Looking Good Dead

53

The video viewing room in the Major Incident Suite was a tiny, windowless cubicle, a few yards down the corridor from MIR One. With just Glenn Branson and Tom Bryce in there it felt crowded and claustrophobic. Yet another example, in Branson’s view – and he was only an occasional visitor – of how poorly thought-out the conversion of the building had been.

Tom Bryce sat at the desk, with a monitor in front of him, and to his left a video and CD stack. The machine was loaded with CCTV footage from two cameras at Preston Park railway station, the first stop north from Brighton, regularly used by commuters both for its convenient location towards the outskirts and for the free parking in the streets all around. It was the station where the dickhead seated next to him on the train last Tuesday night, who had left behind the CD, had got off.

Constable Bunting had come up trumps. Within two hours of Glenn’s call to British Transport Police, the officer had produced footage of the southbound platform of Preston Park at the time of the arrival of the train Tom had been on.

Tom forced himself to concentrate, but it was hard because he was beside himself with worry about Kellie. He had the shakes from having eaten nothing all day and drunk far too much caffeine. His stomach felt as if it was full of barbed wire. Suddenly his mobile phone rang.

He looked at the display but did not recognize the number. ‘I’d better answer it,’ he said. Branson nodded his encouragement.

It was Lynn Cottesloe, Kellie’s best friend who also lived in Brighton, wondering if there was any news or anything she and her husband could do to help. Could they bring some food over? Help out with the children? Tom thanked her and said that a rota of family liaison officers had been organized. She told him to call the instant he had any news, and he promised he would. Then he returned to his task.

The first camera showed the length of the platform, from a high vantage point. A train was just pulling out of the station. A counter in the top right-hand corner read 19.09.

‘That’s the Thameslink, the London Bridge service,’ Glenn Branson informed him. ‘Yours is coming in a couple of minutes.’

Tom fast-forwarded, then slowed when a new train appeared on the track. His nerves tightened. The train came to a halt. Doors opened and about thirty people climbed down onto the platform. He pressed the freeze-frame button, and looked at each character carefully.

No sign of the dickhead.

‘This is the right train?’ he asked.

‘Definitely. The 6.10 fast service from Victoria – the one you told me you took,’ Branson replied. ‘Run it on a bit; might be that not everyone’s off yet.’

Tom pressed the play button and all the people sprang back into life. He scanned the open doors of the train, many of which were being shut again, trying to work out the carriage where he had been sitting. It was about four back from the front – he estimated he was looking at it now.

And then he saw him.

The big-framed, baby-faced man, dressed in a safari-style shirt over shapeless slacks and clutching a small holdall, was stepping down onto the platform now, and looking carefully around almost as if to ensure the coast was clear before he got off.

Clear of what? Tom wondered, stabbing the freeze button.

The man stopped in mid-step, his left, trainer-clad foot in the air, his face angled slightly towards the camera but showing no awareness of it. Although the look of deep consternation on his face was clearly visible.

Tom pressed the play button again, and within moments the man’s concerns seemed to be over, and he began walking, almost jauntily, towards the exit barrier. He froze the tape again, and said, ‘This is him.’

Branson stared at the man in shock. ‘Zoom in, will you, on his face.’

Tom fumbled with the controls, then zoomed in, a little jerkily, until he was tight on the dickhead’s face.

‘You’re absolutely sure?’

Tom nodded. ‘Yes. That’s him. Absolutely.’

‘You couldn’t be mistaken?’

‘No.’

‘That’s very interesting,’ the Detective Sergeant said.

‘Do you know who he is?’

‘Yes,’ Branson said, his voice turning grim. ‘We do.’