Dead Man's Grip

by Peter James

  The entire historic, but in parts dilapidated, square was teeming with uniformed police officers, and the statuesque figure of the Brighton and Hove Duty Inspector, Sue Carpenter, was heading over to greet them. In her early forties, she stood a good six feet tall and the hat riding high on her head, with her long dark hair pushed up inside it, made her look even taller. Grace remembered her from some years back, when she was a sergeant, and had been impressed by her competence.

  ‘Good afternoon, sir,’ she said, greeting him with nervous formality, and then giving Glenn Branson a quick smile.

  ‘How are you doing?’ Grace asked.

  ‘We’ve just found a taxi parked on the third level – the lowest. The vehicle is locked, sir. It’s a bit unusual to find a taxi in a city multi-storey car park. We’ve radioed Streamline, which it’s registered with, to see if we can get any information.’

  ‘Let’s take a look,’ Grace said.

  As a precaution, never knowing when he might need them, he took out a pair of blue gloves from his go-bag in the boot of the car, and a couple of small, plastic evidence bags. Then he glanced quickly around the grassy centre of the square. Across the far side, where the exit was, he saw a halted Jaguar surrounded by police, with its boot open.

  ‘Presumably there’s CCTV on the entrance and exit?’

  ‘There are cameras, sir, and some inside. Every single one of them was vandalized last night.’

  ‘All of them?’

  ‘Yes, they’re being replaced later today, but that doesn’t help us, I’m afraid.’

  ‘Shit, shit, shit,’ he said, banging his knuckles together. He shook his head. ‘Seems a little coincidental, the timing.’

  ‘This car park is quite a hot spot for trouble, sir – in fact this whole area is,’ she reminded him, and pointed across the road at the ruin of the West Pier – one of Brighton’s biggest landmarks, which had been burned down some years before in one of the city’s biggest ever acts of vandalism.

  Grace and Branson followed Inspector Carpenter past a PCSO who was guarding the entrance and down a smelly concrete stairwell. Then they walked along the bottom level of the car park, which was almost deserted and smelled of dry dust and engine oil. The old, tired-looking concrete floor, white stanchions and red piping stretched away into the distance, gridded by parking-bay markings.

  Over to the right, partially obscured by a concrete abutment, he saw a Skoda saloon taxi that had been reversed into a bay and backed up tight against the rear wall. Two young officers stood beside it.

  As they approached, Grace noticed a few fragments of black plastic on the ground close to the car. He fished the gloves from his pocket and snapped them on. Then he knelt, picked the fragments up and put them in an evidence bag, just in case.

  At that moment a controller’s voice came through Inspector Carpenter’s radio. Grace and Branson could both hear it clearly. Apparently the Streamline operator was concerned, as she’d not been able to get a response from the driver since just after midnight last night.

  ‘Do we have a name?’ Carpenter asked.

  ‘Mike Howard,’ the voice crackled back.

  ‘Ask if she has a mobile phone number for him,’ Grace said.

  He peered into the front, then the rear of the car before trying each of the doors in turn, but they were all locked.

  Sue Carpenter radioed the request. A few moments later the operator came back with the number. Grace scribbled it down on his notebook, then immediately dialled it.

  A few moments later they heard a muted ringtone from inside the rear of the taxi. Grace ended the call, turned to one of the PCs and asked him for his baton. Looking apprehensive, the young officer produced it and handed it to him.

  ‘Stand back!’ Grace said, as he swung the baton hard at the driver’s door window.

  It cracked, with a loud bang, but remained intact. He hit it again, harder, and this time the glass broke. He smashed away some of the jagged edges with the baton, then slipped his arm in, found the handle and tugged it. He pulled the door open, leaned in and released the handbrake.

  ‘Give me a hand,’ he said to the officers, and began trying to push the car.

