Death Comes Knocking: Policing Roy Grace's Brighton

10: Blinded in the Night

That couple of months between Christmas and the first daffodils of spring can be a great time for the police. Less partying means fewer people inflicting unspeakable evil on each other; a welcome breather for beleaguered cops. The year of 1998 was the exception that proves the rule. We’d had the calm, now followed the storm.

This was a time of new beginnings for me. Fifteen months previously, after five years of trying, Julie had finally fallen pregnant — with triplets. Going from the despair of childlessness to hitting the triple jackpot on our first IVF attempt was as wondrous as it was exhausting. We had never predicted that we would have a complete family delivered in one go.

Julie had selflessly taken voluntary redundancy from her career at Gatwick Airport to fund and prepare for the fertility treatment. She put heart and soul into trying everything to conceive, including some incredibly painful and intrusive operations. We were both heading towards our mid-thirties and were worrying whether we would ever have the family we so craved.

The IVF had gone as well as such a physically and emotionally draining procedure could. The first pregnancy test in mid-December 1996 had us leaping, gently, around the Christmas tree — Julie would not get to use the new squash racket I had bought her as a present that day for some years.

A very nervous and edgy few weeks of the New Year ended with a scan in early February, which diagnosed twins, but the hesitancy in the obstetrician’s poorly hidden reaction scared us.

Four weeks later, this time at a different hospital, the crowd of doctors and midwives that the sonographer called in again did nothing to relieve our fears.

A hushed pow-wow around the screen ended with the announcement, ‘Mr and Mrs Bartlett, you are pregnant with triplets.’

Our reflex was just to burst into laughter and query, ‘Are you sure there are no more?’

‘No, just the three. Congratulations.’

Our euphoria was short-lived, however. As soon as we left the ultrasound room the consultant obstetrician called us in.

‘You do realize we don’t advise that triplet pregnancies are viable. You run a huge risk to all the babies if you continue with it. I strongly recommend that you reduce the pregnancy.’

‘What do you mean?’ I asked.

‘You should only look to carry two of the babies.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘A simple injection into one of the babies will terminate it, leaving you with a more optimistic prognosis.’

‘So kill a healthy baby. That’s what you’re saying?’ Julie asked through her tears.

‘Well, that’s a harsh way to put it.’

‘But that’s what it boils down to,’ she wailed.

She and I looked at each other for no more than a second. Words between us were not necessary.

‘No way,’ insisted Julie. ‘If this pregnancy is meant to be then we will give all our babies a chance. How can you suggest killing one?’

‘Well,’ the pompous cold doctor continued, ‘they will be premature and we won’t have room for them here so they will be farmed out to other hospitals.’

‘How dare you,’ I snarled. ‘This is our dream and you are not going to wreck it.’

We stormed out, marched to the car and held each other laughing and crying for the next twenty minutes.

Thankfully, the doctor who had carried out the IVF and first spotted two babies was more sympathetic. He was the clinical director at another hospital and took us under his care, saw us every two weeks and admitted Julie as an inpatient for ten weeks until Conall George, Niamh Sarah and Deaglan John, three healthy babies, were delivered at thirty-four weeks.

Julie’s pregnancy had gone swimmingly and the triplets have grown into wonderful, intelligent, loving and healthy young adults. Thankfully I have never met that miserable consultant obstetrician since, but in some ways I would love to and show him the results of us dismissing his cruel advice.

By February 1998 Conall, Niamh and Deaglan were at that dangerous crawling stage where everything that was in reach was subjected to either the mouth or the drop test. As with the fictional DC Nick Nicholl, sleep was just a pipe dream. I’d recently returned, as a DS, to the city I loved. I had previously been posted from Haywards Heath to work at Headquarters for an Assistant Chief Constable — thankfully quite unlike Grace’s nemesis ACC Vosper — but now I was back.

The country was mourning the death of Princess Diana, the Japanese Winter Olympics were about to start and President Bill Clinton had just asserted his undying fidelity to wife Hillary in a national address. The twenty-first century was now within touching distance and people were pondering whether Armageddon would strike when the planet’s computers went into meltdown, unable to cope with eight-figure date formats: the millennium bug that fortunately never was.

