Dead Man's Grip

by Peter James

  ‘What’s the problem, Justin?’

  ‘Well, you asked me to take him to the dentist. I’m at the school now to collect him, but they’re telling me you arranged a taxi to take him there.’

  Carly sat down on the side of the bed. ‘A taxi? I didn’t arrange any—’

  A terrible, dark dread began to seep through her.

  ‘A taxi collected him half an hour ago,’ Justin said, sounding a little pissed off. ‘Did you forget?’

  ‘Oh, God,’ Carly said. ‘Justin! Oh, my God. Tell me it’s not true?’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘This can’t have happened. They must have made a mistake. Tyler has to be in the school somewhere. Have they checked? Have they looked everywhere?’ Her voice was trembling with rising panic. ‘Please get them to check. Tell them to check. Tell them they have to check.’

  ‘Carly, what’s the matter? What is it?’

  ‘Please let him be there. Please, Justin, you have to find him. Please go in there and find him. Please! Oh, my God, please.’ She stood up, hyperventilating now, walking around the room blindly. ‘Please, Justin!’

  ‘I don’t understand, Carly. I spoke to Mrs Rich. She walked him to the gate and watched until he was safely in the taxi.’

  ‘It’s not possible! It’s not possible, Justin. Please don’t tell me he’s not there.’ She was sobbing and shouting in her desperation. ‘Please tell me he’s still there!’

  There was a brief moment of silence, then Justin said, ‘What’s the matter, Carly. Calm down! Tell me – what’s the matter?’

  ‘Justin, call the police. I did not order a taxi.’

  86

  The traffic jam along the seafront was irritating Tooth. This had not been part of his plan. On his schedule he’d allowed a maximum of ten minutes for this section of the journey, but it had already taken twenty-two. And they were still barely moving in stop-start traffic that was being coned into a single lane by roadworks ahead.

  The noise behind him was irritating him too, but it was keeping the kid distracted while he drove, so that was a good thing. He watched him in the mirror. The boy, in his red school blazer and wire-framed glasses, was concentrating hard on some electronic game.

  Click. Beeehhh . . . gleeep . . . uhuhuhurrr . . . gleep . . . grawwwwwp . . . biff, heh, heh, heh-warrrup, haha . . .

  Suddenly the kid looked up. ‘Where are we going? I thought we were going to the Drive? This isn’t the right way.’

  Tooth spoke in his English accent. ‘I had a message that the address got changed. Your dentist is working at his other clinic today in a different part of the city, over in Regency Square.’

  ‘OK.’

  Click. Beeehhh . . . gleeep . . . uhuhuhurrr . . . gleep . . . grawwwwwp . . . biff, heh, heh, heh-warrrup, haha . . .

  The taxi’s radio crackled, then a voice said, ‘Pick up for Withdean Crescent. Anyone close to Withdean Crescent?’

  From behind Tooth came, Twang . . . heh, heh, heh, grawwwwpppp . . .

  They were getting closer now. In a few moments he would make a left turn.

  Twang . . . eeeeeekkkk . . . greeeep . . . heh, heh, heh . . .

  ‘What game are you playing?’ Tooth asked, wanting the kid to feel OK, relaxed, normal, at least for the next couple of minutes.

  ‘It’s called Angry Birds. It’s ace. Have you played it?’

  Concentrating now, Tooth did not reply. The Skoda taxi made a sharp left turn off the seafront into Regency Square. As it did so, Tooth sneezed, loudly, then sneezed again.

  ‘Bless you,’ Tyler said politely.

  Tooth grunted. He drove up the square of terraced Regency houses, all painted white and in different stages of dilapidation, some divided into apartments and some converted into hotels. At the top he made a right, following the road around the grassy park in the middle of the square and then back down towards the seafront. He swung right into the entrance to the underground car park and partway down the ramp, had another fit of sneezing. He halted the car, sneezing again and pulling a handkerchief out of his pocket. He sneezed once more into it.

  ‘Bless you,’ Tyler said again.

