Dead Man's Grip

by Peter James

  ‘You’re very demanding,’ Tooth said.

  Tyler looked at the sight.

  ‘He doesn’t look too healthy to me. What do you think, kid?’

  ‘Male, between fifty and sixty years old. Eastern European.’

  Tooth frowned. ‘You want to tell me how you know that?’

  ‘I study archaeology and anthropology. Can I have some water now please – and I’m hungry.’

  ‘You’re a goddamn smartass, right?’

  ‘I’m just thirsty,’ Tyler said. ‘Why have you brought me here? Who are you?’

  ‘That guy,’ Tooth said, pointing at the skeleton, ‘he’s been here for six years. No one knows about this place. No one’s been here in six years. How would you feel about spending six years down here?’

  ‘I wouldn’t feel good about that,’ Tyler said.

  ‘I bet you wouldn’t. I mean, who would, right?’

  Tyler nodded in agreement. This guy seemed a little crazy, he thought. Crazy but maybe OK. Not a lot crazier than some of his teachers.

  ‘What had that man done?’

  ‘He ripped someone off,’ Tooth said. ‘OK?’

  Tyler shrugged. ‘OK,’ he said, his voice coming out as a parched, frightened croak.

  ‘I’ll get you sorted, kid. You have to hang on. You and me, we have a big problem. It’s to do with the tides, right?’

  Tyler stared at him. Then he stared at the remains, shaking. Was this going to be him in six years?

  ‘Tides?’ he said.

  The man pulled a folded sheet of printout from his rucksack, then opened it up.

  ‘You understand these things, kid?’

  He held the paper in front of Tyler’s face, keeping his flashlight trained on it. The boy looked at it, then shot a glance at the man’s wristwatch.

  ‘Big ships can’t come into this harbour two hours either side of low tide,’ Tooth said.

  He stared at the boxes, each of which had a time written inside it, below the letters LW or HW. Alongside was written Predicted heights are in metres above Chart Datum.

  ‘This is not easy to figure out. Seems like low tide was 11.31 p.m. here, but I’m not sure I’ve got that right. That would mean ships start coming in and out again after 1.31 a.m.’

  ‘You’re not looking at today’s date,’ Tyler said. ‘Today it will be 2.06 a.m. Are you taking me on a boat?’

  Tooth did not reply.

  108

  The phones in MIR-1 had been ringing off the hook ever since the Child Rescue Alert had been triggered, and the abduction of Tyler Chase was front-page news in most of the papers, as well as headline news on radio and television. It was coming up to 12.30 a.m. During the nearly fourteen hours since his abduction just about everyone in the nation who didn’t live under a rock knew his name and a good many of them had seen his photograph.

  The room was as busy now as it was in the middle of the day and the air was thick with the continuous ringing of landline and mobile phones. Roy Grace sat, jacket off, sleeves rolled up, tie slackened, reading through a list that had been emailed over by Detective Investigator Lanigan of the methods of operation of all known currently active contract killers. Not wanting to restrict their search to the US, police forces around Europe had also been contacted and their information was starting to come in.

  But nothing matching their man so far.

  Or his car.

  In view of the frequency with which the suspect appeared to go about changing number plates, Grace had sent out requests to every police force in the UK to stop and search every dark-coloured Yaris, regardless of whether it was grey or not. He wanted to eliminate any possible risk of the suspect slipping through the net, including a mistake being made by someone who might be colour blind.

  It was possible the boy was already abroad, despite the watch that had been put on all airports, seaports and the Channel Tunnel. There were private aircraft and private boats that could easily have slipped the net. But he was fairly certain that the Toyota Yaris belonging to Barry Simons was the one Tyler Chase had been driven in from the Regency Square car park. And if that was the case, Grace did not think he had left the Shoreham area.

  Checks had been carried out with the Harbour Master, the Port Authority and the Coast Guard. All vessels that had sailed from Shoreham Harbour today had been accounted for. No cargo ship had passed through the lock after eight o’clock this evening. A few fishing boats had gone out, but that was all.