It was always a relief for Glynn Morgan when he could finally lock up his cramped pizza takeaway restaurant squeezed among a row of shops on Church Road, Hove. A twelve-hour day getting deliveries out on time, serving the passing trade of ravenous drunks and managing unreliable employees could take its toll. Lucky for Glynn that his partner and soulmate Fiona Perry was always there to help ease the burden and lift his spirits.

Glynn and Fiona lived in a compact mid-terrace flat in central Hove just a stone’s throw from the scene of the crash that killed Tony Revere and set in train the most ruthless campaign of revenge in Dead Man’s Grip. The roads in that area are narrow, giving a feeling of a close community who look out for each other. People were friendly, which was just as well as parking was a nightmare. Tolerance was essential in avoiding road rage.

Being with each other and scraping a living out of their franchised takeaway pizza business kept Glynn and Fiona busy and contented. They drove a clapped-out Austin Ambassador car which limped from one annual MOT to another. Affectionately naming it Anna (‘Anna nother thing wrong with her!’) they had no need for anything more ostentatious, which was just as well given they lived from hand to mouth.

Staff turnover was high. People did not view riding a Perfect Pizza-liveried moped around the city distributing boxes of Meat Feasts and garlic bread as a long-term career. Many treated it as a stopgap between other jobs or a short-term way of boosting their income.

Glynn was grateful when David McLellan had been transferred from another branch a few years previously. He knew the ropes already and didn’t need training. When he left around 1996 he had been with them longer than most.

For Glynn and Fiona it was like any other Saturday night in winter; steady but not rushed off their feet. Trade petered out naturally by the midnight closing time so they were able to clean and cash up before the shutters came down, meaning a swift getaway. Never in their wildest dreams did they imagine what was about to happen. Never did they realize that their every thought, word and act that followed would be delicately drawn out of them by detectives and savagely scrutinized by a sterile justice system.

The safe locked, the ovens off and the mopeds crammed into the shop, they secured the doors, jumped into Anna and made their way the short distance home.

‘One day we’ll actually find a space outside,’ complained a frustrated Glynn as the car crawled along the crammed street where they lived.

‘Why don’t you drop me off at the flat and I’ll go and put the kettle on while you find somewhere to park?’ suggested Fiona.

‘OK. I won’t be long. See you in a minute,’ replied Glynn as he stopped in the road by their front door.

He would never see her again.

As Glynn inched the car round the corner Fiona noticed a man walking briskly past her. She immediately realized it was David McLellan, and it struck her as odd him being in Hove as he lived on the other side of the city. Despite being almost certain that he had not noticed her, she took the precaution of pretending to search for her keys so he would not spot which house was theirs. At that moment she became aware of a second figure pass her by. She glanced up and saw him join McLellan near the junction at which Glynn had just turned. They disappeared from sight.

Not expecting Glynn to be long, she ambled up the steps to the front door when suddenly the roar of a racing engine and the squeal of tyres grabbed her attention. Startled, she turned to see Anna racing and weaving away from her, the rear passenger door being slammed shut as it went.

She couldn’t believe that someone had had the audacity to steal Anna so brazenly with Glynn being right there. How could he allow that to happen?

She walked to the corner, expecting Glynn to emerge from a shadow, clueless, wondering what was going on. As the minutes passed by so her fears soared.

Where was he? What was happening? She was right to be worried.

Glynn had found a perfect parking space just around the corner. Normally it would be, at most, a five-minute walk back from where he managed to squeeze his oversized car into the gap.

As he switched off the engine, he flung open the driver’s door and swung his legs out. He wearily stretched as he stood on the deserted pavement, tired from his long day.

As he was closing the door, he saw McLellan walking straight at him. A second man was closing in from behind. The man behind grabbed Glynn’s keys, forced him into the front of the car, pushed him across to the passenger side and jumped into the driver’s seat next to him. At the same time McLellan leapt in the back behind Glynn.

The driver seemed flustered and couldn’t get the keys in the ignition.

‘You do it,’ he ordered.

