Dead Man's Grip

by Peter James

  99

  As he climbed into his car, Grace instructed Sue Carpenter to get the phone checked immediately for finger- and footprints, then get it straight to the High-Tech Crime Unit. He told her he wanted it in their hands, having been dusted for prints, within the next thirty minutes. Getting the contents of the phone analysed was more important to him at this stage than getting forensic evidence from it.

  Then, as he drove out and turned left down the steep hill, he said to Branson, who was listening to the Ops-1 instructions on his radio, ‘I’m still struggling to get my head around the motive here. Did the perp take this boy as a substitute because his mother was unavailable?’

  ‘Because she’d unexpectedly gone to New York, so the boy was the next best thing? Is that what you’re saying?’

  ‘Yes,’ Grace replied. ‘Or was taking the boy his plan all along?’

  ‘What’s your sense?’

  ‘I think he plans everything. He’s not someone who takes chance opportunities. My view is that probably, by going to the States, Carly Chase made seizing the boy a little easier for him.’

  Branson nodded and looked at his watch. ‘Just over six hours until she lands.’

  ‘Maybe we’ll be able to greet her with good news.’

  ‘I promised I’d get a message to her on the plane as soon as we have any.’

  ‘With a bit of luck, that could be any minute now.’

  Grace gave Branson a wistful smile, then glanced at the car clock. It was half past two. He should eat something, he knew, but he didn’t have any appetite, and he didn’t want to waste valuable time stopping anywhere. He fished in his suit jacket pocket and produced a Mars bar in a very crumpled wrapper that had been there for some days.

  ‘Haven’t had any lunch. You hungry?’ he said to Branson. ‘Want to share this?’

  ‘Boy, you know how to give someone a good time!’ Branson said, peeling off the wrapper. ‘A slap-up, no-expenses-spared lunch with Roy Grace. Half an old Mars bar. This been in your pocket since you were at school?’

  ‘Sod off!’

  Branson tore the chocolate bar in two and held out the slightly larger portion to Grace, who popped it in his mouth. ‘You ever see that film about—’

  Grace’s phone rang. As he wasn’t driving at high speed, he stuck it into the hands-free cradle and answered. Both of them heard the voice of Chief Inspector Trevor Barnes, the newly appointed Silver Commander. An experienced and methodical Senior Investigating Officer, Barnes, like Roy Grace, had handled many major crime investigations.

  ‘Roy,’ he said, ‘we’ve just stopped the Toyota Yaris on the M23, four miles south of the Crawley interchange.’

  Grace, his mouth full of chewy chocolate and toffee, thumped the steering wheel with glee.

  ‘Brilliant!’ Branson replied.

  ‘That you, Glenn?’ Barnes asked.

  ‘Yeah, we’re in the car. What’s the situation?’

  ‘Well,’ Barnes said, his voice somewhat lacking in enthusiasm, although he always spoke in a considered, deadpan tone, ‘I’m not sure that we have the right person.’

  ‘What description can you give us, Trevor?’ Grace asked, the Silver’s words now making him uneasy.

  He halted the car at a traffic light.

  ‘Well, I’m assuming your hit man is not eighty-four years old.’

  ‘What do you mean?’ Grace had a sinking feeling.

  ‘Toyota Yaris, index Yankee Delta Five Eight Victor Juliet Kilo? Is that the correct one?’

  Grace pulled out his notebook and flipped to the right page. ‘Yes. Those are the plates that were taken from a car at Newport Pagnell that we believe our suspect is using.’

  ‘The driver of this Yaris is eighty-four years old and has his wife who is eighty-three with him. It’s their car, but it’s not their registration number.’

  ‘Not their registration?’ Grace echoed.

  The lights changed and he drove on.

  ‘The licence plates on the car aren’t theirs, Roy. The driver may be old, but he has all his marbles, I’m told. Knew his registration number off by heart. Sounds like someone’s nicked his plates and replaced them with different ones.’

  ‘Where’s he come from?’ Grace asked, but he had a feeling he already knew the answer.

  ‘They’ve been in Brighton. They enjoy the sea air, apparently. Like to take their dog for a walk between the piers. It’s their regular constitutional. They have fish and chips at some place on the front.’