  The driver turned. Tyler thought the man was going to thank him, but instead he saw something black in the man’s hand that looked like the trigger of a gun, but without the rest of the weapon. Then he felt a hard jet of air on his face, accompanied by a sharp hiss. Suddenly he found it hard to breathe, and he took a deep gulp, while the air still jetted at him from the capsule.

  Tooth watched the boy’s eyes closing, then turned and continued down the ramp, lowering his window, then removing the handkerchief from his face. He carried on winding down to the car park’s lowest level, which was deserted apart from one vehicle. His rental Toyota, with new licence plates.

  He reversed into the bay alongside it.

  87

  At 11.25 a.m. Roy Grace was seated at his desk, making some last-minute adjustments to his press statement, which he was due to read out at midday.

  So far nothing seemed to be going his way in this investigation, and to make matters even more complicated, the trial of snuff-movie merchant Carl Venner was starting in just over two weeks’ time. But for now he had no time to think about anything other than Operation Violin.

  There had been no progress reported on any of the lines of enquiry at this morning’s briefing meeting. The Outside Inquiry Team had not found anyone who had sold the cameras that had filmed Preece’s and Ferguson’s demise. No one so far had witnessed anything unusual outside Evie Preece’s house. The West Area Major Crime Branch Team had had no breakthrough yet in their investigation into Warren Tulley’s murder in Ford Prison.

  So many people had bought tubes of superglue in shops around the city during the past week that it made any follow-up a resourcing nightmare. Despite that, the team members had collected all available CCTV footage from inside and outside each of the premises that was covered by it. If – and when – they were able to put a face to the suspect, then they’d begin a trawl through these hundreds of hours of video.

  His phone rang. It was his Crime Scene Manager, Tracy Stocker, calling from Newport Pagnell Services.

  ‘Roy, we’ve found one item of possible interest so far. The stub of a Lucky Strike cigarette. I can’t tell you if it is significant, but it’s a relatively unusual brand for the UK.’

  As a smoker, albeit an occasional one, Grace knew a bit about cigarette brands. Lucky Strikes were American. If, as he surmised, the killings of Preece and Ferguson were the work of a professional, it was a distinct possibility that a hit man known to the Reveres and trusted by them had been employed. He could be an American, sent over here. He felt a beat of excitement, as if this small item did have the potential to be interesting – although he knew, equally, its presence could have a totally innocent explanation.

  ‘Did you manage to get a print from it, Tracy?’ he asked.

  Getting fingerprints from cigarette butts was difficult and depended to some extent on how they had been held.

  ‘No. We can send it for chemical analysis, but we may have more luck with DNA. Do you want me to fast-track it?’

  Grace thought for a moment. Fast-tracking could produce a result within one to two days. Otherwise it would take a working week or longer. The process was expensive, at a time when they were meant to be keeping costs down, but money was less of an issue on murder inquiries.

  ‘Yes, fast-track definitely,’ he said. ‘Good work, Tracy. Well done.’

  ‘I’ll ping you the photos of it,’ she said.

  ‘Any luck with shoe prints or tyre prints?’

  ‘Not so far. Unfortunately the ground’s dry. But if there is anything, we’ll find it.’

  He smiled, because he knew that if anyone could, she would. He asked her to keep him updated. Then, as he hung up, his phone rang again. It was Duncan Crocker, sounding as if he had been up all night.

  ‘Boss, we’ve had two possible hits on cars at Newport Pagnell
that arrived at the same time as Stuart Ferguson. One is a Vauxhall Astra and the other is a Toyota Yaris – both of them common rental vehicles,’ the Detective Sergeant said. ‘We’ve eliminated the Astra, which was being driven by a sales rep for a screen-printing company. But the Yaris is more interesting.’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘You were right, sir. It’s a rental car – from Avis at Gatwick Airport. I put a marker on it and it pinged an ANPR camera on the M11 near Brentwood at 8 a.m. this morning. A local traffic unit stopped it. It was a twenty-seven-year-old female driver who lives in Brentwood, on her way to work.’

  Grace frowned. Was Crocker being dim?

  ‘It doesn’t sound like you got either of the right vehicles, Duncan.’

