You Are Dead

81

Friday 19 December

Half an hour later, Roy Grace was seated in front of a microfiche reader in the Reference section of Brighton’s Jubilee Library, a building he had loved ever since it first opened. He had decided to get away for an hour, giving him time to think. He could still be contacted if he was needed urgently.

Up until now they had been looking at the dates between Katy Westerham and Denise Patterson’s disappearances and the present. But he had a strong feeling they might have been looking in the wrong direction, at the wrong time period. He needed to go way further into the past, way beyond the dates of those first two murders.

Back-issue after back-issue of the Argus newspaper scrolled down the screen in front of him. He had taken as a starting point the date of Katy Westerham’s disappearance, December 1984, and was working his way backwards from then. Headlines of monumental events in the city and in the world flashed past his eyes.

A South Korean jetliner which strayed into Soviet airspace was shot down with the loss of 269 people. Sally K. Ride became the first woman astronaut. Nazi Gestapo chief Klaus Barbie was found in America. Should Brighton and Hove be given City status? He went back to 1983. Brighton and Hove Albion football club made the Cup Final and drew 2–2 with Manchester United.

He continued all the way back to 1975. Pol Pot became leader of Cambodia, with the nightmare of the killing fields yet to unfold. Jimmy Carter was elected President of the USA. The Queen made an official visit to Brighton. Bjorn Borg won Wimbledon. A Brighton town councillor was jailed for corruption.

It was half past two. He was hungry and thirsty, his vision was becoming blurred and he was desperate for water and for coffee. He was aware that his concentration had waned and he had perhaps scrolled too fast through the past couple of months. Had he missed something? He went back.

Then suddenly he stopped. And stared. Stared at the photograph beneath the headline.

A young girl, with a pretty face and long brown hair.

The date of the paper was 30 December, 1976.

The Argus headline said:

He read on.

The story dominated the entire front page. Roy Grace read it through twice, making a note of the names, then sat thinking. It had happened close to forty years ago. Some years earlier than Katy Westerham and Denise Patterson. He remembered Tony Balazs’s words from yesterday.

The universal profile of serial killers is they are aged between fifteen to forty-five at the time of their first murder and between eighteen to sixty at the time of their last.

Could there be a connection between this incident and his current investigation? The time frame fitted. Could this be where it had begun, he wondered?

He photographed the image on the screen with his iPhone, then took a second photograph as backup.

Detective Inspector Ron Gilbart. Ambitious officers back then would reach that rank in their early thirties to early forties. Was Gilbart still alive now? If he was, he’d be in his seventies or eighties. He knew exactly who to call to ask.

As he hurried out of the library, he phoned Tish and asked her to get him the number of David Rowland, a former Sussex policeman now in his seventies, who coordinated the local Association of Retired Police Officers. Standing on the pavement in the light drizzle, he waited for her to look up the numbers. She said she’d call him back in a few moments. As he went to call Cleo’s number quickly to see how everything was going, his assistant came back on the line and gave him the number.

He dialled it immediately, but it went straight to voicemail. He left a message asking Rowland to call him back urgently. He strode swiftly up to the Church Street car park, paid what he considered to be the rip-off sum of money demanded by the machine, then began to drive out. Just as the barrier rose, his phone rang.

It was David Rowland. The former copper had a voice that was both elderly, but at the same time imbued with an infectious, almost youthful enthusiasm. ‘Sorry I missed your call, Roy, I was down in the cells of the Old Police Cells Museum and I’m afraid there’s no mobile signal down there. How can I help you?’

‘Detective Inspector Ron Gilbart — do you by chance remember him?’ Grace drove through the barrier, then stopped and waved a man wheeling a bicycle past, followed by a young couple with a baby in a pushchair.

Rowland sounded surprised. ‘Yes, very well indeed. We were both at Hove together for quite a time. Sorry to see that station go, it holds good memories for me. What do you want to know about him?’

‘Do you happen to know if he’s still alive?’ In his mirror he saw another car, a black Range Rover, pull up at the barrier behind him.

‘Yes he is, but he’s not very well, poor bugger. Had a stroke a couple of years ago and he’s pretty much housebound. Got all his marbles, but he struggles with his speech. His wife’s pretty good at helping him out. They’ve got a bungalow in Woodingdean.’

‘Have you got his address and number?’

The Range Rover gave him an angry blast on his horn. Ignoring it, Grace tapped the number into his phone. Moments later, a short, bald man banged angrily on his window.

‘Get a fucking move on, you tosser!’

Grace pulled out his wallet and flashed it open to show his warrant card to the man as he dialled. The bald man raised both arms in the air in frustration. Ignoring him, Grace listened to the ringing tone, then a moment later a female voice answered. It was Gilbart’s wife and yes, Ron was home.

Current regulations restricted the breaking of speed limits to emergencies only. In his view this was an emergency. He bullied his way out into the traffic, and drove as fast as he could towards Gilbart’s home.