  Suddenly Stacey Horobin came over to him and said, ‘Sir, I have a Lynn Sebbage on the phone, from a firm of chartered surveyors called BLB. She’s asking to speak to Norman Potting – said she’s tried his mobile but he’s not picking up. She says she’s been working through the night to look for the information he asked her for, urgently, and she thinks she’s found it.’

  Grace frowned. ‘Chartered surveyors?’

  ‘Yes, called BLB.’

  ‘You mean chartered surveyors as in structural engineers?’

  Horobin nodded. ‘Yes, sir, that area.’

  ‘What do they want at this hour of the morning?’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘Where is DS Potting?’

  ‘DS Moy says she thinks he may have gone out to get something to eat, sir.’

  ‘OK, let me speak to the woman. Did you say Sebbage?’

  ‘Lynn Sebbage.’

  He picked up the phone and moments later she was put through. ‘Detective Superintendent Grace,’ he said. ‘Can I help you?’

  ‘Yes,’ she said. She sounded as fresh as if it was the middle of her normal working day. ‘I’m a partner in BLB. We’re very old-established chartered surveyors in Brighton. We had a visit from Detective Sergeant Potting late this afternoon, regarding the little boy who’s been abducted, saying he was looking for places around Shoreham Harbour where someone might be concealed. The Chief Engineer told him that he knew my firm, BLB, has done a lot of work at the harbour over the past century, particularly in the construction of the original coal-fired power station. He said he thought there was a tunnel bored then that’s been disused for decades.’

  ‘What kind of a tunnel?’ Grace asked.

  ‘Well, I’ve been hunting through our archives all night – they go back over a hundred years – and I think I’ve found what he was referring to. It’s a tunnel that was built for the old power station, Shoreham B, about seventy years ago, to carry the electricity cables under the harbour, and it was decommissioned when the new power station was built twenty years ago.’

  ‘How would someone other than a harbour worker know about it?’

  ‘Anyone studying the history of the area could find it easily. It’s probably on Google if people look hard enough.’

  She then explained where the access to it was.

  A couple of minutes later, just as he thanked her and hung up, Glenn Branson walked in carrying two steaming mugs.

  ‘Brought you a coffee.’

  ‘Thanks. Want to come and take a ride? We could both do with a quick change of scenery.’

  ‘Where to?’

  ‘Somewhere in Brighton you and I have never been before.’

  ‘Thanks for the offer, boss man, but being a tourist at 1 a.m. doesn’t float my boat.’

  ‘Don’t worry. We’re not going boating – we’re going to go underwater.’

  ‘Terrific. This is getting better every second. Scuba-diving?’

  ‘No. Tunnelling.’

  ‘Tunnelling? Now? At this hour? You’re not serious?’

  Grace stood up. ‘Get your coat and a torch.’

  ‘I’m claustrophobic.’

  ‘So am I. We can hold hands.’

  109

  ‘What do you think the chances are?’ Glenn Branson said, as Grace drove slowly along the road, peering to the left, looking for the building Lynn Sebbage had described. A strong wind buffeted the car and big spots of rain spattered on the windscreen.

  ‘One in a million? One in a billion? One in a tri
llion that he’s in this tunnel?’

  ‘You’re not trying to think like the perpetrator,’ Grace said.

  ‘Yeah, and that’s just as well, coz I’d be hanging you on a meat hook and filming you right now if I did.’

  Grace smiled. ‘I don’t think so. You’d be trying to outsmart us. How many times has he changed number plates? Those cameras he left behind, like giving us two fingers. This is a very smart guy.’

  ‘You sound like you admire him.’

  ‘I do admire him – for his professionalism. Everything else about him I loathe beyond words, but I admire his cunning. If he’s holed up anywhere with that kid, it’s not going to be some garden shed full of mushrooms. It’s going to be somewhere he knows that we haven’t thought of. So I don’t think we’re looking at one in a million. I think we’re looking at very good odds and we need to eliminate this place.’

  ‘You could have sent a couple of uniforms along,’ Branson said grumpily. ‘Or Norman Potting.’

