Looking Good Dead

77

Roy Grace drove away from Harry Frame’s house suddenly feeling very low and very tired, despite the latest can of Red Bull and the caffeine tablets he had swallowed less than half an hour ago. It was too soon to take any more. He hoped to hell that the clairvoyant would suddenly get one of his sparks of inspiration.

Then his phone rang. He answered it hopefully. It was Branson, cheery as ever.

‘Bearing up, old timer?’

‘I’m bagged,’ Grace said. ‘What news?’

‘Someone from DS Gaylor’s lot has been going through Reggie D’Eath’s paperwork. They’ve found a monthly standing order on his Barclaycard to a company called Scarab Entertainment. The amount is one thousand pounds.’

‘A thousand quid? A month?’

‘Yup.’

‘Where does someone like D’Eath get that kind of money?’

‘By supplying small children to rich men as a sideline.’

‘Where’s the company based?’ Grace asked.

‘That’s the bad news. Panama.’

Grace thought for a moment. There were certain countries in the world where the law guaranteed a company total privacy from investigation. He recalled from a previous case that Panama was one of them. ‘That’s not going to help us much in the short term. A thousand quid a month?’

‘That’s big business,’ Branson said. ‘Couldn’t we get a court order to force all the credit card companies to tell us who else is paying a grand a month to Scarab Entertainment?’

‘Yes, in these circumstances with lives at stake we could, but it won’t help us. We’ll get a list of nominee directors from some law firm in Panama that’ll tell us to fuck off when we approach it.’ How many subscribers did they have? It would not need many to make a very substantial business. One that they would go to great lengths to protect.

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For a thousand a month you would want to give the odd little freebie, wouldn’t you? Just toss the occasional paedophile into an acid bath.

‘You still there, old timer?’

‘Yes. Anything else your end?’

‘We’ve got one sighting of Mr Bryce in his Espace, just after midnight, filling up with petrol at a Texaco garage at Pyecombe – from the CCTV camera.’

‘Other vehicles on the camera?’

‘No.’

‘And nothing of use in the Espace?’

‘Forensics are crawling all over it. Nothing so far.’

‘I’m coming back to the Incident Room,’ Grace said. ‘I’ll be about twenty minutes.’

‘I’ll have some coffee waiting.’

‘I need a quadruple espresso.’

‘Me too.’

Grace drove on, turning off the coast road and driving inland on the upper road through Kemp Town, past the posh girls’ school, St Mary’s Hall, the Royal Sussex County Hospital, then the Victorian Gothic facade of the mixed public school, Brighton College. On his left, a short distance ahead, he saw a muscular-looking man with a strutting gait walking into a newsagent’s. Something about him looked familiar, but he couldn’t immediately think what.

But it was enough to make him do a U-turn. He pulled over on the opposite side of the road, switched off the engine and watched.

After no more than a minute, the man emerged from the shop, a cigarette in his lips, carrying a plastic bag with a bunch of newspapers sticking out of the top, and walked towards a black Volkswagen Golf parked with two wheels on the kerb, its hazard flashers on.

Grace stared hard through his windscreen. The gait was distinctly odd, a curious rolling swagger that reminded him of the way some hard nuts from the armed forces walked. As if they owned the pavement.

Dressed in a singlet, white jeans and white loafers, the man had gelled spikes of short hair and sported a heavy gold chain around his neck. Where the hell had he seen him before? And then his – sometimes – near-photographic memory kicked in, and he knew exactly where and when he had seen this man before. Last night. On the CCTV footage in the Karma Bar.

He had been Janie Stretton’s date!

Grace’s heart was pounding. The Volkswagen drove off. Memorizing the number, he gave it a few seconds, let a taxi followed by a British Telecom van pass, then pulled back out onto the road, made another U-turn and followed, dialling the Incident Room on his mobile. It was answered on the first ring by Denise Woods, one of the indexers, a very serious, very efficient young woman.

‘Hi, it’s Grace. I need a PNC check very quickly. I’m following the vehicle now. It’s a Volkswagen Golf, registration Papa Lima Zero Three Foxtrot Delta Oscar.’

Denise said she would call him right back.

A short distance on, the Volkswagen, still in front of the taxi and British Telecom van, stopped at a red traffic light.

When the lights went green, the Golf turned left into Lower Rock Gardens, heading down to the seafront. The other two vehicles went straight on. Grace paused for a second, then turned left, keeping as far back as he dared.

Come on, Denise!

The lights at the bottom, at the junction with Marine Parade, were green, and the Golf turned right onto the coast road. Grace went over on amber, keeping as far behind the Golf as he dared, letting a Ford Focus and then an elderly Porsche overtake him, but keeping the Golf in sight.

As the Golf negotiated the roundabout in front of the Palace Pier, his phone rang. It was Denise. The registered owner of the car was a company called Bourneholt International Ltd, with a PO box number in Brighton. The car had not been reported lost or stolen and there were no police interest markers from anybody.

‘Bourneholt International Ltd,’ Grace said. ‘I know that name.’ Then he remembered why. ‘Denise, quickly take a look at the registration of the van that crashed last night; I’ll hold.’

The Golf continued heading west along the seafront, past the recently repainted facade of the Royal Albion Hotel. Then, as they approached the Old Ship Hotel, the Golf moved into the outside lane, its right turn indicator signalling.

