Dead if You Don’t

90

Sunday 13 August

15.00–16.00

As Hall drove, Grace updated Sam Davies on what he had done at Boden Court. He then called Oscar-1 to check on the ETA of the Digital Forensics team at the flat, and was reassured they would be at the scene within ten minutes. Next, he asked Glenn Branson for an update from the Browns’ house.

As soon as they arrived back at HQ, Roy Grace held an emergency briefing of his team. Behind him on a whiteboard was a blow-up of the latest photograph of Mungo, together with the tide chart, with 17.40 p.m. highlighted in red.

‘Right,’ he said. ‘If we are to believe this chart and the latest photograph, then in about two and a half hours the water will have risen above Mungo’s head, and it’s game over. The persons we believe were our three prime suspects, who might have been able to tell us his location, are dead. At this moment, we don’t know who killed them or the motive. Unfortunately, the Boden Court CCTV system has been down for the past twenty-four hours.’

‘Unfortunate or coincidental, boss?’ Norman Potting asked, suspiciously.

‘I don’t have any information on that yet, Norman,’ Grace replied. ‘We are reasonably certain Mungo is being held in a location somewhere in or close to Shoreham.’ He turned to the whiteboard and pointed. ‘Here.’ Then looked at DS Exton. ‘Jon, I want you to get on to Shoreham Port Authority immediately — speak to Keith Wadey, the Chief Engineer, if you can get hold of him, show him a copy of this photograph and see if he can identify any possible location.’

‘Yes, boss, but we need to bear in mind that it’s Sunday.’

‘Are you planning to go to church?’ Grace gave him a quizzical look.

Exton looked unsure, for a moment, if Roy was joking.

‘The port runs twenty-four-seven, Jon,’ Grace said. ‘If you can’t contact anyone by phone, get down there immediately and find someone — the lock gates are manned round the clock, there’ll be people there. Go immediately and use the blues — take someone with you—’ He looked around and his eye fell on DC Davies. ‘Alec, go with DS Exton.’

As the pair left the room, Grace went on. ‘Right, we have a boy kidnapped at the Amex. Our information leads us to believe a criminal gang within the local Albanian community may be responsible. If we are correct, we are dealing with a particularly brutal group of people who do not give a toss about committing their crimes openly in public — in fact they embrace that as a warning to others. Surely, someone must have seen something? In the past twenty-four hours, there’s been a bomb threat at the Amex. Human remains discovered at a crusher site in Shoreham. The crusher operator dead hours later — in possibly suspicious circumstances. And now three people dead in a flat in the city. Oh, and an unfortunate young drugs mule, dead at Gatwick Airport, with links to one of Jorgji Dervishi’s businesses.’

There was a reflective silence from his team. ‘Someone has to be able to connect the dots. OK? Someone, somewhere, must have seen something. A boy disappears in broad daylight from a football stadium that has one of the world’s most sophisticated security systems — not a tiny infant, a big, bolshy teenager. Someone has seen him. This boy is being held somewhere below the high-water level, where the sea is going to cover him — drown him. Someone out there knows how to save his life.’

Potting raised his hand.

‘Yes, Norman?’

‘Have Digital Forensics not been able to enhance any of the photographs, chief?’

‘Not enough to reveal anything helpful, Norman, no.’

‘In case it’s significant, chief,’ Potting went on, ‘while DC Wilde and I were at Dervishi’s house during the night, I went for a pee.’

‘Good for you, Norman!’ EJ Boutwood said with a grin. ‘Hope you put the seat back down afterwards.’

Ignoring the jibe, Potting continued. ‘He’s got one of those photo boards in the downstairs loo. You know the kind of thing — him and his wife and son on a yacht. Pictures of them all at a big party. Pictures at a barbecue. Another at their wedding anniversary. I took a photo of it on my phone, to check it out afterwards. I thought my findings might interest you. There’s one character who pops up in many of them, repeatedly — Edi Konstandin.’

Grace frowned. ‘That name continues to worry me.’

