Dead Man's Grip

by Peter James

  The viewpoint returned to the camera inside the van. Preece’s face was a mask of terror. He was fighting to free his hands – frantically pumping his body backwards and forwards as much as he could against the seat belt, jigging his arms and shoulders, his mouth contorted, yammering in terror. ‘Please . . . Please . . . Please . . . Help me! Help me! Someone help me!’

  There was now a long exterior shot, with the van conveniently rotated broadside on to the quay. Preece could be seen gyrating like a contortionist through the open window as the nose sank lower, the whole van now starting to tip forward, water pouring over the sills of the open windows.

  The viewpoint returned to the interior again. There was a loud, muffled roaring sound. Dark water with white, foaming bubbles was flooding in. The level was rising rapidly, increasingly covering more of Preece’s thrashing chest. He was rocking himself backwards and forwards, sharp, violent jerks of desperation, trying to free himself, whimpering now, a steady low ‘No . . . No . . . No . . . No . . .’

  The water now covered his neck to just below his chin, then the bottom of his earring, and it was rising rapidly. In seconds it was over his chin. Some went into his mouth and he spat it out. Then his mouth was submerged. In desperation he threw his head back, his chin breaking free from the water. He was crying pitifully now: ‘Help me, please. Someone help me.’

  The water rose relentlessly, swallowing up his exposed neck until it reached his chin again. He thrashed his head from side to side.

  Tooth took a sip of his coffee, then lit a fresh cigarette, watching dispassionately. He listened to the man breathing, taking deep gulps of air, as if frantically trying to stock up with the stuff.

  Then the water reached the ceiling of the van. Preece’s head was twitching, his eyes still wide open. The image became very blurred. A stream of bubbles jetted from his mouth. The twitching slowed, then stopped, and his head moved more gently now, rocking with the current.

  The last shot in the sequence was another exterior one. It showed the rear section of the van now, the doors open, slipping beneath the surface of the choppy, inky water. There were some bubbles, then the waves closed over it, like curtains.

  56

  The post-mortem room at the Brighton and Hove City Mortuary had recently been doubled in size. The work had been necessary both to increase the number of bodies that could be prepared for post-mortem at the same time and to replace the existing fridges with a new, wider generation able to cope with the growing trend for obesity in society.

  Roy Grace had always found the previous room claustrophobic, especially when it was occupied by the considerable numbers required for a Home Office post-mortem. Now at least there was more space for them. Although this place, with its tiled walls and stark, cold lighting, still gave him the creeps just as much as ever.

  When he had been at the police training college, learning to be a detective, an instructor had read out the FBI moral code on murder investigation, written by its first director, J. Edgar Hoover:

  No greater honor will ever be bestowed on an officer or a more profound duty imposed on him than when he is entrusted with the investigation of the death of a human being.

  Grace always remembered those words, and the burden on him as the Senior Investigating Officer, on every case. Yet at the same time as feeling that weight of responsibility, he would feel other emotions in this room, too. Always a tinge of sadness for the loss of a life – even the life of a scumbag like Ewan Preece. Who knew what kind of a person Preece might have been under different circumstances, if life had dealt him a less hopeless hand?

  In spite of his sense of responsibility, Grace also at times felt like an intruder in this room. To be a corpse, opened up and splayed out here was the ultimate loss of privacy. Yet neither the dead nor their loved ones had any say in the matter. If you died under suspicious circumstances, the Coroner would require a post-mortem.

  At this moment, Ewan Preece was a surreal sight, lying on his back, in his jeans and T-shirt, on the stainless-steel PM table, his hands still gripping the black steering wheel, which Nadiuska De Sancha had requested be detached from the vehicle and brought with him to the mortuary. He looked, in death, as if he was driving some spectral vehicle.