  For an instant it resisted, then slowly, silently, it inched forward. Grace kept going until it was a few feet out from the wall, then jerked the brake back on. He leaned in, staring at the unfamiliar controls, saw the driver’s ID on the windscreen, which showed a photograph of a burly-looking man in his forties with thinning brown hair and a startled expression. The name Mike Howard was printed beneath. Grace looked around hard, wondering if there was an internal boot release. Moments later he found it and the boot lid popped open.

  Glenn Branson reached the rear of the car first.

  Then, as he stared in, his face dropped.

  ‘Oh shit,’ he said.

  91

  Carly, seated in the busy waiting area by boarding gate 47, looked at her watch. Then she stared for a moment at the two British Airways women standing and chatting behind the desk. Occasionally there was a bong, then a brief announcement. Final call for boarding for some other flight. She looked at her watch again. Twenty-two minutes past eight. The flight was due to depart in less than twenty minutes and they hadn’t even started boarding yet. What was going on?

  She gripped her handbag and kept her holdall right in front of her. No checked luggage, she did not want any risk of delay at the other end. Her legs kept knocking together. She badly needed a cup of tea and something to eat, but she did not feel able to swallow anything.

  She called her mother. She was almost in a worse state than Carly was, blaming herself for having her medical appointment and not picking Tyler up. Then Carly just sat, shaking, raw-eyed, staring around the room at her fellow passengers, and occasionally looking through the emails that were pouring into her iPhone. Mostly work stuff. Questions or information she had requested from clients. Emails from her colleagues. Jokes from a couple of friends who hadn’t yet heard about Tyler. She did not read any of them. All she was interested in was looking to see if, by chance, an email had come in from her son.

  Two middle-aged couples sat near her, Americans in a jovial mood, heading to the UK for a golfing holiday. They were talking about golf courses. Hotels. Restaurants. The normality was irritating her. These people were in earnest discussion. Her son had been kidnapped and they were chatting away about long carries and fast greens and some water hazard they’d all had a problem with on their visit last year.

  She stood up and moved away, walked up to the desk and asked if the flight was going to be leaving on time. She was told they would be starting boarding in a couple of minutes.

  That gave her some small relief. But not much.

  She checked Friend Mapper on her phone for the hundredth time since leaving the hotel. But Tyler’s purple dot remained stubbornly in that same place, close to the entrance to Regency Square car park.

  Why there? Why are you there?

  The screen blurred with her tears. It had been over an hour since she’d spoken to DS Branson. She wondered if she should call him one more time before she got on the plane.

  But he had already promised to call the moment he had any news and she was sure he would; he seemed a good communicator. But what if he had been calling and was unable to get through? The flight was about seven hours long. How the hell was she going to be able to sit there for seven hours without news?

  She dialled to check her messages, but there were no new ones. Nothing from DS Branson. So she called his mobile number and, to her relief, he answered almost immediately.

  ‘It’s Carly,’ she said. ‘I’m at Kennedy Airport, about to board. Just thought I’d check in with you.’

  ‘Right, yeah. You OK?’

  ‘Just about.’

  ‘We’ve got your flight times and one of us will be at the gate to meet you when you land.’

  His voice sounded strange, as if he was hiding something from her. And he sounded in a hurry.

 
‘So – no – no news?’

  ‘Not yet, but we hope to have some for you later. We have just about every police officer in the county looking for Tyler. We’re going to find him.’

  ‘I had a thought – if there is – you know – any news while I’m up in the air, can you get a message to me via the pilot?’

  ‘Yes, we can. We can get you an ACARS text message via the cockpit, and most long-haul planes have satellite phones in the cockpit. The moment there’s any news I’ll get it relayed straight to you. OK?’

  She thanked him and hung up. As she did so, she heard the boarding announcement. She towed her overnight bag over towards the rear of the rapidly lengthening queue, her insides a solid knot that was getting tighter by the second.

  Seven hours.

  Seven hours of waiting.

  Carly handed over her passport and boarding card for inspection, then walked on in a silent haze, more alone and scared than she’d ever felt in her life.

