Dead at First Sight

97 Friday 12 October

Two armed CROPS officers travelled in the small grey van, in the darkness, heading north towards the country town of East Grinstead along a winding rural road. The driver, borrowed at the last moment to replace a sick member of the team, was a pot-bellied old sweat of a uniform constable, seventeen shifts from retirement, he told them with pride and no hint of regret. He smelled of curry. For the past forty minutes since leaving Brighton he’d bored his passengers rigid, swinging the lantern as well as telling them how policing had changed since he’d first joined. Wasn’t the same any more, no sir. You could call a spade a spade back then. Now you’d be up in front of Professional Standards for making a racist statement.

His passengers, CROPS officers PC Doug Riley and PC Lewis Hastings, politely humoured him, the CROPS knowing they would need him for transport later. Riley and Hastings were kitted out in their camouflage fatigues, with thermal underwear, black balaclavas and helmets with netting. They carried in their rucksacks water bottles, food rations, bottles to urinate in, bags to poo in, food rations, night-vision goggles, binoculars, cameras with long lenses and encrypted radios with earpieces. Each was armed with a Glock 17 handgun, in a holster.

Hastings, in the front seat, was watching the satnav on the dashboard, as well as the Google Maps app on his phone into which he had programmed Primrose Farm Cottage, Forest Row. The wipers, on the intermittent setting, swept away the light, misty drizzle from the screen. He was pleased at the mist, it gave them even more cover.

‘Coming up, quarter of a mile, sharp left,’ he instructed their driver.

The voice of the Silver Commander, Superintendent Julian Blazeby, came through the radio. ‘Charlie Romeo Three Seven?’

Hastings reached forward and picked up the mike.

‘Charlie Romeo Three Seven.’

‘I have you on my screen close to the drop point. How is it looking?’

‘Brilliant conditions, sir. Mist as well as darkness. Our ETA is five minutes.’

‘Good. Let me know when you are both in position.’

‘Yes yes, sir.’

The van turned into a wooded single-track lane, with overhanging trees forming a tunnel, and continued for a short while. They passed a sign for Primrose Farm on an open five-barred gate marking a potholed, metalled driveway. The driver slowed.

‘The cottage is showing as further on,’ Hastings said. An animal shot across in front of them.

‘Deer,’ the driver said. ‘Lucky it wasn’t a sabre-tooth tiger, eh?’

‘Ha ha!’ Riley, in the back seat, said.

‘Did I tell you the time when I had to go looking for a reported tiger spotted in the woods at Stanmer Park?’

‘No, but I expect you’re about to,’ Hastings said in a resigned voice.

‘Turned out it had escaped from a circus! Do many of you CROPS guys get eaten by wild animals?’ he asked.

‘More likely to get eaten by boredom,’ Hastings said.

‘So what happens if you need to take a dump?’

‘I don’t,’ Hastings said. ‘I take Imodium before a job, bungs me up good and proper.’

‘I once spent three days inside a fridge in the back of a van, parked up outside a crack den in Whitehawk, in Brighton,’ Riley said. ‘Had to piss into a bottle. Worth it, though, we got the scumbags.’

The headlights picked up the opening to another entrance, to the left. It was marked by rotting wooden gates, wide open and overgrown with brambles, which didn’t look like they’d been closed in years, and a newer-looking oval wooden sign above a mailbox.

The driver slowed.

The letters read PRIMROSE FARM COTTAGE. He halted the car. ‘Want me to drive down?’

‘No,’ Hastings said. ‘Here’s good.’

They rehearsed the code word they had agreed between them. Rattlesnake. If Hastings or Riley or the support team that would be stationed nearby said this word over the radio, it meant their cover was blown and the operation would switch instantly from covert to overt. The support team call sign was Romeo One.

As the two CROPS officers climbed out with their heavy rucksacks, the driver said, ‘Abandon hope all ye who enter...’

‘You’re a regular cheerful Charlie, aren’t you?’ PC Riley said.

‘Nah, I just like horror flicks. Have fun, lads!’

As the van drove off, the two officers pulled on their night-vision goggles and set off along the track, which dipped steeply at first down to the left, then levelled out. It was a long walk, three-quarters of a mile, lined on both sides with ferns and scrubby bushes, with the occasional mature rhododendron, and with dense forest beyond. Finally a house came into view. It was in pitch darkness and showed up a ghostly green through their goggles.

It was a substantial brick building with three gables, a thatched roof and the front door off-set slightly. Attached to the right-hand side of the house, as if added on many years ago as an afterthought, was an ugly double garage that looked in a bad state of neglect. To Hastings, who’d worked in the building trade before joining the police, it looked like two — or possibly three — cottages had at some point in the past been knocked together and converted into a single dwelling. Ivy had grown up a large part of the facade, with almost bare branches of wisteria covering the rest.

A small off-roader was parked outside the front of the house, beyond an overgrown lawn with a brick wishing well bounded by an unpaved circular driveway. They slowed their pace. ‘Proper Hansel and Gretel,’ Hastings said, quietly.

‘Mmmm. I’m kind of thinking Texas Chainsaw Massacre,’ Riley retorted, also quietly.

‘I’ll make sure Leatherface gets you first!’

‘And I always had you down as a gentleman!’ Riley retorted. ‘So what intel do we have?’

‘Not much.’

‘Dogs?’

‘Just a cat.’

‘If I lived here I’d have Rottweilers.’

‘Me too, so I could keep out old plods with boring sodding stories!’

They began to move forward more slowly now, one step at a time, in case there were motion-sensor lights.

‘Probably don’t get too many Jehovah’s Witnesses out here!’ Riley whispered. Hastings sniggered.

The house was now fifty feet in front of them. A light came on in an upstairs window. The two officers melted into the trees.

The shadow of a woman crossed the window. Another light came on. Then another. An owl hooted somewhere nearby.

Twenty minutes later the upstairs lights went off and several came on downstairs.

At a few minutes before 4.15 a.m., all the lights went off. A woman emerged from the front door with a handbag and a large suitcase. She popped the tailgate of the off-roader, pulled out a squeegee and wiped the vehicle’s windows clear of moisture. Then she hefted her suitcase into the rear and closed the tailgate. Firing up the rattling engine, she sat for some moments, then drove off past them, leaving behind a haze of diesel fumes.

Ten minutes later, Doug Riley had carved out a hide inside a dense rhododendron bush. He made sure both the front and rear were covered, then radioed the support team in the van. ‘Romeo One, Mike Whisky One in situ.’

His colleague, Lewis Hastings, buried deep inside a hedge behind the house, radioed in a few seconds later. ‘Romeo One, Mike Whisky Two in situ.’

Riley radioed again. ‘Romeo One. A woman, looks like the householder, has just departed with luggage. What’s the ETA of our weekend guests?’

‘Early evening, Mike Whisky One,’ the old sweat in the van replied. ‘I’m afraid it’s going to be a long day, chaps. Silver has requested as soon as it’s light enough you take and email close-up shots of the front- and rear-door locks. He wants to get a listening device in the house ASAP.’

‘Yes yes,’ Riley said.

‘Yes yes,’ Hastings replied also.