Confused, Glynn did as he was told and leant over and started the car. As it raced off and around the corner, he came to his senses. He spun sideways and tried to kick the door open, intending to throw himself out, but it held fast.

McLellan grabbed him from behind and he felt cold steel being pressed against his throat. The threat of the knife told him this was about more than Anna. Terrified, he sensed they were making their way northwards out of town. The last thing he recalls is the driver demanding, ‘Have you got the shop keys?’

His memory of that night, and the next three months, finishes there. The brain is a wonderful thing. It can blot out forever the most horrific events, saving its host from a lifetime of flashbacks and nightmares.

Fiona frantically dashed to find a working telephone box. After hitting 999 she asked for the police. ‘My boyfriend’s been kidnapped. They’ve driven him off in our car. Please help me.’

Officers were dispatched immediately and, returning late from another enquiry, DC Mick Burkinshaw headed straight for Fiona. Doing his best to reassure her, he coaxed her into his car and drove around the local area hoping to glimpse Glynn or Anna. More cops saturated the neighbourhood and beyond, desperate to find him, hoping that he would have been dumped and that it was just the worthless car that was the robbers’ target.

PCs Richard Jarvis and Jo Nutter were conscientious and intelligent young officers. Regularly crewing together, they were a good team. Richard, despite his youth, had a dour demeanour that belied his dry sense of humour. Jo was the opposite. Irrepressibly bubbly and chatty, she was a perfect foil for Richard. They played to their differences expertly with the public, adopting good cop, bad cop roles when needed.

Knowing the patch well, they were familiar with the sites where stolen cars were dumped. Sometimes they were easy to find as the flames the thieves had ignited lit up the night sky. They made their way slowly northwards to Devil’s Dyke, making sure they clocked every car, moving or stationary, on the way.

Roy Grace used to visit Devils Dyke with his wife Sandy. They liked to park at the top of this 2,000-acre beauty spot and walk across the fields, taking in the panoramic views of the city and the patchwork of the mid-Sussex farmland to its north. So named because, legend has it, the magnificent downland valley was dug by the Devil to flood the local churches.

There are a number of small stopping points along the meandering road that leads to the top; some are just passing places, some bus stops and some, like Poor Man’s Corner, handy little car parks that serve as viewpoints.

As that particular car park came into view, it seemed empty, with not even a carload of teenagers sharing a crafty joint. Ever professional, Jo turned the car towards the narrow entrance as a movement caught her eye.

She made out a jerky figure desperately yet pathetically trying to lift an arm in a plea for help. Crunching the car to a sudden halt, Richard and Jo jumped out and rushed towards the blindly stumbling form, and leant the poor soul up against the car, unable to determine if they were dealing with a man or a woman. If you stretched your imagination you would possibly have recognized a mutilated shape that might be a head. You might just have been able to work out the facial features. If you’d thought about it, the gurgling spluttering groans could have been an attempt at speech.

Were it not for the fact that this horror had been discovered in a rural car park way off the beaten track, you could easily have assumed that the devastating injuries had been the result of a collision with a 70mph truck. It wasn’t. This was pure evil, plain and simple. This poor soul had been beaten and kicked almost to death. Every single facial bone had been broken, probably by repeated stamping, as if crushing a tin can. Richard and Jo knew that he had been left to die, and he certainly would if they didn’t act swiftly. From the description of his clothing, Jo and Richard established this was indeed Glynn Morgan. However, his own mother wouldn’t have recognized him.

Roy Grace, in retribution for damage to Cleo’s car, dumped the hateful Amis Smallbone in the same area in Not Dead Yet. We know from Smallbone’s whingeing to his fellow villain Henry Tilney the physical toll the five-mile walk back had on him, a reasonably healthy yet odious specimen. No chance then that a man with his head and face completely staved in would survive it. He wasn’t meant to.

The paramedics worked miracles, stabilizing and treating him on the gravel and grit of the rough car park. They knew that time was running out. The temperature was close to freezing. It was a balance between getting him to the specialists he would need, but not killing him in the process. Eventually they were able to gingerly lift him and glide their way to the hospital, knowing that every pothole could be a killer. The staff at the Royal Sussex County Hospital worked against all the odds in trying to save his life.

