Love You Dead

84 Wednesday 11 March

Reflexes in the animal kingdom are the key to survival. An instant decision has to be made. Friend, foe or food. Every creature develops the senses it needs for survival through natural selection. Saw-scaled vipers, like most snakes, have poor eyesight, and their hearing is pretty rubbish too. In common with all snakes they have forked tongues which are chemosensory, picking up minute scents on wet surfaces and taking them back into the roof of their mouths, the olfactory Jacobson’s organ. It is smell and taste combined; in effect that’s the survival armoury of this genus of reptile. The more anxious a saw-scaled viper becomes, the more its tongue flicks, and it makes its defensive sawing sound by coiling and uncoiling, rubbing its scales together. It can see only movement, in shades of grey, and cannot discern shape, unlike raptors, such as eagles, hawks and falcons, which can see eight times more clearly than the sharpest human eye. A golden eagle can identify a hare from a mile away and a peregrine falcon can dive on its prey at 200 mph.

Villains depend on heightened senses for their survival, too. Just the same way that the best cops develop a sixth sense for spotting them.

Out on the streets, one of the first things villains see is a police car. It’s like a magnetic force, drawing their eyes to it, and then to the cops inside. A good crim can spot an unmarked car from a distance just as easily as one in full Battenburg livery, decked out in blue lights. Cops sit in a certain way, look around in a certain way.

Roy Grace remembered, eighteen years ago, as a young detective constable, soon after his move from uniform to CID, travelling across lush Sussex countryside on a fine August day to a murder scene, turning to the highly experienced detective inspector who was driving, and asking him if he viewed the world differently from most people.

The DI replied, ‘Roy, you’re looking through the windscreen at a beautiful summer’s day. I’m looking at a man who’s standing in the wrong place.’

Grace had never forgotten that. As he drove away from Brighton Station having dropped off Dr West, he pulled up at the junction with New England Road, waiting for the lights to turn green. A Streamline taxi passed in front of him heading up the hill. And as if drawn by a magnet his eyes locked with those of the passenger slouched in the rear of it, wearing a baseball cap.

For just one fleeting instant.

Then an articulated lorry halted in front of him, straddling the junction and blocking his view of the taxi’s licence plate.

Shit! Shit! Shit!

He had a near photographic memory for faces, and he was sure the one he had seen in the rear of the taxi was the American hitman Tooth, although he was aware his mind might be playing tricks, as he’d spent most of the morning talking about him.

He pulled back the plastic cover on the dash that concealed the buttons for the lights and sirens, and hit the one for the pursuit blue lights, but not the siren, not wanting to alert his quarry. The lorry was still stuck in front of him, completely blocking his path.

‘Get out the bloody way!’ Grace yelled in frustration. But still the lorry didn’t move.

His brain raced. He knew every road in this city. The taxi heading up the hill could either go straight on or fork right in a few hundred yards. At the top of the hill was the Seven Dials roundabout, giving six different options — as well as a left turn-off shortly before.

The lorry moved on up the hill and a van behind it stopped to let him through. Grace pulled out to try to overtake the lorry, but there was a bus in the oncoming lane and he pulled back in to let it pass, then pulled out again. The lorry indicated it was pulling over, and he shot past, squeezing into a narrow gap left by an oncoming car that had halted. But the road ahead was blocked by another lorry, waiting to turn right under the viaduct.

He radioed an urgent request for the Ops-1 Inspector, gave him the information and asked for any units in the area to look for a Streamline Skoda taxi heading up New England Road, with a passenger in the rear wearing a baseball cap. He told them to follow if they spotted it and inform him immediately, but not to stop it. He also asked his colleague to contact Streamline to see if they could get a carefully worded message to the driver. As soon as the lights changed, and the lorry moved on, turning right, he saw a whole line of buses coming down the hill, completely blocking the opposite lane.

He followed the lorry, then pulled out to overtake, thinking he would try to get ahead of the taxi this way and cut it off at the Seven Dials. He screamed past the lorry, crested the hill and eased left through a red light at the junction with Dyke Road, then driving on the wrong side of the road, hitting the alternate wail and honk sirens, bullied his way through the oncoming traffic all the way to the roundabout.

But there was no sign of the taxi.

It could have gone in any damned direction.

He did a full circle of the roundabout, thinking hard. The taxi was heading up New England Road. That was a route people took coming into the city. Was it then going to head down to the seafront? Or the town centre? Those were the most likely options.

He made a left turn off the roundabout into Montpelier Road, again driving as fast as he dared, weaving through the oncoming traffic and peering left and right down each side turning. Then he saw a Skoda taxi in Streamline livery heading west. He raced past it, pulled in front, switched on the red flashing STOP lights, and braked sharply to a halt. In his mirror he saw the taxi pull up behind him. As he was debating what to do next, the rear door opened and a young woman got out, reached in and lifted out a small child.

Shit!

Grace climbed out, removed his warrant card and walked up to the cab, raising an apologetic hand to the woman and the driver, who wound down his window, peering out nervously.

‘It’s fine,’ Grace said. ‘You can continue.’

He returned to his car, wondering. Had it actually been Tooth he had seen? Or just wishful thinking?

Twenty minutes later, as he arrived back at Sussex House, the Ops-1 Inspector called him back to report no success. Grace thanked him and went in through the front door of the building. Climbing the stairs to the Major Crime suite, he reflected on just what he had seen in the back of that taxi. Had he imagined it? He didn’t think so. Offenders had a way of looking at coppers that was different from all other people. But maybe he was just a regular Brighton villain who had picked up on him. Maybe it was just his imagination working overtime.

Back in his office, he phoned Pewe to update him on his meeting with West at the mortuary, and the expert’s opinion. When he had finished, he said, ‘Do you need anything else, sir?’

‘No,’ Pewe said, grudgingly. ‘I don’t.’

As he ended the call, Grace’s phone instantly rang. It was Guy Batchelor and he sounded excited.