact there.’
‘Yes, sir.’
‘Okay, let’s move on, down to business.’ He looked at his prepared notes. ‘Glenn, what do you have for us from the post-mortem today?’
‘We hope to have the DNA results on the four limbs back tomorrow, boss. But from their well-preserved condition the pathologist Nadiuska De Sancha was able to match them up pretty well to the torso. She was unable to find anything under the nails, skin scrapings or anything else which might indicate a struggle and perhaps give us the perp’s DNA.’
‘What about fingerprints?’
‘Yes, boss, we got a complete dead set.’
‘Good.’
‘We also got good plantars, too.’ Plantars were toe prints. ‘The fingerprints indicate the hands – therefore the arms – are probably from the same body, but there are no hits from the database, so we’re no further forward with identification.’ He turned to the forensic podiatrist. ‘Do you have anything to add on the legs, Haydn?’
‘At this stage,’ Kelly said, ‘the right and left leg appear to belong to the same body – I’m as near to one hundred per cent certain as I can be. I fully expect the DNA analysis will confirm this for us.’
‘So all we need is the head, and we’ll have a complete assemble-it-yourself human cadaver in kit form,’ Potting said.
There were several sniggers. Bella Moy gave him a reproachful look.
‘What do you have for us on mispers, Norman?’ Grace asked.
‘We now have thirty-seven male mispers from the three counties, chief, who fit the age and build profile of the victim. The families that we have been able to contact have been asked to provide items we might be able to obtain DNA from. There are five mispers where we have been unable to find any relatives, and another six with relatives who can’t provide us with anything at all.’
Grace thanked him, and turned to DC Nick Nicholl. ‘Nick, how are you getting on with the list of people who’ve had access to Stonery Farm?’
‘We’re pretty much complete, sir.’ He turned to the indexer Annalise Vineer. ‘Annalise has been making up a database for us to cross-reference against.’
‘We have everyone in it who has been to the farm in the last twelve months – at least the names that the Winter family have given us,’ she said, with a slight toss of her head which sent her fringe flicking left, then right, over her forehead. ‘Tradesmen, friends, professionals. I’m also cross-referencing them against the Police National Database to see if there are any matches with known criminals.’
‘Good work,’ Grace said. He looked down at his notes. ‘Right, I understand we have some development regarding the suit fabric.’ He looked at Glenn.
‘I had a long conversation with a very helpful woman at Dormeuil, the cloth manufacturer. They’ve confirmed it is their fabric, and, no surprise, that it is not one of their major sellers. One problem we have – but it could be much worse – is that a relatively new specialist manufacturer of men’s fashion suits, called Savile Style, bought a large quantity of the material three years ago, making over nine hundred suits from it, which they’ve supplied mostly to individual men’s clothing stores around the country – as well as some overseas. They’re putting together a list of all stockists – definitely one or two in Brighton – who bought the suits. Dormeuil are also letting me have a list of all tailors who’ve bought bolts of this cloth too, which would have been for made-to-measure suits – tailors like Gresham Blake.’
‘What we need to do,’ Grace said, ‘is to get the names of every individual we can who bought a suit in this fabric and then, Annalise, check against the visitor list to Stonery Farm and see if that throws up anything.’ He turned to Bella Moy. ‘Did we get any more leads from Crimewatch?’
‘No, sir,’ she said. ‘A steady volume of calls – forty-eight in the last two days – but nothing else of significance, so far.’
‘Right, the footprint.’ He turned to the Crime Scene Manager. ‘David, what have you got for us so far?’
‘We have actually got five matching footprints from the scene, boss. Three of them correspond to the sections of the lake where limbs were recovered, which is a good indication they might be the perp’s. The tread is over an inch deep, which means almost certainly a boot of some kind. Hard to be precise about the size – often shoe and boot manufacturers use the same sole over several sizes and the fit is in the uppers. But this appears to be smallish – probably a man’s size eight.’
‘Can you give us an indication of the perpetrator’s height from that, Haydn?’ Grace said. He looked quizzically at the forensic podiatrist.
‘Not really, there are too many variables. Some leading experts say the normal height range for this size would be from five foot five inches to five foot nine. But that is making a number of assumptions, including that he was wearing footwear correctly sized for him. People often wear gum boots a size larger than their normal shoe size – and if he’s a smart crim, it’s possible he wore padded-out boots to deceive us about his true size. If he’s really forensically aware, he may have even bought a new insole, to wear a bigger size boot in an attempt to also mask his footprint.’
‘So,’ Glenn said, ‘assuming the scrote’s not a size nine or ten squeezed into these boots, which would be pretty difficult to walk with, would it be a reasonable assumption we are looking at someone no taller than five-eight?’
‘Reasonable but not certain,’ Kelly replied. ‘I would not be comfortable telling you that you could eliminate taller people than that from this enquiry.’
‘Haydn,’ Grace said, ‘I’d like you to explain one of your particular skills, which could become relevant at a later stage in this enquiry. Am I correct that you would be able to recognize whoever left these footprints, from watching him walk and studying his gait?’
‘A human gait is as distinctive as a fingerprint,’ Kelly said. ‘Gait is a person’s style or manner of walking and divided into two phases: Stance and Swing. In the stance phase, the person’s heel contacts the ground, body weight is transferred through the foot to when the toes leave the ground – technically this is called heel contact, midstance and propulsion. The swing phase begins immediately after the toes leave the ground, the whole of the lower limb swings forward, and ends at the point when the heel re-strikes the ground. This is unquestionable. How the foot, lower limb and the rest of the body behave in achieving this is distinctive to each individual. Equally that same lower limb can have a posture – or shape – that contributes to its individuality. In some cases this is quite pronounced.’
Grace’s phone, on silent, vibrated. On the display it read, INTERNATIONAL.
Excusing himself he stepped away from the table and out of the room into the corridor, answering it as he walked, ‘Detective Superintendent Grace.’
From the other end he heard an American voice he recognized from their conversation on Monday. The man had been serious and to the point then, and was the sa
me now. ‘Sir, it’s Detective Myman, from the LAPD.’
‘Good to hear from you, how are you?’
‘We’re doing fine,’ the American said. ‘We got a piece of good news for you. We have a suspect in custody for the murder of Marla Henson, assistant to Gaia Lafayette.’
Grace’s spirits soared. ‘You do? Fantastic!’
‘I thought you should know right away, so you can maybe lighten up on your protection of her.’
‘How certain are you this is the right person?’
‘Oh, he’s the perp, no question about that. Got the gun in his house that matches up with the ballistics, got his computer with the two emails he sent on it, and there’s a whole stack of newspaper cuttings about Gaia in his den with some damned strange wording and symbols written all over them. He’s a screwball, but he’s pretty much admitted it.’
‘What was his motive? He just hated her?’
‘He’s got a woman he lives with, she was kind of a bit part actress some years back. Plenty of them in this city. She waits tables in a small place in Santa Monica. Seems like he thought it was unfair Gaia got the part and she didn’t, so he kind of figured in his dumbass mashed-up brain that if he eliminated Gaia, his girl would get the part instead.’
‘This is very good news that you’ve got him,’ Grace said.
‘I’ll let you have any more information as the situation develops.’
‘I’d appreciate that.’