As the duty DS, it was my turn to have my sleep disturbed. Once again my mobile phone chirped at me in the small hours. As soon as I was a safe distance from the sleeping Julie and our beautiful babies — my life would not be worth living if I woke them up — I listened to Mick Burkinshaw’s staccato briefing, trying to comprehend not only what had happened but why.

Motive is all-important in such cases. Sometimes the hypotheses are hard to swallow. Crime investigation is intrusive. It strips away all privacy and dignity. Branson and Grace brought this into sharp relief when divulging to the father of Janie Stretton, shortly after her murder in Looking Good Dead, that she had been a high-class hooker. No secret is safe.

Roy Grace, at the start of every murder enquiry, refers to the Murder Investigation Manual. The route to his favoured MIR-1 — Major Incident Room One — is adorned with checklists from it. However experienced, we all need reminders.

This was not yet a murder, but I was sure it would be. Why would anyone want to kidnap someone off the street, steal their car, crush their head and leave them on a hillside to die? The manual offers possible reasons people kill, including gain, jealousy, revenge, elimination, thrill, hate, to name but a few. To get to the bottom of this I had to find the ‘why’ as well as the ‘what’. That might involve asking difficult questions of Glynn, if he survived, Fiona and all who knew them. One thing I was sure of — you don’t kill someone for an old rust heap of a car.

Later, we would need to broach the delicate subject of the relationship between Fiona and Glynn and whether there were skeletons in any cupboards, but now I needed to think like the attackers. Why Glynn? Why take him from the street? Why drive him away? Why so brutally attack him? Why focus the battering on his head? Where was the car? What was the big idea?

As I danced around the gloomy spare bedroom trying to get my trousers on and hoping the jacket I’d grabbed was from the same suit, I was making call after whispered call getting facts, triggering fast-track actions, pulling a team together.

Apologetic yet assertive was the style I used to call teams out, just as Roy did when Stuart Ferguson’s lorry was recovered in Dead Man’s Grip and on many other occasions. I needed who I needed. Apologize for disrupting their plans, yes; accepting no for an answer — never.

From the dearth of clear information I had to plump for a plausible scenario. It could have been many things but I tried to eliminate what I could. I had to strip away the unlikely to see the obvious. I needed to see what was in front of me and understand what it was telling me.

Having gently kissed Julie and our three miracles goodbye, as I was leaving the house I was told that Fiona had mentioned that she had seen a previous employee, McLellan, just before the attack. Was that relevant?

Thoughts were racing through my head as I rushed into work. McLellan might know where the takings were kept and how much there could be. Glynn himself was in no fit state to speak but Fiona had revealed that he had the shop keys with him. Surely McLellan would know that. Was that it? Was this an over-the-top burglary? Where were the keys now? I was soon at Hove Police Station and in Senior Investigating Officer mode.

The grisly task of searching the blood-soaked clothing the hospital staff had cut off the pitiful victim was one I delegated to the PC on guard. I needed to know if the keys were still with him. I sent officers to the shop to check for any sign of a break-in. Both enquires were negative; no keys, no sign of a forced entry.

No sign of a burglary, but why would there be if they had used the keys and been tidy when they went in? One of my first instructions from home had been for the nearest CCTV camera, which was on a lamppost fifty yards down the road, to be pointed towards the shop. I’d asked for it to be watched in case anyone went there after the attack. The second part of my message didn’t get passed on. I was livid about that. In those days you couldn’t review CCTV quickly. It all needed downloading onto VHS tape. I’d wanted someone monitoring it in live time. I’d been let down and someone would pay, but there was no time for that now.

Only one thing for it. I phoned Mick. ‘We need to get Fiona to tell us if there are spare keys to the shop. If there are we need to get in there now and check to see if anyone’s been in.’

‘Just in time. We were about to take her up to the hospital.’

The phone went quiet. I’d been put on mute. Was he setting me up as the bad cop to get what we wanted, even though it delayed her seeing Glynn? Click. ‘Good news, Graham, she’s got a set with her. Do you want us to go down there?’