  ‘And spoiled our fun?’ Grace said, pulling over on the kerb. ‘This looks like it.’

  Moments later, in the beam of his torch, Grace saw the broken padlock lying on the ground. He knelt and peered at it closely.

  ‘It’s been cut through,’ he said.

  Then he pulled the door open and led the way down the concrete steps. At the bottom they stepped on to a gridded metal platform with a handrail. A network of old metal pipes spread out all around them.

  Branson sniffed. ‘Someone’s managed to use this place as a toilet,’ he said.

  Grace peered over the handrail, then shone his torch beam down the vertical shaft.

  ‘Shit,’ he said under his breath. It looked a long, long way down. Then he shouted, as loudly as he could, ‘POLICE! Is anyone down there?’

  His voice echoed. Then he repeated his question again.

  Only the echo, falling into silence, came back at them.

  The two officers looked at each other.

  ‘Someone’s been here,’ Glenn Branson said.

  ‘And might still be here,’ Grace replied, peering down the shaft again, and then looking at the ladder. ‘And I’m sodding terrified of heights.’

  ‘Me too,’ Branson said.

  ‘Heights and claustrophobia? Anything you’re not scared of?’ Grace quizzed him with a grin.

  ‘Not much.’

  ‘Shine the torch for me. I can see a rest platform about fifty feet down. I’ll wait for you there.’

  ‘What about Health and Safety?’ Branson asked.

  Grace tapped his chest. ‘You’re looking at him. You fall, I’ll catch you.’

  He climbed over the safety rail, decided he was not going to look down, gripped both sides of the rail, found the first rung and slowly, carefully, began to descend.

  It took them several minutes to get to the bottom.

  ‘That was seriously not fun,’ Glenn Branson said, and flashed his torch around. The beam struck the tunnel. ‘Holy fucking shit!’ He was staring at the skeletal remains.

  Both men took a few steps towards them.

  ‘Looks like a new cold case to add to your workload, boss,’ Branson said.

  But Grace wasn’t looking at the skull and bones any more. He was looking at a screwed-up ball of paper on the ground. He pulled on a pair of gloves, knelt, picked it up and opened it out. Then he frowned.

  ‘What is it?’ Branson said.

  Grace held it up. ‘A tide chart.’

  ‘Shit! How long do you reckon that’s been down here?’

  ‘Not long,’ Grace replied. ‘It’s current. This week’s – seven days’ tides for Shoreham, starting yesterday.’

  ‘Why would someone want a tide chart?’

  ‘The entrance to the harbour mouth is only six feet deep at low tide. There’s not enough draught for big ships two hours either side of low water.’

  ‘You think this is connected with Tyler?’

  Grace almost failed to spot the tiny object lying beneath a section of rusted piping. He knelt again and picked it up, carefully, between his gloved forefinger and thumb, then held it up.

  ‘I do now, for sure,’ he said. ‘A Lucky Strike cigarette.’ He pressed the burnt end to his check. ‘You know what? That’s still warm.’

  Pulling on gloves himself, Glenn Branson took the tide chart and studied it for a moment. Then he checked his watch.

  ‘The harbour mouth opens, if that’s what they call it, at 2.06 a.m. That’s fifty-six minutes’ time. Shit! We have to stop any ship from leaving.’

  This time, all his fear of heights forgotten, the Detective Sergeant threw himself up the first rungs of the ladder, with Grace inches behind.

  110

  Tyler, utterly terrified, was whimpering with fear and quaking, yet at the same time he did not dare struggle too much. Choppy, ink-black water splashed at him like some wild, angry creature just inches below his feet. Rain lashed down on him. He was hung by his arms, which were agonizingly outstretched like in a crucifixion.

  He had thought he was being thrown into the water but then he had been jerked tight just above it. He kept trying to cry out, but there was tape over his mouth again and all his cries just echoed around and around inside his skull.

  He was crying, sobbing, pleading for his mother.

  There was a strong stench of seaweed. The blindfold the man had put around his head after he had climbed back up from the tunnel had been taken off only at the last minute before he had been dropped.

