Left You Dead

75

Mark Taylor sat in the square, boxy room at Police HQ, briefing his night-shift team of nine surveillance officers seated in front of him. Six male and three female, all in plain clothes, some deliberately scruffy, wearing reversible jackets and with a variety of caps and beanies stuffed in their pockets, others in varying degrees of smart casual. They would be joined soon by Sharon — Wazza — Orman, and they were aware three of their colleagues were in situ outside the subject’s house.

There was a nickname for everyone in this team, with many not able to recall the real names of their colleagues, due to how infrequently they were actually used. Nicknames were easier to use when communicating amongst the team.

A monitor on the wall behind him showed a view across a wide street of four nice-looking 1950s semi-detached houses. Two were rendered in white plaster; the other two, one with a red ring drawn around it, were in brick. The ringed one had a blue Fiesta parked in the drive; they had seen the subject pick it up from a local hire company. This house, like its twin, had a deeply recessed front door behind an arched porch.

On the top right of the screen was displayed the time in hours, minutes and seconds. Immediately below that were GPS coordinates. It was the start of the evening rush hour and a steady stream of cars, motorcycles, lorries, vans, buses, cyclists and pedestrians passed by in both directions.

Taylor thumbed the remote he was holding, freezing the image, then turned back to his team. ‘This is Nevill Road, Hove, taken twenty minutes ago, from Gummy’s van inside the Coral Greyhound Stadium car park, almost directly across the street. The van’s marked all over with the Coral logo, and it’s one of three parked up together, so it won’t draw any attention. Gummy’s going to remain in situ for the long haul.’

They all knew what this meant. Gummy — Jason Gumbert — would be concealed inside a crate in the back of the van, videoing through the rear windows, which were two-way mirrors. He would have several days’ supply of food and water, would pee into containers and, if he needed to, shit into plastic bags, which he would then seal.

‘I imagine as locals you’re all familiar with the area — anyone not?’

All shook their heads, one managing to do that while chugging from a water bottle at the same time.

‘Smithy, good to see you multitasking!’ Taylor ribbed.

The wiry DC, Darrell Smith, had a naturally furtive face, with permanently half-closed eyes, giving him the deceptive appearance of dozing. Removing the bottle from his lips, he replied in a slow, pedantic voice that belied his sharp brain, ‘It’s a new skill I’ve learned — I can drink and listen at the same time.’

‘And this from a bloke who six months ago couldn’t suck mints and walk at the same time!’ quipped ‘Long Tom’ Thompson, who was a shade over five foot seven.

Taylor, smiling, looked back at the display. ‘The house ringed is the Paternosters’. Niall Paternoster, the subject, is about to appear.’ He pressed a button in the remote, starting the recording again, and a skip truck passed. A moment later, a muscular man with tousled hair and bulging arms, wearing a T-shirt, shorts and flip-flops and carrying two seemingly weighty carrier bags, stepped into view, hurrying across the road and making for one of the brick-faced houses.

Taylor froze the image, then zoomed in close so that Paternoster and the bags he was carrying were in clear focus. Then he looked inquisitively at his team. ‘Anyone tell me what you can figure out from this image?’

‘That he’s ugly with bad hair?’ said a shaven-headed man, nicknamed Hulk.

‘I’m looking for something a little more worthy of your detective brains,’ Taylor said, acknowledging Hulk with a faint grin.

‘The shopping bags, sir?’ suggested Lucy Arndale, nicknamed Frog Girl after once spending almost two days and nights semi-submerged in reeds at the edge of a river, waiting for a drugs drop.

‘Go on,’ Taylor encouraged her.

The slight woman in her late twenties, with shoulder-length brown hair and thin lips, said, ‘Those are Waitrose carrier bags, sir.’

‘Good shout,’ Taylor said. ‘And your point is?’

‘Waitrose has a reputation for quality, but also as being one of the most expensive grocery store chains in the UK. So, I’m immediately wondering, if Niall Paternoster is struggling for money, what’s he doing shopping in Waitrose?’

Smithy shot up his hand. ‘Boss, could it not simply be that this store is the closest to his home? So he went there for convenience and hang the cost?’

‘I’d buy the convenience angle,’ Taylor responded. ‘But he could have jumped into his car and, for the minimal expense of his petrol, made big savings from buying at Tesco or Sainsbury or Lidl or Iceland. So for a man so short of money, doesn’t Waitrose seem a little extravagant?’

‘Perhaps he’s celebrating the end of his austerity, sir,’ Lucy Arndale posited. ‘He thinks, in his small mind, that he’s successfully murdered his wife, with nothing to connect him to her killing, and now the house and whatever cash she has are going to be his to enjoy — with his girlfriend, perhaps the lady he’s suspected of meeting at the Devil’s Dyke car park last Sunday evening?’

The DS nodded. But before he could reply, a string of low-level beeps came from his phone, alerting him to a radio comms. He put the phone to his ear and pressed the ‘listen’ button. It was Gummy, his voice urgent.

‘Boss, subject’s on the move. He’s out of the house, getting in the Fiesta.’

Taylor immediately switched the video from playback to live feed. They all watched.

Niall Paternoster, looking spruced up now, in a pale-blue shirt and white chinos, walked round the rear of the Fiesta and zapped the door lock.

‘Too bad we don’t have the tracker already in place,’ Taylor said.

‘If he leaves the car out all night,’ Smithy said, ‘it’ll be a doddle.’

‘Unless he’s going to dismantle it and lug it in through the front door, he probably will leave it out all night, Smithy — since the house doesn’t have a garage,’ retorted Long Tom.

Smithy looked at Thompson. His voice sounding even more pedantic than ever, he said, ‘How does it go, Tommy? “When you assume, you make an ass out of you and me”? He could have a lock-up round the corner somewhere, couldn’t he?’

Thompson nodded. ‘Fair point.’

But all the team’s focus was now on the Fiesta trying to reverse into the stream of traffic. An old red van eventually stopped to let it out. Then the Fiesta accelerated away, heading north.

It was 5.10 p.m.