‘Yes, but keep that shop watched while you are on your way. I need to know if anyone’s been in there since lock-up. Get a SOCO to meet you there. One who hasn’t been near Glynn or the Dyke. I’m not losing this job on cross-contamination.’

Fifteen minutes later Fiona, Mick and a PC huddled in the narrow doorway of Perfect Pizza, waiting for the SOCO, Dean O’Hara. When he arrived, he and Mick went in. Assured it was empty, and getting the forensic OK from Dean, he called Fiona through.

Still shaking with fear and worry, she checked the till. Fine. Then looked down at the safe. Open. Crouched down. Empty.

‘It’s gone, they’ve got all the money.’

‘How much?’

‘Only today’s takings. We used to have up to about £5,000 on a Saturday as we paid the wages on a Sunday, but not any more. There was probably only £600 or £700 tonight.’

Mick was straight on the phone. That was it. I was going after McLellan. He was right there when Glynn was snatched, he probably knew the old banking procedures and had assumed they were still the same, and he would certainly know where the money was kept. I needed more, but Mr McLellan and I were going to have a chat. He had a lot of questions to answer and, if my hunch was right, he or his clothes would be covered in blood.

Dawn was breaking and we were already beyond the Golden Hour. The Grace novels mention this period of sixty minutes following a crime, and it is critical: the immediate aftermath of discovering a crime or victim provides the best chance of finding forensic evidence, witnesses and getting the truth out of people. So time was now against us. My team knew this. On days like this we worked like Trojans for as long as it took. No-one was waiting in the wings to take this over from us so everything was put on hold from now until we could come up for air.

We had the scene at Poor Man’s Corner taped off and being searched. While not quite on the scale of the chicken farm in Not Dead Yet, it was a large windswept area that, being Sunday, ramblers would want to reclaim.

We needed the CCTV footage from all the shops near Perfect Pizza as well as our own. We needed to speak to anyone who might have seen the car being driven off. We needed intelligence on McLellan; was he capable of this and who did he knock around with?

I needed everything to be done in parallel but McLellan was my priority. With those of my team who had not been near Glynn, the Dyke and now the pizza shop, I went in pursuit of our man armed with a search warrant. We were surprised when McLellan, who was five foot ten and athletic, coolly let us in.

He denied leaving Moulsecoomb, claiming to have been watching MTV with his soon-to-be brother-in-law, Phillip Hurley. He seemed plausible. Hurley, a gangly six foot four bus driver, gave the same account. My team searched both McLellan’s and Hurley’s houses. We found nothing in Hurley’s. But in McLellan’s we recovered what appeared to be some stained black jeans and a grubby dark jacket. We couldn’t work out whether it was blood or grime but I decided the suspicious clothing should be seized and McLellan arrested. We needed more on Hurley, so left him.

Having booked our man into custody, we had a series of lucky breaks that normally only occur in the movies. Mick Burkinshaw had relayed to the CCTV staff my wrath that no-one had bothered to watch the camera in live time. This persuaded them to get the tapes copied quicker than normal.

‘Get over here, Graham,’ he said as I walked into the bustling CID office, ‘and tell me who you think this is.’

On the flickering screen in front of him was a CCTV image of two men side by side, who were dead ringers for McLellan and Hurley. Mick paused the tape. ‘Now watch.’ He pressed ‘play’.

There before my eyes were the same men darting into the doorway of Perfect Pizza. Nothing happened for a couple of minutes then, bold as brass, out they came, this time face to camera. I needed no more convincing. ‘Well done, Mick. You’ve cracked it’

‘It gets better.’ Amazingly they ambled into a taxi office a few doors down then, a minute or so later, came out, got into a cab and were driven away.

We had got them.

‘Get out and nick Hurley,’ I instructed DC Lee Taylor.

‘No need,’ said DC Steve Flay as he replaced the telephone receiver. ‘The idiot’s just turned up at the front desk with some fags for McLellan!’ Lucky break number two.

‘Well, get down there and nick him for attempted murder then!’

Our two suspects locked up, and having arranged for full forensic searches of their houses, I turned my attention to poor Glynn. Things weren’t looking good. He was in Intensive Care but barely alive, wired up to machines that were performing every function his body couldn’t.

