Dead Like You

94

Saturday 17 January

Roy Grace, seated in the office at the end of the Ops Room, was working his way through a horrible slimy and almost stone-cold mound of chicken and shrimp chow mein that some well-meaning officer had brought him. If he hadn’t been ravenous, he would have binned it. But he’d eaten nothing since an early-morning bowl of cereal and needed the fuel.

All had been quiet at the garage behind Mandalay Court. But the number and quality of the locks on the door continued to bother him. ACC Rigg had agreed readily to allowing Darren Spicer to tell them what he saw without incriminating himself, but as yet Glenn had been unable to find him. Grace hoped the serial villain wasn’t playing a macabre game with them.

He dug the plastic fork into the foil dish, while staring at the gridded image on the computer screen on the desk in front of him. All the cars and the thirty-five officers on his operation were equipped with transponders which gave him their exact position to within a few feet. He checked the location of each in turn, then the images of the city streets on the CCTV cameras. The images on the screens on the wall showed their night-vision sight as clear as daylight. The city was definitely busier today. People might have stayed home yesterday evening, but Saturday was starting to look like it might be something of a party night.

Just as he munched on a desiccated shrimp, his radio phone crackled into life and an excited voice said, ‘Target One sighted! Turning right-right into Edward Street!’

Target One was the code designated to John Kerridge – Yac. Target Two, and further numbers, would be applied to any white van or pedestrian arousing suspicion.

Instantly, Grace put down the foil dish and tapped the command to bring up, on one of the wall-mounted monitors, the CCTV camera trained on the junction of Edward Street and Old Steine. He saw a Peugeot estate taxi, in the turquoise and white Brighton livery, accelerate out of the camera’s view along the road.

‘One female passenger. He is proceeding east-east!’ he heard.

Moments later Grace saw a small Peugeot heading in the same direction. The transponder showed on the grid this was one of his covert cars, no. 4.

He called up the next image in sequence on the CCTV screens and saw the taxi crossing the intersection with Egremont Place, where Edward Street became Eastern Road.

Almost exactly the same pattern as last night, Grace thought. But this time, although he could not have explained why, he sensed there was a difference. At the same time, he was still worried about the amount of faith he had put in Proudfoot’s judgement.

He spoke on the internal phone to his Silver. ‘Have we found out his destination from the taxi company?’

‘No, chief, didn’t want to alert them, in case the operator says anything to the driver. We’ve enough cover to keep him in view if he stays in the area.’

‘OK.’

Another excited voice crackled on the radio phone. ‘He’s turning right – right into – what’s that street – Montague, I think. Yes, Montague! He’s stopping! Rear door opening! She’s out of the car! Oh, my God, she’s running!’