  At a PM table on the other side of the archway, the bloody internal organs of another corpse were laid out for a student, who was receiving instructions from one of Brighton’s consultant pathologists, and Grace’s stomach was heaving, as ever, from the stench of disinfectant, blood and decaying human innards. He glanced over, clocked the brains, liver, heart and kidneys sitting there, and the electronic weighing scales on a shelf just beyond. Beside them, on another table, lay the corpse from which they had been removed – an elderly woman the colour of alabaster, her mouth gaping, her midriff wide open, the yellow fatty tissue of the insides of her breasts facing upwards, her sternum laid across her pubis as if in some attempt by the pathologist to protect her modesty.

  He shuddered and took a few steps closer to Preece, his green gown rustling as he walked. Nadiuska was plucking delicately at the skin of one of the fingers with tweezers. James Gartrell, the SOCO photographer, was steadily working his way around the body. Glenn Branson was in a corner, surreptitiously talking on his phone. To his wife, Ari? Grace wondered. Or his solicitor? The Coroner’s Officer, Philip Keay, was standing in a green gown, blue mask hanging from its tapes just below his chin, dictating into a machine with a worried frown.

  Cleo and her assistant, Darren, stood by, ready to assist the pathologist, but at the moment they had nothing to do but watch. Occasionally she would look in Grace’s direction and give him a surreptitious smile.

  The Detective Superintendent was thinking hard. Preece’s hands glued to the wheel confirmed, beyond any doubt in his mind, that the man had been murdered. And the presence of that camera in the vehicle was bothering him a lot. Put there by the killer? Some sadistic bounty-hunter associate of Preece who had known where he had been hiding?

  Or was there an even darker aspect to this? The Mafia connection was weighing heavily on his mind. Could this have been a sadistic revenge hit?

  The body had not yet been formally identified. That would be done later by his mother or sister. Nadiuska said she would be able to dissolve the glue with acetone, leaving Grace’s team able to get fingerprints which would further confirm his identity, and as backup they would be able to get a DNA sample. But from the tattoos on his body and the scar on his face, Ford Prison had already confirmed his identity beyond much doubt.

  With Kevin Spinella from the Argus and the rest of the press having been kept well away from the crime scene, only the immediate team at the quay, and those here in the mortuary, knew that the man’s hands had been glued to the steering wheel. Grace intended to keep this information quiet for the moment. If it made the press during the next few hours, he would know where to look for the leak.

  He stepped out of the PM room and made a call to MIR-1, instructing Norman Potting to organize a group within the inquiry team to find out all they could about the camera, in particular where such a device was available for sale, in Brighton or beyond, and any recent purchases that had been made.

  Next he made a phone call to Detective Investigator Pat Lanigan, who was their liaison officer with the Revere family in America, to ask him whether in his experience the dead boy’s parents were the kind of people who might be sufficiently aggrieved to go for a revenge killing.

  Lanigan informed him that they had the money, the power and the connections – and that with people like this a whole different set of rules applied. He said that he would see what intelligence he could come up with. Sometimes, when a contract was put out, they would get to hear of it. He promised to come back to Grace as soon he found out anything.

  Grace hung up with a heavy heart. Suddenly he found himself hoping that whoever had killed Preece was just a local chancer. The notion of a Mafia-backed killing in the heart of Brighton was not something that would sit well with anyo
ne – not the council, not the tourist board, not his boss, ACC Rigg, and not with himself, either.

  He sat on a sofa in the small front office of the mortuary, poured himself a stewed coffee from the jug that was sitting on the hotplate and felt a sudden grim determination. Lanigan had said a whole different set of rules applied.

  Well, not in his beloved city, they didn’t.

  57

  ‘The time is 8.30 a.m. Saturday 1 May,’ Roy Grace announced to his team in MIR-1. ‘This is the eighteenth briefing of Operation Violin. The first thing I have to report is the positive identification of Ewan Preece.’

  ‘Shame to have lost such an upstanding member of Brighton society, chief,’ said Norman Potting. ‘And such a tacky way to die.’

  There was a titter of laughter. Grace gave him a reproachful look.

  ‘Thank you, Norman. Let’s hold the humour. We have some serious issues on our hands.’

  Bella Moy rattled her Malteser box, extracted a chocolate and popped it into her mouth, biting into it with a crunch. Grace looked back down at his notes.