  Above the sound of the water he heard the chop-chop-chop of a helicopter approaching. A dazzling beam of light passed over him, briefly, then darkness again.

  Come over here! Come over here! I’m here! Come over here!

  Please help me. Please help me. Mum, please help me, please.

  111

  It wasn’t until they reached the top of the ladder that Grace and Branson were able to get any radio or phone signal. Grace immediately called Trevor Barnes, the Silver Commander, who was at his desk in Sussex House.

  The two detectives sprinted up the stone steps and out into the fresh wind and rain, sweating profusely, grateful for the cooling air. Above them they heard the clatter of the helicopter swooping low over the harbour basin, the dazzling bright pool of its searchlight illuminating a wide radius of the choppy water.

  Moments later Barnes radioed back that he’d checked with the Harbour Master and the only vessel scheduled to leave the harbour, via the large lock, was the dredger the Arco Dee. It had already left its berth and was heading along the canal towards the lock.

  ‘I’ve been on that ship,’ Grace shouted at Branson, above the noise of the helicopter and the howling of the wind. ‘There’s any number of ways he could kill that kid on it.’ Then he radioed to the Silver Commander. ‘Trevor, get it boarded and searched while it’s in the lock.’

  For some moments Grace stood still, following the beam of light as it crossed the massive superstructure of Shoreham Power Station. The building had a dog-leg construction, with the first section, which had a flat roof, about sixty feet high, and then the main section about 100 feet high. At the western end was the solitary chimney stack, rising 200 feet into the sky. Suddenly, as the beam traversed it, he thought he saw something move on the flat roof.

  Instantly he radioed the Controller. ‘Patch me through to Hotel 900.’

  Moments later, through a crackling connection, he was speaking to the helicopter spotter. ‘Go back round. Light up the power station roof again,’ he shouted.

  Both detectives waited as the helicopter turned in a wide arc. The beam struck the chimney first and the ladder that went all the way up it. Then the flat roof of the first section. They could see a figure scurrying across it, then ducking down behind a vent.

  ‘Keep circling,’ he instructed. ‘There’s someone up there!’ He turned to Branson. ‘I know the quick way there!’

  They ran over to the car and jumped in. Grace switched on the blues and twos and raced out into the road.


  ‘Call Silver,’ he said. ‘Get all available units to the power station.’

  A quarter of a mile on he braked hard and swung left, in front of the Port Authority building, then sped down the slip road beside it, until they reached a barrier of tall steel spikes. The sign ahead of them, fixed to the spikes, read:

  SHOREHAM PORT AUTHORITY

  NO UNAUTHORIZED ACCESS

  PUBLIC ROUTE ACROSS LOCKS

  Abandoning the car, they ran along the walkway, which was bounded on each side by a high railing. Grace flashed his torch beam ahead of them. To their right now he could see, brightly illuminated by a bank of floodlights on a tower, the harbour’s two locks, a small one for fishing boats and yachts, the other, much larger, for tankers, dredgers and container ships.

  A long quay separated the locks, in the middle of which was a substantial building housing the control room. On its wall, beneath the windows, was a vertical traffic light, with three red signals showing.

  He briefly clocked a warning sign on the entrance gate to this quay, forbidding unauthorized people to enter. The gate had no lock on it, he observed, but his focus was to his left, to the massive superstructure of the power station, partially lit by the helicopter’s beam. He ran on, followed by a puffing Branson, stepping over metal slats and then past more red warning lights at the start of the curved walkway over the main lock gates. A sign cautioned against entering when the red lights were flashing and the siren was sounding.

  When he reached the join in the middle, between the two halves of the ancient, massive wooden lock gates, he turned and looked at the power station again. What the hell was he doing up there, if it was the suspect? For sure it would be a terrific vantage point, but for what? Did he have the boy up there with him?

  They ran on, around the curve of the other half of the lock gates and on to the quay, then sprinted towards the power station. Ahead Grace saw a stack of pallets against the tall spikes of the power station’s perimeter fence.