  ‘Yep, and let me guess where they parked. The Regency Square car park?’

  ‘Very good, Roy. Ever thought of going on Mastermind?’

  ‘Once, when I had a brain that worked. So, give us their index that’s been stolen.’

  Branson wrote it down.

  Grace drove in silence for some moments, thinking about the killer with grudging admiration. Whoever you are, you are a smart bastard. What’s more, you clearly have a sense of humour. And just in case you don’t know, right at this moment I have a major sense-of-humour failure.

  His phone rang again. This time it was Nick Nicholl in MIR-1, sounding perplexed.

  ‘Chief, I’m coming back to you on the vehicle owner check you asked me to do, on Barry Simons.’

  ‘Thanks. What do you have, Nick?’

  ‘I’ve just spoken to him. I sent someone round to his house and they asked a neighbour who knew where he worked – and I got his mobile phone number from his company.’

  ‘Well done.’

  The Detective Constable sounded hesitant. ‘You asked me to check if it was him driving his car first east on King’s Road, then west past the junction between Kingsway and Boundary Road this morning? Index Golf Victor Zero Eight Whisky Delta X-Ray?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Well, he’s a bit baffled, chief. He and his wife are lying on a beach in Limassol in Cyprus at the moment. They’ve been there for nearly two weeks.’

  ‘Could anyone they know be driving this car while they’re away?’

  ‘No,’ Nick Nicholl said. ‘They left it at the long-term car park at Gatwick Airport.’

  Grace pulled over to the side of the road and stopped sharply.

  ‘Nick, put a high-act marker on that index. Get on to the Divisional Intelligence Unit – I want to know every ANPR sighting from the day Barry Simons’s car arrived at Gatwick to now.’

  ‘To double-check, chief, index Golf Victor Zero Eight Whisky Delta X-Ray.’

  ‘Correct.’

  Grace switched on the car’s lights and siren, then turned to Glenn Branson.

  ‘We’re taking a ride to Shoreham.’

  ‘Want me to drive?’ Branson asked.

  Grace shook his head. ‘Thanks for the offer, but I think I’ll be of more help to Tyler Chase alive.’

  100

  Tooth sat in the Yaris in the parking lot behind the apartment block. The same cars were still here that had been here when he left to do his reconnaissance an hour ago. It was still the middle of the afternoon and maybe the lot would fill up when people came back from work. But it hadn’t filled up last time, six years ago. The windows of the apartment block didn’t look like they had been cleaned since then either. Maybe it was full of old people. Maybe they were all dead.

  He stared at the text that had come in and which had prompted his early return to the car. It said just one word: call.

  He removed the SIM card and, as he always did, burned it with his lighter until it was melted. He would throw it away later. Then he took one of the phones he had not yet used from his bag and dialled the number.

  Ricky Giordino answered on the first ring. ‘Yeah?’

  ‘You texted me to call.’

  ‘What the fuck took you so long, Mr Tooth?’

  Tooth did not reply.

  ‘You still there? Hello, Mr Tooth?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Listen to me. We’ve had another tragedy in our family and that woman, Mrs Chase, she’s the cause of it. My sister’s d
ead. I’m your client now, understand me? You’re doing this for me now. I want that woman’s pain to be so bad. I want pain she’s never going to forget, you with me?’

  ‘I’m doing what I can,’ Tooth replied.

  ‘Listen up, I didn’t pay you a million bucks to do what you can do. Understand? I paid you that money to do something more than that. Something different, right? Creative. Give me a big surprise. Blow me away. Show me you got balls!’

  ‘Balls,’ Tooth commented.

  ‘Yeah, you heard, balls. You’re going to bring those videos to me, right? Soon as you’re done?’

  ‘Tomorrow,’ Tooth said.

  He ended the call, again burned the SIM card, then lit a cigarette. He did not like this man.

  He didn’t do rudeness.

  101

  Roy Grace turned the siren and lights off as they passed Hove Lagoon, two shallow man-made recreational lakes beside a children’s playground. Up on the promenade beyond there was a long row of beach huts facing the beach and the sea.

