Dead Man's Grip

by Peter James

  Two paramedics, accompanied by a uniformed officer, were running towards them. Grace edged Glenn Branson to one side to make way for them, then he said the DS, ‘We’re out of here.’

  ‘Where to?’

  ‘I’ll tell you in the car.’

  94

  Tooth, keeping rigidly to the 30mph speed limit, drove the Toyota west along the main road above Shoreham Harbour. He was looking at the flat water of the basin, down to his left, where Ewan Preece had taken his last drive, and almost did not notice a roadworks traffic light turning red in front of him.

  He braked hard. Behind him in the boot of the car he heard a thud and further back a scream of locked tyres. For an anxious moment he thought the car behind was going to rear-end him.

  Then the sudden wail of a siren gave him a new concern. Moments later, blue lights flashing, a police car tore past from the opposite direction. He kept a careful watch in his mirrors, but it kept on going, either not noticing or not interested in him. Relieved, he drove on for some distance, passing a number of industrial buildings to his left, until he saw his landmark, the blue low-rise office block of the Shoreham Port Authority building.

  He turned right into a narrow street opposite it, passing a modern kitchen appliances showroom on the corner. He drove a short way up the street, which rapidly became shabbier and went under a railway bridge up ahead. But before then he turned off it into a messy area that was part industrial estate and part low-rent apartment blocks. He remembered it all well and it seemed unchanged.

  He passed a massive, grimy printing works on his left and various cars, some of which were parked on the road, while others had been left haphazardly in front of and around different buildings. It was the kind of area where no one would notice you, or take any interest in you if they did.

  He turned right again, into the place he had discovered six years ago. He drove along the side of a shabby ten-storey apartment block, passing cars and vans parked outside, and came into a wide, half-empty parking area at the rear of the building, bounded by a crumbling wall on two sides, a wooden fence on a third and the rear of the apartment block.

  He reversed the car in, backing it tight up against the wall, then sat and ate the chicken sandwich he had bought earlier at a petrol station, drank a cranberry juice, got out and locked up. With his cap pulled down low and his sunglasses on, he peered up at the grimy windows for any sign of an inquisitive face, but all he saw was laundry flapping from a couple of balconies. He stood by the car, pretending to be checking a rear tyre, listening to make sure that his passenger was silent.

  He heard a thud.

  Angrily he opened the boot and saw the boy’s frightened eyes behind his glasses. It didn’t matter how tightly he bound him, there was nothing to anchor him to in here. He wondered if it would be wisest to break his back and paralyse him – but that would mean lifting him out first and he didn’t want to take that risk.

  Instead he said, ‘Make another sound and you’re dead. Understand what I’m saying?’

  The boy nodded, looking even more frightened.

  Tooth slammed down the lid.

  95

  Tyler was terrified by the man in the black baseball cap and the dark glasses, but he was angry, too. His wrists were hurting from the bindings and he had cramp in his right foot. He listened, hard, could hear footsteps crunching, getting fainter.

  He’d felt the car move when the man got out, but it hadn’t moved again, which meant he hadn’t got back in. He must have gone somewhere.

  Tyler tried to work out what time it was, or where he might be. He’d just seen daylight when the boot lid rose up. And the wall of a building, a crummy-looking wall, and a couple of windows, but it could have been anywhere in the city, anywhere he had ever been to. But the fresh air that had come in, momentarily, smelled familiar. A tang of salt, but mixed with timber and burnt gas and other industrial smells. They were close to a harbour, he thought. Almost certainly Shoreham Harbour. He’d been kayaking here with his school, several times.

  The daylight wasn’t bright, but it didn’t feel like it was evening, more just overcast as if it was going to rain.

  They would find him soon. His mother would know where he was from Friend Mapper. She might even ring him – not that he would be able to answer it.

  Defiantly, he threw himself against the side of the car, kicking out as hard as he could. Then again. And again.

  He kicked until he had tired himself out. It didn’t sound as if anyone had heard him.

  But surely they would find him soon?

