Dead if You Don’t

31

Saturday 12 August

17.30–18.30

Grace waited in the toilets for some minutes after Kipp Brown had reassembled his phone and left. A number of thoughts raced through his mind, the first being if someone was going to kidnap a teenage boy, why on earth do it here, where there were more security officers and CCTV cameras than anywhere else in the city. But if, as Brown said, his mother kept him wrapped up in cotton wool, and they always took him to school and picked him up themselves, perhaps there weren’t many opportunities for the kidnappers. And there was an old police maxim, that if you wanted to hide something, the best place was in plain sight. This stadium could not be more in plain sight.

He dictated some notes to himself, then made a series of phone calls to the small, tight number of his team members he would need.

This was the so-called ‘Golden Hour’ — the immediate period following a crime, and particularly a crime-in-action, when the trail of evidence would still be fresh. Mungo Brown disappeared possibly up to two hours ago. How far away could he be now?

Oscar-1 had informed the Force Gold, Superintendent Jason Tingley. The Superintendent, like Grace, had considerable previous kidnap and abduction experience, the highest profile of which was a school teacher who had run off to France with an under-age pupil. In response to Tingley’s questions, Grace assured the Superintendent that in his view this was not a hoax. As Gold, it was Tingley’s role to set the strategy. Crucially, he supported Grace’s decision to stay covert.

In conjunction with Gold, Grace decided against sealing off an area with road blocks, because not only could that alert the kidnappers that the police were involved, but in two hours they could be many miles away in any direction — even, God forbid, out of the country by now. The photographs of Mungo Brown Grace had taken from his father’s phone were immediately circulated to Sussex Police and the neighbouring counties of Surrey, Hampshire, Kent as well as British Transport Police, and to all officers and border control staff at airports and harbours, on an all-ports alert. It was on a sightings-only basis and no media were to be told.

Roy Grace left the toilets and hurried round the deserted concourse. Clear the ground under your feet, was one of the first rules for any major crime investigation. Flashing his warrant card at stewards, he made his way up to the Security Control Room.

Morris, Kundert, Balkham and Branson were all in the command centre. At this moment, they were looking at one of the CCTV monitors, at the close-up of the camera in the long grass. As soon as they saw Grace, they gave him a round of applause.

‘You are fucking nuts, boss!’ Glenn Branson said.

‘Thank you for what you did, Roy.’ Adrian Morris smiled at him.

‘I had my son with me,’ Grace said. ‘I didn’t see any option.’

‘My son’s here, too, with my father,’ Morris replied. ‘The other supporters will never know how close to disaster they were. Thank you, again. You’ll be a bloody hero in the Argus on Monday!’

‘You are, like, going to get such a bollocking from ACC Pewe,’ Branson said.

‘Bring it on!’ Grace replied, feistily. ‘We have another major problem on our hands right now.’ He nodded to the police officers and to Morris. ‘Let’s go next door and I’ll update you.’

He led the way into the small private room adjoining the Control Room, then informed the team, and explained it was critical that the enquiry into Mungo Brown’s kidnap remain covert at this stage.

The game on the pitch below them was on a knife edge but none of the team in the Control Room was watching.

‘Boss,’ DI Branson said, ‘if someone was planning to kidnap Mungo Brown, why here? It doesn’t make sense to have taken him here — to have gone to such an elaborate plan right under the noses of all the security guards and cameras.’

‘I don’t completely agree with you,’ Grace said. ‘There are reasons why it might make sense. And I’m not making any assumptions, but one hypothesis is that the bomb scare and the kidnap are related.’

He knew from long experience that the simplest and most obvious was usually the right answer.

Was it the case here?

The simplest and most obvious explanation was that the bomb scare was a smokescreen for the kidnap of Mungo Brown. But Glenn Branson’s point that it didn’t make sense to kidnap someone in a place where there were more CCTV cameras than anywhere else in the city, or the whole county, was well made — except he wouldn’t have known how protected the boy was by his parents.

The DI shook his head, repeating himself. ‘Boss, there must be plenty of opportunities for someone planning to kidnap the kid that are better than this.’

‘Maybe, and I’m going to task someone with finding that out, Glenn. I’m going to set some parameters and policy. Ade, I need all CCTV footage in the thirty minutes before kick-off, and since, checked. If Mungo Brown did enter the stadium, you’ll have it logged somewhere?’

‘Every turnstile has a barcode scanner, Roy, and all the season tickets are barcoded. Juveniles flash a different colour. If the lad went into the stadium, we’ll be able to find out which entrance.’

‘If you can do that quickly. And if it showed he entered the stadium, I want it searched top to bottom in case he’s being held here, somewhere.’

‘Right.’

Grace looked at Branson. ‘Glenn, I know this is a day off for you, but not any more, I’m going to need you as my principal negotiator — you’ve done the course, haven’t you?’

‘I have, boss.’

‘I’m setting up my team in the Silver Command Intel suite at HQ and you’ll keep in contact with me there.’

‘Understood.’

‘We know that Mungo Brown and his father arrived here just under two hours before kick-off. Both of them must be captured on CCTV. The immediate priority is to locate the images, and then see what we get from there. If he has been taken from the grounds, it has to show up on a camera,’ Grace said. Then he turned to Morris.

‘Ade, take control from the club’s standpoint. All the time we’ve got people here, we have potential witnesses — and maybe the perpetrators. At the end of the game can we make an announcement saying if Mungo Brown is in the stadium, can he go to Reception to meet his father.’

He toyed with having the exits managed, but realized that with the number of people here that would be an impossible task.

The Control Room door opened and a tubby steward in a hi-viz tabard came in, puffing with exertion, holding up a mobile phone. He went straight across to Morris.

‘Sir, we just found this lying near the entrance to the car park.’