  Suddenly, as she stood in the crush in the aisle of the plane, her phone pinged with an incoming text. Her heart flipped with sudden hope and she looked down eagerly. But to her disappointment it was from the phone company, O2, warning her she was close to her 50 MB overseas data limit.

  She deleted it, then found her seat. Or at least the part of it which wasn’t already occupied by the damp, overflowing girth of a perspiring bald man who looked like he weighed uncomfortably north of 500 pounds.

  If her day wasn’t already bad enough, the journey from hell had now got even worse. She sat, squashed, her elbows tucked uncomfortably in against her chest, her whole body trembling with fear.

  Fear that she might never see her son alive again.

  92

  In the total darkness, Tyler’s head hurt. He couldn’t see anything, couldn’t move his arms or legs. He was frightened and confused and knew this was not a game, that something bad was happening.

  They were travelling, he could sense that. Motion. There were strong smells of carpet and plastic, new-car smells. He’d been in a friend’s mother’s brand-new Hyundai recently and it had smelled like this. He thought he could detect rubber, too. Could hear a hum. He must be in the boot of a car, he reckoned. The taxi? Braking and accelerating. All he could move were his knees – he could bend and flex them just a little. He tried to wedge them against something solid, to get a grip, but moments later he was thrown away backwards and felt himself rolling over, until he hit something hard.

  He tried to shout to the driver, to ask him who he was, where they were going, but he could not move his mouth and his voice sounded all muffled.

  After the two police officers had come to their house and his friends had left, his mum had sat down in his bedroom and told him there were bad things happening. Bad people. They had to be careful. They needed to keep a watch for strangers near the house. He must call the police if he saw anyone.

  Was this one of the bad people driving him now?

  At least he had his iPhone in his jacket and it was switched on. Friend Mapper would be logging him and his mum would know that. She’d know exactly where he was and she would tell the police. He didn’t really need to be afraid. They would find him.

  He just hoped they would find him soon, because he had an IT class this afternoon that he really did not want to miss. And because he did not like this darkness, and not being able to move, and his arms were hurting, too.

  But it was going to be all right.

  93

  Grace dashed around to the rear of the taxi, just as Glenn Branson leaned into the boot.

  The man inside looked terrified and there was a sour reek of urine. His fleshy face was pale and clammy. Duct tape was wound around his arms, legs and mouth, the same kind of tape that Evie Preece had been bound with, Grace clocked, as he fished out his warrant card and held it up to give the man reassurance.

  ‘Police,’ he said. ‘Don’t worry, you’re safe. We’ll get you out of there.’

  He turned to Branson and to Inspector Sue Carpenter, who had joined them.

  ‘Let’s get the tape off his mouth first. Sue, call for a paramedic and POLSA and a search team, and get someone to bring some water, or tea if you can. And I want this level of the car park closed, as well as all the stairwells, in case they left by foot.’

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  Then he leaned in and, as gently as he could, got his fingertips in the join in the tape. It would have been easier without his gloves, he knew, but he kept them on and finally managed to start peeling it off, mindful that although it would be extremely painful for the man, at the same time he needed to preserve it as best he could for forensic analysis.

  As he peeled it away from his mouth, the man shouted out in pain.

  ‘Sorry,’ Grace murmured.

  The tape went all the way around the back of the man’s head and he didn’t want to hurt him any more.

  ‘Mike Howard?’ he asked.

  ‘Yes! Jesus, that hurt,’ the man said, then smiled.

  Grace folded the tape back on itself. ‘I’m sorry. We’re going to lift you out. Are you injured? In pain?’

  He shook his head. ‘Just get me out.’

  Mike Howard was a big, heavy man. With considerable difficulty, between himself and Glenn Branson they managed to manoeuvre him forward to the edge of the boot. They freed his arms and legs, and tried as best they could to remove the rest of the tape around his head. Then they stood him up and walked him around a little, supporting him until the circulation was back in his legs and he was steadier. But he was wheezing, close to hyperventilating, so they sat him down on the Skoda’s rear bumper.

