Love You Dead

80 Wednesday 11 March

Having woken full of excitement, Grace now felt totally deflated. Edward Crisp, the big prize he had been expecting Glenn and Norman to escort home, had vanished. Now they were flying home alone. He was increasingly fretting about the reaction he would get from his ACC.

He phoned the mobile number of their Interpol case officer in London and got his voicemail. He left a message, informing him of the disastrous developments in Lyon, and asking the officer to call him back urgently.

Five minutes later, mug of coffee in his hand, he sat down at his desk deep in troubled thought. He called Cassian Pewe’s mobile but it went to voicemail. Was nobody bloody answering their phones this morning? He left a message.

He briefly checked what had happened overnight on his computer but there was nothing of significance to him — just the usual muggings, robberies, fights, vehicle thefts — a Mercedes and a BMW — mispers, break-ins and RTCs.

Next he checked his emails and saw one from his NYPD detective friend, Pat Lanigan.

The email had been sent at 10 p.m. last night, Eastern time.

Grace did a quick mental calculation. New York was five hours behind the UK. 6.30 a.m. here; 1.30 a.m. in New York. He’d wait a few hours before ringing him back. Instead he made a phone call to someone for whom he had great respect.

It was answered by the eager-sounding voice of Ray Packham, who had recently retired, on health grounds, from the High Tech Crime Unit.

‘Ray, it’s Roy Grace. I’m sorry it’s so early, but I have something I need to run by you. Are you OK to talk?’

‘Roy! Good to hear from you. I’ve been up for ages, bored out of my mind, if you want to know the truth. How can I help you?’

Grace told him. When he had finished the conversation, feeling very upbeat about his plan, he sat still, reflecting. Crisp had escaped from his cell somewhere between lock-up at 9 p.m., French time, last night and 7 a.m. their time this morning. All his possessions would have been taken from him, surely, when he had been booked into custody there? He would only have had the prison officer’s uniform and gun. Enough to have enabled him to hijack a car and flee the country. He could be in Switzerland or Italy or Germany by now. Or Austria, he thought, looking at the map of Europe on his wall.

God, they’d had the evil bastard. How the hell had he done it? How the hell had he pulled off his escape again? No doubt with the same cunning and planning he’d used to escape from his underground hideout in Brighton back in December. Now he was playing international hide and seek. One certainty, he knew, was that Sussex Police did not have the resources, however heinous Crisp’s crimes, to embark on an international manhunt. They would have to rely on Europol and Interpol for that.

Right now he had to focus on Operation Spider. If there really was a ‘black widow’ operating in the city, and the evidence pointed to it, he needed to stop her before another victim died. But the plan he had concocted during the night seemed fraught with problems. In a different era he could just have gone ahead with it on his own initiative. Now he had to seek permission, and jump through a whole bunch of potentially hostile hoops.

Which might have fatal consequences.

He needed to strengthen his evidence in every way that he could, and one thought had been going through his mind during the night on how he might possibly do that.

He googled ‘saw-scaled viper’, then leaned forward, peering closely at his screen as he scrolled through a wide range of information and links about the snake and its genus, Echis. He was looking for one very specific thing. Something that Jodie might have slipped up on. It was just a hunch, a long shot, but worth a few minutes of his time.

As he read what came up, he felt a beat of excitement. ‘Yes!’ he said, punching the air. He read it carefully again, then phoned Guy Batchelor, who was acting as the office manager for Operation Spider. ‘Guy, the venomous reptile expert from London Zoo who came down to accompany the team that searched Shelby Stonor’s home, Dr Rearden right?’

‘Yes, boss, he said if someone was needed to advise on the snake bite, we should contact the Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine, who are world-renowned experts.’

‘Liverpool, bugger, that’s quite a distance. Can you contact them as soon as you can and see if there’s anyone who could get down here today?’

As he ended the call, his phone rang. It was ACC Pewe. Grace took a deep breath.

Pewe was not as angry as he had expected, but he guessed the reason why. This was something Pewe would be able to bank and hold against him at a later date, however much it had not been his fault.

‘What a bloody mess, Roy,’ he whined down the phone.

‘Crisp? Yes, sir, I agree with you. But not Operation Spider. I have a strategy — I’d like to come and talk it through with you. Do you have any time free today?’

‘I’m free now,’ his boss replied. ‘I’ve one hour.’