Like Nat Cooper who was devastatingly injured in a motorbike crash in Dead Tomorrow, he’d had emergency surgery to ensure he could breathe, but his brain was so badly injured it was swelling dangerously. Fiona wouldn’t leave his side. We needed to speak to her but that could wait. He was going to die — I was sure of that — and her place was with him.

Normally, a Detective Superintendent would have taken on this enquiry. Just my luck, none were available. There were no dedicated Major Crime Teams in those days so, unless Glynn died, it was down to me to lead the investigation. As Grace was taught in his training, J Edgar Hoover once asserted that ‘no greater honor or duty is bestowed on an officer than to investigate the death of another human being.’ I felt both honour and duty even though Glynn was not dead yet.

As suspects, McLellan and Hurley did their best, sticking to the story that they had been in all night. They dismissed the evidence of the female bus driver we found, who knew Hurley well, who said she had taken them from Moulsecoomb to Hove. They scoffed at the taxi driver we identified who took them home again just as the CCTV had shown. They denied we’d find any forensics on their clothes. The ID parades, CCTV evidence, their discredited account and the blood they must have known we would find didn’t shake their resolve.

We plugged on for days. Home became a distant memory for most of us: just a place to snatch a couple of hours’ sleep, a quick cuddle with our loved ones and a change of clothes.

We were still looking for Glynn’s car, still sifting witness statements and CCTV footage. We had daily late-night and early-morning meetings with the Crown Prosecution Service. The pager was always by my side waiting for the inevitable message that Glynn had died. During a custody extension hearing at Brighton Magistrates’ Court, I was poised to whisper to the prosecutor that we were now dealing with a murder.

Amazingly that message never came. Call it a miracle, call it the wonders of medical science, but Glynn gradually started to rally. First came small signs, just a tiny response to stimulus, then minute, almost imperceptible movements, followed by months of the very best care and rehabilitation the National Health Service could provide. His optic nerve, however, had been severed and he would be blind for life. His face needed a complete rebuild, his memory was a total blank, but he survived. The skill of the surgeons and the love of Fiona gave him a second chance.

As for McLellan and Hurley, they were charged with attempted murder and remanded in custody to await trial. Tough for Hurley who had no previous convictions but absolutely right nonetheless.

We soldiered on after the charge. As Grace reflects in Dead Man’s Grip, that’s when the real work begins. Convictions don’t happen by themselves. We found the car, not far from Perfect Pizza. Inside was a balaclava that contained one of Glynn’s hairs. Glynn had never owned such a garment so had it been put on him to stop him recognizing McLellan? The icing on the cake came when the brilliant forensic scientists found a significant amount of Glynn’s DNA in the blood on the clothing of both suspects.

What had started as a hunch became a cast-iron case. Even arrogant pleas of not guilty, allegations of police corruption and an attempt to ban the blinded victim from the courtroom ‘in case it swayed the jury’ didn’t pull the wool over anyone’s eyes. Both men were convicted and imprisoned for a staggering thirty-seven years between them.

Glynn got a life sentence of blindness however. He was forced to rebuild his life and try to make sense of why he was so nearly killed for a paltry £620. He and Fiona made a new but quiet life for themselves, refusing to be bitter, refusing to hate.

My final memory of the trial was an indication of how some in the criminal justice system refuse or are unable to see the horror of what is at the root of their profession. We all experience it; to some it’s a sick, heartless game.

Having spent hours in the witness box being accused of planting what must have been about a pint of blood on the clothes of both defendants from the vial of a few millilitres we had for testing, I bumped into one of the defence legal team outside the Old Bailey after the verdicts. He tapped me on the shoulder and glibly remarked, ‘Well done, Graham, old boy. Good case and right result. Sorry about all that nonsense regarding the blood. When one has one’s instructions one has to try, you understand.’

Understand? How dare he? How dare he try to minimize the horrors inflicted by his client by downgrading the trial to a debating society joust? That was typical of some. Never mind the rights and wrongs, never mind searching for the truth, never mind the victim. Throw some mud where you can and hope you get enough jurors to doubt for a moment. Do what it takes, and see if you get one up on justice and let the guilty walk free. How do they sleep?