  96

  Grace, followed by Branson, sprinted up three floors at Brighton’s John Street Police Station, hurried along a corridor and went into the CCTV Control Room, which was manned around the clock.

  It was a large space, with blue carpet and dark blue chairs, and three separate workstations, each comprising a bank of CCTV monitors on which was a kaleidoscope of moving images of parts of the city of Brighton and Hove and other Sussex locations, keyboards, computer terminals and telephones. Every police CCTV camera in the county could be viewed from here.

  Two of the workstations were currently occupied by controllers, both hunched over them with headsets on. One of them looked busy, engaged in a police operation, but the other turned as they came in and nodded a greeting. He was a fresh-faced man in his late thirties with neat brown hair, wearing a lightweight black jacket. His badge gave his name as Jon Pumfrey. Moments later they were joined in the room by Chief Superintendent Graham Barrington, the Gold Commander.

  Barrington, in his mid-forties, was a tall, slim man with short, fair hair, and the athletic air of a regular marathon runner. He wore a short-sleeved white uniform shirt with epaulettes, black trousers and shoes, held a radio in his hand and had a phone clipped to his belt.

  ‘Jon,’ the Chief Superintendent said, ‘which are the nearest cameras to the Regency Square car park?’

  ‘There’s a police one right opposite boss,’ Pumfrey said, ‘but it’s hopeless – there’s some constant interference with it.’

  He tapped the keyboard and a moment later they saw successive waves rippling up and down one of the screens directly in front of him.

  ‘How long’s it been like that?’ Roy Grace asked suspiciously.

  ‘At least a year. I keep asking them to do something about it.’

  He shrugged. ‘There are also cameras to the east and west – which direction do you want?’

  ‘We’ve just done a quick recce,’ Grace said. ‘If you exit in a vehicle from the Regency Square car park, you have to turn left on the seafront, on Kings Road – unless you go around up to Western Road, but that’s complicated.’

  Part of that road was buses and taxis only. Grace did not think the abductor would take the risk of getting stopped there.

  ‘I’ve set some parameters,’ he said. ‘What we need to see is the video footage showing all vehicles in motion close to the car park, travelling east or west on King’s Road between 11.15 a.m. and 11.45 a.m. today. We’re looking particularly for a dark-coloured Toyota Yaris saloon, with a single male driving, either accompanied by a twelve-year-old boy or solo.’

  Graham Barrington said, ‘All right, you guys, I’ll leave you to it. Anything you want, just shout.’

  Grace thanked him, and the two detectives then stood behind Pumfrey and began to watch intently.

  ‘The Yaris is a popular car, sir,’ Pumfrey said. ‘Must be thousands on the roads. We’re likely to see a few.’

  ‘We’ll put markers on the first five we see, to start with,’ Grace said. ‘If they’re turning left, they’re heading east, but that might be only for a short distance, before they make a U-turn and head west. Let’s check east first.’

  Almost as he spoke they saw a dark-coloured Yaris heading east, past the bottom of West Street. The camera was on the south side of the road.

  ‘Freeze that!’ Branson said. ‘Can you zoom in?’

  Jon Pumfrey tapped the keyboard and t
he camera zoomed in, jerkily but quickly, on the driver’s door and window. It was a grainy zoom, but they could see clearly enough that it was two elderly ladies.

  ‘Let’s move on,’ Grace said.

  They watched the fast-forwarding images, cars darting by in flickering movements.

  Then Grace called out, ‘Stop! Go back.’

  They watched the tape rewind.

  ‘OK! That one.’ They were looking at a dark grey Yaris with what appeared to be a single occupant, a male, driving. The time said 11.38.

  ‘Now zoom in, please.’

  The image was again grainy, but this time it looked like a male, most of his face obscured by a baseball cap and dark glasses.

  ‘It’s not that bright out there. Why’s he wearing dark glasses?’ Pumfrey queried.

  Grace turned to Branson. ‘That was the description by the school teacher – the taxi driver was wearing a baseball cap. And so was the man who rented the car from Avis!’ Suddenly he felt his adrenalin pumping. Turning back to Pumfrey, he asked, ‘Is that the best image you can get?’

