Need You Dead

110 Saturday 30 April

Fifteen minutes later, completely and utterly spent, Grace stepped gratefully down from the last rung, back onto terra firma. There were three police officers as well as two men in yellow hard hats all looking at him.

He wasn’t often lost for words, but he was now. He felt close to collapsing from exhaustion. He staggered forward and stumbled. A sturdy man in a hard hat grabbed him, supporting him.

‘All right, mate?’

‘Where is he?’ Grace gasped.

‘Where’s who?’

It wasn’t going to be a pretty sight, he knew that much. That sort of vertical drop. He’d seen what that did to people. They exploded. Limbs came off, their innards burst out through their stomachs. He was feeling sick at the thought.

The thought that his friend, and colleague, was lying out there in the darkness. His body broken.

‘Is he still up there, sir?’ a uniformed officer whom he did not recognize asked him.

‘Is who still up there?’ he replied, puzzled.

‘DI Batchelor, sir,’ the PC said, looking equally puzzled.

‘He jumped,’ Grace replied. ‘He’s not still up there.’ His voice was choked. ‘I’m sorry but — but — he jumped.’

He turned away, suddenly feeling deeply emotional and close to tears. He should have scrambled up those last few rungs and grabbed him. Held on to him. Knocked him out.

‘No one’s jumped, sir,’ another voice said.

‘He jumped! I saw him! Didn’t you see him? Didn’t anyone find him yet?’

A siren was wailing in the distance, approaching.

Ops-1’s voice came through the radio. ‘Roy, can you give me an update?’

‘Give me a couple of minutes, Kim,’ he said. Then he looked at the group standing around him. ‘He must be somewhere close,’ he said, then ran for the door and outside. Right above him was the illuminated glass observation car.

The first officer he had spoken to followed him. ‘Sir, we have ten officers around the base of the tower — they would have seen anyone falling.’

Grace heard an electronic whirring sound above him. He looked up and saw a drone hovering, a red light blinking beneath it.

He called Ops-1 back. ‘Kim, have the drone do a search around the base of the tower for a body.’

‘Golf 99 at Brighton, Inspector Anakin is controlling it, sir. He’s already carried out a search and there is no sighting of a body.’

‘Kim, he jumped, for God’s sake! The man jumped! He was on a platform outside, right in front of me, then he vanished. Tell him to look again.’

The drone rose into the air and was swallowed by the mist in seconds. Grace looked around at everyone, bewildered. ‘He’s not sodding Superman,’ he said. ‘He didn’t fly off into the night, he jumped, I’m telling you.’

The siren was approaching now. Arriving at the scene.

Then he heard Kim Sherwood again. ‘Roy, Golf 99 has found him. The drone is filming him now.’

‘Finally.’

‘He’s entangled in some kind of netting near the top of the tower.’

‘What?’

One of the maintenance men in a hard hat said, ‘That’s the safety net put up for the inspection and maintenance team.’

Grace could scarcely believe what he was hearing. ‘Safety net?’

‘We put it up for night-time cleaning.’

‘Is he alive? Kim?’

‘He’s moving, Roy — apparently with difficulty. I can patch a live feed through to your phone.’

He turned to the hard hat. ‘How do we get him down?’

‘With difficulty. Not something we’ve yet had to do.’ The man turned to his fellow hard hat, who nodded his concurrence.

‘We’re going to need a helicopter,’ he said. ‘Could be a problem with the visibility.’

Grace called Batchelor’s phone.

After some moments, to his amazement, the detective answered, sounded in a lot of pain.

‘Guy?’ He looked up, but all he could see was misty darkness.

‘Can’t you just leave me alone?’

‘If I didn’t care for you, I probably would. Just sit tight, we’re calling up the coastguard to helicopter you down.’

‘I don’t need a fucking helicopter.’

‘OK, so what do you need?’

‘How strong is this bloody netting?’

‘Strong enough to hold an elephant.’

‘That would be nice — an elephant ride. Just what I need right now.’

‘Just sit tight, we’ll get you down.’

‘I’m not going anywhere, Roy. Jesus, I’m a failure. Couldn’t even fucking kill myself.’

‘One day you’ll be grateful you didn’t.’

‘Yeah? You come and find me on that day and tell me about it.’

‘I will, Guy,’ he promised.

‘You’ll be able to recognize me. I’ll be the man in the prison visiting room with the scars and bruises and his teeth knocked out.’

‘I’ve been told prisons are better at protecting police officers these days.’

He heard a hollow laugh.