Left You Dead

18

As Roy Grace and Glenn Branson walked across the busy Tesco car park, the DI cast an eye up and down his boss — something he did frequently, to Grace’s irritation — before nodding approvingly. ‘Nice whistle,’ he said. ‘New?’

‘Cleo took me shopping — it’s nothing special. I picked up a couple of lightweight work suits in the sales.’

Branson reached out a hand and felt his jacket lapel. ‘Quality threads? Bespoke tailor?’

‘On my salary?’

Then Branson frowned disapprovingly at his tie. ‘Too conservative. You should go bolder.’

Grace gave him a sideways look. ‘Are we done on the sartorial inspection?’

The DI shook his head. ‘Nah, you need me to take you shopping again.’

‘I remember the last time you did. It took three months for my credit card to stop smouldering.’

‘Yeah? And look what you pulled from wearing that gear — Cleo! And did I get any credit? Nope, just you whinging on about the cost! So, anyhow, Niall Paternoster — strange name.’

‘Strange name?’

Branson nodded.

Grace looked at him quizzically. ‘So that makes him a suspect?’

‘Just saying — Paternosters are a kind of lift, with no doors. You jump into them, onto a moving platform.’

‘They have one at Munich Police HQ, I’ve been in it,’ Grace said. ‘A bit weird.’

‘They sound bloody dangerous.’

‘And your point is?’

‘The name — it’s odd.’

They walked through the automatic doors of Tesco into the cool, air-conditioned interior.

A red-haired employee, with the name Tim on his badge, was adjusting a display advertising a special offer for wines. Grace approached him and showed him his warrant card. ‘Detective Superintendent Grace and my colleague, Detective Inspector Branson, of Surrey and Sussex Major Crime Team. We’d like to speak to your Head of Security, please.’

‘Yes, yes, of course, sir. May I tell her what it’s about?’

‘A lady has been reported missing by her husband. He believes she came into this store yesterday afternoon, but he has not seen her since. We’d like to view the CCTV footage from between 3 p.m. and 4.30 p.m. yesterday, and we would like to talk to any members of staff who were present then who might have seen her.’ He showed him, on his tablet, the photograph of Eden Paternoster that Robinson had emailed.

The man frowned. ‘Ah, yes, this rings a bell. I think her husband came in just before we closed yesterday. I spoke to him at one point and we searched the store thoroughly.’

‘And you didn’t find her?’

‘No, we didn’t. She certainly wasn’t in here.’ He hesitated. ‘If you’ll just wait here a moment, officers?’

‘Sure.’

He hurried off.

‘With the amount of security in this place we must be able to find something to help with this,’ Branson said, looking around, trying to spot the cameras. Following his gaze, Grace nodded, then out of the corner of his eye saw Tim hurrying back towards them, alongside a woman he was surprised to recognize.

In her late fifties, with a mane of side-parted silver hair, she wore a chalk-striped trouser suit and high-heeled shoes that made her taller than he remembered. As she approached with an outstretched hand, she gave him a broad grin of recognition. ‘My God, Roy! I keep reading about you all the time in the Argus — so happy to see you got promoted to where you deserve! I understand you wanted to see the Head of Security — that’s me!’

He shook former Detective Inspector Corinne Edgerton’s hand warmly. Corinne had been one of his team when he was first promoted to Major Crime. He could not believe — and was so happy to see — that she had landed here, in this role.

He introduced Glenn Branson, who had been a uniformed PC at the time when she’d retired, then briefly outlined the situation. ‘What I would like to see is video confirmation of Eden Paternoster leaving her husband’s car at the time he has stated.’

Corinne Edgerton nodded, a little dubiously. ‘We can take a look at the car park CCTV, but we don’t have a lot of coverage there. Our main cameras are above the aisles, looking down for shoplifters — and monitoring our staff, too.’ She smiled. ‘Let’s go up to the CCTV room and see what we have from yesterday, both outside and inside. We should certainly pick up this lady inside the store, if not outside also.’

For the next thirty minutes, Grace and Branson sat with Edgerton in front of the bank of monitors, in the small room one floor up from the public area of the store. They watched all recordings from each camera, firstly those covering outside, and then those covering the aisles, from fifteen minutes before the time that Niall Paternoster had claimed he’d driven into the car park and his wife had jumped out of the car to dash into the store, until half an hour after the store had closed.

The exterior cameras scanning a limited area of the car park had recorded no sign of the Paternosters’ black BMW entering. But that did not mean it hadn’t — it was a vast area and with only limited CCTV coverage. Grace had been hoping to see footage of Eden Paternoster getting out of the car, which would have established that her husband had been telling the truth.

The cameras covering the front entrance of the store had not shown her either, neither entering nor leaving. And she had not appeared on any of the cameras that were strategically sited to monitor the aisles in the store. There were a dozen cameras covering the vast interior space. With Edgerton operating the control sticks, they forwarded slowly through each of them in turn, occasionally zooming in on anyone who remotely fitted Eden’s description and freezing the image while they checked against her photograph. But finally they were satisfied, supported by the fact that no one working in the store had seen her, that there was no evidence she had been here at the time her husband had said.

‘Would it be possible, Corinne,’ Grace asked, ‘for her to have entered the store any other way?’

She thought for a moment. ‘The lady could have come in via the staff entrance at the rear, but she’d have had to have known the key code.’

‘How often do you change that?’ Branson asked.

‘God, probably not often enough. I’ve been here five years and we’ve only changed it a handful of times.’

Grace gave her a reproachful look.

She smiled. ‘I know, mea culpa!’

‘So that is a possibility?’ Grace asked.

She shook her head adamantly. ‘If she was in this store, she would have been picked up on one of the cameras. No question. And you’ve seen the one almost directly above the cat litter — animal products — section.’

Either, Roy Grace thought, Eden Paternoster had never entered the store at the time her husband claimed, or—

Her husband had the time wrong?

Or he was lying?

A-B-C.

That mantra from the Murder Manual replayed in his head as it did so often when confronting a potential crime scene. Assume nothing. Believe no one. Check everything.

Grace’s phone rang. He saw on the display it was Norman Potting.

‘Need to take this,’ he said and stepped outside the office.

The DS sounded upset. ‘It’s bad news, Roy,’ he said, his voice low, almost a growl.

‘I’ll come now. Meet you in Bill’s in Lewes in thirty minutes.’

‘No, please don’t worry, I just thought you should know — in case I have to take any time out.’

‘I’m meeting you at Bill’s in thirty minutes. That’s an order!’

Roy put his head back through the door. ‘I’m sorry, mate, something’s come up. Can you deal with this and I’ll see you back at HQ.’

After Grace apologized to Edgerton and left, Branson asked her to replay all the digital recordings from 3 p.m. to 3.30 p.m. yesterday, just for belt and braces.

Half an hour later, they were still in the same place. Nothing.

Branson then asked her to play again all the footage up to 4.30 p.m. They saw a man with tousled hair, dressed in a faded T-shirt — an old Pink Floyd one — and cut-off jeans approach the front entrance and speak to Tim outside, then go in.

‘That’s the husband,’ Corinne said. ‘He came in and questioned members of staff, after which they did a thorough search for her.’

‘Could you print me off an image of him?’ Branson asked.

‘Sure, though it won’t be great quality, I’m afraid.’

‘That’s fine,’ he said.

Next, they went to her office. Branson was conscious it was Monday lunchtime and the store was busy. But Corinne was anxious to help him. Over the following hour she had the entire staff of the store come in one by one and look at the photograph of Eden Paternoster.

Each of them shook their head in turn. No one had seen this woman yesterday.