  ‘I can send it for enhancement, but that would take a while.’

  ‘OK, run forward. Can we get the registration?’

  Pumfrey inched the car forward frame by frame.

  ‘Golf Victor Zero Eight Whisky Delta X-Ray,’ Branson read out, as Grace wrote it down.

  ‘Right. Can you run an ANPR check from here?’ he asked Pumfrey.

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  They continued watching. Then, to Grace’s excitement, the car reappeared, this time travelling west.

  ‘It’s gone round the roundabout at the Palace Pier, doing a U-turn!’ he said. ‘Where’s the next camera?’

  ‘Other than the dud one opposite the Regency Square car park, the next is a mile to the west, on Brunswick Lawns.’

  ‘Let’s look at that one,’ Grace said.

  Five minutes later, which indicated the vehicle was sticking rigidly to the speed limit, and allowing for a couple of traffic-light stops and the roadworks delay, the car appeared, still travelling west.

  ‘Where’s the next?’ Grace asked.

  ‘That’s the last of the city’s CCTV cameras in this direction, sir,’ Pumfrey said.

  ‘OK. Now let’s see if this vehicle has triggered any ANPR camera since 11.15 a.m. What’s the first one west of this position?’

  Pumfrey turned to a different computer and entered the data. Grace noticed his partially eaten lunch on the wooden table beside him. An empty plastic lunchbox, a coil of orange peel and an unopened yoghurt. Healthy, he thought, depending of course on what had been in the sandwich.

  ‘Here we are: 11.54 a.m. This is the ANPR camera at the bottom of Boundary Road, Hove, at the junction with the end of the Kingsway.’

  Suddenly a photograph of the front of a dark grey Yaris appeared on the screen, its number plate clearly visible, but the occupant hard to make out through an almost opaque screen. By looking very closely it was possible to distinguish what might have been someone in a baseball cap and dark glasses, but without any certainty.

  ‘Can’t we get a better image of the face?’ Branson asked.

  ‘Depends how the light hits the windscreen,’ Pumfrey replied. ‘These particular cameras are designed to read number plates, I’m afraid, not faces. I can send it for enhancement if you want?’

  ‘Yes, both of those images, please,’ Grace said. ‘Is that the only ANPR it’s triggered?’

  ‘The only one showing today.’

  Grace did a mental calculation. If the driver avoided breaking the law, and with a kidnapped child on board he would not want to risk getting stopped . . . The exit from the car park on to King’s Road was a left turn only . . . That meant he would have driven east to the end of King’s Road and then gone round the roundabout, by the Palace Pier, and then come back on himself. Allowing for the distance and hold-ups at traffic lights, that would put the car there at the right time from its sighting on King’s Road. Excitement was growing inside him.

  The car’s location was alongside Shoreham Harbour, close to Southwick. He was certain that the sadist knew this area. A lot of villains perpetrated their crimes in the places they knew, their comfort zones. He made a note of a new line of enquiry, to have Duncan Crocker do a search on all previous violent crimes in this area. But first, still staring at the frozen image of the front of the Yaris and the faint silhouette of its driver, on the monitor, he called for a PNC check on the car.

  The information came back almost immediately that the owner was a male, Barry Simons, who lived in Worthing, West Sussex, some fifteen miles to the west of Brighton. Grace’s excitement waned at this news. That fitted with the car’s occupant and position, heading in the direction where he lived. The only thing that kept him hopeful was the fact that the Yaris appeared to have stopped somewhere in Shoreham or Southwick. He was about to call Gold to ask him to get the helicopter over there and block off the area when his phone rang.

  It was Duncan Crocker. ‘Roy, we’ve found a car, a Toyota Yaris, driving on those switched plates taken from the service station at Newport Pagnell – the plates from the woman’s car – that twenty-seven-year-old who was stopped on the M11 near Brentwood. It’s just pinged an ANPR camera, heading north from Brighton on the A23.’

