Left You Dead

103

Roy Grace and Glenn Branson sat in the unmarked Ford, parked on Eastbourne’s almost deserted seafront. A short distance away the streetlights ended, and a steep dark hill rose ahead, the start of the Seven Sisters chain of chalk cliffs, the most notorious of which was Beachy Head. It was just gone 10.57 p.m. and they’d been here for the past hour. Grace was both anxious and bored. Branson just seemed plain bored. The other members of the team were at HQ awaiting deployment.

Peering through the windscreen, made opaque by the pelting rain, Branson said, by way of conversation, ‘You don’t like heights much, do you?’

Grace shook his head. ‘I get acrophobia. If I look down an unguarded drop — or even a guarded one — I feel a strange pull to jump, almost as if I’m being tempted or my brain is taunting me. You ever get that?’

The DS nodded. ‘This is about as close to the edge as I like to be: a good quarter of a mile of terra firma between me and any drop. I get acrophobia standing on a kerb!’

Grace smiled distractedly.

Glenn looked at him concerned. ‘You OK, mate?’

‘I’m OK, I just get flashes when it hits me and I think of his accident. I just hope to God he didn’t feel anything. But I’d rather be here, especially if we get a result tonight.’

Then he focused back on why they were here. Despite what he had told his team at the briefing earlier in the week, he had been toying ever since with turning this into a full-blown operation, with Gold, Silver and Bronze commanders to cover his back if anything went wrong. But mindful of Cassian Pewe’s scepticism about this entire investigation, he worried the ACC would order him to abort his whole plan, so in the end he’d stuck to his decision of keeping it low-key, not getting Pewe involved.

And hoped it wasn’t all going to go badly tits-up.

Although the weather had already gone just that. Far from the forecasted clear night, at the moment there was dense cloud cover and a heavy rain shower was falling. It pattered down on the roof of the unmarked Ford as Grace sat with Branson. A strong wind was blowing, too, sending something — an empty drinks can, Grace guessed — rattling along.

Three of the vehicles of Mark Taylor’s Surveillance Team, each with a crew of two, one with Sharon Orman, were parked up close by, covering the exits to the conference hotel where Rebecca Watkins was staying. The others were stationed on the main roads out of Eastbourne. Inside his jacket pocket Grace had a printout of his risk assessment for tonight. But his nerves were ragged.

A figure, head bowed against the rain, walked along the pavement with a dog on a lead, and passed by their car. Branson yawned. ‘Think you need to use a better weather forecasting method,’ he said with a wry smile, watching the rain. ‘There’s technology you can use, apps, you know? They’re a lot more reliable than sticking your finger out of the window — or was it the entrails of a chicken you were studying?’

Grace gave him a withering look.

‘Sorry, boss, that was tactless.’

‘You could say that.’ He grimaced at the reminder of the previous week. ‘I looked at the forecast for around midnight, it’s meant to be clear skies then.’

‘Definitely, for sure it will be, somewhere in the world, just not here,’ Branson retorted.

But Grace barely heard this, he was back in his thoughts, again thinking through what lay ahead tonight. The words of Sharon Orman, relaying the conversation between Niall Paternoster and Rebecca Watkins in the pub in Croydon. Whenever I can get away without being rude. Probably be near to midnight. Does that sound like a plan?

A lovers’ rendezvous? Was that all it was going to turn out to be? He would have egg all over his face, for sure, if he’d organized an operation simply to watch a couple getting it on in the back of a car.

What, he wondered over and over, was he actually expecting to see tonight, if not that? But all his instincts were sensing this was going to turn into something more than a simple bit of canoodling lovers. Rebecca Watkins was up to something.

But what?

Where would she choose? Which remote location, ideal for lovers wanting to be away from prying eyes, and yet close enough to Eastbourne to be just a short drive away?

Both had their phones in front of them, on the road-mapping app Mark Taylor had instructed them to upload. It currently showed Niall Paternoster’s rental car stationary at his home address.

In order to keep as silent as possible, and avoid any sounds from their radios, both of them wore earpieces plugged into their phones. Each of them also had night-vision binoculars.

Glenn Branson spoke suddenly, quietly, in a caring tone. ‘How are you feeling, mate, you know, about the funeral?’

‘Not great. I’ve spent the last couple of evenings going through the order of service with Cleo, listening to Bruno’s playlists, trying to figure what music he would have approved of — and what would sound appropriate in church. Something I guess to do with all he had to overcome — you know — all the difficulties with his mother, then her death, then moving to a new and strange country, family, school.’

Branson was silent for a while, thinking. ‘One suggestion, although it’s not for me to say and it might not be entirely appropriate... how about Mike Doughty’s “I Keep on Rising Up”. It’s about overcoming adversity, and he has a beautiful voice, soulful — that’s one that could work.’

‘I don’t know it, but I’ll have a listen tomorrow, thanks.’

‘I’ll try and think of some more.’

‘So,’ Grace asked, ‘wedding still OK for next month?’

After a long and acrimonious divorce from his wife, Ari, and a custody fight for their two children, which Ari had mostly won before her untimely death, Glenn Branson had finally moved on and fallen in love again. Siobhan Sheldrake was a very charismatic and fun person, but as the senior crime reporter for the Argus, Grace could foresee some awkward pillow talk between them in the years ahead. On the other hand she had been really good with his kids and loved being a stepmother to them.

‘Yeah,’ Branson said. ‘All set.’ Then as he looked down at his phone, he murmured excitedly, watching the red dot of Niall Paternoster’s car, ‘Subject one is on the move!’

As Grace looked too, both suddenly heard communications in their earpieces.

‘Alpha Five here, subject two, Range Rover Evoque, index Golf November Seven Zero Charlie Papa November has just left hotel.’

Grace felt a beat of excitement. That was Rebecca Watkins’s car. He heard Taylor’s voice.

‘Alpha Five, roger that, keep eyes on it.’

‘Copy that, sir, am following at distance.’

A few minutes later, Grace heard a voice. ‘Subject two’s turning into Beachy Head pub car park. I’m carrying on past.’

Grace looked at the red dot heading up Nevill Road. Even driving fast in light traffic, it would take Paternoster a good half-hour to get here. They could reach the car park in less than ten minutes. He radioed Taylor. ‘Grace to Alpha Seven.’

‘Alpha Seven,’ Taylor replied.

‘We’re going to check out the Beachy Head pub car park.’

‘Roger that, sir, we’ll put units either side but not too close.’

Grace turned to Branson. ‘Fire her up. Get there quickly but quietly.’

As Branson started the engine, Grace looked down at the red dot again. And again hoped to hell this wasn’t going to turn out to be a massive waste of everyone’s time.