  The Lagoon ended at Aldrington Basin, the eastern extremity of Shoreham Harbour, and from this point onwards, until Shoreham town, a few miles further on, the buildings and landscape along this road became mostly industrial and docklands. He slowed as they approached the junction with Boundary Road and pointed up through the windscreen.

  ‘There’s the ANPR camera that Barry Simons pinged this morning.’

  Then Nick Nicholl radioed through. ‘Chief, I’ve got the information you requested on the Toyota Yaris index Golf Victor Zero Eight Whisky Delta X-Ray. It’s rather strange, so I went back an extra two weeks and I now have all sightings for the past month. For the first two weeks it pinged cameras during weekdays that are consistent with a regular morning and evening commute from Worthing to central Brighton and back. Then on Sunday morning, just under two weeks ago, it travelled from Worthing to Gatwick.’

  ‘Consistent with what Simons told you,’ Branson said, butting in, ‘that they drove to Gatwick Airport long-term parking before their flight to Cyprus.’

  ‘Yes,’ Nicholl said. ‘Now here’s the bit that doesn’t make sense. The next sighting was the one this morning, when it pinged the CCTV camera on the seafront at the bottom of West Street, travelling east. There’s nothing to show how the car got from Gatwick Airport down to Kingsway. Even if it drove directly from the airport down to Brighton, with the marker on the vehicle it should have been picked up by the A23 camera at Gatwick, and by another on the approach to Brighton, and I would have thought by others in Brighton.’

  ‘Unless it commenced its journey from the Regency Square car park,’ Grace said thoughtfully. ‘Then it would have exited the car park on King’s Road and had to make a left turn along the seafront, which would explain why it passed the CCTV camera at the bottom of West Street twice – first going east and then, a few minutes later, west. Followed by the one on Brunswick Lawns, a mile further west, and then this one.’

  ‘You’ve lost me, sir,’ Nicholl said. ‘That doesn’t explain how the car got from Gatwick Airport to that car park in the first place.’

  ‘It didn’t, Nick,’ Grace said. ‘Our suspect has already demonstrated he is rather cute with number plates. We believe he rented this Toyota from Avis at Gatwick. I’m prepared to put money on Mr and Mrs Simons returning from their Cyprus holiday to find their number plates are missing. Good work. What about subsequent sightings since Boundary Road?’

  ‘None, sir.’

  Which would indicate, Grace thought, that either the car was parked up somewhere or the killer had changed number plates yet again.

  He ended the conversation and immediately called Graham Barrington to update him.

  ‘My hunch is that he’s in the Shoreham area,’ Grace said. ‘But we can’t rely on that. I think you need to get every dark-coloured Toyota Yaris within a three-hour drive of Brighton stopped and searched.’

  ‘That’s already happening.’

  ‘And we need to throw everything we have at Shoreham Harbour and its immediate vicinity.’

  ‘The problem is, Roy, it’s a massive area.’

  ‘I know. We also need to search every ship leaving and every plane at Shoreham Airport. We need to check the tides. The harbour has a shallow entrance, so there’s a lot of shipping can’t come in or leave for a period of time either side of low water, from what I remember as a sailor.’

  ‘I’ll get that information. Where are you now?’

  ‘At the bottom of Boundary Road with DS Branson – the position of the last sighting of our suspect. I think we should set an initial search parameter of a half-mile radius west of this camera.’

  ‘Harbour and inland?’

  ‘Yes. We need house-to-house, all outbuildings, garages, sheds, industrial estates, ships, boats. We’re beyond the range of the Brighton and Hove CCTV network, so we need to focus on commercial premises that have CCTV. A car doesn’t disappear into thin air. Someone’s seen it. Some camera’s picked it up.’

  ‘Just to be clear, Roy, the last sighting of the vehicle is at the bottom of Boundary Road, the junction with Kingsway, and it was heading west?’

  ‘Correct, Graham.’

  ‘Leave it with me.’

  Grace knew that the Gold Commander, who happened, fortunately, to be one of the officers he most respected in the entire force, would leave no stone unturned. He should let Barrington get on with it and return to Sussex House, first to MIR-1 to show support to his team, and then prepare for this evening’s briefing. With the Chief Constable, Tom Martinson, and the Assistant Chief Constable, Peter Rigg, both due to attend, it was vital he was well prepared. But he was reluctant to leave the chase.