‘It should,’ Potting said. ‘He’s Mr Big. One of the kingpins of the Brighton Albanian mafia — and quite a big pillar of the community. Lots of legitimate businesses: property, storage depots, warehouses, industrial units, estate agencies, betting shops, launderettes, cafés and a couple of car washes.’

‘I know all that. Does he have any businesses down in the Shoreham area, Norman? Any that are on the waterfront?’

‘I can find out, boss.’

Sunday. Damned Sunday, Grace thought. So many business premises would be shut today. Warehouses, industrial units, storage depots — all classic places to hide someone, alive or dead. Mungo could be in any of them — or not. If the video and photograph were for real, he was at the water’s edge somewhere, below sea level.

He was repeatedly trying to hypothesize what might have happened, and to put himself in the mindset of the kidnappers. Mungo and his pal, Aleksander, had originally set this up. Aleksander had used his own father’s trusted bodyguards, Valbone Kadare and Dritan Nano, to help Mungo with the sting. Then at some point a double-cross had happened.

Question: Was Aleksander involved in that double-cross or not?

If he was, he would know where Mungo was. And with the little time they had, the only way to flush the truth out of him might be to frighten the hell out of him in front of his parents. Read him the riot act, warn him if Mungo died he would face a murder charge. He needed to send in a bully, and realized the suspended Detective Sergeant Guy Batchelor would have been the ideal hard man to interview him. He felt Guy’s absence from his team acutely, more than ever at this moment. And he still found it hard to believe what he had done.

Scarlett Riley, who was a trained cognitive interviewer and, despite her appearance, could be fierce when needed, would be a good person to interview Aleksander, he decided. To accompany her, he delegated another tough detective, the diminutive American FBI officer Arnie Crown — better known to the team these days as Notmuch, after a witticism by Norman Potting that had stuck. Arnie Crown had been seconded to them for training purposes as part of an information-sharing programme, and with his counter-terrorism background, he was highly experienced in extracting information quickly.

Grace stared at the large-scale map on the wall. He ran his index finger along from the start of Shoreham Port to where it ended, some way along the River Adur. There could only be so many hiding places along the wharves. Might a local historian know them? But who? And where were they going to find a historian on a Sunday afternoon? With the clock ticking, they just did not have the luxury of that time.

One option was a ground search along the entire waterfront. He knew there were places along the harbour, such as by the lock gates, with hidden sluices and tunnels. He’d need divers as part of a search team to cover the seven miles, but he’d have to bring them in from outside, and it would take hours just to get them into place. Hours they did not have. Sussex Police once had their own dive unit, but that had been a victim of budget cuts a few years back. He desperately wished, at this moment, they still had it.

He switched his train of thought back to Boden Court. The blood on the victims was still wet, indicating they had all been shot only a short time before he’d arrived. Perhaps with a silenced weapon — or weapons. How had the killer — or killers — arrived and left? What was the motive? Was it greed? Taking out these three colleagues in the kidnap plan? Or was it more cynical? Perhaps someone cut out of the deal simply taking revenge and to hell with the boy? He looked at his watch. Felt panic rising.

3.28 p.m.

Just over two hours.

His phone rang. It was Cassian Pewe. ‘What’s the update, Roy? I thought you were going to call me earlier.’

‘I’m sorry, sir, I’ve been a bit busy.’

‘I’ve just heard that there’s more bodies, in a flat in Hove.’

‘Seems I didn’t need to update you, sir, you’re ahead of the curve. I guess that’s the advantage of integrating multiple initiatives into a systems-level approach.’

‘I beg your pardon? You’ve lost me, I’m afraid.’

‘Your words, sir,’ Grace reminded him, smiling privately. ‘May I call you back in a little while, we’re very time critical at the moment.’

‘Are you getting this young lad back? Mungo Brown? Give me a straight answer, Roy.’

‘Well, sir, we’re working on the aggregation of marginal gains.’

‘What?’

As soon as he had got the ACC off the line, Roy took several deep breaths. He had to forget his anger at the man, stay focused, think this through, look at the positives. Two hours. They still had just over two hours. How could he use them to the very best? What could he do that he wasn’t already doing?

