Dead Man's Grip

27

Grace changed the venue of the morning briefing from Jack Skerritt’s office to the conference room, to accommodate the extra people now attending. These included Tracy Stocker, the Crime Scene Manager, James Gartrell, the SOCO photographer, Paul Wood, the sergeant from the Collision Investigation Unit who had attended at the scene yesterday, and his own Crime Scene Manager as well.

Grace had brought in two additions to his own inquiry team. The first was a young PC, Alec Davies, twenty-two, who had previously impressed him when in uniform and whom he had fast-tracked into CID by requesting him for his team now. A quiet, shy-looking man, Davies was to be in charge of the outside inquiry team of PCSOs, who were trawling every business premise within a mile of the accident in the hope of finding more CCTV footage.

The second member was David Howes, a tall, suave DC in his mid-forties. Dressed in a pinstriped grey suit and checked shirt, with neatly brushed ginger hair, he could have passed muster as a stockbroker or a corporate executive. One of his particular skills in the CID was as a trained negotiator. He was also a former Prison Liaison Officer.

This room could hold twenty-five people seated on the hard, red chairs around the open-centred rectangular table and another thirty, if necessary, standing. One of its uses was for press conferences, and it was for these that there stood, at the far end opposite the video screen, a concave, two-tone blue board, six feet high and ten feet wide, boldly carrying the Sussex Police website address and the Crimestoppers legend and phone number. All press and media statements were given by officers against this backdrop. Vertical venetian blinds screened off the dismal view of the custody block towering above them.

On the wall beside the video screen was a whiteboard on which James Biggs had drawn a diagram of the position of the vehicles involved, immediately following the impact with the cyclist.

The white Transit van which had subsequently disappeared was labelled VEHICLE 1. The bicycle was labelled VEHICLE 2, the lorry VEHICLE 3 and the Audi car VEHICLE 4.

Reading from his prepared notes, Roy Grace said, ‘The time is 8.30 a.m., Thursday 22 April. This is the second briefing of Operation Violin, the investigation into the death of Brighton University student Anthony Vincent Revere, conducted on day two, following his collision in Portland Road, Hove, with an unidentified van, then a lorry belonging to Aberdeen Ocean Fisheries. Absent from this meeting are DS Branson, PC Pattenden and DS Moy, who are currently attending the viewing of his body with his parents, who have flown over from the United States.’

He turned to Sergeant Wood. ‘Paul, I think it would be helpful to start with you.’

Wood stood up. ‘We’ve fed all the information from the initial witness statements, skid marks and debris pattern into the CAD program we are currently using for accident simulation. We have created two perspectives of the accident. The first being from the point of view of the Audi car.’

He picked up a digital remote and pressed it. On the video screen appeared a grey road, approximating the width of Portland Road, but with the pavement and all beyond on either side blanked out in a paler grey. The screen showed the white van tailgating the Audi, the cyclist emerging from a side street ahead and the articulated lorry some way ahead, on the other side of the road, approaching in the distance.

He pressed a button and the animation came to life. On the far side of the road, the lorry began to approach. Suddenly the cyclist began to move, swinging out of the side street, on the wrong side, heading straight for the Audi. At the last minute, the cyclist swerved to the left, towards the centre of the road, and the Audi swerved left on to the pavement. An instant later, the van clipped the cyclist, sending him hurtling across the far side of the road and straight underneath the lorry, between its front wheels and rear wheels. The cyclist spun around the rear wheel arch as the lorry braked to a halt, his right leg then flying out from underneath it.

When the animation stopped, there was a long silence.

Grace finally broke it, turning to the RPU Inspector. ‘James, from this simulation it doesn’t look as if the Audi driver, Mrs Carly Chase, had any contact with Revere.’

‘I would agree with that based on what we have heard so far. But I’m not yet convinced we’ve heard the full story. It might be that she was unlucky to be breathalysed on a morning-after offence. But it’s too early to rule out her culpability at this stage.’

Grace turned to the Major Crime Branch Crime Scene Manager. ‘Tracy, do you have anything for us?’

Tracy Stocker, a senior SOCO, a little over five feet tall, was a diminutive power house and one of the most respected Crime Scene Managers in the force. She had a strong, good-looking face framed with straight brown hair and was dressed today in civvies, a navy trouser suit with a grey blouse. A standard police ID card hung from a lanyard around her neck, printed with the words SERVING SUSSEX in blue and white.

‘Yes, chief, we have something that may be significant. We have sent the serial number on the part of the wing mirror that was recovered at the scene to Ford. They will be able to tell us if it’s from a Ford Transit and the year of manufacture.’

‘It’s going to be thousands of vans, right?’ Nick Nicholl said.

‘Yes,’ she conceded. But then she added, ‘Most of them should have two wing mirrors. Maybe a CCTV camera will give us a shot of a van with one missing. The mirror itself has been shattered, but I’ve requested fingerprint analysis of the casing. Most people adjust their wing mirrors, so there’s a good chance we’ll get something off that. It may take a while, though, because the plastic was wet from the rain and it’s not good material to get prints off at the best of times.’

‘Thanks. Good work, Tracy.’

Grace then turned to Alec Davies. ‘Any luck so far from CCTV?’

The young PC shook his head. ‘No, sir. We’ve looked at all the images taken and the angles and distance don’t give us enough detail.’

As Davies spoke, Grace’s mind began to wander, distracted by his thoughts of Cleo, as he had been every few minutes. He’d spoken to her earlier and she’d sounded a lot better this morning. Hopefully by tomorrow she would be ready to come home.

After a while he realized that Davies was still speaking. He stared blankly at the young PC, then had to say, ‘I’m sorry, could you repeat that?’

Once Davies had obliged, Grace gathered his thoughts together and said, ‘OK, Alec, I think you should widen the net. If the van is travelling at thirty miles per hour, that’s one mile every two minutes. Expand your trawl to a ten-mile radius. Let me know how many people you need to cover that and I’ll authorize you.’

Norman Potting raised his hand and Grace signalled to him to speak.

‘Boss, in view of the information that came to light yesterday, about the relationship of the deceased to the New York Mafia, should we be concerned that there is more to this than just a traffic accident? I know we have the hit-and-run van to investigate, but could this possibly be a hit in a different sense of the word?’

‘It’s a good point to raise, Norman,’ Grace replied. ‘I’m starting to think, from what I’ve seen so far, that this is unlikely to be some kind of gangland killing. But we need a line of enquiry to ensure that it’s not Mafia-related. We need to do some intelligence gathering.’ He looked at the crime analyst he had brought into his team, Ellen Zoratti, a bright twenty-eight-year-old. ‘Ellen is already in contact with police in New York to try to establish if Tony Revere’s family, or his mother’s family, are in any kind of dispute with other members of their own family – or other crime families.’

At that moment, Grace’s phone rang. Excusing himself, he pressed the answer button. It was his boss, ACC Rigg, saying he needed to see him right away. He did not sound in a happy mood.

Grace told him he would be there in half an hour.