  The killer was in Shoreham somewhere, he was certain of it. If anyone had asked him why, his only answer would have been a shrug of his shoulders and the lame response, copper’s nose. But Glenn Branson understood. That was why, one day, his mate would get to the very top of their profession, so long as he was able to survive his marriage wreckage.

  Grace made a call to the Incident Room and Nick Nicholl answered.

  ‘Nick, I want you to get everyone in MIR-1 to stop doing what they’re doing for two minutes and have a hard think about this, right? If you’d abducted a child, where in Shoreham might be a good place to hide him? Somewhere no one goes. Maybe somewhere no one even knows about. This whole city is riddled with secret passages going back to smuggling days. Have a quick brainstorm with the team, OK?’

  ‘Yes, chief, right away.’

  ‘We’re dealing with someone smart and cunning. He’ll choose a smart place.’

  ‘I’m on to it now.’

  Grace thanked him and drove on, turning right at the next opportunity. He drove slowly through a network of streets, a mixture of terraced houses and industrial buildings. Looking for a needle in a haystack, he knew. And remembering, as a mantra, the words that his father, who had been a policeman too, had once told him. No one ever made a greater mistake than the man who did nothing because he could only do a little.

  102

  Tyler felt the car rock suddenly. Then he heard a loud boom, like a door slamming. Followed by scrunching footsteps.

  He waited until he could not hear them any more, then he threw himself around again, kicking as hard as he could, drumming with his feet and with his right shoulder and his head, breaking out into a sweat, drumming and drumming until he had exhausted himself.

  Then he lay still again, thinking.

  Why hadn’t they found him yet?

  Come on, Mum, Mapper! Remember Mapper!

  Where was his phone? It had to be in here somewhere. If he could somehow get whatever was covering his mouth off, then he could shout. He rolled himself over on to his stomach, moved his face around, but all he could feel was the fuzz of carpet. There had to be a sharp edge somewhere in here. He wormed forward, raised his head up. Soft new carpet, like rubbing against a brush.

  What would his heroes have done? What would Harry Potter have done
? Or Alex Rider? Or Amy and Dan Cahill in The 39 Clues? They all got out of difficult situations. They’d have known. So what was he missing?

  Suddenly he heard a scrunching sound. A vehicle! He started kicking out wildly, as hard as he could again. Here! In here! In here!

  He heard doors slam. More footsteps.

  Fading away.

  103

  Carly did not hear a word from Sussex Police throughout the flight. Every time a member of the cabin crew walked down the aisle in her direction, she hoped it would be with a message. It was now 8.45 p.m., UK time. Tyler had been missing for almost ten hours.

  Feeling sicker by the minute, she had eaten nothing, just sipped a little water, that was all, on the flight-from-hell, squashed in the tiny part of her seat that the sweating fat man next to her, who stank of BO and drank non-stop vodka and Cokes, hadn’t overflowed into.

  She replayed her decision to go to New York over and over. If she had not gone, she’d have collected Tyler herself from school and he would be safe. He’d be up in his room now, on his computer, alone or with a friend, or doing something with his fossil collection, or practising his cornet.

  Fernanda Revere, who could have stopped all this, was dead.

  Lou Revere scared her. There was something feral and evil about him. Woman to woman, she might have had a chance with Fernanda Revere, when she was sober. But not with the husband. No chance. Especially not now.

  The plane came to a halt. There was a bing-bong, followed by the sound of seat belts being unclipped and overhead lockers popping open. People were standing up and she joined them, relieved to get away from the stinking fat blob. She pulled her bag and coat down, then quickly called her mother to say they had landed, and in the hope she had some news. But there was none.

  A couple of minutes later she nodded to the two cabin crew standing by the exit, then followed the passengers in front of her out through the plane’s door and on to the covered bridge. Instantly she saw, waiting for her, the tall figure of Glenn Branson, accompanied by a younger male officer in uniform, whom she did not recognize, and DS Bella Moy.