What bases was he not covering?

At times like this, it felt like he had the loneliest job in the world. Sure, there were other detectives with kidnap experience he could call on, but he’d need to bring them up to speed and that would all eat into critical time. He had to accept that these next hours could be life or death for Mungo Brown. Very possibly depending on the decisions he now made and the actions he took.

One thought occurred to him as he hastily updated his Policy Book — making sure he had answers for the inevitable inquest Pewe would hold, regardless of the result. As he wrote, he turned to DI Dull. ‘Donald, can you check all serials in the past twenty-four hours, look for anything that has been reported within the Shoreham Harbour and Beach area. OK?’

‘Yes, sir, I’ll get on it after the briefing.’

‘No, start now.’

‘Roy?’ Forensic Podiatrist Haydn Kelly, looking like he’d done an all-nighter, his complexion pasty, his suit heavily creased and his tie slack, said, ‘I’ve been working together with JJ from the Super Recognizer Unit looking for the lad. We haven’t found images of him yet, but from the CCTV footage at the stadium we’ve viewed, we believe we’ve identified the individual in the red baseball cap who left the camera on the seat, then went through the doors and disappeared.’

Kelly pointed a laser at a new whiteboard, on which was a very clear blow-up of the man in the cap. Next to it was a photograph of a man of similar age and build, wearing a blue-and-white striped Seagulls shirt, a matching scarf and bobble hat, and blue jeans. Beside that was a large mugshot.

‘JJ and I both believe this is the same person,’ Kelly said.

‘And your reasons are?’ Grace asked. ‘Apart from it being odd to wear a bobble hat in August.’

The Super Recognizer, a tall DC in his early forties, with short, blonde hair and the eager attitude of someone who clearly loved his job, responded first, pointing the red dot of the laser at the chin of the man in the first photograph, then again at the second. ‘In my opinion,’ Jonathan Jackson said, ‘this is an identical match.’ Next, he pointed the dot on the first man’s nostril, then on the second. ‘Another match.’ He paused then went on. ‘The odds against any two persons having an identical chin and nostrils run into millions to one,’ he said, then gestured to Haydn Kelly, indicating it was his turn.

Kelly returned to the board. He pointed first at the man in the red cap. ‘Roy, I’ve analysed this man’s gait from the Amex CCTV footage, from the time he stood up, to reaching the exit door of the stand.’ He then pointed at the second image of the man in the blue-and-white bobble hat and Albion strip. ‘I managed to obtain footage from BTP — it helped speed things up that their ACC, Robin Smith, is a former Sussex ACC,’ he said, with a smile. ‘It showed this man walking along the station platform just a short while after leaving the stand. My software analysis shows, beyond any doubt, this is the same person. I also managed to get this photograph of our suspect’s face.’ He pointed at it. ‘Does anyone know this charmer?’

Nikki Denero spoke up. ‘I know him. He’s a member of the Brighton Albanian community. He’s got past form as a petty criminal — shoplifting and a drugs possession case. He’s linked — again small-time — to the local big crime families, the Konstandins and Dervishis.’

‘Edi Konstandin?’ Grace quizzed.

She nodded.

He turned back to Kelly and Jackson. ‘Now you’ve got this second image, check out the CCTV footage from car park A, Bennett’s Field, to see if there’s any link with the green BMW car which I believe was the kidnappers’ vehicle. Make sure you keep DCI Fitzherbert up to date with progress.’

Grace turned to Denero. ‘How much do you know about Edi Konstandin and Jorgji Dervishi?’

‘How long do you have, sir?’

‘As long as a car ride to Konstandin’s house takes. Where does he live?’

‘Somewhere near Fulking.’

Fulking was a village fifteen minutes away.

‘Can you check if he’s home, Norman?’

‘He’s eighty-two, confined to a wheelchair after someone put a bullet in his spine twenty years ago. I doubt he’s out gallivanting around — he’s probably home, guv.’