  ‘It will be some days before we get the toxicology reports, but I have significant findings from the PM. The first is that there was bruising to the side of Preece’s neck very similar to the bruising that was found on his sister, Evie, who is claiming to have remembered nothing after going outside on Monday night to let her cat out. According to Nadiuska De Sancha, this is consistent with a martial arts blow with the side of a hand to cause instant loss of consciousness. This could be the way Preece was overpowered by his assailant.’

  Grace looked down again. ‘The seawater present in Preece’s lungs indicates that he was alive at the time the van went into the water and he died from drowning. The fact that his hands were glued to the steering wheel makes this extremely unlikely to have been suicide. Does anyone have a different view?’

  ‘If he was unconscious, sir,’ said Nick Nicholl, ‘how did the van actually get into the water? It would have been difficult for someone to physically push it, because when the front wheels went over the edge of the quay, surely the bottom of the chassis would have grounded on it. Wouldn’t it have needed to be driven at some speed?’

  ‘That’s a good point,’ Grace said. ‘Dudman, who own that particular section of the wharf, say that their fork-lift truck had been moved. It could have been used to push the van in.’

  ‘Wouldn’t that have required someone with an ignition key?’ asked Bella Moy.

  ‘I’m told that particular kind of fork-lift has a universal ignition key,’ Grace replied. ‘One key operates all of those vehicles in the UK. And anyone with a basic knowledge could have started it with a screwdriver.’

  ‘Has the kind of glue been established?’ asked DS Duncan Crocker.

  ‘It has been sent for lab analysis. We don’t have that information yet.’

  ‘There was no tube of glue found in the vehicle?’ Crocker asked.

  ‘No,’ Grace replied. ‘The Specialist Search Unit did an extensive dive search around the area where the van was recovered, but so far they have found nothing. There is almost zero visibility down there, which is not helpful. They are continuing searching today and doing a fingertip search of the quay areas. But my sense is that they are not going to find anything helpful.’

  ‘Why do you think that, chief?’ Glenn Branson asked.

  ‘Because this smells to me like the work of a professional. It has all the hallmarks,’ Grace said. Then he looked around at his team. ‘I did not like the mention of the hundred-thousand-dollar reward from the get-go. It wasn’t put up, as is usual, for information leading to the arrest and conviction, but just for the driver’s identity. I think we could be looking at an underworld hit here.’

  ‘Does that change anything in this inquiry, sir?’ Emma-Jane Boutwood asked.

  ‘In the 1930s this city got the sobriquet Murder Capital of Europe,’ Grace retorted. ‘I don’t intend to let anyone think they can come here, kill someone for a bounty and get away with it. And that’s what we could be dealing with right now.’

  ‘If it’s a professional Mafia hit,’ Nick Nicholl said, ‘whoever did this could already be back in America. Or wherever he came from.’

  ‘Evie Preece does not have an internal door into her garage,’ Grace replied. ‘If our man knocked Preece out, he would have had to carry him out of the house and into the garage – on a street in a densely populated neighbourhood. When he got to Shoreham Harbour, he would have had to leave him in the van while he opened the gates. Then he would have had to glue his hands to the wheel, start the fork-lift truck and use it to push the van into the water. OK, I’m speculating. But Evie Preece had a whole bunch of neighbours. Also, there are houses all around Shoreham Harbour. It’s possible Preece’s killer got lucky and no one saw a thing. But I want to ramp up those house-to-house enquiries in her street and around the harbour. Someone might have been out walking their dog or whatever. Someone must have seen something, and we have to find them.’

  He looked down at his notes again, then turned to DC Howes. ‘David, do you have anything to report from Ford?’

  ‘Not so far, boss,’ he replied. ‘It’s the usual prison situation, with everyone closing ranks. No one saw anything. They’re still working on it – going through all the recorded phone conversations around the time in question, but that could take several days.’

  Grace then turned to DC Boutwood and DC Nicholl, to whom he had delegated the line of enquiry regarding the camera found in the van.

  ‘Do you have anything to report?’

