Dead Man's Grip

82

It seemed only moments after he had fallen asleep that Roy Grace was woken by the sound of his phone ringing and vibrating.

He rolled over, reaching out for the flashing display in the darkness. The clock beside it said 1.37 a.m.

‘It’s OK. I’m awake,’ said Cleo, a tad grumpily.

He switched on his bedside light, grabbed the phone and hit the green button. ‘Yurrr?’

It was Duncan Crocker. ‘You awake, boss?’

It was a dumb question, Grace thought. Did Detective Sergeant Crocker know many people who were capable of answering a phone in their sleep? He slid out of bed and tripped over Humphrey, who responded with a startled yelp. He dropped the phone and grabbed the side of the bed, just managing to stop himself falling flat on his face on the floor. He retrieved the phone.

‘Hang on, Duncan.’

Wearing only the T-shirt he’d been sleeping in, he padded out of the room, accompanied by the dog, which jumped up excitedly, its sharp claws digging painfully into his leg.

‘Down, boy!’ he hissed, closing the door behind him.

Humphrey raced down the staircase, barking, then ran back up and launched himself at Grace’s crotch.

Crocking the phone under his ear and protecting himself with his hands, he said, ‘Be with you in a sec, Duncan. Down! Humphrey, off, off!’

He went downstairs, followed by a madly barking Humphrey, switched the lights on, moved a copy of Sussex Life that was open at the property pages – Cleo had suddenly gone into house-hunting mode – and sat on a sofa. Humphrey jumped on to the cushion beside him. Stroking him, trying to keep the dog quiet, Grace said, ‘Sorry about that. What’s up?’

‘You asked me to let you know as soon as we found the lorry, boss.’

‘You’ve found it? You’re still at work?’

‘Yes.’

‘Thanks for staying so late. So, tell me?’

‘Just had a call from Thames Valley Road Policing Unit. It’s in a parking area at Newport Pagnell Services on the M1.’

‘How did they find it?’ Grace was doing his best to think clearly through his tiredness.

‘It was logged by an ANPR camera as it entered Bucks on the M1 on Tuesday night, boss. There were no further logs, so we asked the local police to check likely pull-ins.’

‘Good stuff. What CCTV do they have at the service station?’

‘They’ve got cameras on the private vehicle and truckers’ entrances.’

‘OK, we need those, to see if Ferguson went inside. How long are you planning on staying up?’

‘As long as you need me.’

‘Ask them for copies of the videos from the time the ANPR clocked him to now and get them down to us as quickly as possible. If it helps them, we can send someone up there.’

‘Will do.’

Grace stroked the dog again. He knew he wasn’t thinking as clearly as he needed to at this moment.

‘Sorry, one other important thing – Ferguson’s lorry. I want it protected as a crime scene. Get on to Thames Valley Police to secure it. They need to cordon off a good twenty-foot radius around it. If the driver was attacked, it’s likely to have happened close to the vehicle. We need a search team on to it at first light. What’s the weather up there at the moment?’

‘Dry, light wind – it’s been the same since Tuesday night. Forecast the same for the morning.’

That was a relief to Grace. Rain could wash away forensic evidence very rapidly.

‘I’ll sort out the search team, Duncan. If you deal with the CCTV, please. Then go home and get some sleep. You’ve done well.’

‘Thanks, boss.’

Grace let Humphrey out on to the patio and watched him pee. Then he went into the kitchen and put the kettle on. Upstairs he heard the sound of the loo flushing and wondered, for a moment, if Cleo was going to come down and join him. But instead he heard the bedroom door slam – a little too loudly.

Sandy used to slam the bedroom door when she was angry about a late-night phone call that had disturbed her. Cleo was a lot more tolerant, but he could sense her pregnancy getting to her. It was getting to both of them. Most of the time it was a shared joy, or a shared anxiety, but just occasionally it seemed like a growing wedge between them and she had been in a really grumpy mood last night.

He made a phone call, apologetically waking Crime Scene Manager Tracy Stocker and bringing her up to speed. He asked her to send a SOCO team up to Newport Pagnell – about a two-and-a-half-hour drive from Brighton – to be there ready to start at dawn. At the same time, in light of the latest development, he discussed the joint strategy she would need with the POLSA – the Police Search Advisor – and search team.

Then he spooned instant coffee into a mug, poured boiling water on to it, stirred it and carried it out into the living room. He felt chilly, but he could not be bothered to put on any more clothes.

He sat down on the sofa with his laptop, bleary-eyed, stirring the coffee again and staring at the laptop as it powered up. Humphrey found a chew and started a life or death tussle with it on the floor. Grace smiled at him, envying him his uncomplicated life. Maybe if he got the chance to choose, when he died he’d come back as a dog. So long as he got to pick his owners.

He Googled Newport Pagnell Services. M oments later he had a full listing of what was there, but that did not help him. He opened Google Earth and again he entered Newport Pagnell Services.

When the globe appeared, he zoomed in. Within moments he saw a close-up of the M1 motorway and the surrounding area. He stared at it, sipping his hot coffee and thinking hard.

Ferguson must have continued on down to Sussex in another vehicle. His assailant’s? So how had he met his assailant?

Was it someone he knew and had arranged to rendezvous with in the car park? Possible, he thought. But to his mind, it was more probable that the assailant had been following him, looking for a suitable opportunity. And if this assumption was right, it meant that the assailant could not have been more than a few vehicles behind Ferguson’s lorry.

He put his coffee down and started suddenly, pacing around the room. Humphrey jumped up at him again, wanting to play.

‘Down!’ he hissed, and then he dialled MIR-1, relieved when DS Crocker answered almost immediately. ‘Sorry, another task for you, Duncan. We need the indexes of the vehicles either side of Ferguson’s lorry on the motorway immediately before Newport Pagnell Services,’ he said. ‘Get everything up to five vehicles in front and twenty back. I want to know every one of the vehicles that went into the services at the same time as him and where they went when they left afterwards. It’s very likely that Ferguson was in one of those. Willingly or otherwise. I think it is highly likely to be a rental car, so we’re looking, primarily, for late-model small to medium saloons.’

‘I’ll get what I can, but it may take me a while to check out every vehicle. Is the morning briefing meeting soon enough?’

No, it wasn’t soon enough, Grace thought. But he needed to be realistic and Crocker sounded exhausted.

‘Yes, that’s fine. Do what you can, then get some sleep.’

Deciding to follow his own advice, he climbed back upstairs, followed by Humphrey, and went back to bed, trying not to disturb Cleo. At midday he was holding a press conference to announce that the police were treating the death of Stuart Ferguson as murder now. But although he had discussed it at length with ACC Rigg and the whole of the Sussex Police media team, he had not decided on the way he wanted to slant the conference. He wanted to make it clear that the police knew the two murders were linked, and the direction in which they were looking, but above all he needed witnesses to come forward. However, if he played up the Mafia link and the hit-man hypothesis, that might, he worried, actually do more harm than good, by scaring people into silence.

The only small positive was that Spinella seemed to have been as duped as the rest of the press into believing, to date, that Ferguson’s death was an industrial accident. That gave him some small satisfaction.

Finally, he fell into a troubled sleep, to be woken an hour later by Cleo going to the loo.