  ‘Can you tell us what happened?’ Grace asked him gently.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ he said. ‘I pissed. I couldn’t help it. I couldn’t keep it in any more.’

  ‘It’s OK, don’t worry. Are you able to tell me what happened?’

  ‘What time is it?’

  ‘Half past one,’ Glenn Branson said.

  ‘What day?’

  ‘Friday.’

  The man frowned. ‘Friday? Friday morning?’

  ‘It’s afternoon, lunchtime.’

  ‘Holy shit.’

  ‘How long have you been there?’ Grace asked.

  Mike Howard took several deep breaths. ‘I was working nights. I was just heading home – about 1 a.m. – and this man hailed me along the seafront.’

  ‘Where exactly?’

  ‘Just near the Peace Statue. He got in the back and told me to take him to Shoreham Airport – said he was working a night shift there. I remember turning into the perimeter road – and that’s the last thing.’

  Grace knew that road. It had no street lighting.

  ‘The last thing you remember?’

  ‘I woke up being shaken about. I could smell diesel and fumes. I figured out I was in the boot of my cab. I was terrified. I didn’t know what was going to happen.’

  ‘Can you remember what this guy looked like?’ Grace asked.

  ‘He was wearing a baseball cap pulled low. I tried to get a look at his face – you always do in this game when you pick someone up late at night off the street. But I couldn’t see it.’

  Grace was relieved that the taxi driver seemed to be cheering up a little.

  ‘What about his accent?’

  ‘He didn’t say much. Sounded English to me. Do you have any water?’

  ‘There’s some on its way. Do you need anything to eat?’

  ‘Sugar. I’m diabetic.’

  ‘An ambulance will be here any minute – they’ll have something for you. Will you be all right for a few minutes?’

  Mike Howard nodded.

  Grace continued his questioning. ‘We think the man who did this to you has kidnapped a child and we need to find him urgently. I know you’ve had a horrendous ordeal, but anything you can tell us, anything at all that you can remember, would be valuable.’

  Mike Howard eased himself forward and stood up. ‘Agggghhh,’ he said. ‘I’ve g
ot the most terrible cramp.’ He stamped his foot, then stamped it again. ‘I’m trying to think. He was short. A short, thin little fellow, like a weasel. Promise me something?’

  ‘What?’ Grace asked.

  ‘If you find him, can I get him to pay me what he owes me, then thump him one, really hard, where it hurts?’

  For the first time in what felt a long while, Grace smiled. ‘You’ll have to beat me to it,’ he said.

  ‘I will, mate, don’t you worry.’

  Glenn Branson then said to the driver, ‘Is there someone you’d like us to contact and tell that you’re safe?’

  Grace looked at his watch pensively. Almost two and a half hours since Tyler Chase had been picked up. Why was he brought here? His assumption was that the abductor had a car parked here, with luck the rental Toyota Yaris, choosing this as a good location to attack and disable the boy, then switch vehicles. Even more ideal with its CCTV cameras out of action. Inspector Carpenter might think it was scummy Brighton vandals, but he didn’t. He had a feeling he was starting to recognize the killer’s handwriting.

  He did a calculation in his head. There were roadworks along the seafront clogging up the traffic, badly. The journey from the school would have been in the region of fifteen to twenty minutes, assuming they came straight here. The pervert seemed to like to film his victims dying. Grace was able to make another assumption, that he had not done that here. From the image he was building of the man, this wasn’t his style of location. He was going to take the boy somewhere he could film him dying. And he sensed it would be somewhere dramatic. But where?

  Where in this whole damned city – or beyond?

  He studied his watch again. If he’d brought the boy in here around 11.20 a.m., it was likely he’d not hung around. He would have left again within a few minutes. Certainly within half an hour.