  97

  Tyler tried kicking again. He could hear the hollow metallic boom-boom-boom echo around him.

  What if the man did not come back?

  There was a story he had read – he was trying to remember the book – in which someone was locked in the boot of a car and nearly suffocated. How long could you stay in one? How long had he already been here? Was there any sharp edge he could rub against? He tried rolling over, exploring the space as best he could, but it was tiny and seemed to be completely carpeted.

  His watch was luminous but he couldn’t see the face. He had lost all track of time. He didn’t know how long the man had been gone, whether it was still day out there or if night had fallen. If the man did not come back, how long would it be, he wondered, before someone wondered about a strange car?

  Then he had a sudden panic about Friend Mapper. Had his mother remembered to log on? She made him keep it on all the time, but she often forgot herself. And she was crap with technology.

  Maybe he should keep kicking, in case someone passed by and heard him. But he was scared. If the man came back and heard him he might get really angry. He had just made the decision to wait a little longer when he heard footsteps approaching – quick, sharp crunches. Then he felt the car tilt slightly.

  Someone had got in.

  98

  In the CCTV room, Grace stared at the frontal photograph of a dark grey Toyota Yaris on a familiar stretch of the A23, just north of Brighton. But to his dismay the windscreen was even more opaque than the car by Shoreham Harbour in the previous photograph. He could see nothing at all inside, no shadows or silhouettes, no clue as to how many people might be in it.

  Branson immediately informed Gold, then listened intently to his radio.

  Grace ordered Jon Pumfrey to put out a high-act nationwide marker on the car. He did not intend to take any risks. Then he sat for a moment, clenching his fists. Maybe, finally, this was it.

  ‘What CCTV units do you have on the A23?’ he asked the controller.

  ‘The only fixed ones are ANPRs on the motorway. The next one, if he keeps heading north, is Gatwick.’

  Grace was feeling excitement but, at the same time, frustration. He would have liked to be out there, on the road, present when they stopped the car. Pumfrey pulled up a road map on to one of the monitors, showing the position of the two ANPR cameras. There were plenty of opportunities for the suspect to turn off the motorway. But with luck the helicopter would have him in sight imminently.

  He turned back to the bank of monitors and looked at the car that had been photographed heading east along the seafront, owned, according to its registration document, by Barry Simons. Just as a precaution, he phoned the
Incident Room. Nick Nicholl answered. Grace tasked him with finding Barry Simons and establishing for certain that he had been driving his car along Brighton seafront this morning.

  From the suspect’s current position on the A23, it would take him about twenty-five minutes, Grace estimated, to ping that next ANPR camera at Gatwick. On the radio he could follow the developments. This was a true fast-time operation. The helicopter, which was also fitted with ANPR, would be over the M23 in ninety seconds. One unmarked car was already on the motorway, approximately two miles behind the target, and two more were only minutes away. It was policy in kidnap pursuits to use unmarked cars wherever possible. That way, the perpetrator would not panic as he might at the sight of a marked car passing him, with the risk of involving his victim in a high-speed chase. If they could get unmarked cars in front of and behind the suspect, a minimum of three vehicles, and preferably four, they could box him in – TPAC him – before he realized what was happening.

  ‘I need to get back to Sussex House,’ Glenn said.

  ‘Me too.’

  ‘I can patch any images you want through to you in the Incident Room,’ Pumfrey said.

  Grace thanked him and the two detectives left. As they walked out of the rear of the building into the car park, Grace’s phone rang. It was Inspector Sue Carpenter at the Regency Square car park.

  ‘Sir,’ she said, ‘I don’t know if this is significant, but I understand that the Regency Square car park was identified by an application on the missing boy’s iPhone.’

  ‘Yes,’ Grace replied, his hopes rising. ‘An application called Friend Mapper. We’re hoping he keeps it on – that it could lead us to him if we can’t find him before.’

  ‘I’m afraid, sir, one of the search team has found a smashed iPhone in a bin in the car park – close to the taxi.’