Looking Good Dead

79

Down on Level 4 of the Civic Square car park a group of police officers was clustered around the black Volkswagen Golf. Outside, officers were blocking every entrance. There was not a soul anywhere else inside the entire building.

‘I don’t want the owner to know we’ve been in,’ Grace said to the young PC from Traffic who was kneeling by the driver’s door, holding a huge set of levers on a ring in one hand and what looked like a radio transmitter in the other.

‘No worries. I’ll be able to lock it again. He’ll never know.’

Joe Tindall, in a white protective suit, stood beside Grace, chewing a stick of gum. He seemed in an even more grumpy mood than usual. ‘Not content with ruining my weekend, Roy?’ the senior SOCO said. ‘Making sure you screw my week up right from the word go too, eh?’

There was a loud click and the Golf’s door opened. Instantly its horn started blaring, a deafening, echoing beep-beep-beep-beep-beep.

The Traffic constable popped the bonnet open and ducked under it. Within seconds, the beeping stopped. He closed the bonnet. ‘OK,’ he said to Tindall and Grace. ‘All yours.’

Grace, also in white protective suit and gloves, let Tindall go in first, and stood watching him. A quick check of his watch showed it had been twenty-five minutes since they had closed the car park. The scene outside the entrances was total chaos: police vehicles, ambulances, fire engines, dozens of stranded shoppers, business people, visitors. And the knock-on effect was that most of central Brighton’s traffic was now gridlocked.

Grace was going to have a lot of egg on his face if nothing came of this.

He watched Tindall take print dustings in the most likely places first: the interior mirror, gear stick, horn pad, interior and exterior door handles. When he was done with those, Tindall picked a hair off the driver’s headrest with tweezers and deposited it in an evidence bag. Then again using the tweezers, he removed one of several cigarette butts in the ashtray, and put that into a separate bag.

After a further five minutes he emerged from the car, looking marginally more cheerful than when he had arrived. ‘Got some good prints, Roy. I’ll get straight back and have the boys run them on NAFIS.’

NAFIS was the National Automated Fingerprint Information System.

‘I’m coming up there myself,’ Grace said. ‘I’ll be about ten minutes behind you.’

‘I’ll have a result waiting for you.’

‘I appreciate it.’

‘Actually, I don’t give a fuck whether you appreciate it or not,’ the SOCO said, staring hard at the Detective Superintendent.

Sometimes Grace found it hard to tell when Joe Tindall was being serious and when he was joking; the man had a peculiar sense of humour. He couldn’t gauge it now.

‘Good!’ Grace said, trying to humour the man. ‘I admire your detached professionalism.’

‘Detached bollocks!’ Tindall said. ‘I do it because I’m paid to do it. Being appreciated doesn’t bang my drum.’ He stepped out of his protective clothes, bagged them and headed off towards the exit staircase.

Grace and the Traffic constable exchanged a glance. ‘He can be a tetchy bugger!’

‘Cool glasses, though…’ the constable said.

Grace checked the interior of the car, looking in the glove compartment, which contained nothing but an owner’s manual, and in each of the door pockets, which were empty. He checked under the front seats, removed the cushion from the rear seat and looked under that. Nothing. There were absolutely no personal effects in the car at all; it felt more like a rental vehicle than a private one.

Then he checked the boot. It was spotless, containing just the toolkit, the spare wheel and a reflective warning triangle that he presumed came with the car. Finally, he crawled underneath; there was no mud, nothing to indicate anything out of the ordinary.

He hauled himself back to his feet, told the Traffic constable that he could lock it up and reset the alarm, and walked along to his car, anxious to get back to Sussex House. Hoping desperately the stroppy but brilliant Joe Tindall was going to produce a result with those prints.

And that the surveillance team did not lose the VW.

Bringing Brighton to a halt for no result was hardly going to improve Alison Vosper’s opinion of him. Or his chances of avoiding relegation to Newcastle. Cassian Pewe or no Cassian Pewe.

Then, suddenly, he thought of Cleo. It was twelve twenty. She hadn’t returned his call.