  ‘I think it may do when you hear this, sir. When the young lady got out of the car, she realized it wasn’t her licence plates on the car. Someone had taken hers and replaced them with these.’

  ‘While she was in the Newport Pagnell Services?’

  ‘She can’t swear that, sir – she can’t remember the last time she noticed her number plates. To be honest, a lot of us probably don’t.’

  Grace thought for a moment.

  ‘So it may be that our suspect has switched plates with hers. Have you put a marker out on her plates?’

  ‘I have, sir, yes. So far nothing.’

  ‘Good work. Let me know the instant anyone sees that car.’

  ‘Of course, sir.’

  ‘Have you sent someone down to Avis at Gatwick?’

  ‘I’ve sent Sara Papesch and Emma-Jane Boutwood.’

  Grace frowned. ‘Who’s Sara Papesch?’

  ‘She’s just joined the team. Bright girl – a Kiwi detective, over here on a secondment.’

  ‘OK, good.’

  Grace liked to know everyone on his team personally. It worried him when an inquiry started getting so big that his team members began taking on new members without his sanction. He was feeling, for one of the rare moments in his career, that things were getting on top of him. He needed to calm down, take things steady.

  He looked at the round wooden clock on his wall. It had been a prop in the fictitious police station in the TV police series The Bill. Sandy had bought it for his twenty-sixth birthday. Beneath it was a stuffed seven pound, six ounce brown trout Sandy had also bought him, from an antiques stall in Portobello Road, early in their marriage. He kept it beneath the clock to give him a joke he could crack to detectives working under him, about patience and big fish.

  It was also there as a reminder to himself. To always be patient. Every murder investigation was a puzzle. A gazillion tiny pieces to find and fit together. Your bosses and the local media were always breathing down your neck, but you had to remain calm, somehow. Panic would get you nowhere, other than leading you to make wrong, uninformed decisions.

  His door opened and Glenn Branson came in, looking as he did most of the time these days, as if he was carrying the weight of the world on his shoulders. Grace waited for him to begin regaling him with the latest saga in his marriage break-up, but instead the DS placed his massive hands on the back of one of the two chairs in front of his desk and leaned forward. ‘We have a development, old-timer, and it’s not a good one. I’ve just had a call from Carly Chase in New York.’

  Now he had Grace’s full attention. ‘Her mission isn’t going well, as predicted, right?’

  ‘You could say that, boss. Tony Revere’s mother was killed in a car smash last night.’

  Grace stared at him in stunned silence. He could feel the blood draining from every artery in his body.

  ‘Killed?’

  ‘Yes.’

  For some moments, the Detective Superintendent was too shell-shocked to even think straight. Then he asked, ‘What information do you have? How? I mean, what happened?’

  ‘I’ll come back to it – that’s the least of our problems. We have a much bigger one. Carly Chase’s twelve-year-old son has gone missing.’

  ‘Missing? What do you mean?’

  ‘It sounds like he’s been abducted.’

  Grace stared into Branson’s big, round eyes. He felt as if a bolus of cold water had been injected into his stomach. ‘When – when did this happen?’

  ‘A friend of Carly, called Justin Ellis, should have picked her son up from St Christopher’s School at 11.15 a.m. to take him to a dental appointment – he was having a brace adjusted. Ellis got there at ten past, to discover the boy had been collected twenty minutes earlier by a taxi. But Carly Chase is absolutely adamant she didn’t order a taxi.’

  Grace stared at him, absorbing the information, trying to square it with the news he had just had about the licence plates from Duncan Crocker.

  ‘She seemed in a pretty ramped-up state yesterday. Are you sure she didn’t forget she’d ordered one?’

  ‘I just came off the phone to her. She didn’t order it, she’s one hundred per cent sure.’

  Branson sat down in front of him, folded his arms and went on, ‘One of his teachers at the school got a call that the taxi was outside. She knew he was being picked up, because his mum had already told them that was going to happen. She didn’t think to query it.’

  ‘Did she see the driver?’

  ‘Not really, no. He was wearing a baseball cap. But she wasn’t really focused on him. Her concern was that Tyler got into the car safely – and she watched him do that from the school gates.’

