Left You Dead

60

Roy Grace, curious about the reported sighting of Eden Paternoster, and highly dubious, was tempted to call back Glenn Branson as he drove to the Sussex Police HQ. But he wanted to use the twenty minutes or so the journey would take to keep his focus on Bruno.

His mind kept admonishing him shoutily. Miracles happen — wait for one. Bruno will suddenly start speaking. He’ll defy those bloody doctors. Another voice in his head was telling him not to be stupid, that he needed to start grieving.

Somehow, when he arrived back at work, he managed to avoid bumping into anyone, entered the sanctuary of his office and shut the door. As soon as he sat at his desk, he called Glenn Branson.

A couple of minutes later, the DI was seated opposite him, in his favoured position with the chair the wrong way round. ‘How is he?’ he asked.

‘I’ll come to it, but I want to hear first about this credible sighting of Eden Paternoster.’

‘You don’t need to be here, Roy — you look terrible — I mean it in the nicest way.’

Grace nodded. ‘I need to be, my mind is all over the place, I need something else to focus on, to keep sane, OK?’

Branson smiled. ‘Understood,’ he said gently. ‘I’ve actually got quite a bit more to report. But yeah, this sighting: a prison officer, who works at Parkhurst in the Isle of Wight, saw the article and Eden Paternoster’s photo in the West Sussex Gazette. She is positive she saw Eden Paternoster on the Isle of Wight Hovercraft ferry on the evening of Sunday September the first.’

Grace frowned. ‘The same day Eden’s husband claimed he’d dropped her at the Tesco store and she’d vanished? Which Aiden Gilbert has discredited?’

‘The same day, boss, yes. But what makes this sighting particularly interesting is that Eden Paternoster has Isle of Wight family connections — her grandfather worked in a hotel in Seaview and she has a number of cousins there.’

Grace had spent several childhood holidays on the Isle of Wight. A few miles south of the coast of Hampshire, it was the second smallest county in England, with a population of around 140,000. One of its claims to fame was that it housed Parkhurst prison, once one of the country’s highest-security jails, which had hosted, at various times, the Yorkshire Ripper Peter Sutcliffe, the Kray Twins and Moors Murderer Ian Brady among many of the nation’s most notorious and repellent criminals. But in recent years, he recalled, following a number of high-profile escapes, it had been downgraded from a Category A to a B.

‘OK,’ Grace said. ‘What information can you get from the Isle of Wight Hovertravel company? Do we have a name the ticket was booked under?’

Branson shook his head. ‘They don’t take names — it’s only an eight-minute ride. I’ve spoken to the boss, Neil Chapman, a very helpful man. You can buy tickets for cash at the terminal or online or by card. I’ve sent DC Hall down there to have a trawl through the online name and credit-card bookings for Sunday afternoon and evening, then he’s going over to the island to talk to the prison officer.’

‘Tell him to bring back a tube of Alum Bay sand,’ Grace said.

Branson frowned. ‘Alan Bay?’

‘Alum Bay. Used to love it as a kid — it’s famous for its cliffs of multicoloured sand. You can buy tubes of it, all different colours.’

Branson gave Grace a strange look. ‘How many tubes do you want, boss?’

‘Just reminiscing, I always wanted to take Bruno there—’ He tailed off.

‘Ah, right. OK.’

‘Get all the names of Eden Paternoster’s relatives on the Isle of Wight. And there must be CCTV?’ Grace said, snapping back into professional mode.

‘There is, yes. They have it at the hovercraft terminal in Southsea and at Ryde on the Isle of Wight. There are also onboard cameras.’

‘Have you got the footage?’

Branson shook his head. ‘Not yet, thanks to GDPR.’

General Data Protection Regulation was one of the banes of modern life that even the police, regardless of the urgency of an enquiry, had to abide by.

‘I’ve done the application for the DP2 form to the Hovertravel GDPR officer. I’m hoping to hear back from them shortly. The good news is that they keep all CCTV for thirty days. So long as we don’t get a jobsworth, they’ll burn off a copy to a USB stick, which Kevin Hall can bring back.’

Grace thought for some moments, absorbing this. ‘As soon as you get it, I’d like to see it.’

‘And maybe Haydn Kelly?’ Branson said.

Kelly was the pioneer of Forensic Gait Analysis, who Grace used regularly when he was available to help confirm or deny a suspect from the way they walked.

‘Yes, if the facial images aren’t clear enough and if there’s any footage of her walking,’ Grace said. ‘Before then, are we going to review the footage of Niall Paternoster’s interviews with Jon and Norman?’

‘Yes.’ Branson glanced at his watch. ‘We’ve another starting shortly, we can see that first.’

‘What are the other developments? You said you had quite a bit more to report?’

‘I do, and this is where it gets more complex. The Dive Team have only started this morning. But the Search Team have been in Ashdown Forest since yesterday evening. They’ve found a number of items of bloodstained clothing in what looks like a hastily dug grave close to where the trainer and the kitchen knife — a match to the set in the Paternosters’ kitchen — were found. But no body parts.’

‘You’ve sent all the items for DNA analysis?’

‘They’re at the lab now.’

Grace considered this. ‘Just clothing. No body parts?’

‘No, but there’s something else I don’t think I’ve updated you on, boss, from last night’s briefing, which might be very significant. Especially regarding the knife. Niall Paternoster started out in life, after school, as a butcher’s assistant.’

Grace stared at him, thinking hard. ‘That might be very significant.’

‘Indeed.’

‘In woodlands, in particular, dismembered body parts can be carried off by predators within a very short time. Foxes, badgers, birds of prey — and all the rodents. That could explain why the team hasn’t found anything yet, potentially five days after it was left there.’

‘But what about the head, boss?’

‘I’ll put good money on that being in the harbour,’ Grace said. ‘Unless it’s in the Isle of Wight and walking around, still attached to her body. We need to get that footage from the hovercraft.’

‘Sometime today, hopefully.’

‘Good.’

Branson glanced at his watch. ‘We should go over to the custody centre and watch this morning’s interview with Paternoster. Are you OK to meet up?’

‘Sure.’