  E-J shook her head. ‘Not so far, sir. The camera is a Canon model widely on sale here, at a price of around a grand, and overseas. There are seventeen retail outlets in Brighton that stock it, as well as numerous online stores, including Amazon. In the US there are thousands of retail outlets, Radio Shack, a national chain, being among the major discounters.’

  ‘Great. So we’re looking for a needle in a haystack, is that what you’re saying?’

  ‘That’s about it, sir.’

  ‘OK,’ Grace replied, staring her back, hard, in the eye. ‘That’s one of the things we do best. Finding needles in haystacks.’

  ‘We’ll try our hardest, sir!’

  He made another note, then sat in silent thought for some moments. He could not put a finger on it, but he had a bad feeling. Copper’s nose, they used to call it. Gut feelings. Instinct.

  Whatever.

  The little shit Kevin Spinella was pushing him to hold another press conference. But he wasn’t ready for that yet and he would stall for time. All the reporter knew at this stage – unless he had something from his inside source – was that a dead body in a van had been recovered from Shoreham Harbour. The fact that the story merited only a handful of lines in today’s paper, both in its print and online editions, indicated to him that, so far at least, the reporter was in the dark.

  And that was good.

  Except, Grace thought, he was in the dark too. And that was not a good place to be at all.

  58

  Tooth was also in the dark. And that was exactly where he wanted to be. Dressed all in black, with a black baseball cap pulled low over his face, he knew he would be almost invisible outside.

  Tuesday night: 11.23 p.m. It was dry and the motorway was dark and busy. Just tail lights, headlights and occasional flashing indicators. He concentrated as he drove, thinking, working out his next steps, covering alternatives, best- and worst-case scenarios.

  At long last the lorry he had been following from Aberdeen was pulling into a service station. The driver had been going steadily for nearly five hours since he had stopped for a break on the A74M, just south of Lockerbie, and Tooth needed to urinate. The need had been getting so pressing he had been close to using the expandable flask he kept in the car for such purposes. The same kind he used to take with him behind enemy lines so he didn’t leave any traces for them to track him.

  He followed the tail lights of the truck along
the slip road and up a slight incline. They passed signs with symbols for fuel, food, accommodation and another one for the goods vehicles’ parking area.

  Conveniently, as if obeying Tooth’s silent wishes, the driver headed the articulated refrigeration lorry along past rows of parked lorries, then pulled into a bay several spaces beyond the last one, in a particularly dark area of the car park.

  Tooth switched off his lights. He had already, some miles earlier, disabled the Toyota’s interior light. He halted the car, jumped out and ran, crouching low, invisible. There were no signs of activity around him. He couldn’t see CCTV cameras in this area. The lorry nearest to his target had its blinds pulled. The driver was either asleep or watching television or having sex with a motorway hooker. Despite his desperate need to pee, he held off, waiting and watching.

  Inside the cab of his sixteen-wheel, twenty-four-ton Renault fridge-box artic, Stuart Ferguson reached down for the parking brake, then remembered it was in a different position from the one in the Volvo he normally drove. That vehicle was currently in a Sussex Police vehicle pound, where, apparently, it would remain until the inquest on the young man the vehicle had run over and killed – a fortnight ago tomorrow – was complete.

  He switched off the engine and killed the lights, and the voice of Stevie Wonder on the CD player fell silent with them.

  He was still badly shaken and had been having nightmares. Several times during these past two weeks, sweet Jessie had woken him gently, telling him he was crying and shouting out. He kept seeing that poor laddie tumbling across the road towards him, coming straight at him, still gripping the handlebars of his bike. Then the severed leg, in his rear-view mirror, some yards behind the vehicle when he had stopped.

  On top of that, he had been worrying this could be the end of his trucking career. Because he was over his allotted hours, he’d had the threat of a Death by Dangerous Driving charge hanging over him, and it had been a relief to hear the police were only going to prosecute him for the relatively minor and straightforward hours offence. Despite the accident, he loved this job, and besides, with his ex-wife, Maddie, pretty much cleaning him out, he needed to earn a substantial wage just to pay her maintenance and to make sure the kids had everything they needed.