  ‘So they just let their pupils get into taxis without checking with anyone?’ Grace quizzed.

  ‘They have strict procedures,’ Branson replied. ‘The parents have to have given prior sanction, which Carly Chase had, on a blanket basis. Apparently Tyler was regularly dropped off and picked up by taxis, so no one had any reason to question it today.’

  Grace sat in silence for some moments, thinking hard and fast. He looked at his watch. ‘The appointment is for 11.30 a.m.?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Has anyone checked with the dentist to see if he’s turned up?’

  ‘Someone’s on that now. He hadn’t as of a couple of minutes ago.’

  ‘Where’s the dentist?’

  ‘In Wilbury Road.’

  ‘St Christopher’s is a private school, right? On New Church Road?’

  Branson nodded.

  ‘That’s a five-minute drive. Ten, max. He was picked up just before 11 a.m.?

  ‘That’s right.’

  ‘Are you on to the taxi companies?’

  ‘All of them. I’ve got Norman Potting, Nick Nicholl, Bella Moy and Stacey Horobin making calls right now.’

  Grace thumped his desk in anger and frustration. ‘Shit, shit, shit! Why wasn’t I told about this dental appointment?’

  Branson gave him a helpless look. ‘We guarded her house with the boy and her mother – the boys’ gran – in it all night. And we had a friend of Carly Chase, who was doing the school run, tailed – to make sure he got there safely. We were going to do the same this afternoon when he came out of school. No one said anything about him having an appointment.’

  Grace shook his head. ‘She was vulnerable. That meant anyone close to her was vulnerable, too. We should have had someone at the school today.’

  ‘Hindsight’s easy. Most people wouldn’t get out of bed in the morning if they knew what was going to happen.’

  Grace stared at him bleakly. ‘Knowing what was going to happen would make this job a damned sight easier.’ He picked up a pen and began making notes on his pad, his brain going into overdrive. ‘OK, do we have a photograph of this boy?’

  ‘No. I have a description of him. He’s five foot tall, looks a little like a young Harry Potter – floppy brown hair, oval wire-framed glasses, wearing a school uniform of red blazer, white shirt, red and grey tie, and grey trousers.’

  ‘Good, that’s fairly distinctive,’ Grace said. ‘We need a photo PDQ.’

  ‘We’re on to that.’

  ‘Has anyone spoken to the gran?’

  ‘She’s at a
doctor’s appointment at the Sussex County. I have someone on their way there.’

  ‘Do we have the make of the taxi? Was it a saloon or an estate car or a people carrier?’

  ‘I don’t have that yet.’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘Because I haven’t had time. I wanted you to know right away.’

  Grace looked up at a map of East and West Sussex on his wall, then at his bookshelf, where he could see a copy of the official Kidnap Manual, which contained all the procedures and protocols for kidnap and abduction. He knew a lot of them by heart, but he would check carefully through it. Before that he had some urgent fast-time actions to carry out. He grabbed the phone off his desk and, as he dialled, he said, ‘Glenn, we need to plot an arc around the school – how far away someone could be in any direction now and in thirty minutes’ time. We’ve got to get the make of vehicle. Is someone going to see the teacher?’

  ‘Two officers from the Outside Inquiry Team should be at the school now.’

  ‘We need more officers down at that school immediately, talking to everyone around it, in houses, walking their dogs, cats, goldfish.’

  Grace dialled the number for Ops-1 – the Duty Inspector in the Force Control Room, Becky Newman. He gave her a quick summary and asked her who the Force Gold was today. The Gold Commander was normally a Superintendent or Chief Superintendent who would take control of any Critical Incident that happened on his watch.

  He was pleased to hear it was Chief Superintendent Graham Barrington, the current Commander of Brighton and Hove, an exceptionally able and intelligent officer. Moments later he was on the line. Grace quickly brought him up to speed. Barrington said he wanted a Detective as Silver and suggested Chief Inspector Trevor Barnes. He quickly reeled off the Bronzes to complete his command team: one a POLSA for searches, then one for Intelligence, one for Investigations and one for Media. In all child abductions or kidnaps, the way the media was handled was crucial.