To his relief, a blue S-class Mercedes in front of him was signalling right, also. Grace tucked in behind its substantial bulk. He saw the Golf head up, past the hotel, and make a right, down into the huge, Civic Square underground car park. So did the S-class. Grace was right on its tail, waiting behind it on the ramp.

Denise came back on the phone. ‘It’s the same, Roy. Bourneholt International Ltd.’

He clenched his fists in excitement. ‘Brilliant!’

The automatic barrier swung up and he moved forward, waited for the ticket to emerge from the machine and grabbed it. ‘Well done!’ he said.

But there was no signal.

The barrier swung up again, and he drove the Alfa through. Just as he did so, a BMW 3 series reversed out of a space, blocking Grace’s path.

It reversed slowly, a nervous man inching back, inch by sodding inch.

Come on! Grace screamed silently.

After what seemed an eternity, the BMW drove forward, then turned off onto the exit ramp. Grace accelerated. All the spaces on this level were taken. He took the ramp down to the next level. That was full too. So was the next level. But as he raced through it, a Ford Galaxy people carrier filled with children, a nervous mother at the wheel, reversed across his path.

Jesus, woman, get out of my way.

He had no option but to wait. And wait. And wait.

Finally he got down to Level 4, and saw several free spaces. He accelerated, looking for the Golf, and then he saw it. Parked in a bay.

The driver had vanished.

He braked behind it, cursing.

There was a blast of horn behind him. In his mirror he saw a Range Rover. He raised a finger, drove on a few yards, then turned into the first empty space he saw, switched off the engine and jumped out of the car. He sprinted towards the exit, up the steps two at a time, and out into the large open square with a Japanese restaurant in the middle, the Thistle Hotel on one side and rows of shops on the two other sides.

But there was no sign of the man with the rolling gait and the spiky hair.

There were three other exits he could have left by. Grace ran round, covering each of them. But the man had vanished.

Grace cursed, thinking hard, standing by the first exit, nearest the Golf and his car. He doubted the man had seen him tailing him. But how long it would be before he returned to the car was anyone’s guess. It could be five minutes, or five hours.

Then he had an idea.

He dialled his former base, Brighton Central, and asked to be put through to an old mate, Mike Hopkirk, a Brighton Divisional Inspector. To his relief, Hopkirk was in and not on a call.

Hopkirk was a wise owl with many years of service behind him; he commanded a lot of respect in the force and was well liked. Grace had made his choice of who to call for this task very carefully. To get everything galvanized at the speed he needed, if Hopkirk agreed, he was the man.

‘Roy! How are you? Keep seeing your name in the press! Glad to see your move to Sussex House hasn’t blunted your appetite for pissing people off!’

‘Very witty. Listen, I’ll chat later. I need a big favour, and I need it right now. We’re talking about two people’s lives – we’ve reason to believe they’ve been abducted and their lives are in imminent peril.’

‘Tom and Kellie Bryce?’ Hopkirk said, surprising Grace.

‘How the hell do you know that?’ He was forgetting, just how razor sharp Hopkirk was.

The roar of a passing lorry drowned out Hopkirk’s reply. Covering one ear and jamming the phone hard up against the other, Grace shouted, ‘Sorry? Can you repeat that?’

‘They’re on the bloody front page of the Argus!’

The PRO had managed to pull it off. Brilliant. ‘OK, Mike, here’s what I want. I need you to close down Civic Square car park for an hour – to give me enough time to search a car in here.’

He heard what sounded like a lot of air going backwards very quickly. ‘Close it down?’

‘I need an hour.’

‘The biggest car park in Brighton, in the middle of the day. Close it down – are you out of your mind?’

‘No, I need you to do this, now, right this minute.’

‘On what grounds, Roy?’

‘A bomb scare. You’ve had a call from a terrorist cell.’

‘Shit. You are serious, aren’t you?’

‘Come on, it’s a quiet Monday morning. Wake up your troops!’

‘And if this goes pear-shaped?’

‘I’ll take the rap.’

‘Won’t be you, Roy, it’ll be me, and you know that.’

‘But you’ll do it?’

‘Civic Square?’

‘Civic Square.’

‘OK,’ he said, sounding dubious but resigned. ‘Get off my bloody phone; I need it!’

Grace needed his, too. He called Sussex House to arrange for a SOCO team to get down here immediately, and for the officer to be accompanied by someone from Traffic who was capable of getting past the locks and security system of a VW Golf.

Next he phoned a Detective Inspector called Bill Ankram, who was responsible for the deployment of the local surveillance team. In a rare stroke of luck, Ankram had good news for him.

‘We were down to follow someone in central Brighton today and the job’s gone short – we’ve had a no-show. I was about to pull the team out and have a training afternoon instead.’

‘How quickly could you get them covering the Civic Square car park?’ Grace asked.

‘Within an hour. We’re not far away already.’

Grace made the detailed arrangements, gave him the vehicle registration and exact position of the Golf. Then he phoned the Incident Room and had them fax and email the photograph of the Volkswagen’s driver to Ankram.

Next he spoke to Nicholl and told him he would have to see the officer from the Met on his own, after all. As he was speaking to him, there was a deafening explosion of wailing.

It sounded as if all the emergency vehicles in the entire City of Brighton and Hove had switched on their sirens simultaneously.