Dead Man's Grip

31

Reading from his prepared notes to the team assembled in the conference room of Sussex House, Roy Grace said, ‘The time is 8.30 a.m., Saturday 24 April. This is the sixth briefing of Operation Violin, the investigation into the death of Tony Revere, conducted at the start of day four.’

It was of little consequence that it was the weekend. For the first few weeks of any major crime inquiry, the team worked around the clock, though with the current financial cutbacks overtime was controlled much more tightly.

At the previous evening’s briefing, PC Alec Davies played CCTV footage he had retrieved from a betting shop a short distance along the road from the scene of the accident. The video was grainy, but it showed that although it had been a near miss, there was no impact between the cyclist and the Audi car. Inspector James Biggs, from the Road Policing Unit, had confirmed that after a second interview with the woman driver, Mrs Carly Chase, and forensic examination of her vehicle, they were satisfied that no contact between the cycle and the Audi had occurred. Moreover they were not intending to charge her with any further offence other than driving while unfit through alcohol.

Carly Chase’s mistake, Grace knew, was thinking, like most people, that the alcohol in her blood from the previous night would have all but gone by the following morning. It was something that used to bother him about Cleo. There were times before her pregnancy when she would drink quite heavily after work. He sometimes reckoned he would drink heavily if he did that job, too. He had hoped that she would be coming home yesterday, but at the last minute the consultant decided to keep her in for one more day. Grace was going to pick her up this afternoon.

A major focus of this morning’s meeting was on damage limitation concerning the massive reward the dead boy’s parents had offered. It had made big headlines in many of the nation’s papers, prompting any number of conspiracy theories. These ranged from Tony Revere being murdered by a Brighton crime family in a drugs turf war to this being a revenge killing by a rival crime family or Tony being an undercover agent for the CIA.

Glenn Branson and Bella Moy took the team once more through the reactions of the dead boy’s parents. It was agreed that there was no indication from them that their son’s death might have been a targeted hit, or that he had any enemies. The only issue with the parents, DS Branson added, had been their anger that they could not take their son’s body home with them and that it might be necessary to subject it to a second Home Office post-mortem. Philip Keay, the Coroner’s Officer, had explained to them that it could be in their interests. If the van driver was found and brought to trial, his defence counsel would not necessarily be content with the results of the first post-mortem.

In reply, Tony Revere’s father had told him, in plain English, that the cause of his son’s death did not require fucking Sherlock Holmes.

Tracy Stocker, the Crime Scene Manager, raised her hand and Grace indicated for her to go ahead.

‘Chief, Philip Keay and I explained to the parents that regardless of whether there needed to be a second PM, the Coroner would not release the body until after the results of the toxicology reports. We could be looking at two weeks minimum for those, maybe more. Tony Revere was on the wrong side of the road and that suggests to me that he might have had drugs or alcohol in his system, possibly from the night before.’

‘Are we having a full tox scan, Roy?’ asked David Howes.

The Chief Constable, Tom Martinson, was under the cosh from the government to lop £52 million from the annual police budget. CID had been asked to send only what was essential to the labs, as every forensic submission was a big expense. A full toxicology scan, including eye fluids, cost over £2,000.

Ordinarily, Grace would have tried to save this money. The cyclist was clearly in the wrong. The woman in the Audi had been driving while over the limit, but she had not, from what he’d seen, been a contributory factor in the accident. The van driver, however, had gone through a red light and when found would be facing serious charges. The lorry driver, regardless of being over his legal hours, could have done nothing to avoid the collision. The toxicology report was not going to add anything to the facts as they stood, other than to explain the possibility of why the cyclist was on the wrong side. But it could feature in any defence case by the van driver.

Besides, this was not a normal situation. The deceased’s parents were demonstrating anger, a natural reaction by any parent, but these people were in a position to do something about their anger. He was pretty sure they would go straight to their lawyers back in New York. Tom Martinson was a belts-and-braces man. If a slew of claims were made by the parents against the woman driver of the Audi, against the missing van driver and against the lorry driver, the insurers would come to the police as their first port of call, wanting to see what they had done to establish the possible culpability of the cyclist. And they would be asking a lot of awkward questions if thorough toxicology tests had not been done.

‘Yes, we are, David,’ Grace replied. ‘I’m afraid it’s necessary.’ He outlined his reasons to the team, then changed the subject. ‘I’m pleased to report a possible breakthrough this morning,’ he went on. ‘A fingerprint taken from the damaged wing mirror found at the scene, and presumed to have snapped off the door of the Ford Transit van on impact with the cyclist, has been identified. This was from a further fragment discovered during the continued search of the scene yesterday.’

All eyes were on the Detective Superintendent. A sudden and complete silence had fallen in the room. Only to be broken by the Indiana Jones ring tone of Norman Potting’s mobile phone. He silenced it, murmuring an apology to Grace. Then PC Davies’s phone rang, with a stuttering chirrup. He checked the caller display, then quickly silenced that too.

‘The print is from Ewan Preece, a thirty-one-year-old convicted drug dealer serving his last three weeks of a six-year sentence in Ford Prison,’ Grace said. ‘He’s on a day-release rehabilitation programme, working on a construction site in Arundel. On Wednesday 21 April, the day of the collision, he failed to return for evening lock-in. I’ve had a vehicle check run on him at Swansea and the only thing registered in his name is a 1984 Vauxhall Astra which was impounded and destroyed some months ago for no tax or insurance.’

‘I know that name,’ Norman Potting said. ‘Ewan Preece. Little bastard. Nicked him years ago for stealing cars. Used to be one of the Moulsecoomb troublemakers when he was younger.’

‘Know anything about him now, Norman?’ Grace asked. ‘Where he might be? Why would anyone go over the wall with just three weeks left?’

‘I know the people to ask, chief.’

Grace made an action note. ‘OK, good. If you can follow that up. I spoke to a senior officer at Ford just before this meeting, Lisa Setterington. She told me Preece has been as good as gold in Ford. He’s applied himself, learning the plastering trade. She says she knows him well and feels it’s out of character for him to have done this.’

‘Out of character for a villain like Preece?’ Potting snorted. ‘I remember him when he was fifteen. I was doing community policing then. He had a formal warning for being mixed up with a bunch of kids who’d been nicked for joyriding. I felt sorry for him and got him lined up for a job at the timber people, Wenban-Smith, but he never turned up for his interview. I stopped him one night a few weeks later, him and two others, and asked why he’d not gone. He gave me a story about his family getting evicted from their council house.’ Potting nodded his head. ‘It’s not easy to be evicted from a council house if you’ve got young kids – his parents were scumbags. He never had a chance. But I thought maybe he was a decent kid and I felt sorry for him. I bet him a tenner that he’d be in jail by his sixteenth birthday. He took the bet.’

Bella Moy was staring at him incredulously. ‘Your own money?’

Potting nodded. ‘I knew it was a safe bet. He was banged up six months later for vehicle theft. Doesn’t surprise me how he’s ended up.’ He nodded again, wistfully.

‘So did he pay you?’ David Howes asked.

‘Ha-ha!’ Potting replied.

Nick Nicholl suddenly interjected, ‘Boss, might it be a good idea to get the word spread around Ford about the reward. It’s likely someone in there will know what Preece was up to. All prisoners know each other’s business.’

‘Good point,’ Grace said. ‘You should go over there, Norman. See if any of the prisoners will talk to you.’

‘I’ll do that, chief. I know where to start looking in Brighton as well. A bloke like Ewan Preece isn’t capable of hiding for long.’

‘Especially,’ Grace said, ‘when there’s a hundred-thousand-dollar price tag on finding him.’