Dead if You Don’t

89

Sunday 13 August

14.00–15.00

There was a view south across the city and the English Channel, and the distant wind farm off the coast, from the fourth-floor kitchen window at Boden Court. Grace stared across at the single chimney stack rising high above Shoreham Power Station and the large residential colony of Shoreham, to the west. Somewhere there, close to the sea, close enough to be affected by the tide, Mungo Brown was imprisoned, a ligature round his neck and the water level rising.

Who had killed these three men and why? Greed? Was it perhaps a fourth partner who knew where Mungo was and stood to get all the money?

His phone rang — Glenn. ‘How are you doing, boss?’

‘Not great.’

‘We have a development.’

‘We do?’

Branson talked him through the latest texts, the Polaroid photograph and the severed ear, then sent him the images.

‘Do you know for certain it’s the boy’s, Glenn?’ Grace asked.

‘It has to be, boss.’

‘Has to be?’

‘Mungo has a bloodstained bandage over his right ear. Now we have a right ear.’

‘I hear you.’

‘Ear you?’

‘I’m not in any mood for humour. I’m standing in a flat with three dead bodies, OK?’

‘Yeah, sorry.’

Grace ended the call and refocused. A young lad, frightened out of his wits, with one of his ears hacked off, probably without any painkillers. He’d like to get his hands on the other people who were behind this, alone, just him and them in a dark room. But that wasn’t for now. At this moment, there was one desperate priority and that was to save Mungo’s life.

He made the decision to ditch all pretence of a covert investigation, and after a quick chat with the Critical Incident Manager, he instructed Oscar-1 to put a full-scale manhunt into operation. Two helicopters, if available, would be scrambled, one from the Solent Coastguard, the other, NPAS-15. Mungo Brown’s photograph was to be circulated to all officers and to the media, very urgently.

Next, he contacted DCI Sam Davies, from the Major Crime Team, informed her what had happened and asked her to attend at the flat to pick up the job as SIO. He then requested Oscar-1 to get a team from Digital Forensics blue-lighted here immediately by a Roads Policing Unit driver in a fast car, to see if there were any immediate clues from any phones or computers in the flat. He was tempted to try looking himself, but did not want to risk making a mistake that could lose or mask anything crucial. That team could be here in less than thirty minutes. He also asked the Inspector to summon a Coroner’s Officer, a CSI team and a Crime Scene Manager.

Where the hell are you, Mungo?

He looked at the two bodies in the room with him. They were like a waxwork tableau. Dummies. Unreal. Carrying the secret of Mungo’s whereabouts to the grave.

Go fuck yourself.

He looked at the man lying on his back, his blood-drenched chest, the bullet graze on the top of his forehead, his glassy, sightless stare.

Tell you what, mate, he thought, irreverently. You look pretty fucked yourself.

He had another thought. One of the bits of technology he did know about was from a lecture he’d attended at the Homicide conference in Las Vegas two years ago. If you left the software activated, and most people did, iPhones kept a record of all your movements. He took a pair of protective gloves from his pocket and pulled them on, then, for the second time in this investigation breaking all the rules of crime scene management, rummaged in the pockets of the man slumped at the table and pulled out a cheap-looking Nokia, a burner.

Kneeling beside his new best friend on the floor, he searched first in his windcheater pockets, pulling out another cheap-looking throwaway phone. Then, exerting himself to move the man a little, he reached round into the back pocket of his jeans and felt, with hope rising, a familiar, slim rectangular shape.

He pulled out a recent model iPhone. But when he pressed the power button, the numerical keypad appeared along with the words, Enter Passcode or Touch ID.

It had been too much, he knew, to expect it not to be password-protected. In desperation, he grabbed the dead man’s hand and pressed his forefinger against the power button. Nothing happened. He tried again, but still nothing. He knew the forensics team had been working on software to enable a dead person’s fingers to activate a touchpad. Had whatever electrical impulses were needed already left this man? He tried with the dead man’s thumb, middle fingers, then with the fingers and thumb of his left hand, but no success. He was wasting critical minutes, he realized, glancing at his watch.

Less than three hours left.

He thought about the tide chart he had memorized. How the hell were they going to find Mungo in time? He stared around the room. What could he do that he was overlooking?

His eyes alighted on a set of Range Rover keys on the kitchen table. Yes! He photographed them and pocketed them, knelt back down and went through the anorak, then jeans pockets, of the man on the floor and found a set of Audi car keys. He pocketed them, too. He found a third set of keys, the Golf’s, in the zipped hoodie of the dead man in the hallway, grabbed them, and ran out of the flat, past Inspector Allchild, and down the steps, radioing Kevin Hall to meet him in the underground car park.

As he burst through the door, he saw Hall running down the ramp. He thrust the Audi keys at him. ‘Kevin, check the Audi’s satnav. See what the last destination was!’

He went to the Range Rover, clicked the door lock to let himself in, sat in the driver’s seat, looked around for the key, then realized the ignition had been switched on by keyless-go.

He pushed the button on the vehicle’s display for satnav. The system opened and he studied it, then tapped RECENT DESTINATIONS.

Shoreham Beach came up.

Underneath was Boden Court.

Bugger.

He went to the Golf and repeated the process.

Shoreham Beach.

Boden Court.

Shit, shit, shit. He was no closer. He went over to Hall. ‘Anything?’

‘Zilch,’ Hall replied. ‘Gatwick Airport is the last entry.’

‘We need to get back to HQ,’ Grace said. ‘Fast.’